Last Week in the Legislature
The Calm Before the Storm - The 89th Session is Around the Corner
By Kenneth Besserman
Director of Government Affairs and Special Counsel
January 7, 2025 | Issue 1
AUSTIN - The start of the 89th Session of the Texas Legislature is just around the corner. On January 14, the Texas Legislature will convene in Austin for its biannual 140-day legislative session. If past history is any guide, we can expect a couple of 30-day special sessions to follow the regular session. While the start of the session is usually ceremonial, the 2025 session will be full of drama because the next Speaker of the House is unknown at this time.
The Texas House of Representatives is required to elect a Speaker of the House at the start of each session. House business cannot begin until a Speaker is elected, which is then followed by the adoption of House Rules. Before the start of most legislative sessions, the Speaker-elect is known – it is either the current Speaker who is running for another term as Speaker or it is a member who has largely amassed the votes needed to be elected. Not this year!
Since the general election in November 2024, at least five individuals have publicly announced that they are running for Speaker of the House. At the time of this writing, the two main candidates for the Speaker are Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield) and Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock). Both Cook and Burrows have been actively seeking support of members in their quest to get a majority of members to be elected.
With 30+ new members of the Texas House, determining the preferences of those new members adds a new dynamic to the Speaker’s race. There have been innumerable meetings between the Republican and Democratic caucuses to determine whom to support, meetings between select members discussing the race, and many behind-the-scenes meetings with no candidate yet with the support of a majority of the House.
What does this mean? If there is no candidate with the publicly declared support of a majority of the House, January 14 could be a long day in the House of Representatives. There could be multiple ballots and more back of the hallway discussions and negotiations. There seems to be a significant divide in support between the declared candidates, so it would not be out of the question for a candidate to emerge who has not yet publicly declared their interest in the Speaker position. It is going to be a very interesting opening day of the session.
While the House debates its leadership positions, the Senate will remain largely unchanged. There will be three new senators in 2025 – Senator Molly Cook (D-Houston), Senator Adam Hinojosa (R-Corpus Christi) and Senator Brent Hagenbuch (R-Denton). The Senate will have 20 Republicans and 11 Democrats, and the operations of the Senate and Senate Committees will largely continue as in past sessions.
During this past year, while the elections were in full swing, TXCPA has been hard at work developing our 2025 legislative agenda and continuing to address the CPA pipeline. Our members, government relations team and lobbyists have had great conversations with legislators in recent months educating them about the CPA pipeline, the need for an alternative pathway to CPA licensure, and the need to improve and modernize CPA mobility in this ever-changing licensure environment. Senator Charles Perry has introduced SB 262 (alternative pathways legislation) and SB 522 (mobility legislation) and we expect Rep. Angie Chen Button to introduce companion legislation in the House shortly.
The 2025 TXCPA Advocacy Day on January 28, 2025, will bring together our key persons, advocates and members to discuss the session dynamics, the TXCPA 2025 legislative agenda, our key legislative initiatives, and hear from key officials and political insiders, all to be followed with a full day of Capitol visits with legislative offices in the afternoon. We look forward to seeing you in Austin in a couple of weeks.