Pat Trip Cast listeners. A couple of weeks ago, we brought you my conversation with Comptroller candidate Don Huffin's a Republican. Now, for a special episode, I bring you my conversation with the Democratic candidate Sarah Eckhard. I hope you enjoy it. This episode of the trip Cast is sponsored by Texas Matters and members of the Texas Tribune. Senator, good morning, thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me, Matthew. Thank you to Texas Tribune family for having me.
Absolutely we are very happy to have you here. I'm going to start the conversation with some hot off the presses polling news. I don't know if you saw this.
This morning, the University of Texas Politics Project put out its regular poll and raising some eyebrows at the very top of the ticket, Senator Representative Taller Rico leading John Cornyan forty percentage points to thirty three percentage points in a hypothetical matchup in a hypothetical matchup against Ken Paxton tell Rico leading forty two percent to thirty four percent.
That comes off of some polling that just was released yesterday, also suggesting a tall Rica lead at the top forty four to forty one over Cornan forty six to forty one over Paxton. Neither of those polls poled the controllers race, to my great disappointment heading into this conversation. But I'm curious, I mean, it is not common in Texas to be
seeing polls like that for Democrats. I'm curious how you see this and what you think that this means, you know, politically for the state right now, and then particularly for your race as well.
Well, clearly this is a wave election. I've been traveling all over the state and talking to people Republicans and Democrats. Folks are really fed up with thirty years of one party rule, and people really do get it that one party rule is not good for us, whether it's Republican or Democrat, that it has a tendency to be wasteful, and also it tends toward abuse, and folks retired of being abused. So we're going to see a wave of
election this year. People feel that they have a choice for the first time in literally decades, and they are going to make that choice. And so I'm proud to be on a ticket with James and other great Democrats in order for us to restore balance and get out of this abusive cycle.
How much do y'all see this as a slate of candidates, how much of that, how much do you envision? And how much of y'all y'all already sort of working together as you look forward these next few months.
We have a lot of coordination. I mean, I've known James and Gina and Vicki and John and of course Nathan for years, and we've worked together for years for better policy for everyday Texans. So this is a naturally coordinated group of people. And the Democratic Party is producing candidates that are truly capable of providing good government to regular Texans. It is unfortunate that the Republican Party is producing some of the worst candidates that we've seen in years.
And what I tell my Republican friends who are disappointed in their choices over on the Republican side is you won't get better choices on the Republican side until you vote for a Democrat. You can always go back to voting Republican when your party starts producing good candidates again.
So you mentioned James, Gina, Vicky, you all of those folks, are you know Travis County politicians what's going on there? Why are we seeing so many Travis County candidates for state white office this year?
And you know, there must be something in the water, what we have left of it. I think that we have seen through redistricting, this condensing of talent into our urbanized areas, and redistricting has has forced all of the Democratic talent into a smaller and smaller pool. And so we're seeing we're seeing some of us fish jump in the pond, frankly, and I think that that is exactly
what's needed. I think that we need to have good candidates running in every single election all across the state of Texas, including statewide races.
Okay, so I talked about the reasons for optimism for Democrats. This time, let's talk about some of the reasons for skepticism. I mean, the first one is just you talk about Texans being tired of you know, one party rule. That being said, they have continued to choose one party rule for basically every election this this century. Why do you think it is that that is the case. Why do you think it? You know, Democrats have been able to break through so far.
I think part of it is the patronage system that grows up inside of a one party system. When you have one party rule, there's significant patronage in corporate tax breaks and no bid contracts and whatnot. And so you start to see, particularly in Texas where there is tragically no campaign finance limit, you see these huge war chests which scare off competition and also drown out any competition.
But I think in a wave election like this, grassroots campaigns actually are more effective than huge billboards on every highway and major major media advertising that nobody watches anymore, and nobody trusts when they do see it.
Yeah, so let's let's talk about that. You know, another thing that was in this poll. They didn't pull your race ut. They did pull favorability, right, don Haffein's your opponent twenty two percent favorable, nineteen percent unfavorable, fifty eight percent don't know enough to have an opinion you particularly, sixteen percent favorable, eleven percent unfavorable, seventy three percent don't know.
