Hey Texas Tech fans, it's Scott. I'm here with Evan. What's up, Evan? Hey, Scott. Good afternoon. Doing okay? Doing all right. Doing all right. How are you? I'm good. I want to let everybody know that our... friend and colleague, Jeremy Wallace, did a live event in San Antonio that we mentioned on our regular show that was published on Friday, and people should check that out if they didn't already. It's called Staging and Intervention. You can listen to that before you listen to...
what you're about to hear right now, which is that live event that Jeremy did in San Antonio. And he was talking to some folks there who are in the political arena, who are in the mix. about what has happened so far in the legislative session here in Austin. This was a special edition of what Jeremy does for the listeners and for his readers in San Antonio. So some folks said what went on there.
We had some listeners to the regular show, Evan, who said, what happened there? I'd like to check that out. So what we're going to do is play it for you now. So it's almost like you were there for the live event. You don't miss out on these things because you are a subscriber to the Texas Tech podcast. If you're not a subscriber to the podcast, I don't even know how you're listening to this right now. It doesn't make any sense. So be a subscriber.
to the podcast, be a subscriber at quorum report.com be a subscriber at Houston chronicle.com. and expressnews.com. I think I got all the plugs in there. So when Jeremy was there in San Antonio, he was talking with Democratic former Texas House candidate Christian Carranza and GOP former representative Steve Allison. Do you think this year...
like there's enough support in the Texas House for something like this to actually happen this time? Do you think this is like going to finally make it? Or is Governor Abbott assuming? you know like look he thinks he's gonna get this time around you know but i'm wondering like is it gonna happen you know it's like i know there's a lot of agreement on it right now but what do you think i think it's still an open question uh i know that uh yesterday
There was released a list of a number of co-authors for now that would indicate that he has the votes on that issue. What I think that we have to keep in mind, though, that I think is so important. is the funding aspect, school funding. That's where it fell apart last session. When we went into the 88th session, i certainly believe and i think there was a clear consensus that we were going to do something for public education the money was there the need is
there to say the least. You know, the districts around the state are going into deficit budgets. Just this morning, there was an article in the Express News about Northside is in horrible shape.
Camps are closing. One of the districts in the district that I represent in Northeast is closing campuses. That's happening around the state, around the area. So we've got to deal with... funding uh unfortunately last session the governor coupled it uh and unless there was a voucher bill passed he wouldn't agree to anything funding wise which is really unfortunate and short-sighted uh so we're that same predicament uh and i'm i'm hopeful that uh
The members will really look at their districts and listen to their constituents and look what's really necessary for public education and education in general. And if they do that, I don't think the vouchers are going to make it. And I hope that's the case. You know, he calls it, the government tries to call it school choice. And I think that's been done intentionally, and it's very deceptive. Because if you look at the...
If you look at the definition of voucher in any dictionary, that's what we're talking about yeah and that's what what exactly what he's trying to do uh you know and i don't think anyone is opposed to choice and he tried to initially and i think they still try to bank it a lot on two years ago four years whenever the republican primary there was a series of proposals and one of them was school choice
I don't remember even voting on that, but the way I understand it was worded, I probably would have voted for it. Who's not in favor of choice? And we've got a track record of supporting that here in most urban areas. concentrate here that I was focused on, we have an abundance of choice opportunity.
Schools, I think we react tremendously well to the whims and requests of students and parents, different areas, like in one of the districts I represent where I served on the school board, Alamo Heights. There was an interest in rocketry. There's an interest in culinary arts.
uh that has really grown uh an interest in business incubator program uh you know and that not a traditional curriculum uh the governor tries to describe our public education system as a one-size-fits-all and nothing could be further the truth and if he would bother to visit a public school rather than just a private school he might see that well it's important to know he was just in san antonio at san antonio christian school uh again
The tuition up there is about $16,000 to $17,000, I think, for the high school. So clearly the $10,000 wouldn't make it. And it's really important to point out, like, one of the other big, you know, differences in these two bills is how they address who's going to get to use it.
ESA. They're called educational savings accounts. And that's what, you know, that's using that for the phrasing on it. Very similar to what we've seen in other states. Iowa and Arizona both have programs called ESAs as well. the program would work for uh i'm trying to think in the senate uh you know they want to you know That $10,000, once everybody takes that money from it, if they run out of slots, they're going to have priority for people who need special education needs and things like that.
The house plan is trying to be a little bit more focused on the front end, saying, look, first dibs on ESAs will go to special needs kids and for parents under a certain level of income. And so they're trying to gear it to lower.
people in lower income not super low but lower income and so you can see both chambers are trying to do something a little bit different which gets you to that question like okay so there's some serious differences in this you know these programs and how they play out let me ask you about this christine uh the is there any way that the program could do what abbott wanted to do
at least what he said which is helping people who may be in a school that they don't think is right for the kid who may not have the means to go to a private school will this really like allow a kid on the south side to go to a san antonio christian school you know or something like that is that realistic
here's the thing i mean i've been watching what's been happening over the last seven weeks and my perspective comes from my community where we have a lot of a lot of issues um san antonio right now is the epicenter for school closures and it's happening on the South side, Harland OISD, where I went to school. We lost.
