Senate Effort To Pass Bathroom, Property Tax Bills Backfires

Andrew Schneider / Houston Public Media

The Senate's bathroom bill and property tax reform bill struck another tall roadblock in the Texas House.

Senators converted both measures to amendments and tacked them onto an omnibus bill designed to benefit county governments. State Representative Garnet Coleman of Houston is the omnibus bill's sponsor. The Democrat says he'll kill his own legislation before seeing it as a vehicle for passing the Texas Privacy Act. Better known as the Bathroom Bill, it would mandate people use the bathroom of their gender at birth.

"I represent the Montrose [area]," Coleman says. "I've been dealing with the bathroom issue for a very long time. I think it's discriminatory. I think it's to divide people, not unite them."

Coleman is also no fan of the property tax reform bill. He says this isn't the first time he's been in this situation. The representative was a supporter of the now-defunct Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO. In 2015, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick tacked amendments opposing HERO to another Coleman bill.

"You know, I'm not stupid," Coleman says. "If they did it last session, they're going to do it again this session, and they did. The joke's on them."

The House has until Friday to vote on any amendments attached to House bills by the Senate.

Note: This story was reported with the assistance of Jennifer Rice of the Texas Station Collaborative.