You know. You may point out right that that's a higher net positive for you than your opponent, but to me, the big takeaway, the biggest two numbers on those lists are don't know. The comptroller obviously there's you know, let's be honest, there's a lot of people who don't know even that we have a comptrolleror what that job does. There's a lot of work to be done in terms of defining who you are to a state wide audience,
to defining who your opponent is state wide audience. And it's going to be hard to get attention in this race when there's so much at the top of the ballot and other things going on. Reflect for me a little bit on that. What's the strategy. How can you get the word out? You know, particularly when, as you mentioned, you're likely to be going up against someone who's going to spend a lot of money in this race.
You know, the challenge is letting people know what the hell, what the heck is a comptroller and who are these two people vying for it. That's absolutely the challenge getting across the entire state, where most people think the comptroller just writes checks, when in fact, the comptroller is the
check on the abuse of power. And you've got two candidates in this race, one who is a robber baron himself and another who has actually been the check and balance on budgets and on misuse misappropriation of government funds. So you're absolutely right. The challenge is letting people know how important this office is and also that you have
a real choice in who controls this office. Somebody who is going to throw wide the door to robber barons, or someone who's going to stand at the door and follow the money and follow the law for the people of the state of Texas.
Yeah, I mean the you know, Senator Huffines has he poured a lot of money into the primary, right And one of the things we learned, at least on the Republican side of the primary, is a lot of times we see, you know, the right wing of the party or the left you know, or the more centrist wing of the party can often you know, win or have more success in a particular election. This year, in the Republican primary in particular, what you saw was that the
campaigns that had the resources turned out pretty well. John Cornan at the top of the ticket, spent you know, his supporter, spent a ton of money supporting him, surprised a lot of people by being the top vote kitterer in that race. Mays Middleton for the the AG's race, and then Senator Huffines again, fifteen million dollars of his own funds going into that campaign seemed to really make a difference. He shocked a lot of people buy winning
that race outright, not getting to a runoff. I mean, is there are you going to be able to compete with that? What is your how do you kind of go about getting the resources necessary to pull this off?
Well, I'll raise the money necessary and then we're going to do a lot of outreach. This is definitely a grassroots campaign. And every campaign I've ever run has been a grassroots campaign with a lot of outreach voter to voter saying hey, I heard about this race and you should pay attention to it. And I've won every race that way. Mister Haffines has only ever purchased political power or tried to. He spent considerably on one term in the Texas Senate, and then he lost that race he
was beat. And then he spent considerably on trying to buy the governor's mansion and he was beat. And then of course he's recently purchased the Epstein ranch in New Mexico. So I think that this is indicative and he's spending a tremendous amount of his own money in this race, But I think people are tired of seeing very wealthy men purchase power and then continue to be rich and powerful on the dime of the public.
There, I think is an ongoing debate within the Texas Democratic Party about how in a state that has traditionally voted Republican during our you know, uh, during this modern era. You know, do you, as a Democrat try to appeal to the middle. Do you try to appeal to those undecided, more moderate voters, or do you try to ignite the base and get you know, young people and get a movement excited and on that I'm curious, like, what do
you think where do you fall on that equation? How do you think you know you should be running these races, this race and your your colleagues up and down the ticket should be running these races.
I think that I would like to be able to run strictly on capabilities. I'm a lawyer. I have a master's in public affairs, including public finance and tax policy. I've been a prosecutor, a county commissioner, a county judge, which is the chief executive of the county. It's not actually a judge, and a black robe, and I've been a state senator for the last almost six years staring into the heart of darkness. So I am prepared to do the revenue estimate and review the budget for its balance.
I am prepared to do the analysis of what our investments are in Texas, whether they're working for us, and whether they're not, and if they're not working for us,
who they're working for. I would love to run on just that, But to your point, capturing people's attention really requires going out there and telling the larger narrative about what's happening in politics today, what's wrong with state and federal politics, which is that we have thrown open the gates to robber barons who stay rich and powerful on your dime. And people don't like that, and they do
want a watchdog. My opponent a couple of weeks ago, I was very flattered that he is matching my language saying that he wants to be a watchdog. But let's talk about what a watchdog actually is. A watch dog guards the house from robbers. Mister Huffines is a robber. He will throw the door open for what he calls
monetized solutions to other robber barons. Like himself, and when he talks about cleaning out the garage, he means letting our car get taken and then burning the garage down to hide the evidence of the theft.
