By:  Gallegos                                          S.B. No. 543
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                        AN ACT
    1-1  relating to residency requirements and to response time to civil
    1-2  emergencies for certain municipal employees.
    1-3        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-4        SECTION 1.  Subsection (c), Section 150.021, Local Government
    1-5  Code, is amended to read as follows:
    1-6        (c)  The governing body of a municipality may prescribe
    1-7  reasonable standards with respect to the time within which
    1-8  municipal employees who reside outside the municipal limits must
    1-9  respond to a civil emergency.  If a standard is adopted, it may not
   1-10  require the employee, in responding to a notification of a civil
   1-11  emergency, to come within the municipal limits in less time than
   1-12  traveling at posted speed limits and obeying all traffic
   1-13  regulations would require.  The standards may not be imposed
   1-14  retroactively on any person in the employ of the municipality at
   1-15  the time the standards are adopted.
   1-16        SECTION 2.  Section 150.021, Local Government Code, is
   1-17  amended by adding Subsection (d) to read as follows:
   1-18        (d)  Notwithstanding the provisions of Subsection (c), the
   1-19  governing body of a municipality may designate certain employees
   1-20  who, because of their duty assignments, must come within the city
   1-21  to respond to a civil emergency within a reasonable amount of time
   1-22  as established by the governing body.  The designations may not be
   1-23  imposed retroactively on any person in the employ of the
   1-24  municipality at the time the designations are adopted.
    2-1        SECTION 3.  The importance of this legislation and the
    2-2  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
    2-3  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
    2-4  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    2-5  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
    2-6  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
    2-7  passage, and it is so enacted.