four elementary schools last school year i mean it's the whole reason i even ran for office and just like rep allison mentioned earlier any isd northeast isd it's one of the more affluent school districts we have in the county they're also closing schools overall throughout the whole county.
in the last three years we have closed 27 schools either they're closed now or they're about to close that's shameful the reason that's happening is because schools have been chronically underfunded for decades here in texas and so what we have to do is make sure that we're funding our schools first the the plans that they have put forward don't have an income cap right so i mean
really who it's going to benefit these vouchers are going to be parents who can already afford to send their children to private schools I mean if you're looking at the the San Antonio as a whole I mean It's 78% Mexican-American. 18 of the people that live in san antonio fall below the poverty line the national average is about 11 so these are very working class communities and you know i was knocking doors all throughout my campaign uh i knocked i think
10 000 doors and you see a lot of the same type of family dynamics in my neighborhood it's like mom has one job dad has two jobs you know they have two kids they need to get to school by 7 a.m they need hot hot breakfast hot lunch they need to get um child care till 6 p.m and are you telling me that you think that this family is going to be able to with the ten thousand dollar voucher with the voucher be able to find a private school that
is close to them where they're going to be able to get all those services. I mean, I would say. Not very likely. And on to that point, like for the Houston audience, like the way it's kind of almost pitched is that like some kid in South Houston is going to be able to send their kid to St. John, you know, private school, which costs $50,000.
thousand dollars a year to go to and it's about 25 miles away from you it's like the question is like the voucher is you know is going to have to cover both the tuition and the transportation cost and kind of get those students there so it's one thing to have that choice but how do you get that student there and there are some schools where that'll work you know it's like you know i was looking down in laredo and there's some private schools there where the tuition is like
you know, $3,500. So then you can, okay, now I can figure out how the transportation would help me get my kid there as well. But it's not like kids are suddenly in, you know, in poor school districts are automatically going to be able to get a private school we know that private schools can pick what they want you know in the soon so and that's one thing i was trying to get clarification on like and you know i apologize if i don't have this nailed down yet but like you have to get a
approved for that private school still. If you're getting that ESA too, so you're going to have to know, it's like, I'm going to apply for this ESA to apply for a school that I may not get into. then what do we do and i want to well that's and that's part of the problem you know it's it's really a misnomer to call it school choice because it's not parent choice or school choice it's the school's choice the private school decides who they're going to pick who they're going to keep
You know, we had an experiment, for lack of a better description, here, years back. I don't recall it when it happened, but we tried to piece it back together. Edgewood was performing very poorly. And so there was a private effort to create a voucher program. They're privately funded, worked well for the first year or two.
And then the kids started going back, either by the school's choice, and it was a number of pop-up schools. It's one of the inherent problems with creating a program like this. There aren't the existing schools to serve all these. the kids that might want to go there if they do that need event the edward thing failed for that description it's not
operational anymore. And what I understand is when those kids went back to Edgewood, they went back behind. That's the worst thing that can happen. And I think what we need to look at is, I certainly looked at it when I was in legislature, that you need to look at other states' experiments. and experience with these programs. And without exception, the kids that take the vouchers
Already, we're in private school. And it's a high percentage from high 60s up to the one state is 90 some percent. But the average is right about 75 percent. So what have you accomplished? If that's all that you're doing, you just subsidize it. And what troubles me with the Senate bill is based on 500% of poverty levels, which isn't reaching the ones you think really want to help.
uh the house bill is a little bit different it it split it yeah i think it's 200 for one category and then 500 for uh i think it's 200 for the disabled and 500% for lower income. I don't know any family making $164,000. That's like two parents. I don't know anyone like that.
Well, and remember, like when when when Rick Perry and George W. Bush kind of pushed their own school voucher program, they were geared and targeted to low income families that were in schools that were considered failing and they were very targeted type. pilot projects projects that's not what's happening now this is much more of a universal push abbott after you know this last like you know 2023 you know cycle decided he wants a full universal now he doesn't want like even a a a token pro
that like can test it out first. He wants to go full board. And I wanted, you know, it's something you were talking about with, you know, funding of public schools, right? You know, it's like, that's one of the key components. The House is trying to make sure that there's a package that includes an increase in the basic.
allotment, right? And we know from the last time there was a much higher basic allotment proposal that didn't get through because it got blown up by the governor. Wasn't much higher, but I know the hope was it was House Bill 1 in a fourth special session. had a combination had the voucher provision that a number of us voted to strike uh the rest of the bill
was workable. And I think a lot of us envisioned that we'd work with that, amend it. The basic allotment was up some, but not near where it needed to go. There wasn't enough funding in it, but that could have been addressed through amendments and discussion of the rest of the bill. And if the governor insists on dealing with vouchers separately, so be it. But we need to.
separate the funding need that is so vitally important. And we weren't able to do that. And we still aren't. The base of your allotment hasn't been raised since 2019. Since 2019, we've gone through COVID. We've gone through a horrible inflation, and we're not keeping up. The House bill, the current one, wants to increase the basic lot by $220.
