By:  Shapiro                                           S.B. No. 461
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                        AN ACT
    1-1  relating to the construction of public works.
    1-2        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-3        SECTION 1.  Subsection (a), Section 19, The Texas Engineering
    1-4  Practice Act (Article 3271a, Vernon's Texas Civil Statutes), is
    1-5  amended to read as follows:
    1-6        (a)  It is unlawful for this State or for any of its
    1-7  political subdivisions, including any county, city, or town, to
    1-8  engage in the construction of any public work involving
    1-9  professional engineering, where public health, public welfare or
   1-10  public safety is involved, unless the engineering plans and
   1-11  specifications and estimates have been prepared by, and the
   1-12  engineering construction is to be executed under the direct
   1-13  supervision of a registered professional engineer.  However,
   1-14  nothing in this Act shall be held to apply to any public work
   1-15  involving structural, electrical, or mechanical engineering wherein
   1-16  the contemplated expenditure for the completed project does not
   1-17  exceed Eight Thousand ($8,000) Dollars.  Nothing in this Act shall
   1-18  be held to apply to other public works wherein the contemplated
   1-19  expenditure for the completed project does not exceed Twenty
   1-20  Thousand ($20,000) Dollars.
   1-21        SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
   1-22  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
   1-23  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
    2-1  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    2-2  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended.