Gina Hinojosa's Day-One Electricity Rate Freeze Meets a Legal Question: Can a Governor Do That in Texas?
The governor-elect says that within an hour of taking the oath she will declare a high-cost emergency and freeze residential electricity rates. Energy analysts say the Texas Disaster Act may not stretch that far — and that court challenges would follow immediately.
AUSTIN — Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa's signature promise has a date, a clock and now a legal fight forming around it. Hinojosa plans to freeze residential electricity rates on her first day in office, in response to what she described as an affordability crisis. '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.
To the Texas Tribune she put a finer point 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 takes that oath on January 19, 2027, having ousted three-term Gov. Greg Abbott on November 3.
The mechanism is the question. '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,' Nick Loris, president of C3 Solutions, a conservative coalition on energy and environment policy, told Fox News Digital in the report. Loris expects the declaration to face legal challenges almost immediately from energy providers.
The structure it would land on is the other half of the problem. Texas built its market the opposite way: Senate Bill 7 in 1999 opened most of the state to retail choice beginning in 2002, the Legislature writing that electric prices should be determined 'by customer choices and the normal forces of competition.' The state runs its own grid and an energy-only wholesale market, with over 100 retail electric providers competing for customers. Loris warned that if suppliers cannot cover their costs under a freeze, the system becomes more vulnerable to shortages; Hinojosa's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what her response would be if the freeze resulted in an energy shortage.
