Senator Parker laid out the committee substitute for Senate Bill 1741 at a Senate Committee on Education hearing (meeting date not specified), describing it as a refile of prior legislation and saying the substitute corrects the bill’s effective date.

Parker told the committee the bill would require each public university to report foreign funding received during the preceding academic year to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board by Sept. 1 of each year. It would prohibit universities from accepting gifts, grants or donations from the government of a foreign adversary and would require espionage and intellectual property-theft prevention training for all researchers at Texas institutions of higher education. The substitute also would establish a reporting system for students, faculty and staff to report suspicious activity, and would grant rulemaking authority to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to implement the statute.

Parker said the bill is a refile of legislation from the previous session and that she intends to introduce another substitute with minor technical corrections based on stakeholder feedback. “This bill is a refile of SB 1537 from the Eighty-eighth legislative session,” she said. She also told the committee her staff provided members with a New York Times story about Chinese industrial espionage as background material.

In describing the national-security rationale, Parker said the threat actors acting to acquire technology include state-directed efforts by organs of the Chinese government such as the Ministry of State Security. “We’re not talking about the Chinese people, but rather the PLA and the CCP,” she said, and cited U.S. counterintelligence views that align with the “Made in China 2025” initiative as a strategic focus for such collection.

The substitute correcting the bill’s effective date was sent up to the committee by Vice Chair Campbell and a separate substitute with technical corrections was anticipated but not yet received by the sponsor’s office. The committee opened public testimony on the substitute, recorded that no one had registered to speak, closed public testimony and then recessed or moved on; the transcript does not show a committee vote or final action on the measure during the recorded hearing.

The sponsor emphasized implementation steps (annual reporting to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, prohibited sources of gifts and grants, required training and a reporting system) and said the bill would include rulemaking authority for the coordinating board to adopt implementing rules. No committee amendments or roll-call votes were recorded in the transcript.