Texas House of Representatives, District 20 Candidates

Texas House of Representatives, District 20 Candidates

Written by Mark Collins and Kara Vaught Friday, 19 September 2008

Dan Gattis, Republican (incumbent)

• Hometown: Austin
• Education: Bachelor’s in agriculture economics, Texas A&M University; Juris Doctor, South Texas College of Law
• Political background: First elected as District 20 representative in 2002, re-elected in 2004
• Contact: 868-5400, dangattis@dangattis.org

Q. What would your priorities be for the 81st session?

A. Some of the main things that are a concern to my constituents are appraisal district reform and property tax reform. I’m serving on a select committee to address and deal with those things. We’re going to have to come up with a package of changes for how we deal with [them] from a transparency and accountability standpoint.

Q. How would those changes come about?

A. I think the appraisal district board of directors should be elected positions the way our commissioners and constables are elected. The appraisal board of directors does three things: sets the budget for the appraisal district, hires the chief appraiser and sets basic policy guidelines for the appraisal district. It is not the board that deals with the review process. If taxpayers’ concerns were not being addressed or if there was an incorrect technique [in appraising] or if they just felt they were being treated rudely, then there would be someone accountable to the voters. Some of the people who talk against that say, “That’s putting politics into the appraisal process.” The people who select those positions now are the taxing districts. So the people who are getting the money get to select them but the people paying the money do not. That doesn’t make sense.

On the property tax side, I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t want their home to increase in value; it’s the biggest asset most of us have. Then why do we get upset when the appraisal goes up? Because it means an automatic increase in our taxes — but it shouldn’t. If the appraisals of a property increase 20 percent, shouldn’t the tax rate decrease 20 percent? If it doesn’t, that means that taxing entity has raised your taxes. Instead, what happens is appraisals increase 20 percent, they cut the rate 5 percent and say, “We cut your taxes.” No, you didn’t. You raised it 15 percent. That’s not transparency, and that’s not accountability. We have to fix that part of the system so that if appraisals go up, the tax rate must go down the same amount. If a [taxing entity] says, “We need more money from you this year than we did last year,” they ought to have to take a vote that says, “We’re raising your taxes, and here’s why.” Just tell me what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Q. What is your opinion on the Hwy. 29 expansion study?

A. This may sound like I’m trying to escape the issue, but you have to look at the positives and you have to look at the negatives. The positive side of buying right of way now is it will be cheaper today than it will be in the future. With the “if we don’t build it, they won’t come” attitude that Austin has had forever, we have double-deckers running through the middle of town. That is five times more expensive than the cost of building a normal road. You have to plan for the future. The negative side of it is that if you say, “This is where our corridor is going,” and don’t actually purchase that property, then really you’ve harmed those property owners. Then they can’t ever sell their property. You can’t do that to people. We had that fight over reservoirs last legislative session where everyone wanted to designate where the reservoirs would be without ever purchasing that property. [If that happened], you’ve just made it to where the people who own that property can’t sell it. People said, “We’ll just buy the property 20 years from now,” but at what value: What it would have been before or after [the legislature decided it would be the site of a reservoir]. If you are going to designate it, then you need to purchase the right of way. The real issue is whether the county should be taking on this role. The answer is the state ought to be taking on this roll. That’s an issue with TxDOT right now that we’re addressing. I serve on appropriations and we’re addressing that. TxDOT has a horrible record right now, and TxDOT is a mess right now and we’re doing a lot of things to correct that. It’s been twenty years of negligence and abuse in a very beaureacratic system, and it’s going to take a lot for us to correct those things. If one of my employees lost $1,000, they would be fired. But we loose a billion dollars and no heads have rolled? What message does that send? We have to fix that agency. The answer is TxDOT should be out here designating and buying right-of-way and everything else. The county shouldn’t have to do it, but the county can’t wait for TxDOT to get its business in order. Now, to that controversial issue —I’ve gotten lots of letters and things — there are a couple of neighborhood where the plans had it going through the middle of the neighborhoods. You can’t do that. Therefore, those plans have to be removed and I think Friday they removed those. I talked to commissioners Covey and Long about it and they had reached the same conclusion that I had reached. It wasn’t through me calling them, but it was a good discussion with them. They said, “Of course we can’t do that. It’s part of federal regulations that we have to have multiple choices and eliminate from there.” I don’t think those were ever seriously considered as possible, but you need to get those off the table as quickly as possible to alleviate the concern for those people.

Jim Dillon, Democrat

• Hometown: Liberty Hill
• Education: Described his education as “a Ph.D. in the 9/11 truths”

• Political background: Candidate for Liberty Hill ISD school board in 2004 and Texas governor in 2006
• Contact: 515-0229, jimdillon@sbcglobal.net

Q: Why should people vote for you?

A: Because I’m of the attitude that a fight is necessary. There are a lot of candidates who would like to do well and solve some of the issues and problems that face us, but without the passionate commitment to an actual fight — and I’m talking in terms of fight for our survival — [like] the fight our soldiers are in and the fight poor people are in every day for their very existence and survival. I’m committed to that level and to solving problems that face our country because I have young daughters who are going to be impacted by these problems if we don’t solve them now.

Q: What is your platform and why?