That's woefully inadequate. That's not much. I worked on a bill last session, worked with the comptroller's office unsuccessfully because it got so expensive. But I think to get back to the 2019 levels. plus get to address inflation and the COVID impact, we'd need to get it up to about $7,800 from the 6,100 is right now. very expensive yeah very necessary uh but to go up 200
It's almost an insult. And then when you couple it further, you know, one thing we also need to deal with, and we wanted to last session, is... teacher and staff compensation we've got to get we've got to get that up right well and in uh i know my first session and i did a good deal of work on it uh we passed house bill three which i think was really transformational and then a very progressive and important education reform bill.
now within that there's a any increase in the basic allotment there's a little bit of a tie to there has to be a percentage of 30 percent of 80 percent to compensation teacher compensation in the current house bill they've increased that to 40 percent so of that 220 dollars 40 percent would go to teacher compensation which is certainly necessary but the senate bill teaches it treats that separately which i think that's important So of that $220, only 60% is going to go into the classroom.
Yep. We're so needed. And if y'all see the Texas Tech newsletter from a couple of weeks ago, I had Senator Brandon Creighton, who was trying to manage both these bills at the same time in the Senate. He told me like his intention was always to keep those.
bills separate of course that's not what happened in 2023 they ended up getting jammed together and so they had to kind of push that through and he told me like his incentive you know this time around he still envisions that's the way he wants to keep them separate now truth be told
Time will tell us what ends up happening. You know the legislative process. Just so folks watching, just because the House passed a version and the Senate passed a version, they still have to come to one specific bill that goes through. going to be a long negotiation process between the house and the senate that will end up with something what we call a conference committee where they will kind of ultimately try to have to hammer something out that the governor would
theoretically then have to want to approve. Right. And so all those things are happening. They're not going to reach a deal that the governor is just going to veto. That's not in anybody's interest. So they're going to try to figure out how do we find.
common ground and that is a big thing right just because you have the basic you know coming right out the gate everybody agreeing on some concepts that's a long way from a bill passing in spite of some of the pro voucher comments well and they're separate and i think they're going to stay separate yeah but uh they're going to be dealt with separately but at the same time i think they have to be dealt with together because uh
I don't see either one of them being successful unless there's kind of a package. We've got to deal with the funding issue. When Christiane, when you were talking about the schools, it's like Houston's feeling that too. We just had a story about how...
There was a 4% enrollment drop at Houston ISD. They're already under a lot of pressure. Cypress Independent School District was having major budget problems, worried about how they're going to make ends meet. And a lot of it ties back to that funding package from two years ago. that they didn't get.
You know, everybody thought there was going to be more money coming and it's put a lot of school districts in a bad spot. And so it's not just San Antonio. It's not just Houston. It's statewide. We're hearing complaints in Lubbock and West Texas, like a lot of places trying to deal. with this new environment we're in um all right
We could go on forever on the vouchers issue, but I want to switch over to a couple other issues here. First, let's get into the issue of abortion. Look, the Dobbs decision a couple of years ago set the stage for Texas to pass an abortion ban. including having no exceptions for rape and incest. But within that, they did have one exception for the life of a mother, but that has clearly been complicated. A lot of mothers have had to leave the state or, you know.
have had doctors have refused to have the procedure done out of fear that They could be sued over it. So it's created a lot of questions and get to the point where Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick really said he was willing to consider changes to the law to maybe adjust it. And so, Mike, I want to talk to you about this first, Christiana.
about what's been the impact of this law on the ground. I know Democrats... campaigned on this issue a lot in 2024 it wasn't always successful right and so the question is was that a sign that voters you know aren't on board with this issue yet or is it just like complicated you know like explain to me what this issue is right now and what's it going to take for voters to actually start voting for democrats on the issue if it really is a big issue i mean well jeremy i have to ask you know
Can't we all agree that Texas is a dangerous place for women to be pregnant? I mean, 51% of the population in Texas are women. We have the worst maternal death rates, one of the worst maternal death rates in the whole country. I'm a woman of reproductive age, and it's scary times for us. You know, we don't feel like...
This is a healthy environment, a welcoming environment for people to want to expand their families. Birth rates right now are also declining in Texas because people aren't going to want to have children. And that's also... we don't have as much kids in our public schools because not as many people are having their babies so it's all connected yeah right and it's just making sure that we're having our elected officials
answering these questions for us because you know again women like me women that are planning to have children we need answers how close do you have to be to death's door to get basic medical care really I mean what are the boundaries two hours to dying 24 hours to dying I mean like we we really want to know and I I don't think that this is
like inherently a partisan issue i think that this is a health and safety issue i think it's a generational issue grandmothers want to know for their mothers and for their daughters We got to find some answers. I know that I've heard recently, you know, Dan Patrick. and other Republicans kind of mentioned some concern about wanting to clarify the language. Well, we got to see action. I mean, talk is cheap in Texas. We need priority. We need leadership. When I debated...
