2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB3595
HB3595 requires assisted living facilities to adopt and implement an emergency preparedness and contingency plan by January 1, 2026.
Official caption: Relating to an emergency preparedness and contingency operations plan, including temperature regulation, for assisted living facility residents during an emergency; providing penalties.
Official report lists House author(s): Barry, Howard, Johnson, King, Darby. 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.
- HB3595 requires assisted living facilities to adopt and implement an emergency preparedness and contingency plan by January 1, 2026.
- Facilities must notify the Health and Human Services Commission when an unplanned interruption or loss of electric utility service lasts more than 12 hours.
- The commission must establish backup-power and evacuation construction/licensing standards for facilities whose permit to begin construction is issued after September 1, 2026.
- The law authorizes penalties under the existing Chapter 247 enforcement framework and requires implementing rules.
What does it do?
HB3595 requires assisted living facilities to adopt and implement an emergency preparedness and contingency plan by January 1, 2026. During a power outage, the plan must provide a climate-controlled refuge with at least 15 square feet per resident, except that a bedfast resident must have a climate-controlled room. Both the refuge and those rooms must be kept between 68°F and 82°F. The statute narrowly defines a bedfast resident as someone unable to transfer out of bed or turn and reposition in bed, and unable to be transported by another person during an emergency. Final law.
Facilities must notify the Health and Human Services Commission when an unplanned interruption or loss of electric utility service lasts more than 12 hours. Plans must address building equipment and available generator or backup-power sources, plus residents’ needs, including bedfast residents and those dependent on electrically powered medical equipment. Facilities must make their plans available to the commission on request and provide a summary to a resident or family member who asks. A refuge is for an outage or other emergency that does not require evacuation of the entire facility; it is not permission to remain in an unsafe building.
The commission must establish backup-power and evacuation construction/licensing standards for facilities whose permit to begin construction is issued after September 1, 2026. Compliance with those standards is not required before the later of January 1, 2027, or the first new or renewed facility license issued on or after September 1, 2026. That later deadline is for the specified construction/licensing standards—not a delay of every facility’s January 2026 emergency-plan duty. The act does not prescribe a single generator model or a universal number of backup-power hours.
The law authorizes penalties under the existing Chapter 247 enforcement framework and requires implementing rules. It supersedes conflicting local emergency-planning regulations to the extent of the conflict. The act took effect September 1, 2025. Existing enforcement law; official history.
What changed along the way?
The introduced proposal contained refuge and temperature requirements, mandatory submission of plans, emergency signs and a broad penalty delay until 2027. The House committee substitute added the separate bedfast-resident room protections, revised backup-power and evacuation provisions, removed the sign requirement, specified penalties through existing law, and replaced the broad penalty delay with the narrower construction/licensing transition.
Barry’s adopted House floor amendment limited the new construction standards by the date a construction permit is issued, made commission access to plans available on request rather than requiring routine submission, and added the conflicting-local-rule override. All four instructions survived into the final law. House amendment.
Alvarado’s adopted Senate amendment would have required strategies for heat/cold complications and responses to designated contacts, written or electronic summaries with backup-power details and estimated operating hours, and protection for compatible local rules that were equally or more stringent. Those Senate additions were removed in conference. The final agreement returned to the House-passed wording, including the narrower summary-on-request provision and conflict-based override of local rules. Adoption in the Senate alone did not make those proposals law. Senate amendment; conference report and comparison; amendment dispositions.
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?
Residents, especially those who cannot readily move or rely on powered medical equipment, gain specific emergency temperature and shelter protections. Families can ask for a plan summary. Facilities face planning, staffing, equipment and compliance responsibilities; the cost will depend on their buildings and existing backup arrangements. Local governments lose authority to enforce conflicting requirements, but the text is not a blanket repeal of all local emergency rules.
The final fiscal note anticipates no significant state or local-government fiscal impact, assumes state costs can be absorbed with existing resources, and says penalty revenue is uncertain but not expected to be significant. It does not price private facilities’ upgrades or prove that compliance is cost-free. HB3595 does not appropriate an equipment grant. Final fiscal note.
Review boundary: This explains assisted-living requirements, not a guarantee that a particular facility is prepared or a claim that every room must have whole-building backup air conditioning. The new text uses the existing penalty system, including its procedures and exceptions; it does not create a new flat fine for every outage.
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.
