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Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
2024: Ranked #1 Law Podcast
Host: Tyler Owen and Clint McNear discussing topics, issues, and stories within the law enforcement community. TMPA is the voice of Texas Law Enforcement, focused on protecting those who serve. Since 1950, we have been defending the rights and interests of Texas Peace Officers by providing the best legal assistance in the country, effective lobbying at state and local levels, affordable training, and exemplary member support. As the largest law enforcement association in Texas, TMPA is proud to represent 33,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers.
Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#033- "A Liaison, Lobbyist, and Friend"
In this episode, we hear from John Wilkerson, a member of the Government Affairs team at TMPA, as he discusses the 88th Legislative Session at the Texas state capitol. Ever wondered how a bill gets born and its journey thereafter? Or how a simple amendment can drastically alter the scope of a bill? With his rich experience, John walks us through his journey from being a field rep to taking on government affairs during the pandemic and the unique challenges he faced navigating the 88th legislative session.
Our conversation peels the curtain back on the legislative process, shedding light on the complex art of bill evaluation and the need for constant fact-checking amidst a sea of misinformation. We also explore the role of lobbyists and how they shape the outcome of these bills. Hear it from John as he shares his first-hand experience of the 88th session and the tumultuous journey of a workers' compensation bill.
Lastly, we touch upon the real-life implications of these legislations. We discuss the importance of mental health leave policy for dispatchers and the significance of law enforcement policy changes. We also examine the challenges the Texas Sunset Bill poses and its effect on the law enforcement community. So, let's step into the complex world of legislation, amendments, and their real-life impacts together. You would want to watch this enlightening episode!
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
One of the things that was tasked on me was the whole workers comp stuff. We didn't get it passed this session. You know, not for lack of trying. We got it passed out of the house unanimously. It landed over in the Senate. I saw Texas Municipal League, texas Association of Counties there are the two that are on record testifying against the workers comp. They are there for your employer, that's it, and your employer's bottom dollar.
Speaker 2:Welcome back listeners, viewers, watchers, lawyers blue grit podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Owen, and Clint. Thank you guys for tuning in watching listening listening. You guys hit that subscribe button. We greatly appreciate it. We've got a special guest today, good friend of mine and friend of law enforcement, john the man, the myth, the legend that walks the Capitol hallways every day during session Wilkerson.
Speaker 1:AKA JW.
Speaker 2:JW Just.
Speaker 1:JW Listen, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, man. Hey, man, appreciate you. I happen to be absolutely, absolutely. We wanted to have you on to kind of give a overview of the 88th session.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate you. I'll give me a little bit of time to let the craziness.
Speaker 2:Well it's not like you have a busy schedule, that we've been begging you to come back and kind of give way and that the session had been kind of prolonged and Governor Abbott had been kind of continuing the session anyway.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we're looking at coming up on our third special. It's already. It hadn't been announced yet, but it's already. Talks are there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So anyway, me and Clint wanted to have you on the world.
Speaker 3:Who is JW? For those that didn't see you on in the past, or that, don't know you. Jw yeah.
Speaker 1:So, uh, uh, you know I've been in a been in law enforcement coming up on 19 years now. Uh, still commission working for Bell County Sheriff's office. I worked full time for a TNPA, started off here at TNPA 2012. So was that 12 years ago, uh came to work on on the grants, some of the grant programs that we have, and uh promoted up through that. And then 2015 came across the street, uh, to be a field rep, worked as a field rep since 2015. And then, oh, what was it? 20, late 2020, I believe it was. Yeah, thanks, um, you know, the position came open in government affairs and I thought, man, that's something I never really had any interest to do. But you know, looking at it going, I haven't done it and you're going for punishment and I'm going for punishment at the time, yeah, Uh, you know, so I figured you know that's, that's something I haven't done and I always like a good challenge.
Speaker 1:So I came over, came over to government affairs and, you know, dip my toes in the water during the 87th legislative session, which I don't even know if that's considered dipping your toes in the water, because you remember you had COVID going on and all the other good mess, so it really wasn't a full on session, it was kind of a modified. So 87th was your first. That was during COVID. Now it's during COVID. Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 1:It was miserable you know you had to go there. Uh, you had to be there early. You know, go to the tent and get your nose rubbed. Get your nose rubbed. Yes, I see that.
Speaker 3:Well, obviously one way of preventing diseases with 50 ways of curing it and it was not a pleasant feeling.
Speaker 1:Uh, so you had to do that every day because you never knew what your office was going to say. Oh, if you don't have your clearance card, if you, you know, have a little wristband showing that you tested negative today, then you can't come in. Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3:They had the military GP to the north end of the building crazy and you got your nose swabbed every morning, every morning, yeah, every morning, yeah, every morning. Lovely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think you know that put a 15 minute wait and so, uh, on everything, uh, you know. So you had to leave 15 minutes early and then you had to pray to God that you know the EIO you won, that was sitting in there in a military uniform. Didn't forget about you, cause that happened to me a couple of times. You only swabbing and you go back 30 minutes later. Hey, are y'all calling an ambulance for me? Are you fixing the quarantine me out of here or what you know? And oh, no, we forgot. We're sorry, you know, so private I have a meeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, uh. So you know, yeah, it was, it was a challenge, to say the least. It was, it was definitely a challenge.
Speaker 3:So when you got in the ledge, have you always walked 30,000 steps a day, or was that something new for you?
Speaker 1:No, no, that's. Uh, that's where I learned how you know. The footwear may look cool, but if it don't feel cool, oh my gosh you threw them suckers in the trash really quick, yeah.
Speaker 3:The first time I went I wore some God awful dress shoes so that they look nice with my suit, and about halfway through the day I thought there is no way people do this every day in these ugly shoes?
Speaker 2:No way, no, no. And for our listeners or members that have never been to the Capitol with some of the ledge guys, it is so impactful and so eye opening really to walk the hallways with your senators and the the ledge guys to see the work that they do. It's so uh, it's crazy. I mean because you're you're, you're face to face with these guys and and and, to see that they work, the do and talk about the bills and really because the laws that you're enforcing on a day to day basis, it really puts in perspective of how far, uh, to see it go from just a piece of paper to see the war.
Speaker 1:No idea yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what's so interesting to me is to go from an idea to go to paper and it goes to a legislators hands, and then the process. And I want you to talk to just talk about the process, because it is a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy process to go through all that and then to go to a law, to where an officer is actually making the arrest, and go to the criminal justice system. It's really fascinating. It really is fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it is a challenge. Uh, you know. I'll give you a great example House will 1133, uh, was was filed and that was an idea that I, that I had coming into the session. Um, and that stemmed from last year out of daughter that graduated high school. And you know, law enforcement has been really short handed. Um, nobody wants to be the police anymore because they're tired of everybody using them as a punching bag. Uh, and so last year when my daughter graduated, uh, they had a project graduation event that was scheduled.
