Texas Weekly

1. ??The Race for Texas Comptroller is on

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has been selected as the sole finalist for the chancellorship of the Texas A&M University System, the TAMUS Board of Regents announced last week.

• Hegar has served in the public eye since 2002, when he was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives. In 2006 he was elected to the Texas Senate before first being elected Comptroller in 2014, and winning re-election as Comptroller in 2018 and 2022.
• As Comptroller, Hegar has served as CFO for the world's 8th-largest economy.

Following the announcement, two prominent Texas Republicans have declared their candidacies for the soon-to-be-vacant comptroller position...

2. ??Lt. Gov. Priorities Sail through the Senate but Face Uncertainty in the House

Two priorities of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick have quickly made their way through the Senate and now await hearings in the House...

3. ?? Housing and Hemp Legislation Make Progress

Two additional priorities of Lt. Gov. Patrick, housing affordability and a ban on hemp products, have made progress in the Senate...

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?? Texas History Fact of the Week

On March 9, 1936, a fifty-eight-mile power line near Bartlett, Texas, was energized, according to some sources the first in the nation under the Rural Electrification Administration. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the REA in May 1935, only about 2 percent of the farms in Texas (and only about 10 percent nationally) had electricity. The REA was originally intended to be a large-scale depression relief agency like the Work Projects Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, but became a lending agency instead with the passage of legislation cosponsored by Sam Rayburn. The $33,000 loan to a group of farmers at Bartlett was one of the first ten loans made by the REA. The REA had an incalculable impact on life in rural Texas, especially in the Panhandle, which had become something of a proving ground for New Deal programs thanks to the influence of Marvin Jones, chairman of the House Agricultural Committee. The REA first brought electric power to the rural Panhandle in Deaf Smith County in 1937. By 1965, instead of only 2 percent of Texas farms with electricity, there were only 2 percent without electricity.

Texas State Historical Association