Why SB 182 will not advance in this session of the Texas Legislation

Update on SB 182: this bill would make it legal to carry firearms on campuses of higher education. However, it has moved out of the Criminal Justice committee. Let’s be honest, it probably won’t advance anymore this session due to the slowness of the legislative system.  The trip to Austin to observe the Texas Legislation in action made it apparent that the session would no produce any results besides a few bills and the passing of the budget for the next two years.

For those of you who do not know, the Texas Legislation only meets every ‘odd’ year for six months. So that means that within that time two things happen: planning and passing of the budget and proposals of bills that are up for passing.

I’m sorry, but that isn’t a lot of time to plan and pass a budget that is suppost to last for two years. It is a faulty system because the population of our state is growing everyday so it is impossible to project what the spending is going to look like two years from now.

SB 182 will not succeed this session because of the system that is in place. The bill does not have a lot of push behind it, which is what it takes for a bill to be passed in the type of system. Currently, another big issue for this session is the education. In the 82^nd session, education was cut by $5.2 billion dollars. This session is planning on putting about half of that back into the budget. We discovered this issue when we met with Holly Taebel, Director of Professional Development and Advocacy for the Texas Classroom Teachers Association.

This video shows Texas Representative Eric Johnson talking about the voucher system that would come with the new education budget. 

Video credit: YouTube

Blog Post #4

Topic: SB 182

Cody Coke