Speaker 1:Uh, where I live, at our local sheriff's office, was, was, um, understaffed, they still are. Uh, our local police department was understaffed, and so that was also not too long after the Evaldi incident. And then, add to that, uh, over in bell county there was a uh, a student that was stabbed and killed at at Belton ISD and uh, so you know a lot of the parents were really uneasy about, you know, a lot of gatherings with their presence. Yeah, you know they, they wanted that. So I reached out to my local sheriff and I said, hey, sheriff, do we have anybody working that down there? And he says, no, I just don't have anybody. Uh, in fact, I think he had to pull in reserves just to cover patrol shifts that night.
Speaker 1:Uh, the local police department same way. Um, and so I thought about it and I thought, man, if, if I could, I would put on my uniform and I would just go volunteer my time. But, uh, you know, bell county carries me as a reserve, and so I was not comfortable with the way the law was, because the law does not allow reserves to work security type jobs. In fact, you can catch a criminal conviction if you do it, you know, and I like my, I like my PID number and I don't want to turn it into a SID number. So I just decided now I'm not going to do this. Uh, but what that did is that prompted, hey, you know what? Why can't we do this? So I contacted my state representative, uh, and a spiller spiller weird.
Speaker 1:You know, redistricting was weird. Um, you know it. Representative spiller has the land, passes county all the way up to the red river.
Speaker 2:You know it's crazy yeah.
Speaker 1:And, and so we uh, you know, we we talked to his office about it. I said hey, you know what? Here's what I'm trying to do. If, if a reserve officer wants to volunteer their time to protect kids or protect their church, they should be able to do that in a uniform and not worry about catching a criminal conviction. And he wholeheartedly agreed with me. And so there's the idea. There's a spark, right? Yep, that's the first step. The second step in that is is you got to figure out where do you put this in the code and how do you put it in the code to where it doesn't have all these unintended consequences, these different things, right? And so one of the unintended consequences with that was we did not, and I agreed with this, and this is a bill that wasn't necessarily a TMP, a backed bill. This is a JW, you know, trying to do more for his community. Uh, one thing I looked at is is is you know, we don't want to completely open the door to where any reserve can just go out and work security jobs and get paid for it. Uh, because that that brings in a whole different realm of issues that are associated with it. So, having to word that the correct way and then fend off the you know the additional language that was trying to be put onto it. Right, because there were several bills that were filed during the session that, uh, I called them vendor bills. You know there was a bill that was filed to try to make it to where any reserve could work jobs. You know security jobs and you know TMP a. You know our board of directors didn't know we're not going to be in support of that. Okay, so that I have my marching orders. So now with my bill, I've got all these other bills that were filed trying to get that done. Now they're trying to tack it onto my bill. So I had to fend all that off.
Speaker 1:While it's moving through the path, and you know so, the first thing that it does is on. You know it's filed on the house side. It's got to go through a committee. Uh, during that committee you give testimony if you're in support of it, if you're opposed to it. After, you know, after it gets hurt in committee, then you got to convince the committee chair to actually put that bill up for a vote, which means you got to go work all the other committee members and say, hey, you know are you going to vote for this, and you know be able to go back to the chair and say, hey, you know what, we got the support for it. And then, once it comes out of committee, then it goes to the calendar's committee. So now you got to go work that committee to try to get them to vote, to put it actually out on the house floor.
Speaker 1:And then, once it comes out on the house floor, it comes up for second reading and that's where all the all the amendments are typically attached to it, and so you got to be watching for those. And part of the problem there is is you can attach an amendment to that bill and you may not be able to see what that amendment does. You have to have a really close relationship with legislators so that way, when they get it, you have a a well enough relationship with them that they're going to share that with you. And then they're going to ask you hey, what does this do? Is it good, is it bad? And then you let them know about that. After it makes your second reading, you'll still do third reading and hopefully it passes 1133 pass unanimously out of the house and then it goes over to the Senate side, where it starts that process all over again.
Speaker 3:So what this equates to our members kind of boil it down is it doesn't just take somebody like Jada up to get an idea. Stephen Delphos, one of our K-9 members at a Bell Air PD, so over years ago. He's sitting around. He's like dude. We don't have a K-9 anymore. We lose a lot of canines. He calls past president James Bab. They BS the idea of spawns the past presidents team PA, get on board. We now have a K-9 Memorial coming. There was funding issue coming up. Past president Long craft just wrote a check to cover it and that all started with Steven at Bell Air PD going dude. A lot of most states have a K-9 Memorial. We don't. Team PA members sitting at home made a phone call and shout out to Steven and past president Bab for getting that rolling.
Speaker 3:But it's somebody sitting at home on their couch, and now we're going to have a Memorial. So for our members, it doesn't take somebody like Jada that knows how things work up and down and forward and how to massage things through, if you have something, bring it. Bring it to team PA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point, Clint. We can't stress that enough. I mean, you know there were there were a little over 8,000 bills that were filed during the session, you know, both on the house side and the Senate side, and that's not including all the joint resolutions and house resolutions. And so one of our, one of our biggest things, is that we have to be monitoring all those bills and figure out are they good for law enforcement? Are they bad for law enforcement? Do they open up a door to branch off into one of those directions?
Speaker 1:So our hands are already filled with that, and when one of our members has a good idea or an idea for for a legislative bill, bring that to us. That's what we're here for. We're here to not only fend off and and you know, take care of the bills that everybody else are following, but to work with our members and say, hey, you know what? Yeah, all right, that looks like a good idea. Let's get it to our board of directors. If our board of directors say, yep, we're going to carry forward with the torch, then it's our job to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure that that bill makes its way through the house and makes its way through the Senate and onto the governor's desk.
Speaker 2:But I want to touch on that real quick because right now I don't want to. I don't want our members to think that it's okay to call you in mid session and say, hey, JDubb, I've got an idea. And I want, I want you guys to go ahead and push forward with this, because session ends in four weeks.
Speaker 2:Right now it's the time to call you and say, hey, we've got the 89th session coming up in two years. I've got an idea and I want to start working on it now, because right now it's the time to start working on the bills for the next session. Now is the time to call you, call our ledge team, and say, hey, I've got this idea and let's start lobbying for this bill now, not in the middle of session, not two weeks before session, not even three months before session. We could do it possibly, but now it's the time to prepare this for the next session ahead of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the great, great example on that. And you're absolutely right. If you, if you have a legislative idea, if one of our members out there says you know what I just been thinking about, this now's the time to get in contact with us. Yeah, during the 87th, like I said, it was my first session and one of the things that was tasked on me was the whole workers comp stuff. And you know, I went in there and I just thought, man, I've been through the system, I've seen how it works, I felt how it works and it doesn't work. So, man, what would make that work? Oh, you know what this make that work.
