SB1273

The council includes research security officers already designated under Education Code 51.956 and an officer from each qualifying private institution that elects to participate. Council membership is not limited to R1 campuses. When a university system has designated an officer for each component institution, its chancellor chooses one voting council member; the other institutional officers are nonvoting. Members serve at the designating person’s will, vacancies use the original designation process, and the Texas A&M University System’s designated member is the initial chair. Section 51.957(c)–(g); Existing public-institution officer framework.

The council must identify best practices, develop a policy that covered R1 institutions must adopt, establish a security-excellence accreditation process, promote the A&M seminar, and offer annual officer training covering researcher background and academic-history checks and research-security tools and software that must be used. Optional private participation on the council does not make the R1 policy-adoption requirement optional. The 2025 Carnegie research designation uses research spending and research-doctorate production; it is distinct from council security accreditation. Required duties; Publisher’s 2025 R1 methodology.

The council must meet at least quarterly, in person or by video as its chair decides, and submit an annual research-security report and recommendations to the governor, attorney general’s office and higher-education legislative committee chairs. That report is confidential and exempt from public disclosure under Chapter 552; the act does not say every council record is automatically confidential. Meeting and report provisions.

The council may accept gifts, grants and donations, but not from an entity or country covered by the act’s four tests: barred from federal contracting under section 889 of the 2019 defense act; identified by Defense as a Chinese military company under section 1260H of the 2021 defense act; owned by a government designated as a foreign adversary under Commerce’s cited rule; or controlled by a governing or regulatory body located in such a country. These are specific contracting, designation, ownership and control tests—not a statement that every national or privately owned business from a listed country is barred. Donation restrictions, subsection (m); Federal section 889, printed pages 1917–1919; Federal section 1260H, printed pages 3965–3966; Commerce rule at the Texas law’s effective date.

The Senate substitute made policy adoption, accreditation duties, security tools and meeting format mandatory; added voluntary private-institution representation and the governor as a report recipient; limited the R1 definition to Texas; and replaced the introduced named-country/religious-freedom donor restriction with the final federal-reference tests. The Senate-passed and House committee texts retained that approach. The sole indexed floor amendment, Wilson’s adopted House amendment, added the university-system voting arrangement and definition. The Senate concurred May 12, and those changes remain in the final law. Introduced proposal; Senate substitute; All versions; Wilson amendment; Disposition.

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Shared policies, training and coordination may help institutions protect research and intellectual capital. They also require officers’ time, institutional compliance and donor screening. The confidential annual report limits public access to that report. The law does not establish a quantified reduction in espionage, show that a particular institution has received security accreditation or award a new research grant to every institution. Duties and limits.

The final posted fiscal note, dated May 6 and labeled “As Passed 2nd House,” anticipates no significant state or local fiscal effect and assumes costs can be absorbed with existing resources. Earlier introduced and Senate-substitute estimates agree. This is not a claim of zero workload or zero cost to private institutions, and the act contains no separate appropriation. Final posted estimate; Introduced estimate; Senate-substitute estimate.