UPDATED: Texas Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman told her staff this week that the last day of the legislative session Monday will also be her last day on the job. Kitzman couldn't win enough Senate support to remain in office.

The deadline for bills to win approval from the House and the Senate passed earlier this week, resulting in the death of a lot of legislation. Most of what remains is to reconcile differences between versions of legislation passed by both chambers. Our updated bill apps — one for House bills and one for Senate legislation — detail the results.

David Dewhurst, the state's lieutenant governor for the past decade, started this legislative session looking for some momentous conservative victories. He's still looking.

Who is really in power in state government? According to the calendar, the clout is days away from moving firmly to the governor's office.

End-of-session dinners are commonplace for legislative committees at the end of the session, and they can be lavish affairs. One this week cost more than $22,000.

A perfect time for speculation: The legislative session isn't quite over, and the political season hasn't quite begun.

It's easier, it seems, for lawmakers to regulate others than to regulate themselves. Ethics and transparency legislation has had a bumpy ride in the current legislative session.

The proposed state budget would increase state judge's base salaries by 12 percent — and would do the same thing to state legislators' pensions. Check out the added benefit by member.

Texas lawmakers have 10 days left in the regular session. They haven't embarrassed themselves, spent much time in bitter fights or generated the sorts of headlines that have made voters think so little of Washington. 

Greg Abbott’s letter doesn’t have any new information in it, but the timing takes away what some — probably those further from the budget conversations than closer — saw as a possible solution for the Legislature’s financial logjam.

Lawmakers are talking seriously about a 21.5 percent pay raise for state district judges, which would increase the pensions of those same lawmakers by that same amount.

Another major House deadline has gone by, ending that chamber's consideration of major legislation filed by its own members. We've updated our House Bill tracker, showing which bills stalled in committee and which ones stalled in the full House.

Spending from the state's Rainy Day Fund does, in fact, count against a constitutional limit on growth in the state budget, Attorney General Greg Abbott advised on Thursday. 

The betting here is that state finance is the closing drama of the session and that in spite of the sharper debates here at the end, that everybody goes home singing Kumbaya.

Most of the legislation filed this session by members of the Texas House never made it out of committee. This new app tells you the number of bills filed, referred to committee and left, forever, in committee after the deadline passed.