The Republican speaker’s interim charges also covered water resources, foreign threats and government accountability.

He instructed the governmental oversight committee to study the implications of adding to Texas “one or more contiguous counties of New Mexico” and the process to do so, after welcoming a proposal out of New Mexico to allow its counties to band together and secede. While the Texas-New Mexico boundary is unlikely to shift next year, the proposal will likely appeal to pro-secessionists in Texas, some of whom are among Burrows’ conservative skeptics.