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Liberty and the Legislature, Texas LP, 2013/03/16
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Jun 5, 2025
Panel discussion on the liberty legislative agendas of several organizations, at the Wingate Hotel, Round Rock, Texas. Moderator: Caroline Gorman, Travis County Chair Panelists: Gregory Foster, Electronic Frontier Foundation- Austin (Electronic Privacy) Terri Hall, Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (Transportation and Matters of Corporatism) Michael Cargill, Central Texas Gunworks (Firearm/Defense Legislation) Jeanette Moll, Texas Public Policy Foundation (Criminal Justice Reforms and Juvenile Sentencing) Matt Simpson, ACLU of Texas (Privacy/Civil Liberties Issues) Cheyanne Weldon, Texas NORML (Drug Policy)
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who wants to be seated okay um then let's go ahead and get started can someone hit the lights
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in the back dim them a little bit all right um welcome to a forum as
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presented by the state libertarian executive committee we are very excited to have you all tonight and tonight our
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Focus will be on building effective was that me I didn't move okay
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all right um my apologies I'm sure that hurt everybody's ears quite a bit uh tonight's focus is on building effective
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organizations to lobby for whatever cause or causes it is that you care about most we're very happy to be able
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to present an excellent panel and I will introduce all of them to you right now
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um first we have Cheyenne Welden with normal uh she previously served as Texas
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normal secretary for three years and is now director of women's Outreach uh in
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2012 she was honored as High Times Freedom Fighter of the month so that's
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[Applause] wonderful then we have Greg Foster who
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is the vice president of EF Austin an independent nonprofit civil liberties
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organization staffed by experts who comprehend the complexities that arise the intersections of science society and
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Technologies wait that's Greg at the very end I'm very sorry this is not in order
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[Applause] [Music] um Matt
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Simpson undergraduate degree in political science and a JD from Lewis and Clark Law School he is now a policy
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strategist at the ACLU of Texas um and that is what he's doing for
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us
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tonight next we have Janette Mo nod that I no got that one right yes thank you
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Juvenile Justice Juvenile Justice policy analyst in the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas public policy
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Foundation prior to joining tppf she served as a legislative Aid in the Wisconsin legislature where she dealt
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with various policy issues media Affair Affairs and constituent
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Outreach next we have Michael cargo who is an army vet served for 12 years and
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he's coowner of the Central Texas Gunworks Austin based store which sells firearms and offers a variety of fire
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firearms training including CHL courses and does a lot of Second Amendment
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[Applause] activism next we have Terry Hall founder
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of San Antonio Terry founder of San Antonio toll party
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and Texans uniting for reform and freedom she's also a homeschool Mom of eight and
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takes taxpayer Advocate advocacy very seriously she's done some wonderful
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things and that at the end is Greg Foster who I introduced earlier um so
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thank you guys very much for being here um we have what we're doing tonight is
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it okay there we go um we are trying to learn how to build better organizations
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to reach out for the CES we care about uh right now I'd like to tell you about some of the county organizations that we
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have going we have 50 organiz no how many organized counties do we have 51 in
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Texas including Williamson County and Travis County and I mentioned that specifically because I imagine many
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audience members are from those two areas so if you would like to participate in those two counties you're more than welcome the Williamson County
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has their chair and vice chair here if you all could raise your hand that's Boose Zimmerman and Robert
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[Applause] Butler and they have meetups every month
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uh their business meeting is the second Tuesday and you can find them on meetup.com so please stop by and find
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out what they're doing I am the chair in Travis County and we also have yay
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[Applause] Travis we also have meetings every mon once a month and we're working on having
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socials every month and we tend to use our Facebook page more so if you could find us there that would be most
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appreciated all right so sorry okay um so as I said we're here
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tonight to learn more about building strong organizations citizen coal
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coalitions activist groups to get more done and we invited you all because you're experts in doing that so let me
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tell you about the form at tonight with that overall goal in mind um first I'm going to ask you to each spend a minute
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describing your organization's goals then I'd like to ask you to
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describe a yearr round picture of the channels you work through to achieve those goals um then after that I'd like
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you to describe specifically what you're doing in the legislative cycle and then finally I'd like you to
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ask what is the most effective thing that one individual can do you know just what really helps the most has the
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greatest power um so I after that we'll open up to audience
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participation so unless there are any questions or caveats from the panel I
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think we'll begin with Cheyenne down here if we could just get a minute from each of you about the goals of your
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organization and next time we'll talk about how you achieve them so right now just the goals please
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okay I better okay I knew I knew I shouldn't have said at the beginning of the table I actually moved my card to
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sit here so sorry um so the goal of normal as as a National Group which we
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are with over 100 chapters Nationwide Texas normal is the chapter in Austin
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but um the national message is that we're trying to move public opinion
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sufficiently so that the use the adult responsible use of cannabis is no longer a
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crime that's the that's the basic core message in in whatever way we can do
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that and for those of you who don't know normal is the National Organization for the reform of marijuana laws established
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in 1970 when uh we thought it would be legal very soon and we're still trying
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so [Music]
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um well I am from the state affiliate of the ACLU so um all of our goals tend to
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be either local or Statewide in nature um and they fall into four categories we
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work on uh immigrants rights we work on school to prison pipeline issues uh we work on trying to end over incarceration
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try to address issues like the death penalty the use of solitary confinement uh and then finally we work on religious
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freedom trying to make sure that the you know public forum is a place where everybody and of any religion or no
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religion has a kind of an equal chance um in terms of the specifics I think the most interesting of the of the campaigns
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for this group is probably our work with school to prison and with uh criminal justice which will actually overlap
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probably kind of more than you would more than you would expect with tppf so I'll try to keep it brief but um we're
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particularly interested in trying to end ticketing in in public schools Texas has a major problem with over ticketing
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students in class uh or in the Halls um we're looking at some accountability measures for law enforcement that are
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placed in schools most schools now have law enforcement stationed there full-time uh but there is no specialized
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training and there is no data on arrests and citations from school so we're working on those issues with the ledge
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this session um with tppf uh with Texas apple seed and in a a pretty pretty nice
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uh spectrum of of groups uh and then when it comes to criminal justice we're particularly focused on over
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overcriminalization which certainly touches on some of the drug law reforms uh as well as looking at the death
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penalty of possible which is a little tricky at the ledge and uh solitary confinement as I mentioned so those are
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kind of some of the things I'll probably talk about in the context of our work to come thank
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you uh so my Foundation is a nonpartisan nonprofit Think Tank devoted to thank
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you uh devoted to free markets and individual liberty and so we seek to effectuate those goals in a wide variety
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of policy areas we actually founded back in the 80s to focus on school choice and we've now expanded to cover I think we
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have eight different policy centers now from Healthcare to education HED and why
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I'm here criminal justice Juvenile Justice and overcriminalization and so in those fields specifically we work to make sure
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the government is as small as possible because there has to be a role for government in criminal but we also need
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to make sure that it's small and that it's effective and so we work to make sure that they're uh not wasting
