Your State Senator Recaps The Legislative Session

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Austin Common Radio Hour. I'm your host, Amy Stansbury, and today we're talking about the Texas legislature. But first, a little background. So the Texas legislature, which is our state government, only meets once every other year for 140 days. This is called a legislative session. And on June 2nd, this most recent legislative session, which was called the 89th session of the Texas legislature, officially ended.

And again, as a little reminder, the Texas legislature meets in that big pink dome building on Cogner's Avenue downtown, also called the Texas State Capitol Building. Anyway, since the legislative session is pretty short, things can happen really quickly. And it can be super hard to figure out which bills actually passed and which ones didn't. Plus, a lot of bills pass each session, and not all of them are all that important to have.

us living here in Austin, so what bills should we be caring about? And how will any of these new bills impact Austin? To help us answer that question, I called up State Senator Sarah Eckhart.

Senator Eckhart represents most of the Austin area in the Texas Senate, and before that, she was actually the county judge in Travis County. Oh, and she's also a Democrat. Unlike city council, the Texas legislature is a highly partisan affair, and the majority of the members of the legislature are Republicans.

Oh, and one more thing before we listen to this interview with Senator Eckhart. The interview was recorded on June 9th after the Texas legislature had passed a bill essentially banning all types of THC. But, as you might have heard in the news, since then, Governor Greg Abbott actually vetoed that bill and decided to call the Texas legislature back for a special session in July to pass some sort of CHC regulations, but not an all-out ban.

Anyway, so stay tuned for updates on that one. Okay, let's go ahead and listen in on that interview with State Senator Sarah Eckhart. All right, I am here with State Senator Sarah Eckhart, who represents most of the Austin area in the Texas legislature, right? Do you want to real quick just tell for folks how they might know if they're in your district?

Sure. So I represent Senate District 14, which is most of Travis County and most of the city of Austin. And I used to be the county judge representing all of Travis County.

All right. And so you just finished, you know, another busy legislative session. I thought we could start with education. There was a lot of education related bills this session. I want to highlight a few that probably will have a big impact on Austinites.

SB2, since that was like one of the more controversial ones that school vouchers or education savings accounts, however you want to call it. Maybe let's start with just just give people if they've like only been seeing the headlines around and they're like, I don't really know what this is.

Just give us the basics, like what's in this bill? Sure. So a big picture, the state of Texas has an obligation under the Texas Constitution for the state to provide a system of free public education for every Texas.

That is a state obligation. The state has pushed a larger and larger portion of that obligation onto local property tax holders. So the voucher bill is really about creating a state lottery, a state-funded lottery to pull students out of public education into private schools or to reward students and their private schools that are already in private school.

it is a very, very concerning trend that will undercut state funding for its obligation under the Texas Constitution to provide a free public education to every Texas child who wants it. And the way it works, right, is like you said, families can apply. And I think the number is about ten thousand dollars or about in that number that they could then spend like.

at a private school if they wish and my understanding right is it's not limited right this is not for exclusively low-income children this is not for exclusively families with children with disabilities it's open to a wide range prioritization but anyone can apply pretty much right

The House did put in some ladders of priority, so that was good. But at its base, it is still a lottery for a coupon to go toward your private school education. It will not cover the entire... cost of your tuition and in most instances it's going to go to private schools where the kid is already in private school. The private schools still have no obligation to take all comers. They can still just take who they want and have a portion of the tuition covered by the state of Texas.

Right. So you talked about that prioritization. Can you just explain what that means? Like anyone could still get in, but then if there's not enough money, like what does prioritizing mean? A capped number of vouchers for this biennium. um there is a first tranche that goes toward uh and actually i'll have to go back and review what the house ultimately did but there is preference for students are disabled and there's preference for students who are lower income.

