The Texan Podcast - Interview: Rep. Jared Patterson on READER Act, Property Tax Reform Debate, Energy Grid

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) joined The Texan’s reporter Cameron Abrams to discuss the READER Act, legislation he authored aimed at removing sexually explicit material from public school libraries. Signed by Gov. Greg Abbott and set to become effective in September, the legislation will require library book vendors to rate applicable materials as “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant.” “Ultimately, what [the new law] does is it eliminates explicit content and puts in parental controls over other content,” said Patterson. Patterson also discussed the ongoing debate between the House and Senate over property tax reform, and when he thinks the standoff will come to an end. “I think in the month of July, we will have this completed,” said Patterson. “All it takes is for both sides to come to the table in good faith.” Patterson also discussed the possible outcome of a special legislative session regarding school choice, as well as the legislature’s efforts to improve the reliability of the energy grid. Enjoy this content? Be sure to subscribe for similar interviews and The Texan’s Weekly Roundup — a podcast released every Friday that brings you the latest news in Texas politics.

Hi everyone, this is Cameron. I'm a reporter for TheTexan.News. Today we talked with Representative Jared Patterson. We talked about the Reader Act. We talked about the rating system for books in schools. We asked him how many special sessions it's going to take to pass property taxes. And we asked him about the electric grid. Make sure to subscribe at TheTxan.news. Rep. Jerry Patterson, thank you for joining me today. Hey, thanks for having me.

So I wanted to start off with talking about the Reader Act. That was a major piece of legislation this session. And could you just explain for our listeners what the bill actually does? Because it seems there's a lot of misinformation about it being reported right now. So I just wanted to give you the opportunity to explain what it actually does. Yeah, well, and I want to, you know, say thanks to you guys, because y'all, you know, y'all followed this, this process from the beginning, and, you know, really had accurate reporting where a lot of people made it about things that it wasn't, you know. And so I appreciate that. But, you know, look, at the end of the day, House Bill 900, the Reader Act was a speaker priority bill. Speaker Phelan made the commitment early on in session that this was going to be one of the few legislative priorities that he puts forward and puts the weight of his office behind. And it was because we had worked for 18 months

nearly, you know, back in the district and across the state with moms that were fed up with the types of materials that were found in public schools. You know, we had to figure out a way to get materials that you couldn't print in a newspaper. You couldn't put over the radio airwaves that material because FCC doesn't allow you to do it because of the content. Yet that same content and worse is in our public schools at the hand, you know, in the hands of our children. And so, you know, we came up with this idea for the bill and we worked it. We got a lot of input from a lot of different people, mainly moms around the state that like me formally challenged books in their own districts.

And the only thing that this bill really does is that it, number one, removes explicit material from school, just period, the end. You can't have it there. It also allows for parental controls over other materials that are in public schools. Those are the top two things that the bill does. It does that through a rating system that the book vendors have to do, through mandatory library standards that we've never had. And there's some other functionality in the bill, but ultimately what it does is it eliminates explicit content and puts in parental controls over other content. Yeah. And you talk about working together with these moms who've been pushing back on a lot of this explicit material that have been shown up in schools,

and that's been well-documented online. And why do you think with all the support you've been hearing from moms that there has been some pushback both inside and outside of the Capitol to this redirect? Well, number one, I think, you know, when we first began fighting this, you know, in late 21, early 22, I think some of the pushback was that people didn't believe that this type of material was in our schools. I mean, it's unbelievable. When you look at the radical nature, the radically sexually explicit content, I mean, it's worse than a lot of, you know, things that you would even contemplate, you know, would be there. And so, you know, I think for at the beginning, it was a lot of people didn't believe that this problem

existed. They couldn't believe it, you know. And so for at the beginning, it was a lot of people didn't believe that this problem existed. They couldn't believe it. You know, and so when we started showing people examples, you know, that went a long way. So that's number one. And then number two, I would say, unfortunately, there are just a lot of people in society that believe that children should be exposed to this sexually explicit content. They believe that minors should have full access without any parental controls whatsoever to sexual acts being illustrated in books, being written about in the written word in such detail that every possible aspect of a sexual encounter is included, there are people that believe that that material should be in the hands of children. I mean, look at Representative Aaron's wiener. She started keeping these books in a library in her own office. And she fought,

you know, tooth and nail for this bill not to become law because she believes that children should have access to it. You know, that's a dangerous thing. It's proven that this type of material is dangerous for the brain, especially, you know, in the developmental process, you know, where children's brains are still developing. They don't need access. It's unsafe and not just amoral. You know, it's immoral.