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taxpayer dollars that they're not unfairly infringing upon uh the rights of citizens to perform their duties or
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to work in the free market um there's a lot of different things that we're working on this session but a lot of
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them as Matt mentioned focus on criminal justice uh School discipline reform over commonization uh we have thousands of
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felonies and misdemeanors on the books right now in Texas and we need to make sure that we're only making public safety issues a criminal uh law issue so
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we'll go more speciic thank [Applause]
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you gold I don't know there's so many of them Where Do We Begin my goal is to get
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constitutional carry uh in the state of Texas that's my goal
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constitutional my goal what is my goal my goal is to tell the government to
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stay out of my home uh stay out of my bedroom uh and keep your hands off my
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guns that's my goal so many goals I don't know
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my goal this year is to have open carry passed in the state of Texas that is my
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goal my goal is to have conil Carry On Campus pass this year that is my
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goal my goal is to have everyone that I possibly can to support all PR proun
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legislation in the state of Texas I want to get you to show up that's my goal I need you to join me I don't want to be
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alone that's right that's my goal
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Absolutely I'll piggy back on that we can't do this alone that's why you are also integral to what we do um but Turf
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our primary mission is defending property rights and the freedom to travel uh so it's Transportation related
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issues and as you can imagine as you've been really you're getting hit with an onslaught of toll roads in particular in
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Austin the way they're being done I think would be you'd find very offensive as Libertarians um it really is one of
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the biggest impediments to our freedom to travel in our Modern Age um two of the things in particular that would be
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of interest to your group that we're working on this legislative session is uh the way that they're criminalizing
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driving there's a lot of areas now where you just literally can't even drive in your car we were the only Group by the
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way to testify against the the banon texting in your vehicle if you actually read that bill that means if you're even
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holding your phone in your car a cop can give you a $100 ticket you're even touching your phone um and it's only a
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defense of prosecution if you can prove you're guilty until proven innocent you have to go into court and prove that you
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were only dialing your phone or uh programming your GPS but otherwise they will assume that you're guilty and how
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many people are going to take a day off work and go pay to park downtown and all of this to defend a $100 bill of course
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some of you will but most people won't and they're counting on that and so it's really a revenue generation scheme which
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we said in committee um then another thing is how they're going to criminalize us for failure to pay tolls
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ultimately you can be thrown in jail for failing to pay tolls it's like a debtor's prison which is against the
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Constitution both federal and state so this is a huge problem and it's going to um continue to be a problem until we
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Reign it in and we would love the help of the activists in this room to help us do that because we do need to have help
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we can't be the only lone wolves in committee and they see me at every Transportation Committee hearing so it
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helps to have other faces so especially when you live in Austin if you can make it at all to the legislature for
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committee hearings it's going to be a key time for us here during the session so we'll tell you how you can do that we have a whole table in the back um with
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lots of information and a comprehensive list of all the bills that have been filed this session and if they're good
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or bad as they relate to transportation and property rights so I encourage you to to snag that when you get a chance but thank
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[Applause]
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you well it is wonderful to be here with all of you all here tonight and thank you all for showing up I Echo the
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sentiments um I think that part of winning is really actually just showing up I think that more and more folks are
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seeing that now um I myself am just recently kind of stepping up into the
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political realm more um e Austin has been around for a good while um actually
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since the foundation of the electronic from tier Foundation um I don't know if
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any of yall how many of yall here are familiar with the eff all right so a good amount um do you all remember back
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1990 199 one or so when the Secret Service rated Steve Jackson games and
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kind of bubbled that whole operation all right so we've got one person remembers so the eff was formed as a result of
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that particular incident because there was recognition of the fact that we have
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this whole new online realm and who's going to protect our rights out there who's going to keep an eye on what's
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going on and so I'm a technologist by trade computer de by trade and so I
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understand kind of the outs how this works I understand um the degree of the
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ease with which data is collected and aggregated in that sort of thing now and so we're active again at this point UF
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Austin sort of waxed and waned over the years and we feel like we're needed right now because um online privacy and
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this entire domain basically the pendulum needs to swing back in the direction of individual rights and
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protection of our information our [Applause]
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privacy so tonight I'll tell you a little bit about a bill that we're working through the state legislature um
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focused on geolocation tracking information how many people have a cell phone here why don't we let you move on
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into the second part of the question we'll just keep the mic with you since you're you know at the end there and the
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question here is could you all spend two minutes describing the various channels that you take or the methods you take
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throughout a standard year maybe your cycle is two years to advance your goals and what I mean by cycle is I know if
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you want to be active in the legislate in the legislative session you really need to start asking people to put in
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bills way before the session starts so what is it you know how do you plan this out to be most effective and why don't
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you go right into it sure I'm probably the best person to start this one
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because we're building it as we go along um we really were just invited uh how
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many of youall are familiar with the grits for breakfast blog that Scott Henson writes on criminal justice here
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um so Scott and his partner Kathy Mitchell who also happens to be my boss at Consumer Reports um they heard about
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this um Senator Patrick Le asked the telecommunications companies well how
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many requests do y'all receive per year from law enforcement state and federal
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for information for for subscriber data that can be your email contents your
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text messages really just a record of your geolocation which is everywhere
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your phone goes just just a map of everywhere you go and your associations
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can be inverted from that basically a diary of your Digital Life and so the
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telecoms came back and said that they in 2011 processed 1.3 million requests
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for data so much so that they've had to build automated portals for this this is
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not this is getting more into the legislative piece so we'll save that first so we were brought into this early
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this year um we've been making a lot of friends actually at the legislature because we're finding that our expertise
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is is valuable the perspective that we can provide as far as explaining how all this stuff works is is needed and so
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we're being actually asked to help out or to file additional bills um as
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regards to location tracking information email content um we were asked to help
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out on the the anti-drone bill that's up right now HB 912 and
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so we're kind of recognizing that we have a lot of work in front of us and so
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we've begun developing out the different tools tool sets that we can use to organize people around the state uh one
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tool that we use that I'm really excited about is called Nation Builder and it's
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a really just sort of a member database organizing tool put together by some of the smartest guys in the room these days
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um we have websites we're looking at Twitter Outreach Facebook these sorts of things you have to go where the people
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are at so I have a lot of background in that sort of online organizing piece of the puzzle and so we're trying to put
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those uh Parts into play and figure out how to get all of that to to work out together but then there's all the
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traditional fundraising and those pieces as well so we have lots of ideas and we're just figuring out how to make it