My state rev, John Lujan, when I debated him last year, he told a room, a standing room only audience, he said that he would commit to expanding exceptions. for rape and incest. I mean, Mr. Luhuan, I'm still waiting for your bill. The other bills that I've seen that have been filed are from Representative Donna Howard, who is a known champion for women's issues and women's health care. So her bills want to clarify the language.
expand the scope of different medical exceptions, like for healthcare for women who experience, who have a history of severe mental health issues. So those... What often happens, right, is these bills, they get stuck in calendars, they get clogged up in calendars. We need urgency. We need people pushing those through right now. So if there are Republicans who say that they care about women and they care about the safety of women, then they need to push those bills through.
Well, and let me add, so I did have a conversation with the governor in the mansion a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him about this after what Dan Patrick had said. And he told me that he's not so sure that they need to clarify the law. He says doctors aren't understanding what, you know, the law. already says, and he thought there was enough protections in the current law. That said, Representative Allison, I think you can help kind of answer this question for me.
When I think about Texas, I'm going to steal this from my Texas Tech co-host, Scott Braddock. He always says it's a primary state first. It's like a lot of Republicans are worried about their primary first and foremost. And I was thinking. Even if Dan Patrick's willing to consider like making changes to the exception, who's going to carry that bill? Because I was thinking like any Republican who puts their name on something like that, you know, puts himself at risk of, you know, maybe.
unfairly being criticized as being weak on abortion just by clarifying the language. It feels like it's a dangerous topic for Republicans to weigh on, particularly if they are pro-life and they just want to clean up the exception. Well, but I don't think that it violates any pro-life position. I consider myself very pro-life. I believe in the sanctity of life and the way to protect life at all stages.
You know, and I believe it was Donna Howard's bill that we passed two sessions ago that attempted to clarify the confusion. It obviously didn't well enough. when we saw from the Cox situation, and then the second one whose name I've forgotten already. But I think that clearly shows that it's not clear.
Yeah, maybe the doctors are misinterpreting it, but I disagree with the governor. I think by the doctor's actions or inactions and the medical board's inaction clearly shows we need to do some more tweaking or fixing of that. situation and make sure that we protect mothers as well and protect women it's not just you know we focus so much on the unborn but it's much broader than that and i think there's republican support for that we passed
Donna's bill. Yeah. Attempted to improve the situation. And I think we need that to do that again. So if she passes her bill again, like in Dan Patrick's signaling, he's okay with the possibility. But I'm getting a sense that you're not hearing much at this point that gives you a lot of confidence in it. I think it may have to come from the House rather than try to originate in the Senate like most do. I heard Brian Hughes.
made comments earlier that yeah we need to do some corrections and I understand he backed off of that but then since then the lieutenant governor's made his comments and I still think that if we could get something through the house the Senate would accept it. Yeah. And I mean, and I'll say too, is that, you know,
Doctors aren't lawyers, you know, but the way that law was initially designed makes it really hard for them to interpret this. And so we got to do everything that we can to clarify the law so we can keep women safe. And that's something that Republicans, Democrats, independents, everybody.
to keep women safe um and you know i i want to believe that these folks are mean it when they say that they want to help clarify the law um you know these are very powerful people so the longer that we wait and keep these bills you know in calendars where they're stuck um the the easier it's going to be
these really influential people to to do harm to people in texas so you know we we gotta be really urgent about this and one thing i want to kind of point out like you know one you know watching the legislature for as long as i've been watching uh
Each legislative session is a little bit different. When we're this close to the statewide elected officials are up for reelection, the governor's race and the lieutenant governor's race and the attorney general's race, all those are coming up in this next cycle.
primary is the beginning of that and as people are thinking about what they want to run for higher offices particularly you have a lot more politics potentially that can get into decision making when you were talking about brian hughes like there's a person if he decided he wanted to run for a statewide
office like an attorney general spot or something like that you start having to make that calculation of what can i do with this abortion law that won't become a primary issue because as you all know in elections everything that's said during a campaign is not always true right attacks are made all the time this guy's weak on this or this guy's you know weak on that it's like and like and sometimes you know that and so you often these sessions there's a different kind of political undertone
than the years in which the governor's not up for reelection right afterwards. And so watch that kind of going forward. I want to also get into something really super important to, I think, everybody's pocketbook. property taxes. This is something that the legislature says they're going to try again to get some property tax cuts to Texas, right? Two years ago, we had this historic property tax reduction that was in 18...
18 billion? And the principal key to that was... at least this came from the senate at least they raised the homestead exemption which at one point was forty thousand dollars for schools and now have raised it up to a hundred thousand dan patrick this time around has proposed
pushing it up to 140,000. Senator Paul Betancourt, a Republican from Houston, just passed that legislation out of the Senate, and now it's up to the House what they're going to do. The House doesn't have that same focus on a homestead exemption. that the Senate does so far. They want to try to do something that's a little bit broader and help some other businesses as well. The one thing I always know about any sort of tax when you're dealing with property taxes, if you reduce...
Your property taxes for some people increases the burden elsewhere in the system unless you start cutting like crazy. And so I wanted to start off with you, Representative Allison, that we obviously have a lot of. attempts to reduce property taxes so far. And, you know, we were talking about before we came on, like I have one friend in Houston who two years after all these tax cuts, his tax bill went down by $1.
