The Texan Podcast - Interview: Rep. Dustin Burrows on Bill Requiring School Security, Local Preemption Bill

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

See the full interview exclusively at The Texan: https://thetexan.news/video-rep-dustin-burrows-on-school-safety-bill-local-preemption-and-appraisal-cap-battle/Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), the chairman of the House Calendars Committee, joined The Texan senior reporter Brad Johnson to discuss the status of major policies as the legislature enters its final month of the regular legislative session.“I try not to compare sessions. They all have a very different feel and flow,” said Burrows. “But we’re getting into the good part of session where a lot of the conservative victories are about to be accomplished.”Burrows discussed two of his major bills: a broad local government preemption bill and legislation to require school districts to maintain armed security at each of their campuses.In a portion of the interview exclusively available at The Texan, Burrows also discussed the likelihood of school choice legislation passing the Texas House during this legislative session and the current battle between the House and Senate over appraisal caps. Watch the full interview here: https://thetexan.news/video-rep-dustin-burrows-on-school-safety-bill-local-preemption-and-appraisal-cap-battle/Get a free month subscription: https://thetexan.news/register/?level_id=1&coupon=9535

Hi everyone, this is Brad Johnson, senior reporter here at the Texan. Today I sat down with Representative Dustin Burroughs, a Republican from Lubbock, and chairman of the House Calendars Committee, to discuss his preemption bill, the school safety bill that received a lot of both criticism and support in the Texas House this week, along with four subscribers only. We discussed school choice, the issue itself, and the chances of a special session after that, but also the appraisal fight between the two chambers that has embroiled the lieutenant governor and the Speaker of the House to send memes back and forth at each other on Twitter.

So listen in. It's a great discussion, and we hope you enjoy. Hello, everyone. This is Brad Johnson, senior reporter with The Texan. Today, we have Chairman Dustin Burroughs. Chairman Burroughs, welcome. Thanks for coming. Well, appreciate you having me on. Looking forward to visiting with you. We're going to talk session, a couple bills you authored, run the whole gamut. But first, I think nights are getting longer, and we'll continue to get longer in the Texas legislature. How much sleep are you getting on average night? Oh, you know, we're still trying to get six or seven hours.

I'm early to bed, early up. You know, it's always a good thing. I'm right there with you. I can't do the late night stuff. My mom always reminded me nothing good happens after 10 o'clock. I've heard that same phrase only it's 2 a.m. Yeah. I'm from Lubbock.

Yes. I like that one better. So first of all, it's been a busy month for you, probably busy two months if nothing else. But one of the biggest features of your time over the last two months has been your preemption bill, HB2127. That was kind of your baby this time around. I know I listened to you speak about it at the NFIB event in February. It got an endorsement from the governor. A lot of acclaim about this bill. First of all, can you give us a rundown of what the bill does and the purpose behind it?

Yeah, the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, right? I mean, Texas has a great reputation for business. We hear all the time about businesses wanting to move here because, I mean, we really are somewhat a low-tax, low-regulation state. We can always do better, but for the most part, by comparison, we do an okay, adequate job and we do attract businesses. But I think a lot of businesses, when they get here, are surprised to learn that some of our bigger, major metropolitan cities are out of control and they're trying to regulate to their social agenda. And you have kind of progressive activist groups that can't get their agenda done here at the state capitol in Austin. So they go to these city halls and lean on the mayors to pass, you know, kind of radical environmental labor, you know, anti-business type of policies. And so what we have done is we've said, look,

if the state regulates something, we're not going to let each of our municipalities shut up their own regulatory scheme and frameworks. We're having consistency across the state. And I think that that's really much in line with what the Texas Constitution already is supposed to provide with home rule cities, but just really good policy, in my opinion. You've described the issue as playing whackable, trying to address the patchwork of regulations that businesses may face in different cities across the state. The bill passed by a pretty good margin, and I think you got, was it eight Democrats on board? What was the process like, whipping votes behind the scenes, getting that support on this pretty contentious issue?

