HBA-JEK H.B. 1113 77(R)    BILL ANALYSIS


Office of House Bill AnalysisH.B. 1113
By: Goolsby
Urban Affairs
3/12/2001
Introduced



BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE 

Current law requires a municipality of 1.5 million or more that has adopted
provisions regarding municipal civil service to establish and maintain a
legislative leave time account for each of its firefighter and police
officer employee organizations.  A legislative leave time account decreases
the amount of money an employee organization is required to reimburse a
municipality when its members take time off from work to conduct
legislative business.  A number of police officers from other
municipalities have expressed interest in donating some of their
accumulated vacation and overtime to their employee organization to be used
for legislative leave purposes.  House Bill 1113 requires a municipality of
one million or more that has not adopted the provisions for municipal civil
service to establish and maintain a legislative leave time account for each
police officer employee organization. 

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the opinion of the Office of House Bill Analysis that this bill does
not expressly delegate any additional rulemaking authority to a state
officer, department, agency, or institution. 

ANALYSIS

House Bill 1113 amends the Government Code to require a municipality with a
population of one million or more that has not adopted The Fire and Police
Employee Relations Act to establish a legislative leave time account for
each employee organization for police officers employed by the
municipality.  The bill does not apply to a municipality of 1.5 million or
more that has adopted the provisions for municipal civil service. 

H.B. 1113 authorizes a police officer to donate not more than two hours for
each month of accumulated vacation or compensatory time to the legislative
leave time account of an employee organization.  The bill requires a
municipality to credit and debit a legislative leave account on an
hour-for-hour basis regardless of the cash value of the time donated or
used.  The bill sets forth provisions relating to the donation of time to,
use of donated time from, and management of such an account. 

EFFECTIVE DATE

On passage, or if the Act does not receive the necessary vote, the Act
takes effect September 1, 2001.