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Brief Summary of Texas

Texas is truly a Republic. There are a multitude of items that to modify the state constitution must be modified. So there are times when Constitutional amendments are on the voting ballots. While I sometimes abhor the wording, the concept that all of those legally able to vote in Texas must vote on the change is a good one. And bills in Texas are generally short, making it easier for everyone to understand.

Power Systems Summary

Legislation covered here will revolve around different energy bills. Some are directed at ensuring no power outages in the future, others at general management for climate change sake. But honestly a whole lot of it is all virtue signalling.

Proposition 7 - Texas Energy Fund. Sounds like a good thing but it moves energy spending outside the general revenue fund. Therefore there is less oversight from the Treasury office, and since those administering the funds are not elected, you can't vote them out. Vote NO.

A huge deal was made about Texas loosing power to people during the storms in 2020. Personally I was without power for 3 days for around 75% of the time. However my gas never stopped being available. In fact, if my home heater did not rely on electricity to turn on and off (my older system did not), I would have had heat the entire time. Instead I relied upon a gas fireplace for heat, along with candles; and the intelligence my spouse and I had to block off the remaining parts of the house from the fireplace room as best as possible. Plus we have a gas stove to cook on, and battery powered lights. I'm not saying it was all great, but seriously as far as those I know - we had power the least amount of time. Most everyone I knew had the rolling black-outs of no power for 15 minutes each hour. (Of course, that's mostly in North Texas area.) But tons of places in the North East had rolling black-outs this past winter, and there was no great uproar over it. Seriously they are much better established for dealing with cold temperatures than we are in the South, and I didn't think it necessary for us to spend hundreds of thousand to millions of dollars to winterize things like wind farms. Financially it's just stupid. Rather we should have merely brought more gas power on line, but Texas made the mistake of asking the feederal government for permission first. Hope we never do that again.

But anyway legislation here will focus on energy issues. Hopefully not spending tons of money, nor creating massive committees that just complicate and slow everything down.

Blogs About Power Systems

J.B. Williams, J.D. has published 2 blogs on this subtopic. The 2 most recent blogs are summarized in the following sections.

Texas Energy fund - hiding more spending Vote NO

Published: 2023-10-17
This would create a fund that could freely spend money without legislative oversight. This permits claiming to supporting Energy spending, all the while not having to show any overspend in the budget.

Outage alerts

Published: 2021-11-04
Setting up commissions and reports to virtue signal. This bill came about do to issues that occurred during the February 2021 storm. In all fairness, weatherizing is expensive and something that is rarely needed for winter weather in Texas. Furthermore, had they increase production in advance of the storm than they would have been significantly less likely to have had issues. It is my understanding that they requested the right to go over environmental overages from the Federal government in advance of the storm and it was denied. As was the request to not export power during the 24 hours prior to and throughout the storm. During the later storms, the Governor advised entities to increase power and we would deal with any potential repercussions later. A much improved approach.

Legislative Blog