The Texas House sent Houston's pension reform package to the governor's desk Wednesday, marking what Mayor Sylvester Turner hopes is the beginning of the end of a 16-year fiscal crisis, and giving him a landmark achievement in his second year in office.
Turner, who has made passing the reforms the centerpiece of his tenure, alternated between grins and gravitas Wednesday night. He cheered the bill's passage, but also warned that more work lay ahead, a clear nod to a series of referendums looming this fall.
"There is no challenge that this city cannot address, no mountain we cannot climb if we stand together," the mayor said, flanked by dozens of police and municipal workers, civic leaders and senior aides.