The Texan Podcast - Interview: Rep. Drew Darby Talks Education, Property Taxes, House Speaker’s Race

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Rep. Drew Darby sat down with The Texan’s Senior Reporter Brad Johnson to discuss the future of School Choice, Property Taxes, and the House Speaker’s Race.

Hello everybody, this is Senior Reporter Brad Johnson here at the Texan. I've got Representative Drew Darby. Representative, thanks for joining us today. It's my pleasure, thank you Brad. And thanks for coming. It's early in the morning, but a lot of stuff happened at the legislature already. First, I want to get your take on the last year and a half. You know, you joined in 2007, right? And it's been wild. It's been wild. Well, it's really kind of focused in the last year. Clearly, we had a very eventful 88th legislative session, and not only a regular session, but we had very special sessions.

I don't know why they call them a special session. They're not very special. But we had several of them, and it culminated in one in which we took some votes, and everybody figured out where everybody was on the issue of vouchers. And then we went about the business of trying to get reelected. So ever since I've been in the legislature, the mantra has been, vote your district, vote your district. Well, we voted our district, and a lot of us were targeted because of that vote. So it's been a vengeful campaign session.

We worked very, very hard to come back to tell the people our message about we represent them. We answer to them. We don't represent other people in other parts of the state, nor do we represent any other elected officials. And so that message won out. We fought hard, spent a lot of money, spent a lot of time, and we were successful in that regard. So, but you know, once you finish that process, then you've got to go about the business of regrouping and trying to figure out what the political landscape is and where you fit into that and how your policies work in that regard. And so that's what we've been doing since the end of the primary in March, preparing for the next session, which will begin the second Tuesday in January.

And we'll begin all again, as they say. You know, the regular session itself was pretty contentious, too, before we even got to the specials. You know, a big one was property taxes, right? What was it like trying to find the middle ground or negotiate between the two chambers in what was a really, you know, there was a lot of bad blood, right? Well, there was a lot of bad blood, and, you know, but it had to do with policy and how you give relief. Both branches of government, the House and the Senate, believe that we needed to return money back to the taxpayer. The question becomes, how do we do it? And we have seen that compression

works over the last several sessions where the state, in my opinion, simply buys down local property tax dollars and supplants them with state dollars, which is what should have been all along. When I was growing up, the state contributed way more than 50% to the cost to educate public students here in Texas. But over the years, we had gradually moved away from that to where the local entities were picking up close to 60% of the cost to educate kids. And the state was simply stepping back and allowing local tax revenue to supplant state money. Well, we thought that was wrong. And we thought that the state ought to pick up its share.

And so that's what we've been doing. We've been buying down or compressing property taxes, and I think that's a good thing. And so the House wanted to continue that process. Let's just do more of that. The Senate took a different tack. They wanted to use exemptions. Well, exemptions are great by increasing it from $40,000 to $100,000. Certainly that captures a lot of the housing market. But I would point out, and you know this,

Brad, but point out to the listening audience that when you give an exemption, you simply transfer the obligation to support local government to other people. We have the ability, or everyone in Texas has the ability, to end all property taxes because property taxes simply pay for local government. If you don't want local government, if you don't want a sheriff's department, if you don't want a police department, if you don't want roads or potholes in your community fixed, if you don't want water delivered or any of the other municipal services that people expect when they live in an area, then simply do away with that. I mean, the state doesn't collect any property taxes. And I keep reminding people back home who are rightfully so alarmed about the level of property taxes here in this state. But property taxes are designed to simply support local government.

I live in Tomarine County. And so we raise local property taxes to pay for local services, our sheriff's department, our police department, city services, that sort of thing. Would we want to engage in a system that collects a statewide revenue to pay for those services. And people in Tom Green County would have to go to Austin to beg for money to support their local services. There's over 4,200 taxing entities in this state. And the idea that we would want to do away with local property effort to pay for local services at a level that we deem important locally is just crazy. The idea that we supplant that with a state sales tax, and so the state of Texas collects that, and so everybody, these 4,200 entities, have to go to Austin to beg for their money? I mean, do people in Tomarine County want to pay for police services or sheriff services in Harris County? No, no, they want to pay for

