Sixteen key oil and natural gas corporations and business groups are backing Rep. Tom Craddick’s third bid to enact his GROW Texas bill and benefit all the state’s energy-producing areas with money from the $13.6-billion Texas Economic Stabilization or Rainy Day Fund.
Craddick told the Odessa American Tuesday that he will introduce the bill in the House Ways & Means Committee, to which Speaker Dade Phelan has appointed him along with the House Energy Resources Committee, and thereby have it voted on by both houses well before the 88th Legislature ends May 29 in Austin.
Aimed at funding schools, health care and roads, the “Generate Reoccurring Oil Wealth” measure passed the 150-member House by the necessary two-thirds majority in 2019 and by over 120 votes in 2021, but time expired both years before it could be considered by the Senate.
Craddick said the bill has broad appeal because all but 23 of Texas’ 254 counties have at least some oil and-or gas and it would bring a percentage of the Rainy Day Fund to the Permian Basin annually for schools, health care and roads.
State Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, said Thursday that he will back his fellow Basin legislator.
“I have always supported the GROW Texas proposal and will proudly vote again for it in 2023 because it will be a good way to help build infrastructure in the oilpatch,” Landgraf said. “In addition to improving infrastructure, energy-producing areas like the Permian Basin also need investment in our schools, hospitals, workforce training programs, law enforcement and pollution mitigation.
“That’s why I’ve taken feedback from the people I serve to file the Texas STRONG Fund.”
Craddick said GROW Texas is also being supported by the Diamondback, Apache, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Occidental Petroleum, Pioneer Natural Resources and Centerpoint Energy corporations, Texas Association of Business, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, Panhandle Producers & Royalty Owners, Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners, Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance and the Texas Oil & Gas and Texas Pipeline associations.
“I’m putting it in Ways & Means rather than Appropriations because I couldn’t bring it out of appropriations till the appropriations bill comes out in late April or early May,” said Craddick, a former speaker who has been Ways & Means chairman three times.
“I think it has a good chance of passing both houses this time because of the people who have put their names on it. Speaker Dade Phelan is all for it and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick has been out here several times. We need millions just for roads in the Basin.
“It would be basically putting money back into the system, which you have to do in every business. We need to make sure we take care of the schools, health care and roads and that people are getting high enough wages.
“Ways and Means is a mixture of everything. I have a background in finance, so I enjoy it.”
Craddick said GROW Texas got a boost last December when Energy Resources Chairman Craig Goldman of Fort Worth brought his committee here to visit a working oil rig and see the Permian Basin’s needs firsthand.
Asked what other priorities he has this year, Craddick said one will be the biennial chore of blocking the unitization and pooling of oil leases. “That’s been an issue every session since I was first elected to the Legislature in 1968,” he said.
“You just have to watch for these things that our area is really against.”