Yeah, I mean, it took me, you know, several months of explaining it and visiting. And I talked to several of my colleagues, mayors, directly on the phone, tried to explain to them what the bill did, what they didn't. Or on Twitter. Yeah, or on Twitter. You know, part of the way they kill bills in the Texas Capitol is sometimes you confuse the issue to try to delay it because no bill ever dies. It just runs out of time to pass. So a lot of it was just setting the record straight about what it does. And I mean, in all of our home rural cities are still going to have broad powers to do what we think of as core functions of government, whether it's addressing natural disasters or cities or police fire, they all have those things. And despite some of the propaganda that was put out, those things still exist. And I had a lot of time citing different sections of code that allow regulation of controlled burns or various other things like that.

How much did taking the time to go through each of those individual instances of, hey, the city can regulate X thing, was that effective? Did that bring people to your side on this? Yeah, I think, you know, some of the times whenever, you know, the opposition tried to point out that the bill prohibited something specifically, and we were able to cite in code where it didn't, that made a big difference, because it showed that they had a false narrative. And obviously, it kind of brought them back over. The catalyst for this has been years in the making of one-off responses to individual regulations that cities have implemented. One that got a lot of attention that hasn't quite been adopted yet is the Dallas regulation of gas-powered engines or lawn equipment. The city of Austin has a whole host of different things that it's implemented, whether it's employment regulations.

We saw two bills die in the House last session trying to cut down on that. So your bill took a broader approach, the field preemption strategy. Do you feel like it has the ability, the staying power moving down the road to address what needs to be addressed? Absolutely. I mean, that's the goal is, you know, if we're going to do this, let's stop playing whack-a-mole. Let's have a consistent regulatory scheme. And this is absolutely the right way to do it. So moving on to another bill you had, the HB3, you had a lot of, actually, you know what? I missed one question I want to ask you. So while the bill, while HB2127 was on the floor, I think it took five hours on second reading. What was that like dealing with all of the amendments and four points of order, I believe,

sitting waiting for something to happen, if anything to happen, or hoping your bill survives? What's that like? You know, you're always nervous. You're always anxious. I knew I had the votes going into it. So I was confident that if we just basically stood strong and passed the bill as I intended to be passed, we would get there. And I was not going to let the bill get watered down. I mean, that was the most important thing, despite, you know, making my day on the floor easier by adopting amendments that would have weakened or watered

down what we were trying to do. I said, no, this is kind of a big deal I've worked on for several months now. And we just stood there and took it and glad we passed it in a form that will actually get the job done. Yeah, I was sitting there in the press gaggle watching it happen. And I saw Representative Cody Vesutz and Briscoe Cain running around trying to kill the points of order that were being called. It was kind of chaotic, I'd say. Yeah, I thank God for them. They're phenomenal members. I think very highly of them. And they help so many other members behind the scenes work on, you know, parliamentary procedure. We can't all be experts on things. And, you know, Briscoe and Cody have really kind of set

themselves apart as people who really have dug into what, you know, these are. And they help so many of our Republican bills get passed by defending points of order, parliamentary procedure-wise. I think I overheard you say at one point, you haven't done that kind of thing since your first session. Is it just not your forte, or you prefer other routes? Yeah, as far as handling the points of order and things of that nature, yeah, my first session being a lawyer, people kind of thought maybe I would be that guy, And obviously, I kind of ended up more in the tax world and policy world. And, you know, you have to kind of understand that, you know, if you're a jack of all trades,

you're a master of none. So, you know, you kind of focus on what you're good at. And those two really excelled in being kind of the leaders, you know, in our caucus on those issues. And we're all very thankful for that. Okay. Moving on now to the school safety bill. Your HB3 passed this week, and it got some controversy from especially the left on the methods by which armed security in schools is acquired. Can you tell us about the bill itself and why you fashioned it the way you did? Yeah, look, the bill does a lot of things. It requires, gives TEA more oversight if our schools are not actually becoming safe, allows them to do intruder detection audits so they can go in and make sure that they're actually keeping bad people