services for their community. And so when you give an exemption, you're simply transferring that obligation to support local services to other people. Now, are those exemptions well-deserved? Sure. They're very well-deserved. People live in their home. They may not have a mortgage. They have the right to have those taxes reduced. But when you do so, even for that good reason, you're simply saying to the business community and others that you're going to pay more. And I have found in life that businesses, they don't pay taxes. Consumers pay taxes. People who buy their services pay taxes. So if a business's taxes are increased, property taxes increase, then that cost is shared by everybody that buys a product from that business. So the debate ought to be not should we have property taxes. The debate should be what do we want in local services

and how do we pay for it. Now, some communities, you know, can try to keep their property taxes down, but they have a local sales tax that they can deploy. They can have fees and other costs associated with doing business in that community that raise money to pay for those local services. I get that, and I support that.

So it's more of a philosophical debate, if you will, between the House and the Senate is how do we provide the relief. We pretty much agreed on the amount of relief that we had. We had a magnificent surplus. We still have a magnificent surplus. Not quite as big, but still pretty big. Not quite as big, but it's certainly big. And, you know, Brad, I've been a part of this legislature.

When I've come down in January in one session, we thought we were going to have a $5 billion surplus. And when we got here, it was a $10 billion deficit, 2011. Well, what'd we do? We cut state government, but more importantly, we cut $5 billion out of public education. Cut it out of our schools because we didn't have the money. And we've never restored that, Brad. And so people who want to attack public schools, in my opinion, and in my view, we've never fully restored our obligation to public schools

that we took away in 2011. Now, we've added some money money but when I read one report recently that that when you look at inflation and all the other factors that we are still 10 billion dollars under funding for public education than they were 13 years ago. So I don't think it's fair to judge our public schools when we keep bleeding the institution of public education and saying you're not performing at a level we expect when we're not giving them the resources to do that. So the debate between the House and

the Senate on property tax relief, we all agreed, let's give it, we all agreed on the amount, but how we delivered that was what was at issue. What kind of, you're talking about kind of touches on everything in terms of how, just how much things cost more, right? Everything costs more. And, you know, I think I saw Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick say we put more money into public education than we ever have before. But, you know, as you're pointing out, everything's costing more, right? Everything's costing more. And, you know, I live in an area that it's a wonderful area to live in, but we have challenges. We have geographic challenges and resource challenges with water and remoteness and those sorts of things.

But, you know, it has to do with we just have to overcome those challenges and provide those resources to people in that area. So I don't know, Brad. It's something that we struggle with every day on how we deliver those services back to our community. Let's back up a bit and talk about the primary. You mentioned it a bit, but you were one of the only incumbents that was targeted by Governor Abbott who won and survived and is coming back. Tell us about that. I wasn't one of the few that were targeted. I was one of the few that won. And you're right, there were three of us, Stan Lambert out of Abilene and Gary Van Deaver. And I think the message was that, you know, that for me certainly was, you know me. I've been here, lived here all my life, raised my family here, had businesses here.

I don't lie. I have supported every initiative, the Republicans. I have carried a lot of the water. I was chairman of a select committee on a convention of states that was a priority of the governor's office. But we disagreed on public education. I happen to believe that we have not properly funded schools. We have continued to erode the resources that they have available to them and certainly put more and more obligations for performance, accountability, all of the things, safety.

We required them to have a lock on every door. Well, who would disagree with that? We want them to have a resource officer on every campus. Well, that costs money. And so they followed our instruction. They did all that. And we promised them billions of dollars to help fund that. And so the greatest tragedy that came out of the 88th legislative session is

we promised them that we would deliver resources to them, and yet we did not do so because those resources were tied to a decision by the governor and lieutenant governor to hold funding for our schools hostage unless we had a universal voucher program here in Texas. And so those of us that were targeted, we voted our district. I have 30-something school districts back home, very few private schools in that area. What we need is resources. They were promised. They weren't delivered. We said, if this is such a good policy issue, let's put it aside and vote on it and leave funding separate.

But we did. We pulled that out. And let's talk about the funding. But we did not have that opportunity. The bill was pulled, and it was not resurrected, thereby giving an issue to campaign against us. There were 21 Republicans that voted to separate vouchers from the discussion about funding our schools. Six decided not to return, so there were 15 of us. All of us were targeted.

