In the September 7 episode, Corpus Christi councilmember Mark Scott explains how the city council defeat of a proposed desalination plant will harm residents, industry and perhaps cripple the city. State Senator Paul Bettencourt tells us why he was surprised and disappointed that so many House Republicans joined an effort to defeat his property tax reduction bill. And State Representative Donna Howard reacts to the passage of what’s been referred to as the “bounty hunter” abortion pill ban. GUESTS Mark Scott, Corpus Christi City Councilmember State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-District 7 State Rep. Donna Howard, D-District 48
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Straight ahead, it's dead in the water. Corpus Christi killed a billion dollar project to desalinate water from the Gulf. City councilman Mark Scott on the statewide implications of this decision. When is the last time Republicans missed an opportunity to lower property taxes? It just happened in the House and surprised the Senate. State Senator Paul Betancourt explains what went wrong.
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Texas Republicans have tightened abortion restrictions even further, effectively ending access to the abortion pill. Democrat Donna Howard on what she expects the result of this legislation might look like. Lawmakers finally passed historic reforms, improving camp safety after July's deadly flash floods. And new rules in the Texas House make it harder now for lawmakers to break quorum.
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Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whiteley starts now. Thanks for being with us. I'm Jason Whiteley. A lot to get to, but let's start with the headlines here. Historic reforms for Texas campers, those are now the latest laws here in the state of Texas. The legislature approved these in response to July's deadly flash floods that killed 138 people statewide, including 27 girls at the storied Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas.
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The new laws forbid cabins and flood plains require camps to have robust emergency plans and mandate independent inspections to hold camps accountable. Texas Republicans also approved brand new rules in the House of Representatives to prevent future quorum breaks. The resolution will punish lawmakers who break quorum by tripling daily fines, cutting their office budgets, and stripping members of seniority.
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This of course is in response to Democrats leaving the state last month to protest new congressional maps that President Trump wanted Texas to approve to make it easier for him to keep control of Congress next year. And get ready to see a lot more political ads as we go into the midterm election next year. A firm called Ad Impact tracks TV commercial buys and says the 2026 midterm election could be the most expensive on record nationwide. In Texas ad impact forecasts a half billion dollars to be spent.
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The race for US Senate here in Texas is likely the largest share of that. Other seats in Congress expected to spend millions of dollars on ads as well. Let's begin though right now in Corpus Christi and the fallout from a raucous city council meeting there. Like many parts of Texas, Corpus needs more drinking water, but city council there, uh, killed a billion dollar plan that would have desalinated seawater.
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Our first guest is Corpus councilman Mark Scott telling us his city made a mistake and warned that the implications might be felt statewide. Uh, Councilman Scott, welcome to the program. City officials have warned that Corpus Christi could be out of water, or really face a dire emergency by December of 2026, just a little more than a year from now, if there is not additional supply. You voted to continue the desalination project. That's not gonna happen now.
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There are several emergency projects underway right now, but they're short term. What happens next for the city?
< spk_1 - 00:03:18.5290000 >
Yeah, so I will tell you that um We were weeks away from what I call solving the riddle. Um, I was super, super disappointed in the city's inability to move forward. This is a project we've worked on for 10 years. We literally have spent and borrowed and spent $230 million that we're gonna have to repay without any new water, which means the local ratepayer is gonna be saddled with $8 a month for no water for the next 10 years.
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Uh, incidentally, If we'd to finish the project, the rates would go up $11 and so it's $8 to do nothing, and then $11 to have 30 million gallons a day. Well,
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I wanted to ask you about that next. industry is warning of dire consequences here. Do you think the city not moving ahead with this uh desalination project is going to affect jobs there in the coastal be?
< spk_1 - 00:04:11.2290000 >
Well, yeah, it picks two parts. One, I think a 10, I think there's probably 14 to $16 billion of new economic development that has moved on. Uh, some of them are, you know, they've announced, um, so number one, we, we've lost the ability to grow our community. Now keep in mind Flint Hills in Corpus Christi supplies the jet fuel to DFW.
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There's also a pipeline that supplies jet fuel to Bergstrom, and they're building another pipeline to San Antonio to supply that airport. You know, think about that, you know, we are fueling Texas and we're about to curtail.
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Project costs for this exploded from $160 million to more than a billion dollars. It it's gotten very political over the last few years. How did this project get off the rails?
< spk_1 - 00:04:58.8590000 >
Yeah, so it, it's so if if you look at other similar projects during that time frame, it escalated like everything else has escalated. Number one, it was 10 million gallons a day. Then it was 20 million gallons a day, and now it's 30 million gallons a day. And if you look at other projects in Corpus Christi, they've escalated similarly. Um, so I don't, you know, I wasn't around when we were talking about a $200 or $400 million project to me. It is what it is, right?
