I have been honored to represent you for the past 16 years. My first job as your State Representative is to be your voice and vote in the Legislature. I also believe I should do what is best for the citizens of Texas and try to take leadership positions for you on national issues.

A Legacy of Local Representation

I am very proud of the legislation I have passed for local citizens of the district and for our organizations and businesses. During the 73rd Legislature, my first session, I passed HB961 which allowed consolidation of election voting locations in special elections. I did this because Collin County held an election to replace Sam Johnson in the Texas House on the same date the City of Dallas had a city election. The state was required to hold elections in every precinct but the City of Dallas consolidated all Dallas polling places to one location. These two events meant that to vote in the city election everyone went one place and to vote in the State Representative election almost everyone living in the Dallas portion of Collin County had to go to a different location. Our bill now allows the county to consolidate and allow voting in different types of elections at the same location.

In addition I authored legislation brought to me on behalf of the Seis Lagos Utility District to stagger the terms of their directors.

In the 74th Legislature, I passed HB200 to redefine surveying at the request of a local Collin County surveyor. Also on behalf of our community college I passed legislation for statewide uniform common add/drop dates for courses. I also joined our other local legislators to eliminate speed traps in places like Lavon. During the 77th Legislature I passed the bill to make the Collin County DA’s office subject to the professional prosecutor’s law. We later took the request of some of our election personnel and precinct leaders to keep the voting records of certain very small precincts with just a very few voters secret. The results of an election are reported to the press by precinct. If you lived in a precinct with only one or two voters this meant that everyone who saw the results of your precinct would know how you voted on every race. This certainly violated the secrecy of the ballot for those voters. Now those election results can be kept confidential.

We also passed a bill to allow motor voter registrations to be electronically transmitted to the election departments to ensure the timely registration of all voters. For some of our local advocates we joint authored a bill to study children’s asthma and established an asthma and allergy research advisory committee. For our friends in Frisco I sponsored the bill creating the Frisco Square Management District. During the 78th Legislature in 2003, I passed a bill by the Plano School District to allow purchase of electricity from a political subdivision. During that same session, at the request of the North Texas Municipal Water District, we created legislation to allow the integration of small water services into a regional system which was of great benefit
to the North Texas District. In 2005 at the request of the City of Plano and firefighters, we passed HB263 regarding civil service examination requirements for certain fire department personnel. We also passed surveyor legislation capping damages that can be obtained from a registered professional surveyor in certain cases. Also on behalf of the Dallas County DA’s office we expanded the ability of the DA office to take depositions of witnesses that might not be available to testify thereby helping in many prosecutions for crimes against the elderly. At the request of the Collin County Justices of the Peace I passed HB1601 to improve interpreter services in certain cases. At the request of several local officials we passed HB2199 to improve the county control over the election administrators and to compensate them fairly for their work. We also passed HB3200 for the City of Plano to help them with a problem they had on single employer benefit plans.

And in 2007 we passed HB2392 to help the Erickson Retirement Community with problems they had with the insurance commission. Throughout the years I have consistently worked with the other Collin County legislators in the passage of every bill to add Courts for Collin County.

A Legacy of State Leadership

Early in my legislative career I took the lead on election issues and reforms. When I first moved here in 1971 I voted mid-afternoon in a Richardson City election only to find out I was the seventh person to vote. The election was uncontested but the city still had to hold the election. Working with Senator Shapiro and others I passed legislation that allowed cities, school districts and others to cancel elections and save tax payers money if all of the positions on the ballot were unopposed. Just this spring the Collin College cancelled its election thereby saving the citizens of Collin County over $75,000. I also passed legislation on judicial campaign finance reform. This bill has been a landmark for judicial campaigns in Texas for the last ten years.

In 1995 I was the House sponsor of SB42 and SB80 by Senator Shapiro, two of the seven bills commonly called Ashley’s Laws. The bills allowed access to background checks for volunteer organizations and also required training for law enforcement personnel. These bills were the first of many which I have worked on to support victim’s rights and improve our sex offender laws and law enforcement.

A major issue for Frisco had been the inability of a community located in two counties to have a vote on the ability to sell beer and wine in the city. In 2001, I worked with the industry and Senator Shapiro and I was the house sponsor of SB377 which allowed Frisco citizens the right to vote on whether or not to allow beer and wine sales in the community.

Also in the 77th Legislature I was the cosponsor of a bill I had authored two years earlier which required parental approval for a minor to check out of a drug or alcohol treatment program. The tragic death of the child of one of my family’s closest friends inspired this bill. It was the first of what has become many efforts to break addiction of our young people.

In 2003 I was assigned to the Public Education Committee and carried several bills for the Texas Association of School Boards, including teacher reimbursement for expenses in the classroom and support for teachers on the finality of a grade they give in their class.