Some, I say all of us, I think there were a couple that weren't specifically targeted because they didn't have an opponent. But there were three of us that were targeted and won, and I believe there were at least 11 that were targeted and lost. These were good members, good rural members primarily, people who adhered to the adage, just vote your district, something that hurt all their legislative experience. Something that we hold near and dear to our role as a Texas House of Representatives member.

And I take that name seriously. Brad, they call us a representative. They don't call us a senator. They don't call us an assemblyman. They don't call us a delegate. They call us a representative. They don't call us a senator. They don't call us an assemblyman. They don't call us a delegate. They call us a representative. Well, to me, that's a higher calling. It's a higher calling to represent your district, and that's what we did.

We thought vouchers was bad policy, and we can talk about that here in a little bit, but we thought it was bad policy, and let could talk about that here in a little bit, but we thought it was a bad policy, and let's take that debate. If we want to have that debate, let's have that debate. But let's separate it from the business of funding our public schools. We weren't able to do that. When you guys reassemble in January, this is obviously going to be one of the top issues discussed. No doubt that it'll be one of the top issues discussed. No doubt that it'll be a top priority for the governor. Probably be an emergency item, yeah. You know, where we ended up last time was, as you were discussing, the education savings account

program tied to the funding increase. Do you think that's where it starts again, or are they actually going to separate these? Oh, I feel absolutely certain there'll be a tie to all this again. I think there will be a vigorous debate. But let's talk about vouchers. Let's talk about the merits of it. We're seeing across this country that states are rejecting vouchers. And states that have implemented them are having financial crisis. Arizona, for one, where it was anticipated that the cost for vouchers would be less than $100 million.

Well, it's blossomed to nearly $1 billion. It's jeopardizing their entire budget. And what happens is when those costs exceed expectations and the revenue doesn't change, well, what's got to give? What's got to give is other state services have been cut back. And so, for example, one of the paradoxes here is that when we go to Austin and we look at the initial budget, almost 83% of that budget is already fixed. We don't have the flexibility or the discretion to even talk about it because it's governed by formulas, either public education funding or health care or roads or prisons. I mean, those type of things, the budget's already built in

or baked into the system. We only really argue about 17%, 17%, 18% of the budget. And so that's what's called discretionary. And so that's what the appropriation and finance committees meet on is those discretionary funds. Well, what comes out of discretionary funds? Well, I think a lot of priorities of this state. Well, so one of which is border security.

We spend about $4 billion. Well, that's discretionary dollars, and we think that's important, so we fund that. But you might not have to fund this time because the Trump administration, at least the lieutenant governor kind of hinted at that. Yeah, I mean, that'll be another item of discussion. But clearly, prisons, do we think prisons are important? Well, that's a discretionary.

We put money in that for paying for prisons. Do we think property tax relief is important? I think so. Well, that's discretionary dollars. We put it in there. So when you create a universal voucher system and the projections conservatively grow that in the out years, three and four, if $2 billion a year, well, that's $4 billion over a biennium. Well, does anybody in the sound of my voice think that that's ever going to go down?

Do we think there are going to be less kids taking advantage of that? So that's going to continue to grow. And as it continues to grow, it's going to crowd out other priorities of the state because whether it be the higher education coordinating board, prisons, property tax relief, border security, all the things that we we have determined our priorities will be taken off the table as we continue to feed the voucher beast. And that's the fear that I have. Now people will say well it doesn't take away from public education. Well dollars are dollars and whether they are in the public school fund or are they in the general budget they're still dollars and dollars that could have been transferred from the general fund to fund our public schools would not be transferred because they're supporting a group of children that are not being supported now. So in my opinion, that's a new entitlement.

That is an entitlement that will continue to grow. It will never grow smaller. It will only grow larger and jeopardize. When we have a budget crisis, and which we will, everyone knows about the cyclical nature of the Texas economy, and it will happen. Well, when we have a shortfall, well, what are we going to cut? We're not going to cut kiddos.

We're going to cut all this other stuff. And that's what I think is disingenuous. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about that policy. Let's not tie it to schools having to deal with the real budget crisis that they're facing now. Almost every one of my school districts has adopted a deficit budget because they were relying upon the state's promise to increase their support. We have tied their hands on how much property tax they can charge, and yet we have not delivered on the promise to support them.

