Rep. Jeff Barry: There Is No Free Tax Cut

State Rep. Jeff Barry (R-Pearland) sits on the two committees at the center of next session's biggest fight: the governor, lieutenant governor, and House Speaker all want agencies to cut spending 3% across the board — and Barry breaks down why you can't cut property taxes without cutting state spending first. As a freshman on Appropriations, he walks through how a budget bill actually becomes law, why "Robin Hood" school funding is about to collide with the push to eliminate local school taxes, and the insurance reform bill he says already stopped a rate hike for coastal homeowners.

Then Garrett takes over solo to break down the Talarico-Paxton Senate race turning into a real toss-up, why Governor Abbott's numbers are sliding in his own re-election bid, how data centers became the wedge issue nobody in the GOP wants to touch, and a wild pilot program out of El Paso ISD that's putting administrators back in the classroom as substitute teachers.

**Topics discussed:**
- The Texas budget process, from subcommittees to conference committee to the governor's veto pen
- The "Big 3's" push for 3% across-the-board agency budget cuts ahead of the 90th Legislature
- Why cutting property taxes requires cutting state spending first
- Property tax compression, homestead exemptions, and the fight over eliminating the M&O school tax
- Robin Hood recapture and funding for rural school districts
- The taxpayer-funded lobbying fight and the role of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB)
- Barry's bill eliminating the TWIA insurance tax and his push for a state reinsurance program
- New building codes aimed at making homes more storm-resistant
- The Ike Dike and protecting the Houston Ship Channel from storm surge
- Privatizing operation of state mental health hospitals
- The Talarico-Paxton U.S. Senate race and the Abbott-Hinojosa governor's race
- Data centers becoming a rural-vs-suburban political wedge issue
- El Paso ISD's plan to have central office administrators substitute teach

**Guest:** State Rep. Jeff Barry represents House District 29 (Pearland/Brazoria County) and serves on the House Appropriations and Natural Resources committees. Learn more or get involved at votejeffbarry.com.

**Sources:**
- *The Hill* — August 20, 2026 — [Texas, Iowa Senate races shift to toss-ups: Cook Political Report](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6041660-cook-political-report-texas-iowa-senate-races/)
- *The Texas Tribune* — By Gabby Birenbaum — August 20, 2026 — [Talarico floods Texas airwaves in U.S. Senate race as Paxton, GOP stay quiet](https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/20/texas-us-senate-race-donors-ken-paxton-james-talarico/)
- *The Center Square* — [Polls show tight Texas governor race, closest margin in Abbott's career](https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/article_5e175925-bc41-467f-a20c-4682c21a9422.html)
- *The Texas Tribune* — By Paul Cobler and Alejandra Martinez — August 3, 2026 — [New Texas data center projects frozen until state audits them](https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-project-audit-greg-abbott/)
- *Texas Tribune* (via Houston Public Media) — By Jaden Edison — July 22-23, 2026 — [Texas' longstanding 'Robin Hood' school finance system will face a new legal challenge](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2026/07/23/557775/west-texas-midland-district-lawsuit-school-finance-robin-hood/)
- *KFOX14/CBS4 El Paso* — [EPISD confirms central office staff, including superintendent, must sub eight days](https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/episd-confirms-central-office-staff-including-superintendent-must-sub-eight-days-this-year)
- *Houston Public Media* — By Lucio Vasquez — August 14, 2026 — [Texas schools see modest improvement in 2026 A-F ratings. Here's how they fared](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/2026/08/14/559560/texas-schools-see-modest-improvement-in-2026-a-f-ratings-heres-how-they-fared/)

Chapters
0:00 Cold Open & Episode Preview
1:17 Rep. Jeff Barry Joins the Show
4:27 How the Texas Budget Process Works
13:17 Cutting Spending to Cut Property Taxes
18:15 Robin Hood School Funding Explained
31:49 TWIA Tax Cut & Insurance Reform
40:53 The Ike Dike & Storm Surge Risk
48:32 Solo Segment: Senate Race Toss-Up
52:16 Data Centers Become a Political Wedge
54:34 El Paso ISD's Substitute Teacher Plan

