By Culberson                                           H.B. No. 714
       74R1483 ESH-D
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
    1-1                                AN ACT
    1-2  relating to exempting a school district from the obligation to
    1-3  comply with certain unfunded state educational mandates.
    1-4        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-5        SECTION 1.  Subchapter Z, Chapter 21, Education Code, is
    1-6  amended by adding Section 21.940 to read as follows:
    1-7        Sec. 21.940.  EXEMPTION FROM CERTAIN STATE EDUCATIONAL
    1-8  MANDATES.  (a)  A school district is exempt from a state
    1-9  educational mandate for which the legislature has not appropriated
   1-10  funds estimated to be sufficient to meet the expenditure required
   1-11  by the mandate at the time the mandate is effective unless the
   1-12  legislature has determined that the mandate fulfills an important
   1-13  state interest and:
   1-14              (1)  the expenditure is required to comply with a law
   1-15  that applies to all persons similarly situated, including entities
   1-16  other than a school district; or
   1-17              (2)  the mandate is necessary either to comply with
   1-18  federal law or to meet eligibility standards for a federal
   1-19  entitlement, and the federal law specifically contemplates action
   1-20  by a district for compliance or eligibility.
   1-21        (b)  In this section, "state educational mandate" means a
   1-22  statutory provision the implementation of which requires an
   1-23  expenditure by a school district that would not have been required
   1-24  in the absence of the statutory provision and rules adopted under
    2-1  that provision.
    2-2        SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
    2-3  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
    2-4  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
    2-5  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    2-6  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
    2-7  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
    2-8  passage, and it is so enacted.