BILL ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 3015
By: Kuempel
Environmental Regulation
Committee Report (Substituted)
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Many municipalities provide solid waste management services through contracts
with private companies. These contracts can include residential and commercial
services, or they may be limited to one or the other. Open markets exist when
one or more of these types of solid waste management services is not included
in a municipal solid waste management services contract, which allows for
individual accounts and businesses to be serviced by individual contracts with
private service providers for those excluded services. A municipality recently
extended a residential service contract without a public bid process and
included commercial accounts in that contract that were previously serviced by
open market contracts. This caused significant disruption and cost to the
private service providers that were essentially immediately evicted by the
municipality's decision. C.S.H.B. 3015 seeks to address this issue by allowing
for a privately owned solid waste management service provider affected by an
exclusive contract entered into by a public agency, such as a municipality, to
continue to provide services for a limited time so that the provider may wrap
up and remove their assets. The provisions of C.S.H.B. 3015 only apply when an
exclusive contract is awarded absent a competitive bid process.
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
C.S.H.B. 3015 amends the Health and Safety Code to require a public agency that
enters into an exclusive contract, including by renewing or amending an
existing contract in a manner that grants a privately owned solid waste management
service provider an exclusive right to provide certain additional solid waste
services that was not contained in the contract before the renewal or
amendment, to give notice containing the following:
· a summary of the purpose of the contract or amendment;
· a description of the change made by the contract or amendment; and
· a summary of the effect of the contract or amendment and the bill's provisions on the operations of a privately owned solid waste management service provider that is operating in the agency's jurisdiction and is not a party to the contract.
The
bill defines "exclusive contract" as a contract or franchise
agreement between a public agency and a privately owned solid waste management
service provider that grants to the service provider an exclusive right to
provide certain solid waste management services in the agency's jurisdiction.
C.S.H.B. 3015 requires
a public agency that is required to give such notice
to do the following:
· publish the notice in a newspaper of general circulation in the agency's jurisdiction or on a publicly available website maintained by the agency; and
· if the agency requires a privately owned solid waste management service provider to register or obtain approval to operate in the agency's jurisdiction, give notice to each provider registered with or approved by the agency to operate in the jurisdiction.
C.S.H.B. 3015 establishes that the contract or amendment takes effect on publication of the notice. The bill authorizes a privately owned solid waste management service provider that has an existing contract with a person to provide certain solid waste management services for which a public agency enters into an exclusive contract with another service provider to continue to provide those services in the agency's jurisdiction until the earlier of the following:
· the date the service provider's existing nonexclusive contract expires; or
· the second anniversary of the date the agency publishes the notice.
C.S.H.B. 3015 authorizes a privately owned solid waste management service provider that provides solid waste management services to a person in a public agency's jurisdiction and that does not have a contract to provide the services, if the agency enters into an exclusive contract with another service provider to provide those services, to continue to provide the services in the jurisdiction until the 60th day after the date the agency publishes the notice.
C.S.H.B. 3015 expressly does not apply to the following:
· an exclusive contract awarded by a public agency through a competitive bidding process; or
· the provision of solid waste management services by a municipality to an annexed area as provided by specified statutory provisions.
C.S.H.B. 3015 applies only to a contract or franchise agreement for solid waste management services entered into on or after the bill's effective date.
EFFECTIVE DATE
On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2023.
COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL TO SUBSTITUTE
While C.S.H.B. 3015 may differ from the introduced in minor or nonsubstantive
ways, including by conforming to certain bill drafting conventions, the
following summarizes the substantial differences between the introduced and
committee substitute versions of the bill.
The substitute includes provisions not included in the introduced that do the following:
· require a public agency that enters into an exclusive contract to give certain notice regarding the contract and to publish the notice; and
· establish that the contract or applicable amendment of a contract takes effect on publication of the notice.
The substitute does not include a provision present in the introduced that establishes that the bill's provisions expressly do not apply to a decision not to renew an exclusive contract or franchise agreement at the end of the term of the contract or agreement.