It's unsafe to have it in the hands of children. Well, why do you think you spoke about Reps Weiner having these books in their office, people defending it? Why do you think people are defending having some of these books in the classroom? Why do you think that they believe it's necessary for children to have access to these materials? Yeah, I mean, I just I think it goes into this this whole mantra that that we're being faced with in society today, whether it be explicit sexual shows like these drag shows that you're seeing that we outlawed this session to take children to, whether it's these books with these radical illustrations of very graphic illustrations of sex in these books, or whether it's the gender, so-called gender affirming care, or, you know, these folks that believe that children can choose their sex and therefore, you know, want to take these drugs or have these surgeries, which we, you know, banned this session. If you look at what we accomplished this session, children never, ever had a safer session

than what we had this session with the number of things that we did. Now, the unfortunate reality is, is that it's because no one in prior sessions would have ever believed that we had to pass legislation to protect children from some of these things. You know, I often say the hardest thing about legislating in 2023 America is being imaginative enough of what we're going to have to combat, you know, and write down on paper what used to be common sense. But, you know, there's just there are people in society that believe that our children, that little kids should be sexual beings and should have access to any type of material that's out there, whether it be a live show or whether it be in a book. And we fought back against that this session. Yeah. And I recently saw an article

about some bookstores here in Texas that had expressed some concerns about the rating system that is a part of this HB 900 Reader Act. Could you talk a little bit about how you envision this rating system working? Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the rating system is kind of the lunchpin in the bill where the book vendors are required to rate books either sexually explicit if they meet that definition of the bill, if it's sexually relevant, which is a much lower standard in the bill, but the book still deals with sexual content, or there's no rating at all, right? Now, the overwhelming majority, I mean, the vast majority of books are going to have no rating at all because they don't deal with any of these types of themes or any of this

type of content, right? So then you get down to these two, sexually relevant and sexually explicit, and that's where the book vendors have the responsibility now under Texas law to rate these books. They're the ones with the direct financial relationship with the school districts. They're the ones that are physically handing over these books and accepting money for these books. And they're the ones that should have to determine whether or not this book is appropriate for a child. You know, we wouldn't allow someone to sell lead paint to a school to paint on the walls in a classroom. We wouldn't allow someone to sell spoiled food to have in the cafeteria for our children to consume. Yet there are some that believe that we should have equally dangerous content for developing brain of a child.

This radically explicit content in our public schools. And so if you're accepting money in exchange for a product, you should be able to tell whether or not that product is safe for a child to consume within the school district. Yeah. And, you know, I want to move to some broader questions about the capital now. And, you know, there was a lot of, you've touched on a lot of controversial bills that have come up this session, right? And what do you think were, what do you think was the biggest issue that divided House members this session? Well, you know, I don't know about divided House members. You know, if you look at most of what we did, you know, it was very bipartisan in nature. You know, I think we had 10 Democrats that voted in favor of the Reader Act, for example. You know, remarkably, you know, Representative Sean Theory, you know, stood up and gave an eloquent speech about, you know, protecting children from this type of material because she has a daughter. And I think for legislators that have children or grandchildren, you know, they can more easily

identify with, you know, what we try to do this session. But, you know, having said that, I think, you know, this session will go down. I mean, look, there was a lot of good things that we did. You know, we reined in district attorneys who didn't want to enforce the law. You know, there was one piece of illegal voting that, you know, we made a felony again, you know, listening to the grassroots to add that to the dozen or so felonies that we already have on the books for illegal voting. There was a lot of good things like that in addition to, you know, what will become in the special session, the largest state tax cut in U.S. history. But I think if you look at overall in totality of this session, you will say that keeping children

safe has never been a bigger priority than it was in the 2023 legislative session. Everything from armed guards in classrooms, which is an unfortunate reality of today's culture. You know, we have arm guards in classrooms. We have panic buttons now that are going to be installed in schools. So those types of things, all the way down to, you know, important, you know, culture war issues, which are, you know, keeping children from these radically explicit live drag shows, you know, keeping these radical materials out of our schools, making sure that our kids are safe online with the Scope Act, social media,

protecting their data privacy, those types of things. And then obviously gender modification, keeping children safe from these drugs and these surgeries that are happening in society. So, and that's just, you know, a few of the things that I can count off the top of my head without actually looking at notes and everything that, you know, was passed into law. But, you know, we had a great session for protecting children. Again, it's several things that prior legislation couldn't have even been thought of because we never would have dreamed that people would take their kids to what is essentially a strip show, you know, on the street or at a restaurant or in a library. No one ever thought that we'd have to guard our children against that.