Speaker 1:So I go in and I make a one-sentence change, one sentence. That was it. And I gave it to Represent Patterson's office as chief of staff at the time, madeline, great, great chief of staff. And I said, hey, what do y'all feel about this? And she said I like it, let me run it past the boss. So she runs the past representative Patterson, and he says, oh, yeah, I'm all for it.
Speaker 1:Well, then that language is sent over to Texas Department of Insurance division, workers comp, and they said, well, hey, that's great, but if you do that, it's gonna change this code, that code, this code, this code, that code, that code, this rule, those rules, this rule, that rule in that code. And so I just basically had to bow down and say, yeah, let's just pull the plug on this and let me take all interim to work on this and get back with you, and that's that's what we ended up having to do. So you know, I was of the same mindset. Oh, I've got this great idea. Well, why don't we just get it turned into law real quick? That doesn't work.
Speaker 3:Now is the time into John's credit when he said he had to bow out or whatever, and reevaluate. To John's credit, he took between 87th and 88th and I would almost say could testifies an expert on workers comp. He didn't just take a surface, look and see. Well, what could I do? He spent an enormous amount of freaking time researching, understanding, vetting the information, vetting the facts he was finding, and can talk forward backwards, inside and out, about workers comp, and I would rather Run a belt sander across my forehead for an hour then listen to anything about workers comp. And so kudos to you, brother, for for taking the time on behalf of our members. Yeah, to understand, to truly understand how, what, how, what, what good, I was gonna say how it works, but it doesn't work yeah, what that process is and in the failures in that process, in some possible good Changes to make that occur, because, man, that was a hell of an undertaking I don't have the patience.
Speaker 3:To wrap my mind around that and listening to you explain it to people I'm like shit. He got over my head like four seconds into the conversation. Kudos to you on behalf of our members For digging into that, because workers comp is broken as hell and desperately and literally. I was on workers comp last call last week where I got nobody will approve surgery. Yet they told me I need Physical therapy and they won't approve physical therapy. And so I'm sitting here with an injury and I mean literally it's still a friggin problem and no matter how hard we work, try, but it takes relentless work and, man, it is truly appreciated, brother, yeah well, we didn't get.
Speaker 1:We didn't get it past this session. You know, not for lack of trying. We got it passed out of the house unanimously. It landed over in the Senate, Landed in senator shortness, but it was for lack of effort on your part.
Speaker 3:Because, be clear, we have a strong lobby there. Law enforcement has a strong lobby. But you got to understand every time we propose something, somebody on the other side of that as an equal Lobbyist, down there fighting like hell. So you have Texas Department of Insurance, you have all these other people who have their lawyers down there telling our legislators that these, these bills are bad or this is not good, or these these dumb cops over here trying to propose this just, and I want to clarify.
Speaker 1:So TDI takes apartment insurance. They're not allowed to lobby, so it wasn't them, it was the insurance companies. It was Texas Municipal League, which you know they do most of the workers comp insurance for municipalities, and Texas Association of Counties there are the two that are on record testifying against their workers comp bill.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is interesting because in the last episode, or one of the last episodes, we talked about tack and TML. You know are not here for your F5 or your due process. They're not here to care about your workers comp. They're not. They are not here on your behalf, contrary to what most people think.
Speaker 1:No, they are there for your employer, that's it, and your employer's bottom dollar, that's it. That's sad, yeah. So you know, we look at this. You know, like I was saying, you know. So, just to recap on that, if you have an idea for legislative Idea for you know something to become law, now's the time to get a hold of us, now's the time to bring it to us so that way we can start kicking around internally, get it to our board of directors, get got us from our board of directors and then Start working on it.
Speaker 1:You know now, because here's, you know, one of the things that happens and we do have to be really careful on how much we take on During the session. So we try to prioritize them because, like I was talking about, I mean, we had, we had a little over 8,000 bills that were filed and and just you know I want to walk you through that picture what that looks like, right? So when these bills are being filed, the ledge team, we look at that bill, we read the caption of it and Does it look like that could possibly affect our members? And when I say affect our members, I'm saying all of them, all of them, yeah, so you know peace officers that are out there working, jailers that are out there working, anybody that can be a member. You know we have to, we have to look at and evaluate that. But then we're looking at not only how we do our job is in when we put on that uniform and we go out there and we Work that street and we take those calls. Well, we're also talking about the labor side of it.
Speaker 1:You know, not all the bills are focused just on criminal law. You know you have some that are focused on the labor side. You have some that are focused on, like the Tico sunset bill. You know, reg more of the regulatory side of it. So you know we got to read all those over and and you know, once we identify, okay, this could potentially impact our member, then we flag it and out of the flag bill. So out of that, out of that 8,000, we flagged Just under 1600 of those bills, which means now we haven't flagged. If any of them get movement, if any of them are called up for a committee hearing. Now we now that triggers the next step you go in and you read that bill and that could be a one-page bill, it could be a 35-page bill. Now you got to go and you got to read that bill. You got to read all the sections of it and you got to understand exactly what this bill does to our members. And is it a good thing here? Is it a bad thing?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's one. One of jw's really strong points is when he evaluates a bill. Again, I don't I like the bandwidth and watching jw go through a bill and understanding Is it shall or may, how one word in a bill can affect how that bill is imposed or how it affects law enforcement. And literally you go through a 10-page bill and you see a few words in there that you realize this word right here is a problem. Or where it says you know, if this, then this.
Speaker 3:Well, now you have to go research over in the transportation code. What does it mean when it's referring to that over there? Or simply we are always telling guys, does it say shall or may do and and man to do that over and over, and you start talking about 1600 bills and most bills aren't two sentences, and so I mean it is time-consuming, the the brain capacity that it takes to continue to do that and stay involved and stay aware, because if something slips through, you know I mean then then we're the bad guys on that the way you die, sex it and transcribe it for to where our members not saying our members are not as smart as him, but think about it.
Speaker 2:He puts it in layman terms.
Speaker 3:Okay, there you go. So Go ahead and say it, so a Marine can Cry on a crayon can eat yeah.
Speaker 1:That's, that's why we took the crayons out of the meeting room. That's right. That's right. I had a couple too many jar heads in there. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, clint. You know you have to be able to go in and you have to look at that. And and so I really hope our members don't get offended when they call us during session. They say I want to know about House bill 42, 29, 29. I'm like okay, what bill is that? When you work down there, you ought to know. You know I'm tracking about 1600 bills right now, so you know.
Speaker 1:And then, and then we pull it up and we look at it, and then this is one of the more frustrating parts of the job is, you know, we are, we are 100% responsive to our members and I cannot tell you how many times our members would call up. It happened handful of times where they would. You know, they're on some social media chat group or there, Listen to their buddies standing around the coffee machine, or something like oh, did you hear about this bill, tyler? Man, this bill is gonna take away our retirement and everything else. Man, this is, this is wrong. I'm gonna get a hold of somebody at TMPA and here it is. You know you got three days left in session and they're calling you about this because they somebody told him about it. And you pull up the bill and it was filed and never got a hearing and you're like, uh buddy, that bill's DRT, it is dead right there. That bill ain't going anywhere. Well, just sort of clear.
