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AUSTIN (AP) — The Texas Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would more than double the amount of money the state spends to lure film and television production to Texas.

Senate Bill 22, filed by Houston Republican Sen. Joan Huffman, would direct the comptroller to deposit $500 million into a new Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund every two years until 2035. That figure is more than state lawmakers have ever allocated for media production since they first started funding a film incentive grant in 2007.

The bill received heavy praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and passed with a 23-8 vote. Those who opposed the bill raised concerns about how the governor’s office will determine which productions to fund. The bill gives the governor’s office complete discretion over which projects receive grant funding.

The bill now moves to the House for consideration.

Since 2007, lawmakers have funded the film incentive program at varying levels, with $50 million during one legislative session followed by $45 million the next. A then-historic $200 million came during the most recent session.

The variability has left producers tentative to film in Texas for fear that the money might vanish at the whims of lawmakers.

The program has boosted economic activity in Texas, producing a 469% return on investment, according to the Texas Film Commission, though economists and some House lawmakers have criticized that metric and denounced film incentives as wasteful spending.

Huffman successfully pushed through an amendment that would give an additional 2.5% incentive to faith-based productions, despite some strong objections from Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin. The bill already directs the Texas Film Commission to offer extra grant funding to films labeled “Texas Heritage Projects,” as determined by the governor’s office. The law would ask the office to consider whether the project promotes “family values” and “portrays Texas and Texans in a positive fashion.”

Eckhardt said that while she supports the bill’s goal, she worries about the subjectivity of terms like “faith-based” and “family values.”

“Adding subjective criteria would tilt this away from the realm of economic development and into the realm of non-neutral subject matter propaganda,” Eckhardt said on the Senate floor.

“I don’t think the promotion of family values would be propaganda,” Huffman responded.

“Of course, ‘whose family values?’ would be the question,” Eckhardt rebutted.

Texas is one of 37 states to offer a film incentive program, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Industry insiders and Hollywood producers have for years lamented that Texas’ program is not as robust as that of some other states, including Georgia and New Mexico.

SB 22 would make Texas more attractive to producers who have opted to film their projects in other states that have historically offered larger and more stable incentives, Huffman said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing last month attended by Texas-born actors Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.

“Producers who want to film in Texas often have difficulty convincing the capital management side of film production companies to allow filming here when presented with more robust and consistent incentives being offered in other states,” Huffman said.

Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, echoed that sentiment Wednesday, noting that the Netflix series about Selena, the beloved Texas singer, was shot in California instead of Texas. “That should never happen again,” Alvarado said. “We should be the default choice.”

Fueled by endorsements from famous names in Hollywood, SB 22 appears to have widespread support. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have praised the film commission for what they said is a rigorous program that audits film production’s spending and only offers rebates on money spent within Texas. Eligible expenses include Texas workers’ wages, meals purchased from local restaurants, and airfare on Texas-based airlines.

Flanked by Harrelson, McConaughey told lawmakers during last month’s hearing that increased funding would allow them and other actors to tell Texas stories in Texas. Seated behind the duo was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has declared SB 22 one of his top pieces of legislation.

“All of the filmmakers in the faith and family category say we will become the leader in the world for faith-based and family movies for all faiths and all families,” Patrick said after the Senate voted on the bill. “It’s always a good thing to sell our Texas values, our faith values, and our family values to the world.”

By committing to 10 years of sizable funding, McConaughey said, Texas could grow into a media hub with facilities dedicated to post-production editing, along with a pipeline of film crew, including makeup artists, hair stylists, lighting experts and set designers.

“There’s going to be a point where we are not going to need financial incentives from the state because the infrastructure will be in place, and that will be a major game changer,” McConaughey said.

Despite showing overall support for boosting Texas filmmaking, some lawmakers have questioned whether productions that aren’t “family-friendly” should be supported by taxpayer dollars.

Both Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, and Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, suggested shows and movies that use profanities be ineligible for grants. Bettencourt singled out “Landman,” a popular television series centering a West Texas oil company executive played by Billy Bob Thornton.

“It’s not functionally correct, it doesn’t explain what a landman does, and no offense, having Billy Bob Thornton f-bomb every sentence is not Texas values,” Bettencourt said of the show produced by Taylor Sheridan whose second season is expected next year. “It simply is a bad product and not something the Texas taxpayers would want to be supporting.”

The Texas Film Commission limits what types of projects are eligible for funding, and SB 22 would codify additional rules into statute. The bill would prohibit, for example, funding pornography or obscene material, local events or religious services, and casino-type video games. The law does not propose specific rules about foul language, but the governor’s office has broad discretion to designate a project as ineligible for a grant.