But this session, we passed a number of bills that became law in the state of Texas to protect children. Yeah. And how do you manage those relationships between house members? Like you're saying, the imaginative nature that you have to have to understand what are some of these issues going on. And some members might not understand that these things are coming up. So how do you build those relationships with people across the aisle to let them know that, you know, these things are happening? How do you manage those relationships? dinner or meeting with someone in their office. You know, the legislative session is a 24 hour a day, seven day a week, you know, job where, you know, we're making phone call, you know, when I'm driving to and from Austin, I'm typically on the phone nonstop with someone about something to do

with the legislation or the legislature. You know, when I'm in Austin, I'm going to dinner, sometimes with members of both parties, you know, to get to know them, to meet them where they are. Here's what you have to understand. Every district is different. Every Republican district is different. Every Democrat district is different. Every member brings a different skill set, a different background, a different idea. I think a lot of times, you know, people want to put all the Republicans in one basket and all the Democrats in one basket. And that's just not reality. There are some Democrats that are more conservative than others. There are some Republicans that are more conservative than others. You know, I was

recently ranked the number one conservative in the Texas House, according to a study at Rice University, where they look at every single vote that we cast and they mark you down accordingly. So I'm the number one conservative in the Texas House. Yet I still try to go out of my way to form relationships with all of my colleagues to try to meet them where they are and to try to win them over. Because at the end of the day, my job is to get to 76 votes regardless of what the policy is. And I think I've proven that I've been able to do that consistently over the three sessions that I've served. Yeah. And I wanted to touch on what seems to be the continued ramping up of tension between the chambers, actually, especially during the special session with property taxes. What do you see needs to happen in order for both leadership in the House and in the Senate to come to some sort of conclusion on property taxes?

Well, I think we're getting there. I think that we'll have something done this month, probably in the next couple of weeks or two to three weeks, I would say that we'll have something done. I think the month of July, we will have this completed. I think that all it takes is for both sides to come to the table in good faith. I know that I can speak from personal experience. I'm not in the Senate, so I certainly can't speak for them or the lieutenant governor. But I know from the House's perspective, we have met over and over and over for months and months in good faith trying to work out a deal. You know, I think the good news for voters and for all Texans is that, you know, what we're

arguing about is how best to deliver the largest state tax cut in United States history. That's what we're arguing over. I mean, it is a blessing to serve in the legislature when those are the types of issues that you get to work on is how do we best deliver this? And I think, look, both sides have reasonable ideas about what's best for consumers. And again, I'll tell you that every district is different. Every member is different. Everyone's background, everyone's professional career is different and how that's impacted by what we're doing here. And so I think that if you look at the totality of this, we will have something done and it will be done whether it's in July or whether it happened in May, it will have the same effect legally in the state of Texas.

But this is too big of an opportunity for Texans to get it wrong. We've got to make sure that we continue on this path to try to eliminate the M&A property tax. There would be no bigger opportunity for Texans and for Texas businesses if we're able to do that. But I think that we also recognize, especially in the House, that appraisal reform is among the top issues that our people want to have. And we've been fighting for that all session. We continue to fight for appraisal reform. And I'm confident that we'll get something done on that. Well, do you want to give any predictions on how many special sessions it's going to take this post-session to get that done?

Well, again, I think from property taxes, I fully expect this to happen in July. Maybe it doesn't, but I think that, you know, that we're under pressure to get it done this month. You know, again, whether it happened in May or if it happens in July, legally, it's the same. That can't be said if we go later into the year where we can't get a, you know, if there is a wider homestead exemption, you know, that can't be on the ballot this November if it doesn't happen here soon. So, yeah, I think we're all motivated to get something done. Now, how many specials we're going to have total this year? You know, Governor Abbott made it very clear, you know, what he wanted on the property tax debate.