Find us at seeingredpodcast.substack.com for full episodes. Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast. x.com/gwfulce 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Saying Red. I'm your host, Garrett Folks. We have a great episode lined up for you. That's right. The man The Myth, the legend, Jeff Barry, representative from Pearland, on the show with us today. We're talking about his role as a freshman. Got the the the desirable spot on appropriations and what that'll look like going into 90th, where the governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker all want to slash the budget 3% across the board. Gonna jump into all the issues that happened in the 89th and what's gonna happen in the 90th. And then after that, I talk about what's going on in the Senate race. It's a coin flip. Tylerico and Paxton, head-to-head, 50-50 shot, anyone's game. How's that gonna fall out? The governor's race is moving in the wrong direction for Republicans too, so we're gonna dive into that a little bit. And then eventually we're gonna talk about El Paso ISD. They got a cool initiative going on out there that I think people across the state are gonna want to check out. All that and so much more on this week's episode. But before that, don't forget to like and subscribe. Just go doop doop doop doop. Helps you keep the lights on, keeps it free for everyone. But now we're just gonna do like, subscribe, and go and we're gonna watch the video the interview with Representative Barry. My guest today is Representative Jeff Barry from Pearland, House District 29 of the great Brazoroia County. He sits on appropriations, natural resources. He's at the middle, he's in the on those two committees, he's on the middle of a two of the bigger stories going on right now with property tax cuts and all the that fun stuff on top of all the things happening with data centers. So welcome to the show, Representative Barry. Thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, Garrett, thanks for having me today. And I'm looking forward to our very first conversation. I think we've uh when you reached out, I didn't know who you were, and I did a little research, and you know, I've I've become a big fan.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Well, appreciate you doing the research and make sure you share it with all your representative friends. We want to make sure that everyone in the Capitol knows about it, but and everyone else too, not just people in the Capitol. But walk me through a little bit. You're you were a freshman in the last session, so you, you know, figuring out where the paperclips are and all that fun stuff, and they throw you into appropriations on some of the subcommittees. You know, tell me a little bit about the wins from the 89th session, but really what it was like for you to see it firsthand on your first session as a representative.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Well, I'll tell you, you know, I'm no stranger to being thrown, you know, in you know, going from the grease into the fire, Garrett. You know, I spent a lot of time on school board and city council, and I was somewhat known as that fiscal hawk when it came to those the those organizations. So I'm you know, digging into the numbers and understanding the numbers, it was great. And and finding how actually how state government works, that was the biggest eye-opener to me. You know, understanding that state governments actually provide tools to local government is kind of the perspective I come from. So that that was you know the lens that I I looked through when when given the task. But you know, speaking to Health and Human Services and all the different agencies around Texas was was interesting, you know, from an appropriations standpoint. Appropriations standpoint, every agency, or most agencies other than DPS and Health and Human Services came to our appropriations committee and and talked about their legislative appropriation requests and stuff like that and why they needed additional funding, or if they needed additional funding. I mean, you'll see in the 90th that'll get interesting. Some of the big wins we had this past session, you know, as you know, public school funding. Public school funding was a was a big one, eight and a half billion dollars for public schools. And we we somewhat changed the way that we funded public schools, and that's an actual interesting topic in and of itself. We could probably speak for an hour just on that. We had also had the ESA program that we created, largest ever in the state of Texas. I was able to work with some fellow compadres to get a few amendments on that bill. But the the appropriations process is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Let's let's talk a little bit about that. Like, and just let's clarify for the people at home, because some of the people just kind of follow the more high-level stuff. When we're talking about appropriations and revenues and ways and means and all that fun stuff, like what exactly is an appropriation and kind of where does the you where do you on the appropriations committee fall in that process?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

So, just as a person on the committee, the way it works is this. So let's just take uh Health and Human Services, that one 42,000 employee organization for the state of Texas, they put together their legislative priorities and their their legislative appropriation requests when it comes to every session. Now, this session is going to be quite unique because in in all my years of following the legislature and just government in general, I've never seen the big three in leadership in the state of Texas put out a directive like they recently have to tell all the agencies that they need to tighten the belt a little bit by 3%. Yeah. You know, I might have might have asked for more, but because I think we can always do better when it comes to government and we can be more efficient. But as a as a person on appropriations, those individuals or those agencies come to us, we hear all the arguments for and against those appropriation requests. We get the opportunity to ask our questions, we get an opportunity to vote on them out of committee to make sure that you know if if it goes out of committee and it gets appropriated into or passed down to what they call conference committee, it it actually it actually goes into this thing called conference committee. So the the House has a committee and the Senate also has a committee.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

We both hear the this is the this is the passing out the big HB1, SB1, the budget bill, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