Speaker 3:If it's on Facebook, it is true. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah the fact checkers over there, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so out of out of nearly that 1600, you know nine, not almost a thousand of them 997 of those bills actually went to a hearing, which means out of those 997. Now we have to fully go in and read those bills, look at them. But here's a kicker for you just about every one of those bills had a committee substitute, because everybody was in a hurry to follow bill. They wanted to get the bill filed, get it filed, get it filed, get it filed and Ledge council, which is the attorney. So, tyler, if you're a legislator and you want to write a bill, you you write up the draft and you send it over to the attorneys at Ledge Council and then they look at it, they word it the way that the law is supposed to be worded, all that kind of good stuff, and they send it back over to you. Well, if you're coming up against a deadline to get the bills filed, you're like I'm just gonna file it and then, whenever I get this copy back, I'll file that copy as a Ledge Council.
Speaker 3:It's kind of a placeholder to sort of get the bill back. So you have something there. Is that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And so now when you go to committee, now the legislators walking into the committee room and they're gonna lay out the bill and they're gonna lay out the committee sub. You may have not even seen that committee sub yet because they may gotten it back 15 minutes before they walk in that room. So now you got to stop everything you're doing, pull that, look at it and go oh man, I'm registered and supported this bill, yeah, we're still in support. Or, oh god, this is really no. No, this ain't good anymore. Now I got to change and you know, be in opposition to this bill or be neutral on the bill or just provide some feedback. So you know, there's that aspect of it and you know. So out of that 997 we were looking at Just little under, little under 420. I think it was with 418 bills that we found were good for law enforcement. Okay, that's great, they're good for law enforcement. So a Lot of people think there's nothing to do on that. No, there's a lot to do on that. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, if it's good for law enforcement, you can do everything you can to kind of help it. You know grease the skids for it. You know get it across that finish line. But then you also have to watch out for the attacks getting lumped on to it. Yep, because once it hits that house floor, you know Anybody can drop an amendment on it and all it takes is the majority of the house floor to approve that amendment. So you could start off with a bill that was really good for law enforcement and by the time it's been done and over with now it's bad for law enforcement. So that's.
Speaker 3:That's. Another thing I want to interrupt to make sure people understand is the late hours you guys keep, because as the session goes on, january and February sessions pretty dead. As it ramps up it's a crescendo where it rises and their days go from eight or nine hours to if you have a committee going, until midnight, these guys are there. They've got to either be in the committee or they have to be watching Live to figure out what's going on, because if somebody proposes an amendment, or later on if a rider is attached to a bill, it can totally change the entire spirit of the bill, of how it began. So what may be a really great bill.
Speaker 2:Well, just prime example. Like the canine, like the member, what was the members name?
Speaker 2:Stephen Delphos if Stephen put the bit, his idea who saw purpose of that canine Memorial was to have a more a canine memorial on the cap cap backgrounds. Okay, so let's say that I'm a, I'm a state rep and I'm anti law enforcement. I don't want anything to do with the canine memorial on capital grounds and I drop a amendment that says okay, I don't want this kind of moral anywhere near the capital grounds, just like we have the Texas peace office memorial. I'm gonna drop an amendment that says the canine memorial can only be 12 inches by 12 inches on the south side of the memorial and all of me.
Speaker 3:a house cat memorial, that's right.
Speaker 2:And it's slipped and it slips behind. Yeah, the whole sole purpose of that memorial shot.
Speaker 3:You and I both know that, but I think Stephen would still like a house cat memorial. Yeah, he's a good guy. I think you'd still be proud of that.
Speaker 2:But you see what I'm saying. So it but that's, but that could happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so uh but then you know, but then the opposite side of that could happen too.
Speaker 3:And that may happen at one am.
Speaker 1:Literally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely that goes on at one am sometimes and and sometimes it's. You know you may think that it's not going to happen, and I'll give you a great example of that House Bill 30 that was that was filed. Uh, you know, that bill was filed as, in response to the school shootings, the legislators wanted information. Uh, the family members of the victims wanted information and they weren't getting the information because they're still active investigations and so it's not subject to the open records. And so, uh, uh, the representative filed HB 30 and it was sold as well. This is basically going to give the family's closure and it's going to give legislators more information. Uh, what was actually contained in that bill was that it opened up our officers, our members, complete personnel filed to the full year request. And so the title says one thing and you know we, we have this saying in the in government affairs, the devil's in the details, and that devil was right there in those details. And you know that.
Speaker 1:And that's just another shining example of you have to know what's in those bills, and sometimes you don't have long to figure it out, because these things are moving, and that particular bill we thought was dead, you know we, we really did. We thought, okay, this, yeah, you know he got it out of the house, but we have commitment from the Senate that it's not going to go anywhere. Well, what ends up happening is is, now the Senate has their bill that they want to get across the finish line, and now somebody in the house who is responsible for helping it get across that finish line they say well, you know what? Um, I got your bill here, I'm in charge of that committee. It's my call whether or not that bill gets a hearing.
Speaker 1:What are you doing with my HB 30 over there? And so then you have those, those, those ransoms, right, they're holding hostage, they're holding bills for hostage to get something else done. And that's what ended up happening with HB 30. Now, granted, because we have a good relationship with Senator King uh, you know, senator King, you know, assured us that nothing bad was going to be in that bill that came out that negatively impacted our members. And that's exactly what happened. Hb 30 did pass, but all that bad stuff about opening up our files, all that was stripped out of the bill for our members?
Speaker 3:What? What would you say, are five results out of the 88th that affects them that they should be aware of, and timelines on? Those are most, would you say, most laws, or September one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most of them are. Yes, some of them maybe even pushing a little further past is because there's so many changes to it that they have to give the state agencies time to get the rules adopted on them. But you know, one of those is you know, give shout out to Tio over here. Uh, you know who's? Tyler Owen this on me. Oh, the Tyler.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so uh, you know last session TFO bills at a TFO bill.
Speaker 2:No, it's not Task Force officer bill.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, it's actually a education bill, which has surprised me, you know coming from, but anyways, uh oh my God, you guys are harsh.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so.
Speaker 1:Tyler, you know Tyler brought it to the ledge team last session about, you know, the peace officer school transfer bill. Uh, that would allow you know officers, who you know, who have kids in in in school and maybe those kids are facing harder times because of what their parents are doing, uh, as a profession, you know, for those kids to be able to be transferred to another school district. So without a fee, without a fine anything like that.
