Patrick Last-Second Committee Shift
Clears Way for Booze Bill to Advance

Breaking News: Texas Senate Endorses Liquor Distillery Retail Bill Friday

Capitol Inside
April 23, 2021 - Posted Originally April 22

A Texas Senate panel approved a diluted version of a booze-to-go bill on Wednesday after Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick raised it from the apparent dead in a whirlwind maneuver that put the measure on a fast track for the regular session's final five weeks.

Senate Bill 655 had languished for more than a month in the Business & Commerce Committee before Patrick rerouted it on Tuesday to the Administration Committee, which happens to be chaired by the measure's author GOP State Senator Charles Schwertner of Georgetown.

Schwertner set the liquor legislation for a public hearing on Wednesday when the committee endorsed SB 655 on a 7-0 vote with a recommendation for consideration on the floor on the local & uncontested calendar that will include it on Friday.

The local calendar is reserved for bills that have no official opposition in committee. That suggests that no one signed up to testify against the Schwertner measure in the public hearing that the Administration Committee held on the day after Patrick shuffled it there without a public explanation for the highly unusual move.

The resurrection and relocation of SB 655 could be a sign that State Senator Kelly Hancock was simply refusing to set the bill for a hearing as the chairman of the Business & Commerce where it had been parked since March 11 without a hearing or a vote.

Hancock - a North Richland Hills Republican - had broken ranks with the lieutenant governor last month in a dispute over pricing of electricity during the Arctic storm here in February. Patrick had turned to Hancock for a high-profile grilling in his committee of electric regulators in the immediate wake of the freeze.

Patrick had responded to Hancock's defiance by sending the bulk of a power grid reform package to the Jurisprudence Committee instead of down the traditional path through the Business & Commerce Commission. But Patrick hasn't said or done anything publicly to confirm or to deny that he considers Hancock to be in the dog house beyond the curious shifts of major legislation away from the committee that he leads in the east wing of the statehouse.

Schwertner and his colleagues on the Administration Committee watered SB 655 down substantially - eliminating a provision that would have allowed local Texas distilleries to sell more than four times the amount of liquor that they've made for off-premise consumption than the current annual limit that the state has in place.

Most of the other major players in the Texas alcoholic beverage industry including package stores and distributors were preparing to fight the measure before the quick trip through the sponsor's committee. The version of the measure that the Administration Committee forwarded to the local calendar would give Texas distilleries the ability to sell four 750 milliliter bottles to the same customer on an annual basis - two more than current state law permits.