out of there. It requires that bond money be used first to actually make schools safer. But the headline is we're going to require an armed security officer on every single campus. And obviously, when minutes and seconds count, I think it's really important to have the opportunity to neutralize the shooter. Kind of a left-wing anti-gun group came in at the very end and tried to say that, well, because there's more guns on schools through those armed security officers, it makes our schools less safe. They tried to make it a gun debate, as we saw on the Texas House floor. And I'm going to give a compliment to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. The majority of them did not fall for it. They kind of, you know, went back to their common sense.

Despite being pushed on, you know, by one wing of their party and an activist group, they said, no, you know, this is what we do at banks, as we do at airports, we do at sporting events. And what we heck we even do at the Texas Capitol is we do have armed security officers to protect our schools. And they went along with me, the majority of them did. And, you know, very proud that we kind of cut through the partisan political rhetoric and did what really needed to be done for our schools and our children. One of the methods by which school districts already can have armed security is the school marshal program. How does that fold into this bill? Yeah, so what we did is we gave our schools the option of fulfilling that armed security guard requirement. I mean,

they can do it with their own internal ISD police force, they can contract to local sheriffs, they can go through the school marshal program, You know, they can arm a teacher, not require them, but, you know, one volunteers. So we give them maximum flexibility to choose how they want to fulfill that requirement. You know, to me, what's important is at least we're giving an opportunity to try to shoot, you know, an intruder, perhaps in a hallway or outside before they go into a classroom and do, you know, the ultimate damage and barricade themselves in there. You live in a more rural area. Obviously, Austin is more urban. Two different dynamics there at play.

What do you, obviously it's up to the individual school district, but what do you foresee the different strategies being used on this issue? Well, you take some of the rural communities that I represent and finding a trained police officer to be in the building to provide that protection is probably very challenging and difficult. I mean, you know, I represent school districts that, you know, for many miles, it's hard to find law enforcement officers if something like this happens. So they'll probably go through the school marshal program or look to one of their current employees because practically speaking, that's what the choice they have. But, you know, maybe Austin ISD doesn't

want to do that. Maybe they want to basically continue to beef up their ISD police force. So we're going to give them that discretion. And we also give them discretion to determine the number of armed security officers on each campus. You know, in an ideal world, we'd have two or three there because honestly, you know, one sometimes doesn't have the courage with no backup, but you know, this is a good, big, you know, start of doing that. And so we let the school boards to determine how many they want. You mentioned lack of courage to address something without backup. You know, that was something we kind of saw in Uvalde, and you chaired the interim committee to study that tragedy. How did that influence the way you fashioned this bill? Well, you know, I was in and out of there for 44 days.

Our committee interviewed over 70 different witnesses. I personally, you know, examined so many of the people who were on the scene, and we saw multiple shortcomings and found that there was multiple systemic failures, some at the school district level, a lot at the law enforcement level. And so you kind of have to look at the different buckets of policy that we need to address this. And so it greatly influenced it. One of the things that we saw at Uvalde is they did have an independent school district police force, but all the officers were primarily at the high school and not actually at the elementary. They would kind of come by the elementary in what they called rattle doors

to make sure they were locked for about 15 minutes a day. And had they actually had that police force on site that day, maybe they could have taken him out in the hallway or deterred him from coming through one of the unlocked exterior doors. Moving forward on this issue, what do you foresee the next aspect of this needing to be addressed? Well, you know, obviously the Senate's going to

have to take up, you know, this policy and decide if they agree with the House on armed security officers. They passed their own version of the bill, SB 11, Senator Nichols, and I think he did a fine job. And a lot of the components in Senate Bill 11 are House Bill 3. But they have not debated whether or not armed security officers play a difference or not. And I'm hoping the Senate's going to take that policy up and agree with myself and the majority of the Democrat caucus over in the House. Do you know what the key differences between the two plans are so far? That's probably one of them. There's a couple of others, you know, but I think they're more finer points of details.

