HBS
Texas
The HBS Texas team breathes Texas. The four Texans that make up the team bring a wealth of experience across government and business including, a former state budget director, legislative chiefs of staff, and trusted advisors to governors in addition to an impressive range of industry expertise. The HBS Texas team ensures clients are ahead of the curve in making or breaking potential legislative and regulatory action in Austin.
HBS Texas has a portfolio that covers a range of key issues within the state legislature, including the state budget, energy, e-commerce, environmental services, real estate and land use, healthcare, higher education, tax policy, transportation, and telecommunications. Clients benefit from our team’s broad network of contacts across the state government and the trust they have built with key decisionmakers and private sector influencers.
HBS Texas invests in the success of their clients as they create opportunities and achieve effective legislative solutions.
HBS Texas Team Members
Resources
Case Studies
Client
Manufacturer of new transportation vehicle
Objective
Create a state commission to study the statutory and regulatory updates needed to allow the new vehicle to legally operate in Texas in 2025.
Strategy
With the introduction of a new mode of transportation creating legal and regulatory complications, HBS and the client worked to create a process that would bring stakeholders together to develop state laws to advance the implementation of the new technology. The legislation would establish a commission made up of stakeholders appointed by the Texas Department of Transportation. HBS and the client drafted the legislation and obtained sponsors. HBS also worked with the Texas Department of Transportation and other industry players to develop an agreed-to bill that could pass both chambers and be signed by the Governor.
Result
The Texas Legislature passed a bill to create a study commission that is tasked with reporting the legal and regulatory updates to the legislature in late 2022. HBS also secured a seat on the commission for the client, appointed by the Texas Department of Transportation. The commission is conducting its research and is expected to have a bill to introduce in the 2023 Legislative Session.
Client
National trade association of companies that offer insurance-like contracts to protect consumers from repair costs when appliances and household systems fail.
Objective
Texas is the only state that has two different state agencies that each regulate these insurance-like contracts. The regulatory structure is cumbersome and confusing, and also deters new products from entering the marketplace. The client’s goal was to merge the programs under the control of one state agency.
Strategy
HBS worked with the client, other trade associations and two state agencies to come to an agreement about combining the two regulatory programs into one program and one state agency (“Agency A”). HBS worked with the sponsor of a “Sunset” bill reconfiguring Agency A, who agreed to roll the new regulatory structure into the bill.
Result
The Legislature passed the Sunset bill including the amendment that merged the two programs under Agency A.
Client
Healthcare provider
Objective
Obtain $2 million in back fees from Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) for services rendered.
Strategy
Our healthcare client was denied access to approximately $2 million of Medicaid reimbursement payments in Texas following the delayed approval of a change of control. Husch Blackwell’s legal team collaborated with HBS in order to remedy the problem. The delay sat squarely on HHSC’s delays. HBS worked up the chain of command at HHSC to release the nearly $2 million in payments owed our client. HBS ultimately contacted a state senator, in whose district one of the client’s facilities was located.
Result
Once the HHSC Commissioner was contacted by the senator, HHSC began to release the funds to our client. Alternative solutions, political advocacy and teamwork streamlined results for our healthcare client.