But to the extent that, but those preferences also are limited. There is still a percentage, a minimum percentage that would be available to pretty much any family that is at the... at the median or below. So it's also expected.

to go from a $1 billion investment this biennium to a $5 billion investment by 2031. Right. And so I assume, you know, that you voted against this or you're opposed to this yes so talk more about why you feel like this is a particular threat to like public schools you know like if I'm someone who's you know I send my kids the public school system you know why do I care it's like okay

100,000 kids go to this other school. Like, why is this like a bigger issue than just, oh, this is a limited program that might impact a few students? Because it is relatively small at this juncture.

it's relatively small but it's a camel's nose under the tent like i said it will grow um it will quadruple by the end of this decade um and schools are let's see how do i how do i put this it's like um schools are fixed assets um you have to have a building and you have to have teachers and you have to have other personnel um whether you have uh and these are you know these are exemplary numbers they're not real numbers but let me let me just

give it to you like this if you have if you want to have a movie theater you have to have the the building and you have to have the staffing whether five people come to the movie or a hundred people come to the movie and so uh

If 100 people come to the movie, you might cover your costs for having that movie theater and all the staff. But if only five people come, or 10 people, or even 50 people, there is a point at which the decreasing population in that movie theater is cutting into your ability to keep the movie theater open and it's the same thing with schools um we will see schools close and we will not see class sizes going down as we know

Class size is one of the biggest indicators of a student success and so this will make it very difficult to have smaller class sizes and it will in all likelihood mean a consolidation of schools. So we will have fewer neighborhood based schools and school districts will need to consolidate into larger classrooms and larger facilities. And, you know, I think one way you hear this characterized by some of the supporters of this as well.

If the public schools did better, then parents wouldn't take their kids to the private schools. What's kind of been your response to that or feeling about that argument? Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation out there and I think intentional disinformation with regard to the performance of our public schools. The state of Texas took itself out of national testing to give an apples to apples comparison of our schools.

against other schools in the nation. But our best statistics that do compare us indicate that Texas schools are pretty much in the middle of the pack. We're performing on, you know, in an average way, even though our per student funding. is significantly below average so we're actually doing quite well given the financial constraints that the state has placed on the public education system also know that the state

pulls a tremendous amount of local property tax out of local schools and into state coffers for redistribution. So this is the Robin Hood system of school finance. coupled with the voucher system that's just been voted in is actually a tremendous redistribution of wealth. And one thing that's always stuck out to me when you look at...

Some of the private school, public school situation is, like you said, the private schools don't have to give star testing, they don't have to admit all students, and the public schools still have to serve everyone, right? That's still in this bill, right? That's right. Okay. And it's in the Constitution that the public school has to serve everyone.

Yeah. So kind of tied to that is funding. So HB2, I guess, is one of these bills that it's been called. This is like the big school funding bill, $8.5 billion for new funding for Texas public schools. How should we be thinking about this? You know, I've heard it.

It characterizes like this is the biggest investment we've ever made in school funding. But then when I talk to some of my like educator friends, they're not like jumping for joy. Like they seem maybe like, well, good. More money is good. Like, I don't know. Like, how do you take this in? How are you perceiving this bill? And maybe first explain what's in it real quick, too. Sure. It's an $8.3 billion investment.

And instead of making the investment through the basic allotment, which is a more flexible tranche of money, the basic allotment says that 30% needs to go toward teacher salaries and the other 70% should be utilized. for core curriculum and other school needs. Instead of going through the basic allotment, we developed this a very restrictive menu. with capped amounts in each one of the menu items. So there's a specific amount for school security. There's a specific amount for...

teacher salary increase. There's a specific amount for non-instructional salary increases and these are very specific and it's kind of like your home budget. If you've budgeted a certain amount for groceries and a certain amount for utilities, but your utilities were a little high that month, you can always move your grocery money that you didn't use over to your utilities. You will not be able to do that.

this bill if it's earmarked for security it can only be used for security if it's earmarked for salary increases it can only be used for salary increases so it's very inflexible but it is 8.3 billion So how do you so how do you characterize it in your mind? Like, are you saying like, how are you explaining this to the to the public?

Like good, bad, great, medium, meh, better than nothing? How are you kind of describing it to folks? It at least maintains state obligations. It does not improve on the state. obligation considerably, we will still see schools closing and we'll still see school districts struggling financially. I had one more question on teacher salaries. I know this was a big issue in Austin, you know, like I remember coming up in a recent bond election that.

The gap between, you know, a teacher who's worked in the school district for one year versus 20 years, it was like maybe $5,000. It was so minimal. I know that this bill is supposed to get at that some, but... like what what can teachers i guess expect to receive from this you know i've seen maybe five thousand dollar bonus but that that is meaningful but in a city like austin and given like how much the cost of living is increased like that still doesn't seem like a lot, you know, given...

