2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB3803

HB3803 makes specified financial-condition information about perpetual-care cemeteries and their trust funds confidential at the Texas Department of Banking, while allowing limited sharing with government agencies for law enforce…

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Official caption: Relating to the confidentiality and disclosure of certain financial information of perpetual care cemeteries and perpetual care trust funds.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Lambert. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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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.

HB3803 makes specified financial-condition information about perpetual-care cemeteries and their trust funds confidential at the Texas Department of Banking, while allowing limited sharing with government agencies for law enforcement.
The protection covers financial-condition information the department obtains directly or indirectly, through examinations or otherwise, other than a published statement.
The banking commissioner may share the protected information with an agency, department or instrumentality of Texas, another state or the United States only after determining that disclosure is both in the public’s best interest and necessary or proper to enforce the relevant laws.
The act leaves the annual fund-statement requirement in Section 712.041 unchanged, including its requirement that a copy be available to the public on request.

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What does it do?

The protection covers financial-condition information the department obtains directly or indirectly, through examinations or otherwise, other than a published statement. It separately makes department files or records relating to the cemetery’s or fund’s financial condition confidential. A “fund” here is the perpetual-care trust fund defined in Chapter 712, whose distributions support the care specified by the trust, including cemetery maintenance. This is not a rule making every record about every cemetery secret; Chapter 712 has exemptions for certain small family/fraternal/community cemeteries, nonprofit plot-owner associations, religious entities and government-owned public cemeteries.

The banking commissioner may share the protected information with an agency, department or instrumentality of Texas, another state or the United States only after determining that disclosure is both in the public’s best interest and necessary or proper to enforce the relevant laws. This is discretionary government-to-government disclosure, not a general public-access exception.

The act leaves the annual fund-statement requirement in Section 712.041 unchanged, including its requirement that a copy be available to the public on request. It also leaves the commissioner’s examination authority intact. The new confidentiality rule restricts access to protected information; it does not excuse the cemetery from keeping or providing required records to its regulator. Statutory confidentiality is recognized by the Public Information Act’s Section 552.101.

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill would have protected retained financial-condition records and expressly excluded them from public-information disclosure. It allowed disclosure to Texas governmental recipients when the department considered it in the public interest or necessary or proper to aid enforcement of a law or rule, and proposed a September 1 effective date.

The House substitute replaced that wording with the final categories, published-statement exception and commissioner-controlled sharing provision. It expanded the listed governmental recipients to other states and the federal government while changing the disclosure test from or to and, and added the immediate-effect voting provision. The engrossed, Senate-report and final operative texts match.

The amendment index reports no amendments; the changes above came through the committee substitute. Version index. The House passed it 135–0, with two present but not voting; the Senate passed it 31–0. The governor signed it June 20, 2025, meeting the immediate-effect conditions. Official history.

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?

Regulated cemetery operators and funds gain protection for nonpublic financial-condition information held by the regulator. Public requesters, journalists and families may have less access to that protected material, while the published-statement exception and existing annual-statement access remain important limits. Regulators can share information for enforcement when the statutory test is met.

The May 9 fiscal note, consistent with the earlier notes, expects no significant state or local fiscal impact. It explains that the Department of Banking is self-directed and semi-independent, pays its own operating costs, cannot impose costs on General Revenue and is outside the legislative budgeting process. The note does not quantify private compliance costs or the value of reduced public access.

Review boundary: This explains the statutory confidentiality categories and disclosure test, not a ruling on whether a particular requested document is protected or whether a particular cemetery or fund is financially sound.

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.