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all work together and we will open it up to audience participation at the end so if someone would like to ask him to
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elaborate on that we can definitely do it well great well we um I feel like I'm
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on a Non-Stop treadmill whether it's the session during the legislature or not with Transportation there is a role to
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play at the local state and federal levels so literally there's never a time to take your breath because there's
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always one of those levels of government that's um in your business um so one of the things we do in between sessions is
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and this is where we started was at the local level there was some roads particularly uh the road that got me involved was US 281 goes all the way as
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you know from really the Border all the way up to Canada um but 281 goes throughout our state they wanted to come
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in and take and convert all of our existing free Lanes into toll Lanes complete tax pair ripoff highway robbery
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of course that didn't sit well with the Grassroots so we really started our movement based on collecting uh
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signatures and signups at t.u hearings and we would use the open mic time
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during the public hearing format to educate people about what was wrong with this and the waste and the boond doggles
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and everything else that was going on and um get signups that way and you'd educate people both through the microphone and we would also bring lots
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of flyers and just you know you guys have probably done a lot of this where you hand out flyers at public meetings
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because people just don't know what's really going on um so that's how we started then we started monitoring um
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the local boards that were making the decisions thumbs up or thumbs down on tolling and here in Austin they have one
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and they have one in every city in the country that has population of 50,000 or more and they're called mpos
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Metropolitan planning organizations and those literally are made up of local elected officials and they're like
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little Godfathers they their own you know these guys literally have so much
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power and can Dole out so much public money and they can abuse the taxpayer like you wouldn't believe and and most
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of the time they stack them with areas of town that aren't being affected by tolls so it's hard for you in the areas
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that are affected to pressure these boards to do the right thing because they're just not in your district and
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they don't care if they told you because then that means more free Road money for their District so we do a lot at the no
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level um then we also do a lot of the state legislature and so we're having to juggle a lot of balls because as you can
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imagine you don't just walk into the session in January and expect that it's all going to fall into place there takes a lot of groundwork um and we've just
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built relationships with a lot of legislators through the years because they would carry bills now we didn't
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initially ask them to carry those bills but you find the legislators that are going to be your best bet on carrying
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your bill based on the other types of bills they carry so for instance Lois Kor is one of our big fans with property
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rights bills and uh she was the one that almost single-handedly helped us repeal the trans Texas Corridor last session
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took us three sessions but we finally did it now there's still lots of that going on we gone underground leave it
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for the legislative sure sure sure just but we also get involved in um campaigns
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because that has to become an aspect as well um we have a pack for that but we do help candidates I do robo calls for a
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lot of candidates to educate people about what their voting record was or if they're a good guy we want people to know and to vote for them for the right
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reasons um so we we basically get involved in at every level and we've
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also done a lot of litigation sadly that's one of the only things that gets their attention sometimes is When U the
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taxpayers sue the government so we have experien in that too so anyway that's kind of the overview but but you really
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can do a lot by educating people just through the public hearing process so I would encourage you to keep get involved
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in that if you're not already thank you awesome did owe that definitely get involved uh some of the things that I do
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uh I actually go around to a lot of different universities and colleges and I talk to the students because the students are a good voice and they they
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are our future so I I go to the different groups I talk to Republican groups I talk to the libertarian groups
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I even try to talk to the Democratic groups but I get kicked out of there no you would think you know my
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goodness I'm a poster child for the Democratic party right I'm an African-American gay Mill and a long-term relationship for 14 years you
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think they would love me right no way they lock me out of the door but yes I I definitely reach out to
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them and I think education is the tool so I I actually travel to LC I talk to Texas Tech I try to talk to every
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student group at Texas Tech I go up to bayor University I try to talk to every student group at bayor University
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University of Texas I would go there and talk to every student group at University of Texas and just continue you know do this little Loop and
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continue to talk to them and let them know that I need their help and get them to get them involved so then what
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happens is I get them excited you know and then they actually they surprised me uh Bailey University got 600 signatures
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in support a consal carry on campus called me up say hey Mike can you come to Waco we're going to go to the
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Senator's office in Waco here and we're going to deliver 600 signatures from bayor University you know because the
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the another group got together 100 signatures so we're going to we have 600 that we want to turn in I said yeah all
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right I'll be there in a few minutes I'm on my way so we went and turned in those signatures um another thing that I do is
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I actually will go after any company that attacks uh lawful gun ownership in this country uh Groupon
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that's right Groupon decided that uh this year that they were going to stop any deals dealing with uh gun ranges uh
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any shooting clays or any gun deals at all they decided hey we're not going to do those at all so they decided that
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they were going to attack lawful gun ownership in this country so I said you know what no we're not going to stand for that because you're telling uh
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you're telling uh citizens who take the time out of their busy schedule to learn gun safety to learn the laws surrounding
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carry that gun to actually try to do the the right thing you're saying you're going to Target that individual you're gonna Target that person and punish them
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and you're not going to help them out you're only going to support the criminal so I said no we're not going to do that you know what we're not doing business with you if you don't want to
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do business with us when we're not giving you our money thank you Michael I have a quick question for
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you uh before we move on to go and speak to those student organizations what does that normally require do you contact
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them directly do you have to permission from the University yes I definitely reach out to the president of the group
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and I you know will try to get their number give them a call and say hey let me you know come down and talk to your group and just you know let you know
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some of the things we're working on and I like to talk with you guys and get your input on some things as well see you know what are some of the things
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that you're looking for what are some things you want to change you know great idea yeah and get in the door and
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definitely sit on the top of them so thank you uh well we do operate on a two-year
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cycle and ours goes from July of an odd number year to July of the next odd numbered year um and we started in July
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because that's right after the last session ended and as I mentioned earlier we're a think tank and so everything
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that we do is based on our research and based on the policy papers that we produce so we sit down in July and
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there's just under 40 employers at our or 40 employees at our Think Tank and we sit down and independent of any
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legislation we we start talking about the issues that we're concerned about we highlight what the areas where we think
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government has grown too much and where we can reduce the government we highlight problems that we see in legislation or in the law from the last
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legislative cycle and we pick out the issues that we want to research in the issues that we want to talk about and so
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we uh we set up a schedule for our research and each of us produces between 12 and 15 research papers each year and
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that becomes the basis of our legislative work and the way that that happens is a variety of ways a lot of
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times legislators read our stuff and contact us and say I will file this bill for you I agree 100% write it draft up
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for me and so we'll draft legislation for that legislature other times we have to do the leg work and that means that
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we take our policy papers and we shop them to the legislature and we say this is what we think these are the fixes that we could use in the legislature do
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greate and if they do then we we go through the same process where we draft up the legislation for them um and
