2025 · Regular session · Senate bill
SB502
SB502 puts specified Health and Human Services inspector-general peace officers on the state’s Schedule C pay system and extends hazardous-duty and injury-leave coverage.
Official caption: Relating to peace officers commissioned by the Health and Human Services Commission's office of inspector general.
Official report lists Senate author(s): Perry. 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.
- SB502 puts specified Health and Human Services inspector-general peace officers on the state’s Schedule C pay system and extends hazardous-duty and injury-leave coverage.
- The state classification officer must classify commissioned peace officers employed as investigators by the office as Schedule C positions beginning with the biennium starting September 1, 2025.
- The act adds the office’s commissioned law-enforcement officers to the definition used for hazardous-duty pay.
- It also extends injury leave without salary deductions or mandatory use of other accrued leave.
What does it do?
SB502 puts specified Health and Human Services inspector-general peace officers on the state’s Schedule C pay system and extends hazardous-duty and injury-leave coverage. It expressly lists officers commissioned and employed by that office among Texas peace officers and requires officers employed under Government Code Section 544.0107 to be compensated under Schedule C in the General Appropriations Act. It does not set a single salary or a uniform percentage raise in this bill. Officer status and pay provisions.
The state classification officer must classify commissioned peace officers employed as investigators by the office as Schedule C positions beginning with the biennium starting September 1, 2025. That implementation section expires September 1, 2027; the permanent compensation provision is not given that expiration. The act was signed June 20, 2025, and took effect September 1, 2025. Classification transition; History.
The act adds the office’s commissioned law-enforcement officers to the definition used for hazardous-duty pay. Existing eligibility still requires qualifying employment on at least part of the month’s first workday and at least 12 months of lifetime service credit by the preceding month’s end. The change is not hazardous-duty pay for every Health and Human Services employee. Added employee category; Retained eligibility conditions.
It also extends injury leave without salary deductions or mandatory use of other accrued leave. Existing safeguards remain: the injury must arise from the nature and performance of duty; gross-negligence contributions and routine-office-duty injuries are excluded. A Texas-licensed physician’s examination evidence and recommended leave period are required, with a maximum of one year for injuries occurring at one time. Workers’ compensation medical benefits may run concurrently, but disability-retirement benefits may not during this leave; workers’ compensation wage-replacement benefits accrue after this leave ends or is exhausted. The expansion applies only to injuries on or after September 1, 2025. Injury-leave coverage and transition; Existing conditions and benefit coordination.
What changed along the way?
The introduced bill already contained the pay, classification, hazardous-duty and injury-leave changes. The Senate substitute added a legislative instruction to harmonize the peace-officer list with the session’s nonsubstantive code-correction legislation. The engrossed and later texts also cleaned up wording; the substantive employee protections survived into the final act. Introduced text; Senate substitute; All five versions.
The official amendment index lists no floor amendments. The House passed the bill without changing it. Amendment index.
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?
Covered officers gain the specified pay classification and benefits. The bill does not itself promise that Medicaid-fraud recoveries will increase, create 37 new jobs or give every agency investigator an unlimited injury-leave entitlement. Scope of the enacted changes.
Both the March 4 introduced and March 12 substitute fiscal notes estimate a $3,584,686 negative effect on general-revenue-related funds for fiscal 2026–27. The analysis assumes reclassification of 37 existing positions, costing $1,691,172 in all funds each year including benefits and related pay, plus $612,419 in one-time payroll-system technology costs in fiscal 2026. Those all-funds components total $3,994,763 over the two years; they are not additional costs to add on top of the general-revenue-related estimate, because the funding measures overlap. Latest fiscal note and methodology.
The estimate uses maximum Schedule C salaries in the budget as introduced, so it is not a promise of each officer’s actual pay or audited spending. The bill makes no appropriation, though it can support an appropriation; the note anticipates no significant local-government fiscal impact. Estimate limitations.
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.