And so he didn't quite feel that tax increase. Is there room in the legislature to do another tax bill? And will it be something that people can feel? Well, I think there's room to near another tax bill. You know, the problem that I see, and I think is pretty evident, is the increasing appraisals.
That's certainly going to impact increasing the homestead exemption, which sounds great and does provide theoretically some immediate relief. But I'm afraid that it's short-lived, like we're seeing as the values go up, that value of that homestead exemption. decreases. Plus it's so limited. You have to be a homeowner so it doesn't affect the entire populace.
The House version, which the governor requested for one of the special sessions and where the House and Senate got at odds, was compression to compress the school district rate. that would be a broader relief uh but again it's got a sustainability issue to it and i know the uh There's claims that, well, that's where money went into education. Well, it really didn't. Not any new money because of compression money.
uh provided for the state would reimburse the school districts for what they lost due to that compression correct there's no new money just shifted it uh but but that seems to be the the focus of the house bill as i understand it more compression uh and also
So I think there'd be a broader application. Which explains to you why we had special sessions about property taxes two years ago, right? While everybody says they want to cut taxes, philosophically, how you want to do it becomes such a big deal that the house...
the senate the negotiations collapsed just among the republicans mind you where like they had to have two special sessions in order to ultimately get to the final number that did get approved and so we go into this next session with like you know again some of those same
dynamics are starting to flare up again. I know there's people I've spoken to in the house who are like, boy, $140,000 homestead exemption sounds good on paper, but it continues to throw off the balance of our property taxes, right? Which then raises the question.
of what about everybody else? And I was going to ask you about that because like, look, you know, it's like there's a lot of people who like are renters. There are a lot of people who are business owners who aren't feeling the property tax cut, obviously, if it's only for homesteaded properties.
Is this really the way to get property or get tax relief to the vast majority of Texans? Well, I mean, if you look at Bexar County, 50% of Bexar County are renters. I'm a renter. I think it's 4.2 million.
households are renters here in Texas. Unlike other states, Texas does not give direct relief to renters for any kind of tax breaks and for both the house and senate proposals neither of them provide that are providing that tax relief for renters so you know what i would like to see are some guarantees um because right now there's no commitments that when a landlord a property tax or property owner gets this this homestead exemption gets a tax break that's going to
go all the way towards the renter right there so it's fundamentally unfair um what i think we could do for renters is you know Maybe it's a thousand dollar rebate, five thousand dollar rebate. I mean, can we put together a subcommittee to talk through, you know.
guarantees for renters i mean i'm sure that there's some some models across the country that we can do um i mean because right now if you just look at it uh it's there are no guarantees for renters and it's just not fair for us well one of the things You might remember this from a couple of years ago. I had an interview with Greg Abbott, and he said he supported maybe reducing the sales tax, you know, at that time when Senator...
Royce West had a bill to that level. And right after that interview with him, Paul Bentancourt and Royce West told me that was news to them that the governor supported the idea. So they started working on the bill, but it clearly didn't go anywhere.
It ultimately did, you know, fail to get, you know, much further than just that discussion phase. So we'll see where that goes. But one of the things I want to do, I want to kind of get into some of these questions that I'm getting online. So I'm going to like, you know, throw some questions at us and we kind of dig through them.
from janet miller who was asking about you know the tech going back to school choice issues and school vouchers uh about private school testing uh and the requirements and like what kind of accountability and like let's talk about that a little bit it's like you know in the legislation we've had in previous years uh like what is there any requirement that you know private schools are going to have to do the same levels of testing uh that public schools have
Well, there's a provision that the private schools, except in a voucher, will have to provide a norm reference test, but very open of what that would be and not... not up to necessarily the requirement that the public schools have of the controversial star test uh so so that's that's definitely an issue i think that's one of the major concerns going on going in just the transparency and the uh
equal treatment, public schools versus private schools, that it's not a level playing field. It's not fair. One, just the application of the test. one taking it but then what do you do with it yeah you know in the public schools the star test has become the pick for winners and losers for the teacher success campus success school district success do we see that in the private schools no
There's no chartering of their test requirement even as they exist. I understand that the private school association as part of their accreditation process requires some sort of test. yeah uh but uh you know providing the test is one thing how do you use it
And are they going to use it the same way that the public schools use it? It's very important. And what public access to information will you have, right? Because like in a public school, I can compare schools on the north side versus northeast independent school district or in. know, San Antonio, but I can compare that.
I don't know how to judge whether or not is this private school as good as this other one? Or how do I get more information? The Houston Chronicle just had a really good story about just kind of how like, you know, private schools don't have, you know, that same.
they don't have to put out nearly as much information for the public on that. And it's their right. Obviously, they're private schools, right? But it does hinder the parents' ability to kind of pick, you know, what schools are going to go to. It does. I mean, and I'll say with this, you know, what for private schools um they
What's frustrating, and I think what feels really unfair, is that these are public dollars. These are our tax dollars. And they're going to private schools who don't have to make any of their financial statements public. private schools is going to remain private, right? What we need, if these are going to be our public dollars, what we need is a measure of transparency and fairness, and we're not going to see any of that.
