The House Judiciary II Committee is reviewing 26 amendments to the revised (and even worse) proposed committee substitute annexation bill (PCS). This bill takes the worse of the League’s bill and the worse of another bad bill, HB 524 and then for good measure adds new provisions that don’t help anyone (except the cities).
Timeline
Tuesday: A PCS was going to be considered in the J-2 Committee but opposition from citizens was very strong to the bill because it didn’t provide any reforms (it completely ignored the citizen’s annexation bill, HB 645). The J-2 committee decided not to introduce the bill and instead discussed the annexation issues and the goal was it would fix the PCS after the meeting, taking into consideration HB 645. Discussion was actually positive in the J-2 committee.
Thursday: The new PCS is introduced and is actually worse than the first PCS (it still doesn’t take into account HB 645, or at least anything worth mentioning). Opposition prior to Thursday was very strong against this new PCS. The J-2 Committee was supposed to vote on the even worse PCS, but decided against it. There were numerous amenndments introduced. The Committee is supposed to take up the bill next Tuesday and vote on the amendments.
Coming next on what I’m calling Annexation Reform Friday: What needs to be done?
