FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 16, 2023
Contact: Ike Hajinazarian, ike@txdemocrats.org
Texas Democrats Condemn Senate Passage of House Bill 2127
Houston Chronicle Editorial Board writes that H.B. 2127 would “hobble the powerful engines of the state’s economy”
AUSTIN, Texas — Today, following the vote in the Texas Senate to pass House Bill (H.B.) 2127, a bill which would strip huge swaths of local power from municipalities across Texas, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa released the following statement:
“The millions of voters in counties like Dallas, Harris, Travis, and Bexar did not vote to have Republicans’ anti-worker, anti-women, and anti-veteran ideologies forced upon them. In fact, in just the last election, these urban voters voted overwhelmingly (by a nearly 20-point margin) to reject Republicans’ extremist views.
“But we disagree with H.B. 2127 on more than just the devastating substantive impacts it would have on some of Texas’ most economically industrious municipalities – we disagree with it on the principle as well. Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans have for time immemorial spoken about the need to govern from the most local level possible – and we agree. We trust that community leaders know their communities far better than Texas Republicans at the Capitol do, and local decisions should be made by local school districts, cities, and counties — local leaders, mayors, and county judges who know their jurisdictions best.”
KVUE-TV (ABC Austin) reports that H.B. 2127 seeks “to expand State authority and shrink local control at the city and county level” and that it “would keep municipalities from passing or enforcing local rules in several critical areas ‘unless explicitly authorized by statute.’”
Through amendments to the bill, Republicans voted:
- To allow workplace discrimination against Texas veterans
- Against allowing local municipalities to keep in place mandatory meal and/or rest breaks for workers (including allowing construction workers to be ensured water breaks every so often when working in the scorching Texas sun)
- Against protections for victims of workplace sexual assault
- Against allowing local municipalities to keep in place regulations that would ensure workers’ health and safety on job sites
- In favor of allowing predatory “payday lender” operations to run unfettered
- In favor of other anti-worker and anti-Texan measures (including allowing employers to fire someone because of their accent – yes, you read that correctly), and against ordinances that would have protected Texas workers
In an editorial published today, the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board wrote that, with H.B. 2127, Texas Republicans “not only trash the conservative tenet about local government being the best government, but also hobble the powerful engines of the state’s economy.” The Board’s writers go on to state that H.B. 2127 “is part of an insidious nationwide effort on the part of the GOP to hobble metropolitan areas that are more diverse, more educated, more prosperous, more dynamic and — most important to the Grand Old Party — bluer than the preponderantly white, blue-collar, mid-sized metro areas and small towns that have become the Republican base.”
Additionally, a group of dozens of North Texas mayors penned an op-ed on the dangers of H.B. 2127 in the Dallas Morning News. In the piece, the mayors assert that the bill:
- “…would increase the state government’s regulatory power, thereby stripping local authority and leaving local governments unable to represent their citizens’ best interests.”
- “…could lead to the erosion of citizen-granted local control.”
- Includes “…a non-exhaustive list of current authorities that will be stripped away, many that businesses want cities to enforce in order to protect their local investment.”
- “Not only… invite[s] individuals to file lawsuits against local governments, but… also encourages them— needlessly at taxpayer expense.”
The Texas Tribune reported after the bill’s House passage that, “Because the bill is so broad, no one really knows the full extent of what it would do. Months after [Republican State Rep. Dustin] Burrows unveiled the first draft of the legislation, opponents still fear they’ve only scratched the surface of its potential impacts. Democrats on Tuesday sought explicit carve outs for local laws including nondiscrimination ordinances and protections against workplace sexual harassment but those measures failed.”
As a reminder, Bexar, Dallas, Travis, and Harris Counties alone hold a collective quarter-million Texas businesses, including hundreds of thousands of Texas’ small businesses and dozens of Fortune 500 companies. All together, these four counties alone create nearly $1 trillion in GDP.
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