By: Brittany Williams
When Mike Collier is asked about his party affiliation, he says he’s an accountant who rallies for “fiscal responsibility and problem solving.”
Collier, a Democrat who is challenging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in November, was in Longview on Saturday and attended the Longview Pride Festival in downtown.
He said politicians like the Equal and Uniform law “loophole,” which he believes cheats the state out of $5 billion that could be used on property tax relief, public education and health care.
The law, passed by the Legislature in 1997, allows property owners to fight an appraisal if they can show that comparable properties are appraised at lower values. But that law also applies to large industrial and commercial properties.
“It’s not raising taxes. It’s just enforcing the law because the Texas Constitution says that everybody has to pay taxes based on market value, so homeowners and small business owners do, and therefore the large corporations have to as well, and they aren’t,” Collier said.
“The people that like that loophole give Dan Patrick and the senators a lot of money to look the other way, so I’m going to make them vote.”
Gov. Greg Abbott recently unveiled his school safety plan, which he said would provide $120 million in funding for schools to implement his recommendations, but Collier said that’s “not even enough to hire one-third of one counselor at each school.”
“The no. 1 problem with (the governor’s) plan is it’s not backed by money. … So it’s almost meaningless,” he said. “The fact that that they refuse to call the special session of the Legislature tells me that they won’t do anything now and they won’t do anything ever.”
In the aftermath of the Santa Fe school shooting, Patrick has said schools should reconsider their designs and noted that “there are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas.”
While Collier agrees that schools should “be mindful of physical security,” he believes Patrick’s suggestions are a distraction.
“I don’t think anyone wants our schools to be prisons. I don’t think anyone wants our schools to be locked in and can’t get out. I don’t think anyone wants to require teachers to carry guns, for example,” he said.
“(Patrick has) blamed the violence on godlessness, which is an unbelievable slap in the face to all the men and women of faith who are in public education,” Collier said.
“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. He says these things to distract everyone from what needs to be done, which he will not do.”
Among the things Collier said Patrick “will not do” is considering gun safety laws.
“We need background checks that work, and we should have ‘red flag’ laws so that if someone is clearly a danger to themselves and the community, following due process, we can move before, not after, something like this happen,” Collier said.
“Those are two very, very sensible approaches to gun safety that Texans agree with, but politicians don’t have the courage to say that. I have the courage to say that.”
If elected in November, Collier said he won’t have problems reaching across the aisle because he’ll bring “rational thinking to policy.” “I should be just fine as a Democrat versus a Republican. The question I would throw back and ask (is): ‘Why don’t Republicans think about those things?’” he said.
“People often say to me, ‘Mike, you sound like a Republican’ when I talk about fiscal responsibility and problem solving. I say, ‘No, I don’t. When’s the last time you’ve heard Dan Patrick, a Republican, say anything of the sort?’ I’ll be just fine.”
Read more on the Longview News-Journal website.