Yeah, one of the things about private schools, like, you know, one of the speeches that Governor Abbott gave on his tour was that... I'm trying to remember the school I was at right now. I think it was Cypress Christian near Houston. And that school, like, you know, he gave the speech. But one of the problems with that school particularly is that they can pick and choose who's coming to that school. It's like if you're not.
if you don't sign a doctrine saying that you're a christian you're not going to be into that school it's like they can deny you and so one of the important parts to know about the you know private schools and i talked to senator creighton about this private schools don't have to be part of this if they don't want to take
children who have esas they can do that and so you see that like there is like you were talking about earlier that the choice part of this conversation can sometimes be the private school that can decide like you know little johnny's not coming in here because you don't fit our boxes of what we want at this school right now exactly yeah yeah and when you get into special education
uh you know the private schools are not required to provide it in fact the parents lose the federal protections if they go to the private school and those programs are so expensive as we're seeing in the public school setting and some of them there's some very acute needs of children being addressed for special education needs in the public schools the private schools just won't do it
can't do it. And that's an important distinction, I think, particularly when they're trying to be the emphasis on addressing those children that have special needs or special education or disabilities. You know, on the testing requirements, there is a provision in the in both the House and the Senate bill, I believe, that the test results are to be provided to one of these five entities that are set up.
under the program. So it's kind of an open question, I guess, that gets into the public sector. There will be access to those test results, which I don't think the private schools are going to like. But, you know, there's five entities. Each take a piece of the... voucher funds, the billion dollars. The five entities get 3%, 5%, and the comptroller gets 3%.
That's what's so frustrating about this. Over the next five years, the projections are that the vouchers will... receive 11 billion dollars wow 11 billion dollars are we gonna have money for anything else starting with a billion dollars and then increases up to by 2030 they show that it's going to be up to 4.8 billion so for those five years 11 billion
Think what good that could do in the public schools in total or elsewhere. We've got water needs, we've got property taxes, we've got health care, we've got mental health. It would be much better used than this small percentage. students that may take the vouchers and then it's complicated even further compounded if
The rest of the country is correct, and I think we've got to assume that they are, that the vast majority of those kids are already in private schools. So what have we accomplished? Well, I got a question here about the issue of DEI, diversity, equity, and... inclusion programs clearly have been a topic in the Texas legislature. We saw that a couple years ago, there was an emphasis to try to end DEI programs at the college level. The argument that Governor Abbott had made at the time was
that while some of these programs may have been started off with good intentions, they have morphed into being too discriminatory about who they're hiring. I want to ask you all about this issue. I've spoken to Senator Brandon Creighton, he talked about this issue with me. There's an idea to spread this anti-DEI message into the public schools in the grade school levels. And they're afraid that people are being hired because of DEI.
issues are related. Let's take a step back and like, would you be surprised if there's more DEI legislation coming out of this Texas legislation? Or do you think? they've gone as far as they can is is there stuff for people to be worried about that there are more programs yet to be cut that's certainly the statements coming out of at least out of the senate and i think somewhat out of the governor that they want to apply
DEI restrictions to the public schools. I don't see that. I don't see it. It just doesn't seem to fit in the public schools. And I mean, we have enough trouble right now hiring teachers. yeah uh and and having certified teachers to add and another issue like this that it doesn't make any sense to me i just don't see it applying i can see the argument in higher education
that they were creating different departments and were getting maybe away from, arguably, away from quality. I just don't see that applying in the public schools. I just don't see it. Well, you heard it on the campaign trail, right? It's like, you know, a lot of Republicans use this messaging to say, look, you know, Democrats are going too far on this stuff. You know, it's like we got to rein in DEI and like make it about all these other issues. Did you hear that?
Regular voters concerned about that when you were out there? Like I said, I knocked 10,000 doors. Not once. Not once did I have anybody mention anything close to this. I mean, people care about how are they going to get their kids to college. They're talking about the price of eggs. No one's talking about DI. Give me a break.
Sam, just going through more of these questions. If you have questions, even if it's not on any of these topics we've already talked about, certainly throw them into the Q&A and we'll get into them. I did want to bring up one question here about the issue of gambling. It's good because I just wrote about this not too long ago. The governor has opened the door in an interview that I had with him at that governor's mansion.
He did tell me that he was open to the idea of maybe doing online sports betting, which is being done in about 39 other states right now, maybe 40. But Texas still doesn't allow it to happen. Of course, the Texas Constitution says you can't expand gaming in Texas. So we kind of have this confluence on this issue. Is this the year that the Texas legislature does anything with gaming, you think?
I think there's an effort to do it. I know there's a big push from Texas Sands to do it. You know, what I think is being missed is...
