84th Legislative Session Wrap Up June 3, 2015

84th Legislative Session Wrap Up
Government Affairs/Advocacy Team
6-3-15

The 84th Texas Legislature is a wrap. The Texas SHRM Government Affairs/Advocacy team of Kristin Bauer, Pam Bratton and Lon Williams is proud to say we primarily had wins this session and came out relatively unscathed. Texas SHRM worked 17 bills closely out of over 6,474 bills filed.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the session:

HB 931 by Representative Murphy was signed by the Governor and is Effective 9/1/15
This bill moves the waiting week for unemployment compensation to the end of the benefit period. This will encourage job seekers to get re-employed quickly and no longer give incentive to stay unemployed for the full 3 weeks to get paid for this week. We signed cards of support for this bill during hearings.

HB 1251 by Representative Alvarado was sent to the Governor for signature
This bill relates to the transfer of compensation experience for purposes of the Texas Unemployment Compensation Act. We supported this bill

HB 2732 by Representative Metcalf was sent to the Governor for signature
This is relating to the recovery of unemployment compensation debt thought participation in the federal Treasury Offset Program. We supported letting the Feds help us recover unpaid unemployment comp debt through the IRS or other means available on by the government.

We had several bills that we supported that made it to calendars, but never got voted out of either chamber – maybe next year for:

We opposed these bills and they did NOT pass:

Texas SHRM