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that's that's been actually a really important part of our work is doing the draft itself because legislative Council
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uh doesn't always come up with the best draft um so we we spent a lot of time
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educating ourselves and how you actually write the draft so that the legislators can just file it themselves without
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having to go through ledge Council um so then while we you're in the legislative session itself it's all about you know
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the nonpartisan effort the the lobbying effort to get that legislation passed and that's testified in committee
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hearings that's oneon-one meetings with legislators and that's media outre uh we find it's really really important to
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have a good spin on our issues in the in the media if they do become an issue and so we'll do um press releases and
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interviews and call and we have a weekly column in the Statesman um that we use to kind of Advance our goals and then at
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the end of session we we take a look back and we see how many bills we able to get pass and we start all over again
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um and then the only other component to that is we do have a national effort named r on crime there are some flowers on that in the back we started this a
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couple years ago when we realized that there are uh conservatives and those on the right side of the aisle all over the country that want to start working on
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this issue on criminal and Juvenile Justice they just don't know how they don't have the words they don't have the tools they don't know what they should
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be talking about and so we brought together a group of conservative leaders to give them those tools and give them
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those words and give them the research that they need and ride on crime has now uh been in all 50 states in some form um
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and so we're helping leaders in other states work on legislation and do media outreach uh in those in those issues as
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well thank you I know that I would love to for the libertarian party to have a weekly column in the states that would
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be wonderful but maybe during question and answer we can talk more about that media our reach and ways for smaller
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organizations to get that done I think that would be very helpful Mr Simpson
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well um I guess my organization might be a little bit distinct in some ways we have um a couple of different arms for
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advocacy um oh actually I wanted to back up the other I guess kind of the fifth priority for us is privacy and
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technology and we're working with Greg on basically all that stuff but uh particularly the cell phone tracking
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bill um and so actually those are those are some things I would like to talk about when we get into specifics of work
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I think there's a lot that folks in this room can do to ensure privacy um so anyway but we'll get to that uh my
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organization's a little bit unique in terms of this panel uh we have uh we make an effort to activate or get
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involved our activists in our and our folks that are already members of the organization and then others that are interested in the specific issues so for
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example we worked with uh parents in the Dallas area that were concerned about U suspensions of their of their children
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basically kind of over incarceration of the classroom um so we will uh so we put out materials
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um both information about our issues and also kind of activist toolkits um and
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often when folks just start googling for what do I do if my kids suspended uh they'll start finding like our youth
29:45
rights manual and other materials like that look through our website and start to see that there's some opportunity for
29:50
uh working with our organization on local issues um so we've been developing that uh it's it's it's certainly um we
29:56
haven't perfected it but uh we're definitely ly feel like we're moving forward we had a few local folks that
30:01
we've actually been able to coordinate and do ledge visits with so we're starting to even see some of our local work start to be a part of our
30:08
legislative work and and we certainly uh kind of incorporate it into litigation as well so we've got the kind of
30:13
activist Outreach uh we also do a lot of work in the media I think that it's uh it's absolutely critical when you are
30:20
talking about issues that are easily misunderstood like privacy like Drug law reform to have the right messaging so
30:26
that people aren't confused by what you're the words you're saying and missed the kernel of truth right and so
30:31
U you know I think echoing what Janette and probably everybody else would say you know thinking about how you portray your issue in the media is incredibly
30:38
important and um it has to do with your Effectiveness in all the other Arenas um that I guess we kind of operate in and I
30:44
think just about anywhere um then we also do legislative work that's I work with a group of uh volunteers and uh UT
30:51
grad students and we go and testify on bills that are important to the ACLU uh
30:57
a lot of them almost all our civil liberties and then finally we do litigation which is probably what folks
31:02
actually know is for so and we try to coordinate all that into um you know one coherent strategy which also is not
31:09
always perfect thank you okay uh well Texas normal we in the
31:18
past year I guess have really grown so that now our Focus year round is again
31:23
it's always Outreach but now we're able to have specific Outreach I for example I'm trying to reach out to more women
31:29
because that's in in the public polls we see that women are 10 to 12% behind men
31:35
in favoritism of reforming drug laws so in coming out publicly and being a woman
31:41
in the movement just by setting the example I try to encourage more women to to become involved and to talk just to
31:47
have the conversation which is the biggest Outreach that tool that we have
31:52
trying to make it a public conversation so we also do that by an athletic group that one of our directors started so we
31:59
have people walking around in a group Around Town Lake or doing a 5k or a 10K
32:05
soon um all wearing shirts that say Team Hope through cannabis with a huge list
32:11
of ailments and conditions on the back that it can help so it's just raising awareness that we're out there we're
32:16
part of the community we're not just inviting you to our reggae show and expecting you to act exactly like we do
32:24
and that's the only way that you can be a part of our group instead we're trying to reach out to people on other levels
32:30
and just connect and show that we're we're part of the community we're not we're no longer a subculture that we
32:36
tried to be and had to be for so long uh we also reach out to people in our movement that we know there's a specific
32:43
need for like patients um our in fact our director of patient Outreach is here tonight Vincent Lopez so I want to
32:49
acknowledge that if anybody wants to speak to him um we also recently uh have a
32:57
veterans Le Aon who is not local in Austin but he is in Colleen and so he's very active he's also a school teacher
33:04
so we were we're just reaching out to groups that either have a need or that we're not really hearing from and we
33:10
want them to be a part of this conversation and um otherwise just H in
33:15
having that conversation and bringing it to to the public um making it okay and not taboo to talk about I think the most
33:22
important thing is to find out what people's concerns are on any level like
33:28
education or where we're spending our money and try to explain to them how changing our drug laws could change
33:35
something and benefit their own concern I think the most important thing in talking to people is that you can't
33:40
expect them to agree with you on all points and you can't try to force your exact method of your message you have to
33:48
find out what where their interest lies and then kind of conform your message believe me there's something affiliated
33:55
with the drug war that you can reach out and connect to somebody on so I think that's just a big key in Awareness thank
34:05
you um you you get to start the next round which is what you're doing this
34:11
legislative session and I don't think we have time to go into detail about specific bills but if you could a
34:19
general overview of what your goal is and also you know are you doing what does your organization do focus on most
34:26
is it lobbying days is it testifying is it you know talking to the legislators
34:31
and providing research uh so if we could get two minutes on that from each of you
34:36
that'd be great thank you okay well this was our big year to really um make an
34:42
attempt at lobbying and at being really involved with the legislature not just
34:47
on our own as individuals whoever felt like doing it but up until this year we had um put together an activist training
34:54
guide held an activist training day where we tried to get people involved to go on their own and here's how you find
35:01
out who your legislature is here's how you contact them and some guidelines this year we stepped it up a bit and did
35:07
that as well but we also um we put out a voter's guide there's some copies of all
35:13
this stuff back there if you guys want to take a look at it we made our first attempt at a voters guide um most of the
35:19
people we heard from were Libertarians thank you um so we had some really positive responses but I will say that
35:26
even the Republicans that had even the worst that it was wasn't bad all the way
35:31
across the board so I think that showed a a good thing good climate temperature
35:37
kind of check for us so that was helpful and then we put together and we realized that a lot of people just are not
35:43
educated so we can't just assume that they're going to pass a bill that they one don't even know about and two
35:49
wouldn't understand anyway so we put together a legislator legislative
35:54
education package and that's back there as well we distributed that amongst our members and we distributed it most often
36:01
um if we could by constituent and otherwise the Texas normal Representatives brought those to the legislators we tried to keep track of
36:08
the feedback and connect people with their legislators and we did hold a Lobby day this session first time a lot
36:16
of lessons learned but um it was it was a good day and we're just starting to build those relationships and make our
36:22
presence known at the capital so it's a first effort but I think we took a lot of big steps this session and uh looking
36:30
forward to trying harder and um learning how to do it better next session thank
36:35
you I think wa are two bills I'm sorry if I could
36:40
just say I don't have um there is information in the packet but there are two bills in uh in the house right now
36:46
one has been in committee already which is a drim bill it would just lower possession for up to 1 o uh to a fine
36:53
only and the other one is an affirmative defense bill which would just um and I say just because it's it's I think it's
36:59
important to emphasize to these conservatives who don't understand what these do that they are not legalization
37:06
bills neither one of them are so when that's the concern you can't go at them with weed should be legal and we should
37:13
tax it because that's not what either one of these bills does so there's really just not a point to that
37:18
conversation so being concise and emphasizing what the bill doesn't which are their concerns and emphasizing what
37:25
it does and how it helps the other one opens up a conversation between patients and their doctors and we're waiting for
37:32
that to be scheduled uh the Committee hearing has been requested but not scheduled so look up those two bills
37:38
hb14 HB 594 Texas normals website has information on it but um if if the