Let's back up a moment because we keep defining the universe by what happened in the legislature. Let's instead define the universe by what should happen. Schools and education should be funded on an ongoing basis in an equitable fashion.

an appropriate escalator that takes into account increases in student population and increases in cost of living for the employees and the teachers that educate those kids. The way to do that is you establish the base amount of what it costs to educate a child the average amount some kids are going to cost a little more some kids are going to cost a little less but you would establish a basic amount and then you would put an escalator on it associated with

cost of living or some other index like CPI. The state does not do that. It does flat dollar amounts every other year. And we are in a pitched battle every single legislative session every other year about what that flat dollar figure is, because there is no planning for future increase. So while it's awesome that there is a flat dollar figure in the bill for salary increases for teachers, those flat dollar figures lose value the very day they're voted on.

And we will be back next session talking about teacher salaries. Um, this might, I'm not sure if this is too much in the weeds, but I'm curious if you have any insight or no, like, it seems like in the bill, teachers in rural districts, like small districts with less than 5,000 students got more money than in larger districts. even though the cost of living is less yeah i'm like why it's because um

we've had a circumstance where the school districts that are in the more populated areas are able to pay teachers more because they have a bigger tax base. And so the idea, you know, on the positive side, the idea was level up the playing field because rural districts have a hard time keeping teachers because they will go to a district that can pay them more but

that on the flip side we're paying teachers who have a lower cost of living more than the teachers who have a higher cost of living so we will see teachers that might be working in say AISD choosing instead to work in Williamson, Bastrop or Hayes because they can get a higher salary in a county with a lower cost of living.

Let's shift to non-education related bills. Obviously, another big thing that passed that I'm sure people are aware of is the THC ban. Talk a little bit about that. That was like a real struggle in the ledge this session. Explain again what's going to happen and your opinions on it. So the THC bill is not popular.

All the polling indicates that the people of Texas were not at all interested in this ban. They were most interested in appropriate regulation, appropriate labeling, consumer protection, and more. revealing research on the positive effects of THC but also any negative effects so that the consumers both for medical reasons and for recreational reasons could know what they were purchasing.

and and make informed decisions none of that happened um the lieutenant governor really wanted a full ban on all thc products uh the house drug its feet Not particularly interested in pushing that bill. And then in the 11th hour, at the very end of the session, the lieutenant governor put his foot down and said, I want it. I want it. I want it really bad. You're going to give it to me. Oh, my God, I'm going to pitch a big fit. And so he got what he wanted.

after throwing some gummies at some reporters. And what kind of impact do you think that's going to have in the Austin area? I mean, you're seeing, I see like pretty much every bar you go to now has a THC drink on the menu or, you know, there's tons of these shops. Like what kind of impact do you think this is going to have on our community? It's going to have a tremendous impact. Businesses will close. An industry that's created about 50,000 jobs will wither along with those jobs.

while there was also an expansion in the teacup program, the THC Compassionate Use Program. It is still very, very difficult to access THC products under a doctor's order. There's very few outlets and it is expensive. What we're going to see is we're going to see legitimate businesses closed down and we're going to see the black market have a resurgence. Another bill that passed this session, I believe that's.

will impact Austin SB8 mandating local sheriffs to cooperate with immigration and custom enforcement. Can you talk about what that means? Sure. I was county judge back when this was tried the first time. an insistence that all local sheriffs cooperate fully with ICE and worked closely with Sheriff Hernandez and also with Sheriff Hamilton before her on what the appropriate relationship is between local law enforcement and immigration enforcement. It will have a big impact.

What it means is that by requiring the sheriff to hold to to hold immigrants who are detained by ICE. our limited jail space which should be used for people who are a danger to the public will instead be used to detain immigrants. That will be very expensive for the local taxpayer. We will be footing the bill for federal immigration enforcement.

Any other bills that pass this session that you think are going to have a big impact in particular on austenites, good or bad? So there are a whole bunch of bills that would have impacted Austin greatly, but we managed to kill them all. Yeah, we'll get to those in a second. But first, any ones that other ones that passed? The ones that passed that I think will have the biggest impact. was our property tax bills. So the homestead exemption went up to $140,000.

