The Texas Legislature is back. Here’s what we’re watching.

  

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Texas lawmakers returned to Austin on Tuesday to begin a 140-day session, during which the Republican-led Legislature is poised to pass an array of conservative priorities and decide how to spend more than a quarter trillion dollars in state money over the next two years.

The session follows an election cycle that saw Republicans maintain firm control of both legislative chambers. But the party is deeply fractured, with a leadership battle looming for control of the Texas House that will shape the next five months of policymaking.

Whoever is in charge, lawmakers will race to address a number of key challenges before the Legislature gavels out in early June, including shoring up the state’s water supply and power grid, addressing health care and public school workforce shortages, and continuing to rein in property taxes around the state.

Much of the agenda will be driven by GOP state leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott, who is continuing his push to enact education savings accounts, a voucher-like policy that would give families direct access to state funds they could use to cover the cost of private school tuition and other education-related expenses. The idea is also a top priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate and is also vowing to ban all forms of consumable tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in Texas.

As the Legislature reconvenes, here are some key issues we will be watching throughout the session.

Who will be elected House speaker?

More than a month has elapsed since the House’s current leader, Dade Phelan, abandoned his bid for another term wielding the speaker’s gavel. The race to succeed the Beaumont Republican has come down to two GOP candidates, neither of whom has secured enough public support to lock up the speakership.

The speaker controls the fate of legislation by ruling on procedural matters on the House floor and installing allies to lead committees that decide whether to advance bills or keep them bottled up. With the leadership contest stuck in limbo — a rarity this late in the game — members, lobbyists and advocates are heading into the session without a clear picture of who will be pulling these key levers of power.

Vying for the speakership is Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, a top Phelan ally who quickly emerged as the consensus pick of Phelan’s GOP leadership team, along with a majority of House Democrats. Battling Burrows for the gavel is Rep. David Cook of Mansfield, who won a closed-door vote in December to become the House Republican Caucus’ endorsed candidate after a contingent of Burrows’ supporters exited the meeting.

Cook is largely backed by the House’s most conservative members, while Burrows’ GOP support stems mostly from moderate and establishment Republicans. But the contest does not fall neatly along ideological lines: Cook’s voting record puts him near the ideological middle of House Republicans, firmly to the left of his hardline conservative supporters. Meanwhile, even some of Cook’s supporters acknowledge that Burrows has solid conservative bona fides, displayed by his lead role in passing a sweeping new law in 2023 aimed at sapping the power of progressive local governments — a sore spot among some Democrats who have refused to get behind Burrows.

Much of the conflict comes down to questions of power-sharing with Democrats and, for Cook’s supporters, a desire to wrest control from what they view as a cliquish leadership cadre formed by Burrows, Phelan and their close allies.

If elected, Cook has vowed to weaken the speaker’s means of controlling the chamber by supporting a two-term limit on the position and barring the speaker from distributing “political funds.” Both are among a list of demands from hardline conservatives supporting Cook, who has also agreed to ensure that GOP bills reach the floor before any Democratic measures; make it harder for Democrats to use procedural tactics to kill or delay conservative bills; and end the tradition of appointing Democrats to chair a select number of House committees. Burrows has said he would let the full House decide whether to ban or continue allowing Democratic chairs.

Also at stake in the speaker’s race are relations between the House and Senate. Patrick — whose rift with Phelan stalled major items like property tax cuts and border security — has urged House members to support Cook, setting the stage for continued sparring between the chambers if Burrows wins the gavel. Patrick has said he does not care who is speaker “as long as they win with a large majority of Republicans,” though he has made clear his preference for Cook, accusing Burrows and his allies of “desperately trying to hold onto power.”

Heading into Tuesday’s vote, Cook remained stuck shy of 60 public supporters, nearly all of them Republicans. He has courted Democratic support since winning the GOP caucus vote in early December but had failed to net any public pledges until Rep. Richard Raymond , D-Laredo, announced his support for Cook last week.

Burrows, meanwhile, announced the backing of 76 current and incoming members — 38 Democrats and 38 Republicans — shortly after the December caucus vote, seeming to reach a majority of the 150-member chamber. But a few Republicans immediately asked for their names to be removed from Burrows’ list, dropping his public support below the needed threshold. If both candidates remain short of 76 votes, a third candidate could emerge to seek the gavel.

Private school vouchers and public education funding

Two of the biggest issues on the table this session are private school vouchers and a possible funding boost for public schools. The two matters are deeply intertwined: though bipartisan majorities in both chambers supported a push to hike public education spending in 2023, the effort died when lawmakers voted to strip vouchers from a broader education funding bill, bringing down the entire package.

Since then, Abbott has led a well-funded coalition of voucher supporters who spent millions in last year’s primaries ousting House Republicans who teamed with Democrats to sink the voucher plan. The governor claims to now have 79 “hardcore school choice proponents” in the House — three more than needed to pass legislation.

Still, some voucher foes argue that Abbott’s whip count assumes backing from numerous incoming Republicans who voiced general support on the campaign trail for “school choice” or education savings accounts but have never laid out what kind of voucher proposal they would back.

In a memo to members in November, House Democratic Caucus leaders urged defiance, pointing to comments made by pro-voucher Republicans acknowledging that the passage of voucher legislation is not a done deal yet. The memo noted that, “like any bill before the House, the devil is in the details.”

Still, Abbott has transformed the political landscape around vouchers with astonishing speed, and supporters are bullish that their success at the ballot box generated enough momentum and political will to keep members in line.

