Four new Texas House members discuss immigration, property taxes and public school funding

Subscribe to The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to date with the most important Texas news.

The four freshmen’s priorities for the 2023 legislative session include lowering property taxes, improving public education, and reducing the number of migrants and drugs crossing the Texas-Mexico border, they said during a Texas Tribune event. Tuesday.

Republican state representatives Carl Tepper of Lubbock and Ben Bumgarner of Flower Mound spoke in libertarian tones, saying Texans want their government to “leave them alone” and emphasizing a desire to return some of the state’s budget surplus to the taxpayers it depends on. came.

“This is our money,” Bumgarner said. “The reason we have a surplus is because we paid too much in taxes. So I want it to come back to us humans.”

Democratic State Representatives Michaela Plesa of Collin County and Maria Luisa “Lulu” Flores of Austin said their top priorities are increasing public education funding and lowering property taxes. Plesa pushed for giving retired teachers a 14th paycheck for the year, up from the 13 checks the last Legislature gave teachers in 2021, and tried to change the state’s method of “returning” public education funding. Her area in Collin County is one of the hardest hit in Texas, she said.

Flores said she would prioritize school funding and teacher salaries.

Tepper also said tightening school security would be a focus for lawmakers in response to last year’s shooting at Uvalde Primary School, where 19 students and two teachers were killed.

“We need to better protect our schools,” Tepper said.

Paying tribute to Republican leaders’ push for a “bill of parental rights” to limit what educators can teach about race, sex and gender, Bumgarner said he wants to “get politics out of schools” and force teachers to focus on “things that have meaning.”

Both Republicans said they support giving parents public funds to transfer their children from public schools to schools of their choice, which is expected to be a big fight in the Legislature this session. Traditionally, Democrats and rural Republicans, whose public schools are big employers and often the only education choice in their area, have joined forces to prevent such a law from being passed. But Tepper said his constituents in Lubbock are “demanding some options.”

Lawmakers are divided on how to deal with the growing number of migrants at the border. Gov. Greg Abbott has been praised by Republicans for his multibillion-dollar efforts to send Department of Public Safety and National Guard troops to the border and build a state-funded border wall. They said his efforts to bus migrants to other parts of the country brought the crisis to the attention of the country.

The Democrats agreed that there is a problem at the border, but disagreed with the state’s approach to solving it. Plesa was critical of the disparity in benefits for National Guard troops assigned to the Abbott Border Mission. These members do not receive death benefits on the same basis as other law enforcement officers involved in the mission. She signed a bill by Republican State Representative Jared Patterson to bring troops to pay parity for death during a mission.

But she also criticized the mission’s lack of results after years of multi-billion dollar investment and spending on the border wall.

“I’m not against border guards, but I feel like it’s more like an art installation,” she said.

However, all four lawmakers agreed that immigration is at a watershed and urged the federal government to address the issue.

“We implore Congress to put your actions in order,” Tepper said. “Find a solution to this, secure this border, and then find a solution to base immigration.”