Okay, so it's November of this year, and I keep wanting to say twenty twenty five. You know, I know that November twenty twenty six you have been elected controller. It's a major, massive moment in Texas politics because a Democrat has been elected statewide this century. What has happened between then and now to have allowed that to happen is what is your path?
First? My path is to get the word out that people actually have a choice. They do not have to just sit back and allow this this theft. Basically, they have choices in this election, and they have choices that can win. Also, it's important to speak with every voter, Republicans and Democrats, because I can tell you from experience inside the Texas Senate that my Republican colleagues are also a lot of them very dissatisfied with one party rule. They feel the boot on their neck more keenly than
I do, because I can still speak my mind. But my Republican colleagues know that if they question the current leadership, the retribution will be swift. That's deeply concerning to them. And frankly, if I'm Greg Abbott right now, if I'm standing on the deck of the ship and I look to my right and my shipmates are Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, May's Middleton and Don Huffines, I'm sleeping with one eye open, or I might not survive the night.
Okay, let's talk a little bit about the Controller's office. Why did you choose this office to run for this office?
You know, this is the most exciting, boring office you'll ever hear about. This is the boiler room of Texas policy. It really is the engine. It's checking on the engines of government. I'm a policy wonk. I love the way government works, and I also really hate the way government doesn't work. Getting inside the machinery of government to see where we are investing with success and where we are
not investing is exciting to me. So a chance to have all of the numbers and three thousand dedicated public servants who will do the analysis, do the comparisons, and set our investments in the context of federal, state, and local investment is extremely exciting to me, and gives an opportunity to more deeply inform Texans but also their representatives when it comes time for the legislature to convene.
Okay, let's talk about some of the functions of the job. You know, you mentioned what is a comfortable to do. I'm imagine most people in this room know. But let's let's talk about how it works and how you view some of that work. Of course, one of the newest tasks for the office is the administration of the school voucher system. You were in the Senate when this came up. You voted against the school voucher system or the you know,
the proposal to implement vouchers in Texas. First of all, I guess before we get into how you would manage it, just tell me about that vote.
Sure, So you know, I have worked for a legislative body, and I have been in a legislative body as well as being in an executive function. So I have I've been staff, I've been a legislative and I've been executive. It is in my capacity, in my legislative capacity, I fought tooth and nail against the voucher program. I felt then and I feel now that that billion dollar investment will not produce a better result for far and away
the vast majority of Texas school children. In fact, I believe that much like many corporate tax breaks, this is a subsidy that is subsidized, that will subsidize activity that's already occurring and not improve the educational circumstances for most Texas children. So, yes, I voted against it. As your comptroller, I will be in the executive branch. The executive branch's role is to implement policy. I will implement that policy, and I will do it. I will follow the law,
and I will follow the money. And in following the law and following the money, I will report out honestly who is benefiting most, least and not at all from that program, and deeply inform the legislature for the next session.
Yeah, you talk on your campaign website about auditing the system. Is that sort of what you're talking about? What does that look like? And auditing of the.
Voucher Auditing the voucher system requires that every August the Comptroller reports out the demography if who receives those vouchers. It also requires a detailed line item of how the voucher was the voucher dollars were expended, whether it was
on tutoring, transportation, school uniforms, and whatnot. This is important information for the Texas legislature to have to know how that billion dollars or frankly four billion, which is what it's expected to be by the at least by the twenty thirty one session, where that money is going, and what you're getting for it. So that's what I mean
by auditing. Auditing is an important function of government, both financial auditing and performance auditing, and that is a function of the Comptrollers.
So this roll out of this system has been managed by Acting Controller Kelly Hancock, one of your former colleagues in the Senate. How do you feel about how this has been administered? You know, again setting aside the vote, like you talked about, how do you feel like this has been administered by the office so far.
I served with Kelly Hancock in the Senate and I had great admiration for him in the Texas Senate. He actually was one who questioned the one party rule in the Texas Senate and the retribution was swift and frankly, Governor Abbott's protection could not save him, and I was deeply disappointed that my former colleague, well, I'll just say it broke the law by refusing to certify Muslim schools.