That's right, and the supplemental, yeah. So so the House has a committee, the Senate has a committee, all the agencies and every appropriation request, even Texas Parks and Wildlife, everything is part all of the of our budget. So we hear all those arguments on the House and the Senate side. Then once that's done, all the chairs for all the subcommittees on the House and the Senate get together in a room or multiple rooms or whatnot in this thing called conference committee, where they really hash out, you know, did Health and Human Services or did Article II really want to approve funding for, you know, commercial SNAP programs? Or did they want to approve funding for this or that or whatever? Right. And so then conference committee is really where the rubber meets the road. I'd love to get to conference committee one day just so I could I can see the process and how those things actually get get finalized. But once conference committee is done, then the house or the senate, whomever created the bill, this year was a house bill, next year it's gonna be a Senate bill, right? Because we alternate who writes the bill, the final budget. And so last year was the House, this year it's gonna be a Senate. So the Senate's gonna hear the final reconciliation of the conference committee. They're gonna lay it out that it's gonna come over to the House. You know, we may or may not pass it. We all always have an opportunity to not pass a budget. I don't know why why we would go through that process and not pass it, but every opportunity, every member, all 181 of us have well, you are constitutionally obligated to pass a budget.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I just don't necessarily it's not necessarily that one that y'all work on so hard through through all this process.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Well, that was the one thing we are required to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Right. Yeah, exactly. So I guess just I want to re kind of re-clarify, or not rec clarify, but kind of just go through the process. So let's talk about how a bill is made and the budget bill. It starts in committee, or starts in subcommittee, really. There's different like in this case, I think there's eight articles, and then there's the myth mythical article nine, which is where budget items go to die. Then the which that could because it doesn't exist, basically. Or eleven, right? Or eleven or wherever. It's like that's the they you can move things to articles that don't exist, and then they just poof, they disappear. So you they go through the art the subcommittees meet, they they do their proposals, they go up to the main appropriations committee, they put out the main budget to the floor of the respective House or Senate, they pass it, each Senate, then there's a huge budget debate. There's writers which are just moving money around within the budget, and it's a whole process. And then conference committee happens when the House has passed a bill and the Senate has passed a bill that are different. They're substantively similar, but they're different, and the two come together to the basically the speaker and the lieutenant governor select a few members and senators to come together and just hatch out the differences between the house and the senate, and they make an agreement, and then both houses have to vote on the conference report, and if that happens, it goes to the governor for final signage of the final budget. That's right. He does he the governor has a line item veto, doesn't he? So then at that point, the governor can still go through and line item veto things. So that's the budget process. Yeah. And you're right in the middle of it because you serve on a couple subcommittees. You said you served on Article II, which is Health and Human Services, and then you said you could when you and you also are on six, seven, and eight, which are basically all the major agencies.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Agencies, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Well, when agencies being executive agencies, like Texas Parks of Wildlife, Texas Water Development Board, all those.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Gotcha. And so you're really at the middle of like setting the budgets for those huge agencies. Like we're talking this the governor is on top of being part of the big three that's asked for the three percent cut across the board from agencies as they're doing their next biennium budget writing process. He's also the major thrust behind that is in order to cut property taxes, we have to cut spending. Because you you can cut tax one type of tax all you want. If you don't cut the spending, you're still taxing the same amount, it's just pulling from different places. And so you have to cut those, you've got to cut spending in order to cut taxes effectively effectively. Especially when we have a balanced budget like in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yep. Well, I think it's just good practice, right? I mean, I think I think moving forward, if we're going to be good stewards of of our tax dollars, we need to make sure that our agencies are being as efficient as possible. And again, we need to give them the tools to be able to do so. So I think it's just good practice for for all the agencies in Texas to to go into budget season season with a baseline budget or or you know, just to make sure that, you know. And they should actually review their budgets every year anyway to make sure that there aren't legacy items in their budget that they don't necessarily need. You know, just again, streamlining their agency, making it run more efficiently, because these are taxpayer dollars, and we have to be very careful with with how we spend it. And they should they should actually have the same care that we do as legislators when it comes to the budget process.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Well, and then this there should be, and I I'm sure there's to a degree, I know there is this type of this type of bulk buying, but there's just making sure that you are getting the the right price for like Microsoft seats or Gmail suites or whatever like basic like work suites you get, they cost certain level certain money, and you can get more if you buy more seats. Well, we have a lot of seats as a state government versus an agency, and making sure that we're getting the best price and that there are systems to make sure that we're using our bulk buying power efficiently and not wasting money where we could save money. Those kinds of things, just making sure that the people in charge of spending the people's money are doing so in a way that is responsible. And I think that's uh and then you and then having the legislatures like you, you know, be the last pair of eyes to make sure that, you know, to check and see if they're doing those things. At the end of the day, though, we're we're trying the governor, then the big three are trying to cut the overall budget, and it's you know, to make sure that the the property tax cuts that they've been putting in place can maintain themselves year over year, on years when we're not as we're bringing in more money, so we need to figure out what how ways to make sure that we're giving that money back to the people.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Well, I mean, just to be clear, just to be clear, you know, the state doesn't collect property taxes at all. What we do, what we can pass is legislation restricting, restricting the amount of money that they can collect on rollback taxes, and when it comes to property taxes, we can do those things. I think in the governor's plan, he's talking about restricting some of their the spending. And we can't necessarily ask local governments to restrict spending if the state's not willing to do it ourselves. So it's a big, it's a big issue. And I think we as a state legislature need to be the example of how how actually we can run efficiently and effectively, all the while still being able to maintain an efficient and uh efficient budget.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah. And you're you're you're right about the taxing authority for sure. The property tax, the the we passed a constitutional amendment in the 80s that prohibited a statewide ink property tax. That's right. And so one of the big pushes they're gonna be doing is basically, I think, taking away most of school district's ability to levy any property tax and then paying the current portion of local contributions to a school district from state coffers, so from sales tax and other those taxes. So there's also this the the to cut property taxes, it's all so the two mechanisms. I mean, there's compression and there's just limiting the ability. So it's going to be one of the reasons why they're doing it is a lot of the compression, so the the amendments that we've passed that have given higher what are they called, property tax exemptions. So look raising rating that floor are paid for with state dollars, where the the local government still get the money for that valuation, it's just being paid for by the state.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

We we artificially compress their their uh property tax rates either through a homestead exemption or or something we call compression, where we we cap their rollback rate from you know to two and a half percent for schools. So whatever that number looks like, we reduce their their property tax rate on the M and O side in order to compensate. So so as as time goes by, they have been getting less of a property tax rate over time, although valuations have increased and things of that sort. On top of that, when we do compress rates or offer homestead exemptions, the state utilizes their their general fund to make those school districts whole. So we need to make sure that we our schools are you know properly funded. And you know, the governor just this week I saw he's putting a huge emphasis on the fact that he wants to now make our public schools number one in the United States of America, which I am excited to hear about because I think as Texans, we have every opportunity to do that. We have the revenue, we have the funding, we have the skill set from all of our teachers and administrators. So I'm excited to hear about that. I worry sometimes though when we talk about eliminating the MNO tax. I don't know what that looks like. I'd have to get more information. I don't know what that looks like sometimes because what do those mechanics look like? How does a school go to the legislature and say, hey, I'm gonna need more money for this program or that program? We heard a lot about systems modernization and the legislature last session of appropriations from all of our agencies. Uh it seems like they're all behind in in in infrastructure, IT infrastructure, modernization. What if a school system? I know when I was on the school board, we had a $17 million bond to address IT issues. So for Paraline ISD to go to the state legislature and say, hey, I need $17 million, or I need to go out for a bond for $17 million on you know for IT infrastructure. I just I just don't understand how that those mechanics are gonna work because largely what's happened in the past, public schools, you know, they've been able to do some of these capital projects with within the coffers that they had. Yeah, some of the savings that they had. Yep. I don't know how that's gonna look now.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, I don't, I I that's a great question that's gonna have to be answered, and I'm sure will be one of the more one of the bigger sticking points as it works through the process. My expectation is that some something will come out of the 90th, and then there will be a major thing that falls at the last second that ends up being part of a special session or two. I don't know what that will be, but like there's gonna be a big push on this. I mean, there's also the pending another another challenge to Robin Hood right now coming out of Midland IST. Yeah, that's a secondary question of if you're how the system works currently is if you have a certain level that you can tax to, and if you go over it, the state starts to recapture most of that money.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

It's a whole formula and it's a redistribution of property tax values based on the funding formulas.

