El Paso Legislative Priorities

The next session of the Texas legislature will be starting soon and El Paso's delegation has filed their normal pile of bills. I'm still going through most of them but a couple of them are noteworthy.

The weed bill and the cow bill.

Representative Joe Moody (HD 78) has filed a bill that has drawn praise from newspapers across the state of Texas (San Antonio, Houston, Dallas) but for whatever reason really hasn't gained any attention here in El Paso. Essentially what Moody wants to do is decriminalize user amounts of weed.

Its probably the most common-sense approach to dealing with the "War on Drugs" anyone in the delegation has ever proposed. We pay more for our judicial system and jail system in El Paso County than anywhere else in the state. Decriminalizing weed is likely a pretty good tax-saver for El Paso. 

Moody is a former prosecutor, so he's got some clout and street cred being the state representative that introduces the bill. If this bill was introduced by some hippie rep from Austin it would be dead on arrival but the bill being introduced by a border rep that is a law and order guy gives it some legs.

That being said, the bill still has an uphill battle. And by uphill, I mean steep.

The fate of this bill is going to be largely tied to the speakers race. The crazy nut-ball tea party wing of the Texas Republican Party is attempting a coup to take over the speaker's seat. They are going to lose that battle, but they are making the push nonetheless. 

Moody needs a Republican with some clout to back up his play on the bill. So while the more Libertarian-leaning members of the House might be willing to jump on board, it would likely be a death sentence for the bill because of their efforts to "Oust Strauss" as they say.

Moody needs an establishment Republican to go along with the bill. Thats the key to whether or not the bill is going to pass. 

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The other bill of note is the cow bill. Look, cows are not a priority to this community. Even in the valley there are strong voices opposing the re-introduction of dairies to the community.

But lets look at this from an economic development perspective. Dairies don't produce good jobs. They are profitable for the farmers, many of which I know and respect greatly, but the reason they are profitable is because they have to keep their over head low. That means they don't pay the hands a lot of money. And frankly, there aren't that many jobs there anyway because they are mostly family operations. 

Its time for legislation to help crack-down on what is going on in Clint. There are thousands of constituents in the area that are getting hosed and need an advocate at the state level to protect them. Especially in Montana Vista, Horizon, and Agua Dulce.