That was frankly illegal, and the courts declared it so, and so he was forced ultimately to certify Muslim schools. That was deeply concerning. I have seen some interesting trends in the early numbers. So the families who applied skewed white, skewed toward children already in private school, and also skewed higher income. But interestingly, in the first tier distribution, roughly half were at two hundred percent of federal poverty line and below, and roughly half did not have their children
previously in private school. So I'm intrigued by that. I have some theories on why why the distribution fell out that way, but we won't know yet until we have the numbers. And that's why it's so important for government to be not only effective, efficient and fair, but transparent so that we all can double check it and make sure it is effective, efficient and fair.
You mentioned, you know, the possible cost of this going up to maybe four billion at some point. The number of people who applied for this program far outpaced the amount who will likely be able to participate due to the amount of funding that was available. It is written into the law that the Controller shall request in the upcoming legislative session the amount to fully fund the program. That, of course, will be the decision of the legislature as
to whether to allocate that money. How do you view how would you view your role? What would you be doing during that legislative session in that conversation of do we put more money into this? Where does this program go from here?
You know, I quibble with the wording request. It is the responsibility of the Comptroller's office under the law as it was written, to calculate how much which would be necessary to fund all the children on the wait list who are eligible for the program. That's different from requesting the funding, and I think that is an important function of the comptroller to calculate how quickly this program could escalate in the amount of money it is. It's soaking
up in a very low tax state. I think that the Tax Institute, which is a nonpartisan think tank federal think tank. It calculates the state and local tax burden and compares it against all states, and Texas has the sixth lowest tax burden in the United States, that's combined state and local tax burden. So when you're looking at a program that is quadrupling in as many years in a very low tax environment, it is taking up space fungible.
You know, money being fungible for other needs. Is subsidizing private schools a higher priority than water, infrastructure or some of our other needs like healthcare. That is a question for the legislature to answer, but it is a job of the comptroller to calculate how much more money this particular program is occupying of what is a limited tax revenue.
You mentioned you know your intention to follow the law. Do you see any room within the law to change aspects of this program or how it's administrated, any opportunities, any things you would like to do, You know, in this position of power with regard to.
The program, the rule setting function of any agency is extremely important and it's often overlooked. The legislature when they set policy, can't know every nuance of the implementation of that policy, and agencies fill those gaps with rule making. So there may be opportunities to make this particular program more effective, efficient, fair, and transparent that are in line
with the legislative intent. And I would certainly want to explore those to make it the most effective, efficient, fair and transparent program within the law.
Another important aspect of the controller's job, of course, is supplying the biennial revenue estimate that essentially sets the amount of money that the legislature can spend every two years and put in the budget. You have witnessed this process several times as a state senator. How do you feel like that process goes right now? Is this system working? Has the previous controller done a good job of estimating and you know, declaring how much the legislature has to spend.
I think Glenn Hager did an excellent job of estimating the revenue. Of course, toward the end of his last term, he had the pleasure of his historic budget surpluses, and I think that his revenue estimate was was very accurate. I also am mindful that part of the revenue estimate is, and we may get to this is the property valuation study. The property valuation study is important to that revenue estimate because of the amount of property tax that is transferred
to this state for redistribution for public education purposes. In public education is the largest of our investments at the state. So this is a this is a this is an uncomfortable circumstance where the Comptroller's property valuation study requires, in some cases for central appraisal districts or appraisal districts to appraise your property higher to meet market and meet the revenue requirements of the state.
So do you see that work going on largely pretty similarly to the way it has gone on, you know in the past.
I think so, I think what I would seek to do. First of all, you know, the first thing I want to do is break one party rule. And I think then everyone will be the sigh of relief, both Republicans and Democrats, because I think without one party rule, my Republican colleagues will be freed to speak their minds as well,
which would be really, really valuable. But also to get inside the Comptroller's office and re establish and reinforce that the revenue estimate is not a political document, it is not to be politicized one way or the other, and that there will not be reward or retribution in the revenue estimate. It will be clean and everyone will be able to rely upon it. That needs to be stated over and over and over again. We will not cook the books. They shall not be cooked.
So there has been you know you mentioned. Providing this estimate has been pretty fun, I think for the cultural over the last few years. Last legislative session of twenty four billion dollar surplus coming in the session before that thirty three billion. These are you know, astronomical numbers compared to history, by far, the two largest surpluses that have you know, the state has encountered going into a legislative session. There are a lot of people who think that that
might not be the case in twenty twenty seven. Are you one of those people?
