The Democratic Nominee for the Lt. Governor position, Mike Collier, paid a visit to Victoria Tuesday evening, as part of a state-wide tour, to greet residents and share his vision for Texas if elected to the position.
Collier, a 57 year old from Kingwood, is challenging incumbent Dan Patrick during the November General Election. The race is one of many in Texas that is seen by political analysts as ‘hotly contested’. According to Mike Collier’s Campaign website, “[Collier] started his career at Exxon, but soon found his way to PriceWaterhouseCoopers – one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, with tens of thousands of employees. He served in the audit practice for 10 years, eventually becoming a top aide to the PwC World Chairman. Finally, he served in Houston as a Partner for ten years, leading a team of two dozen professionals providing due diligence, structuring, and valuation services to some of PwC’s largest and most sophisticated energy clients. Then, Mike helped build a successful Texas oil company, serving as its CFO.”
During a studio interview with Collier, we asked him to explain just exactly who Mike Collier is. He said, “I’m a certified public accountant and I’ve never held office but I ran for Texas Comptroller in 2014 because I was very unhappy with public education and property taxes. You can’t talk about one without talking about the other and we have big problems in both… the issues are still there so now I’m running for Lt. Governor.”
Collier has based his campaign around increasing School Funding for the many school districts in the state, VISD included, while lowering property taxes. He adds the biggest issue boils down to one point: “I’ve looked at the hundred largest school districts in the state, Victoria being one of them, to show the reason property taxes keep going up, yet we don’t have enough money for schools, is because the state is withdrawing funding. And that’s the biggest issue that we face in my opinion because we’re not investing properly in public education, and at the same time, property taxes are too high.”
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