And the over 65 and disabled exemption went to 200,000 if it passes on a November referendum. Those are important pieces of legislation to to help with affordability for homeowners. Not much was done with regard to renters and helping out renters. At least these tax relief bills will ease the pressure on homeowners, though. And in that regard, those are good bills.

And some of the bills that didn't pass, I'm sure you have a list too, but some of that popping up to mind for me, there was something about, there was definitely several attempts again at Austin's Project Connect and train project, right? Yeah, so the Project Connect hater bill did not pass. That was great.

And then there were several about municipal funding, bonds, things like that. Do you want to like mention that a little bit? I feel like there was a lot of the city's finance team. You would hear them talking. They'd be like, we. They're very nervous about planning for the future until the legislative session were over because there was a lot of bills in the mix that would have impacted the city's ability to raise money, right?

Yeah. So the municipal bond industry is very interesting. It's very intricate. And there were bills to hamper municipalities and counties ability to to. levy bonds and have what's called in the biz more vertical equity in our taxing structure by you know if you

I'm going to go wonky on you for a minute. If you're building a bridge, the bridge is going to help, you know, the next 60 years of people who live here. So you don't want to put all of the tax burden on today's generation for building a bridge that's going to help people for 60 years. So what you do is you borrow the money at really low interest rates that's paid out over time so that future generations of taxpayers share the burden at a reasonable interest rate.

So there were bills in the legislative session to prevent local governments from bonding that way and prevent local governments from taking out a bond and then moving the revenue from that bond over to. a separate entity to build a bridge. In this context, it was Project Connect, but it could have been any other project. Those bills died. The Death Star 2.0, which would have further curtailed local governmental authorities, also died. So that was good. The Ash Juniper Hader bill died.

The aquifer storage hater bill died. The Congress Avenue redevelopment hater bill died. So we were happy to have been successful in those.

You know, as in your role as, you know, you're a Democratic lawmaker in this, you know, largely Republican Senate and House like Ledge, how do you what's your general approach to to a session? You know, it must be. It must wear, you know, what's your approach and what kind of approach do you share with other Austinites who, you know, have a hard time staying engaged or interested in what the legislature is doing? It can feel like it beats you down.

It does. It does. And it's built to be opaque and difficult to navigate. That's intentional. The legislature does not want people up there testifying. But I am so proud to represent this area because my folks show up. And it does make a difference having, you know, the Austin-Travis County constituency show up in those hearings, staying all night and showing our spirit for civic engagement. The same kind of spirit that we have.

commissioner's court or at city council, folks take to the legislature and that's really great. And my approach to the Texas legislature, you know, yeah, I'm in the minority party and we are in a. a era in state government that's that does not share any power with the minority and is looking for every opportunity to not even have to listen to the minority. So my job is to get heard.

The way I pass bills, if it is not something that is of a high priority for the lieutenant governor, I can probably pass it. But if it is a high priority, I need to give it to one of my Republican colleagues and help them pass it. And we did that this session. And I was proud to do that. As long as you don't have ego about it, you can get a lot done if you don't care if your name's on it.

Why do you think it matters for the public to get involved? I hear Austinites complain about this a lot that come to session. And I think sometimes they say, like, I don't know why I bother. Like, why do you feel like it does make a difference? it does we don't know whether it let me put it this way anybody who remembers shooty fath shooty fath was uh this incredible legend

legend. She died at 106. And one day when I was having a particularly bad day in the legislature back in 2021, I went by Shidi's place and said, I'm just, I'm feeling in my cups. And she said, And I tell people this all the time. You need my three part mantra. And I said, yes, Judy, I do. What is the three part mantra? And she said, first, you got to give a damn about something and work to change it. Second, you need friends because you don't do this kind of work on your own. And third.

There are no guarantees that what you do is going to work. The only guarantee is if you don't show up, nothing will change. Pretty good mantra. pretty good mantra so you know if you're going because you you need to be sure that it's going to work that you're never going to be sure it's going to work the only thing that you can be sure of is that if you don't show up nothing's going to work

All right. Any other bills you want to highlight, some bills that you passed that you're proud of this session? We've been talking about some of the negatives, but maybe some of the good things that came out. Sure. We did some good work this session. We passed the Academic Fresh Start bill. which it's for those young adults and perhaps not so young adults who started out in college and bombed out.

