SB1957

Covered oversight: the new definition includes a board or office established by a municipality for public oversight, monitoring or investigation of firefighters, police officers or their departments, carried out by members of the public who are not firefighters or police officers. It is not limited to police oversight or to an entity formally called a board. The existing definition of the civil-service commission is moved to a new subdivision without changing its wording. Final law, Section 1; Earlier definitions.

Eligibility rule: new Local Government Code Section 143.091 covers both a felony conviction and placement on deferred-adjudication community supervision for a felony. Treating the rule as conviction-only would omit the second category. The new section states no look-back period or grandfather exception for existing members. It does not itself create a criminal offense, require a city to create an oversight board, or prescribe an enforcement or removal procedure. The briefing does not resolve individualized questions involving expunged records or other legal relief. Final law, Section 2.

Municipal scope: the amendment is in Chapter 143, whose coverage generally requires a municipality of at least 10,000 people, a paid fire or police department, and adoption of the civil-service law by election. Section 143.002 also preserves certain legislatively validated adoptions and coverage after a population decline. It is therefore not a new eligibility rule for every advisory board in every Texas city. The chapter also permits adoption for only the fire or police department; applicability to a particular municipality must be checked. Final law; Chapter coverage; Adoption provisions; Application of general subchapters to large municipalities.

Amendment: the introduced, Senate committee, Senate-passed and House committee texts also disqualified someone convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. Representative Reynolds’s sole indexed amendment, adopted May 27 on House second reading, deleted that separate ground. The final law retains only the stated felony categories; the deleted wording must not be presented as enacted. The Senate concurred May 30. Certified votes were 23–8 for Senate passage and concurrence, and 100–38 in the House, with two House members present but not voting. Those votes met the immediate-effect threshold, and the history confirms June 20 effectiveness, not the fallback September 1 date. Introduced; Senate committee; Senate-passed; House committee; Reynolds 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.

Covered municipalities have an additional statutory limit when selecting people for civilian oversight roles, and people within the felony categories lose eligibility for those roles. The House amendment narrowed the exclusion compared with the original proposal. The law does not establish how many current or prospective members are affected, whether a particular person must be removed, or whether oversight quality will improve. Those are not verified outcomes of this review. Final law; Adopted amendment.

The April 25 introduced and May 28 passed-House fiscal notes anticipate no state fiscal implication and no significant local-government fiscal implication. They contain no quantified estimate of affected board members or administrative costs. These fiscal conclusions do not establish that the restriction has no effect on participation or representation. Introduced fiscal note; Passed-House fiscal note; Same dated note linked with final bill.