Texas This Week: Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Dade Phelan On the eve of the special session, Speaker of the Texas House Rep. Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) discussed the topics of the special. Author: Ashley Goudeau Updated: 10:29 AM CDT July 18, 2021 AUSTIN, Texas — On the eve of the special session, KVUE sat down with Speaker of the Texas House Rep. Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) to reflect on the regular session and discuss the topics of the special. Ashley Goudeau: How do you as speaker of the house score this past regular session? State Rep. Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont): "I thought we had a great session, especially all the headwinds we had coming in with COVID and Winter Storm Uri, a potential huge, massive budget deficit, double-digit unemployment. Considering when we left last session, we were supposed to have an $8 billion surplus and we came in with a $5 billion deficit, we fully funded public education, higher education. We will do things with telehealth, telemedicine, broadband. We made criminal justice reform a priority here in the House and passed many of those items. Health care reforms, passed many of those items. I thought we did an excellent job, especially here in Texas House. And we left with some unfinished business, and that's why we're back here today. But that's, that's not uncommon to come back and and finish some priorities that members of the House and Senate left undone. And so I was, I wish we had gotten more done on that in the last week, especially brain health bills, no-knock warrants, some more criminal justice reform issues that came down to the wire on that last session, the last day. But I'm not surprised we're back. Election integrity was a priority item of the governor, as was bail reform. And I knew we'd back at some point this summer, and so we'll start tomorrow at 10 a.m. and take up the governor's call."