< spk_1 - 00:05:27.7090000 >
I, I don't want to spend a billion too, but it is what it is, and keep in mind this is not just something somebody threw on the wall. This is Kewit, internationally recognized company, The Spreeze and Nichols, highly respected engineering group, part of the process. What they called ICE independent uh cost estimators, they're those guys that sit in the room and come on board they were gonna, so they were gonna review the numbers and so that was gonna be what it was gonna be. This is really in its core a battle between.
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Industry pro-growth, uh, supporters and a group of environmentalists that don't want to see uh the industrial community grow.
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Texans, you know, outside the coastal bend might look at this and say, listen, you know, we're a state that needs water here. If Corpus can't do it, can anybody do it in Texas?
< spk_1 - 00:06:16.0700000 >
I think that's a real issue, and I think what we heard from. Austin from our, you know, Austin leaders was just that, you know, and we've said that the state of Texas is watching us, uh, the state of Texas is our partner, and we got the loan from the Texas Water Development Board. We're fully permitted. Keep in mind that you're gonna hear other projects or alternatives. None of them are permitted. The only fully permitted funded project.
< spk_1 - 00:06:45.0590000 >
Uh, that we had in our basket was in a harbor desalination and so it puts a big black eye on future desalination projects, uh, for the whole state of Texas, and, and I'm disappointed in that. I thought we, you know, we have a good project. Maybe the councilor comes back in a week or two and tries to reach out to Axion and see if they're interested, which again would mean we, we, we saddled $50 million of expenses we can't use again, uh, and a one year delay.
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But it would signal that, you know, we're willing to move forward. We, we know this, most of us know that the state of Texas is watching, and I, uh, I promise you I'm disappointed in our decision.
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Councilman, it's good to see you. Thank you for the insight.
< spk_1 - 00:07:27.6190000 >
Thank you very much, sir.
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All right, let's bring in the roundtable to talk about the politics of water. Bud Kennedy is here from the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Ashley Goode is political director at Kview in Austin. I am Metra with us as always from the Texas Tribune in Austin as well. Bud, let's start with you here on the program last week we had Chairman Cody Harris from Palestine 9. Trying to stop an investor there from extracting groundwater from that aquifer and selling it elsewhere that died at the last minute when the when the House adjourned early. But why is Texas having so much trouble figuring out water all over the place here?
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It seems like the state isn't on the same page.
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Yes, water is becoming very valuable like in California. It will be more valuable when you look at the charts over the next 20-30 years. The reason is we won't condemn land and build lakes. There's so many, uh, state lawmakers who refuse to let any new lakes be built where they need to be built. I mean that's what we have to do. We condemn land for airports, for railroads, for highways, for schools. We need more lakes and everybody's trying to find workarounds because the, the smaller uh rural lawmakers stand in the way of lakes
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and that's highly controversial what he's talking about Ashley.
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Yeah it is and I think you have to really though take a a step out and say we have to do something though, right? I mean you have people ringing the alarm there is fear that the state is going to, they say, run out of water by 2030. This was one of the governor's emergency items during the, the first legislative. The regular session was a generational investment in water. The state has got to do something and now the legislature is out and we've done nothing.
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Yeah, and and this was talked about a lot back in January. I remember I, we discussed it here on the program, but is Texas really that much better off right now when it comes to water than we were in the beginning of the session?
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It, it's a really difficult question, you know, some analyses have said that, you know, even that that Texas could be in real trouble, you know, by 2030, uh, you know, and, and so like you legislators, you know, this is one area where there is some bipartisan kind of, uh, agreement and, and sense of urgency and you know the latest legislation.
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That's uh that moved through, you know, I accounted for $20 billion but that's a drop in the bucket in terms of like the greater overall needs and then you're talking about, you know, you know, the, the challenge of like facing building new water supply projects versus, you know, feking our our leaky infrastructure that's across the across the state and it's just, uh, it's uh it's going to be a continuous challenge.
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Yeah, and a lot to do there. We'll wait to see what what happens with that guys back to you in just a moment. A lot more ahead here, including this. When we come back here, that unexpected vote in the House. House Republicans killing a Senate Republican plan to reduce property taxes. State Senator Paul Betancourt up next. And Texas lawmakers have effectively ended access to the abortion pill.
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Democratic state rep Donna Howard on this latest legislation when Inside Texas politics returns. Welcome back to Inside Texas Politics. Now to that unusual scene we watched play out in the final hours of the special session. House Republicans killed a bill from Senate Republicans that would have lowered property taxes. The bill belonged to state Senator Paul Betancourt, a Houston Republican. We called him to find out what happened here. Senator, welcome back here.
