SECURE BORDERS

Reggie Smith knows that border crime isn’t just a border problem. From drugs to human trafficking, it hurts all of Texas. As State Representative, Reggie coauthored legislation to ban “sanctuary cities” and ensure that local law enforcement is provided the tools and resources they need to make our border secure.

While serving on the House Appropriations Committee, Reggie saw firsthand how additional financial resources are needed to combat illegal activity happening along our southern border and coauthored legislation that included:

• $1.2 billion dedicated to surge border security efforts, including deploying 700 National Guard members and funding for future surge operations when additional manpower is needed.
• $1 billion dedicated to border security grants to local law enforcement.
• $300 million dedicated to increasing the number of additional active border security personnel.
• $750 million dedicated to building temporary and permanent physical barriers along the border.

During the 3rd and 4th special session of the 88th session, Reggie Smith helped pass some of the most sweeping border security bills in the state’s history include:

• Senate Bill 4 created an offense for “illegal entry from a foreign nation” and increase in cases with certain previous convictions or under certain conditions and Senate Bill 3 appropriates $1.54 billion in general revenue to Trustee Programs within the Office of the Governor over the next years for border security and to construct, operate, and maintain border barrier infrastructure.

PRO-LIFE

2ND AMENDMENT

PUBLIC EDUCATION

Reggie is committed to our schools, to our teachers, and most importantly, to our children. He wants every child in Texas to have access to a first-class education and understands that we need to reduce the burden of over-testing and to further empower parents and teachers to improve their local schools. He is working to reduce and eliminate unfunded mandates on our schools that come down from Washington and Austin. Reggie believes that local education decisions should remain local and that education dollars should remain focused on our local schools, not sent elsewhere to unaccountable entities and initiatives.

While Reggie’s is committed to fighting for our students, he also understands our duty to support current and retired teachers. Ensuring the reliability and integrity of TRS Healthcare is crucial for many of our teachers and he is fighting to provide additional resources, like a supplemental 13th check per year to our retired teachers while also increasing the state’s contribution rates to Teacher Retirement System.

Reggie also understands that we must reform our broken school finance system, He’s committed to reducing the reliance upon local school property taxes to fund education by restructuring without lessening the state’s share of public education funding to ease the tax burden placed on local property owners.

In the 88th legislative session, Reggie supported constitutional amendments and legislation to provide retired teachers with the necessary permanent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to their monthly pension that had not been granted in decades.

ELECTION INTEGRITY

As the Chair of the Elections Committee, Reggie understands the importance of a secure election process and worked hard to pass legislation to ensure that each election is held to the highest standards. During the 88th Legislative Session, Reggie passed key legislation through the Election Committee including House Bill 1243 which increased the penalty for illegal voting to a felony and House Bill 1299 which adds security to the mail-in ballot process by requiring ink on paper signatures.

Reggie also pushed for reforms regarding our voter rolls. Senate Bill 1070 removed Texas from the controversial interstate voter registration crosscheck program known as ERIC and put Texas on a path to maintain our own database and Senate Bill 545 required death certificates to be provided to the Secretary of State to ensure deceased individuals are not included on future voting rolls.

Restoring trust in our elections is a top concern for Reggie so he made transparency a priority this session. House Bill 5180 required county election offices to make more records available for public inspection and House Bill 246 created a pilot program for recording ballot counting activity.

PROTECTING TEXAN CHILDREN

Reggie Smith believes that protecting the sanctity and innocence of our children from the challenging modern world is one of the highest priorities in the Texas Legislature, and continues to fight for the preservation of an environment where children can succeed. In the 88th legislative session, Reggie helped pass the following pieces of legislation that empower parents and their children:

• House Bill 900 provided procedures for rating school library materials to identify content that is sexually relevant or sexually explicit, as well as establishes state standards for school libraries.
• Senate Bill 12 created civil penalties for an individual who controls the premises of a commercial business and allows a sexually oriented performance to occur in front of a child. A person who engages in the sexually oriented performance can also be charged with a Class A misdemeanor.
• Senate Bill 14, known as the Children’s Gender Protection Act, provided a common-sense prohibition on therapies and medical procedures to alter a child’s gender before they are legally adults
• Senate Bill 15 which preserved the opportunities provided by Title IX by preventing biological males from endangering female athletes, taking girls’ spots on teams, breaking girls’ hard-earned records, and unfairly putting girls’ athletic scholarships at risk.

DISTRICT IMPACT

Reggie is a strong defender of constitutional rights and is quickly securing successes for his district. He shepherded legislation directly proposed by constituents of District 62, including:

• House Bill 1163: Created a criminal offense for boating while intoxicated with a child passenger to help protect our children from deadly boating accidents.
• House Bill 3956: Legislation expanding on the collection of DNA from those who have been charged with violent and sexual offenses to better address the severe backlog of rape kits and other unsolved crimes in Texas.
• House Bill 1949: Redrew a portion of the Texas/Oklahoma border, by way of the Red River Boundary Commission, to better protect our state’s natural resources from invasive species of plants and animals, like zebra mussels, from other states.
• Senate Bill 6: Landmark bail reform legislation passed to better protect the public and law enforcement by keeping dangerous criminals off our streets.