Adriana Cruz, executive director of the Texas Economic Development and Tourism office, said in response to Bettencourt that the office would look to state law and its own rules to determine whether to approve a project.

Stephanie Whallon, the director of the Texas Film Commission, previously told The Texas Tribune that some projects had been rejected but didn’t specify why.

In addition to pumping more money into film incentives, SB 22 would make smaller films eligible for larger grants. Currently, projects that spend between $1 million and $3.5 million in Texas are eligible for a 10% rebate, and projects with a greater than $3.5 million spend can receive a 20% grant. The bill proposes a larger, 25% grant for feature films and television programs that spend at least $1.5 million.

“I’m excited about lowering some of these sliding scale boundaries or limitations because I think a lot of family-friendly, faith-based projects fall into that tier,” said Chad Gundersen, producer of “The Chosen,” a television show about the life of Jesus Christ and his disciples that is mostly shot in the town of Midlothian, about 25 miles southwest of Dallas.

Gundersen said during the hearing that his project was not initially eligible for a grant because it was too small. He added that it has since grown and resulted in more than $75 million spent in Texas.

Campbell urged lawmakers and the film commission approving projects to remember that Texas is “still in the Bible Belt,” and she praised “The Chosen” as “the greatest story ever told.”

Texas’ film incentive program offers an additional 2.5% incentive to productions that are shot in certain “underutilized” or “economically distressed areas,” as well as those that hire veterans as 5% of their total paid crew.

Identical legislation, House Bill 4568, filed by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi has not yet received a committee hearing.

DALLAS (AP) — The student who shot four students when he opened fire at a Dallas high school this week was in and out of the building in less than two minutes and is believed to have been targeting a specific student, the school district police chief said Thursday.

The 17-year-old suspect was able to enter Wilmer-Hutchins High School, which has metal detectors at its entrance, at 1:01 p.m. Tuesday when another student opened a locked side door, Dallas Independent School District police Chief Albert Martinez said at a news conference.

The suspect was taken into custody several hours after the shooting. He was remained in jail on Thursday on a charge of aggravated assault mass shooting.

Martinez said that they believe there was “a dispute taking place,” but they do not yet know what led to the shooting.

“We don’t have that information as to the why, the motivation,” Martinez said.

Martinez said they are looking into “how deep” the culpability is of the student who opened the door.

Four male students were shot and were taken to hospitals, according to officials. Martinez said all of those injured are all expected to make a full recovery.

The shooting drew a large number of police and other law enforcement agents to the roughly 1,000-student campus.

Martinez said that the suspect parked his vehicle at the school just before 1 p.m.

An arrest warrant said that after the suspect was let into the building, he walked down a hallway until he spotted a group of students. The arrest warrant says he then displayed a firearm and began firing “indiscriminately” before approaching a student who was not able to run and walking toward that student and appearing to take a point-blank shot.

The suspect’s bond was set at $600,000. Jail records did not list an attorney for him.

At the same school last April, one student shot another in the leg.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Houston residents are eager for more entertainment options, with a majority expressing enthusiasm for a major theme park and new professional sports teams, according to a new survey by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs. The survey, conducted between March 29 and April 4, polled 1,400 registered voters in Houston about their preferences for entertainment and news sources. The results reveal a strong desire for attractions similar to those found in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which boasts a range of sports teams and theme parks. A whopping 64% of Houstonians are either very or somewhat enthusiastic about the possibility of a major theme park, such as a Disney World or Universal Studios-style resort, coming to Houston. This comes as Houston has been without a major theme park since AstroWorld closed in 2005.

Enthusiasm is also high for new professional sports teams. Sixty percent of residents would welcome a WNBA team, while 57% are keen on the idea of an NHL team. A Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) team garnered 45% enthusiasm, and a Major League Cricket (MLC) team drew interest from 29% of those surveyed. Demographic differences play a role in these preferences. Women are more enthusiastic about a WNBA and MASL team. Black and Latino residents show more interest in a WNBA team, a MASL team, and a major theme park. Additionally, younger residents are more excited about an NHL team, while those with children are more enthusiastic about a major theme park. If Houston were to get a major theme park, 29% of Houstonians say they would visit it more than once a year. The report suggests that Houstonians are hungry for more entertainment options and that city leaders should consider these desires when planning for the future. Houstonians want more entertainment options, particularly a major theme park and new professional sports teams. The survey highlights the potential for these attractions to boost the city’s appeal and quality of life.

