For people who are interested, I highly recommend reading the bill. It's actually fairly straightforward, so I won't regurgitate the specific text, as you can easily read it on Page 6, lines 10 through 20. [0]

The main situation that the state is trying to prevent is conflicting laws.

Let me give you an example - let's say you are building a road, which happens to travel through multiple jurisdictions. Now in one jurisdiction, there may be a rule that requires one set of employee benefits and different benefits in other jurisdictions.

Now, which one should the contractor follow? What happens when they conflict? And it's easy to be in two jurisdictions at once, which really causes a problem. Now clearly this example doesn't hold because the government builds roads, not private entities, so this activity is excluded from the law. But it is as simple illustration.

One side note - a friend of mine has a house that sits on a county and city border, and is taxed in 2 different cities and 2 different counties here on the outskirts of Houston. He gets multiple tax bills per year, and doing anything to his house is a nightmare because of the different codes (yes, he has multiple building codes in different parts of his house). This is what the state is trying to reduce.

Finally, from reading the article, it looks like the employer is guilty of negligence, and probably gross negligence at that. Any rational human being in Texas gives people breaks, and if this article is at all accurate, someone needs to go to jail for a really long time...preferably without air conditioning.

[0] - https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/HB02127F....