84th Recap: Omnibus Office of Consumer Credit Commission Bills

With all of the recent changes in federal law and regulations, most of which resulting from the Dodd-Frank Act and CFPB rules sprouting from the Act, there are many areas in Texas finance law that are now out of date. Most of the Texas finance provisions refer or cite specific federal laws or regulations. Trouble is after Dodd-Frank many of those citations changed, were relocated elsewhere, or eliminated. SB 1282 and its identical House counterpart, HB 3094, were large omnibus "clean up" bills that went through all the various finance laws regulated by the Office of Consumer Credit Commission. The 24 page bill made numerous citation clarifications to areas of the Finance Code that we always pay close attention to, namely the chapters dealing with the Texas SAFE Act and the governing of manufactured housing chattel lending.

There were no changes in the bills that would have an adverse impact on manufactured home lending. In fact, the bills would add needed clarity and proper citation references to update state law to the changes in federal law. Our concern throughout session was not related to the bill language, but rather the fact that they opened up sections of the Finance Code that impact manufactured housing, and thus could be used as vehicles to put on bad amendments. As such we monitored these bills closely to make sure they were not adversely altered. 

The good news is that the bills remained clean and no adverse amendments or changes were made that would negatively impact our industry.

But as an example of just how difficult and how finicky it can be to actually pass a bill, SB 1282 provided a good 2015 lesson. The non-controversial, simple, agency "clean up" bill made it easily through the Senate, and was rolling nicely in the House. In both chambers the bill got unanimous votes in favor of its passage, and in both chambers was sent to the expedited calendar for uncontested bills called the local and consent agenda (also referred to as the Local Calendar). The issue for this bill was end of session deadlines and being victimized by a political blood bath on the final Local Calendar. 

For a bill to get knocked off of Local members can stand to speak on the bill for a set amount of time or gather a specific number of signatures to knock it off. The parliamentary details aside, the point is that there is a low threshold to knock a bill off Local. Early in the session being knocked off Local isn't a death sentence. The bill can just go back and be added to the normal Calendar. But that is not the case for the last Local Calendar of the session because at that time there are no more regular Calendars. The 135th day of a session is the last Local Calendar, and it was on this day that SB 1282 died. 

A small group of conservative law makers came to the final Local Calendar with a list of bills they did not like, be it for political or policy reasons. SB 1281 was on their list and when it came up it was knocked off and had nowhere else to go. SB 1281 died inches from making it to the governor's desk.

We fully expect the language of SB 1282 to come up again in the 2017 Session.

<< Return to the 84th Recap Overview | View the next 84th Recap story >>