According to the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), the fiscal implications of HB 15 are expected to be relatively limited in scope, primarily impacting law enforcement agencies at the local level. The bill mandates the creation and maintenance of a separate “department file” for each licensed peace officer, which includes not only standard employment documents but also records of alleged misconduct, even in cases where those allegations were not substantiated. Agencies will also be required to produce these files upon request from TCOLE or prospective employing law enforcement agencies.

For local law enforcement agencies, this may require additional administrative resources to create, maintain, and manage department files in compliance with the new legal structure. While many agencies may already maintain internal documentation of officer conduct, the bill could require process updates to ensure separation between personnel and department files, and to develop or revise policies for inter-agency sharing and records confidentiality. These adjustments may carry marginal administrative costs, especially for smaller agencies with limited staffing or technology infrastructure.

At the state level, TCOLE may incur some costs associated with receiving, storing, and possibly reviewing these department files as part of its oversight and investigative responsibilities. However, since the bill does not create new investigative authority or require proactive audits by TCOLE, these costs are expected to be absorbed within the agency’s existing budget and staffing levels.

Because the bill does not include any new funding mechanisms, appropriations, or criminal penalties, and largely builds on existing administrative duties, its overall fiscal footprint is likely to be considered minor and absorbable by most agencies. Nonetheless, an initial one-time implementation cost may arise as agencies adjust document retention systems, personnel procedures, and information-sharing protocols in accordance with the bill’s provisions.

The Senate Committee Substitute to HB 15 retains the core framework of the House-engrossed bill, requiring law enforcement agencies to maintain a separate “department file” on each peace officer that includes records not placed in the personnel file, especially those related to misconduct allegations, including those found to be unsupported. While the bill’s intent is to increase internal accountability and improve hiring transparency among law enforcement agencies, the mechanisms chosen continue to undermine fundamental liberty principles, public oversight, and procedural fairness.

Crucially, the Senate version eliminates the already limited transparency provisions that were present in the House version. Those provisions had allowed certain individuals, such as complainants or the immediate family of a victim, to view misconduct-related documents in the department file following the conclusion of an investigation. By removing this language, the Senate Committee Substitute makes the bill more restrictive and opaque, further entrenching a system of internal surveillance without external scrutiny. The result is a law enforcement bureaucracy with expanded investigatory and recordkeeping power but little reciprocal accountability.

From a liberty perspective, the concerns we previously articulated in the House Engrossed version of HB 15 are only magnified by the Senate’s revisions. Officers still have no right to be notified of what is added to their department file, no opportunity to contest the inclusion of unsustained allegations, and no appeal process or rebuttal mechanism. The government is empowered to indefinitely preserve and transmit adverse employment information without affording the subject due process. This administrative file system resembles a backdoor blacklist that violates the principles of fairness and transparency critical to both public trust and limited government.

Moreover, the bill continues to deny public access to these records by codifying a confidentiality exemption under the Texas Public Information Act. This is particularly troubling given that the individuals in question are public employees empowered with state authority to detain, arrest, and use force. Shielding these records from public inquiry denies civic oversight of misconduct patterns, undermines community confidence, and tips the scales of accountability entirely inward, placing power in the hands of the state with no external check.

Taken together, the Senate Committee Substitute fails to correct the bill’s original flaws and instead exacerbates them. It reduces transparency, avoids due process protections, and increases bureaucratic discretion at the expense of individual and collective liberty. While the stated goals of accountability and hiring integrity are valid, they cannot be pursued through opaque recordkeeping practices that institutionalize suspicion and curtail oversight.

Accordingly, this legislation is unacceptable on policy grounds. Texas Policy Research reaffirms the vote recommendation of NO on HB 15 to lawmakers.

The bill’s structure may interfere with a free and fair labor market in the law enforcement sector. Officers who are otherwise qualified may be informally blacklisted due to internal records that are not open to challenge or public scrutiny. Employment mobility is curtailed not by formal discipline but by opaque, unverified internal documentation that is nonetheless shared among agencies. This restricts the ability of officers to compete for jobs on an equal footing, undercutting the principle that labor markets should be driven by merit, verified performance, and transparent qualifications, not hidden records.

Although the bill does not directly affect private property, the erosion of transparency and the possibility of harboring unaccountable misconduct within law enforcement agencies have indirect implications. A lack of oversight into police behavior, especially when complaints are kept hidden, could result in violations of individual property rights going unremedied. From a broader liberty standpoint, unchecked public authority poses a systemic risk to personal security, including property.

While the bill does promote personal responsibility by ensuring that officers’ past behavior, documented even if not formally adjudicated, can be considered during hiring, this responsibility is asymmetrically applied. Officers are held accountable for conduct that may never have been proven, but agencies are not required to ensure fairness in how they document or disclose such information. There are no statutory safeguards to prevent malicious or biased internal memos from affecting future employment, and no consequences for agencies that misuse this system. Thus, responsibility is imposed on the individual, but not reciprocated by the institution, a liberty imbalance that weakens fairness.

Perhaps most critically, the bill expands the scope of government surveillance and internal recordkeeping without adding meaningful public oversight or procedural safeguards. It creates a new category of confidential government record, accessible to other agencies and the state, but hidden from the public and from the individuals it documents. By doing so, it shifts the power dynamic in favor of bureaucratic discretion and secrecy, rather than transparency, accountability, and restraint. Moreover, by eliminating public access and failing to require any mechanism for internal checks, audits, or appeals, the bill builds out an administrative infrastructure that consolidates authority while insulating itself from scrutiny. This is antithetical to the principle of limited government, which seeks to constrain state power, not expand it in secret.

The most significant liberty concern with the bill is its treatment of unsubstantiated allegations. The bill requires law enforcement agencies to document and retain any records of alleged misconduct, even if the agency determines there is insufficient evidence to sustain the charge, and makes those records accessible to future law enforcement employers and to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE). However, officers are given no right to be notified when such records are added, no opportunity to submit a rebuttal, and no path to appeal or correct the record. This creates a shadow personnel file with potentially damaging information that can follow a peace officer for the rest of their career, without having been subject to adversarial testing or due process. By institutionalizing the retention and intra-governmental sharing of unproven allegations, the bill violates the principle of presumption of innocence and risks government-inflicted reputational harm without judicial process. These provisions shift the balance of power in favor of administrative judgment and against the civil liberties of individuals.

• • House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans' Affairs: 7Y/0N (4 Absent)
  • Senate Committee on State Affairs: 6Y/2N (3 Absent)

• SB 15 (Similar To)