Last Week in the Legislature
The Legislative Spring Begins
By Kenneth Besserman
Director of Government Affairs and Special Counsel
January 31, 2025 | Issue 3
AUSTIN - The 89th Legislature has now passed the two-week mark. While there is some news in both the Senate and the House, the big news is that TXCPA just completed its 2025 Advocacy Day in Austin and the Capitol.
TXCPA’s 2025 Advocacy Day was a resounding success. More than 175 TXCPA members came to Austin to hear a full program of speakers on the morning of January 28, beginning with a legislative/lobbyist panel discussion about the session, the CPA pipeline, and two very important bills to TXCPA and the profession – creating an additional pathway to licensure (SB 262/HB 1757) and an improved and modernized CPA mobility bill (SB 522/HB 1764).
The Advocacy Day program continued with a presentation by Marta Zaniewski, AICPA VP of State Regulatory and Legislative Affairs, who spoke about federal issues and state CPA licensing issues that are progressing around the country, issues that our members need to know about as we advocate for licensing changes in Texas.
The program continued with remarks from Scott Braddock, Quorum Report, who spoke about a lot of political and relationship issues that are often the undercurrent of what goes on behind the scenes during session and what may help or hurt the progress of legislation.
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar then spoke to the Advocacy Day attendees about the budget surplus in Texas, the needs that the state faces with an ever-growing population, and the important work that the Comptroller’s office does and the valued relationship TXCPA has with his office.
The program concluded with remarks from Mark Koziel, the new CEO of AICPA. TXCPA was fortunate to be the first CPA society stop for Mark since becoming the CEO on January 1. Mark talked about the challenges to the profession and the opportunities that exist to move the profession forward. TXCPA is very thankful to Mark and Marta for informing and educating our members about what AICPA is doing and how we can work together to advance the profession.
Following the program, TXCPA members descended upon the Capitol to talk to legislators and staff about our important 2025 legislative agenda. We met with over 100 legislative offices and had well over 40 drop-in visits. TXCPA was well received by legislators and staff and, most importantly, developed some new relationships and built on existing relationships. Our pathways and mobility bills are common sense approaches to address the CPA pipeline issues, and many legislators and offices understood that workforce development is a key issue that the legislature should address.
Advocacy Day 2025 also had the added feature of having Senator Perry introduce and pass Senate Resolution 8, which recognized TXCPA for all its work and recognizing TXCPA Advocacy Day on January 28. Additionally, Rep. Suleman Lalani passed House Resolution 110 also recognizing TXCPA Advocacy Day in the Capitol. Thank you to both legislators for their friendship to TXCPA.
TXCPA Advocacy Day 2025 was a great success, and we will use all the work that our advocates and attendees did at the Capitol to further our agenda for the remaining months of the session. If you received some good intelligence or information in your visits, please let Kenneth Besserman know so that we can follow up with legislative offices.
Last week, the Texas House passed the new rules that will govern how the House operates and conducts business. The most important change to the rules since the 2023 session provided that only members of the majority party will be committee chairs, but that the members of the minority party will be vice-chairs of committees. So, after months of acrimonious debate and interparty fighting, the House voted to only permit Republican members (the majority party) to committee chairs. This will likely not change House operations too drastically but will now allow the House to move on to more important matters.
Next up for the House is naming committee chairs and assigning members to committee. This is a process that takes weeks. Stay tuned.
In the Senate, the Senate Education Committee passed its version of the school choice/school voucher/education savings account bill (SB2). The bill puts aside at least $1 billion for school choice, allowing each student to receive up to $10,000 per year to use for private school education. There are some provisions of the bill that restrict who has priority to access the fund if there are more people wanting to use the vouchers than money appropriated. The Senate is scheduled to debate the bill next week and it could pass the Seante next week if the Governor adds the issue as an emergency item.
Progress on school choice will be slower in the House and there is also likely to be changes to the program, then sending the bill to a conference committee later in the session to work out the differences.
The session is ramping up and TXCPA is in the middle of all the action.