And this is what the bill says is that universities and two year institutions can choose a. a smaller number of years to continue looking at your old bad transcript right now all institutions have to look back uh for 10 years but now institutions can say you know what we're gonna We're going to make that five years or not look at them at all. It's up to the universities and the community colleges to decide. So that's going to help a lot of people get back into school.

We also closed up a loophole on paramedics being able to get tuition waivers for coursework that goes to their expertise as a paramedic. And that was really important for our first responders out there. Worked on that with Cheryl Cole. She was the House sponsor and I was the Senate sponsor. And what does that mean? What was that loophole about? What was happening? What the loophole was about was that paramedics who work for fire.

based services if they're paramedics that work along with firefighters they already get the tuition exemption but if they're standalone paramedics like austin ems austin travis county ems they weren't eligible for the tuition waiver So I think there's about 32 standalone emergency medical services across the state, and they were left out of the tuition exemption. So we fixed that. So that was that was proud work. And then we also worked on a bill along with Senator Paul Betancourt.

big Republican, but I have a really good relationship with him. And I passed a bill to let teachers serve on the appraisal review boards in the summer. So teachers can have a side gig in the summer that they get paid for and also help us with our appraisal review process. And I'm hoping the governor will sign it.

Senator Paul Betancourt added an amendment onto the bill that was a really good amendment. And there was a House amendment to make sure there's no ex parte communications between school districts and the teachers serving on the ARB. It's a great.

bill it's a win-win-win it's a for for those homeowners who are trying to get their contest heard for the tax appraisal tax appraisers who can't get ARB members, and also for teachers who are just looking for a summer gig that uses their capabilities well. And so I'm hoping that the governor will sign that one soon. Yeah, that's a big deal, right? Because that ARB, they're the ones like you mentioned that if you're...

A homeowner, you get your property tax bill in the mail, you know, every year you want to protest it. You feel like the appraisal is not right. You go before this board, you know, which they get paid to do it. counties all over have a really hard time staffing them right like all these boards that staffing is constantly an issue it's kind of an odd gig like you mentioned it's mostly in the summer and um so

But before, if you worked for any of these government agencies, right, you couldn't serve on the board. So that's what you're getting at is teachers would be a great thing to fill in. But this kind of would do with that. That's right. It's a hard gig, but it's the peak time is during the summer. And this way, teachers who, you know, they they know how government works. They know the value and the importance of the ARB and they could.

They can take up these summer jobs and knock out these appraisal contests only for residential properties. And most of these teachers are homeowners, too. So they get it. They get it. We need an accurate appraisal. So I'm hoping that the governor will sign that one soon.

I feel like a lot of the bills you just mentioned there are really like the bread and butter of running a government, like a lot of the stuff that doesn't get talked about as much, but are essential to making sure things work. Like, where do these ideas come from? You know, how do a lot of these parts? Yeah. Yeah, they come from the constituents themselves. So the academic fresh start bill came from an intern of mine.

who had started out in college when he was 18, had just bombed out because he didn't really understand the value of it. And now he was in his mid-20s. And he said, I'm going to have to wait until I'm 28 before that bad transcript is washed out. And so we started talking and one of my policy directors said, we should write a bill for that. And so we did. And now Daniel is back in school and he's applying to U of H in political science.

And that was State Senator Sarah Eckhart. And that's pretty much our show for today. The Austin Common Radio Hour is brought to you in partnership by the Austin Common and Co-op Radio. The Austin Common is a local news source that helps Austinites be informed and make a difference in their community. You can learn more about The Austin Common by visiting theaustincommon.com or following us on Instagram at the underscore austin underscore common.

Co-op is a cooperatively run community radio station based here in Austin, Texas. To listen to more of Co-op's amazing lineup of shows, visit koop.org or tune in to 91.7 FM. This show is hosted by me, Amy Stanspreit, and produced by John Hoffner. You can find podcasts of the Austin Common Radio Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. One quick friendly request on this, if you like our show and you find it useful, please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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