Speaker 1:And and so last session it passed out of the house, but it didn't go through the Senate because it ran out of time. And so this session it was picked back up by the incoming uh freshman state representative and, uh man it, it sailed out of the house, made its way over to the Senate, sold out of the Senate and that bill actually became effective June 2nd. Um that, you know, for the 2023 school year, 2023 to 2024 school year, you can now transfer your child to any neighboring school district without having to pay a fee for it.
Speaker 3:And there there was some discussion. Does, does there have to be some threat or some possible threat or some issue, and or is it strictly? You can be, you can transfer your kid.
Speaker 1:So it originally started off with there need to be a threat and somewhere along the road that got stripped out, which is a good thing. Uh, you know that that got taken out. So right now there does not have to be threat, there does not have to be any retaliatory act against your children. You don't have to do any of that right now. The way the laws worded is is that peace officer can transfer them to a different school district.
Speaker 3:And for a listener's, not law enforcement arena, so that you can understand the levity of that and shout out to Tio for a damn good bill. But the levity of that. We had an officer in North Texas years ago. Uh, got involved in a shooting and a smaller community right next to Dallas not a small community, but a smaller community right next to Dallas, unbeknownst to him. Well, his kids come home the next day upset crying elementary school age kids crying that all the kids at school are calling my daddy a murderer. They're daddy the policeman, unbeknownst to them, bad guy that their daddy had to kill because he chose to pull a gun on him. His kids went to that school also. Oh, they were telling everybody that you know, little Johnny's daddy murdered my daddy for no reason. Little Johnny's daddy murdered my daddy and so that's what these kids were hearing all day is that my daddy's and he was a hero and an example for non law enforcement listeners to understand exactly what, how important this bill is?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know that's that's like we were saying earlier. You know, not all of the bills that we track, not all the bills that we work on uh deals with how an officer does his job. You know, some of them deal with making sure that officer has peace of mind, knowing that his kids are okay during the school day and not, you know, not having to suffer because he's he or she has decided to become a police officer. Uh, yeah, another good one that that becomes law on September 1st. That we worked on. That's another one that we worked on for a couple of sessions now.
Speaker 1:Uh, and again, an idea that came to us out of Williamson County. Our members there in Wilco uh brought to us as a cold case related issue about doing away with the with the uh statute of limitations for tampering with evidence when somebody moves a body or moves evidence that was associated with the homicide. Uh, we worked on that last session. Uh, we worked on it again this session and and this session we got it passed through both chambers, the governor signed it and so now, effective September 1, if you tampered with a body, uh, you know that was part of a homicide, or if you tampered with evidence that a reasonable person would have, should have known was associated with that homicide. You cannot be prosecuted until the day you die, and that's.
Speaker 3:That's a good thing for uh, for criminal justice, and shout out to team PA member Gary sweet, my old partner from Gartland PD homicide that came down and testified on that bill.
Speaker 1:Yep, uh, member Gary came down and testified and, uh, we had one of the detectives from Williamson County I cannot recall her name right now to save my life but uh, you know both of those were very instrumental. Uh, you know, coming down and sharing their stories, and that's that's what moves Now. That being said, you know there's a great a that I think there's a great time to talk about that, clint, oh, if we always want our members to come in and talk, tell their story, but we also have to remind our members that a lot of the legislators, they entertain the story but they may not want to hear it. And and the reason for that is because they may be scheduled to hear 40 bills during that hearing and they didn't get started at time or on time. Because, you know, hearing was set for 10 at 10 am, and now here it is. You know they were on the floor until 2 pm and now they're just now getting started and the chairman put 40 bills to be heard, which is a god-awful lot which we saw this past session. And so now everybody's coming up and they're trying to tell their story and nobody Understands what three minutes means. I mean nobody does. And and so when you get with us and if you're gonna come in a test phone and build, there may in fact be times where we're we're evaluating the situation and we may tell you how. You know what. When, when the chair calls you, it'd be really smart for you to just say I'm here to answer any questions if you need, because we see, you know and Senator Whitmire on the Senate side is notorious for this He'll tell you it. The bills in good shape. Which means don't sit here and take up all of our time telling your war stories, because you're just gonna aggravate everybody. So just be mindful of that. We understand everybody has a story. We understand that. But if we, if we make daudable call and tell you that it's for a reason, it's not for anything else. But we don't want your bill in jeopardy. The game's going well. Yeah, yeah, we're good. You know.
Speaker 1:Another great one is the, the recall provisions for DA's. You know that was a great bill. You know TMP a we have some different language that we were, that we were hoping for. It didn't get filed. But we evaluated HP 17 and you know, by representative cook and and you know it was a good bill. It would. It would help get get it accomplished. It would help accomplish getting some of these DA's removed off of out of office that don't need to be there. So that was good and it takes effect September 1st as well. And then another great one again. Another you know Hold over from last session. You know we worked on the workers comp Bill last year with their last session with with representative Patterson, and some of them that we were working with was the Association of firefighters. So you know in in between their naps and you know their breaks with Call of Duty or you know whatever whatever.
Speaker 1:You know in between that you know we would, we would work with them and you know they had a really good bill and and we teamed up with them on that bill.
Speaker 1:We worked with them really good on that bill and I feel bad for him because all of the stuff that they wanted in that bill got stripped in the Senate the the the one thing that we wanted in there and we worked with.
Speaker 1:Glenda Shields is a great guy, he's got a, he knows what he's doing down there at the Capitol and I've always, you know, found it real, real pleasant to work with Glenn on these issues. And so on the law enforcement and firefighters side, we felt that you know every officer, every firefighter that gets injured in the line of duty, they should all have at least a year of injury leave. You know all civil service agencies have it, but so many agencies out there are not civil service and so basically it's 12 weeks of FMLA and then the agency can get rid of you if they want to. So house before 71 Originally had a lot of stuff in there for the firefighters that passed out of the house. It got over the Senate side and the insurance companies went in and did their stuff and they stripped out everything, with the exception of the one section that Gives when your injury leave to every law enforcement officer.
Speaker 2:What is it currently? I'm sorry, what is it currently? Is that a curiosity?
Speaker 3:Well, it depends civil service it's 12 weeks of FMLA and then you're gone. Civil service, it's a year, unless you work for an elected official. Oh yeah, yep, Yep.
Speaker 1:And you know, if you work for an elected official, you know that that sheriff cannot terminate your employment Simply because you're injured, until that sheriff leaves off.
Speaker 2:Is that very per per county I mean, I guess?
