MARCH 31 PLANO, TEXAS—Sen. Van Taylor (R-TX-SD8 Plano) and Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-TX-HD66 Plano) are moving up in the world. Well, at least they hope so. Taylor hopes to succeed the retiring Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX-CD3 SW Collin County) and Shaheen hopes to succeed Taylor. Other Republicans and Democrats will be standing in their way.
Getting elected to a higher office requires meeting a new set of voters, so what better way to achieve that than holding a town hall? It was a standing room only crowd for the Shaheen-Taylor Town Hall at Davis Public Library in Plano on Friday afternoon.
Or as Brett Shipp of WFAA-TV said, “It’s not clear whose idea it was to hold a town hall at a public library, but what was clear was that it was a bad idea.”
The audience was mostly polite as Taylor and Shaheen read off their legislative priorities. Taylor had the audience scratching its head when he talked about SB252, a bill to prevent Texas tax dollars from funding overseas “terrorist organizations”. I mean, our GOP legislature needs a law to tell them to not budget money for terrorists? The boos from the crowd were louder than the cheers when Shaheen announced new abortion restrictions.
Then they opened with the questions.
The first two questions related to Taylor’s vote for SB3, a school voucher bill on Thursday. Shaheen lamely tried to deflect, “well parents of means already have school choice, they can move to what ever ISD they want, they can move near the school they want, they can send their kids to a private school. We’re trying to make it so low income parents have choices too. I don’t think it’s fair to penalize a mom and dad and their child to force them to go to school that’s not appropriate for that child.” I believe the second questioner supported vouchers, but his metaphor on AT&T was unclear.
I got to ask the next question, and I attacked them from the right: “I’d like to talk about SB6 and HB1362, the bathroom bills. I’m a straight, married cis male with two young daughters whom I have to accompany into the bathroom when my wife is not available to take them. They refuse to use boys rooms. Under SB6 I could be arrested simply for taking my daughters to the restroom. Also, I’m a member of the Plano Chamber of Commerce. North Carolina’s bathroom bill cost its state GDP $3.8bn and with Texas’ proportionately larger population a bathroom bill could cost us $10bn in lost business. I’m a pro-business person, I don’t want to see dumb laws passed that shoot ourselves in the foot and harm our economy.” That got a huge ovation from both the Democrats and the Republicans in the crowd.
Taylor’s response, “At the end of the day this absolutely needs to be a state issue.”
In unison the crowd, liberal and conservative alike, shouted, “NO!”
The next question focused on HB6 and Texas’ ongoing and stupid privatization of foster care. Neither Shaheen nor Taylor was prepared to answer this question.
They were then asked by a woman about SB25, the “doctor lie” anti-abortion bill, and Shaheen was roundly jeered when he uttered, “we need to protect doctors”.
A retired teacher focused on SB1750, a bill that moves newly hired teachers to a defined contribution retirement plan, and thus kicking the funding legs out from under the retirement and health care for current and retired teachers. Taylor and Shaheen both moved their lips, but avoided answering the question, instead congratulating themselves on how the massive cut to Medicaid in the budget was necessary.
One of the big issues in Collin County is that the huge growth in the local population has lead to a rapid increase in the market value of real estate and thus constant increases in the property taxes we all pay. And Republicans hate taxes. So the question about capping our property tax assessments should have been right up Shaheen and Taylor’s alley. Except they both managed to annoy the crowd by answering the question through an ideological lens instead of a practical one
The conservatives in the crowd finally jeered a question when Sen. Taylor was asked if he's a member of an anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America. He stumbled a “no” after a minute of trying the dodge the question altogether. This topic certainly deserves further scrutiny as Taylor gears up his congressional campaign.
The next questioner had me zoning out as the questioner took what seemed like days to ask them to change the school standards, but thankfully she posted a video of her question if you care to follow.
A mother of a child with special needs wanted to know why the state couldn’t fully fund special education. Shaheen got booed by the crowd for saying vouchers would solve this. Taylor tries to explain how emulating some voucher program in Florida would help special needs kids.
The new Texas budget proposes a $2.4bn cut to health care in the state. The next questioner pointed out how this would devastate access to health care in rural areas and drive up maternal mortality rates. Taylor just non-sequiturs with his answer, talking about how opioids are the “number one killer in New Hampshire”. Umm?!? Van, I’m not going play down the seriousness of opioid abuse and the devastating effects that’s having rural areas, but you don’t have to lie about easily checkable stats while totally not answering the question. And bringing up another state doesn’t excuse the fact that your funding priorities will make both the problems you and the questioner mentioned worse, much worse, here in Texas. Seriously dude, just expand Medicaid, that’ll solve your budget shortfall.
At 12:30pm Taylor left to do TV interviews outside, but Shaheen kept taking questions.
Finally, we get a break from all those pesky liberal questions, when a couple of conservative home schoolers both screeched at the crowd about how they should get vouchers for homeschooling. The crowd was completely not supportive.
Shaheen took a hostile question about a “lobbyist written nursing home bill” (SB1130 and HB2766). Shaheen answers by stating that he loved how his late father was treated in a nursing home.
An Allen teacher asked a question about HB1336, the “Transparency in Testing” bill. Shaheen says he hasn't read the bill, but he “fully supports transparency in how our tax dollars are spent” (at least until ETS pays him to not support it).
Women’s health was the next topic, as Shaheen received a very detailed question covering the state’s ridiculous contract with the Heidi Group, teaching comprehensive sex ed, and how state funded birth control would do more than anything to prevent abortions. Shaheen adamantly refused to allow tax dollars to be used to fund preventative birth control.
Shaheen took another hostile question on the question of vouchers. After much back and forth with crowd, Shaheen uttered, “I support public schools." But on vouchers, "we have a fundamental difference of opinion on this." During the exchange Shaheen was challenged on the diversion of lottery money from schools, which Shaheen swears “has ended”. Well, you decide, the legislature didn’t change the funding formulas in either of Shaheen’s legislative sessions.
A new Texas resident who was moved from Michigan by Toyota also complained about school vouchers, putting her experience in the context of Betsy Devos’ work to destroy her home state’s public schools. Shaheen’s smarmy reply? "You wouldn't be here if it weren't for Texas' low taxes and lack of regulations." Video of her question here.
Last question. “Why are End of Life Relocation Agencies being closed?” Shaheen: “I have to look at that line item in the budget.” Yeah, I have to look into that too because I can’t figure out what an End of Life Relocation Agency is or what bill is affecting them.
Shaheen to his credit did stay behind and talk to everyone individually after the event while Taylor left early.
Watch WFAA-8’s coverage of the town hall here. The townhall was also covered by KRLD-11 and MSNBC, but neither has posted their video.