§ 111.005.Appropriations

Two short rules that keep consent and money apart.

Paying is not consenting. An appropriation of state funds to pay or comply with a settlement does not amount to consent or approval under this chapter.

Without that rule the chapter would be easy to work around. A line in an appropriations bill could be argued into a ratification of a settlement the legislature never examined on its own terms.

Consenting is not paying either. A resolution consenting to or approving a settlement does not require the legislature to appropriate any particular amount for any particular purpose.

That protects the appropriations power from the other direction. One legislature’s resolution cannot bind the next one’s budget.

The pair leaves a settling party with two things to obtain, at two different times, in two different forms: consent under Section 111.004, and money.

The design matches how the state pays other obligations. Chapter 103 works the same way for wrongful imprisonment compensation, where an approved claim still waits on an appropriation.

A claimant should read the two rules together before signing. A settlement can be consented to and remain unpaid, or funded and still unapproved, and neither state of affairs is what a settling party wants.

The separation also protects the legislature from being committed by its own committees. Budget writers appropriate; the two houses consent; and this section keeps one act from being read as the other.