| TO: | Honorable Byron Cook, Chair, House Committee on Environmental Regulation |
| FROM: | John S. O'Brien, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB1553 by Burnam (relating to the development of a climate adaptation plan by certain entities.), Committee Report 1st House, Substituted |
The bill would require 14 state agencies to each develop and publish a climate adaptation plan every even-numbered year no later than September 1 beginning in 2010. The plan would be required to be made available on the Internet and copies submitted to the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the presiding officer of each standing environmental committee, and the executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). A plan would provided for a strategy to identify, minimize, and adequately prepare for the effects of global warming on the social, economic, and ecological systems of the state and to manage the risks associated with a changing climate. Each entity’s plan would be required to contain: a climate change vulnerability assessment; a review of existing programs in the context of anticipated climate change; specific steps necessary for entities to fulfill their missions during anticipated climate change; analysis of the identified steps and their budgetary impact during the next two, five, and ten years; potential funding sources; and a statewide strategy to monitor continuing effects of climate change. Each entity would be required to consider the most current assessment report created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and consult with the Houston Advanced Research Center and the Office of the State Climatologist in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the College of Geosciences, Texas A & M University.
Although the bill's passage would likely result in various agencies incurring costs to implement the provisions fo the bill, this estimate assumes that these costs would not be signficant to any individual agency's budget and could therefore be absorbed using existing resources.
| Source Agencies: | 576 Texas Forest Service, 710 Texas A&M University System Administrative and General Offices, 304 Comptroller of Public Accounts, 308 State Auditor's Office, 405 Department of Public Safety, 473 Public Utility Commission of Texas, 529 Health and Human Services Commission, 551 Department of Agriculture, 580 Water Development Board, 582 Commission on Environmental Quality, 601 Department of Transportation
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| LBB Staff: | JOB, SZ, ZS, TL, SK, WK, ES
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