Texas legislature moves to finalize bills in the final days of session

AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- Deadlines for passing bills on second and third readings have come and gone in the Texas Capitol, and now lawmakers turn their attention to the final steps of passing remaining bills in the final days of the session.

At this point in the session, House bills amended by the Senate and Senate bills amended by the House are being returned to their originating chamber for final approval. The sponsor of the bill must tell each body if they concur with the changes made to their legislation.

If not, the bill moves on to conference committee, like House Bill 3071 by State Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican from Fort Worth. He got up to the front mic of the House chamber to talk about amendments made to his bill, which relates to the cancellation of certain solid waste disposal permits.

"They're not any good and I am requesting to go to conference," Geren said to thunderous cheers in the chamber, a point of levity after long consecutive days and nights of debating and voting.

What happens in conference committee?

When a conference committee request is approved there are five members selected, known as conferees, from each chamber, including the two bill sponsors. What has been described as a closed-door negotiation between the ten members is actually more like a negotiation between two people. Dennis Bonnen, the former Speaker of the House, said most of the time negotiations begin even before a conference committee is called.

"Your lead author in the House, your lead author in the Senate, they're already talking. They've been talking through the whole process," Bonnen explained.

In fact, the other conferees are more symbolic and only provide a signature once an agreement has been made between the bill authors. Mark Strama, a former state lawmaker, and Bonnen both agreed they forgot they were conferees on a conference committee until they were asked to sign on to the final language of the bill.

For a bill to pass out of conference committee it needs three signatures of approval from each coalition of conferees. It then goes back to each chamber for final approval from the full body.

A majority of conference committees work just like that, but there are instances where legislation is significant enough that all members of the conference committee are contributing to the solution. One prime example is the appropriations bill, which funds the state over a two-year period.

"They're bigger issues. They're more significant. There's more volume to be dealt with," Bonnen explained. This session, Bonnen believes the state's Compassionate Use Program (TCUP) is one of those bills that will need all hands on deck.

Negotiations between the Senate and House have been ongoing for the past couple of weeks as the legislature moved to ban all hemp-derived intoxicants. There is a push to expand the TCUP to allow more people to be eligible for the medical cannabis program, and make it easier for patients to get their prescription.

Strama also pointed out that conference committees can be used to revive bills that died either on the chamber floor or in committees. For the most part, conference committees are deciding between the differences in a House-approved and Senate-approved bill. But there is a procedure where the committee conferees could go out of bounds to add in additional provisions from other bills. It's known as going "out of bounds."

To do this, the conference committee would have to go to each floor and ask for a resolution to go out of bounds. A majority of both chambers would need to approve that resolution.

"When you're out of power, you're looking for ways to stretch a conference committee report to extend to something to one of your bills that failed," Strama said.