We dodged a bullet getting 1935 out of the House when it did - it barely missed getting tied up in the "Freedom Caucus's" Mother's Day Massacre.
Regular bills are those generally considered to be uncontroversial and expected to pass near unanimously and with little, if any, debate. These bills are placed on the L&UC (Local & Uncontested Calendar). The HOUSE and Senate each have one.
That is how HB 1935 got out of the House so quickly. Todd worked with the bill's sponsors and other Representatives on the committee to get out a bill that would pass L&UC muster.
For those not in the know about how the Texas Legislature "works" and don't necessarily get details on what happens in the sessions, this past Thursday was the last day that "regular" bills originating in the House to get passed on to the Senate for a vote. Any bill that gets out from here on will go through the debate process.
One of the rules in the Texas House is that if 5 Representatives object to a bill, it is removed from the L&UC and sent back into the queue of bills that go through the debate process. This late in the session, any bill suffering such a fate is almost assuredly doomed to fail passage.
This brings us to the "Mother's Day Massacre". The "Freedom Caucus" is a small group of Tea Party Representatives who bill themselves as the "Freedom Caucus" (FC) and who think the House conservatives are not being conservative enough. The FC thought that other GOP Representatives were retaliating against them (FC) for the FC's delaying tactics by not putting their (FC) bills onto the calendar fast enough for them (FC) decided to kill the entire L&UC - 121 bills.
Now whether any other politicians were actually "playing politics" with any of the FC sponsored bills is debatable, but the bottom line is a few crybabies got their knickers in a wad and peed in everyone's Wheaties.
With the FC killing the chances of many important legislative bills, there is almost certainly going to be a Special Session of the Legislature needing to be called - wasting both time and money. The FCs will probably not end up getting their way in a Special Session because the only items that can be worked on and passed in a Special Session are specific items identified in the Executive Order the Governor signs calling for the Special Session, and if the FC pissed the Governor off badly enough with their shennigans, then he would put any topics on the list that they want.
Had Todd's work not gotten the compromised bill out the door when he did, we would have gotten zip-diddly this session, and had to wait another 2 years for changes. I'm pretty sure the Governor would NOT have placed any knife law modifications into the Special Session list. As it stands, we just have to wait on the Senate to pass the bill when it comes up.