When it didn't happen, he vetoed a number of bills. And, you know, I believe his statement was, look, this is important policy, but it's not as important as the largest state tax cut in U.S. history. And so we'll revisit these items after we get property taxes done. And so I fully expect to be here in July. I fully expect to be here in October, you know, in other months of the year until we get all of this work completed. Right. Well, I wanted to ask about that because, like you said, Governor Abbott has signaled, you know, as many special sessions it's going to take for property taxes. He's said there's going to be a school choice special session. What other issues can you predict are potentially going to be called for a special session? Well, you know, look, I think the two biggest issues that didn't get done

in the session are property tax relief and reform. And I would throw in appraisal district reform in that same, you know, bill ultimately that probably comes out. And then also, you know, school choice. You know, we had a test vote in the House and, you know, 24 Republicans didn't support it. I believe that we have an opportunity here to do something extremely meaningful on this item. I believe that the two sides, the House and the Senate, are actually very close on where we could ultimately end up. I think that some Republicans believe that their rep may not support school choice up. I think that, uh, some Republicans, uh, believe that their rep may not support school choice, but I think that we can get to a place where most of the Republican reps will actually support, uh, you know, what the ultimate plan is. I don't know if that plan

is going to be good enough for governor Abbott or not. And I think that remains to be seen. I know he has a very, very high threshold. Um, you know, but at the end of the day, again, it goes back to, we have to be able to count to 76 votes in the Texas House. That's the way it works. And if we can't get to 76, then we can't get to what we want. So I think as long as we are, my goal, I believe in something called effective conservatism. You see a lot of conservatives who their entire career, they just yell and scream, whether it be on social media or whether it be in the chamber. They don't really get anything done. I guess they think that they're getting something done, but they just kind of they're just there to antagonize. I believe in something called effective conservatism, meaning, you know, again, the number one conservative in the House.

But I've also proven that I can not only advance the conservative movement through my words, but I can advance a conservative movement through legislation and policy wins in the Texas House. And so I think that if we can get to a point where we can get to 76 votes, we need to take that opportunity on school choice, whether it's the whole thing that I would support or whether it's something less than that we can put out there as a as a proving ground and prove that this will work. You know, whatever it takes to get to 76, that's what we've got to get done. And then, you know, if we need to come back later and we need to adjust, you know, any bill that we pass, we can do that, you know, but we've got to advance a conservative movement. I don't believe in this all or nothing strategy. know, but we've got to advance a conservative movement. I don't believe

in this all or nothing strategy. I think that we've got to advance the ball as far as we can get it and then come back the next session and continue that work and continue advancing the ball. Just like on property taxes, where we put $5 billion towards compression in 2019, we're looking at, you know, $12 to $17 billion, depending on which plan you go with, to advance that ball further this session. We can come back next session if the economy remains strong. We can advance that ball further all the way until we completely eliminate that M&O property tax rate. We can't do it all in one chunk. And school choice may be the same way. Maybe we can't do it all in one chunk. But I think that if we can get as much as we can, then we can come back in future sessions through rhetoric online or to the base or whatever it may be.

But how do you build the relationships with those who might not be in that same effective conservative camp in order to move conservative issues forward in the House? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I mean, I think there's a lot of us that are willing to work with any member of the legislature that comes to the table in good faith. You know, I think what would shock the grassroots to know is that there are some members who may be the loudest voices on social media, you know, and claim that they're fighting for conservative efforts, but never pick up the phone and call anyone, never go meet with anyone, you know, just aren't involved in the process, you know. And so it's a lot easier to pick up, you know, my phone and to send out a salacious tweet, which I've been known to do. But it's a lot easier to do that than it is to actually roll up your sleeves and put the work in to meet people where they are and to advance the ball on conservative policy. You know, I've spent two sessions now on the calendars committee where I've been able to work with a lot

of different members to advance conservative policy. And I think if you look at Speaker Phelan in his time as Speaker of the Texas House, we've never had more conservative policy wins than his tenure as Speaker of the Texas House. He's only the fourth Republican that we've ever had serve as Speaker. So it's not like there's a long list. But if you look at the policy wins from ending abortion, you know, with the heartbeat bill, the trigger ban on abortion, the constitutional carry to defunding cities that defund the police to ending critical race theory and social studies classes to ban in these, you know, sexually explicit books and all the protections we talked about earlier for children. We have never had more policy wins than we've had in the last two sessions. And it's because there are conservative members that have a seat at the table. It wasn't always like that. Under Joe Strauss for 10 years,

