May 28
What Gives? To Audit or Not? Or When Will Us Average Joes Know?
Ok. So I know that lawmakers need to feel important and thus create tons of rules, lingo, processes, etc so that no layman can figure out what the hell is going on without actually getting elected, but I was trying to figure this out today and thought maybe someone out there could enlighten me.
I’ll run it in sort of a time-line style.
1) Austin passes Mandatory Energy Audit Ordinance
Austin Ordinance
2) Texas Legislature inserts a statement into SB 546 making it illegal for a municipality to impose a criminal penalty (fine in the case of Austin’s Energy Rule) on the seller of a piece of real property (real estate) for failure to perform an energy audit.
Bill Info
3) SB 546 passes both houses by 5/18/09
SB 546 Bill progress
4) The Texas Governor is next up on the SB 546 path to resolution
Governor’s Action
5) The 81st Legislative session ends June 1, 2009 and the Governor has until June 21, 2009 to veto or approve the bill
Important Dates
So as I read it…
Outcome 1: Governor approves SB 546 and the bill becomes law. I assume that this would then become law immediately, but not sure.
Outcome 2: Governor vetoes SB 546. In this case, the bill goes back to the legislature and needs 2/3rds to override the veto.
Outcome 3: Governor does nothing. Then on June 22nd, 2009 the bill becomes law. Of course that is if the bill could not become law immediately for some reason (read some of those crazy rules the government makes to keep itself feeling important and noted above) then it would become law 91 days after the session ended on September 1, 2009.
Man, I’m confused. Can anyone add some lucidity to this whole deal for me?
Joe
