§ 109.002.Applicability; Appropriations and Payments for Certain Claims

The applicability provision, and it is a restriction on the Legislature itself.

The chapter applies to appropriations and payments for a claim for which the state government is liable under the Tort Claims Act resulting from the conduct of a state agency, and for indemnification of an employee, governing board member or other officer under the state indemnification chapter.

Those are the two ways state money reaches a claimant — the state’s own liability, and its obligation to stand behind its people.

Subsections (b) and (c) contain the operative restriction: the legislature may not make an appropriation for either purpose except in accordance with the source provision.

A statute directing how the Legislature may appropriate is unusual, and it is a self-imposed discipline rather than an external constraint — a later Legislature could amend it.

Its function is budgetary rather than legal. Claims paid from general revenue are invisible in an agency’s budget, so an agency generating substantial liability shows no cost from it.

The source provision addresses that by directing appropriations first to unappropriated amounts in a special fund or account available to the agency, and only then to general revenue.

So the cost is pushed toward the agency that incurred it, which is the chapter’s organising idea.

Both subsections are subject to the exceptions section, and those exceptions are broad enough to remove much of the state’s claim exposure from the scheme.