HB1545

Texas periodically reviews agencies through the Sunset process to decide whether they should continue and what should change. HB1545 rearranges several review dates and keeps narrower reviews of juvenile justice and anatomical-donation oversight on the 2027 legislative agenda. It does not shut these agencies down now. Final law, Articles 1–6; official history.

• Credit Union Department and Credit Union Commission: their scheduled abolition date moves forward from September 1, 2035, to September 1, 2031, unless the Legislature continues them.
• State Office of Administrative Hearings: its review moves from 2027 to 2031 and every 12 years thereafter. It remains subject to review, not abolition through Sunset.
• Texas Juvenile Justice Department and board: their scheduled abolition date moves from September 1, 2027, to September 1, 2031, unless continued. But a limited review for the 90th Legislature in 2027 still examines regionalization—prioritizing local juvenile-justice options over placement in state secure facilities. That review expressly excludes the department’s independent ombudsman. The department also had to report by September 1, 2026, on its response to the federal Justice Department’s August 2024 findings, youth waiting in county facilities for state placement, staffing and turnover for each fiscal year since 2016, and progress on facilities funded in the 2024–25 biennium. This briefing verifies the reporting requirement, not whether the report was delivered or the problems fixed.
• State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners: its scheduled abolition date moves from September 1, 2027, to September 1, 2033, unless continued. This change depended on SB2155 or similar legislation becoming law. SB2155 was signed June 20, 2025, satisfying that condition.
• Lower Colorado River Authority: its review moves from 2031 to 2035, recurring every 12 years. It cannot be abolished through this review, and the existing exclusion for management of wholesale electricity generation and transmission remains.
• State Soil and Water Conservation Board: the bill cancels a separately required 2027 limited review of its dam structural repair grant program. It repeals the review instruction in Section 12 of 2023 SB1424, not the grant program itself.
• Texas Funeral Service Commission: a limited review for the 2027 Legislature covers its oversight of willed-body programs, non-transplant anatomical donation organizations and anatomical facilities. This provision applied only if SB2721 or similar legislation did not become law. SB2721 stopped in the House, and the Sunset Commission now lists the limited-scope review for 2026–27.

The law also makes Sunset’s reporting, evaluation, hearing and exemption rules expressly apply to agencies reviewed without being scheduled for abolition. Agency self-evaluation and required-report inventories are due before September 1 of the preceding odd-numbered year; commission review work is due before January 1 and public hearings before February 1 of the review year. The existing exemption grounds—two years of inactivity, legislatively imposed inactivity, or inability to participate because of a declared disaster—remain. Public members’ legislative-oversight role now refers to “state” agencies rather than only “executive branch” agencies. Final law, Article 5.