[brimelian]

I have spent my entire career working around the Texas Legislative process. What happened to Menendez' bill yesterday is standard, but the sad fact of the matter is that his legislation has virtually no chance of becoming law this year.

The legislative session ends on May 28th, and there are a number of procedural deadlines in the last month of the session designed to kill bills that aren't moving. The House already has a tremendous backlog of bills that need to be heard before these deadlines start to apply, so the reality is that all house bills need to get out of committee by mid-April to have any chance of making it through the entire process.

Based on what I have heard, Menendez has the votes to get his bill out of committee. However, he probably doesn't have the votes to get it out of the full house. Even if he did have the votes, the bill would have to be scheduled for floor consideration by the House Calendars committee. Given the political composition of that committee, it is unlikely his bill will ever make it back to the house floor.

The most likely scenario is this: Menendez gets his bill out of committee, but it dies in Calendars and never makes it to the floor.

I know this sounds discouraging, but consider this: similar bills have never made it out of committee in past sessions. If Menendez can get this bill out of committee this year, he will have accomplished something that has never been done before. That doesn't help us now...but it will give the bill a fighting chance in the 2009 legislative session.