A Texas Republican Wants Abbott to Call a Special Session to Shrink the Emergency Powers Hinojosa Is About to Inherit
State Rep. Brian Harrison says the next ten weeks are the window: pass limits on the governor's emergency powers - the same powers Gina Hinojosa has pledged to use on day one to declare a 'high-cost emergency' - before she is sworn in on January 19.
AUSTIN - The first fight of the Hinojosa era is about the powers of the office itself. Republican State Rep. Brian Harrison is urging outgoing Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session of the Legislature in the ten weeks before Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa takes office, for one purpose: limiting the emergency powers she is set to inherit, Fox News Digital reporting carried this weekend says. 'Republicans lost last night, but Democrats were not sworn in,' Harrison wrote on X. 'We still have total power in Texas, and we must act like it by using the remaining ten weeks to restore separation of powers and limit the emergency powers that Governor-Elect Hinojosa is set to inherit.'
The powers at issue are broad. Under Section 433.002 of the Texas Government Code, a governor may issue emergency directives and amend, modify or rescind them during a declared state of emergency; under the Texas Disaster Act of 1975, disaster declarations must be renewed after 30 days and can be ended by the Legislature. Harrison has been making this argument since before it pointed at a Democrat - he filed HB911 in December 2022 to restrict what he calls the governor's 'never ending emergency powers' - and he is explicit that the target now is Hinojosa's own campaign pledge, reported by the Texas Tribune, to declare a 'high-cost emergency' and use executive orders to halt the state's gas and diesel taxes and freeze residential electricity rates.
'Texas should have reined in executive emergency powers when I first demanded it in 2022,' Harrison told Fox News Digital. 'If these are not revoked, Gina Hinojosa will assume not just the powers our state constitution bestows upon a Governor, but will, in effect, inherit nearly all the powers of a dictator.' That is his characterization, and it is reported here as his argument. Abbott's office and Hinojosa's campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment; Hinojosa, for her part, has vowed her administration will 'lead with a politics of courage, not convenience.' No special session has been called, and only the governor can call one.
For Houston, the stakes are concrete either way. Emergency declarations are the machinery Harris County lives under during hurricanes and floods, and a governor who can freeze electricity rates and suspend fuel taxes by order can change household budgets across this city in a day - which is precisely the promise Hinojosa ran on, and precisely the power Harrison wants fenced before January 19. The Legislature he is asking to act is the one voters just voted to change; whether its outgoing majority spends its last ten weeks shrinking the office it lost is the question Austin now has to answer.
