Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN- If border lawmakers want greater state investment in their communities they need to start objecting to an inadequate state budget that reflects misplaced priorities, says state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh.

“It is not OK to keep voting for the budget,” Shapleigh said. “We have to say being last will put us last. We can no longer have the least spending on our own people in the country. That’s the reason there is no medical school in the Valley for 50 years. It is because it has never been put in the budget.”
 
The El Paso Democrat made his comments in a video interview with the Guardian and Action 4 News about the 81st legislative session that winds down on Monday. He believes any review of the session needs to start with the $182.3 billion 2010-2011 state budget.

“More people need to speak out against the budget. I have voted against the budget the last two cycles because we have to make a statement. We can do better. We need to invest in education. We need to invest in our future,” Shapleigh said.

Shapleigh was one of a handful of Democrats who voted against the budget in the Senate. On Friday, the House voted 142-2 in favor of the budget, with the lone “nay” votes coming from Reps. Joe Crabb, R-Atascocita, and Sid Miller, R-Stephenville.

Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican from San Antonio, said the new state budget is a good one.

“The approved budget is balanced and fiscally responsible. It adequately funds necessary government services. House members have shown wise judgment in adopting a biennial budget which does not touch the Rainy Day Fund, controls state expenditures, provides important funding for education, health care, and transportation and invests in the future,” Straus said on Friday.

Shapleigh has a different view. He said the budget needs to be challenged by border lawmakers because the underlying philosophy towards state spending in Texas has hurt their communities.

“For at least 15 years, Texas has been the home of Grover Norquist. Who is that guy? He’s that famous rightwing ideologue who said let’s shrink government so small that we can drown it in a bathtub,” Shapleigh said. “So, Texas has the lowest per capita spending in the country. We spend less on our own citizens.”

Shapleigh said that philosophy has resulted in less investment in public education, highways, college tuition, and health care than is necessary for a growing state.

“If these programs are so small, they are shrunk in the budget, who is hurt? Who’s hurt is the Valley,” he said. “When we say Texas has more uninsured children than any other state, guess what? Look at the Valley and the million people who live in two counties… that is the home of the uninsured in Texas - Cameron and Hidalgo counties.”

Shapleigh pointed out that large border counties like Cameron, Hidalgo, El Paso and Webb have the highest number of uninsured citizens. He said in El Paso the percentage is about 25 to 28 percent for adults, with an even higher percentage for children.

“When a child has asthma in El Paso they go to the county hospital and so that preventative care that could have handled it for pennies on the dollar during the week is now in the emergency room of the county hospital and it has become a thousand dollar treatment. And who pays for it, the local property taxpayer,” Shapleigh said.

Shapleigh said the same lack of investment in health care at the state level is true for public education. “When we say the school districts are strapped for cash and we keep shifting more and more of the burden to local property taxpayers because the state is not picking up its share, guess who is hurt? These very fast growth low per capita property value districts like Cameron and Hidalgo counties,” he said.

In a recent debate in the Senate, Shapleigh was critical of a move to extend the Texas Economic Development Act to 2015. The Act is like a tax abatement program that businesses can enter into with school districts in Texas. Should the Act be extended to 2015 under H.B. 3676, it would cost the state a total of $675 million dollars per biennium.

“They don’t pay taxes for ten years. That costs us $644 million in school taxes. Someone has got to pay to keep the schools open,” Shapleigh said. “They were coming to Texas anyway and then what happens on the other side, 380,000 kids are not enrolled in Medicaid.”

Shapleigh pointed out that half the students who qualify cannot get a Texas Grant and thus cannot afford to go to college. He said some state lawmakers would rather give tax breaks to large corporations than invest in a student’s education. “Who was the casualty - the kids because they didn’t have a lobbyist down here to defend them,” Shapleigh said.

Shapleigh said the same lack of investment in health care and education at the state level is true for transportation. “Let’s take highways. We used to have 71,000 miles of state highway systems. We had a gas tax that would pay for things. So what is happening now? People here (at the Capitol) are saying, I’m not paying for anything,” he said.

Shapleigh believes too many legislators are making an unnecessary “line in the sand” with comments about not raising taxes. He said they believe they are being “real brave.” He disagrees.

“You know what I call that, cowards; cowards because they won’t do their job funding what they’re supposed to fund,” Shapleigh said. “So, what’s their solution? Let’s punt, let’s give it to the locals to vote in their own local community; whether or not they want to raise the gas tax and they want the registration fees to go up to build this highway project because we don’t have the courage here (at the state Capitol) to do the right thing to provide the revenue to have a highway system. That’s what’s happening.”

Shapleigh was equally blunt when discussing the death of the CHIP expansion bill that would have allowed an additional 80,000 children to get health insurance. Gov. Rick Perry said he would veto the bill.

“I hope people remember when they go to the ballots. I hope they think, what happened here. Truthfully, I hope they get angry,” Shapleigh said.

“Who killed Medicaid, who killed CHIP here? When Rick Perry can say, I’m going to veto the CHIP bill if it gets to my desk, that attitude, that leadership is failed leadership. To be the governor of the state that covers fewer kids with health insurance and say I’m going to veto the bill when it gets to my desk, is an outrage. People ought to remember that when they go to the polls.”

Shapleigh believes lawmakers need to stand firm against pressure from the “no new taxes” groups. In the dying days of the session, calls from such groups appear to have played a role in blocking a local-option tax proposal from Dallas area officials.

“It’s a tiny set of folks. We have had two or three e-mails. If I say to the people of El Paso, do you want to be in congestion for two more hours a day, do you want to see gridlock like they do in Austin, Texas, where, if you leave for home at 5.15, 5.30, you don’t get home ‘til 7, folks would say, ‘we want to have a highway system and a transit system that really works.’ They are saying that in north Texas, they are saying that in Dallas,” Shapleigh said.

Shapleigh said he hopes he and other lawmakers hear loud and clear from border residents in the interim.

“People need to call foul. They need to say, Rick Perry, you’re not doing your job. Lawmakers in Austin, you’re not doing your job. It is your job to pay for these statewide essential services.”