With 17 new members and 101 representatives to lead, House Speaker-elect Kyle Hilbert says it’s too soon to get into a full list of priorities.
Half-yelling over the clamor of the full House of Representatives and their families scuttling around him, Hilbert made no commitments to any one issue when prompted by reporters. Instead, he played the same card as his counterpart in the Senate, Pro-temp-elect Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, did last week and said he’s letting his fellow Republican majority caucus suss out the chamber’s path.
“We'll have our majority caucus retreat here in about three weeks, where we'll study the issues and figure out where we want to go as a caucus,” Hilbert said.
Reporters asked Hilbert where he stood on a state income tax cut and continued transparency around the budget. Both were hot topics during the last legislative session.
“Obviously, we've voted for various tax cuts as a House in the past, but we're going to see what does the economy look like?” Hilbert said. “What does the Board of Equalization report look like coming out in December? And then decide as a caucus.”
Senate Bill 1 by Sen. Michael Bergstrom, R-Adair, is the first measure filed across the rotunda. It proposes a quarter-of-a-percent individual income tax cut given revenue increases of at least $400 million year-over-year — adjusted for inflation every decade.
Hilbert said he hasn’t seen the measure yet, so he can’t comment on his stance. An income tax cut can take many forms, and not all ways are best, he said.
“The devil is always in the details,” Hilbert said, stopping short of saying whether he supports tax cuts himself this session.
Either way, he said he looks forward to working with the Senate to continue tax — and budgetary — talks. He says the two chambers have a great relationship heading into lawmaking season, and, as Paxton said, transparent budget talks between chambers will continue from the last session, even if they go down differently.
“I think there are going to be changes because we have new people at the helm in both chambers,” Hilbert said.
He said while budget summits will continue, whether they are live-streamed for the public “remains to be seen.”
“There were some positives that came out of that,” Hilbert said. “But I don't know how much the livestream really improved the outcome of the final budget.”
The point of view diverges from Paxton’s.
“Anybody that wants to have access should see how the process unfolds,” Paxton said last week.
One thing that will stay the same for sure, Hilbert said, is the maintenance of the House’s publicly accessible Budget Transparency Portal.
“That was a great initiative that we put forward last year as a House,” he said.
The portal already displays state agency requests for fiscal year 2025, which are up $37.8 million in total compared to FY 2024.
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