Most of us have seen the flowchart of "how a bill becomes a law" in our government classes at one time or another. What I've found is that the challenges are not always at the steps that are shown on that flowchart, but often in between those steps, in the complicated process of fiscal analysis, rules of the House, and personal interactions.

So, with the regular legislative session finished for another two years, I thought I would bring you stories of three of the bills which I proposed during the past session. I've selected fairly simple bills that had no public opposition, but which nonetheless had to fight to pass during the short 140-day regular session. (Anything that does not pass during any session must start from the beginning to pass in a future session.) I hope you'll find these stories interesting and helpful in understanding how the process works.

Summer 2004 - A constituent writes me for help collecting a mail-in rebate he is due on the purchase of some computer equipment from a national retailer. While helping the customer get his rebate, I learn that there are no legal requirements for the processing of such rebate offers, and there are "gotchas" in the process that almost assure that many customers will never collect. In fact, only about 40% of customers entitled to rebates ever collect them. With rebates on electronic equipment often running as high as 2/3 of the purchase price, and totaling hundreds of dollars on each purchase, a consumer who is unable to collect their rebate has suffered real harm. "There ought to be a law," and so I set out to create one.

1/11/05 - Legislature convenes for its 2004-2005 session, which, according to the Texas Constitution, will last only 140 days.

1/20/05 - I submit my rebate protection act for consideration. It's the 511th bill submitted for this session, so it becomes House Bill 511. (There will be about 3,500 filed by the time the session ends.) The act would set a time limit for processing a rebate and require a company to notify you and give you 30 days to correct any problem it finds with your rebate submission.

1/24/05 - We ask the legislative legal council to "translate" our proposal into formal legalese. While that is not absolutely necessary, the chairs of most committees expect you to submit a "council draft" before they will pass the bill. With thousands of bills being submitted, it can take several weeks to get a draft, which then must be checked to make sure it matches what the original draft proposal intended.

2/7/05 - HB 511 is assigned to the Committee on Business and Industry. This is one of about three dozen committees that the House is divided into to review bills. Most bills never get out of committee. We immediately formally request a hearing for the bill, which must be held before the committee passes the bill, and also I personally ask the chairman of the committee to schedule a hearing.

Meanwhile, the bill has caught the attention of Reliant Energy. Their lobbyist, a former legislator, stops by. Reliant apparently offers rebates to new customers. The rebate is deducted from a customer's bill if the customer stays with the company for a certain amount of time. Since this is not really a mail-in rebate, Reliant doesn't think we meant to include that type of rebate program in what we were regulating. They want the bill to be changed so that they are excluded from its requirements.

Since we have not heard of problems with this kind of rebate, and since I don't need to have the electric power industry working against the bill, I agree to add language to the bill that excludes rebates that are paid as deductions from your bill, but we check with legal council to make sure the proposed language would not exempt a rebate on electronic equipment that is credited to a customer's credit card.

2/10/05 - The lobbyists for the American Electronics Association pay us a visit. They represent computer and software manufacturers, and they don't like the bill. They give us a list of changes they would like to see, some of which would make the bill meaningless. I agree to work with them to address their technical concerns, but tell them that I believe the bill is needed. They suggest that if the bill passes, "companies will just stop offering rebates in Texas." But we have already researched the industry, and know that mail-in rebates are important in the companies' marketing strategies and that one way or another, these discounts will be offered to Texas consumers.

2/17/05 - We get five days notice that the Committee on Business and Industry will let me present HB 511 at their next hearing. This is good - a hearing this soon implies that at least the committee chair is interested in the bill and it might actually have a chance of passing!

2/22/05 - At the hearing, the response from the committee members is very positive, and several of them say they have been personally cheated out of rebates they were owed. One member says the bill is not strong enough - that all rebates should be automatically deducted from the price you pay at the store. But such proposals have been defeated in other states, so I stay with the more moderate approach. The bill is "left pending", meaning that no action is taken. That's typical for the first time a bill is heard by a committee. But now I need to get them to bring the bill back up at another hearing and actually pass it.

It takes us several weeks to get our council draft, work out language with Reliant, and incorporate some of the wording changes that AEA wants. During this time, I am, coincidentally, denied a $100 rebate on some electronics I bought in January. The rebate center tells me that the denial is their own mistake, but that I would have to start the whole rebate process again and wait another 8 weeks for payment. As a result of that experience, I add a new section to HB 511 requiring prompt payment of any rebate that is erroneously denied.

Meanwhile, the committee has gotten busy with its major task for the session, the reform of the workers' compensation system. It's hard to get back on their agenda to pass my revised bill.