unknown 17:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So the funding formulas for the schools come out from TEA. You know, there's 31, I think 31 different formulas that we use. And so the basic allotment generally flows through those funding formulas based on the demographics of that school. And there's tons of demographics associated with, you know, small to mid-sized schools, large, you know, large suburban schools, urban schools. So there's all these different things, demographics, you know, economically disadvantaged, free and reduced lunch. There are a lot of these things that happen. And when when the your dollars actually flow through the funding formulas, that tells us or the schools how much money they need to operate. Well, when that money, that dollar number is less than the property tax value that they collect, well, the additional funding is a Robinhood funding, right? So that additional money has to go back to the state to send to those rural areas that really need the help. Because we have smaller public schools around the state of Texas, like in De Henness, Texas. How many kids actually go to that school, but yet they have to have gymnasiums, they have to have classrooms, they have to have books, they have to have teachers, they have to have all these facilities and supplies in order to meet the standards that TEA sets forth to educate our kids in Texas.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So uh that becomes And if you get rid of MO as it currently sits and it's all funded by the state, then Robinhood's de facto not goes away. Right? I mean, I I could be wrong on that, but but but that so this is an inextricably, inextricably linked issue because it's one of the problems that people have had. It's like the Robin Hood like formula came out of like I think 1990, 1992 has been challenged for 35 years in the courts, and it's you know it's been upheld as constitutional, but is otherwise never it was one of those compromises that no one liked.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

That's right. I mean, it's exactly right. It's just like when you're on a city council, no one likes to do a walk you know, you know, spend money on water lines and infrastructure because it's not exciting. You know, people can't see anything when it's all done. But if you go and build a school or you know, put a new facade on a school or brand new basketball court or something like that, people can actually see that. They can see those things when and they feel like something has been accomplished. So you're correct. You know, these these schools in rural rural Texas need the funding, they need support. Otherwise, I don't necessarily know how we're going to do it. And if they have to come to the legislature every time they need funding, that's terribly inefficient for them. They have mechanisms in place for TASB to be able to do those things and go and lobby on behalf of those schools. And you saw last session we had a big, you know, there was a lot of folks in the legislature that are trying to really hinder what TASB can and can't do. I will tell you when I was on school board, TASB was a huge benefit to us, you know, through their legal services and things of that sort. So I think, again, TASB is a tool just like anything else. But rural schools I think it's odd.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

My I mean, if you want to get into this, we can, but uh and this is gonna be a tangent. My issue with the taxpayer-funded lobbying question is all of the proposals I've seen would not prohibit an employee or an elected official from a district from coming and testifying and providing guidance to the whatever and being paid to do so. And so by it would it only does like collections via like a second a third-party lobbyist or through an association or something. And so the big cities, the big school districts would still be able to send their government affairs person or their superintendent or their board members to Austin to testify. But those small rural schools, those smaller cities in West Texas or wherever, get absolutely no voice and no real eyes into the Capitol because. Because they're not being able to see anything that's happening to know that they need to try and get to Austin.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Bingo, you hit the nail on the head right there. You know, exactly. So they don't have the resources to do it. And I would I would even argue that the mid-sized schools like Paralleline ISD, Alvin ISD, you know, Brazosport ISD, those are my schools, and the smaller school I have has 10,000 students. So I have three large school districts in my district, and I would venture to say that they don't have time to go and go to Austin and lobby. The argument for taxpayer funded lobbying is the fact that TASB's out there negotiating and not negotiating in the best interest of all schools. And I've not seen that personally, but I take it, I you know, other legislators are certainly dead set on the fact that that has happened. And I just think that it's it's nothing I've seen. But again, again, I've only been here one session. I think that we desperately need to have an association or someone that's willing to advocate for public schools across the state, large and small. But if you want to parse out larger schools, I'm fine with that. You know, if you want the HISDs or Fort Bent ISDs or you know, Clear Creek ISDs to, you know, have to go to Austin to lobby for themselves, fine. But the Paralands and Paralands and Alvins and Browser Sports and Dan Barry's and Engletons, they just don't have the bandwidth. And trust me, I've been there. I spent six years on school board. I've been involved in our public schools since 2007. You're not going to find a bigger, bigger advocate than me, but you're also not going to find somebody that's more of a staunch, you know, conservative, you know, budgetarily conservative person either. So, you know, I definitely hold people to task when it comes to funding and taxpayer dollars. But I I sat on, I've voted for those budgets. I voted against the last budget that we had when on my life in my last budget year. That's a whole different story. But, you know, the thing is this, they just don't have the time nor the wherewithal. And last session, when we passed the public school funding bill, eight and a half billion of public schools, we pulled all that funding away from the from the funding formulas. So we did not increase the basic allotment. Well, we increased it by $55, which eliminated or stabilized the golden penny yield and stuff like that. But, you know, we we didn't we didn't add the money to uh the basic allotment. Instead, we put the money in buckets, which ultimately caused a huge amount of regulation to be analyzed by all of our public schools across the state. So they had to go and parse through all those different pieces to understand how the funding mechanism is supposed to work. It was a lot of work. So there's a lot. We can speak for an hour about public school funding and how public schools work and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Probably good, we'd probably go longer than that. I I just think I think there is a disin and disingenuity in the boogeyman of about this question, and that the main culprits of derision are coming from people who are just upset that TASB has won some fights that they've been on the other side of. And they're trying to make it an issue where it's okay, we just want to make it where they they can't be funded. And my whole thing is at what point if TASB is effectively a vendor to school districts, they all they are a a trade association that only allows school districts, but given their what the I'm just using TASB as an example, they're I can't remember what it's called, but they're something board uh where you can buy stuff. They have like a buy board, they have buy board is a is a major thing. They do have they provide policies and legal updates and all that sort of stuff and like those sorts of services. So at what point is the money being paid to this nonprofit organization, is it no longer taxpayer money? Because they're paying for a service. I pick they pay ATT to have their cell phones and their infrastructure, they pay Encore and they pay their utility bills and they pay Joe Schmo for t-shirts and they pay all these things. Is all that money still taxpayer money? Or do they pay for a service and it's no longer taxpayer money?

