Chance for Some Legislation
Ben Philpott, KUT News

AUSTIN, TX
(2009-04-27)

The 2009 Texas Legislative session continues to move along at a slow pace - especially in the Texas House. This session's bottleneck includes several high profile bills that have yet to come to the floor for a vote. KUT's Ben Philpott reports on a 2nd option lawmakers have to get their bills passed.

Lawmakers often say that the Texas legislature is designed to keep bills from passing. Tyler Representative -Republican Leo Berman - calls it the legislative gauntlet.

Berman: "It can be blocked in committee. It can be blocked in one of the two calendars committees. And then if it does actually make it to the floor - it can be blocked again on the floor."

Berman has experienced first hand those blocking techniques as he's worked to get bills that would tighten penalties on hiring undocumented workers - and cut those workers off from state funded programs --- through the House. He says the difficult system becomes harder to navigate if you're carrying a controversial bill.

Berman: "Some representative attempt to block bills of people who - I wouldn't say they don't like - but of people whose legislation they don't particularly care for."

So without much hope of his legislative agenda getting to the floor this session - Berman has instead begun trying to add some of his proposals to other bills as amendments. Just this week he tried to add an amendment to a grant program that said none of the program's money could go to undocumented citizens. Changing a bill into an amendment is a second chance for plenty of bills during the final days of every legislative session - especially for what some consider controversial ones.

Representative Frank Corte - is used to carrying what he says are controversial bills. The San Antonio Republican has carried a handful over the years that have created emotional debate. This year his firebrand is HB 36 - which would require an ultrasound to be performed and a viewing offered to a woman seeking an abortion. He says he'd like to get a vote on the bill - but thinks its nature will make it hard to find legislation to amend.

Corte: "That bill may be hard to amend. I don't know if there's any other vehicles - as we refer to them as. I think that the opposition would be really keen not to bring up a bill because they would know that would be a potential."

But that doesn't mean he won't be keeping an eye out for any chance. Corte's bill had a committee hearing last week. It has not been set for a floor debate. A similar bill stalled in the Senate. Reporting from the Texas Capitol.

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