Well over 700 new laws take effect in Texas on Friday, September 1ST. The new laws involve everything from school safety to crime and from gender and voting to guns.
Texas House Bill 3
Unfunded Mandate creating Challenges
It became one of the most talked about laws that followed the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24 of last year, in which 19 students and 2 teachers were fatally shot. HB 3 will soon require at least one armed security guard at every school campus in Texas. The first and most daunting task is how to pay for all those armed officers. “We talked with some experts who estimate that to put armed police office at every campus, it’s going to be a minimum of 75 to a hundred thousand dollars, per campus.” But school districts are beginning to run into another big challenge: Finding enough qualified officers. And many school districts simply don’t have the money to implement HB 3. School districts in this situation are allowed to arm a school district employee who must undergo training to become certified for school safety.
Texas House Bill 393
“Bentley’s Law”
Texas House Bill 393, better known as “Bentley’s Law,” will require convicted drunk drivers, who kill parents, to pay child support until the CHILDREN turn 18 or graduate from high school. the grandmother behind the legislation lost her own son and his fiancée to a drunk driver. As she recently told Ivanhoe Web News, Cecilia Williams is raising her four young grandchildren on her own. Williams confided that she often thinks of the night of the deadly collision. “A drunk driver rear-ended them, going a hundred and, I believe it was a hundred and nine miles an hour.” Williams then reflected, “When you lose your child every waking moment of every day is like it just happened again.” Williams turned her sadness and anger into a mission to help other families also left devastated and broken. While the deadly crash happened in her home state of Missouri, similar legislation --- that would force drunk drivers, who killed parents, to pay child support– Williams says that effort was mired in delays. So Williams teamed up with Mothers Against Drunk Driving” – better known as M.A.D.D., and that partnership eventually led to Texas House Bill 393. The group’s spokesperson Jess Rowland says there are no winners here – just survivors. “The trauma is unending as there is no justice because their loved ones will never be coming back. But this provides a sense of financial restitution and holds the offender accountable. “ Bentley’s Law – or a version of it - has been introduced in 20 states. The convicted drunk driver would begin making those child support payments one year after being released from prison.