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah. But Garrett, a very interesting thing that you you mentioned is they're a vendor. Just because you sign up, you know, to be, you know, for them to be a vendor as part of your school district or whatever, doesn't mean you have to use them. You can still go to the, you can go to the TASB byboard, you can go to other, there are other buyboards out there that you can utilize and and compare the pricing between all three all of them. You know, so I think there's a misconception out there that TASB is the one and only buyboard out there, and that's just not true. I think though that public schools and cities alike, because cities also use buyboard through TASB, cities also use by board. So I think what uh the misconception is is once you once you get or associated with with one, then you just use that one. And also, too, is they the misconception is that they have best pricing on everything. And I found that to not be true. If you look at some of the Doge's testimony from last session, we had one of some of our very own council members from Paraline, Texas go and testify about some errors that were made in purchasing vehicles. So, and I arranged for them to come out and and have their voice heard to be able to do that and testify in DOES Committee. But again, they're not perfect. It takes it takes two willing parties to to have a contract, right? So TASB's there, they're willing to train people on how to utilize their systems and how to apply the appropriate credits and so on and so forth. They've told me that, they've told my constituents that, and they've made true to those promises. At the same time, though, we had some turnover in our finance department in that city, so some of that mind share was lost. Just like a business. I mean, I run a business, I have nine employees, and I, you know, when we hire new employees, we have to make sure that those employees come up to speed on all the different things, and as a business, we do. And cities are no different, schools are no different. And I think to me, the only the only the only surprise to me wasn't the buyboard part. It was the fact that TASB actually has you know a funding mechanism where they they do investments for schools like through Textpool, Textpool Prime and stuff like that. So I I would say I would say that TASB is nothing more than a creative vendor offering various products and services to to public schools and even cities across the state of Texas. I think they do a great job. They've done a great job for me over the years. But yeah, I don't I don't want for one moment doubt that some of my peers in the legislature have had bad experiences, and that's just bad experiences that they're gonna have to you know work on and whatnot. So I think that's the derivative derivative of all the taxpayer funded lobby issues and things of that.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

So and then there were I mean, I I know a lot of it came from old fights with the municipal league and this association of counties from 10, 15 years ago, too. But those it it's it's a it's an old fight, and we'll it's we'll see. I don't know how they functionally do it as a free speech issue for most of these organizations. I digress for a moment. I do want to clarify for folks just to make sure they know TASBE is a Texas Association of School Board. It's a it's a trade association that only services school districts. And there's a sister or parallel organization called the Texas Association of School Administrators, TASA TASB, that are you often hear about them used together. So just wanted to clarify that for listeners who were wondering what we were talking about, if they didn't figure out from context. Moving back to November for a look for a little bit, before we wrap up here, what would you say were the biggest wins for the everyday person, like the things that hit us in the pocket? But were you able to like lower taxes or lower insurance rates? And then beyond that, what in the 90th are you looking forward to really helping, you know, your kind of median voter, median Texan, and and you know, folks my age, kind of 30 to 50, young family trying to just get by, scratch a living, spawn business owner, or just W-2 employee?

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah, no, that's a great question. Just kind of going back to the 89th, I passed a bill that allowed or eliminated the tax on TWIA, which is Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, and they service coastal counties for windstorm and hail coverage for homeowners and commercial businesses. But they were paying in excess of $12 million a year to TDI on every policy that they sold. I eliminated that tax last session, mainly because it's a state agency. Uh TWIA is an agency that was created statutorily, and then they were paying another state agency. To clarify, TWIA is not a state agency. They're a standalone organization, they have their own board and whatnot, but they were paying taxes to the state of Texas. So I eliminated that tax, which in their annual report, they actually said that because Senator Middleton and I passed a bill. Senator Middleton had a bill that I also co co-authored with him on the House side. But Senator Middleton had a bill that and and I both had bills that they said directly attributed to the fact that they didn't have to have any rate increases this year. So effectively, the cost of reinsurance went from six amount of reinsurance they purchased went from six billion dollars a year to roughly a little over two billion dollars of reinsurance a year on Senator Middleton's bill, and I eliminated the tax. So between those two, they they weren't requiring a rate increase this year, which is unusual because every year they always ask for five or ten percent. And sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't, um, with the fact that our homeowners' rates are so high. I did some other stuff, you know, with the assisted living centers and backup generators, but that didn't necessarily affect pocketbooks. That affected the health and safety of elderly in assisted living facilities across the state of Texas. It was the fourth time that this bill seen the legislature. I'm happy to say I finally got it over the finish line. Now moving over to the 80 to the 90th session, if if I'm so lucky to get there, I think because I have a race coming up. What I'm working on is various things associated with insurance on the property and casualty side. I want I want to build a reinsurance program in the state of Texas so that insurance companies who come into the state of Texas have stability when it comes to reinsurance rates. It's inevitable every time we have a large catastrophic uh either a hurricane or a large billion-dollar hailstorm or large wildfire across the state of Texas. We have very varied insurance companies.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

No, real quick, explain what reinsurance is.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

So reinsurance is is a is a product that insurance companies buy to insure their book of business.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

So it's insurance for insurance companies.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Insurance for insurance companies. That's the way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Basically helps them spread risk if they have too much in one sector versus another, like you're saying. So if a hurricane hits or a hell storm hits and it's concentrated in one area where they're really, really overleveraged, they don't fail and they're able to then pay for the policy, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah, it's a bucket of money that they can go to when their claims fund that they collect from policyholders gets kind of to a certain point. They can go into this other bucket of money provided by the capital markets in the United States. So that that funding mechanism is driven largely by our economy in the in the United States. So several few years ago, what happened was we we had a several billion dollars come out of that marketplace because we were going through a time in history where we had a lot of Florida had a bunch of claims, Texas had a bunch of, I mean, Florida had a bunch of windstorms, Texas had a bunch of windstorms, and we were just moving along, and insurance companies were going defunct and leaving Texas and in Florida. So a lot of that funding capital came out of those markets, which drove the cost of insurance way up. So by creating this reinsurance program in Texas, is what I would love to do, create this market and add stability and a low-cost option for a certain layer of reinsurance for all the carriers in the state of Texas. So we would not be subject to the ebbs and flows of the commercial markets. We would we would we would be not affiliated with with any of those commercial markets, so we would have better more stability for the carriers. So that's a big deal. And we've proved proven that that works when we talk about that TWIA bill we passed last session. You know, had I not passed that TWIA bill and had uh Senator Middleton not gotten his bill across the finish line, though all those things did was cut expenses for the for the insurance company. So if our goal is to give tools to care, you know, businesses and and and and agencies across the state of Texas to be successful, this is a great way to cut expenses for insurance companies in coming into the state of Texas, thus lowering previous uh lowering previous premiums over time. So I think it's gonna be a great stabilization factor when it comes to insurance premiums for the long term.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Is there any appetite for encouraging better, more resistant building? So uh somehow incentivizing via the insurance companies or from the government the more resistant buildings that are less likely to be as damaged from future events. Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

