Proposed changes to the Title 1 of the Texas Administrative Code would create draconian new reporting requirements for District Attorneys and County Attorneys presiding in a district or county with a population of 250,000 or more persons. (This would affect 23 of Texas’ 254 counties, including the five largest: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis. Of those five, Tarrant County may be considered purple leaning slightly red and the other four are blue. Among all 23 affected counties, only four are reliably red; ten are blue and the other nine are purple leaning slightly red.)
The full text of the proposed changes can be found here.
I’ll leave it to better legal analysts than myself to tease out some of the details. My main takeaway from PART 3. OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL CHAPTER 56. DISTRICT AND COUNTY ATTORNEY REPORTING REQUIREMENTS is that the OAG is looking to bury certain DA’s offices with reporting requirements seemingly designed for those offices to fail to meet; and certain to create additional backlog in the caseload of ADAs in the affected counties.
The same link continues on to PART 15. TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION CHAPTER 382. WOMEN'S HEALTH SERVICES, which reveals proposed changes that are no less egregious for their predictability on the subjects of abortion, eliminating references to elective abortions, exceptions for health of the mother, etc. and emergency contraceptives.
If these changes are adopted and moved through without delay, affected counties could have to begin the new reporting as early as June of this year. But Josh Reno, the Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice, has disingenuously determined that “...for the first five-year period the proposed rules are in effect, enforcing or administering the rules does not have foreseeable implications relating to cost or revenues of state government. There may be minimal costs to local governments for gathering and submitting quarterly and yearly reports to OAG, however, the gathering and submitting of the required reports can likely be absorbed into reporting entities' ongoing operations with minimal, if any, fiscal impact.
Mr. Reno has also determined that for each year of the first five-year period the proposed rules are in effect, there are minimal, if any, anticipated economic costs to entities that are required to comply with the proposed rules.”