The bill offers no exceptions for doctors’ offices, clinics or other health facilities. Senators agreed to let those entities require unvaccinated employees to wear personal protective gear or take other “reasonable” measures to manage the spread.
Karen Brooks Harper
Karen Brooks Harper reported on the state budget and health and human services from 2020 to 2024. An alumna of the Missouri School of Journalism, Karen arrived in Texas in 1995 to join the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, spent several years in Laredo and Mexico covering immigration and the drug war for Knight-Ridder newspapers, and has covered Texas politics for more than two decades for news organizations including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas Morning News and Reuters.
Posted in
Texas Legislature 2023
Texas lawmakers again try to prohibit private businesses from requiring COVID-19 vaccines
A Senate panel on Tuesday advanced such a measure. The debate centered largely around the safety of the vaccine and whether doctors’ offices and health care facilities should be exempt.
Posted in
Economy
Texas will have an $18.6 billion surplus and avoid a recession, comptroller projects
The updated comptroller’s report raises the amount of revenue available to the state over the 2024-25 cycle to $194.6 billion.
Posted in
Health care
Updated COVID-19 shot slowly rolls out in Texas, but access is spotty
Doses aren’t arriving at providers’ offices at uniform, predictable intervals. Shipments are largely dependent on individual providers’ ability to work out the logistics of ordering, stocking, training and paperwork.
Posted in
The 2023 Texas Tribune Festival
Texas lawmakers will have new money going into special session on education, comptroller says
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar says the state has collected more from insurance premiums that he had previously predicted. He suggested lawmakers invest more in teacher pay raises.
Posted in
Ken Paxton Impeachment
For Paxton lawyers, the trial was a “sham.” House managers say it exposed a “corrupt politician.”
Finally freed of a gag order, the opposing sides pulled no punches after the attorney general was acquitted.
Posted in
New Texas Laws 2023
Texas can now apply to import lower-priced Canadian medications
Texas joins a handful of states turn to the north for cheaper drugs. But feds have been slow to approve requests, three years after giving initial OK.
Posted in
Economy
Billions in property tax cuts need Texas voters’ approval before taking effect. Here’s what you need to know.
Legislation passed this month would raise the state’s homestead exemption to $100,000, lower schools’ tax rates and put an appraisal cap on residential and commercial properties, among other measures. But voters must approve a constitutional amendment first.
Posted in
Texas Legislature 2023
Gov. Greg Abbott signs $18 billion tax cut package for Texas property owners
At a time when the state has some of the nation’s highest property taxes, the initiative was a cornerstone of his 2022 reelection campaign.
Posted in
Texas Legislature 2023
Long-awaited $18 billion property tax-cut deal heads to Gov. Greg Abbott
House Democrats attempted to insert benefits for renters and more money for public education into the tax-cuts package in a series of floor amendments but were unsuccessful.