By Gary Borders
Texas Press Association
The Texas Legislature convened in special session last Thursday and GOP legislators introduced a fresh set of voting bills after Democrats blocked an earlier attempt during the regular session by walking out in May, preventing a quorum.
HB3 and SB 1 don’t include some of the more controversial measures that were in the previous bill, such as restricting voting on Sundays. KUT.org reported the new bills include new ID requirements for people voting by mail and banning local election officials from sending vote-by-mail applications that have not been requested by the applicant.
The measures, still largely opposed by Democrats and voting rights groups, also ban drive-through voting and extended hours during early voting. Those backing the new bills say those extended hours encourage voter fraud, though there is no evidence of widespread fraud during the 2020 election. Republican lawmakers are pushing for a full House floor vote this week.
Editor’s Note: Since this was written, many Democratic legislators have walked out again in order to stymie Republican efforts in the legislature.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced the topics to be considered during the special session the day before it opened. Besides the voting bills, they include:
Abbott also last week directed the Public Utility Commission to make major changes “to ensure the reliability of the Texas power grid,” the Houston Chronicle and other media outlets reported.
Abbott asked the PUC, which oversees the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to improve maintenance on power plants and speed development of some transmission projects.
“The objective of these directives is to ensure that all Texans have access to reliable, safe, and affordable power,” Abbott wrote in a letter released last Tuesday.
In response, PUC chairman Peter Lake in a letter to Abbott expressed “wholehearted agreement with its contents.” Besides the widespread blackout during the mid-February storm, a heat wave in June prompted ERCOT, which maintains the state’s electric grid, to urge Texans to conserve electricity as usage approached peak capacity.
$4.1 billion more in school stimulus funds
Texas will receive another $4.1 billion in federal stimulus funding for its public schools, the San Antonio Express-News reported.
The U.S. Department of Education announced last week that it had approved the state’s plans for spending $12.4 billion that was allocated to the state. According to the Express-News, the top priority for the Texas Education Agency is bolstering the mental and emotional health needs of Texas students by expanding tutoring and other methods.
TEA estimates Texas students lost 5.7 months of learning during the pandemic school year.
“The approval of these plans enables states to receive vital, additional American Rescue Plan funds to quickly and safely reopen schools for full-time, in-person learning; meet students’ academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs; and address disparities in access to educational opportunity that were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a news release.
At 12,426, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Texas increased 18% in the past week when compared to the previous week, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University.
The number of new deaths in the past week dropped slightly to 151. Hospitalizations of lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients in the state were on the rise, with 1,927 currently in Texas hospitals as of Sunday, according to Texas Department of State Health Services.
The number of Texans fully vaccinated crossed the 12 million mark this week, DSHS reported. The rate of vaccinations in the state has slowed significantly in recent weeks, despite troubling reports of the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19.
Gary Borders is a veteran award-winning Texas journalist. He published a number of community newspapers in Texas during a 30-year span, including papers in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches and Cedar Park. Email: gborders@texaspress.com.
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