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports the budget for the Texas Lottery Commission, which brings about $2 billion a year to the state treasury, has been reduced to zero in the 2026-27 spending plan the Texas House approved last week. And the chamber on Tuesday signaled it was serious about ending the 34-year-old agency. The decision to defund the lottery, which for the much of this year has been a magnet for criticism in the Legislature on multiple fronts, was seen as legislative gamesmanship when the House in the wee hours of Friday morning passed its version of the state budget. That’s because several amendments were filed by some House Republicans that would have tapped into the lottery’s budget to fund other projects. Rather than opening the door to potentially protracted debates on those projects, budget managers quietly cut the lottery’s funding and transferred it to a special fund that is managed by the governor’s office, which was also eyed as a funding source for some members.

Therefore, any amendments targeting the lottery funds were moot and not acted upon. State Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, who was among the House members who had sought to tap the lottery funds, told the American-Statesman on Tuesday that House budget leaders had acted with a heavy hand. “It was the uni-party,” said Little, who is among a cadre of conservative lawmakers who have said that the Democratic members, who are outnumbered in the House, have outsized influence in the GOP-dominated chamber. “Republicans and Democrats were working together to shut down conservative government.” But before Little’s comment, the House appeared to double-down on its decision to defund the lottery. Because the House’s budget differs from the one the Senate has passed, the competing versions will have to be reconciled by a conference committee. The House, by an 89-57 vote, largely along party lines, instructed its conference committee members to keep the lottery stripped of its funding. On Friday, state Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur, asked the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Republican Gregg Bonnen of Angleton, if he would commit to keeping the lottery’s budget at zero during the upcoming House-Senate haggling. Bonnen, however, was noncommittal.

AUSTIN – Texas Monthly reports that the year is 1969, and revolution is in the air. Protests clog American campuses and streets. Richard Nixon enters the White House on behalf of his “silent majority.” NASA puts men on the moon. And the hippie counterculture threatens to remake the world in its image. It’s a kaleidoscopic time in which all things seem possible. Even the Texas Legislature—that citadel of chest-forward corruption and gleeful reactionaryism—is dreaming big. Lawmakers advance, with little debate or fanfare, an almost fantastical proposal. Problem: Texas is projected to run out of water by 1985 if something isn’t done, according to a state water plan developed in 1968. Solution: a modest proposal to divert an ocean of water from the Mississippi River below New Orleans, move it across Louisiana, and then harness nuclear energy to pump it more than three thousand feet uphill, in some cases, in open-air canals stretching as far away as Lubbock and the Rio Grande Valley. To store the bounty, vast reservoirs with as much watery acreage as Connecticut’s landmass would emerge from flooded river bottoms in East Texas. The price tag: about $90 billion in today’s dollars, just for capital costs. To help finance this grandiose vision, called the 1968 Texas Water Plan, the Legislature asks voters in 1969 to approve $3.5 billion in bonds, or about $30 billion adjusted for inflation.

Critics blast the proposal as costly, destructive, and unnecessary. The Sierra Club describes the plan, with only a little hyperbole, as “the largest altering of the face of the earth ever yet proposed by man.” There’s also the small matter that, apparently, no one has asked the Mississippi River states whether they’re willing to part with their water. The bond proposal narrowly fails, by about 6,300 votes out of 625,000 cast. And Texas manages to escape calamity. But the idea doesn’t die. It has been kicking around, zombielike, ever since. The year 2025 is too young to call it revolutionary yet. But the Texas Water Plan—or at least a modern facsimile of it—is back. Pointing to looming water shortages, one state senator has made it his mission to scare up vast new supplies, including quantities from neighboring states, and feed the bounty into a state-owned, state-run grid of pipelines. The idea is to move water from where it is to where it ain’t, generally from wet East Texas to the drier west. Instead of a mostly local patchwork of water systems—the reservoirs, treatment plants, and distribution networks that dot Texas—state Senator Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, envisions a multibillion-dollar statewide “water grid” to make sure Texas never worries about the resource again. He is proposing investing in desalinating salty Gulf water, cleaning up the chemical-laden fracking water used to coax oil from the ground in the Permian Basin, and injecting fresh water underground for later use. Meanwhile, he is involved in mysterious dealmaking with other states for their reserves. During debate over his legislation in early April, Perry alluded to talks with “one or two” neighbors—probably Louisiana and Arkansas—to contract for water. Perry, who did not respond to an interview request, brings a crusading spirit to his cause.