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2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB4163
HB4163 bars a city from directly or indirectly requiring the owner or lessee of an agricultural operation to mow, bale, shred or hoe material on the right-of-way of an adjoining public road.
Official caption: Relating to the authority of a city to impose certain governmental requirements on an agricultural operation.
Official report lists House author(s): Guillen, Cain. 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.
- HB4163 bars a city from directly or indirectly requiring the owner or lessee of an agricultural operation to mow, bale, shred or hoe material on the right-of-way of an adjoining public road.
- The law took effect September 1, 2025.
- This concerns work on the public road right-of-way, not a general right to ignore every vegetation rule on private agricultural land.
What does it do?
HB4163 bars a city from directly or indirectly requiring the owner or lessee of an agricultural operation to mow, bale, shred or hoe material on the right-of-way of an adjoining public road. It adds that protection to the existing limits on city regulation of agricultural operations in Agriculture Code Section 251.0055.
The law took effect September 1, 2025. The amended section applies to city requirements adopted before, on or after that date, so the protection is not limited to new ordinances.
This concerns work on the public road right-of-way, not a general right to ignore every vegetation rule on private agricultural land. Existing Section 251.0055(d), for example, permits limited vegetation-height rules on specified boundary strips, subject to its conditions. HB4163 does not repeal those provisions or direct a particular public agency to perform the roadside work instead.
What changed along the way?
The introduced bill proposed the same basic roadside-work protection. The House substitute cleaned up the wording, used the existing statute’s more precise animal-feed, livestock-forage and wildlife-management-forage language, and added the express provision covering requirements adopted before the effective date. That forage wording already appeared in the underlying law; it should not be presented as a wholly new protection created by this bill.
The engrossed, Senate committee and enrolled texts retained the substitute’s operative provisions. The amendment index lists no floor amendments. The official history records the governor’s June 20 signature.
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?
Owners and tenants of agricultural operations gain protection against city-imposed labor or equipment costs for the adjoining public road right-of-way. Cities lose this particular way of requiring roadside maintenance and may need to consider other lawful arrangements. The bill does not itself fund replacement maintenance or quantify who will perform it.
The latest fiscal note anticipated no fiscal implication for the state and no significant fiscal implication for local governments. It did not estimate private savings or maintenance costs at individual roads.
Review boundary: This explains the city-requirement prohibition, not the location of a particular right-of-way, a private maintenance contract, or every county or state road-maintenance power.
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.