It has to go out for a vote, for a public vote. Good point. And how can you oppose putting something out for a public vote? And I don't want to... beat the voucher thing to death but why don't we put the voucher issue out for a vote that's right and and see you know we're going to put the gambling thing out for a vote if it passes i think we came up one vote short uh last session yep to do it
How can you say, no, I know better than you, voter? How can a member of the legislature say, no, I know better. You don't need to vote on this. That troubles me. I agree. I think we should put a... this to a vote um i mean if other states are taking advantage of this i mean it's a national trend why can't texas get in on this when i've heard republicans talk about you know this issue um you hear a lot of
they're always talking about like you know economic development this is good for economic development for me it's i i kind of want to go even further than that right further than job creation i want to know how does this impact the community right are there going to be commitments that texans people from texas are going to get jobs that are beyond you know the cooks and the maids in the hotel rooms and the midnight vacuum cleaners right like what texans need are higher than minimum wage jobs
that come with benefits so i think a lot of voters want to understand that too so i think that a lot of those answers need to All those questions need to get answers before folks feel comfortable enough to vote for it. Yeah. And one thing, you know, there's a casino gaming bill that, you know, representative Carol, Senator Carol Alvarado has that would. Also allow casinos and online sports betting. San Antonio would get a casino out of that. There would be two in Houston.
two in Dallas. And again, we saw that there's some support out there. And you mentioned that Las Vegas Sands. So, you know, two of the biggest campaign donors over this last couple of cycles has been Miriam Adelson, who is Las Vegas Sands and Tillman. who is, you know, he's a Houston, you know, billionaire, but he has the golden nugget as part of his portfolio. You see big donors are giving a lot of money to a lot of people in the state government to try to get Texas to expand gaming.
Because as we know, like people are still gambling, right? We know if you ever, like a friend of mine said, if you ever go to the casinos in Las Vegas, they're all Texas plates in the parking lot. You go up to Oklahoma.
it's all texas plates they know what they're doing in that regard and the one thing i'll be interesting to see is like there have been all these complications with the lottery of late uh eric dexheimer at the houston chronicle has done amazing work on showing how they've been using these courier services to game the system a little bit to kind of help.
improve the odds of certain people winning it that has made dan patrick very concerned like you've seen him doing i don't know if you all saw he did like a 60 minutes type interview of his own where he went to one of these places that are doing that kind of work where they had given out uh $3 million payout. And so questions about the lottery system, which is a form of legalized gambling, questions about that could quickly...
combined into this discussion on, you know, casinos and sports betting, whether or not we even get there. Well, and I think there's been increased interest driven by the format of the... casinos or resorts or whatever and i think the governor's even supported that saying that he could possibly get behind something that's more of a resort
family-oriented type of setting as opposed to just pure gambling casinos, Las Vegas style. I think the Windstar in Oklahoma shows that. I think there's a lot of people who want the entertainment aspect of it. And I know there's a lot of pushback. Well, it's going to bring crime and it's going to bring an unsavory element. I think that could be controlled and could be. And it's just a job creator. It's a revenue source that we're going to have to start looking for.
Yeah, I had one question from somebody here about how, like, wasn't the lottery created to help provide education funding? And it's like, and you might, you've probably heard this discussion, you know, more than most of us, you know, it's like you've heard this in the legislature.
it's like shouldn't it schools be getting more money out of the lottery system well it was it was supposedly devoted to education uh i haven't seen that happen yeah i think it did in the early stages some trickle then it went to the general fund and i don't know where it goes
certainly not coming to education and i think i remember at some point it's like if you took all that money from the lottery you might be able to fund the schools for like you know two days or three days of you know educational work but there's a lot more go on that um let's see what yeah
Just trying to see what other questions we have. Focus on water issues. You know, oh boy, that's a tough one, right? Talking about getting into an expertise that I'm not great at. But one of the issues that Governor Abbott has made, one of his priority items, is to try to move water.
from... east texas to west texas it sounds crazy in on a level right it's like and i'm not sure how you kind of quite do it i don't know if you get oil pipelines that can be reversed going out west but that's one of the issues that's gonna that's a big ticket item though when you start talking about
water resources every time they kind of dabble onto this issue uh you have places that have too much water like you know east texas and places that don't have enough water and how they spread it all out it's like is this you you've heard these bills go through before or at least we get worked on, this is a big price tag, right? It's a big price tag, but it's a huge need, an increasing one. We're growing some fast influx of people and businesses.
and a shortage of water. So we've got to deal with that. I know Senator Perry has a very comprehensive bill going forward this session he did a lot of work last session we passed a bill that provided a billion dollars which sounds like a lot but it was a drop in the bucket to use that for water but uh it was primarily designed to uh for maintenance of aged remote rural systems that wasn't going to accomplish that at all. So we need something far more comprehensive and a lasting fund.
because we're running out of water. I have a question that's perfect for you here. It's like, what are Texas Democrats supposed to do at this point? How do we regroup and, you know, tackle the Texas legislature? I know a lot of people coming out of elections going like there's a lot of losses out there it's like but how do you like what what happens here what can people do at this point to stay engaged and start having some influence do you have any ideas on that yeah i mean
Last year, November, I mean, it was a really hard night for Democrats everywhere. right um but i i think that the state party here in texas and and democrats across the state are trying to figure out um you know how do they rebuild for next cycle um you know certainly you know we are 14 seats down in the state house and so there's uh conversations about what is the strategy to win back those house seats and um and do that before the next redistricting so that way because i think texas is
supposed to get, you know, four to five more congressional seats because of all the people that are coming here to Texas. So there's a lot of strategy, a lot of conversations around that. You know, we saw, I mean, and I'm going to talk about, you know, my district 118, you know, we saw
A lot of what's already been happening down in South Texas where Democrats have been losing Hispanic working class voters. So I think that that's going to be a priority for us is making sure that we're engaging with Hispanic working class. people and you know meeting meeting them where they're at Real, real organizing and that's going to come with investments. So we got to make sure that we're doing everything we can to fundraise and do that. And, you know, we got to make sure that we're.