37:44
affirmative defense bill passed then not only could a patient talk to his doctor and then neither would need to be
37:50
concerned but if the patient were arrested then the the doctor and the patient could have that conversation
37:56
with the jury which I think is an important way to sell it that all you're doing is trying to open up the the jury
38:02
and the doctor's office uh with the truth thank [Applause]
38:09
you just I will say that um I think that LP is transitioning from encouraging
38:15
individuals to go going up there and getting our you know complete you know thorough legislative
38:22
agenda you know sort of at the same process you are in and then also I'd love to hear about the lessons from
38:27
lobbying day so maybe if someone wants to follow up any either of those two in questioning I think that could be very
38:33
useful for the lp and where they are now but go ahead sorry no um well let's see
38:38
um so the question is what what do what are we doing right now in the legislature and what are some how are
38:43
you going about it okay um well I think that uh there are a couple ways to summarize it one one way to think about
38:50
it is that a lot of the legislators they are legislators for 6 months out of every two years and there are thousands
38:57
of bills and so our expertise on any little niche issue for them is incredibly valuable and then our
39:03
willingness to run issues around from office to office to be the person that links the Senate to the house basically
39:10
all the things that people assume happen internally up at the capital that maybe do or don't like you can be a part of
39:16
making all that happen and that helps move your agenda and the more folks that are doing those kinds of things help move the kind of bills you want to see
39:22
out there so you have an opportunity to I I would definitely highlight the opportunity to give your representative
39:29
or Senator direct input on bills you think should be filed or bills that they are filing or bills that they're
39:35
considering maybe uh and then the other big opportunity is testimony in in a hearing um if there's something that you
39:40
have expertise on that you want to go talk about um hearings are a great time to kind of give some input to the
39:46
committee I I wanted to just quickly talk about a couple of bills uh that we're going to be watching in terms of our goals that all really relate to
39:53
privacy and technology and to some degree really uh law law enforcement overreach into our Liv lives um one is
39:59
the the tracking of students at schools working with Heather and a lot of other folks uh on basically ending the
40:05
practice of tracking students internally within schools then also we're uh monitoring
40:12
all the drug testing bills so required to do a drug test before you can receive tanif benefits before you can receive
40:18
unemployment uh we're working on Facebook privacy and social media privacy that would bar employers from demanding your password to your private
40:26
inbox uh before you could be hired which unfortunately is happening in some places and then we're working on the
40:31
cell phone tracking and the Drone Bill and and and the U and the email uh email
40:36
confidentiality and then one thing that I think I'd like to work on someday uh and there's folks in this group that would probably understand why there's
40:42
the automatic license plate reader is a real issue that hasn't been addressed by the the but I think probably yeah so
40:48
there's at least one person that's familiar uh but but I think that's an issue that the ledg is really let fly and we somebody needs to get them moving
40:54
on that as well and the final one is DNA collection upon arrest rather than conviction ACLU obviously believes that
41:00
you are innocent until proven guilty we should not be collecting until you're coni so thanks thank
41:06
you um well our legislative approach is is
41:11
very um burdensome sometimes there's quite a bit going on this year uh the
41:17
foundation as a whole is tracking 1500 bills uh My centeral Lan is tracking just over 700 bills um only 30 of those
41:25
are bills that we've written so unfortunately there's some other ones that we have to work on um and the reason that there's so many is that
41:31
every single time we read a bill that had a criminal penalty for what we don't think should be a criminal penalty or
41:37
that increased occupational licensing or put more requirements in occupational licensing we put it in our tractor to to
41:43
track it and make sure that we were testifying against in committee and that should give you an idea of how many
41:48
times the legislature slaps the criminal penalty or an occupational license and something that there's over 600 bills on
41:55
something relating to those issues right now the legislature um our exact efforts
42:00
you know we always begin with our sponsor the person that we're working with if it's Bill that we support we make sure that they know we support them
42:06
and where they're available to provide talking points or research if they need it if it's a bill that we oppose you
42:11
always go and you tell them that you oppose it they hate to be blindsided with this stuff in committee and they're actually very willing to work with
42:18
people if they know that you oppose one of their bills um so that's that's a really high priority for us we actually
42:23
won't testify against it if we haven't gone and tell them that we oppose it so that's a that's actually something I'll
42:28
be doing the next week is making my rounds and sharing some unfortunate news of some people um so after we we reach
42:36
out to the sponsor then you begin the the committee work and that's making sure that you have the votes lined up in committee uh that's making personal
42:42
meetings with every single one of the committee members to find out why they stand on it and see if you can answer any of their questions beforehand um
42:49
because often they've already made up their minds before the Committee hearing so public testimony unfortunately doesn't mean as much as we wish it did
42:55
um so once you make sure you have the votes then you get the hearing and your sponsor has to request the hearing from
43:01
the committee chair that the bill is referred to so as soon as we know that we have enough bills to support it or
43:06
I'm sorry enough votes to support it or enough votes to to kill it we uh make sure that the sponsor knows that it's
43:11
ready for a hearing um after hearing then you begin to reach out to folks that are are going to be able to get it
43:17
to the floor and that's a different process whether you're working in the house or the Senate um there's a calendars Committee in the house that
43:23
has to vote for something to go to the floor and the Senate is the twoth thirs role so you have to to make the reach out in that sense to get it to the floor
43:29
because it's an uphill battle there's a lot of stuff that comes out of committee favorably reported not everything gets
43:34
to the floor and that's something that you have to be very proactive about is making sure people know you need this to get to the floor um and then you start
43:41
the whole process over again in the next house um some of the specific stuff I'm just going to run through our specifics
43:47
really really quickly um we're working on legislation that would uh provide more effective probation monitoring in
43:53
the counties uh we feel like if they're doing a good job the state should reward them if they're doing a bad job the
43:58
state should not reward them um we're working on state jail reform about 80% of the offenders in state jails are
44:05
either low level drug offenders or lowlevel property offenders these are not threats to the public safety and
44:10
should not be in a state jail um so we're working on we're working
44:15
on requiring um instead of a term the state jail probation for those offenders which we know will be more effective and
44:22
cheaper for the state anyway uh victim offender conferencing when someone has committed a crime against a particular
44:28
victim it's that victim who has been harmed and not the state we think that that victim should have more control over process and not the
44:36
government thank you uh rule of lenity this would require if there's a particular term in an offense an element
44:43
or a mental state that is unclear it gets construed against the state rather than defendant because the state's the
44:49
one that wrote the legislation so they should be they should lose if they were unclear about it oh yeah yeah yeah that
44:55
one's been filed and I think we're going to have a hearing in the next two weeks on that one um a sunset review of all
45:00
occupational licensing Texas is one of the worst states by this over a third a third of all of our occupations people
45:07
working in Texas are under a license and have to ask the government for permission to go to work and so we're
45:12
going to pass or work on legislation that will require sunet review of all occupational licenses to see if it's
45:18
truly necessary for the government to get that involved in the free market I hate to cut you off but we might need to
45:24
move on at this moment I will say thank you and thank you for the tip about approaching the sponsor first if you
45:29
oppose a bill I think that's that sounds like excellent advice that sorry I dragged on you wouldn't know unless you were an Insider so thank
45:36
you U what I some of the things I I do is um I would teach 120 people a week
45:42
Canal hang gun license uh the course and I stand in front of my class and I asked them and I say well why what has brought
45:49
you to this point that makes you want to get a concealed handang gun license you know what's going on right now in your life that you want to get a concealed
45:55
hang gun license and they'll tell me well what's going on in the federal government you know I said okay and I'll
46:00
go around the entire room and everyone will say the same thing because what's going on in you know in the government uh they're talking about taking our guns
46:07
away and all this other stuff and then I I'll let them know that in Travis County we have 600,000 registered voters
46:12
there's 600,000 registered voters in Travis County out of that 600,000 only 10% come out and vote in their elections
46:19
only 10% and so I asked them did you vote and then you know I informed them
46:26
that I Alle Lors only meeting odd years last time they met was 2011 they're meeting right now until June 2013 next
46:32
time they meets 2015 uh things like open carry was on the table in 2011 open
46:38
carry did not pass do you know that the state of Texas is one of the very few states that you cannot open carry
46:45
handgun Most states in the United States you can open carry handgun Texas is one of those States you cannot we lost open
46:52
carry back in 1995 when we got concealed carry so they took open carry away cuz
46:58
we weren't paying attention right so you got to get involved and pay attention to the way some of these bills are written
47:04
and what happens in um in committee what did you just say what happens when they come out of um oh then you have
47:11
conference committee conference commit exactly because then they they will water them down so you got to pay attention to what goes on through the
47:17
entire process to make sure it comes out of calendars you know and and and what happens in conference committee because
47:23
that's very important so yeah those just you know some of the things you got to focus
47:29
on thank you um yeah well we uh at the ahead of every session we always put
47:34
together a legislative agenda what are the things we want to accomplish on freedom to travel and property rights type issues and so we make sure that
47:41
every legislator particularly the transportation committee members get that uh from us and in enough time to be
47:48
able to think about what bills they might want to sponsor for us um then we try to meet one-on-one with lawmakers
47:53
particularly again the transportation committee sometimes the land and resource management committee because that's the property rights stuff um but
48:00
I have to say with ACLU and tppf they get access that Grassroots groups do not
48:06
get I will tell you that right now it takes me months sometimes to get on a member's calendar um they have every way
48:13
under Sunshine all these excuses why they can't meet with us but if someone like tppf walks through their door they're instantly given access I've seen
48:20
it happen so it's very sad but when you're Grassroots and you don't have a paid staff somehow you're just kicked to
48:26
the curb like you don't somehow do uh worthy work for the citizens so that's the hard part is getting access but if
48:32
you can meet oneon-one we do definitely reach out to the members so they know if we oppose their bill before we go in
48:38
committee and do that um then we also have Lobby days as well I think this has been our fourth one that we did just
48:46
last week um and we had our largest group yet and it was wonderful um we do a lot with that if you want to know more
