Latest news with #HouseBill24
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Louisiana higher ed employees get most of their retirement wishes
Rep. Tony Bacala presents his bill. (Allison Allsop / Louisiana Illuminator) The Louisiana Legislature has unanimously approved a bill that grants a wish list of retirement reforms state higher education employees put forward, though it lacks one enticement faculty and staff consider critical to keeping them on campus. House Bill 24 by Rep. Tony Bacala, R-Prairieville, passed the Senate on a 36-0 vote and had previously cleared the House on a 97-0 vote. It next goes to Gov. Jeff Landry for his approval. Bacala's bill expands eligibility for the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL) to include faculty at the state's community and technical colleges. It also extends the period when employees can switch from a 'portable' retirement plan to the fixed, pension style plan offered to most state employees. Qualifying campus faculty and employees will have seven years, instead of the current five years to choose between the two plans, aligning it with the typical timeline it takes for professors to earn tenure. Bacala's bill incorporates most of the recommendations from a Board of Regents task force he helped form. An increase in employer contributions to TRSL retirement plans was among the most anticipated portions of Bacala's bill. In its original state, it would have increased the minimum employer contribution to portable plan accounts from 6.2% to 8% of employee pay. The contribution bump was removed from the bill because it would have increased state spending more than $11 million annually, and the legislature is trying not to add to state spending amid uncertain fiscal times. Bacala said he would try to address this provision in future legislation. Last year, lawmakers gave certain higher education employees a limited window to switch from the portable plan to defined benefits. According to the Board of Regents, 795 applied for the change as of the end of 2024. Nearly 7,000 college and university faculty and staff members are enrolled in the state's 'portable' or optional retirement plan that allows them to take their accrued benefits with them if they choose to leave the state for another job. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas House approves bill to help increase state's housing supply
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The Texas House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that will make it harder for homeowners to block projects to build new homes near their neighborhood. House Bill 24 — introduced by State Rep. Angelia Orr, R – Angelina — will weaken a 100-year-old law to help increase the amount of high-density housing, a Republican initiative to address skyrocketing house prices in Texas. Since the 2020 pandemic, housing prices in Texas have gone up about 40% across the state, said Emily Brizzolara-Dove, policy advisor for Texas 2036, which is a nonpartisan public policy research group. Brizzolara-Dove attributes some of the pricing issues with a lack of housing supply. 'We've got a big mismatch in supply and demand,' Brizzolara-Dove said. 'So, efforts to reform land use — to infuse neighborhoods with more housing, more diverse housing — are going to be critical to Texas' success going forward.' Local governments can change the zoning code for residential areas to allow for multi-family housing, like duplexes or apartment complexes. The city of Austin instituted major land code changes in 2024 to allow for up to three housing units on a property zoned for single-family use. However, under current law Texas property owners have been able to block zoning changes that could create more housing. The law said if 20% of property owners within 200 feet of a proposed zoning change sign a petition it forces a governing body, like a city council, to approve that zoning change by a supermajority, instead of the standard simple majority. 'It is very, very good at killing housing and it is ripe for reform,' Brizzolara-Dove said. HB 24 amends those petition requirements to 60% of the property owners within the 200 foot threshold, and even if that number of signatures is met, it allows a governing body to still be able to pass a zoning change with a simple majority. For property owners whose property is within the zoning change proposal, the 20% petition and supermajority rules still apply. The bill passed 83-56 after many delays. The Texas Senate passed similar legislation – Senate Bill 844 – in April. State Rep. John Bryant, D – Dallas, did raise concerns with Orr during floor debate this week. Bryant argues it will make it harder for property owners to block commercial and industrial developments from being built near their homes. 'A simple majority vote could take away the zoning that they relied on when they made their biggest investment in their home, and suddenly they have an industrial or commercial use right next door,' Bryant said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Texas Senate wants more — and smaller — starter homes in new neighborhoods
DALLAS — New homes in certain Texas neighborhoods could be built on smaller lots, allowing for more homes to be built amid a shortage that has driven up housing costs, if a new proposal from the Texas Senate becomes law. Senate Bill 15 — filed Tuesday by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston — reduces the amount of land cities can require single-family homes in new subdivisions to sit on. Doing so makes it possible for homebuilders to put smaller homes on smaller lots, driving down the final cost of the home. The bill wouldn't apply to homes built in existing neighborhoods, where homeowners often oppose new housing. 'What we're trying to do is come up with changes that get government out of the way of blocking affordable housing in the major urban cities,' Bettencourt said. Also on Tuesday, the House unveiled a proposal that aims to bring down housing costs. House Bill 24 — authored by state Rep. Angelia Orr, R-Itasca — would effectively make it harder for property owners to oppose new housing near them. The state's high housing costs have placed enormous pressure on renters and the dream of homeownership out-of-reach for many Texas families — a large majority of Texans have signaled that those high housing costs are a problem. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick named 'removing barriers to affordable housing' among his top priorities for this year's legislative session. [High housing costs, inflation bite into Texas sales tax growth] Lawmakers aim to put a dent in the state's high housing costs by tackling the state's considerable housing shortage. Though Texas builds more homes than any other state, it needs 320,000 more homes than it has, according to one estimate — a finding embraced by state Comptroller Glenn Hegar. That deep shortage, housing advocates have argued, played a key role in driving up home prices and rents — increasing competition for a limited supply of homes amid the state's economic boom. The Senate bill would prohibit cities from requiring single-family homes in new subdivisions to sit on more than 1,400 square feet — if the subdivision sits on at least five acres of land and is zoned for single-family development. The idea is to give homebuilders more flexibility to provide a broader array of housing options at different price points — and give would-be first-time homebuyers, who have struggled to find a home they can afford amid the state's high home prices, a leg up. Reducing lot-size requirements by that much, even only in new subdivisions, would be dramatic. Among major Texas cities, the most common requirements sit between 5,000 and 7,500 square feet, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. Those rules, critics argue, drive up a home's final cost by encouraging builders to construct larger, more expensive homes. They also leave less land behind to build other homes, limiting how many homes can ultimately be built and exacerbating the housing shortage. 'The idea of this is to find that area of housing density that will increase the supply to the point where middle-income Texans can afford a house,' said John Bonura, a policy analyst at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. The bill, Bonura said, aims to 'restore the idea of a starter home.' The lot-size rule would apply in cities that have more than 90,000 residents and sit in a county with more than 300,000 residents — a designation that applies to about 33 cities, Bettencourt said. The bill's proponents expect the legislation to spur at least some development in major cities. Dallas, for example, has more than 21,000 acres of vacant land, according to a city estimate — though not all of that land is contiguous. Bonura said he expects the bulk of the development spurred by the bill to take place in outlying suburban and exurban areas of major counties. Any legislative proposal to allow more homes to be built will likely rouse strong resistance from existing homeowners and neighborhood groups, who often can oppose new housing in or even near where they live on the grounds that doing so would alter their neighborhood's character. Some lawmakers have filed bills designed to make it harder for cities to allow more kinds of homes in existing single-family neighborhoods. Bettencourt's bill attempts to short-circuit that opposition by only applying the new lot-size requirement to new subdivisions, Bonura said. 'We don't have to change everything everywhere,' Bettencourt said. 'We have to change enough to make a difference on home affordability and on housing affordability in general.' There's also skepticism that building more homes can contain housing costs, despite evidence to the contrary. Legislators can see the dynamic that building more housing has on housing costs in the state capital itself: rents in the Austin region have tumbled for nearly two years amid a massive apartment building boom. Statewide measures to diminish cities' zoning regulations will likely encounter opposition from city officials and their allies in the Legislature. For much of the past decade, Republican lawmakers have pushed to erode the power of local elected officials in the state's urban areas, who are often Democrats. Some city officials have already expressed anxiety about state lawmakers overriding local rules about what kinds of homes can be built and where — as states like California, Oregon and Montana have done. Such concerns fueled, in part, successful Democratic efforts to kill similar legislation two years ago. Since then, Texas Democrats have expressed that they're open to zoning reform — with some authoring bills to reduce local regulations. Two Democratic senators, Roland Gutierrez and Royce West, have signed on to Senate Bill 15 as co-authors. Whether Democratic lawmakers will go along with those efforts remains to be seen. Neighborhood groups opposed to statewide zoning reform, too, argue cities should have the final say when it comes to the kinds of homes that can be built in their communities. 'Why should zoning not be left to local authorities who know their communities, where small lots work, where they don't and what the mix of smaller and larger lots should be, even in new communities?' said David Schwarte, who heads the Texas Neighborhood Coalition, a group that has fought for restricting short-term rentals and helps residents enforce existing residential zoning laws. Few parts of Texas have gone untouched by higher housing costs in recent years, proponents note — providing ample pretext for state lawmakers to intervene. Bettencourt's bill is part of a slate of proposals lawmakers, including Republicans and Democrats, have filed to relax some of those regulations. Those rules, critics say, have played a key role in preventing the state from adding enough homes to meet demand. Easing zoning regulations can help cities add more homes and contain housing costs, recent research shows — though housing advocates and experts say that relaxing those regulations alone won't resolve the housing crisis. Lawmakers could relax local rules to make it easier for homeowners to build accessory dwelling units — often called ADUs, mother-in-law suites and casitas, in the backyard of single-family homes. Legislators in the Texas House rejected a similar bill in 2023. Legislators also are entertaining ideas to allow homes to be built in places that now only allow offices, shopping malls, warehouses and houses of worship. Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. We can't wait to welcome you to the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Step inside the conversations shaping the future of education, the economy, health care, energy, technology, public safety, culture, the arts and so much more. Hear from our CEO, Sonal Shah, on TribFest 2025. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
