Fellow East Texans,

I hope this note finds you and your family well — and staying cool in this East Texas heat. I wanted to take a few minutes to share what I’ve been working on and what’s ahead as we gear up for a critical special session in Austin.

Protecting Our Water

On Tuesday, I sat in on a special hearing of the House Committee on Natural Resources to take a deep look at permit applications to drill water wells in Anderson and Henderson Counties that would tap into the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer to pull over 10 billion gallons of water per year.

This type of high-capacity, large-volume groundwater production poses substantial risks to the water supply in East Texas. We need a sustainable water plan that will provide for growing needs across the state, but we cannot allow local resources to be depleted from rural Texans.

At this point, the projects are still not approved at the local level and have a challenging path ahead in order to do so, but the application itself raises an important question in principle about how the state can best protect resources that are region-specific while still allowing for individual freedom and ingenuity. It’s a difficult and complicated conversation, but I’m grateful for the developer’s commitment to amending their plans should future tests show that the current proposals would have a negative impact on East Texas.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on policy solutions to address this issue and prevent bad actors—whether intentionally or unintentionally—from drying the wells we rely on in East Texas for our livelihoods.

The Special Session

In other news, I’ll be back in Austin more regularly in the coming weeks for the upcoming special session.

Governor Greg Abbott has placed many important issues on his call, the top of which is addressing the tragic and destructive flooding that occurred in the Hill Country region on Independence Day and the weeks since.

Though we will always face the hardships of a world marred by sin, we can—and should—work to bring relief to those who have had their livelihoods uprooted and take steps to save lives going forward. To that end, I look forward to working to pass legislation that will strengthen our early warning systems and do what we can to help rebuild in the wake of this disaster.

As I mentioned in my recent interview with KETK’s Nolan Hoffman, the other two big items on the agenda that will likely be prioritized are regulating THC and congressional redistricting. Other subjects that are on the call and that I hope to tackle include banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, cracking down on abortion pills, and the Women’s Privacy Act to keep women’s restrooms and locker rooms for women.

Coming Up…

I hear it from folks across our district every day: property taxes are too high, and families are feeling squeezed. While we’ve made some progress at the state level, too often local governments quietly pass new tax increases or bond measures with low voter turnout.

That’s why I’ve filed a bill this special session (House Bill 96) to require all bond and tax rate elections to be held in November when the most people are engaged and eager to participate, and to require at least 60% support for these measures to pass.

You deserve transparency and accountability when it comes to your hard-earned money, and I’m fighting to make sure you get it.