But, you know, largely I think we're somewhat aligned. I think both chambers do take school safety and security seriously. Both the lieutenant governor and speaker made these priority legislative asks for this session. And both chambers have passed policy that is significant. I think the one key difference is what I just mentioned with the armed security presence. And certainly, we look forward to hoping the Senate will concur and agree with us on that. Do you know how long this mechanism may take to be implemented by school districts across Texas? And what's the funding mechanism for this?

Yeah, so we're putting $1.6 billion into school safety this session. So we're going to help support that. We've asked that they have this up and running by the beginning of the school year. That's a pretty short window for them to get it done. But that all being said, it's pretty important. I mean, I would love to give them,

I want to be respectful and give my school districts ample time to try to figure out how to do this. And some already are. I read a headline the other day that one central school – and I think it was New Braunfels ISD. I may be wrong on that. But they decided to go ahead and have an armed security officer on every campus. They were going to put them in plain clothes. They thought that was the way to do it.

And I'm glad they get to all choose how they want to implement it. And so it may take a little bit of time for them to get it up and away, but our schools need to be more safe and secure. Yeah. One tangential issue to that that I've seen is the increased consideration of artificial intelligence, monitoring video cameras. Do you know much about that? Is it something you think could really solve some problems with this? Absolutely. And so there's also a technology component in our bill that we decided that we want, you know, TEA and the school safety center to vet all the technologies that are available and make sure that the money that's being spent from the state is used on, you know, vendor approved, you know, groups, because there's a lot of different people selling their technology

that's out there. But some of the technology I've heard about really, I think, could be a game changer where you have a tie-in to cameras that's going to detect a weapon coming into a school building and go ahead and get there before, make other people aware before perhaps the persons on the ground actually know about it, you know, offsite monitoring, knowing that the doors are actually locked, they can monitor that from offsite, having maps of the schools so that when first responders engage, they can actually figure out where to go. So, you know, part of the investment the state is making is not only monetary, so these schools can have this available, but trying to make sure that we have the best, you know, people who are selling people who are selling that going there and trying to have some economies of scale

so that we can have statewide contracts that our schools can get into. But I'm very excited about technology. I think it's a critical piece of this and obviously part of both bills, to be candid with you on trying to address it. Yeah, the one that I've heard, it's kind of used in warehouses right now to track PPE compliance and safety issues of falling boxes or things like that. And applying it to school, you could track different factors, such as a weapon or a hooded individual,

things like that. It's a pretty interesting concept and something that seems to be really pioneered right now. Yeah, you know, it's something that the military has used to protect their bases. There's a lot of ex-military officers who have helped develop some of these. And, you know, I think it definitely can be used, you know, by our schools, our superintendents and keep our children more safe. And we're going to make that investment, and I think it's very important. So moving on to just more session overall, it seems like it started off a little slower, especially compared to last session where we had COVID, and then the blackouts, which just kind of took the oxygen out of everything. How do you compare so far this session to last session?

Well, I try not to compare sessions. And they all have a very different feel and flow. And a lot of it depends on the issues that we're, you know, trying to be, you know, dealing with. I mean, this is the first session since we've ended abortion in the state of Texas, which I'm very proud of. First session since we've probably passed the most historic pro-Second Amendment laws in the country with passing constitutional carry. And so usually this time of session, we're looking to try to advance the pro-life agenda. And this is the first time in the wake of Dobbs, and thank God that Dobbs' decision happened to do that. And so they all have a very different feel. But we're getting into the good part of session where a lot of the

conservative victories are about to be accomplished. And getting to go home and talk to Republicans about the big things that we're going to do is very exciting. And I think my Republican colleagues are very excited about what's going to happen the next couple of weeks. You mentioned Dobbs. And last session, of course, you guys passed the Heartbeat Act, which was the first one that really had an effect on abortion. But then kind of unexpectedly, at least for many of us, the trigger ban became effective once Dobbs was overturned. Did you guys think that, do you really think that the court would overturn Roe so quickly? I think we all hoped it would. And we all, you know, had confidence in the new appointments