I think that any credible analysis of our current economy would indicate that we will probably see some pretty significant volatility in sales tax revenue, which is the largest revenue source for the state of Texas, and all those severance tax the oil and gas tax will likely increase. It's a lagging indicator, and it probably won't hit quickly enough to even out the volatility of our sales tax revenue.
So yes, I do not think these historic budget surpluses can continue in an economy where Texas has the largest raw number of business bankruptcies of any other state in the US right now, the largest number of uninsured individuals of any other state in the US. These issues are These are not political narratives. These are just the numbers, y'all. And I don't think that the numbers are indicating that we will continue to have these surpluses in the near term.
What do you think that's going to mean for the legislature, for the state government.
Well, let's talk about public education funding for a moment. The legislature and I voted for this. This was good policy. The legislature bought down the school portion of your property taxes and now is carrying a buy down figure of roughly fifty one billion dollars. That's good. That means the state is paying a larger percentage of the state's obligation
to provide public education. That's a good thing. But without these budget surpluses, we are all already hearing legislature legislators talking about backing away from that fifty one billion or certainly not increasing that fifty one billion, which means the legislature will probably want to return to over relying on property taxes for the state obligation to educate every child.
Do you think the state should I mean, in a world where you know, when you when you use surplus funds to pay for property tax cuts, if you want those property tax cuts to last, you have to continue to use state dollars to do it. Right. This is you know this, This is this is simple you know simple math, math and budgeting. So in a world where there is not a big surplus, it's going to be harder to pay for that mass amount of money. I mean, do you think the legislature should try to unwind any
of this? Is that something that should explore if indeed we get into a situation where there's a lot less money to spend on it.
Well again, and I go back to the fact that by an unbiased, non partisan federal think tank, we are the sixth lowest combined state and local tax burden in the United States. That means the average Texan and everyone above average tax for their wealth is paying less than almost everyone else in the United States. So the state over relies on property tax significantly. We should be looking at other appropriate revenue sources for the state, like the
THHC industry instead of killing it. The THC industry could provide a significant revenue source that would assist the state in its obligations, like public education.
You you were here when your opponent, Don Hafines was on the stage talking about some of these same issues. He said that he wants to be closely involved with you know, if he wins closely involved with the you know estimate that will come out at the very beginning of the session, right around when the new controller takes over. You know, I would assume that work is already happening in the controller's office. It will happen before we even know who the next controller is. I wonder how you
feel about that, Like do you think, you know? Essentially, like are you do you do you want to reserve the right to you know, change or revise or pull back on, you know, the decisions that are going to be made before you come into office.
Well, first off, when mister Huffines was here with you, he openly admitted he's never reviewed a revenue estimate before. And I think it is clear from his statements in this space but also in his campaign rhetoric, that he would like to suppress the revenue estimate. I think that it is important to keep political thumbs off the scale
of the revenue estimate. I certainly reserve the authority to amend the revenue estimate if after I take office, I see that there was a material error that caused either a lower or higher estimate that will then cause problems in balancing a budget. That's the comptroller's job, y'all. But I am absolutely uninterested and frankly would be a watchdog against putting a political thumb on the revenue estimate at any time before I take office or after.
One of the things that I really wanted to understand from him was how willing is he to sort of use the office to be sort of a bull in a china shop, right, to really kind of use the different levers of the Comptroller's office to you know, put leverage, use leverage, put pressure on you know, legislators, other statewide officials and folks like that. I'll ask you the same question.
I mean, in a world where you are elected, I think you know, it seems unlikely to me there will be so much of a democratic sweep that you're working with a Democratic House Senate, in all statewide officials. That means you're probably going to disagree with folks at times. How willing are you to sort of disrupt in that situation? How willing are you to kind of grind the gears of government to a halt in order to get what you want.
Well, I think that you heard in this room from mister Hawfines that he's willing to withhold checks that he's legally obligated to cut to various departments of state government if he disagrees with what they're doing. That's not what the comptroller's job is. But what the comptroller's job is is to honestly report out how our investments are performing.
And so if a if I as comptroller, when i'm comptroller, if I see an investment that's not panning out for the state of Texas, I will definitely report that out to the people of Texas and the Texas legislature. This investment is not producing public, you know, public benefit for you.