No, there is, and and so we have there's there's a new building code that Representative Oliverson has. It's a it's fortifying fortifying homes, and and this this has been done in a couple different states that I know of. One in Florida, where they implemented this building code, where these building codes are a little bit more stringent that builds resiliency into homes. So they're less susceptible to damage on windstorms and tornadoes and hailstorms and such. In Florida, they they passed it and it's in effect today. They've not seen a significant decrease in premiums due to passing this bill, primarily because a lot of the homes are already fortified in in Florida because they're they're built to certain standards. They passed the same bill in in or a similar bill in Alabama. Alabama in statute, though, require the insurance companies to provide a credit. So there's a difference in the way that those two bills are implemented. I'm not sure how Representative Oliverson's gonna introduce his bill and what that's gonna look like. But he had this very bill last session, and in in the coastal areas and the in the 15, 16 counties of in on the coasts, we already have stringent building codes. We have the International Residential Code, we have the International Business Code, we have higher revisions of those codes than they use in the general populace of this in the state of Texas. So one bill that I'm going to introduce is taking the codes and and aligning them with the coastal codes across the state of Texas. So just to give you a little data point, not to bore you with any kind of details, I know you're you're busy, but you know, in in the regular building outside of the coastal areas, uh, most builders build homes to International Residential Code, a two 2006 version. On the coast, we build to 2018 going to 2024. So those actual those actual building codes provide a credit already on TWIA policies on the coast. So we have three ways of getting credits on policies on the coast. So if we're able to get credits and have built building resiliency on the coast already, why don't we just take the codes that we use already and implement those across the state of Texas without even without even requiring any kind of credit associated with the insurance policies or forcing forcing credits upon insurance companies, just allow that building resiliency to infiltrate across the state of Texas over time. I think we're going to see really good results associated with that. And there's not going to be a brand new building code and a lot and a lot of other vendors that are coming through to take, you know, take advantage of the fact that we passed this bill. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

One last kind of well, uh probably two more questions, but one question that one thing that's popped up on the show, we had Evan Mintz on a few weeks ago. He's an editorial, he's the opinion editor at the Houston Chronicle. And he's been a longtime advocate for and one of the people who perpetuates it on Twitter of what's called the Ike Dike, which is this large, which is a large this way of preventing a large storm surge event from coming off the Houston Chip channel. Given that you represent a large chunk of Rosouria County that's if not on the chip channel, it's not on the ship channel, but is in that area for sure. What are your thoughts on the Ike Dike? And then like what are its prospects of getting help from on the state side to push it across on the on the federal side?

SPEAKER_01 40:08

We have we have too much industry on the coast for the Ike Dike not to be important. So I like the Ike dike. I think that we need to we need to continue to focus on it. I know that the the federal government has provided a lot of funding associated with the eich dike. Those plans are out there on what it is we need to do. And you know, when we talk about you know beach erosion, people think about the eich dike as as affecting beach erosion and things of that sort. They don't necessarily think it's all that important, but it is truly very important because one of the things that the eich dike would do would be to eliminate or reduce significantly tidal surge when it comes when it comes to hurricanes and large storms coming onto the coast, not necessarily just protecting our beaches, but protecting industry. So we need to be very very cautious when we understand or we talk about the eyke dike and what it truly means for us on the coast here. And it's not just the Houston-Galvison area, it's it's from Matagorda County all the way to Orange County that that we're really focused on this particular area because if you're not aware, we have over 20% of our GDP in the state of Texas that flows through those port systems, right? You know, as of today, and 8% of the US GDP flows through Texas Gulf Coast.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

So that's Freeport, Beaumont, and Houston's Houston. The three big ports.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

That's right. And not to mention we have other ports. We have 23 ports, I think 23, 23 ports across the coast. Not really people, not a lot of people really know that. We have we have all these ports across the coast. It's overall, you know, through the entire port system, including Corpus Christie. You know, Corpus Christie's having a ton of issues right now regarding water and industry and and and actual drinking water for their citizens.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

They did have a reprieve. They had all that rainwater from a month ago has gone into Lake Corpus Christie. It's 100% full now.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

I know, and their lakes are full, 80%. They're doing great right now. Thank God they did get a reprieve. I'm I'm grateful for that because they they certainly needed it. I hope that their their city council and the leadership within in and around uh Corpus Christi Christie puts it into high gear and gets this done. I think uh Representative Villa Lobo is gonna be a huge proponent of and driving a lot of that change in in Corpus Christie, and I'm looking forward to the good things that she's gonna do there.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Along with the man in black himself, Representative.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

That's right. Along with Chairman Hunter, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Well, one last thing before we we we let you go. What does there you were talked a little bit before about sub uh Article II being held in human services? Is there anything in on in that realm that you're planning on uh attacking, uh or not necessarily attacking, but like going after and passing budget items on or legislation on in the next session?

