From the 87th - TMHA Supported HB 3417 Passes the House
TMHA supported, HB 3417, passed out of the Texas House this morning. The bill that would add licensing flexibilities during a prolonged disaster, expedite bulk title transfers when a manufactured home community is bought and sold, and make other needed clean-up changes to Texas’ manufactured housing laws, now heads to the Senate.
Having completed a third of the journey, the bill will need to be heard and passed out of Seante committee, set on the Senate calendar, and voted out with a majority of votes in order to make it to its final leg – the desk of Gov. Abbott. And to accomplish this, it has to all happen before Sine Die when the session ends on May 31st.
Actually, the deadlines are even a bit more looming. We are now at that part of a session when things begin to officially run out of time. The deadlines begin hitting this week, the big one being that all House bills have to be passed by midnight on Thursday, or they are goners.
The Senate has a bit more time, but just a bit. The last day to get a bill passed out of the Senate is May 26th. The fate of hundreds, if not thousands of bills, will be determined in the next intense 15 days.
We expect the legislature to work everyday remaining until the end. They already worked last Saturday but took off on Mother’s Day. That was probably their last day off until the end of May.
While there are still many good bills that are moving, and need to continue to do so and with haste if they want to survive to the end, there are also a great many other bad bills we are not sad to see get killed by the clock. There are a select few bills, 84 to be exact as of today, that have passed. Eighty-four out of nearly 7,000 bills filed. That number will assuredly climb over the next two and a half weeks, but we expect there to be a significant drop off compared to prior sessions.
One of the most significant of those few bills that has passed, been signed by Gov. Abbott, and is effectively immediately is the PPP loan forgiveness bill that excludes the pandemic relief loan forgiveness from state franchise tax calculations.
Stay tuned for more as we come down the final stretch.