Gov. Rick Perry appointed Julia Rathgeber, deputy chief of staff to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, to be the state's new insurance commissioner. She replaces Eleanor Kitzman, who couldn’t win Senate approval. Rathgeber worked at the state's General Land Office, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission and at that agency's successor, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

House Speaker Joe Straus filed papers before the end of the session setting up a run for a fourth term as speaker in 2015.

Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, is the new president pro tempore of the Senate, putting him third in line behind the governor and the lieutenant governor and giving him the keys to government when the other two are out of state. 

Deaths: Ray Barnhart, former chairman of the Republican party of Texas. He was 85.