Under a proposal added to the Texas House budget last week, funding could go to a program to rehabilitate victims of sex trafficking.
As The Texas Tribune reports, the proposal would funnel $3 million from the governor’s homeland security budget - $1 million in 2018 and another $2 million in 2019 - and direct it to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission so that trafficking victims could receive “necessary services,” though no specific services were cited in the bill.
Texas lawmakers passed an anti-sex trafficking law in 2009 that called for the creation of a $10 million-per-year victim assistance program aimed at providing housing, counseling and medical care for trafficking survivors, but the money was never appropriated by the Legislature and the program remains unfunded.
In order to become reality, the new proposal must get past budget negotiations between the House and Senate, as well as the governor’s veto pen.