SPEAKER_01 43:17

When it comes to when it comes to our hospitals that we own and maintain, like specifically our mental health hospitals, because we we've just put about two and a half billion dollars a couple sessions ago into building mental health facilities across the state of Texas, which we desperately need, by the way, and I'm grateful that that that's done. I think the lieutenant governor was instrumental in driving a lot of that stuff. And but you know, when when it comes to the operations of those, I mean, private enterprise has always been more efficient, better and more efficient at running running business than the state of Texas and any any government for that matter. It's been proven time and time again. So my proposal has always been to To focus on allowing private enterprise to own and operate these hospitals, much like a triple net lease. So if I go and lease an off office space from a commercial property owner, I have to pay for my insurance, I have to pay the taxes, and I have to pay the expenses associated with that property. Why would we not be able to lease these uh facilities out? We have the client base already, because they're called they're coming to our facilities for help. You know, we're we're gonna be able to provide the services and the individuals. Why can't we lease these out on a triple net uh lease basis to operators and you know practitioners across the state of Texas? I think it's the a common sense thing to do or to consider, especially when we're looking at affordability issues. You know, if we can become more efficient in the way that the state of Texas runs, I'm all for it. And I'm gonna continue to advocate for it. You know, you know, small wins here and small wins there, equal up to large equal to large wins over the long term. So that's gonna continue to be something that I'm gonna advocate for. And if you haven't taken a look at some of our new hospitals, you really need to. They're state-of-the-art, they're wonderful hospitals, and uh I think that you know we've done a great job in building those across the state. We have two more big hospitals coming being constructed right now across the state, which is gonna add more money to the costs associated with deferred maintenance and employee benefits and salaries for the upcoming hospitals. It's it's extraordinarily expensive and in the billions of dollars for the state of Texas, and I think we need to consider consider other options when it comes to that.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

Well, I absolutely thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find more information about you or what you're doing right now?

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Go out to uh if you want to go out to votejeffberry.com, and that's B-A-R-R-Y, votejeffbarry.com. You can see my bio and all the things that I'm up to. We have a Facebook page. Always check my Facebook page and and see what we're doing. We're out in the district every single day. I really enjoy being out in the district. But yeah, those two areas are the best way to do it. And look forward to meeting meeting you and all my constituents out in the county, and I appreciate all the all the work that you do, Garrett.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Thank you so much. Well, representative, we appreciate your time. We appreciate everything you're doing for Texas. But for now, we'll let you get back to it, and hopefully we'll be able to grab your ear during session or afterwards to hear about all you got done in the 90th.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

