2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB3248
HB3248 allows a defense base development authority's board to employ and commission peace officers.
Official caption: Relating to the authority of a defense base development authority to employ and commission peace officers.
Official report lists House author(s): Cortez, Dorazio, Lujan, Lopez, Ray. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.
Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.
Bill highlights
Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.
- HB3248 allows a defense base development authority's board to employ and commission peace officers.
- A defense base development authority is a special district a municipality may establish under Local Government Code Chapter 379B.
- The officers' jurisdiction includes property the authority owns or controls.
- The board may, rather than must, create these positions.
What does it do?
HB3248 allows a defense base development authority’s board to employ and commission peace officers. Their purpose under this new provision is to prevent or stop offenses under state or local law relating to port functions, facilities and operations. The governor signed May 24, 2025; the act took effect September 1, 2025. Final law; history.
A defense base development authority is a special district a municipality may establish under Local Government Code Chapter 379B. The chapter concerns qualifying closed or realigned military installations and certain base-efficiency projects; this is not a general power for every private industrial park to establish a police force. Authority framework.
The officers’ jurisdiction includes property the authority owns or controls. Within their jurisdiction, they have the powers granted by Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 14, which governs arrests without warrants and includes conditions and safeguards. HB3248 does not authorize an arrest simply because someone is on authority property, or erase the chapter’s restrictions. It also adds these commissioned officers to the statutory list of peace officers. Chapter 14 arrest rules.
The board may, rather than must, create these positions. The bill does not set staffing levels, salaries or a new tax. It provides that its changes prevail over conflicting nonsubstantive code-correction legislation from the same regular session; that is not blanket precedence over all other laws.
What changed along the way?
The filed bill contained the same commissioning authority, property-jurisdiction language, Chapter 14 reference and code-list addition as the final act. The House committee, House-passed and Senate-reported versions retained those provisions. Version index.
The amendment index lists no amendments. The long existing peace-officer list is reproduced to insert the new category; the act does not newly create every police category listed there.
For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.
Official bill versions
Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.
Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?
An authority choosing to commission officers may gain a dedicated law-enforcement presence for its operations. People and businesses using its property may benefit from that presence, while also being subject to lawful enforcement. Actual staffing and effects depend on the board’s decision; the bill does not document a resulting crime reduction.
The May 2 fiscal note anticipates no state fiscal impact. It says a defense base development authority could incur an impact if it chooses to employ and commission officers, without assigning a dollar amount. The bill does not appropriate state funds for those positions.
Review boundary: All four enacted sections, the version history and the referenced authority/arrest framework checked. This is not a determination of a particular arrest’s legality, a claim of unlimited statewide jurisdiction, or confirmation that an authority has hired officers.
Official sources
- Bill history and latest recorded action
- Bill versions, analyses and fiscal notes
- Action history and votes
- Amendment index
Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.