3/22/05 - Finally, my revised version of HB 511 is brought up for a committee vote, and is passed unanimously. But a month has passed since the hearing, and the bill must still pass the full House and repeat the process in the Senate.

Now, another week passes and the bill has still not been "reported" to the Committee on Calendars, which controls the schedule of legislation for the House floor. Where's the bill? My staff starts pestering the committee clerk to find out the problem.

It turns out that the minutes of the committee hearing on 3/22 were not submitted to the House clerk within the required time. That's a violation of the House rules, and means that all bills passed at that hearing are not "officially" passed. While the bill could move forward without fixing this problem, any one member of the House could kill the bill on the floor based on this violation. So, all bills passed that day must go back and get passed again.

4/4/05 - The committee meets and passes HB 511 again, almost two weeks after it had been passed the first time. Time is getting short. And, since it is getting late in the session, many bills are being passed by committees and the backlog in the process is building. It takes another 11 days for HB 511 to be reported again by the committee, printed and distributed to every House member, and received by the Committee on Calendars. I ask the chair of the Committee on Calendars to please look at the bill as soon as possible.

4/25/05 - After having the bill for 10 days, the Committee on Calendars first formally considers whether to let the full House vote on the bill. The Committee votes to place the bill on the House calendar. That generally means the Speaker's staff has also reviewed the bill and does not object to it passing.

4/27/05 - I present the bill to the entire House. There are no questions, and the bill passes without opposition.

4/28/05 - I have to present and pass the bill again. All bills in the House must be presented twice on different days just to make sure nobody has thought of any problems since the first time it was presented. Again there is no opposition.

4/29/05 - The House sends the bill over to the Senate. There is now only about one month left before the session will end.

5/1/05 - The Senate sends the bill to its Committee on Business and Commerce. As a House member, I cannot present the bill to the Senate. I must find a Senator to do that for me. The bill will go more smoothly if the Senator is one who serves on that committee. I visit the office of Sen. Leticia Van de Putte to personally ask her to carry the bill. She agrees and directs her staff to talk to my staff to get the details.

Now the Senate and House leadership are sniping at one another over whether each side is passing enough of the other side's bills. This is the tip of a much larger iceberg over whether the Senate has given appropriate consideration to bills the House passed several months before on school finance and property tax reform. Action on Senate bills slows up in the House, and action on House bills slows up in the Senate. Minor bills like HB 511 are delayed in the crossfire.

5/17/05 - With only two weeks left in the session, the Senate committee holds a hearing on the bill. There is no opposition, but no action is taken.

5/18/05 - The Senate committee meets again, and passes the bill unanimously.

There is no Committee on Calendars in the Senate, but the bill must still get on the Senate floor before time runs out. The deadline to present bills on the Senate floor is 5/25.

Now, the AEA gets back in the act. Now that the bill is likely to pass, they want to try one more time to water it down. They approach Sen. Van de Putte with some proposed changes, and she sends the proposals to us. Half of the changes would significantly weaken the bill, while the other half would do no harm but could slow up the bill long enough as to prevent its passage. We tell the Senator's staff that I can accept the harmless changes but only if they would not jeopardize the passage of the bill. She tells AEA that she will not make the changes. They decide not to push any further.

However, one member of the AEA is not willing to let the matter drop. Intuit, the maker of "Turbo Tax", hires a contract lobbyist for a few days simply to get two technical changes made to the bill, based on concerns raised by Intuit's legal staff. The lobbyist proposes the changes to me. He and I agree that Intuit's concerns really stretch the meaning of the words in the bill, and he is almost embarrassed to bring them to me at such a late point in the process.

Changing the bill may well delay it again and prevent its passage. Instead, I offer another idea. Since Intuit's concern is really that some court might read the bill differently than it was intended, I will read a "statement of author's intent" into the official House record that would eliminate any confusion. That way, the bill will not be delayed and Intuit will get the assurances it wants. The lobbyist agrees, knowing that he does not have enough time to rally any opposition to the bill in the Senate.

5/24/05 - I submit my one-sentence "statement of intent" for publication in that day's House record.

5/25/05 - On the very last day allowed for Senate consideration of House bills, HB 511 is presented before the Senate and passes without objection. Since there were no amendments made in the Senate, the bill does not have to come back to the House for any further action.

6/2/05 - HB 511 is sent to Governor Perry. He has until 6/19 to sign or veto the bill. Governors generally wait until just before the deadline to sign or veto most measures. I'll let you know what he decides.

Next time, I'll talk about another bill that passed, and then one that didn't.

As always, let me know if you have comments or questions.

Scott Hochberg
State Representative
District 137 - Southwest Houston