Speaker 1:one. Now that's in the Texas Constitution, so it's statewide I didn't mean Sheriff I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Does it vary? So if you work for a constable's office or anything that does not, each county is the same Right, so it's. It's repeat that again for the listener and for the watcher viewer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you work for an elected official, and that's the way it is in the so every county employee is the same, which is if they're law enforcement, not, yeah, we're not talking about road crews, stuff like that, we're talking about your, your jailers.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, your jailers and your, your sheriff's deputies, your constable deputies. You know it's Records clerk, and those folks they're not gonna be covered under it, right, because of the wording. But you know, yes, the, the, the deputies, they, if they get injured on the job, the, the entity cannot terminate their employment simply because they're injured, until that elected official leaves office. Okay. And then tmp We've had to educate some, some counties, on that. A couple years back we had to educate Travis County on it because the deputy constable got hurt and they try to get rid of him, right. So the good part about 471 is is that and that one went into effect June 12th. So any of our members, any and they don't have to be our member but any law enforcement officer Working in the state of Texas that was injured, honor after June 12th. They now have one year of injury leave to get better. So all the same Protections under 143 as it relates to that injury leave, that now applies to every officer across the state of Texas, which is it's huge for our members.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah again for non le listeners you getting a bad car wreck and you get rearing it by DWI. You get shot 12 weeks in a whole lot of time to get better and to be told you I know you're, you got both your legs broke or I know you're. You know you got severely injured or you got shot, but your 12 weeks is up. Take care of me. Well, I appreciate your sacrifice for your community, but don't let the door hit you on the way out. Yeah, and that is not acceptable.
Speaker 1:And it's not. And just to throw a one more little wrench in there, I guarantee the entire time they're going to be arguing with the workers' comp insurance company. So yeah, yeah, yeah, the entire time. We see it. Right now we see members that work for a civil service agency that have that one-year injury leave. They spend nine months of it arguing with the insurance company to get the treatment that they need to get back to work. Yep, that's crazy. So you know another one that goes into effect, nine one.
Speaker 1:This is another one where our members reached out to us. In fact, we were driving back from the TECO conference last year and get a phone call from the sheriff in Mylum County. He says hey, you know, we have this law that says that. You know, agencies have to have a mental health leave policy for police officers Said yes, sir. He said what about my dispatchers? Man, that's cool.
Speaker 1:He said you know, my dispatcher was on the radio the night that one of my CIT deputies was shot in the face and she is not taking it very well. And you know I don't have much room to do much with her because it's not in the statute like it is for my officers. Well, in between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. Let's get this, let's get that fixed. And so we got what the state rep, who was brand new, put the two of those in communication with each other. We worked out the language, we worked it everywhere that we could, and that's another bill that we got passed. You know TMP. I got that bill put into place, so now the dispatcher is going to be covered into that same mental health leave policy.
Speaker 2:That's awesome dude. Shout out to that my own kind of sheriff, for having leadership and port of duty to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I want to touch one base on that because I get this question a lot. They asked well, how come there's not a specified number of days in there? And and and I give a shout out to Clint on this because I didn't know how to answer that until that I forget where I was, but I heard Clint saying this in a clinic explained it the best when he said you know that that he's been to shootings. We you know everybody up here has been to officer involved, shooting support those members. And and Clint made the comment one time he said you know, I've been to shootings where you got a guy that's been in five or six shootings and you get there and like hey, man, you're all right, yeah, a little hungry, you know. You give me something to eat. And then you get the one who's, you know, been in law enforcement 30 years, just gotten their first shooting and they're in a consolable. So to have a blanket standard would probably do more harm than it would do good, right, but now if, if it starts getting abused and we need to address that in the future by all means bring us that information. If you see it's being abused.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know there was a lot of bad, bad bills that we, that we got fended off. You know a lot of the refiles. You know we talked about HB 30 that would open up our personnel files. We got that. Then you had the bunch of little sneaky bills, right. So you know a good one on that house, bill 4486. You know it. It at face value it sounds good.
Speaker 1:It was the model citation bill, right, it's the. Every agency needs to use the same citation. Oh, yeah, oh, you know, I don't disagree with that. I mean it would make it easier to train officers and so forth. Well, the problem with that is, remember, the devil's in the details. Also included in that bill was the agencies also have to adopt a policy that says you cannot arrest for classies only so little things like that you always have to watch out for. So we got, you know, we got a lot of those killed off and not real. I don't know that there's any that passed. It was just terrible and in fact I think if anything was terrible that we have to reflect back on from the session, it would. It would probably be, you know, losing the F5 hearings at part of the part of the TECOL sunset.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll tell you what I'm we're facing. I'm on the security board for the 40 SD school district and one of the laws that just passed requires a armed person at every school, which sounds great and I'm all for it. I'm.
Speaker 1:HB three.
Speaker 3:I would be for 20 armed people at every school. Problem is is implementation of that. There was really no amount of money not an adequate amount of money thrown at that and it has to be ramped up, I think, fairly quick. And getting someone competent that you trust to have a weapon at every school in a district and not every district is is well, well funded man. That's a challenge.
Speaker 3:That is a huge challenge and I'm all for protecting our kids and I'm all for making sure a good guy with a gun is there to stop a bad guy with a gun. But when you just come out and tell these districts that you, you're going to do this and you need to implement it and, by the way, here's a couple of dollars to help with that with districts that are already strapped, man, that's a tall order and I know, I know specifically for me just because I'm involved, but I know a bunch of other districts are like good Lord, how do we, how do we comply with this and how do we make it work? And we don't want to give some more nuts with guns right to be up there to school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean everything was so far across the spectrum. You know, I mean they were talking you know about, you know, the guardianship program. They were talking about the school martial program. They're talking about hiring a retired military. You know and and you know I'm a military veteran, clint, I know you are as well and and you know as well as I do there is a difference between the training level of a combat arms job and a non-combat arms job.
Speaker 1:And you know, part of what I do for fun in my spare time and that's where I make my extra gun money is I teach firearms at the local police academy and where I'm located at we get a lot of military that come into that and what I find is is that a lot of the military that are non-combat arms, yeah, they were trained on the rifle, but they had hardly any training on a handgun whatsoever. Well, that's what they're going to be. You know, if they're selected and they're going into schools because a law would allow them to and I'm not saying it does, but if it was ever changed that way, we got so many that's never been really trained on a handgun. You know that.
Speaker 1:That that now walking in schools with a handgun you know, so you know, there's the one thing I'll say about HB3 is the one thing if I could go back and change anything, it would be I wish our members would have communicated better with us, our school ISD members. I wish they would have communicated with us better because again, I just gave you the numbers over 8,000 bills. We can't, you know, we can't know every intimate detail about every single bill and everything that changes. And then, more importantly, you know I've never been an ISD officer. I've got plenty of experiences, patrol investigations and narcotics, that kind of stuff, but I never had the ambition to go into the schools and so we rely on those subject matter experts to communicate with us.
Speaker 1:And what little bit of resources that we did have. You know past board members, some members that we know that work in the ISDs. You know I was feeding them bills all during the session and saying, hey, you know what's the deal here, and one of the things that we found is is, like you said, clint, it may work for this school district but not that school district. So we were getting conflicting information sometimes about whether or not this bill was actually good or not.