In 2005 I became Chairman of the Corrections Committee and authored several bills to make changes at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I joint authored the legislation that moved some over-the-counter drugs to more secure sales locations and restricted purchases so that we could stop the production of methamphetamines in the area. I also wrote several bills on mold and mold assessment, and I proposed legislation to make major changes in the probation system in Texas.

In 2007, one of the most critical bills of the session and the most far reaching of the bills I worked on was SB103. I was the House Sponsor of this bill. This legislation was the complete reorganization of the Texas Youth Commission and was one of the most highly praised pieces of legislation in the session. The bill was completely reworked and significantly improved by the House Corrections Committee under my leadership. The bill sets many high goals for achievement by the Youth Commission and was done in response to serious criminal charges of crimes by state employees on the youth they were supposed to help.

In the areas of criminal justice I passed legislation to create a residential in-prison infant and baby care program for mothers incarcerated at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I also restricted the ability of a school district to create a criminal record for a youth that only violated the school code of conduct but no other law of the state of Texas. I improved educational opportunities for those youth held in a Juvenile Justice Facility in the counties and set added standards for School District Alternative Education Programs.

I authored HB429 to require a study of expenses on elderly inmates to determine how much the state is spending housing seriously ill older offenders. One of my bills also allowed youths convicted as adults to approve health care needs for themselves and not require parental approval.

I authored HB530 to expand the very successful and well received drug courts in Texas. HB1678 was the major update on the operation of our probation systems and I put an emphasis on close observation of those who are most likely to re-offend in the system. HB2391 allowed a community to decide whether the law enforcement officers could just ticket certain low level non-violent misdemeanor offenses. This bill was brought to me by law enforcement personnel and would relieve some of the jail overcrowding. The bill is now being used in several counties and jurisdictions in Texas and appears to be gaining in utilization.

I joint authored a bill to allow certain public officials to have their home addresses secure from disclosure as many officials have received threats. I joined with Senator Van de Putte in passage of the prison phone bill that helped fund the Victim’s Fund for Texas. I was a joint author on the legislation creating memorial sign programs for the victims of certain vehicle accidents in Texas. I also joined Sen. Royce West in the passage of SB 166 which set up prison diversion progressive sanctions programs throughout Texas.

I was the House Sponsor of SB909, the Sunset bill for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. This bill reauthorized the Department and made several changes to their procedures and also to the procedures of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. I joined Representative Branch and Senator Shapiro in the passage of SB9 which required disclosure of criminal history records, child abuse investigation reports and school district audit work papers and which required background checks of all school employees to try and ensure added safety for our children. As a result of my success in this 80th Legislature, I was chosen by Texas Monthly magazine as one of the State’s ten best legislators of 2007.

A Legacy of National Leadership

Many of the issues I have worked on have given me national visibility including my work on Military Voting Rights. After the 1996 election there were efforts in Texas to restrict the voting rights of military personnel who were deployed away from Texas. I led the fight not only to retain those rights but also to expand the availability of the vote to those great Americans serving our country away from home. These efforts included the ability to fax in requests for ballots, to have votes counted even if they were delayed in the mail and not received by election day, added abilities to have easy registration, and the ability to cast votes even when the candidates were not know, for example if a young Texas were about to begin today a six month tour on a nuclear submarine and the candidates were not all known to still allow the person to vote.

In addition I helped pass legislation that defined methods to handle punch card ballots, legislation which was held up in 2000 as an example of what state’s should have done to count these type of ballots particularly
as compared to the laws Florida had and used.

In the 80th Legislature I and Senator Shapiro passed two landmark pieces of legislation, SB 156 which established the Nurse Family Partnership in Texas, and SB1788 which established the Virtual School Network for Texas. Both of these pieces of Legislation are very forward looking and will have enormous impact on Texas and the rest of our country for years to come.

But the greatest recognition I have received is for my work on Criminal Justice. I am on the board of major committees with the American Legislative Exchange Conference, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the Council of State Governments Justice Center. I worked diligently across party lines to develop programs for Texas that would work to reduce drug addiction, reduce alcoholism, increase support of mental health community programs, and faith based reentry programs. This work eliminated the need to spend about 2 billion in tax payers dollars to build new prisons thereby making that money available for roads, schools, tax cuts, or what ever programs chosen by the Legislature and not used for concrete prison structures. Thanks to this work Texas is now recognized as one of the most forward looking states in being both tough and smart on crime issues. Just recently I was invited to the White House with the President for the signing of the Second Chance Act. This act should make added federal funds available to keep Texas crime rates lower, keep our citizens safer and provide opportunities for those who have succeeded while in prison in changing their lives for the better and for those inmates who worked hard in programs like our Prison Ministries and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.