Senator Dawn Buckingham talks legislative session

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press 

On Tuesday, Senator Dawn Buckingham said at the Public Policy Council lunch held by the Killeen Chamber of Commerce that she expected Governor Greg Abbott to call that afternoon for a special session. She was right. 

Abbott called for a special session of the legislature, which will commence on July 18. 

During the luncheon on Tuesday, Buckingham reflected on her first go-round as part of the Texas legislature, both through what was accomplished and what’s still to be done. During her freshman session, 28 of her bills were passed, one of the highest numbers in the Senate. However, Buckingham said she knows it’s still “veto season.”

The vast majority of the Senate session, she said 85 percent of the votes were unanimous. 

“That’s Democrats, Republicans, getting along and agreeing on issues and doing together. I’m a big unity person. To the extent you can find common ground and work on that common ground together and accomplish things, that’s what I want to do.”

She said her office’s strategy from the beginning was to partner with each fellow senator something, and then look across to the Texas House to partner with representatives there. 

Among the questions she answered on Tuesday was a question about whether funding for child protective services was adequate. 

“One of those places the legislature really put their money where their mouth is was child protective services. We really increased the funding, we will make it available so we can have more caseworkers, and those caseworkers are spending time with the families and their children and not doing extraneous paperwork, jumping through extra hoops. We’re trying to change the culture of the Department of family and Protective Services.” She also spoke of the idea of breaking the “punitive” work cycle in the past which led to high turnover in caseworkers 

In response to providing relief to communities affected by disabled property tax exemptions, Buckingham said one bill she helped pass was one that looks at unfunded mandates in the state budget. 

“We want a report (from the Comptroller) of everything that we have in the legislative process that is not funded.” Buckingham believes it will show things like unfunded mandates that the legislature can either get rid of or fund, and also possibly discover “pools of money” for things that were funded as far back as 50 years ago, cease to exist and yet are still funded every year. 

As far as the upcoming special session, according to a statement from Abbott’s office on Tuesday there are 20 items the legislature needs to work through when it convenes, to include “sunset” legislation, a teacher pay increase of $1,000, administrative flexibility in teacher hiring and retention practices, school finance reform commission, school choice for special needs students, property tax reform, caps on state and local spending, preventing cities from regulating what property owners do with trees on private land, preventing local governments from changing rules midway through construction projects, speeding up local government permitting process, municipal annexation reform, texting while driving preemption, “privacy”, prohibition of taxpayer dollars to collect union dues, prohibition of taxpayer funding for abortion providers, pro-life insurance reform, strengthening abortion reporting requirements when health complications arise, strengthening patient protections relating to do-not-resuscitate orders, cracking down on mail-in ballot fraud, and extending maternal mortality task force.

It was already announced this week that Abbott signed legislation which bans texting while driving statewide, to take effect Sept. 1, 2017.