48:52
details with it um but one of the things we are always sure to hand out we try to do it after the bill filing deadline and
48:58
then I pour through hundreds of bills myself there is no staff I don't have anyone to help me um and we put together
49:04
our comprehensive Bill list and these are just the bills that were the most egregious or our bills that we are
49:10
trying to push um there are literally hundreds of bills in transportation that
49:16
we have to follow and most of them are bad and we have to try and kill them all single-handedly because we're pretty
49:21
much the only group that focuses on Transportation in the state of Texas so we've tried to align our ourselves with
49:27
other group other groups there's over 300 Grassroots groups that we work with including groups like The libertarian
49:32
party um liberty-minded groups you name it tea parties 912s um a lot of different Democrat groups have similar
49:39
um you know issues that align with ours and so another thing we'll do is testify
49:45
in committee like everyone's talked about and we do like to issue a lot of press releases we had we always start
49:50
our lobby day with a press conference on the South Capital steps and we always make sure there's really good visuals with lots of signs you know stop tolling
49:57
Texas or whatever stop selling our roads or whatever there's all all kinds of little messaging things we can do with that and we did get pretty good uh press
50:04
coverage on if you saw it on the Austin TV on on Tuesday night but that's um that was us um then we also like to be
50:10
um as was mentioned a leason our resource um we're pretty much the only one that's not an official think tank
50:17
that puts together white papers um I do a lot of extensive research the abuses of tolling worksheet you see in the back
50:23
was by going through Tex Dot's 10-year plan they called the UTP and found out all the taxpayer subsidies that are
50:29
going into these toll roads that means they're building roads with your tax money but charging you again to drive on
50:34
them our legislators were not aware of this and so I went and found ways to prove it and when I added up the figures
50:42
in the next 10 years they will spend $1 billion in tax money this makes their
50:49
eyes pop open and realize just how bad the abuses are that are taking place but if we hadn't put that together I
50:55
wouldn't have been able to do that um so it's very important to do that and providing talking points and such we also do legislative report cards at the
51:02
end of every session and we also do voter guides all of this is really hard to do with unpaid volunteers every
51:08
session going through hundreds of votes sometimes um to put these together we
51:14
also put out a bill alert um if it gets out of committee that's when the animal really gets big because now it's not
51:20
just a few Transportation committee members you're dealing with now you're dealing with the entire legislature of either the house or senate or both um so
51:27
we do a lot of Bill alerts both electronically and we'll even have volunteers come through the capital and put it underneath their doors or
51:33
personally hand it to every single office so they are without excuse when they say oh I didn't know what was in
51:38
that bill you know how they do this all the time right oh I just I didn't know I voted for that well they're without excuse on Transportation because they
51:45
are always put on notice before they take the vote Terry think we're have to cut it short
51:53
unfortunately um if I could just finish with one thing we all also like to do open letters to legislators and get a
52:00
lot of media play with that where um we'll do an open letter to the governor lieutenant governor and the speaker for
52:05
instance and tell them what we want and what we don't want and we have it uh signed on by hundreds of groups um and
52:11
that really helps get their attention to we actually saw committee members running into a room one time sorting through looking to see if their a group
52:18
in their backyard was you know a co-signer to that list so those are the things that the Grassroots versus a
52:23
think tank policy type group have to do to try and get their attention because we don't get their attention just by
52:29
being you know a certain group like tppf or whatever they they they gonor a ton of respect around the capital for a very
52:36
good reason but Grassroots groups have to kind of go at it from a different angle so that's kind of why I mentioned that thank you and it sounds like you do
52:43
incredible work and I for one would love to hear more about the open letters that sounds like a very powerful tool it's
52:49
greig's turn so I got myself very fortunate to have a couple of very very
52:55
good mentors uh as regards entering the the legislative process at the state level um I'm working with some folks who
53:02
have been very tapped into um how things operate at the state legislature for on
53:07
the order of 20 years so they've been able to see um the the importance of
53:13
relationship building the importance of how things change over time how things wax and weigh and understand that
53:20
there's an important factor important strategic Factor as far as timing is concerned and so that's one of the
53:25
reasons why we feel like right now is a good opportunity for the the legislation that we're working on as regards
53:31
technology and privacy so some of the things that we are doing um and again
53:38
I'm we're learning or I'm learning as as I go along I try to try to see what sort
53:44
of lessons I can glean so pass along what we've seen here a lot of which are echoing uh what the other panelists have
53:51
been saying so far um one thing that is important I think for me to recognize is
53:58
that as as a citizen you can initiate a lot of these processes yourselves um you
54:05
can draft legislation you can go to a hearing you can go to your elected
54:12
officials offices you can go to to any of the officials offices and talk with their staff members and let them know
54:18
what you're working on this is an important factor because I think if more people knew how easy it is to actually
54:25
get involved in the process then we would have a different sort of
54:31
society um so I I want to emphasize that fact
54:37
um one thing that we've done with the geolocation tracking bill as well as the
54:42
email contents bill is been very careful as far as a selection of who or who we
54:48
want to actually file the bill um so we look at the members of the Committees
54:55
that are likely going to see the bill and we tried to find one of the members of the committee to actually file the
55:01
bill on our behalf so now naturally then they'll want the bill to actually come up for hearing and have their bill heard
55:09
so um then comes a strategy that we learned from um the the Drone bill this
55:17
year which we thought was very interesting which is um they
55:22
actually went to well with a bill you can actually have um you have a person who files the
55:29
bill and then you can have up to four other joint authors of the bill and as many co-authors of the bill as you would
55:35
like and so this is a way of demonstrating the um belief and in that
55:42
bill and interest in seeing that bill pass so on the Drone Bill what we saw is they actually instituted a strategy to
55:49
get as many co-authors as they could and at this point they have on the order of
55:54
over a hundred uh co-authors and Joint authors for that
56:00
bill which is important because there's 150 representatives in the house so that
56:07
demonstrates something about the likelihood of that passing so we've been looking to do that same sort of thing
56:13
and for the geolocation tracking Bill we're up to At Last come uh 69 um
56:19
authors and uh co-authors so we think that's a pretty good one um then we're
56:25
looking really carefully at who you are actually reaching out to how you're expending those resources to go and talk
56:31
to people and you have to be careful about who who you look to next so we
56:37
look to the committee members as was mentioned earlier um and also the calendar committee members also because
56:42
you do want to make sure that the bill is filed on the house side which I didn't know was different on the Senate that's good to know so um then we are
56:51
also looking to bring in subject matter experts for the hearing um and and we have it's been excellent actually um for
57:00
the geolocation tracking piece because it's all around the country folks are waking up to this going on and there's
57:07
interest in legislation being filed but there's only a few real good experts and we've been able to connect with those folks and are bringing them down for the
57:14
hearing and to talk to our legislators and so they can hear from the people who know everything about it and uh so
57:21
that's that's an important piece then is this the the last then this is the we
57:26
might have to move on okay go ahead then so after this session um what we're
57:32
going to do like everyone else is to prepare for 2015 and instead of doing the research
57:38
and reports are are rather a different way of doing the research that we're looking at is open records requests uh
57:46
which also are are very easy to initiate basically takes a stamp say give me this
57:52
and so it's not quite that easy as far as the process because it kind of becomes a cough Maze of sorts with all sorts of
57:59
resistance but that's really telling as well so what we want to do
58:06
is well I won't get into what we're going to be looking for because it's interesting but um we want to do this on
58:13
a mass scale and so I want to direct your attention to a group called muckrock news um they are looking to
58:21
actually automate in some sense the open records request process and do it in a way where they provide
58:29
you with basic language for it all like you go to their website you say you want to reach out to this agency and they've
58:36
sent off the request they have the entire calendar which is very very important as far as the number of
58:42
business days that they have to respond to here and then after this point if they get any response back they
58:47
automatically scan it and do the OCR recognition post it online which is also
58:52
important because that's that accountability powerful tool so maybe someone can follow up on that during
58:58
questioning sure um and we do have one thing before we go to open audience
59:04
participation and this is a challenge to The Forum I the question is what can one
59:10
individual who is not a paid activist or Works a 9 to-5 job has children what is
59:17
the one thing and I'm looking for a one-word answer if possible that that
59:22
person can do that is powerful and effective for whatever their you know their cause of greatest concern
59:28
might be and we are going to start with you Greg so don't look concerned about one word well I
59:35
know it's hard to condense everything into one word so I'm sorry to not give you warning no no no it's hard for me to
59:40
not blabber on a little bit so I think it's conquering fear it's not
59:47
any particular thing it's conquering fear and apathy um I'm reading a book
59:53
right now by the No No I can't sorry it was already more than one word
1:00:00
so question time after this I promise show show up aside from show up I'd say phone
1:00:07
calls alerting legislators that you're for or against certain bills because that's one of the few ways we can
1:00:14
actually weigh in before the decisions are made or before the final vote happens if we don't have a radioactive
1:00:20
level of public outcry on certain bills there's no stopping the train so I would
1:00:26
say phone calls thank you politely PST something on their Facebook page they
1:00:32
have paid staffers that sit there and monitor their Facebook page all day long post something on their Facebook page be
1:00:38
polite about it thank you
1:00:44
vote that's mine too but I I would say really quickly I think along with that this uh as Libertarians you all have an
1:00:52
interesting uh kind of Leverage with the legisl because I think just about every mainstream Republican that is in office
1:00:59
at the ledge is a little bit worried about a Libertarian coming into their primary so so I think that you know I'm
1:01:06
not I'm not saying you should threaten anybody or anything like that but a you should vote but B you should also think about ways that you can encourage them
1:01:13
to take your your agenda in into the agenda they forwarding I think you all are really particularly well placed in
1:01:19
the political system so thank you I think my one word would be educate
1:01:26
and I like I said our our packet that we sent to the legislators is called an education package so I think it's that
1:01:33
an important approach and I I furthered that in my mind confirmed that in my mind I was uh putting together letters
1:01:39
to go to our our members telling them whether their uh whether their legislator is on the fence or supportive
1:01:47
or against and I had to rephrase it in my mind and change that letter to
