By:  Barrientos, Wentworth                             S.B. No. 993
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                        AN ACT
    1-1  relating to a change in the use by the City of Austin of certain
    1-2  real property currently designated for a public purpose.
    1-3        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-4        SECTION 1.  The legislature hereby finds that the City of
    1-5  Austin would facilitate and improve the availability,
    1-6  accessibility, and cost of health care services to its residents if
    1-7  it could either lease or transfer all or part of its hospital,
    1-8  including the main hospital buildings and the professional office
    1-9  building, for operation on a nonprofit basis to another entity
   1-10  experienced in providing health care services, which may be an
   1-11  entity currently operating health care facilities located in the
   1-12  City of Austin.
   1-13        SECTION 2.  Section 2, Chapter 492, Acts of the 67th
   1-14  Legislature, Regular Session, 1981, is amended to read as follows:
   1-15        Sec. 2.  The city of Austin is hereby <exclusively> empowered
   1-16  to use such designated land as shown on such plat and as patented
   1-17  to the city of Austin by patent dated July 15, 1994, for any public
   1-18  purpose.  The term "public purpose" shall include the lease or
   1-19  operation of the property for health care purposes by a nonprofit
   1-20  organization as authorized by the city of Austin regardless of
   1-21  whether such lease or operation might be considered to be
   1-22  anticompetitive under the antitrust laws of the United States or
   1-23  the State of Texas.
   1-24        SECTION 3.  The importance of this legislation and the
    2-1  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
    2-2  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
    2-3  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    2-4  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
    2-5  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
    2-6  passage, and it is so enacted.