Legislature approves Railroad Commission bill, but critics call it weak
A Democratic senator on Tuesday made an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to beef up a bill aimed at reforming and reauthorizing the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency — legislation environmental groups have decried as toothless — before the measure was approved overwhelmingly.
Sen. José Rodríguez sought to amend House Bill 1818 to require the Texas Railroad Commission to develop a searchable online database of violations by oil and gas companies and complaints against them, along with inspection reports and enforcement actions taken by the agency.
Those recommendations are contained in another bill Rodríguez filed, Senate Bill 568, which the Senate Natural Resources Committee approved last month on a 6-2 vote. “This is about transparency,” the El Paso Democrat said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
But Sen. Van Taylor of Plano said it would be too expensive to implement the amendment. He urged the Senate to reject Rodriguez’s amendment, which it did in a party-line vote.
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