1:01:52
instead of being your member your representative is against this instead now this is the education letter to me
1:01:59
your member needs to be educated and on whatever the specific thing is just a
1:02:05
different way of thinking about it thank you keep it um so now we are going to
1:02:10
open it up for audience participation I see multiple hands already the way this is going to work is we're going to keep
1:02:17
the mics up here so you have to project introduce yourself well I
1:02:22
get um State your question if you're with an organization state that please
1:02:28
just ask the question not lots of background and tell us who your question
1:02:33
is directed towards or if it's everyone on the panel so the very first hand I saw was Ben
1:02:39
farmer thank you Pro for recognizing my question I'm Ben farmer I'm libertarian representative from Odessa Texas my
1:02:46
question is for Mr Simpson I'm curious if he is familiar with the Austin based group peaceful streets project and what
1:02:54
is it finally going to take for the ACLU to get intimately involved in the Austin
1:02:59
Police Department corruption well well thanks for having
1:03:04
me um I uh I uh you know I I think that
1:03:11
we have tried in the past to work with local activists on those issues and you know in the past couple years we haven't
1:03:17
been as involved as we should be in that particular issue um you know I I think that uh one thing that that you should
1:03:24
uh that that you should take hard about is that we're actually hiring a community organizer located in our Austin office in the next three months
1:03:31
who'll be trained in and start working here and that's exactly the kind of stuff we need a we need a community organizer for so and I think it is an
1:03:38
important issue may I suggest Antonio beer yes we consider him considered um I
1:03:47
have Pat Dixon and then over there and then Jim so let's go pat first Pat Dixon I'm the state chair of the part this is
1:03:52
for the uh whole panel is there something typically that somebody could
1:03:58
at a hearing they could say or do that's going to hurt your cause they may be in favor of what you're doing but you're
1:04:04
like oh please don't say this please don't do that any advice you would give to people I just check with the author
1:04:10
ahead of time I think there author the sponsor would be my response but I just think being on point with
1:04:18
what the bill actually does I I just went to my first Committee hearing and
1:04:23
and I didn't even intend to testify because because I thought I'd be running over straight from work at the end of
1:04:28
the day but the last person who we thought was going to be the last person was so in so many places that no one
1:04:36
could really follow him at least you know after being there for three hours so I think being considerate and I
1:04:42
wouldn't have gone up but for that fact I went up only just because that couldn't be what the last thing was in their minds and the chairman afterwards
1:04:50
even said that was that was good that you did that because he was even thinking the same thing that this oh
1:04:55
don't do this this is going to be the last thing we hear so I think just we all have a lot we want to say but I try
1:05:02
to in in my own group try to remind people what it looks like when a car drives down the road and has every space
1:05:08
covered in a bumper sticker that you might like some of the sentiments but it's really hard to get a hold of it so
1:05:16
you have to be you have to be really concise and ask yourself does this information I'm relaying to these
1:05:22
professionals who are at work relate to these two pieces of paper that are in front of them that that's the that's all
1:05:29
this bill does that's all they care about that's what they want to get through and the personal stories are great but they're even more impactful if
1:05:37
the bill would actually affect that personal story does any does anybody else have
1:05:45
something add yeah um don't interrupt the representatives when you're testifying that drives from
1:05:51
crazy they think that they should not ever be interrupted and so they won't listen to you unfortunately Ely um and
1:05:56
then the other thing is is trying not to accuse them of anything um was at a
1:06:02
hearing yeah along those lines um that's the only thing they'll remember I was at
1:06:08
a hearing on a bill and and someone started accusing all of the members of the commit of being racist and whether
1:06:13
or not that's true that's the only thing they're going to remember from that person they're not going to remember all the excellent points they made on that bill the only thing they're going to
1:06:19
walk around saying is okay that person thinks I'm a racist so you know demeanor and messaging is very very important
1:06:25
with with politicians and their egos I was going to say that too one of
1:06:32
the things like on um for instance a sunset Bill they're usually several hundred pages long and there's a lot of
1:06:38
things you have to cover and you only get three minutes sometimes they'll cut you down to even two minutes so what we'll do is if we have a group of
1:06:44
activists up there to testify we will split up the areas of concern among us
1:06:49
all so that they don't hear just the same three things from 20 people a lot of times it's better if you use variety
1:06:55
in your approach to the legislators so that you can have some people cover this some people cover that and you kind of
1:07:00
work your whole agenda that way um and I would definitely follow up and say that you don't want to insult them you need
1:07:06
to be polite even though we know that they can be absolute like Red Army something or others you know it's like
1:07:12
you still you have to hold your tongue and um be gracious in how you deliver it because I think that's how they really
1:07:17
take you seriously on a policy level um is if you're um you know polite in how you approach them and not you know
1:07:24
accusing them of being different thing things but um I think one other thing that I always worry about on tolling is
1:07:31
that there's tolling that we feels permissible and tolling that is not and so the worst thing for me is when I go
1:07:37
up there and someone says well I'd be okay with it if you just and I'm like oh God here we go you know because they
1:07:43
basically just gave them permission to move the bill and when you're trying to kill a bill you don't want to give them any excuses to move that bill if they do
1:07:50
some little tweak to it because most of the time your nice little tweaks that they say okay we'll put the public vote
1:07:55
in there and then suddenly it'll make it okay that we're ripping you off they pull the public vote out in conference
1:08:01
you are never going to get those things that they promise you I found and they will rip it out so fast uh so to us if
1:08:08
there's a bill we're trying to kill just work with us on killing the bill or work with us on moving a bill rather than
1:08:14
trying to say well I'd be okay if we you know and if you're kind of doing this negotiating if they see one sliver of
1:08:21
weakness they are going to exploit it so I would just caution you to make sure you know at least from Grassroots point
1:08:28
of view what it is we want you to focus on or say and kind of stick with that
1:08:33
because sometimes you can actually make it worse to come up there and kind of give them wiggle room so anyway thank
1:08:40
you I'll just add one process note that I thought was interesting is that you don't actually have to go and testify um
1:08:46
in person you can go ahead and put in written comments um you basically go to
1:08:52
where the hearing is at they have cards at the back you can and put down your name whether you support or oppose the
1:08:57
bill and then you have written comments just make copies for all of the committee members and you hand the
1:09:05
papers and the uh the card to the clerk and that's it thank so have in the house
1:09:12
this year an electronic registration for bills so usually about an hour depends on the committee but usually about an
1:09:18
hour before the committee is scheduled to begin like if you have to go to work you know you can't stick around for a
1:09:23
committee but you want to say I do not want this bill or I really am in favor of this bill I want it passed you can go
1:09:29
to the capital um you can just do the meters even because you can just you know and and in the Capital Parking
1:09:34
Garage you can get the first two hours free so if you want to run in register for a bill and then go to work you can
1:09:41
do that now and you don't have to wait for the cards the Senate still does a card based system so you still have to
1:09:46
just go a few minutes before the Committee hearing do that be a little quieter out there it got noisy all of a
1:09:51
sudden let's not do that but the kiosks are great it will reord for your ad name and address and organization name and
1:09:57
everything so you can just basically click a button and it'll fill it all in for you after you've done it one time you can save your information and you
1:10:04
can just go down the list and and you can leave you don't even have to be you know staying at the capital all day and do oral testimony um and so it's made it
1:10:12
really easy for the public to waigh yes it does make it much easier um James
1:10:18
gston oh sorry yes I'm Alan Patterson chair of the county libertarian party I
1:10:25
have a question for Terry with Turk uh do you guys get involved with Federal Transportation projects absolutely are
1:10:32
you familiar with CSA 2010 no what is that it's a comprehensive
1:10:38
driver safety reform package it involves whether the
1:10:43
driver has paid his child support oh boy I want to things of that nature um I was
1:10:50
wondering if you guys legislated on the federal level at all with creditation issues yes we have doubled a little it's
1:10:57
a very big animal to steer because even though Texas is a big state and we have a lot of representatives from our state
1:11:02
it's really hard when you have 49 other states that you have to deal with but we do work our delegation for instance I
1:11:08
know who the you know house Transportation subcommittee members are who represents us um in the senate
1:11:14
committee and that sort of a thing and then we work with those members and let them know what we want and particularly the Federal Highway bill that's that's
1:11:20
the pretty much the only thing we've had time to deal with but we're very opposed to Agenda 21 sustainable development all
1:11:27
the stuff that threatens our freedom to travel at every level we try and fight it everywhere we see it and so a lot of
1:11:32
that's going to be in bills other than the Federal Transportation bill but that's the one that usually takes up all our time map 21 passed last summer and
1:11:39
we were very involved in that thank you uh Jim
1:11:44
stutzman I'm Jim stutsman liaran Committee Member thanks for coming and my question
1:11:52
is for Mr Foster now technology is a good thing in
1:11:58
general I think and I'm positive as is everyone in the room there's tons of
1:12:06
junk coming down that we must stop because of that but have we considered
1:12:12
and can we write something that would be a law that these H thinks it's so good
1:12:20
that if you abuse this technology in a c way well then maybe you ought to do 20
1:12:30
years well it depends on what you mean by abuse I think and I think that
1:12:37
there's so many different facets and pieces of the puzzle can I define abuse sure anything that affects our Liberty
1:12:44
our property and our freedom that's abuse that goes against the Constitution or the Bill of Rights well I think that
1:12:53
what we're seeing here recently is actually that the constitution is kind of on a roll I guess is one way to put
1:12:59
it um you're seeing actually federal judges around the country who are
1:13:05
starting to step up and um actually National eff had a pretty remarkable
1:13:11
Victory yesterday um at the federal level where um do you all know what
1:13:17
national security letters are um these are the the gag orders that the FBI can
1:13:23
issue um uh with a subpoena that says that the telecommunication provider has
1:13:28
to Fork over the subscriber data and they're not allowed to tell the customer they're not allowed to speak publicly
1:13:35
about it at all it's uh I believe it came along with the Patriot Act and
1:13:41
yesterday at the federal federal level they just ruled that National Security L level national security letters are
1:13:53
unconstitutional so there's a 90-day period where the Department of Justice can appeal which wouldn't that be
1:14:01
interesting and um but there's a lot of examples like that around the country actually um I can give you several more
1:14:08
but basically I feel like the The pendulum's Swinging back in the direction of a little more sanity about
1:14:13
all this stuff thank you uh more questions I saw your hand
1:14:19
first really for all six of you what are you doing to get juries to do their jobs
