Texas Governor-Elect Gina Hinojosa's Day One Electricity-Rate Freeze Runs Into a Legal Question: Does the Disaster Act Reach a Power Bill?
Hinojosa says that within an hour of taking the oath on Jan. 19 she will declare a high-cost emergency and freeze residential rates. Energy analysts say the Texas Disaster Act was written for storms and floods - and that providers will be in court almost immediately.
The first fight of the next Texas administration is already scheduled, and it is over the power bill. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa says that on her first day in office she will freeze residential electricity rates, a promise she frames as an answer to an affordability crisis: 'On Day One as governor, I'll freeze residential electricity rates and make corporations finally pay their fair share,' she said in an interview with a local energy data group.
The mechanism she has named is an emergency order. She told the Texas Tribune: 'Within an hour of taking the oath of office, I will declare a high-cost emergency in the state of Texas and issue an emergency executive order to ... freeze electricity rates.' Hinojosa, who ousted three-term Governor Greg Abbott on Nov. 3, will be sworn in on Jan. 19, 2027.
The legal objection surfaced the same morning. Nick Loris, president of C3 Solutions, told Fox News Digital he expects energy providers to challenge the declaration almost immediately and cast doubt on its scope: 'The Texas Disaster Act lets the governor declare disasters and suspend the regulatory laws and statutes that are in existence. But I think there is a high degree of skepticism, both from courts but also from state policymakers, that this warrants such a claim - and that it is such a disaster.' The structural objection runs alongside it: since Senate Bill 7 in 1999 opened most of Texas to retail choice, prices in the state's energy-only wholesale market have been set by competition among more than 100 retail providers, and Loris warned that if suppliers cannot cover their costs under a freeze, 'that's going to leave them worse off and make it more vulnerable for them to adequately provide that power.'
Hinojosa's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what her response would be if a freeze produced shortages. What is certain is the calendar: the Legislature convenes in January, the oath is Jan. 19, and the freeze she has promised for its first hour will test, on day one, how far a Texas governor's emergency powers reach when the emergency is a household bill.