Now, can they adopt a budget deficit? Sure they can. Most of them have a fund balance. But that fund balance will be eaten up and gone. And so we're jeopardizing the very foundation of this state, which in my opinion is the most important infrastructure, and that's our children and the education of our children. From my understanding, there are 39 states across the country that have some sort of

ESA or voucher program. Some of them are having budget issues. You mentioned Arizona. Not all of them, though. So what are the ones that are having budget problems doing wrong with this program versus the ones that aren't? Well, first of all, I mean, I think we had a very vigorous and a very productive discussion during the session about if we're going to have a voucher program, what would it look like? Well, to me, special needs kids that we have in our schools today are critically important. And we fund them, but we don't fund them for all their costs. Generally speaking, we fund about $2 billion a year for special education. It costs about $4 billion. So if you want to talk about go ahead and funding what we're already obligated to educate, I'm all in. I'm all in. So let's fund our special

needs kids. Then the second cohort would be kids that are in failing institutions. Number one, I would hope to give those failing institutions direction and resources to correct that model and actually create a learning environment where they're succeeding. But failing that, if they need to transfer to another school within the community, and that costs money, I'm open-ended to talking about that. But where we seem to break down is this concept of universal savings accounts for everyone. Then those 39 states that you just talked about, most of them have discovered that that money is already going to mostly affluent families that were educating their kids. Now they're just getting a little help.

And so what they're getting in vouchers does not cover the cost of a private education. It's just a, it's a, maybe a third, perhaps even a half. Well, there's worry about those private institutions just raising tuition prices, right? Lower socioeconomic families cannot pay the delta between the voucher and the cost of tuition. And more importantly, they can't get there because there's no public transportation. So it is a false idol. It is a false idol. It is a false idol. The reality is that money goes to affluent families who are already sending their kids to private institutions,

paying the full cost. They're just getting some help in that regard. Now, that's what I have the most problem with. If we were to design a program to directly affect kids that are impacted today with schools not meeting their special needs, I'm all in. If we're talking about kiddos trapped in failing institutions that need help finding a school within that community to go to, I'm in. But we can't, on the one hand, say that that's the objective, but yet the money goes to wealthy families.

And yet there are no other strings. When you have public dollars, you have public strings. What are those strings? We're going to have a very hearty discussion about accountability. Does anybody in this state want to just give money to a group of people or individuals? First of all, we can't write a check to an individual. It's a state. But are we going to give that to folks without any metrics on measuring success? Public education has many stringent tests associated with what we give them.

They have to have curriculum approved. They have to have standardized testing. They have attendance issues. They have all these things that we put on public schools. I think we need to have a hearted discussion. If we're going to give public dollars to private or parochial schools, there has to be accountability. There has to be, in my opinion, an open enrollment policy.

Because vouchers is not about giving parents choice. Parents have choice today. If you even live in San Angelo, right now you can choose a wonderful public school. You can choose a wonderful public charter school. There are several private schools, parochial schools. We have one of the largest homeschool communities in the state. And so parents have choices. But that's not what this is about. The advocates for vouchers have done a wonderful job of steering the dialogue

and creating the terms to describe this. When they do polling and say, should parents have a decision on where their kids go to school, who would vote no on that? Nobody. So they say that's choice. We all need choice here in Texas. The reality is we have choice in Texas. This is not about that. This is about a private or parochial school having the choice whether to accept little Jimmy and Susie or reject little Jimmy and Susie.

And that's what the choice is in reality. And so we have to be careful that we don't set up a system that continues to maintain racial disparity, socioeconomic disparity, geographic disparity. I mean, parents want little Jimmy and Susie to go to school with other little Jimmy and Susies, then they have the right to do that. But I call a distinction between somebody who wants to take public dollars and say, I want to go to a school that maintains racial segregation or religious segregation or any of those other things that we've tried to keep public schools out of. So that's a debate we're going to have in the session to follow. The question is, how do Texas House of Representatives and the Senate,

how do we come down on those important, and they're not minor parts. These are major policy issues that I think have to be ferreted out. While there may be, by headcount, enough member that took dollars, campaign dollars, to beat an incumbent on the issue of vouchers. It wasn't really about that. It was about beating down the incumbent on that vote. And it didn't turn into a referendum on vouchers. No, no. You saw a lot of ads about border security.

It was about, they saw that was a bad argument. It wasn't winning. So they switched. It became about can't be trusted on border security or can't be trusted on property tax relief. When every one, every one of those defeated incumbents voted right down the line on border security and property tax relief. But they were sold.