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Uh, you were surprised, uh, I understand that House Republicans killed SB 10 there. You, you said no one contacted you ahead of that vote. What do you think this boiled down to?
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Well, it obviously boiled down to House politics to some degree. Um, when you have a bill that will, uh, cut taxes in 52 counties and 57 cities across the state.
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You have to be surprised that without notice 27 Republicans vote with 44 Democrats and the conference committee report is literally turned down in the house and uh that's a sad thing because that means that next year, not this year because we're gonna have some really good property tax relief on schools, but next year it means in, you know, in those cities and counties tax rates are gonna stay too high and they're not and folks are not gonna get the property.
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Tax relief they could have if uh SB 10 had passed and quite frankly, you know, this is up to about 24 Republican freshmen that made that decision.
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Since the House killed SB 10, have you spoken to any of the Republicans who led that charge, Steve Toth or Mitch Little or Tony Tenderholt?
< spk_5 - 00:11:58.1300000 >
You know, um, they voted no. And then I immediately started calling them and say, please come visit. We brought them over to the Senate and because I wanted them to hear from other senators. I, I didn't want them just to hear from me. It started with Senator Paxton, Senator Hall, Senator Nichols saying the caucus and the Republicans have already met and we have settled on the 75,000 population bracket.
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And then Senator Nichols said there's a lot of the caucus that wants to go to 100%. And Representative Tinderholt, Representative Tote said, well, we want it lower and then the crowd got bigger, and then, then I've got Senator Middleton, Senator Creighton, and we're up to 8 or 9 people, you know, uh by that point in time because Everybody on the Senate side had been working this for 50 days. We had taken the public testimony.
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We talked to our county judges, you know, a lot of them are not big fans of a bill like this, you can imagine, OK? And so the senators knew the issue really well. So, uh, it's disappointing because, because you always want to make progress when you can. And, and this is tens of millions of taxpayers get a break out of this bill.
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It's not something small because the top counties and cities are the, the, the lion's share of the property tax accounts in the state.
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What was your reaction when you, when you saw Toas go to that back microphone and and and start discussing this?
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Well, I was, I was trying to get him on the phone. Well, no, and I was trying to get Representative Tinderro on the phone and trying to get Representative Little on the phone because again, um, in my statement, I made it real clear and I, and I made it real clear to them on the floor that what really disappointed me was no phone call. Now, to Representative Tinderholt's defense, he said, he apologized and said we should have.
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But the problem is once you nuke a conference committee report, the only solution is to reconsider because you don't have time to recommit one within 24 hours cause you're, you're gonna sign and die.
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Senator, I always appreciate the time. Right. Texas Republicans used the 2nd special session to further tighten abortion restrictions. House Bill 7 effectively ends access to the abortion pill. Women can no longer order it from out of state pharmacies or from doctors. State Rep Donna Howard is our next guest, and Austin Democrat who warns of the implications this new law could have. Uh, Representative Howard, welcome back to the program.
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Outside of a medical emergency, is there any way for a woman in Texas to get an abortion now?
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The the real answer to that is no. That's the intention of of the previous pieces of legislation as well as the one we're talking about now that just passed, um.
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You know, the fact is that abortion is still legal health care in other states, and women have had the ability to travel if they had the means to travel out of state to get a legal abortion, but with the legislation that we just passed, uh, that is becoming more unattainable at this point.
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Because we're going after the manufacturers and the distributors and the providers uh with uh what I would consider to be frivolous lawsuits, and it will definitely have a chilling effect on the ability to, to get the medications that are needed.
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At the end of the day, if you have a woman in Texas who can't afford to go anywhere else for for treatment, she can't order this uh mail order abortion pill, what happens to her and, and probably thousands of others like her.
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Well, you know, part of the problem we have in this state is about half of the counties in our state are maternal health care deserts. There aren't providers. There's not access, and those women who find themselves pregnant don't often get the pregnancy care that they need. Uh, we have those high rates of maternal deaths. We have higher rates of infant mortality. Um, those are the consequences of not being able to access care in general.
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And then when you add on top of it not being able to control when if and when you're going to be pregnant, uh, to be able to make those determinations in a, in a healthy way, a safe way, you're going to see more deaths related to that as well. So I mean there's no question that we're going to see more women dying, especially those that don't have access to care.
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Texas again letting private citizens. sue to enforce this. There's no state criminal penalty involved here. People related to these, uh, you know, mothers and unborn fetuses are the ones who collect the most money, and then anyone else would collect a smaller portion of that. But do you expect that we're going to see families turning on each other?
