Well that was a fun day.

As you may or may not know, my wife Megan is a lighting designer.

just after 10:00 this morning I got a “WHAT. THE. HELL.” IM from here and then a link to the now well traveled JimonLight blog post letting us know that some Texas Lege members were legislating in crayon again. They gerrymander in chalk so it’s no surprise…

Making my wife a vigilante is a bad plan folks.

See…wha..wha..happened was…

The Texas Senate stapled an accidental paradigm shift to a one-pager House Bill written by Rep. Wayne Smith that was attempting to clean up a couple of spots in the Occupations code. The accidental paradigm shift did nothing more than require that:

LIGHTING DESIGN; LICENSE OR REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
(a) A person may not perform or offer to perform lighting design services unless the person is:
  (1) licensed as an engineer under this chapter;
  (2) registered as an architect, landscape architect,
       or interior designer under Subtitle B, Title 6; or
  (3) licensed under Chapter 1305.
(b) In this section, "lighting design services" means the preparation of plans and specifications that depict the placement and direction of illumination of mounted or installed lighting fixtures in the interior or exterior of a building, including the specification of bulbs, reflectors, lens, louvers, baffles, and other hardware. The term does not include the preparation of shop drawings or other directions from a manufacturer for the installation or operation of lighting fixtures.

and given the parties that stood for the bill:

Archer, Thomas J.  (Homeowners of Texas, Inc.),  Austin, TX
McKnight, Peyton  (TCEC),  Austin, TX
Rocha, Susan  (City of San Antonio),  San Antonio, TX
Schulle, Jr., Gerhardt  (Texas Soc. of Prof. Engineers),  Austin, TX
Dick, Alexis  (Texas Department of Insurance),  Austin, TX

The bill is a CYA liability deal. Only it was written in crayon by people who never go to the theatre, so it really did inadvertently outlaw the rogue practice of hanging and pointing lights by unregistered humans.

But @JimonLight got folks moving and we had over a hundred calls in to Rep. Smith and something similar to Senator Averitt.

They are both very tired of hearing from us. According to Representative Smith’s office he will attempt to strip the Senate amendment tomorrow. We will keep an eye on that. If he can strip it completely we win.

If he can’t it may go to conference committee. They may be able to fix it then, we will need to get on the conference committee members as soon as we know who they are, we’ll get you that information.

If the language remains unchanged and goes to the Governor’s desk we have the hail mary, and we need to nail it. If the language passes reconciliation and/or conference committee then it’s on to Governor Perry.

I suggest a timed assault nationally on the Governor’s phone bank – everyone dialing in at noon on Friday. For the truly diligent I would also try to get Ed Robertson, the Governor’s advisor for Texas Commission on the Arts, on the line.

The first action step is to call your own Texas reps tomorrow. In Travis County: Dawnna Dukes, Eddie Rodriguez, Eliot Naishtat, Valinda Bolton, Donna Howard, and Mark Strama. The more people that know that this isn’t just a syntax cleanup formality the better.

If you aren’t in Texas feel free to call the Governor’s Office at
512–463-1782 or fax at 512-463-1849.

Be polite. The people on the phone didn’t do anything to you.

And please do us all one more favor.
I know how easy it is to throw out a twitter post, or blog screed. But do your research first, and read your sources all the way to the bottom. There was a lot of misinformation today, and it didn’t help. So let’s stop the funerals for the industry until they’ve actually accomplished something.

The first flare on this went up on JimonLight went up 30 hours ago. We got the boots on the ground and on the line and have some traction. Talking about the lasting effects as if it’s done distracts and discourages.

Save the snark for the beer after we beat this idiocy back in the box.

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