conservatives couldn't even get a bill-holding committee, much less be committee chairman or be on calendars or be members of the body that are effective. But that has changed. And now you have conservatives like, you know, Matt Shaheen and Briscoe Cain and myself and others that are playing pivotal roles. You know, look at Matt Shaheen past the drag queen, you know, making sure that our children, you know, don't get, you know, access to these sexual performances. Briscoe Cain has been a chairman of two different committees in the house. You know, I've been on calendars for two sessions. There are a lot of conservative members

and there are many others. Those are just, you know, two, but there are conservative members. Every member now has a seat at the table if they want it to put in the work that is required to pass conservative policy. And I think that's what our voters demand, number one, and that's what they deserve. Our leaders who will go in there with a conservative mindset that they campaigned on

and push the ball forward as far as they possibly can each and every session. And that's what I've been committed to doing. I feel like I've done a good job of that, rated in the top 10 most conservative members every single session and proven that I can carry big legislation all the way through to the governor's desk and get it signed. Yeah. And I wanted to ask about one more issue before I let you go. I know we're getting a little long here, but I wanted to ask about the grid just quickly. We saw record demand for electricity among these rising temperatures.

And do you think there was enough things done this session to secure the power grid? And do you think there's anything additionally that needs to be done? Well, you know, we could do a whole podcast on the grid. It's a very technical and complicated issue. I think it's far more complicated than what most people realize and what you'll see oftentimes. But here's what I'll tell you. The things that we did this session were more long-term goals for the grid. They're not things that are going to fix things right now today. We worked on that last session. So in 2021, we worked on more immediate needs. But also the PUC and ERCOT under Governor Abbott's leadership worked on more immediate things, you know, even than we addressed through the 2021 legislative session. You know, things like winterization, going out and checking power plants to make sure they're not going to have the same issues that they had under winter storm Erie. All of that stuff happened in December of 21. So, you know, look, at the end of

the day, we're in a precarious situation. We've got the ninth largest economy in the world. We've got a growing population. You know, I think people don't realize that even though California has a larger population than Texas, their peak demand on their grid is only about 60% of what our peak demand is on our grid in Texas. I think people don't realize that. So we're in a precarious situation. And the more that we continue to invest in unreliable sources of power generation, specifically wind power, and even though the investments are going more towards solar than wind power now, they are now coming back and wanting us to spend billions of dollars on transmission lines to bring wind power that was built on cheap land out in West Texas. They want us to spend billions

more on transmission lines to bring that power to the Metroplex. The problem is everyone pays that through their rate paying through the transmission delivery piece of their electricity bill. So that's going to make everyone's costs go up dramatically, just like it did the last time they did this. But also wind power doesn't work when we need it. Wind power works most overnight. It rarely works in extreme temperatures, especially during a hot summer afternoon in Texas. And so we need to continue to incent and have people invest in reliable forms of electricity production, namely natural gas, because that's what we have an abundance of. It's cheap. It burns cleaner than coal. It's a great product for electricity generation. I would love to have more nuclear, but people aren't going to tie up billions of dollars in investment waiting on the federal government on a 20 year permitting process. You know, so we need more nuclear, but we're probably not going to get it. Natural gas is the cheapest, cleanest, best form of electricity production. We put some incentives in place this session in 2023 to try to encourage more development there, in addition to some market changes that they're hoping encourages more development there.

But folks have to understand that we are competing against an extremely, extremely high dollar amount that is flowing in from the federal government and incentives to these renewable generation sources. And so that's why they, that's why the natural guys haven't been investing as much in Texas. So, you know, we had to come up with some incentives to try to get them to invest here. We're competing against the taxpayer. It's really, it's really unfortunate because the taxpayer in Texas is competing against themselves because they're sending money to D.C. that's coming back in the form of these incentives to the wind power generators that is, you know, worsening the reliability of our grid. And so then those same tax dollars now are going to have to try to incentive, incentivize natural gas generators against themselves to try to make sure that our

grid continues to be in a good place. And it's just, you know, we're in a precarious situation. But I'll tell you, it's kind of one of those problems. It's a good problem to have at this point because it means your economy's growing. It means your population's growing. You look at some of these other states that aren't having these problems, and it's because their economy is in the tank. It's because their population, people are fleeing their states. So it's one of those things just like roadway infrastructure, just like cell phone towers. It's another infrastructure piece that people get frustrated with, but it's because we're

victims of our own success. We're growing rapidly. Well, like you said, we could have an entire podcast just about the power grid and going over all the incentive programs, but I think we're going to wrap up here. And I just want to say thank you again for joining me today. And it's been a fantastic conversation. Well, thank you for having me. Always enjoy it.