BILL ANALYSIS |
C.S.H.B. 2555 |
By: Patrick, Diane |
Higher Education |
Committee Report (Substituted) |
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Texas has long been committed to providing tuition and fee exemptions at public institutions of higher education to certain military personnel through an initiative widely known as the Hazlewood Act. Recent legislation established a legacy provision which allowed a veteran to assign unused exempted semester credit hours to a dependent. Interested parties note that, in recent years, the expanded exemption has become increasingly costly for institutions of higher education at the same time as the institutions have experienced significant reductions in state funding. C.S.H.B. 2555 seeks to provide for a study and report regarding the Hazlewood exemption with the intention of acquiring information that will help to maintain the exemption for all qualified individuals and secure its future viability.
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RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.
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ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 2555 amends the Education Code to require the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), in consultation with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Veterans Commission, to study and evaluate the tuition and fee exemptions required to be given by the governing board of each institution of higher education to certain veterans, military personnel, and their dependents. The bill requires the LBB, in the study, to consider any available historical data and the projected data regarding recipients of such exemptions disaggregated by veteran, dependent, spouse, and legacy recipient, for each of certain specified categories of information. The bill requires the LBB, to the greatest extent possible, to include in its study a review of all federal education benefits for veterans in order to comprehensively review the sustainability of state and federal benefits for veterans and to use applicable data from the 2008-2009 academic year or a more recent academic year as a baseline in the study. The bill requires institutions of higher education, to the greatest extent possible, to cooperate with the LBB by providing any requested data and ensuring the reliability and validity of the data collected and submitted for the purpose of the study.
C.S.H.B. 2555 requires the LBB, not later than December 1, 2014, to submit to the coordinating board, the veterans commission, the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the speaker of the house of representatives a written report of the results of the study, together with any recommendations for legislative or administrative action, including any changes to eligibility criteria or other changes necessary to promote sustainability, fiscal efficiency, and effectiveness in the use of the exemption. The bill requires a recommendation included in the report to contain an explanation of the basis for that recommendation. The bill's provisions expire January 31, 2015.
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EFFECTIVE DATE
On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2013.
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COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE
While C.S.H.B. 2555 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following comparison is organized and highlighted in a manner that indicates the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.
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