{"id":361924,"date":"2026-07-05T16:58:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T16:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/361924\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T16:58:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T16:58:20","slug":"senators-harvey-will-dominate-next-two-years-of-legislative-talk-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/361924\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators: Harvey will “dominate” next two years of legislative talk | Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several state senators and representatives of the Fort Bend Delegation predict challenges or the next legislative session. Legislators gathered for a panel Tuesday, hosted by the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce and Central Fort Bend Chamber at the Safari Texas Ranch in Richmond.
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\nSens. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, and Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, as well as Reps. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, Phil Stephenson, R-Wharton, John Zerwas, R-Richmond, and Rick Miller, R-Sugar Land, all agreed during the panel that the 86th legislative session will confront the affects of Hurricane Harvey on school and property taxes.
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\"Texas<\/a>
The panel was hosted by the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce and Central Fort Bend Chamber.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\n\u201cI think right now I would have to say [the most pressing challenge facing our state right now is] how we face the challenge of Harvey recovery,\u201d Huffman said.\u00a0\u201cIt has devastated many areas of our state, individuals, small businesses, large businesses \u2026 That\u2019s the biggest issue facing us in the immediate future.\u201d
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\nKolkhorst agreed and reiterated the devastation that the storm brought.
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\n\u201cHarvey \u2026 will dominate I think what we will do for the next two years in many ways,\u201d Kolkhorst said. \u201cThose pictures that you saw of the flooding is going to impact business activity.”
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\nReynolds added that meaningful healthcare and school finance reform are priorities for the next session.
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\nRoom for improvement
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\nWhen asked to grade themselves as a legislative body this past session, most of the delegation gave higher marks for actions impacting Fort Bend County and were more critical for progress made on the state level.
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\nKolkhorst said passing the General Appropriations Act, the only bill required to pass during a special session, was a major accomplishment.
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\n\u201cI think there were a lot of good bills \u2014 human trafficking bills, a pro-life bill \u2026 I think that we can do better but I don\u2019t think that we failed this last session,” she said.
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\nZerwas and Miller praised legislative action taken to address child protective services, foster care and mental health issues.
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\n\u201cThat system was totally messed up, it now has a chance to survive and get better with more money \u2014 money, people and some new programs that were put in place,\u201d Miller said of the state’s foster care system. \u201cThose kids belong to Texas and so we needed to do something with that.\u201d
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\nOther members of the delegation did not sugar coat the challenges to come.
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\n\u201cWe focus on too many divisive issues instead of issues that many Texans care about,” Reynolds said. “We didn\u2019t do anything for job creation, for infrastructure \u2014 many of the issues that we dealt with were issues that most Texans don\u2019t agree with.\u201d
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\nHuffman said she was disappointed the legislature failed to tackle some topics, namely school finance reform.
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\n\u201cI am hoping and hopeful that the commission on public school finance will get us some answers that we can really dig into next session,” she said.
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\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several state senators and representatives of the Fort Bend Delegation predict challenges or the next legislative session. Legislators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,128436],"class_list":["post-361924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-senators-harvey-will-dominate-next-two-years-of-legislative-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}