Speaker 3:And I'm all for protecting kids and I'm certainly not anti-second amendment. But trying to make something work that is forced upon you in a short amount of time without the funds to support it is a tall order because everybody wants to comply, Everybody wants to protect kids, but man, it's tough. It's tough in that short amount of time with the funding.
Speaker 2:Well, I'd call out what you want to. I wouldn't want a bunch of paul ball arts protecting my kids and in the schools. I'll call a spade, a spade.
Speaker 1:Well, if you think about it, I mean and you know I don't want to air out too much of our dirty laundry, but I mean, what's the first thing to get cut when budgets hit? Training. Yeah, we've seen that and that's why right now, currently, you know you have so many agencies out there. Their officers, you know, their annual firearms training is not not even training, it's annual proficiency. So once a year they go out and they fire 50 rounds out of their handgun to prove that they can hit the target set of seven out of 10 times.
Speaker 2:Well, like John Sariga said, they have a day right now with the, with the amount of shortcomings with staffing, right now with other police departments, they can't train, they can attend law enforcement. Can't attend training right now anyway, because of the staffing levels. Right, how the hell are they going to? Oh, that's, right, Sorry. John Sariga. So how the hell they're going to attend training for this anyway? So this, this, this whole roll out of this HB three really wasn't I'm not going to say thought through entirely, but it wasn't Thought through and time.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll say it to a degree and I said it a couple episodes again, or somebody did. The best quote I've ever heard out of Kevin Lawrence is after, unfortunately, after the tragedy and you valedict for years. It was defund, demilitarize, uh, quit being warriors for years. And when Kevin testified before the legislature and they ask where were all the warriors, kevin's response was you sent them home. You sent them all home. All the warriors are gone because you didn't want them armed. You didn't demilitarize, quit being mean, quit being scary.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a time and you got to be a guardian and then you got to flip the switch like an Allen. You got to flip the switch and go exact violence, it's the one in that in that short amount of time. And then we not saying that the HB three is bad or a 30 is bad, but uh, we got to. We just got to be smart how we do all of these laws, because knee jerks don't fix anything. Yeah, um, and we're always trying to improve. And that's another point to some of our members is they call with a idea sometimes and I've had them too and then, when you really look at it, implementing it, uh, the idea sounds great or sounds sexy, but how you implement it, or is it really truly practical In the big picture? Because it's not just my community. You got to look at it because that law is going to affect the entire state. Yeah, how does that roll out? How does that implement? Is it financeable? Is there a funding attached to that? What is that going to look like in?
Speaker 3:the big picture, and that's part of what JWB has to go through, uh, and determine as when those calls come in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I think you. I think you hit the nail right on the head with that Clint. Uh, another great example you know we, the legislature, passed what's going to be the Texas Rico act, right, I don't know if you're tracking that. Uh, part of my job now that session is the regular session is over is now I get to go in and I get to build the, the presentation for the legislative update class, and, uh, yesterday I was working on the Texas Rico bill and Rico similar to the federal Rico.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I said federal to you.
Speaker 2:I like that federal. You know T calls they never T co like Tyler Owen.
Speaker 3:Anyway, well, I just figured federal like TFO yeah.
Speaker 1:I just want to point out to all of our listeners that T? O just just authorized us to blame everything wrong with T call on him because he said named him after him. Right, I just said it was named after me.
Speaker 2:I didn't say everything, oh well that's, that's not the story.
Speaker 3:I'm going to tell you they just spelled it wrong.
Speaker 1:A second to just spilt it wrong, just throwing it out there, uh, but yeah, you know, I'm sitting there trying to put that together and I'm finding this with so many bills now, uh, because you get these people that come in and they'll have an idea for a bill and then they realize, oh, this touches all these different areas and for so long, I think for so long, they looked at it and they said, oh man, it's really more complicated than what I wanted to put into this. Uh, but this session they're, they're putting in the work. You know, like the like the recall bill. I mean, I'm sitting there going, good Lord, where does this go?
Speaker 1:Do I put this in a penal code section? Do I put it in the health and safety code? I put it in the CCP? Do I put it in civil remedies of practice code? Well, I had to put it in its own little section, uh, within the curriculum, because you know, and then there's a couple of bills that I had to do that and then a couple of bills that I have to go through and I have to read and and work, work my way through it and go, okay, which, which part of this really impacts the patrol level officer? Okay, well, there's about four sections in that bill that does that, but they're all in four different codes. So you know, if you're attending one of our ledge update classes in the future, you're liable to see the same bill in about four different codes because these things are so intertwined with each other and you got to be able to go in and break out and extract all that information.
Speaker 3:That's great, so go away. When, when, when may our? We get a lot of requests about this time of year knowing when team PA is going to roll out our ledge update class. When do you think that?
Speaker 2:we are working on that soon.
Speaker 3:Yep, stay tuned, yeah, stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Uh, our goal. Uh, now granted. Uh, for anybody that has training uh, let's report it through Tico. You understand this concept. We can put it together, we can have it ready tomorrow. If, if we really, I mean if we put the manpower to it, if we put six, seven guys working, you know, all night tonight, we could probably have this thing ready tomorrow. But until Tico comes out with the instructor resource guide and we know that everything that we're talking about is covered in that guide.
Speaker 1:Uh, really, we're at, we're at the mercy of that and you know I talk to Tico. I stay in in communication with them. We work with them really well. Uh, shout out to.
Speaker 3:Gretchen. Yeah, yeah, gretchen is amazing.
Speaker 1:By the way, she's a rock store.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know we, we.
Speaker 1:we reach out to them and we say, hey, you know, or I reached out to them the other day and I'll say when, when, when, anything we're expecting the RG, and the last word I got was they're expecting it at the end of this month.
Speaker 2:So later, at the end of this month, I knew something different this year, when they have a little mix of a little stand up comedy, a little bit of rapping country music. It's going to be cool. Yeah, I'll be looking forward to it, yep. Available on Amazon and Spotify, and it's going to be neat. I like it, it's going to be cool Yep.
Speaker 1:You know, and one thing and I know we're we're winding down on time here One thing I really want to drive into our members that are listening to these podcasts and more specifically this particular one. Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of conversation on the T-Cole sunset bill that's going on out there. You know, we know we lost the the ability to appeal a dishonorable F5, because they're going to no longer have the ability to give you a dishonorable F5 after March one of next year, after March one of next year. That basically the concept is is we just notify T-Cole that you no longer work here and then let your personnel file speak for itself? Obviously, there could be a lot of potential issues with that right, Because how do you control what's put in that personnel file?