A: As a candidate for the Democratic Party, I’m supposed to adhere to their platform by and large. But I stray from it in the most important areas, which irritates them. My platform consists generally of personal liberties, individual freedoms, because our country was founded on the notion that independence and rugged individualism were what was required to win the West and survive under harsh conditions. Defeat the British, defeat Mexico, defeat the Indians — that was more of a genocide thing. The official formal platform of the Democratic Party includes a love of abortion, wide open borders and uncontrolled spending, extraordinary rights for homosexuals and pretty much unrestricted drug use. So in those areas my platform is uniquely customized to myself in that I have my own deeply held convictions on what the solutions need to be. In general, the two most important issues to me are the second amendment — gun rights — and ending abortion. Other issues are secondary to that.

Q: What prompted you to be associated with the Democratic Party even though you don’t agree with some of their positions?

A: They’re the underdogs in Texas. They’re the underdogs in Williamson County, which is where the District 20 primarily is. The Democratic Party is only a label — not even a good fitting label. The Republican Party is not the solution. My association with the Democratic Party is very limited. They’ve disowned me 100 percent officially. The leadership of the party has ostracized me and ignored me to the point of invisibility. It doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. I needed a position on the ballot and the Republican Party already had their candidate; a three-term incumbent. I could have run against him in the primary, but it would have been futile. I needed the Democratic Party and they need me and candidates like me in order to mount a winning campaign for office and literally to save America. They need real American candidates to run in their party because if they nominate the type of candidates they have in the past who are way out of touch with the true American spirit and the average American voter, they can’t wonder why they never win in the elections, although they recently did win a few around the country.

Craig Weems, Libertarian

• Hometown: Cedar Park
• Education: Bachelor’s in education, University of North Texas; master’s in education, University of Houston-Clear Lake
• Occupation: Government teacher at Cedar Park High School

• Political background: First-time candidate
• Contact: 350-9159, ccwroo@academicplanet.com

Q. Why should people vote for you?

A. I think people should vote for me to send a message to the two major parties in Texas. That message is: “You’re more concerned about being re-elected and being a Republican or a Democrat than doing what’s best for the people of Texas.” I really feel that this needs to change and that people need to start putting people in office who reflect that feeling.

Q: What is your platform and why?

A: There are three things I’m focusing on. I’m focusing on education because I’m a teacher, and I was in business for 20 years, so I’ve kind of seen both sides of the coin here. Our education system in the US in Texas is at the very best mediocre. It didn’t used to be that way, it used to be the top education system in the world and we have fallen so far down. We’re not preparing our young people for the real world. We’ve just gotten really, really off base. A lot of people cry that we don’t have enough money for education, that’s crazy, we have more than enough money, it is just so grossly misused it is not getting to where it needs to be spent. We don’t focus on the core subjects anymore; we spend the money on all these different things. Education has become a giant bureaucracy that feeds on itself. We need to have competition and choice for parents and students. We need to reward our teachers and get rid of the bad ones. Communism I think is how they based the pay system for teachers. It’s based on how long you’ve taught, not on how good you are or how many hours you’ve taught or what you’ve achieved. There are some very good recommendations on how you can reward teachers. Second is taxes. They’re killing us, we’re sure not getting our money’s worth from the taxes we pay. We pay indebted taxes, you’re drivers license is a tax, your safety inspection sticker on your car is a tax, you’re license renewal for your car. All those are just taxes that bring more money in. So Texas, they’ve been counting all the tax cuts we have recently, but a lot of that is just smoke and mirrors. They were thrilled to death about the property tax decrease we got last year, well they turned around and raised the value of the houses so much that yeah you’re paying a lower percentage, but you’re paying almost the same thing in property taxes that you were before. The last thing is less government, and government that is responsive to the people. Just like education, I see a huge amount of our resources that state government just wastes. What we get back is mediocre. I’m tired of going into renew a drivers license, get a vehicle registration sticker or go protest my property tax and be treated like I’m their employee or a criminal or whatever. Do you wait in line for two hours when you go to renew your driver’s license? Do you wait for anything in free enterprise for two hours? We need competition and we need free businesses handling these [governmental entities where] they’re rewarded for doing a good job and they’re penalized for doing a bad job.

Q: How can a citizen affect governmental change, other than by voting?

A: Voting is the most important thing, because you’re sending a message, but you need to have a choice to vote for. For people who don’t feel that they’re getting a choice, then they should take a look at themselves and say ‘maybe I’m the choice people need,’ and run as a libertarian or an independent or something other than the two major parties. People should be involved in their community, they should go to school board meetings, they should campaign, not just go vote, they should support people that they feel will make a change. They should express their opinions on any level that they can.

Q: Why did you get into politics?

A: There was no choice on the ballot. There’s a Democrat candidate and a Republican candidate and I’m really fed up with both parties. I saw where the Libertarian Party was asking people to run in races that there were only two candidates and I volunteered to do that because I wanted people to have a third choice to send a message to both of those parties that you either need to start listening and reacting to us or we’ll start putting other people in there.

Q: So this is your first time running for office?

A: I have never run for anything in my life. I teach government and so I’ve always had a real strong love for government, and I’ve been active in parties before. I’ve been active in organizations, associations to protect ourselves from the government. But as for running, this is my first time.

Q: What challenges do you face as a Libertarian candidate?

A: They have really set the rules and things to favor the two major parties. If I had wanted to run as an independent, I would have had to get thousands of signatures, get them verified, it would have been a lengthy, costly thing. And they drag your feet, so you can’t just decide you’re going to run for an office. I aligned myself with the Libertarian Party because of the three on the ballot, they’re the closest to what I lean toward at this time. The challenges are going to be that most people think I’ll be throwing my vote away if I vote for a libertarian so I’ll vote for the lesser of two evils, but I have to tell you, when you vote for the lesser of two evils, you still get an evil.

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