The voters were sold. That was what this was about. But in the next session, those issues remain, and I think we're going to have a vigorous debate on that. Oh, yeah. There's going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight on that, along with a couple other things. But, you know, we're in the throes of a speaker's race right now, and that may impact policy during session. Where do you see the race for House Speaker? Well, this is going to be my 10th session.

And every session we seem to have a speaker's race and so I think that will sort itself out between now and January. I feel confident that our current speaker will be the speaker when we meet in January and so but there there are a lot of there's a lot of new folks that ran on the idea that we have to have change, and then there's some that feel that we have one of the most conservative, if not the most conservative speaker we've ever had in this state, has implemented more conservative policies than any other speaker in this state has ever had. Did some great things. When you look at property tax relief, border security,

all of these things that Texans enjoy and we triumph, our surging oil and gas industry and policies relating to energy, all of which the speaker's had a direct, Speaker Phelan has had a direct hand in and has promoted and encouraged and helped pass. So this is about do we maintain that current trajectory and keep that kind of conservative environment a known quantity, then I think it's critically important.

There's a big theme in this race is how the House operates. The rules, you know, there's a lot of rules changes being proposed. You know, Speaker Feele implemented these policy work groups. You've been in the chamber for a long time. What do you think needs to change, if anything, in the way the House operates? Well, I just think that we've got to get back to trusting one another. When I first came, you know, we've kind of gotten away from it. Our word is our bond.

If we look somebody in the eye and tell them we're going to do something, shake their hand, say I'm supporting you, you could take that to the bank, as the ad said. I hope we would get back to that where we can trust members that are there for the right reasons, that are there to represent the folks back home, not simply the special interest, not simply the Faustian bargain. I took your money to support vouchers, and so I'm lock, stock, and barrel for that.

And if we have to get rid of the speaker, then I'm supportive of that. They don't even know. They've not even served under Speaker Phelan. But they're making decisions based upon you know how they got there not what they're doing as a state representative representing their district. So I would hope that we would get back to allowing members to vote their district. I would hope that we would get back to civility where we can disagree but we don't have to be disagreeable.

And I'm hoping that we will have that sort of environment as we move forward into the 89th legislative session. One issue you're really big on is just energy. And you talk a lot about that, especially alternative forms of energy. But a lot has been done on the really big issues, the power grid, right? Some oil and gas stuff. What is left that the House or the legislature needs to do now that these really big ticket items are at least mostly off the table? Well, you know, let's start with the grid. I mean, we had endured windstorm Uri, and there were, let me back up even further, when we deregulated

the electric industry, I was a part of that in my early time in the legislature. So Windstorm Uri pointed out some failings, if you will, in policy, some gaps that had developed over the years, and we addressed those. We've made some major changes in our electric grid policy. I think now is the time to kind of let those policies work themselves out in the system. I don't think we need to keep tinkering with it. Let's give it a chance to maturate and see how those policy changes have affected it. We still have issues relating to a growing state, growing energy demand. We've had so far, knock on wood, enough generative capacity in order to meet the needs. But that demand is going to continue to grow. Issues are, where do we have the production of those energy molecules and where do we need them?

So transmission has always been an issue. We need to, I've been an active proponent of building more transmission in order to achieve greater efficiency in our generative source. We have under our current transmission lines, we have areas of the state, 16 at least, that are constrained. And by constrained, I mean you have energy producers on one side of the constraint that their projects are deemed less efficient because they can't deliver all the electricity to market because there's not enough capability on the line. And then you have people on the other side of that constraint that are paying higher prices because that cheaper energy can't be delivered. So I continue to work to try to solve that problem. I live in part of the Permian Basin, which has grown dramatically.

It is remote in nature, and you have to have electricity. If you're going to convert some of these methane-powered compressor sites in remote West Texas, you're going to have to have electrification, and that requires not only generation but distribution. That continues to be a problem. So if this state is going to meet the energy needs, we're going to have to look at transmission and distribution all along this. Then as this state grows, our oil and gas has been able to grow and meet the demand. But a growing state with growing population, growing needs, new data centers, manufacturing facilities, then we're going to have to look to every piece of the puzzle. I'm kind of an all of the above guy. I've been an oil and gas lawyer, certainly, but I'm also recognized that it's going to take all

of it, more of it. And so I've been very active and will continue to be active. And hydrogen, I think, is an area that... Tell us about that. Well, you know, we created the Hydrogen Policy Council in the last session. They have been compiling a report. It should be due any week now. Based upon that report, we'll determine what kind of legislative suggestions they have on addressing that burgeoning industry. So I look forward to that report. We are particularly well suited for hydrogen, especially with our manufacturing along the Gulf Coast.

