Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows directed lawmakers to study the secession of New Mexico counties to Texas, the development of data centers in the state, property tax relief and more in a list of his priorities for next year’s legislative session released Thursday.
The Lubbock Republican’s interim charges overlap with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s initial to-do list in their shared focuses on reducing property taxes, securing Texas from potential foreign threats and homing in on potential fraud and abuse in government spending.
But Burrows’ priorities cover a broader range of policy issues for House committees to tackle in preparation for the 2027 legislative session. Burrows also created three new committees on governmental oversight, health care affordability and general aviation.
He instructed the governmental oversight committee to study the implications of adding to Texas “one or more contiguous counties of New Mexico” and the process to do so, after welcoming a proposal out of New Mexico to allow its counties to band together and secede. While the Texas-New Mexico boundary is unlikely to shift next year, the proposal will likely appeal to pro-secessionists in Texas, some of whom are among Burrows’ conservative skeptics.
“Following a legislative session defined by historic solutions, it is critical the Texas House remains engaged in thoughtful policymaking and oversight as our state continues to grow and advance,” Burrows said in a statement. “These interim charges reflect a commitment to building on that progress while further empowering committee chairs to identify fraud, waste, and abuse and safeguard taxpayer dollars.”
House Democrats slammed the list of priorities as failing to address the true challenges Texans face.
“Every Texas family paying more for health care, more for electricity and more for groceries should look at Republicans’ interim plans for their state Legislature and ask what any of it does for them,” Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, the Texas House Democratic Caucus chair, said in a statement. “Your electric grid, your water, your insurance bill, your kid’s classroom — none of it made the GOP’s priority list. They’ve been too busy with the donor class and too distracted by the culture wars to deal with what’s actually making life harder for Texas families.”
Data centers appeared twice on Burrows’ list of priorities. He directed the State Affairs committee to recommend ways to “streamline” regulations on data center development “while enabling communities to plan and manage growth responsibly.” And he told the Natural Resources committee to examine the total water usage of data centers in Texas and consider how to “optimize water resources and enhance water stewardship” to ensure “water-efficient” data center development.
A longtime crusader for cutting property taxes, Burrows also instructed the Ways and Means Committee to evaluate compressing school district tax rates — or sending state funds to school districts so they collect less property tax revenue — and increasing the school homestead exemption. Additionally, he told the panel to assess “whether the property tax appraisal system is working as intended” and consider the economic impact of tax exemptions.
Burrows and House leadership have generally tried to pursue cuts via compression and lowering appraisal caps, while Patrick has prioritized hiking the school homestead exemption, or the amount of a home’s value that can’t be taxed to pay for public schools. Gov. Greg Abbott has also unveiled his own proposal to lower the property taxes, centered around a vow to abolish homeowner school property taxes, laying the groundwork for a potential legislative fight next year.
Also on Burrows’ list is a directive for the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee to review existing Texas law to “ensure that Sharia law or any other foreign law contrary to the U.S. and Texas constitutions has not permeated into other judicial and legal matters in Texas.” Burrows also charged the homeland security panel with cracking down on “foreign adversary and terrorist-linked influence operations affecting Texas, including political activity, advocacy and funding networks directed by foreign governments or organizations.”
Taken together, those charges are a nod to GOP efforts to shut down Muslim groups in Texas, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group, which Abbott has designated a foreign terrorist organization. Texas Republicans have made “preventing Sharia law” from spreading in the state a major priority, pushing anti-Islam rhetoric and casting the issue as a critical threat in campaign ads.
For the first time in several years, border security was not included on the speaker’s list of interim priorities, with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown shifting the political and policy landscape for Texas Republicans. Still, lawmakers were tasked with reviewing potential security concerns related to employers’ use of the federal H-1B visa program — a recent target of the right — and English-proficiency standards and other regulations to crack down on immigrant truck drivers.
Burrows also charged lawmakers with assessing the “impact of increased geopolitical uncertainty on Texas’ oil and gas industry,” including from “the effects of regime changes in the Middle East, the importation of Venezuelan oil, tanker traffic risks in the Strait of Hormuz and disruptions to the international liquefied natural gas market,” as the United States and Israel wage a continued war in Iran.
On the natural resources front, water infrastructure and production also featured heavily, after lawmakers took some steps to address Texas’ water supply crisis last year.
Burrows’ charges did not include any reference to expanding the state’s $1 billion private school voucher program, which lawmakers established during last year’s session.
And the list did not mention ending public education funding for undocumented children. The idea has recently risen in prominence as a conservative priority in Texas and Washington, with the White House pressing Texas Republicans on their efforts to challenge a landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, that said states cannot bar children of undocumented immigrants from accessing a public education.
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