Speaker 1:We fought tooth and nail to get something put into the code on that. You know, something standardized put in the occupations code. And then I'll tell you some of the language that we presented to them was that the officer, if something negative was put in their personnel file, they had the ability to appeal that to the governing body of their individual governing body of their entity. So if they worked for municipal police department and they didn't have civil service, then they could appeal it to the chief and then if the chief didn't agree with or the chief if they didn't like what the chief said, then they could appeal it to the city manager If it's a city manager form of government, and if not, then they can appeal it to the city council and, and you know, in your general law, municipalities, right, Uh, and then from that, then they could appeal it to SOA. So, you know, we, we provided all kinds of language on this. I mean, we were. I can't tell you how many times we rewrote language because they'd come out to well, you know, we just don't think this aspect is going to work because of this. Okay, we go back to the drawing board and we find a way to make it work and we present them with more language and at the end of the day, I think we filled up all their trash cans with all of our language. That that we were trying to get them to consider on this, Uh, and what they ended up going with at the end of the day was they're going to be developing rules, and how they're going to develop those rules is by, uh, certain committees that are going to be formed, or by advisory committees.
Speaker 1:So those advisory committees will meet. They'll discuss the issues that are that are taking place. Uh, you know, there's there's three different advisory committees that they're looking at right now. Uh, there's one on minimum standards for law enforcement agencies, and, and so I know that there's been discussion in the past with some of the legislators saying, well, you know what? Not every small town needs a police department. They can contract with their sheriff's office, they do whatever. So you know, they can't afford to hire and keep quality cops, which actually who can right now? Uh, you know, they can't afford to do that, but maybe they don't even have a police department. So they said, all right, we're going to, we're going to put together a study panel on this to figure out what those standards are.
Speaker 1:To have an agency to begin with, Uh, and then they're going to have another one that's going to be in place to talk about the examination of licensees. And when we talk about the examination I'm talking about you go to the academy and you take a TECO test. I'm talking about, for some reason, somebody believes Clint McNair, you're a patrol officer and I just don't think you're fit for duty. So now I'm going to send you down for a fit for duty evaluation and, by the way, you have to comply with this. If you don't, TECO can take your license away from you.
Speaker 1:So what are the rules that are going to be in place to make that happen? Right, To make them more of an enforcement agency, Right, Correct, Yep, and then, uh, misconduct investigations and hiring procedures, and that's where the personnel file issue is really going to come into play. And, and you know what, what's going to be considered a sufficient misconduct investigation and what's going to be considered good due process at the local level. So this is these advisory committees are going to, they're going to listen, All this is going to take all this in, and then they're going to report that back. Whatever findings they have, they're going to report that back to the, to the, to the commission, to adopt rules on that. And that's where, for our members that are listening, uh, if you want to get involved, you need to be paying attention to TMP, a social media TO does a wonderful job at our, at our social media, yeah, and and you know, I know I can go to TO and I can say hey.
Speaker 1:I can go to TO and I can say, hey, man, this is an issue that's popping off now. We got to get word out there and I know he knows how to do that and he'll get that out. So our members be watching for that. If there's a bad rule that's being proposed, we may need you. Hey, you know what. You need to contact T coal and you need to submit written response to this. And oh, by the way, it probably wouldn't hurt for you to loop in your state representative on this as well. If something like that comes up and it's that bad, we may be asking our members to do that. It's going to be really important that they, that they back or play on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like you, I agree.
Speaker 1:Well, uh man you got a thing else. No, no, I appreciate you guys having me on, Uh, man we greatly appreciate you. Hope I didn't go too far off.
Speaker 2:No absolutely not. You kicked ass this past session and, uh, hopefully this third session is kind of a rumor. Uh well, I'm sorry. This is the second special. All right, the third.
Speaker 1:we just finished the second special might be going to that third. You know everything's pointing that way, oh God, uh. So one thing you got to remember is uh, there were some bills that were vetoed, hmm, because things weren't going the way that some felt they should during the first and second special.
Speaker 3:And some good bills got vetoed, just for a statement.
Speaker 1:Yes, Collateral damage, not intentional collateral damage, and and and. So I would suspect that some of those maybe kind of put in an area for a special call session to kind of maybe give them a little CPR and get them back back to life. That's the finish line, Yep.
Speaker 2:Hmm, well, I have to wait and see. All right, We've already done the rapid fire questions. We've already got your answers on that one, so we don't want to get crowned. Nick is still the best car.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah, hey, since we've already done rapid fire. Hey, nat, stay on the wide shot.
Speaker 2:Come over here a minute, please yeah we want to give a shout out to Natalie Natalie.
Speaker 1:Oh, come on.
Speaker 2:I can't, can we? This is our rock star, natalie Garza. She's the one that runs our cameras and she is absolutely amazing. Natalie, yeah, welcome to the blue grit stage. Let the world see who you are.
Speaker 3:Hello, this is like the Wizard of Oz. She's always been this person behind the screen. Get up on the mic. That way the world can hear you. That actually works all the magic. Yes, this is yellow. You guys are getting to meet the Wizard of Oz. And a shout out to the Astros she's got her Astros jersey on, yeah.
Speaker 2:Heck yeah.
Speaker 3:Yep, hello. How do you, how do you tolerate us? I mean, it's pretty easy. I love working.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a bear, it's a big family. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, we love you Nat. I love you guys. Yeah. You're amazing, it's cool having Nat.
Speaker 3:She doesn't really have law enforcement background, really no family. Your sister worked here. Yes, nat's been here for quite some time, came over and joined the field side and she keeps, she keeps all of this mess in order and keeps us moving forward At conference. She works like a angry firing up behind the scenes. Yep Conference just wrapped up. How was that?
Speaker 4:It was probably my favorite year, aside from the first year, just because I don't know Something about this year. Everything just fell into place. It was no stress. I mean it was, it was good.
Speaker 2:Good year. It's a good conference too.
Speaker 3:Yep, it's a good conference. It was awesome. Natalie Garza, when you call down here trying to find one of these knuckleheads, you probably get her trying to help steer you in the right direction, to find us or to get information to us, or you ask us a question that we don't know. We hung up and called Natalie and asked her where's the side or where is swag at, or where can you? She's the one that keeps this whole Jerry Springer episode moving in a forward direction.
Speaker 2:She's a rock star with us. Greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate you.
Speaker 1:You know that. You know that saying you know, behind every great man is a woman shaking her head. Kind of the same situation here. You know, behind all of our greatness we have people like Natalie that just keep us in line and do so much for us. We just cannot say how much we appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Well, no, you did not. This wraps everything up and you guys stay safe and be sure to check out saving heroes places. Gala that's coming up in a couple of months. Get their Facebook. Mississippi on the coast yeah, that's right, and it's supposed to be a really, really, really nice hotel. I'm hopeful that me and Janet are going to take our trip out there to maybe take or check that out. So hit their Facebook up. You guys pay by tickets to that. Support that good cause. They are amazing, amazing people and it's an amazing mission. Hit that up. Subscribe like. Be nice to Clint whenever you guys leave the review. Be safe out there. God bless you. And, as always, they got less Texas we're out.