Meanwhile, Abbott has said he is committed to hiking public school funding and teacher pay as well, painting it as a false choice to suggest that “you can’t have both school choice and robust public schools.” Voucher critics, however, argue that such programs would funnel money away from public schools, further choking a system that is already facing widespread budget shortfalls from inflation and five years without a significant boost in state funding.

How the state budget surplus gets used

Just like in 2023, lawmakers will have to decide what to do with a multibillion-dollar budget surplus — and once again, there will be plenty of competing interests vying for a share of the pie.

Comptroller Glenn Hegar estimated Monday that Texas will have nearly $24 billion left in its state coffers when the current two-year budget cycle ends in August. Lawmakers can spend some of the leftover cash before then or put it toward the upcoming budget that will run through August 2027. They also may leave some money in the bank to avoid busting state spending caps, as they did in 2023.

A big chunk of the surplus could go toward public education. Elected leaders from both parties are calling for a major boost in school funding, after the voucher clash derailed efforts in 2023 to put $4 billion toward raising teacher pay and giving schools more money per student. Lawmakers will have a second chance to tap into that funding — which was included in the current state budget but remains unspent — and add more on top if they want.

Budget leaders also will have to decide how much money to put toward school vouchers if Abbott is able to steer a package through the Legislature. The current budget sets aside $500 million for a voucher program, which also remains untouched.

Further competition for surplus dollars will come from lawmakers and advocates who want to renew items they passed two years ago. Water policy experts are pushing for the Legislature to establish a “dedicated,” or ongoing, source of funding to build on the $1 billion approved by lawmakers and voters to develop new water sources and fix crumbling infrastructure. Texas will need to spend more than $150 billion over the next half century to meet its growing water infrastructure needs, said Jeremy Mazur, director of infrastructure and natural resources policy for the nonprofit think tank Texas 2036. Abbott and other Republicans recently have signaled support for major water spending this session.

Additionally, Abbott and Patrick have each said they want to pass another round of property tax cuts this year, after lawmakers in 2023 put nearly $13 billion of that year’s surplus toward a tax-cut package. The two Republican leaders also have called for the Legislature to double funding for a $5 billion state fund aimed at expanding the power grid by offering low-interest loans for companies looking to build new gas-fueled power plants.

Texas’ overflowing coffers also have allowed Republicans to pump more than $11 billion into border security since 2021 under the umbrella of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative, through which a surge of state police and National Guard troops have been sent to the border to apprehend people suspected of crossing the border illegally and either turn them over to federal authorities or jail them on state charges.

Abbott has said the massive expense is needed to counteract the Biden administration’s immigration policies, which Republicans have slammed as overly lenient. But with President-elect Donald Trump set to take office later this month and enact an immigration clampdown, Abbott and Patrick have signaled plans to redirect some of the billions spent on border security to other uses.

“We’re going to be able to take a lot of that money now and put it back to our taxpayers, for roads, for water, for education, for health care, for all the things that we need that Joe Biden forced us to spend because he was letting millions of people cross the border,” Patrick said in an interview with WFAA-TV in Dallas after the election.

Can Democrats present a united front?

Though Republicans control both legislative chambers and every statewide office in Texas, Democratic lawmakers have continued to wield some influence over the lawmaking process — and how the state spends its money — by deploying parliamentary tactics to obstruct GOP bills and chairing a handful of House committees, including panels overseeing parts of the budget.

But in the House — the chamber where Democrats have their best chance of blocking GOP priorities and shaping legislation — the party is fresh off a divisive leadership battle that saw Rep. Gene Wu of Houston supplant Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio as caucus leader.

The House’s 62 Democrats — outnumbered by an 88-Republican majority — are now heading into the session divided over how to approach the speaker’s race. A little more than half the caucus is publicly backing Burrows, while most of the remaining members are withholding their support for either candidate. Some uncommitted Democrats have held talks with Cook, but only Raymond, the Laredo Democrat, has announced his support.

Martinez Fischer, who is among the uncommitted members, penned a letter to fellow Democrats on Jan. 1 urging the caucus to get on the same page. He argued Burrows’ support was shaky enough that Democrats could hold out for a better deal or candidate if they stayed on the sidelines, directing his argument at Democrats who, he contended, were supporting Burrows out of a misguided sense that “‘the train was leaving the station’ and they needed to get on board.”

“If you are one of [those Democrats], you should really consider joining those of us who are not committed,” Martinez Fischer said. “As we have said for months in our opposition to vouchers, our unity is our power.”

Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat who is helping lead the party’s voucher opposition in the lower chamber, told the Tribune in December he is optimistic that Democrats will remain united against vouchers, as they were in 2023.

“I do see a path where there is no voucher [bill] passed. I also see other paths of different ways this session could end,” Talarico said. “This game just started, and there’s a lot of clock left.”

Democrats can also look for leverage on Republican efforts to amend the Texas Constitution, which require two-thirds support in both chambers. After netting a seat in the Senate, Republicans will control 20 of the chamber’s 31 seats, just one vote shy of the two-thirds threshold. But in the House, Republicans will need to bring 12 Democrats on board to pass constitutional amendments when every member is present — an obstacle that has thwarted recent GOP priorities like a long-running effort to give judges more discretion to deny bail.

That measure, aimed at keeping more defendants behind bars while awaiting trial, is set to be a priority of Patrick and influential Republicans in the Senate, where GOP bail laws have repeatedly sailed through in recent years.

Disclosure: Texas 2036 has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.