BILL ANALYSIS

S.B. 1177

By: Birdwell

Culture, Recreation & Tourism

Committee Report (Unamended)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

In 2018, the Texas Historical Commission managed meetings and dialogue among six state agencies as a result of certain concerns contained in a Sunset Advisory Commission recommendation. These collaborations led to two substantive reports to the Sunset Advisory Commission regarding the stewardship of cultural collections owned by the State of Texas and the outlining of options for a searchable public catalog of state collections managed by these agencies. There have been calls for a centralized system to manage state-owned artifact collections and the creation of a task force to help begin the process of implementing that system. S.B. 1177 seeks to address this issue by providing for the creation of a task force to evaluate these collections.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.

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.

ANALYSIS

S.B. 1177 establishes a task force to manage artifact collections owned by the state that is composed of representatives of the following state agencies:

· Texas Historical Commission;

· General Land Office;

· Texas State Library and Archives Commission;

· Parks and Wildlife Department;

· State Preservation Board; and

· Texas Facilities Commission (TFC).

The bill requires the executive director of each of those state agencies to appoint an agency employee to serve as the agency's representative on the task force not later than October 1, 2021, and requires the members representing the TFC to have engineering and architectural expertise. Task force members are not entitled to compensation but are entitled to reimbursement for travel expenses incurred while conducting task force business as provided by the General Appropriations Act.

S.B. 1177 requires the task force, for each state agency represented on the task force, to do the following:

· evaluate the need for a separate collections facility for the agency and compare use of a separate collection facility to a secure centrally located joint collections facility with a processing laboratory for repair, cleaning, re-housing, and light conservation of state artifacts, including cost estimates for maintaining a separate collections facility for each agency compared to a joint collections facility;

· analyze the storage capacity for the agency's collections to determine whether the agency's collections facility is adequate for the agency's successful stewardship of its collections over the next five years and 10 years;

· review the option of establishing a disaster-secure collections facility with separate storage areas for each agency;

· review the recommendations in the Texas Historical Commission's December 2018 response to the Sunset Advisory Commission decisions on creating a searchable public catalog of state-owned collections to determine cost estimates for implementing the recommendations and a process for implementing the recommendations; and

· assess any unmet need of the agency regarding state-owned collections as determined by the task force.

The bill requires the task force, not later than December 1, 2022, to report its findings and determinations to the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the house of representatives, and standing committees of each house of the legislature with primary jurisdiction over Texas history and culture. The task force is abolished and the bill's provisions expire September 1, 2023.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2021.