YCT Releases 82nd Texas Legislature Agenda

YCT is pleased to release our legislative agenda for the 82nd Texas Legislature. Each session YCT releases an agenda outlining our positions on the issues we believe the legislature will confront that session. The agenda is organized by topic, starting with Higher Educaiton and continuing on to cover K-12 Education, fiscal issues, illegal immigration, property rights, civil rights and liberties, etc. Also, in this session’s legislative agenda, we have included a list of our top 15 legislative priorities; ten policies which we would like to see enacted this session and five policies we bitterly oppose.

YCT provides a legislative agenda for two primary purposes. First, we hope that Representatives and Senators will draw good policymaking guidance from it. Second, the agenda is an effort to make YCT’s position on the issues known before voting begins and well in advance of our efforts to compile our legislative ratings. While it is impossible to predict every issue which will arise this session, many votes which will be scored in our legislative ratings will be touched-on in the agenda. Following the agenda and voting with YCT’s position is the surest way of performing well on YCT’s legislative ratings.

In addition to our legislative agenda, YCT is pleased to provide a selection of policy papers addressing various topics the legislature will confront, ranging from tuition deregulation to a statewide smoking ban. Along with relevant papers from previous sessions, we have included two new papers: “The Best and the Worst Under-the-Radar Bills of Early Filing,” a profile of some good and bad bills filed in the last two months which have not received adequate attention, and “Republicans and Higher Education in Texas: A Crisis and an Opportunity,” a policy paper written by a pseudonymous professor of humanities at a major Texas university. This paper theorizes that pending budget cuts to higher education, if not accompanied by pro-student reforms, will be used by university administrators to drum-up opposition to Republicans amongst students by cutting essential services.

We hope that legislators and citizens alike will find these documents useful as we go into the 82nd Texas Legislature. Please check often as more policy papers and written testimony are posted. And, as always, legislators and their staffs who would like to know more about YCT’s positions on the issues should not hesitate to contact YCT Senior Vice Chairman Tony McDonald at (512) 923-6893 or YCT Director of Legislative Affairs Nick Carona at (512) 554-9959.

Please visit the Legislative Affairs section of our website to view the published files.