The Texas legislature is debating a pair of bills that would strip cities and counties of the right to set policy on a wide array of environmental, safety and discrimination issues.
These two state bills — House Bill 2127 and Senate Bill 814 — would bar municipalities from passing or enforcing local rules in several critical areas “unless explicitly authorized by statute.”
Seizing power: This means that unless the Texas legislature has given cities specific right to pass rules and ordinances pertaining to natural resources, agriculture or labor, such rules are null and void as soon as they are passed.
Potential nullified laws could range from new anti-discrimination rules to bans on certain kinds of pollution or industrial practices.
A bigger fight: The proposed legislation builds on nearly a decade of state Republican attacks on the autonomy of Texas cities — like Austin’s attempted ban on single-use plastic bags or Denton’s failed attempt to keep fracking out of city limits.
Going on defense against progressives: The House bill’s sponsor framed the new legislation as defensive.
“Progressive urban centers are beginning to pass all sorts of things they historically have never touched before,” House sponsor Dustin Burrows (R) told the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Burrows pointed to “the Green New Deal, or Dallas trying to ban gas-powered lawn mowers, or fracking bans out of Denton, or labor union bills in the city of Houston.”
In all these cases, “progressive activists who can’t get their agenda through the state house now go down to our city councils to pass rules, which are hurting business.”
Business lobby approves: The Texas business lobby applauded the bill, which would allow state-wide businesses to negotiate environmental and labor issues exclusively with the Republican-dominated state government — rather than the comparatively liberal cities. The bills would spare those business owners from “the whims of rogue regulators,” state director Annie Spilman of the National Federation of Independent Business said in a statement.