State Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo) gave an overview of the last legislative session and talked about upcoming issues during a town hall at the Bairfield Activity Center last Friday.
The senator opened his comments by talking about the loss of his committee assignments following a public disagreement with the Republican leadership.
“I voted against two of 30 things the lieutenant governor wanted and was removed from the committees,” Seliger said.
If that bothered the senator, he didn’t show it. Instead he touted his commitment to local control and local government Friday in the face of actions by his own party against those interests.
“It was a terrible session for local control and local governments,” Seliger said, “and it will get worse before it gets better.”
He mentioned specifically his opposition to property tax reforms that limited how much new revenue local governments could raise.
“What would we do if Washington told us we had to lower our severance tax or our sales tax,” he asked. “We would go nuts!”
Seliger was pleased with the improvements that were made to teacher salaries and retired teacher benefits, but he said neither of those went far enough to address those issues.
Looking ahead, Seliger said legalizing marijuana won’t happen any time soon, and he said Texas won’t turn Democratic soon either but said that depends on how Republicans relate to Latino voters.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.