Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Brandon Waltens 

Tuesday, March 16, 2021
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• In a stunningly quick turnaround, legislation was filed and passed yesterday in the Texas Senate in just a matter of hours, addressing electrical pricing during the recent winter storms. Jeramy Kitchen has the timeline of one of the fastest bill turnarounds seen in the Texas Legislature.
   

• After the lone commissioner of the Public Utility Commission, with Gov. Greg Abbott’s backing, told Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and senators during a Senate committee hearing that he did not have the power to retroactively reverse high energy prices last month, Patrick and the Senate got to work.
   

• In just a few hours, a bill to urge the PUC to revise energy prices was rammed through the process and sent to the Texas House in about four hours.
   

• The bill—Senate Bill 2142—says that the PUC does have the authority to correct prices, and urges them to do so retroactively. Opponents say the change would help unreliable energy producers—such as wind and solar—at the expense of more reliable producers.
   
• "In my experience as a legislator, every time the government overreaches into the marketplace, Texans lose." –State Sen. Brandon Creighton, one of three "no" votes on the bill
   
• Just remember this the next time your lawmakers says they "ran out of time" to pass your priority piece of legislation. They can move fast when its a priority for them...

• A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control found mask mandates made less than a 2 percent difference in the daily death rates from the Chinese coronavirus and an even smaller percentage in case growth.
   

• Robert Montoya reports, from March 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, the CDC found that in 2,313 American counties where mask mandates were issued, daily growth rates of the Chinese coronavirus decreased by only 0.5 percent in the first 20 days of being issued; they went down 1.8 percent within 81-100 days.
   

• "Daily case and death growth rates before implementation of mask mandates were not statistically different from the reference period,” the CDC study states

• Yesterday, Gov. Greg Abbott publicly threw his support behind “robust legislation” to improve election integrity—a top legislative priority for the Texas GOP and the only one also designated an emergency item by the Republican governor, calling it "an issue that is so important to our fellow Texans.
   

• Abbott made the comments during a press conference Monday with State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R–Houston) and State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R–Deer Park), both authors of major election reform bills this session. Erin Anderson has the details from his press conference

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