that we had a really good chance. And I think the heartbeat bill probably pushed the Supreme Court to think about that. I mean, it was a very smartly done bill. I was proud to be a joint author and championing that from day one. But we thought that by kind of pushing the boundaries of where we thought we could get to, maybe the court would decide they have to take it up. And I think before they wanted to consider the heartbeat bill and the enforcement mechanisms and how we did it, they decided to use the Mississippi case to just say it was back to the states. And so we were prepared.

We had thought about it, and we were where we ought to be. Yeah. You mentioned the enforcement mechanism, and it's the private cause of action. I don't think that had been used anywhere else on this issue, at least. I remember talking to you about that at the time. It really seemed to be effective for a while and even more effective if it did cause the Supreme Court to move on the case. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with, you know, empowering people to use the courts. We're

not trying to create, you know, frivolous lawsuits and things of that nature. But when it comes to enforcement mechanisms, and, you know, I like to empower people to have the opportunity to avail themselves of our court system to, you know, have their rights adjudicated and especially to protect life. You'll notice that the preemption bill also has a private cause of action for our businesses and individuals so they can go get a declaratory judgment. They can't go get money damages. We're not trying to make anybody rich. But, you know, it's a way not to have to wait for the attorney general or somebody else to act. And we empower people to go do this. It seems like the private cause of action is an increasingly favored option for Republicans in the legislature on, you know, all number of

issues. I think the the rein in D.A. bill has that as well. Obviously, you said preemption. Is this something we should expect to see a lot more? Well, you know, we kind of decided to go that way with the heartbeat bill. It's probably one of the most effective and important bills we've passed. And I think that there's start to be kind of something in the conservative movement that realized that, you know, by outsourcing, you know, some of this, what we need to get done to private individuals and groups, it may be more effective. I think we have to use it sparingly. I mean, we're not trying to, you know, we're not trying to use the court system to get people rich, right? I mean, I think you have to look at, you know, is it just an enforcement mechanism to bring rights,

you know, to be adjudicated? Or is it a way to, you know, incentivize people to go out there and try to make money? And the latter is not where we're headed. But to try to have an enforcement mechanism, I think that you're starting to see people avail themselves of that and conservatives wanting to push that because it's been so effective. Facebook bill's another, by the way. Yeah, that's right. That's right. How do you fashion the cause of action so it doesn't lead to frivolous lawsuits

or trying to, you know, gain the system to make money? Well, I think it has to do with what your remedies are available to you. You know, if we're going to give you the opportunity to get damages, I think we have to be very cautious about that because we don't want people out there to do that. But if your right of action is only to, you know, have your rights restored or to have, you know, something unconstitutional struck down, and that would be through what's called the Uniform Declaratory Judgment Action. I think that's a very decent and reasonable method of trying to get those things to happen.

And so in the example of the preemption bill, you could sue, and if you win, whatever regulation that is in place at the local level would be invalidated, correct? And you could get your attorney's fees. We did provide for that, and it's reasonable attorney's fees. So a court may say a dollar is only what's reasonable to you or may take a look at the entire cost of it. But you can't go out there and say, well, my business was harmed to the tune of a million dollars and have any opportunity to recover that.

Florida had actually tried that. That bill got vetoed by Governor DeSantis, you know, on some sort of another preemption bill is kind of one of those things that stuck out. But, you know, I certainly understand the idea that we're not trying to clog this up with people, you know, looking to get wealthy off of this type of litigation. I just want people to have the opportunity to go to the courts and have their rights restored and bad, you know, city ordinances struck down. Thank you for listening to the free portion of this conversation with Representative Dustin

Burroughs. To watch the rest of it, in which we discuss school choice and the appraisal fight between the two chambers, click the link in the description. Hope you enjoy it.