And so I'm excited about the prospect of hydrogen and how do we create more generation and how do we transport it, store it, that sort of thing, export it. We were also active in other energy areas like geothermal, geothermal is where you drill down into the core of the earth and create. You don't have to go that far. In some places of the state, that heat is closer to the surface, and Texas has a lot of geothermal resources. You use oil and gas technology to access it. So that's an area that I think we need to continue to look at. Brine mining, this state and this country needs more rare earth minerals, and so those minerals can be obtained through brine in certain formations in this state. encouraging and helping creating a regulatory and statutory platform, if you will, for that

industry to continue to develop. All of this is fueled by private industry, private investment. So the role of government is to simply make sure that we have smart regulations in place and smart laws in place which will allow them to develop responsibly, environmentally correct, and to deliver those energy sources when they become priced and efficient enough to make a profit. Where does nuclear fit into this? Because previously it's been way too expensive to develop anything new since, what, the 70s, right? Are we on the forefront of something new? And I'm really excited about that because these small modular nuclear plants,

they're small in nature, they're less costly. They're certainly less dangerous. In fact, there's one being developed on Abilene Christian College there in Abilene. And I'm excited about that. I think Texas A&M is one of the leading institutions. Going to create another one, I think, on the RELLIS campus in Bryan College Station. So I'm excited. It is something that can be deployed fairly quickly as opposed to a full-scale utility-grade nuclear facility, but certainly these small modular nuclear power plants are, I think, just what this state needs. They can be located throughout the state fairly quickly, relatively quickly.

Does the state need to supply funding for this, or is it just, you know, care back regulation? Well, you know, that's going to be open for debate. We have some funding sources that they're doing the research capabilities now. But we put money into an energy account to incentivize natural gas power generation. I think it's oversubscribed. We put $5 billion in, and it's oversubscribed. Maybe $5 billion more after this session.

And again, I point back to the earlier discussion. Is that a priority of this state state that we need more dispatchable power generation from natural gas or resources and we're incentivizing that by five billion dollars but if you have a voucher program I mean taking away four billion dollars I mean that's less money we can put into assuring our grid stability stability it's less money we only put a assuring our grid stability. It's less money. We only put a billion dollars into the Water Development Board for long-term water development.

Brad, we've talked about a lot of important issues. We didn't talk about the most important issue, which is water. Without it, we have no life. And so a billion dollars is literally that drop in the bucket. We need about $80 billion. And so that's going to be a huge focus this session on our water or lack of water and how do we get it from one part of the state to another part of the state? How do we maximize resources in certain parts of the state? How do we deploy, produce water that oil and gas generates in separation? It makes no sense to me to re-inject that back down a hole when we have it on the surface.

Let's see if we can treat it and reuse it. Well, that takes money. We know how to do it. It's just costly. So is that a priority of the state? Well, I would submit to you that there are parts of the state that don't have any water right now. I know the hill country here in central Texas. People are moving here by the tens of thousands and more and more straws are being put into the aquifers and we're having

less and less of those aquifers produce. And so we've got to figure this out. Water, I think, is going to be critically important in the session to come. Again, all of this is affected by is it a priority and how do we make that happen as a state? My hope and prayer is that this session is devoted to the long-term needs of the state, not just a knee-jerk reaction to what's the latest social issue flavor on social media that we spin off into a rabbit hole. Let's stay focused and figure out the long-term needs of the state. We have a surplus. Is it more prudent to devote resources to a short-term gratification, or is it more important to devote resources to the long-term problems facing this state.

And I hope and pray we concentrate on that as we move forward into the 89th session. Well, Representative Darby, Republican from San Angelo, thank you for joining. We appreciate it, and it's a fascinating discussion. Well, my pleasure, Brad. You do a great job, and it's always wonderful to be with you. Thanks, sir.