You got it. I appreciate it. Y'all have a good one. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Wow, what a great interview with Representative Barry. It was a great conversation. Be sure to like and subscribe. We're gonna dive into a few more topics here. I want to talk a little bit about the what's going on in the U.S. Senate race. The Cook Report, which is a person who like it's one of the major like outside organizations that rate like the how competitive a particular race is, has moved the Texas U.S. Senate race to a toss-up, meaning it could go either way. The polling is just way too close. The factors and all the other stuff that goes into it puts it at a puts it at a 50-50 more or less. The big thing right now that's helping Taler Rico is Paxson's never recovered from the negative ads that just destroyed him over the past year in the primary. Taler Rico didn't have that problem. Taler Rico's outraised him like 60 million to 9 million. And so Talo Rico has been on air. I see a Talo Rico ad every night, or one or two. I saw three this morning while the TV was on while I was getting my kids ready. There's one right now with him and his grandpa. He's one of him at a grocery store. You know, it's just a normal dude talking about normal issues, pocketbook stuff. We're not seeing the insane Talo Rico that you see on Twitter, where all the, you know, people just kind of post stuff because Twitter's not real life. So Twitter maybe has 15% of the electorate on a good day. And those the memefication that's going on there isn't being shown to the rest of the people. And so, yeah, people are starting to tune in. Numbers are about to shift because people start really keying into the election after Labor Day, which is in a couple weeks. And so we're gonna have a better idea then. But as I talked about after the primary, after the runoff, Paxson needed to spend this time doing whatever he could to define Talarico and not letting Talarico define himself. And he hasn't done that effectively. He had a singular message that was good. Taler Rico's weird. The Talafrico or whatever, the necessarily the sloganeering wasn't the best I've ever seen, but the idea was correct. And that was the what they were pushing. But it hasn't been enough money. The National Republicans didn't want to put any money into it. Apparently, MAGA has not wanted to put any money into it. And so there's just not been enough money behind PAX. And now he's going on Fox News saying how he needs money. He's raised a few million dollars a week until now until the end of the election. And he's absolutely correct. If he wants to win, he has to raise a lot of money because it's expensive to go on air in Texas. Right now, he's spent about 20 grand, which is enough to get an ad picked up for free media. So sometimes what a candidate will do, if they don't have enough money, is they'll buy a very small, limited run, maybe run it once or twice, and maybe a good amount of eyeballs will see it, but then they put press releases behind it so national media will run it on the news and talk about it. And that seems to be what he's been able to do so far. That's not enough to win this in Texas, even as a Republican, especially when you're going against a well-funded Democrat. On the flip side of this, you have the Democrat, you have the governor's race, where Gina Anahosa is running against Governor Abbott, and the money is completely flipped. Governor Abbott has like 70 million on hand. He's bringing in tons of money. He's spending it. I see a Governor Abbott ad nearly as often as I see a Talerico ad. And so I'm not seeing anything from Gina. I think she's raised like four million bucks, or she has like four million bucks on hand. Like she is a non-starter, but nevertheless, Governor Abbott is his numbers are going down. They're not getting to where he wants them to be. A lot of this is coming down to the fact that, again, people haven't tuned in yet. And so there are a number of people who are saying, I don't know, who are probably just gonna vote for Republicans. That's just how this goes in Texas. Historically, these are just non-committal people on the phone, and then the numbers start to get closer to reality or closer to what reality is, whatever that is, closer to the election. Again, we're still about two and a half months out from election day. A lot of people who end up voting just haven't paid attention to this enough yet to form an opinion. And so we'll start to see those numbers stabilize and we'll see how those go. One of the big issues right now is data centers. If you want to know why Governor Abbott has come out as strongly against data centers as he has, which is to say he's called them out by saying, like, you've not been a responsible business, you've marketed this terribly, you're not doing things responsibly, and you've created all these problems, is because if you want, when you want, when you run in Texas a Republican, Democrats are going to run up the score in the urban centers. Republicans that need to run up the score in rural areas, and you're typically fighting it out in the suburbs, and whoever wins the suburbs can do it, unless you run up the score enough in one of your two areas. If you can really run up the score, really get the margins that we get Republicans get, they get like 80%, you can get 70 to 80% of the vote from rural Texas goes to Republicans. Well, if you can make that number come down or keep the percentage where you just have fewer people coming out, those other places where Democrats do better start to, you know, get weighted better for Democrats. And so this is a big wedge issue for Republicans right now. And it's why you've seen so many Republicans just go not even quibble about it. They're just like we're they're they're gonna put their hands up and say, fine, if the rural Texans don't want it, they don't want it, we're not gonna push it. That's the reason why. And so, like, we're gonna see how that issue plays out over the next couple months, but I don't think it's gonna get better for that as in our advocates, boosters, or people who are promoting it. But that's where we're at with those issues. One thing I wanted to tie back is Elon Musk is a l is reportedly gonna be spending a lot of money across the country on behalf of different Republicans. He's very involved here in Texas. Obviously, he's moved a lot of his companies here, and our SpaceX has massive stuff here, Tesla has massive stuff here, and so he's reportedly going to be spending a good amount of money in the state. I haven't seen how that's actually being spent yet, but he did in 24, and so we'll see what he does going on. That's a big thing to keep an eye on over the next few weeks on that. But let's shift gears a minute. Let's talk about education again. El Paso ISD, a pretty large ISD, independent school district, all in the mountain time zone and far, far, far west Texas. They are reporting that they're trying to they're going to make every single administrator at Central Admin substitute teach at least eight days a week. Or sorry, hey, eight days a week, eight days of school year in this upcoming school year, including the superintendent. A lot of people are giving this lot. It does two things. One of them means they can spend less money on substitute teachers, which is nice. The other thing is a lot of people who are in admin start in teaching and they haven't taught in a long time. And so being forced to have to go in and do substitute teaching on different campuses across your district, especially in a district as big as El Paso, and see how these things are are happening does a lot towards helping those decision makers make better decisions for what's going on in the classroom to see where problems are actually existing. And so it's a pilot, I guess. I'm not sure if other districts have done this, but El Paso is getting news about it. And I've seen more than one legislator and a lot of activists who are taught who are appointed this and be like, we need to look at this. This might be something we need to require to some degree for all school districts so that admin knows what it is. So I just wanted to highlight that K Fox reported this out of El Paso, I believe. But it's a great story, a great wrinkle to kind of be looking at for possible ways to make our schools better going forward, just kind of making sure we got administrators who are in charge of it. I think we should also add board members. Board members should be substitute teachers. And I think they should be in and be in it. And if your board member probably can't require them statutorily, but if your board member isn't doing it, you probably shouldn't be voting for them. I think that's I think that should be a great thing for any school board member to do is be to get involved as a substitute teacher to make sure they're seeing on the ground how stuff's working in the school day. So some other interesting stuff came out from TA. The rankings came out, the A through F rankings came out last week, and so there's been a lot of reporting around that. But there's also some stuff as school has come back into session. We're starting to see numbers come in for the major school districts. And day one snapshots aren't ever used for anything because a lot of kids get enrolled later. Either A, they're figuring out they're gonna where where they're going to school, or maybe they were on vacation and their parents are just gonna enroll them later. That's why TEA doesn't take like a full district snapshot until sometime in October, and or it's like October 1st, and it's reported October 15th, stuff like that. But it's something to keep an eye on is that the numbers are people are the big districts, from what I've seen, might be missing their projections, and they're already on all of them, are pretty much on a downward trajectory, and they were building into the fact that uh ESA's opened up this year. But these schools have all been on negative enrollment trajectories for a while. We're just not having as many kids as we used to have. This isn't a pro this isn't a problem that's specific to independent school districts, it's a problem for private schools and it's a problem for charter schools as well, that there aren't as many students as there were before. We just didn't have as many, I guess, five, six, seven years ago, or 18 years ago, depending, you know, that range. And we're starting to see that. And the way Texas funds its schools based off of average daily attendance, and we're gonna we're starting to see a real decrease in that funding level, while we're also seeing an increase in how much each student is getting. There are still, nevertheless, when it comes to schools, like we talked about with Representative Barry, there are built-in costs. You have to have a building, you have to have AC. Right? There are certain costs that are just flat, doesn't matter how big the school is going to have a kid you're teaching. So that all plays a factor in in the fights that we're going to have over the next session. But I just wanted to kind of point that out that even in this strict that, and I'm going to be keeping my eye on this particular, but I think that even in accounting for students leaving the public school system to go to use ESAs, we're still going to see a greater, a bigger number than 100,000 having left or not coming into schools because the kids don't exist, despite our population growth and all these things. It's kind of a crazy thing that's happening. But there's going to have to be, there's going to be some big fights and some big not necessarily fights, there's going to be some big discussions around not only how school is funded, but what school, like what the schools are being like how they're being rated or how they're being judged. And we're going to have to deal with the fact that we had to build out for a world that we with a lot more kids than we're we have. And so how can districts, especially large ones with a lot of physical assets, right-size in a way that's not going to damage property values or damage community trust and all these other factors. So it's something to keep an eye on, and I'm gonna keep keep my eye on it. But so you know whenever those stories drop, make sure again you like, you subscribe, you comment. It's free. Just go into the thing and just do it real quick. I'd appreciate it. Helps keep these lights on and uh keeps me on the air. So thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Bye guys.