SB1946

Leadership and membership: the governor appoints members, who serve at the governor’s pleasure; the governor or designee chairs meetings. A two-person steering committee consists of the governor or designee and the chief executive of a statewide family-violence advocacy organization or designee. It may create working groups drawn from task-force members. Meetings occur at the chair’s call. Final law, new Section 772.0065(b)–(i).

Required membership includes four family-violence-center employees or contractors from different regions representing rural and urban areas; a statewide legal-services representative; representatives of relevant state agencies, including the attorney general, health and human services, court administration, state health services and family protective services; and a separate representative of the health commission’s family-violence program. It also includes UTHealth Houston’s Center for Violence Prevention, the named statewide prosecutors’ and municipal-police associations, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, the Texas Violent Death Reporting System, a domestic-violence high-risk team, two survivors, and the two steering-committee officeholders or designees. The governor may add members; this is not a fixed-size membership limit. Final law, new Section 772.0065(c)–(d).

Work and privacy: the group must analyze leading risk factors, advise agencies and nonprofits and provide resources to improve professional training, and collect, analyze and publish region-organized information about prevention, investigation, prosecution and survivor services, including a list of advocacy organizations. Public information must not be privileged, confidential or otherwise legally barred from disclosure. It must recommend better coordination of survivor services and provider funding, and better prevention, investigation and prosecution. This does not authorize publication of protected survivor records. Final law, new Section 772.0065(j).

Funding, compensation and deadlines: the task force must use available state or federal funding. Non-state-agency members and invited meeting participants are entitled to the specified General Appropriations Act per diem and reimbursement of actual and necessary expenses. The usual Government Code Chapter 2110 advisory-committee rules do not apply; the act supplies its own operating rules. A written findings-and-recommendations report is due to the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker by December 1, 2026. The task force is abolished and the new section expires January 1, 2028. The act does not itself state a new appropriation amount. Final law, new Section 772.0065(h), (k)–(n).

Amendment: the introduced, Senate committee, Senate-passed and House committee texts had the same operative provisions. Representative Manuel’s sole indexed amendment, adopted on House third reading May 28, changed appointments and tenure from steering-committee control to the governor, made the governor or designee the chair, replaced two advocacy-organization representative seats with the governor and advocacy chief-executive seats, and added the express privacy restriction. Those changes are in the final law. The Senate concurred May 30. Certified votes were 29–1 for Senate passage, 30–1 for concurrence and 75–55 in the House, with three House members present but not voting. Introduced; Senate committee; Senate-passed; House committee; Manuel amendment; Final law; Version index; Amendment index; Official history.

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

Survivors, service providers and public agencies may benefit from better coordination, training resources and policy recommendations. The statute creates duties, not proof that homicide rates have fallen or services have expanded. Actual appointments, meetings, spending and report delivery have not been verified here. Final law, new Section 772.0065(j)–(n).

The April 28 introduced fiscal note and May 28 passed-House fiscal note anticipate no significant state or local-government fiscal implication. The governor’s office expects administrative costs, but the notes assume they can be absorbed using existing resources. The later note reflects governor-appointed membership and the compensation provisions. These are budget assumptions, not a finding that staff time, travel or meetings cost nothing. Introduced fiscal note; Passed-House fiscal note; Same dated fiscal note linked with final bill.