Hey Texans! Got a special session question here...

[Bouncy Ball]

There's a particular state representative I want to keep a very close eye on during the special session for school finance.

Any good websites to watch for reports? Our state lege seems even more hard to observe than our national one. At least for that, I've got C-SPAN.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm going to hold this guy's feet to the fire.

[crispini]

1. You're in luck!

Our state lege is actually fabulously easy to get info over the internet via the magic of:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

Oberve "Bill Search." Play with this a bit and you can figure it out. You can search by Author of the bill. Once you find a bill, click around and you can see all of the status on it, etc. Click on the "History" part and scroll down and click on "Bill Alert" to get the system to email you about bill changes.

That said, the REAL action on bills tends to occur before they even get out of committee-- that's a critical step. If you know which committees the member you are interested in is on (this is also on the website) then one of the best steps you can take is to find someone down in Austin, some lobbying group, who is interested in what's going on in that committee. Sonias was able to keep me updated on action on the elections committee. I bet there will be a lot of people very interested in action during the special session. Try reading the Austin American Stateman website too. Oh, also PinkDome is good at that stuff.

[Bouncy Ball]

2. Thank you, hon, you're the best.

Smooch!

[NoPasaran]

3. Many committee hearings are also streamed

And then archived.
House o' Reps
Senate

[Bouncy Ball]

4. Thanks guys! Another question:

when does the special session start? I could have sworn it was March and I don't want to miss anything.

[NoPasaran]

5. It hasn't been called yet

It's still up to Goodhair.

[Bouncy Ball]

6. Oh ok, thanks.

I wonder where the hell I heard March. I know according to the Texas Supremes, they have until June something to fix it.

Not that they will. I recently read the whole legal brief on the SC decision on the school finance system (from the firm that brought the suit). Very interesting stuff.