1:14:28
I mean groups like fully informed jury associations because a lot of this stuff
1:14:34
could be nullified if juries would just do their
1:14:39
jobs well in case of Transportation uh the the litigation that we've pursued generally doesn't go to a jury trial a
1:14:46
lot of them are administrative type hearings like the National Environmental Policy Act is the federal law that we've sued under um and one every time by the
1:14:54
way um and on that one it is administrative law so most everything's just done back and forth with briefs
1:14:59
between lawyers we're not even usually in court on that one there was one case where we um sued techop for their
1:15:05
taxpayer funded lobbying which violates uh state law and um that one didn't go to a jury because the state has all
1:15:12
these fun little mechanisms that allow them to do a FastTrack appeal it completely to me violates due process in
1:15:18
our constitutional rights it needs to be challenged but I don't have the money and resources to do it just yet but I will if I can um and and then that is
1:15:25
where basically before you even have your case heard in court at the trial level they can kick you up to the
1:15:31
appeals court by this thing called plea of the jurisdiction which is where the state claims sovereign immunity and that
1:15:36
they are basically immune from uh the consequences of their decisions and so anyway it kicks you up to appeals court
1:15:43
before you even get the chance to have a jury trial so there's a lot of things at least in our world where I would love a
1:15:48
jury trial because I'm pretty sure that I could get the jury to agree with what we're saying well I think some of the
1:15:53
other organizations deal more directly with juries right or jury education
1:15:58
efforts uh I would just say real briefly that in the criminal World 96 97 98% of
1:16:04
all cases are dealt with plea deals rather than the jury so we think it's a lot more effective to make sure the law
1:16:10
is in the right place rather than waiting for the small minority of cases that do go to the
1:16:15
jury are we just basically the same thing I mean we encourage people to take
1:16:21
it to a jury but most people just can't afford the time and the expense of doing
1:16:26
so and if they will if somebody will go to a jury I mean we will be there we've
1:16:31
been there and it makes news when they do somebody will fight it all the way and they can get an attorney to go with
1:16:36
them to go to court and go to a jury for two grams then we'll be right there with them but it just doesn't happen very
1:16:42
often people face 10 years or a felony and and then they're offered probation
1:16:47
they're going to take probation so just doesn't happen enough for us to affect much there thank you
1:16:56
all right um I'm gonna do Ken Stanford and then one question after that I got a question um okay Ken okay my question is
1:17:05
for Miss Terry Hall uh have you ever thought about taking on the do for
1:17:13
the double jeopardy of fines of inflicted on DUI
1:17:22
cases whether or not they are found guilty you know we have not delved into
1:17:27
anything having to do with DUI we just don't have the resources really um because we're just so buried under all
1:17:33
the other stuff we're doing um but I can tell you that we are looking at some federal some federal challenges because
1:17:40
the interstate highway system when it was first uh conceived by President Eisenhower back in the 50s it was all
1:17:47
about facilitating Commerce and now we're seeing um and really well it was facil facilitating Commerce But
1:17:54
ultimately was for National Defense first that was the whole purpose of the interstate highway system and now with
1:17:59
this slice and dice and this chopping up of our highway system into toll and non-tool and the restrictions that are
1:18:04
coming down on our travel we think that there's going to be some ripe cases for
1:18:10
um really coming out of on just right to travel in general because all of those things are being eroded very very quickly at pretty much every state is
1:18:16
doing the same thing and we're dealing with I mean multi-billions of dollars of
1:18:22
Public Works projects and that's what makes um sometimes Transportation really really tough to fight because you're going against all the what I call
1:18:28
banksters and all the bond guys and all the you know Goldman Sachs and everybody else I mean that's who's crawling all
1:18:34
over our Highway Department all the time and um that keeps us rather busy before
1:18:39
we even delve into the DUI aspect but maybe some other panelist has an idea on that I say take it to the media and make
1:18:47
it sexy for him you know nothing like standing in front of the media and sticking to your talking points stick to
1:18:52
those one points those that one point that those two points or three points and just Hammer them Hammer them down
1:18:58
with those talking points um uh man there's a there's a bill right
1:19:05
now before A legislature where if you have a concealed handgun license well if you have a concealed handgun license you're held to a much higher standard so
1:19:12
police officer can get charged with a crime you know and still keep their badging a gun but CH holder can lose their license you know if they they will
1:19:19
lose it if it's charged and they will lose it you know for seven years if it's revoked but a police officer you know
1:19:24
you know they can still keep their bad and gun stay on the on the jump if you have a concealed hanging license and an officer stops you determines that you're
1:19:31
intoxicated uh not 08 not 07 not 654321 uh smelled alcohol on your
1:19:38
presence then they can say that you're you know they can charge you with unlaw the carrying and so we're trying to get
1:19:45
that removed and I I say you know I hammer them I I hit uh DPS up last week
1:19:51
uh on the news because they're taking a long time to process you know applications and stuff like that so I
1:19:56
tried to make it sexy for the media you know try to make it sexy for them say and Hammer them hit them hard do you
1:20:02
know that when I hit him so hard on a Thursday by Monday they gave me what we were looking for on Monday you know so
1:20:09
hit them on in the media thank you um Mr Roland do you have a question
1:20:15
yes I'm so sorry I didn't see that earlier John roll and constitution.org
1:20:20
uh what place on your agendas do you have for holding individual officials
1:20:29
accountable by penetrating official immunity and doing such things as
1:20:35
opening grand juries to direct complaints from
1:20:41
citizens is the question clear to the panel well I've actually had a lot of
1:20:46
people contact me about doing the grand jury uh method for the tax peer funded lobbying and some other things that we've caught Tex St doing literally I
1:20:53
have such a long list of infractions of laws that this agency has broken that I could be in court every day of the week
1:20:59
and still not litigate all of it that's how corrupt our Highway Department is um and it's hard to get the attorneys and
1:21:05
you know get everything together to be able to even get a case off the ground much less multiple cases but that is
1:21:11
something that's available to us apparently and I'm trying to understand it better before I just March into court and do it um but apparently we can we
1:21:18
can go in as Citizens and um go before a grand jury with evidence and um if they
1:21:24
find that there's enough to indict then that gets you going so um it's possible
1:21:29
to do it to do it yourself but proos says pretty hard and anyway we're working on it but I don't know if anyone
1:21:35
else is thank you is anyone else all right uh that's fine because we're in a hurry so last
1:21:41
question oh jeez um
1:21:47
um I think you had your hand up earlier so I'm gonna go with David ring David
1:21:52
ring I'm a nobody my question just for ter now this is for purely uh selfish reasons but I I think the problem with
1:21:59
our society is that we're all too obedient you're talking about the tollway my thing is this I've got a
1:22:04
friend in Dallas that owes like $117,000 nothing's really happened to him yet now my thing is this right here
1:22:10
I've got one of those toll tags on my car what are they going to do to me if I take it off cuz I'm I'm ready to dat and
1:22:16
go out there and take it off I mean that's part of my monthly income what can they do to us so that we can all as
1:22:22
a group right now stop yeah what can they do now if they can arrest me David
1:22:28
I think the question is clear yes one of the things chance it's a it's a process
1:22:33
so first they'll send you a bill uh because they'll take your a picture of your license plate don't we all love
1:22:38
that right it's big daddy government out of control with these tollways then um once you fail to pay within the it's
1:22:45
usually just 10 days is all you've got before they'll start adding heaps of fines and fees most of the time like the
1:22:51
person who owes 177,000 probably only owes a couple hundred bucks in tolls they is all finds and fees um okay well
1:22:57
we find that a lot in Austin I get calls from people all over the state about toll collection problems so anyway um
1:23:04
then they'll escalate that once you have a certain number of uh tolls unpaid
1:23:09
they're actually several bills right now in the legislature for um the North Texas Tollway Authority to get the same
1:23:16
Authority that the Harris County Toll Authority and the rmas want the same Authority uh tech. wants the same Authority they want to have their own
1:23:22
court system so they become the judge trial jury uh and they're the foxes
1:23:27
guarding the hen house so you basically don't have any due process and they're doing it this way on purpose then if you
1:23:32
fail to show up in court on your court date on these that's how they nail you that's how you can be thrown in jail for
1:23:38
failure to pay your toll fines is if you fail to show up in court and one time well it's it's kind of been remedied now
1:23:45
but for a while techop was sending toll bills to uh the address on the vehicle's
1:23:50
title not the most current address which is on your vehicle registration so people wouldn't even get their first
1:23:56
notice until they were already in collections and then they'd have hundreds if not thousands of dollars and
1:24:02
fines tacked on on top of that so it's a really hot issue we would love it um if
1:24:07
you could get on our turf email list so that when these bills come up for a hearing um you guys can make phone calls
1:24:14
and say uhuh you guys are not going to have your own court system and be your own judge and jury against the people of
1:24:19
this state when it comes to our right to travel because they're going to take that away by by just having you be
1:24:24
violator and and by the way a lot of those are erroneous now your friend might be doing it on purpose but a lot
1:24:30
of them are erroneous bills and we actually have people my pastor is one of them who got a bill from the Tyler toll
1:24:36
Tollway Authority and has never been to Tyler in 20 years and they told him if he didn't pay up in 10 days he was going
1:24:42
to start having all these consequences and he's like okay so I'm guilty till I prove myself innocent I never was on
1:24:49
your Tollway and they had this photo that looked like his making model of car and basically they stuck his license
1:24:56
plate on it and he's never been there so how do you prove that you've never been there when they've got a picture of
1:25:01
what's supposed to be you on their Tollway so there's just a lot of problems with this electronic tolling
1:25:06
well wait it sounds like maybe you all should talk afterward um I am going to
1:25:11
bring P Dixon our chair up right now but first I'd like to have a big hand for a panel thank you guys
1:25:25
and I want to thank Caroline Gorman for moderating thank you very
1:25:32
much and Heather fio was put this thing together thank
1:25:41
you this is the third one of these forums we've done I think this thing is working I really think that uh these
1:25:48
opportunities are very valuable I think you appreciate it we want to continue to do this the next one we're going to
1:25:55
hopefully do sometime in June we do need your support I'm going to ask if you will help defay the cost we made an
1:26:02
investment and getting the room and putting this thing together today on your chairs is a form that we do have to
1:26:09
comply with the Texas ethics commission makes us do this but if if you would
1:26:16
make a donation to help defay the cost then we can continue to do these things uh you would just fill this out and you
1:26:22
can put Federal Reserve in there or a check or fill out with a credit card and you can give it to Caroline or Heather
1:26:30
or myself and we will thank you for your support and hopefully continue to bring
1:26:35
these kind of forms together thank you very much for being here thank you so
1:26:43
much thank youate thank you Janette Michael great
1:26:50
job great really good job I think
#Social Issues & Advocacy