By:  West, et al.                                      S.B. No. 189
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                        AN ACT
    1-1  relating to the certification of historically underutilized
    1-2  businesses by the General Services Commission.
    1-3        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-4        SECTION 1.  Subsection (a), Section 1.03, State Purchasing
    1-5  and General Services Act (Article 601b, Vernon's Texas Civil
    1-6  Statutes), is amended to read as follows:
    1-7        (a)  The commission shall certify businesses that are
    1-8  historically underutilized businesses.  As part of its
    1-9  certification procedures, the commission may approve another
   1-10  certification <a municipal> program that certifies historically
   1-11  underutilized businesses under substantially the same definition
   1-12  prescribed by Section 1.02(3) of this Act, and municipalities may
   1-13  adopt the certification program of the commission, the federal
   1-14  Small Business Administration, a political subdivision, or another
   1-15  governmental entity <certify businesses certified by the
   1-16  municipality as historically underutilized businesses under this
   1-17  Act>.
   1-18        SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
   1-19  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
   1-20  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
   1-21  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
   1-22  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
   1-23  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
   1-24  passage, and it is so enacted.