targeting these competitive districts, you know. 118 and 121 the state party certainly has their eye on and they want to make sure that they're finding really strong candidates to recruit for that so it's going to take you know making sure that there's an economic message when you're talking to
working class Hispanic people, because I think we often forget that a lot of these issues that we talk about, there is an economic component. You know, an example of that is you talk about border security. We can't lose sight that when we're talking about, you know, the border that.
we're also talking about jobs right so i mean the border employs a lot of jobs for for a lot of those communities so we got to make sure that we're having these conversations the right way we're identifying really good candidates to run in these seats And we got to do that quickly.
And just to dovetail on what you were saying, so what typically happens at the end of a decade is that races in Texas get a lot more competitive as the redistricting kind of wears off. As you look at 2018, right before. In that cycle, we ended up having 12 House seats flipped from Republican to Democrat. We had two Texas Senate seats flip over, and we had two congressional seats. But you saw with the redistricting in this last cycle, it's still kind of strong, right?
hard for like seats to kind of flip over right now but as we talk about like well how do democrats get back in winning some seats to you know make it closer well that's going to take some time and as the population of Texas shifts and becomes more urban. And like, there's a lot of things that are happening demographically to state that, you know, can assist Democrats in winning seats in the legislature. Again, we saw it in 2018, the question of can they make those changes?
ahead of time and i did talk to the uh democratic national committee chairman the new guy uh martin and he you know he told me in my interview with him without me even bringing it up he said we need to win 14 seats in the texas house Right. So to have somebody from Minnesota at the Democratic National Committee, even understanding how important Texas is to the overall Democratic strategy tells me they at least now know a little bit more and are saying the right word.
to kind of get in part of the game. Whether or not that transpires into real help on the ground is another story, but at least they're talking about it, right? And I think we've got time for one more question here. Talk about the vaccine issue. One of the things that's happening out there right now, there was an anti-vaccine push coming out of the pandemic, of course.
But now we're having these stories about this measles outbreak, a very contagious disease. And like I saw something today where like once you start getting under 95 percent coverage on a vaccination, you start losing herd immunity. And that's kind of. Is this an area where the Texas legislature has any room to kind of work on this issue? Is there any place to go to make sure that more vaccines are being done?
Is it just up to the populace at this point? It's scary right now, in my view. I think there's a segment that want no vaccines or free choice to accept a vaccine or not. which I can understand with the controversy over the COVID vaccine that wasn't fully tested and all, but when you deal with the measles vaccine, that's pretty well established that it works.
uh you know we're required of our school children uh obviously for obvious reasons that they have to have measles mumps rubella uh how can you oppose vaccines like that for the public good and we're seeing it with the with the measles epidemic i mean that is growing like wildfire already and it's concerning
you know they spread into i mean there were reports uh they spread into san antonio and to san marcus uh when those people travel and that's there's a death now yesterday yeah yeah a child in lubbock um i think as of yesterday there's been 127 confirmed cases in texas 18 hospitalizations i haven't seen i mean and maybe this just happened today but i haven't seen if governor abbott has like put out a psa on this and the
Part of that's really troubling because it's not just children that are not vaxxed. It's also elderly people, you know, 70, you know, 90 plus who maybe got the MMR vaccine when they were much younger. But because, you know, we eradicated.
in 2000, you know, nobody had made sure that these folks are getting that shot again. So, I mean, it's... it's worn off on a lot of these a lot of these elderly folks and san antonio we have a lot of elderly people a lot of um you know elderly people with that are medically fragile you know they have diabetes, a lot of elderly veterans, people that are immunocompromised.
These folks definitely need to get the MMR booster. I'm like driving down. I was like driving down here from the south side or driving up Flores and I'm like seeing the pharmacies. It's like measles booster available. You know, it's like all the signs are popping up. So, you know, I say like if you know somebody or yourself and you're elderly, you're over 70, if you got the MMR shot prior to 1968, you need to get it again. Yep.
Well, look, I can't thank you all enough for joining me on this. I hope you all get something out of this as we kind of go forward in the legislative session. It's only 140 days and like we're already, you know, over a month into this. And so a lot's going to start happening real quick.
on all these issues we talked about. You'll definitely want to stay in touch with the Houston Chronicle and the Express News and follow our coverage there. Please check out the Texas Tech newsletter. I break down all this stuff every day. And of course, check out the Texas Tech podcast, which means...
operatic. We're talking about all these issues throughout the session. We've been doing some pretty deep dives on the school choice school voucher issue. No matter what you want to call it, we're going to tackle it. That's right. We absolutely will. You should check out Jeremy's newsletter. You can find it on his X.
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