Texas Gov. Greg Abbott outlined his legislative priorities for the 2019 legislative session during his State of the State address Tuesday morning.
Abbott spoke before both the Texas House and Senate to lay out his priorities and the emergency items he wants the legislature to tackle immediately this session.
Among them were school finance reform and increasing teacher pay; school safety; a mental health consortium to collaborate on statewide mental health initiatives; property tax reform and disaster preparedness and recovery.
Get DFW local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC DFW newsletters.
Though he declared school safety a top issue to tackle during the session, Abbott didn't propose any gun restrictions as a possible solution but rather said it was time to develop the "innovative solutions" revealed during several roundtable discussions following the shooting at Sante Fe High School outside of Houston.
The governor didn't outline what those solutions were, specifically, but did say one area of focus for making schools safer would be to address mental health in schools through the proposed Texas Mental Health Care Consortium.
Abbott also asked the legislature to increase funding to create six regional human trafficking squads to shut down human trafficking operations throughout the state.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
He's also targeting gang members and said he wanted to build two new anti-gang centers in Waco and Tyler to help those communities rid their regions of dangerous gangs.
The governor also asked lawmakers to do more to help the survivors of rape and sexual assault by helping clear the backlog of rape kits "languished untested for far too long."
The legislative session runs until May 27.