You might want to take a look at this. And also, through having an effective, efficient, fair and transparent comptroller's office, I can also turn to well the independent press as well as independent think tanks and say, here is a body of data that I think that you should really examine. And we have not had a comptroller who has invited in independent review of comptroller held data for a very
long time. That's not to say that you can't get the data the Comptroller's office, but you have to know in advance what you're asking for. It's it's it's it's pretty opaque.
You you know, have, of course as a senator, worked with other Republicans. It's part of the job. The Senate, you know, famously a tightly held by Republicans, particularly the tenate Governor Dan Patrick. How have you navigated that and how does that translate to this position?
Well, I'm a Democrat in Texas, so of course you have to work with Republicans. I have friends on both sides of the aisle. But my Republican friends are are very concerned about mister Huffines and and frankly concerned about a growing disassociation of policy from the facts of what most Texans are facing. So I think my Republican colleagues will be relieved to have an honest broker in the Comptroller's office.
A more obscure function of the controller, but one that I want to ask about is that they are required by law to maintain a list of companies that boycott Israel, that boycott energy, companies that boycott companies that are affiliated with China. These are very high stakes lists to be on because it will can greatly restrict how you can do business with the state, or if you can do business with the state at all if you are on
this list. It's been a controversial thing. You've seen some companies get upset about being on it and really try to lobby against it. How do you envision maintaining those lists?
Again, my job will be to follow the law and follow the money. So I will follow the law in compiling that list, but I will also follow the money. And this is what I mean by that, calculating the impact of excluding these companies on the bond rating and the cost of renting money by local and state governments. So by taking these companies off the list, you shrink the pool of ready capital for projects at this at the local and the state level, and that costs you money.
That costs taxpayer dollars. So not only will I follow the law, even though I disagree with it, I will also follow the monetary impact of having restricted our access to capital through maintaining this list.
So I mean, there are you know, there are many people in your party who are very you know themselves upset agree at Israel in particular, you know the way they've administered this war and causa. Uh you do you? Do?
You not?
Do you see any issue with maintaining such a list?
And I see all kinds of issues with maintaining that list. But again, this is an executive position, not a legislative position. As a legislator, I stood on the floor of the Senate and said, lists, lists, lists, We keep creating lists. That's what authoritarian regimes do. We're keeping lists of authoritarian regimes, and we are becoming one. So yes, I voted against
such lists. But as Comptroller, I again would have to follow the law, but I would also have the authority and frankly, the responsibility of reporting out to Texans and the Texas legislature what the fiscal impact is of restricting our access to capital by maintaining these lists.
Okay, folks in the audience and watching on livestream have been sending in some questions that Matt has been sending to my phone. I will soon be pulling up my phone to look at it. I'm not playing Candy Crush, I'm doing that. But there's still time to get a question in as we go through that part. So please, if you have questions, for the senator, please put them in.
But I'm going to ask you one more before we get to that, which is just about the sort of executive function of, you know, overseeing an agency with many employees and you know, in a significant budget. Your opponent talked pretty openly about an interest in cutting down in the number of staff, and I think seemed to be hinting pretty strongly that he saw a decent amount of turnover coming in that office if he were to win, and some redirection of, you know, some of the work
that folks did. He talked about taking people whose job it is to audit businesses for tax compliance and instead refocus them on auditing government programs in the state. How do you see the staff of the Comptroller's office right now? Do you foresee big changes if you were to be elected.
I was in a church recently where a handful of prisoners came up to me and said, we all work for the comptroller's office. You have to win. I was in Gillespie County, out in the whole country, and a nice one and walked up to me and said, oh my god, I work at the Comptroller's office. You have to win. Last night, I was at an event and somebody walked up to me and says, my father works at the Comptroller's office and he's going to take early
retirement unless you win. So we will see a significant brain drain out of the Comptroller's office if I don't win, and that will be really, really bad news for Texas. So I don't think that mister Huffines would have to do a big staff production. I think you'd see a stampede to the door in advance of being asked to do things that are unsavory. No auditor worth their salt wants to put their thumb on the scale for political purposes.
An auditor who has spent their career making sure that our tax system is fair and equally applied does not want their skills turned on auditing government, which is what he said he wanted to do.
