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

HB5092

HB5092 expands the Lubbock Reese Redevelopment Authority's role at the former Reese Air Force Base to support national-security and critical-infrastructure research with Texas Tech University.

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Official caption: Relating to the operation and dissolution of the Lubbock Reese Redevelopment Authority and to agreements between Texas Tech University and the authority.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Tepper. 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.

HB5092 expands the Lubbock Reese Redevelopment Authority's role at the former Reese Air Force Base to support national-security and critical-infrastructure research with Texas Tech University.
Research and agreements: The authority may support an applied research site with Texas Tech and enter interagency agreements to support university research or transfer portions of base property to the university.
“National security-related technology” must be researched or developed in collaboration with Texas Tech for a national-security use by the named agencies or another collaborating partner and used in qualified research under the cited Tax Code definition. “Critical infrastructure” uses the existing definition covering communications, cybersecurity, the electric grid, hazardous-waste treatment and water treatment.
Property and projects: The law extends an existing temporary-location/interstate-commerce presumption to specified national-security or critical-infrastructure technology and property primarily used to develop it, and extends the aircraft language to development as well as construction.
The definition of a “qualifying project” now also covers an income-producing facility constructed by an entity whose purpose is supporting the specified technology or services in collaboration with Texas Tech.
Governance: The seven-member board continues to have six appointed directors and the executive director of the South Plains Association of Governments.

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What does it do?

HB5092 expands the Lubbock Reese Redevelopment Authority’s role at the former Reese Air Force Base to support national-security and critical-infrastructure research with Texas Tech University. It changes board appointments, property-related tax presumptions, project rules and the process for transferring property and eventually dissolving the authority. It took effect September 1, 2025.

Research and agreements. The authority may support an applied research site with Texas Tech and enter interagency agreements to support university research or transfer portions of base property to the university. Its collaboration powers expressly include the Defense Department and its components, the Energy and Homeland Security departments, and other public or private partners. The law removes the general governor-approval/coordination condition from Section 3501.102(b); the separate condition for accepting federal title in subsection (a) was not removed.

“National security-related technology” must be researched or developed in collaboration with Texas Tech for a national-security use by the named agencies or another collaborating partner and used in qualified research under the cited Tax Code definition. “Critical infrastructure” uses the existing definition covering communications, cybersecurity, the electric grid, hazardous-waste treatment and water treatment.

Property and projects. The law extends an existing temporary-location/interstate-commerce presumption to specified national-security or critical-infrastructure technology and property primarily used to develop it, and extends the aircraft language to development as well as construction. Related property can qualify when its owner demonstrates to the chief appraiser an intent to incorporate or attach it to the specified property or aircraft. These are presumptions for the property-tax jurisdiction/location rules in Tax Code Sections 11.01 and 21.02—not a blanket exemption for every business, item or transaction at the site.

The definition of a “qualifying project” now also covers an income-producing facility constructed by an entity whose purpose is supporting the specified technology or services in collaboration with Texas Tech. That matters because existing Section 3501.005(b) excludes qualifying authority projects from Government Code Chapters 2267 and 2269. It is not a repeal of every procurement requirement.

Governance. The seven-member board continues to have six appointed directors and the executive director of the South Plains Association of Governments. Successor directors are now appointed by the board in consultation with the Texas Tech president or designee, rather than five city appointments and one county appointment. The experience categories retain real estate, finance, manufacturing and agriculture, while replacing general business with national-security or critical-infrastructure technology. Existing members may finish their terms; the new appointment rules apply to appointments from September 1, 2025, and qualified incumbents may be reappointed.

Transfers and dissolution. The law expresses an intent to transfer portions of the base to Texas Tech for authorized agreements; an agreement may allow the authority to keep operating afterward. Dissolution becomes permissive, but only after the board finds its functions complete, debts/obligations are satisfied or retired, and remaining property/assets are transferred. Texas Tech has first opportunity to receive them with its Board of Regents’ approval; if it declines, they go to the City of Lubbock. The former city/county approval requirement and proportional city/county distribution are removed. This law does not itself prove a transfer or dissolution has occurred.

A transferred Texas Tech facility is excluded from the specified facilities-inventory audit and coordinating-board inventory rules until the university places it in service and assigns it an educational and general function.

Sources: final law, all ten sections; official history; authority statute and retained provisions; critical-infrastructure definition.

What changed along the way?

The official amendment index lists no floor amendments. The House did adopt a committee substitute; that is a separate legislative step, not a floor amendment. Comparing all five versions shows that the substitute corrected the facilities-inventory trigger from the introduced “educational or generation” wording to “educational and general,” and made conforming wording corrections. The House committee, engrossed, Senate committee and enrolled operative text otherwise match.

The House passed the bill May 2 and the Senate May 14; the governor signed it May 28. The final September 1 effective date and protection of existing directors’ terms were retained.

Compared with the pre-effective statute, the material changes are research collaboration, the broadened property presumption and qualifying-project category, board-controlled successor appointments with university consultation, removal of the general governor condition, the Texas Tech agreements and transfer priority, permissive conditional dissolution, and the new inventory-rule exception. Many financing, leasing and other powers printed in Section 6 already existed; they were not all newly granted.

Sources: all bill versions; amendment index; introduced text; House committee substitute.

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?

Texas Tech, the authority and qualifying research partners gain flexibility to develop the site and transfer facilities. Owners of qualifying technology/property may benefit from the expanded tax-location presumption, but the bill does not establish any particular owner’s tax result or guarantee research contracts, jobs or revenue.

The authority and university may incur operational, development and administrative costs. Local elected bodies lose the former successor-appointment and dissolution-approval roles; the county is no longer the named fallback recipient of residual assets. Those are governance changes, not a quantified financial loss.

The May 7, 2025 fiscal note anticipates no significant state fiscal effect and assumes Texas Tech can absorb implementation costs within existing resources. It says the authority could be affected by its expanded powers and responsibilities, without giving a dollar estimate or time-period total. The introduced and committee fiscal notes reach the same conclusion. These estimates do not appropriate funds or guarantee that local costs or forgone tax revenue will be zero.

Review boundary: all ten enacted sections, five versions, the no-amendment index, three fiscal notes and pre-effective statutory provisions were checked. The national-security definition’s qualified-research reference was checked against Tax Code 151.3182 as it stood when HB5092 took effect (incorporating Internal Revenue Code Section 41); that Tax Code section was separately repealed effective January 1, 2026. This explanation does not turn HB5092’s property-location presumption into a continuing sales-tax exemption, decide a specific tax assessment, or claim that any particular agreement, transfer or project has occurred.

Sources: May 7 fiscal note; state property-tax jurisdiction; local property-tax location rules; separate SB2206 repeal, Sections 3–6.

Official sources

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