By Jennifer Carr Allmon, Associate Director, Texas Catholic Conference

My husband is fond of telling people that I get an 18 month vacation because the legislature only meets for six months every other year. The Texas Legislature is the largest of only 5 state legislatures (Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Oregon) in the country that meets every two years rather than annually. But despite my husband’s teasing, there is much work to be done during the interim and the Governor also has the power to end my summer vacation with a special session of the legislature.

The Texas constitution mandates that the legislature pass a balanced state budget. Due to the failure of the legislature to pass the critical fiscal matters bills that provided the revenue to balance the budget, the comptroller will be unable to certify that the budget that passed the legislature will balance. This forced the governor to call a “Special Session” this summer to develop pass legislation to come up with the funding needed to balance the budget before the fiscal year for the next budget cycle begins Sept. 1, 2011.

The governor controls the timing and content of a special session and only legislation on topics he “calls” can be addressed in the session. So far, the Governor has added the following topics to the “call” of the session: fiscal matters, healthcare cost containment and Medicaid reform, congressional redistricting, Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, and sanctuary cities.

The constitution also limits the special session to 30 days, putting significant pressure on the legislature to get the job done in that time frame, or risk the Governor calling ANOTHER special session in July or August in order to fund state government by Sept 1.  The fiscal matters issues are the only issues on the call that MUST pass by Sept. 1.  At a cost of $30,000 per day to taxpayers, special sessions are an expensive way to resolve legislative issues.

There is no constitutional mandate for the legislature to adopt redistricting maps. If they fail to pass them, then the Legislative Redistricting Board (composed of the lieutenant governor, speaker of the house, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner) is constitutionally mandated to meet within 90 days of the end of the regular session to adopt maps, and eventually the courts will decide if those maps are valid.

As these deadlines approach we at the Texas Catholic Conference are hopeful that our summer isn’t special for too long so that we can start our “vacation”. Stay tuned for our outcomes report from the 82^nd regular session of the Texas Legislature. You can also check our web site www.TXcatholic.org for the latest updates from us.