That.
He wanted to turn these auditors who are uh expert, you know, have expertise in looking for tax dodges, uh and instead have them look at local governments. And he was very specific about that, he wants to look at local governments. Uh. Mister Huffines was very clear that he wants to use the office for political retribution, and that's not what the office is for.
Uh.
And that is dangerous, y'all. That's what happens in a one party system that exists too long. It starts to take retribution on itself. And I think that's what we're we're seeing now.
Yeah, and he's talked about, you know, dojing Texas government. Uh, I'm going to take a leap and assume that you would not use that term to to talk about, you know, the review of state government. That being said, I mean, the Comptroller's Office has a long history of of you know, review inefficiency within state government. Uh, you know, dating back to the back when there were Democrats in the office and gained a lot of national attention for the work
being done there. I mean, what about that aspect of the job? Do you do you see? Do you like the idea of kind of turning a magnifying glass to state government and trying to find ways to save money.
Well, first you have to understand the machine before you take a hammer to it. And John Sharp was a great example of that. He was and is a very deep thinker, really knows how the machinery works. And he used what were called the gears the government efficiency and Effectiveness reports to inform the legislature where improvements could be made and where real cost savings could be had. And
that's uh, that was super super useful. But of course those gear reports were moved out of the Comptroller's office and moved into the LBB. And that's there was a reason for that. The Texas Comptroller is in independently elected statewide official. The one party rulers much preferred to have those effectiveness and efficiency reports in the LBB where they could be controlled better. And I think the proof is
in the pudding the LBB. Now, the fiscal notes that come out of the LBB often say that there is no fiscal impact on our local governments. For instance, even though seventy percent of public roads are funded by local governments, more than fifty percent of healthcare is I mean sorry, courts are funded by local governments. Roughly ninety percent of law enforcement is funded by local governments, and yet the LBB consistently reports out no significant impact in their fiscal fiscal notes on bills.
All right, thank you everybody for your questions. Let me ask some of them here. Dale from Austin asks Texas is the highest consumer of government spending on climate disasters. What can the office do to deal or mitigate this huge expense for taxpayers?
Such a great question. So yes, Texas has more extreme weather events than any other state in the Union, and those extreme weather events are getting more frequent and more severe. In twenty twenty four, December of twenty twenty four, right before the legislature convened, we had our first ever Texas flood report that came out from the Texas Water Development Board showing that a little over twenty percent of all
of Texas is in a flood zone. And then it gave very specific recommendations for what Texas could invest in to mitigate the risk to Texans living in flood zones. And we hardly touched the document. And then what happened. We had a flood and a lot of people died. And that's the kind of investment we need to be looking at. We are under invested in mitigating risk from extreme weather and we need to look at that. The State of Texas has hardly any investment in water infrastructure.
For instance, the state lends money to locals to build the water infrastructure they need, but it's expected that that be a revolving fund and that the money come back from fees off of those water utilities, so we really do need to make a deeper investment. We have made a step in the right direction with twenty billion dollars toward the water Fund, but the Texas Water Development Board recently increased their estimate of our overall need to just
over one hundred and seventy billion. So this is the kind of investment we need to be looking at at the state level. Some of our communities across the state of Texas don't have the bonding capacity to make that kind of investment without assistance from the state and from the federal government.
All right, Steve from East Texas asks if you can clarify your position on the various grant programs the Controller administers and how you will support these programs if elected to office.
The Comptroller's office has become a grab bag of a number to administer a number of grants. One of them is the bad which you know, I'm going to flub what BEAD stands for, but essentially it's the federal grant for extending broadband all across the state of Texas. Texas remains one of the states that is lagging behind in access to broadband, and there is roughly one point three billion dollars left in that grant, and Comptroller Hager suggested
sending the money back, which I think is concerning. I understand why he suggested sending it back. It has to do with a Trump administration change in the utilization of the money, and the Trump administration would call the job done, and therefore Comptroller Hager suggested them sending the money back. But I would want to make sure that we repatriate every federal dollar that Texans have paid for. We pay a lot in income tax, and we should be repatriating
every formula fund that's available, and we don't. We don't in medicaid funding, we don't in supplemental nutritional assistance, we don't in indigent civil and criminal courts. We're just not repatriating our federal tax dollars. And that is unfortunately political but foolish economically. That's our money. We should make sure that we get our fair share and that we use it for the people of the state of Texas.