< spk_6 - 00:16:51.8690000 >
And that is a sad statement, but uh not out of the realm of possibility when something like this is set up. I mean, Especially if you have a family that may not even be getting along. There is all you have to have is evidence of intention, and you can set that up yourself actually. You can actually order the medication. Saying that it was the intended for someone else, not even take it, the person doesn't even have to take it.
< spk_6 - 00:17:20.9000000 >
The intent is all that's necessary for that lawsuit to, to, to go forward. So yes, I think that is a possibility.
< spk_0 - 00:17:27.5400000 >
Representative, good to see you. Thank you for the time.
< spk_6 - 00:17:29.5790000 >
Thank you, appreciate it.
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The round table is ready when we come back here on Inside Texas Politics. All right, time now for Reporters Roundtable to put the headlines in perspective. But Ashley and I and all back here with us. Ashley, let's start with you. The second special session ended early, uh, last week. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick says he thinks this was the most successful one ever, and if you look at, you know, Republican priorities, they got a lot done.
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I mean they did get a lot done. The governor put a lot of things on the call, right, and they got uh the large, the overwhelming majority of of those things done though there were some things that really didn't get done and what we, I really hone in on is the whole reason why we were gonna have a second special session uh special session to begin with was over THC and you had the lieutenant governor saying this was the most important legislation that he had passed, you know, in his career he said that during the the regular session.
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Before that bill was vetoed to ban all consumable hemp with THC and then it just kind of poof it went up in the air and and yet he's praising, you know, the special session. It's it's interesting to hear that from him. Yeah,
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and I, I was really interested to see the statement from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick saying, listen, we got to I got together with Speaker Burroughs and Governor Abbott, and we, we discussed it and we couldn't come to an agreement on that. That that's, you know, he, he's telling the behind the scenes stuff that's happening, but if they didn't come to an agreement now I can't imagine anyone's gonna change their position on this.
< spk_4 - 00:18:57.9690000 >
It's hard to see it, but you, you, but you never know, you know, and maybe there's something else that happens here, but again, you know, you know this has been a very conservative, uh, uh, special session, and it follows a, a successful special uh regular session for Republicans as well. Like it seems like forever ago that the school voucher plan was passed and then there was also property tax reform in the original regular session. So there's a lot that Republicans will be able to. Uh, to, uh, to, to kind of hang their hat on, it'll be interesting too to see how they do because now they're getting into the primary season.
< spk_0 - 00:19:26.2600000 >
Yeah, that's a good point. They do have a lot to hang their hat on, but as they go into the primary elections.
< spk_2 - 00:19:29.8190000 >
Well, exactly, and so much of what was passed was just political trivia. It was not anything to help Texas at large. It was something to say, to say you're more conservative as you go into the to the uh to the primary to say yes, I am conservative after. But what did the session prove most or all most of all is that Dan Patrick still leads the Texas legislature around by the nose. He refused to let the THC law pass even though Governor Governor Abbott laid out specifically what he wanted to see. That bill didn't get through.
< spk_0 - 00:19:58.6940000 >
Now that's, that's a good point there. Let's talk about the race for US Senate here, Ashley. Uh, we see Ken Paxson still going after Beto O'Rourke. Betto O'Rourke isn't. His opponent here he's going after Beto O'Rourke over the, uh, you know, whether he funded some of the quorum break. John Cornyn's gaining in the polls here. I is there a strategic mistake that's happening?
< spk_3 - 00:20:18.2190000 >
I mean, do I think it's a strategic mistake? Sure I do. I think that Ken Paxton is spending a lot of his time going after Betor work so he can say look what I did to the Democrats who broke quorum. Look how I'm defending, uh, you know, Texans. Meanwhile, Cornyn's team, oh they are on it. They are attacking Paxton left and right, the digital ad.
< spk_3 - 00:20:41.2430000 >
The the Ken Stoppers truck that's going around Austin and the website, they are going after him hard and it seems to be working in the polls and I just don't know where Paxton is.
< spk_0 - 00:20:53.1820000 >
What benefit, Bud, does Paxton get out of this this fight with Beto O'Rourke?
< spk_2 - 00:20:59.0220000 >
Well, that's it. Paxton is up against too many people. He's trying to. Sue Beto and get publicity on one side by suing Beto while John Cornyn's, you know, barking up his coattail, and I think that that uh that Paxton's just kind of overextended at the moment. He's trying to fight on two fronts. Yeah,
< spk_0 - 00:21:16.7250000 >
uh, yeah, this is, this is fascinating to watch guys. Thanks so much. We're out of time. I appreciate it as always and thank you for watching as well. We're back next Sunday to take you inside Texas politics, and we hope to see you then. Take care. Yeah.