The Rare File Both Parties Signed Onto Monday: Bills to Rein In License Plate Cameras — One Would Ban Them Outright

AUSTIN — Of everything filed on the Texas Legislature's first day of prefiling Monday, the license plate camera bills may be the strangest fit: they belong to both parties at once. Lawmakers from both parties targeted the cameras on filing day, the Texas Tribune reported — at least three bills would rein in license plate cameras like Flock's, and one, by Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, would ban them outright. Pratt on Texas, the conservative filing-day account, recorded the same shape from the other side of the aisle: Democrats joining conservative Republicans filing to end the use of Flock-style surveillance cameras.

The bills land on ground the executive branch has already been clearing. In October, Comptroller Don Huffines signed an executive order banning the use of state grant money administered by his office to buy or contract for Flock cameras, automated license plate readers and other vehicle-identification systems that turn plate images into computer-readable data. In September, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to pause permits for license plate reader technology on state-owned roads. Neither move is a ban — the Comptroller's order governs his office's grant money, and a lasting prohibition, as Texans for Fiscal Responsibility's account of the fight puts it, has to come from the Legislature itself.

That is what makes Monday's filings the story: the question has moved from agency orders to statute, and it has arrived with sponsors who agree on little else. The same filing day saw both parties take aim at data center tax breaks as well — a second point of rare overlap in a session that will be defined by a divided Legislature. What the camera bills would do to the systems North Texas cities already operate is a committee fight still to come; filing runs through March 12, and the session opens January 12, 2027.