Excellent, Emily and Austin ask if you don't win, how would this election affect your future work in the state Senate?
My work in Texas as a public servant, frankly doesn't change whether I'm comptroller or state senator. My mission is for government to be effective, efficient, fair and transparent and actually deliver services to the state of Texas instead of quibbling over culture issues ad nauseum. We often see the current leadership and again, this is a one party thing,
Democrat or Republican. This one party thing says, look over there, there's an emergency, a disaster is being declared right over there, while over here they're picking your pockets and giving away corporate tax breaks and snow bit contracts. That's the kind of thing that needs to stop. And I will work to end that kind of pay to play patronage whether I'm in the Texas Comptroller or whether I'm in the
Texas Senate. But I'll tell you the Texas Comptroller is a way better platform to combat that kind of behavior than in Dan Patrick's Senate.
All Right, Jacob from Austin asks or says, Texans pay a lot in property taxes. Most of those are assessed at the local level, but are used to pay for rhoades, jails, courts, mental health, elections, indigen healthcare, and many other state services. What role can the Texas control our play when it comes to truth and taxation to ensure the state pays for services rather than shifting that burden to property tax payers.
One of my goals has always been, you know, I went to state government because I was for twenty two years in local government and I was frankly getting tired of the state, the state that had just stopped governing and just did nothing but complain about those of us who still did. So one of my chief goals in public service is to put in context how we pay for things. And like I mentioned, ninety percent of law
enforcement is paid for by your local property taxes. More than fifty percent of courts are paid for by your local property taxes, more than seventy percent of your public roads are paid for by local property taxes. And an emergency response that's usually fronted by your local property taxes
and then reimbursed by the federal government. But we're starting to wonder whether the federal government is going to continue to reimburse right, And so it's important, and you know, give me the question again because I want to make sure I address it. Let's see, okay, O, truth and taxation, Truth and taxation. So it's important that the Comptroller actually lay out in easily found infographics where your money is coming from. To pay for these services. It requires a federal, state,
and local partnership. But what we're seeing is we're over relying on that property tax in order to avoid looking for appropriate revenue sources and also stop the bleedout on corporate tax giveaways. Let me tell you can I riff for a moment on corporate tax incentives. The tax code is super powerful for incentivizing behavior that the market would not otherwise produce, and behaviors that are good for public benefit.
But when you start to give preferential tax treatment to corporations to do what's already in their best interest, you are simply giving your money away and you are forcing the tax burden onto everybody else. So it's important that the Comptroller do the kind of analysis necessary to show what public benefit has actually been returned for the investment in these corporate tax breaks. It's also important that the Comptroller's office claw back corporate tax breaks that do not
live up to their promise in public benefit. We've not seen a lot of that from the Comptroller's office. I could only find one in the recent past, and it was on a solar farm. I have a hard time believing that corporate tax breaks on the promise of a public benefit that was not already being produced by the market. I have a hard time believing that we have seen no corporate tax breaks that didn't live up to their expectations.
Okay, thank you for everyone for your questions. I think we have time for one more. Sorry for not being able to get to all of them. There's some really good questions in here, but I'm going to ask herb from Austin's because I think it's a good one to close on center Eckhart, as controller, you'll be watching over this of my precious tax dollars. Is there any particular reason that I should trust you over your opponent to do that.
You should trust me over my opponent because my opponent, my opponent is a robber baron, and he hangs out with robber barons. I mean, jeff yass has given the man two million, I'm sorry, one million dollars in campaign contributions. A million dollars in campaign contributions. I am not a member of the Epstein class, y'all. I don't know the kind of I don't run with the kind of people who will give me a million dollar check. Jeff Yass
has given Greg Abbott ten million dollars. If y'all don't know jeff Yass, he is the big proponent of SCHO school vouchers all across the nation. So you can trust me to follow the law and follow the money, irrespective of what the robber barons want. I will not participate in political retribution or political reward with your tax dollars.
Okay, well, I want to say thank you to everyone who is here today. A big thanks particularly to our members who help make events like this possible, and a big thank you to you Center, Drackhard. It's been a great conversation.
It's been a great conversation. Thank you, Matthew, and thank you all.