Legislation to follow for Milam County
With this year’s legislative session in full swing, I felt it important to cover a few of the bills that we are looking at here that will help rural Texas and Mobile County in particular.
The first bill is House Bill 1109 which exempts counties from state motor fuels tax. A few months ago, the Commissioners’ Court passed a resolution supporting this bill.
This bill would exempt the county from paying motor fuel taxes on county vehicles. This doesn’t sound like a large expense, but when you consider all the miles that the Sheriff’s Department, our constables, and the road and bridge crews put on their vehicles each year, it does add up to a sizable chunk of money that the county pays to the state and the federal government for motor fuel taxes.
This bill would eliminate those taxes and bring that money back into our own budget thereby helping to maintain or even lower the tax rate.
House Bill 1461 requires the state to reimburse counties for mental health, juveniles, and parole violators housed in a county facility. This bill would require the state to pay for services that over the years the counties have been required to pay due to legislation passed by the state; or in other words, unfunded mandates.
Along with this, there is another bill that addresses unfunded mandates in our county jail system, Senate Bill 468 which will reimburse counties for juveniles not accepted by the Texas juvenile Justice Department within 30 days.
Right now, we have inmates who are awaiting transport to other facilities that cost the MIlam county taxpayers quite a bit of money to house when in reality they should be transferred to the state-run facilities in a timely manner. These two bills would force the state to pick up that tab rather than county taxpayers.
One item that has bothered a lot of people with state subdivision regulations has been the use of flag lots. Flag lots are extensions to a lot that brings a driveway through another property to get to either the County Road or a state Road. Senate Bill 253 and Senate Bill 325 both address this issue and either correct or eliminate the use of flag lots in the development of a subdivision. This seems like a rather innocuous issue; however, it often becomes an expensive issue for landowners and a time-consuming issue for the counties.
Another costly and time-consuming issue is that of visiting Statutory Probate Court Judges.
Next month there’ll be a convoluted probate trial involving a large estate here in MIlam county. The family members involved in this estate are challenging each other on the assets and as a result a visiting Statutory Probate Court Judge is required.
Currently, state statutes require that the county pick up this tab, however these trials are becoming more and more expensive and are happening more often than they have in the past.
Senate Bill 302 will require the estate to reimburse the county costs for visiting Statutory Probate Court Judges. Again, I know this seems like a somewhat less than pressing issue, but I assure you these costs rack up rather quickly when you have trials of this sort.
Senate Bill 409 will prohibit a bond election for five years after an unsuccessful bond referendum. This is an interesting bill that has lots of support on one side and just as much on the other side. Basically, if a bond issue fails in an election, then the entity trying for the bond issue would have to wait another five years before another one could be put on the ballot.
Lastly there is Senate Bill 76 That is causing some consternation in smaller counties. This bill would eliminate the countywide polling system that most counties use currently.
In Milam county for a general election and for a primary election we normally have eight polling locations throughout the county and folks are allowed to vote at any of those eight polling locations. This bill would force each county to go back to where every precinct was required to have a polling location and you could only vote in your polling location. This would make it much harder for many people to vote.
For instance, if you work in Bryan/College Station, but you live in Cameron you can currently stop and go to Gause or Milano on your way home and vote. If this bill was to become law, you would have to drive all the way back to Cameron to vote.
There are also some bills to greatly curb or eliminate some of our non-government representatives like the County Judges and Commissioners Association (CJCA) who represent county governments and help us track legislation allowing us to better serve our Rural Texans, including Milam County. We are following those and working with our legislators to help ensure that those bills are not passed and that we have the ability to use these reps to better serve us and in turn serve our fellow rural Texans.
These are just a few of the bills that are proposed in the legislature right now that we are tracking. The period for filing bills is now over and the legislative committees are meeting to assess the bills that have been filed and I will go as needed to testify on some of them.
Several thousand bills have been filed and it’s sometimes hard to keep up with them all, but we are tracking the ones that we feel are pertinent to the future of Milam county and while these are but just a few there are ones that I felt were important for the people of Milam County to know about and to address with their legislative representatives. To find out who represents you in Austin go to the website at wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home.