Governor-Elect Gina Hinojosa's Day-One Electricity Freeze Meets Its First Legal Question: What Law Lets a Governor Set Prices in the State That Deregulated Power?
Hinojosa says that within an hour of taking the oath on January 19 she will declare a high-cost emergency and freeze residential electricity rates. A conservative energy coalition's president is already sketching the court fight — over whether the Texas Disaster Act reaches a price freeze in the nation's most competitive retail power market.
AUSTIN — The first governing fight of the next Texas administration is already taking shape, ten weeks before inauguration day. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who defeated three-term Governor Greg Abbott on November 3 and is scheduled to take the oath on January 19, 2027, says freezing residential electricity rates will be her first act. "On Day One as governor, I'll freeze residential electricity rates and make corporations finally pay their fair share," she said in an interview with a local energy data group, according to the New York Post's November 10 report, read in full by this desk. To the Texas Tribune, she put a clock on it: "Within an hour of taking the oath of office, I will declare a high-cost emergency in the state of Texas and issue an emergency executive order to … freeze electricity rates." She has described the freeze as a response to what she calls an affordability crisis.
The legal pushback arrived in the same news cycle. Nick Loris, president of C3 Solutions, a conservative coalition focused on climate, energy, environment and agriculture policy, told Fox News Digital he expects the emergency declaration to face legal challenges almost immediately from energy providers, and cast doubt on its scope: "The Texas Disaster Act lets the governor declare disasters and suspend the regulatory laws and statutes that are in existence. But I think there is a high degree of skepticism, both from courts but also from state policymakers, that this warrants such a claim — and that it is such a disaster," he said, according to the Post's account. "I would imagine if there were legal challenges, it would come from those affected parties."
Underneath the legal argument sits the structure Texas chose a generation ago. Senate Bill 7, passed in 1999, opened most of the state to retail electric choice from 2002, on the Legislature's own finding that electric prices "should be determined by customer choices and the normal forces of competition"; today more than 100 retail electric providers compete for Texas customers in an energy-only wholesale market, the Post reported. Loris warned that if suppliers cannot cover their costs under a freeze, they are left "worse off" and more vulnerable to adequately provide power, and that price signals act "like a traffic light" for the system. Hinojosa's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on what her response would be if a freeze contributed to a shortage, the Post reported. The argument, in other words, is joined — and January 19 is when it stops being an argument about an interview and becomes one about an order.
