District 71 Representative Stan Lambert discusses re-election bid, achievements & future plans
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TAYLOR COUNTY, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – In this week’s Big Country Politics Sunday conversation, District 71 Texas House Representative Stan Lambert discussed his bid for re-election, achievements, and future plans.
Lambert shared that he believes there has been a lot of ‘misinformation’ throughout this campaign season.
“A lot of misinformation that’s being sent out, information that really doesn’t have a lot of basis. In fact, they, the opposition, seem to want to attack my record, my voting record, and what I’ve done in the last eight years that I’ve been in Austin and representing House District 71. As opposed to really talking more about the issues and the policies and what we look forward to as far as addressing some of the issues that we know are going to be facing us in the next legislative session. So, for me, it’s just been trying to stay focused on what I feel are my strengths, my voting record, what we’ve accomplished, and what we have tried to do in terms of not just representing House District 71 in Austin, but also the entire state of Texas. I think we’ve we’ve done a lot of very, very good things. We’ve had two very conservative sessions in a row where we’ve passed a lot of very good conservative legislation. And so I’m anxious to build upon that and continue to continue to march forward,” Lambert said.
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During a candidate forum hosted by the Taylor County Republican Party, Lambert’s opponent made a claim that Lambert often votes with the Democrats. Lambert responded by stating that making such accusations requires an understanding of the legislative process.
“You kind of have to understand the process and how voting actually occurs when you go to the house floor. There are second readings. And then there are third readings. And many times, on third readings, there is a lot of uniformity as far as voting on third reading. And so there are a lot of bills that we pass where we have a number of Democrats voting with Republicans; the Republicans control the House and control the vast majority of the committee chairs,” Lambert replied. “You have to understand that process before you come out and start making accusations that you voted for 400 Democrat bills. That’s completely false and not true at all. Let me also say, though, about some of the major policy issues that were just voted on in November, the constitutional amendments that we voted on 14 of them. And you might recall, the two of those were very important to this district. One was the big property tax reduction, the $18 billion property relief package that required 100 votes to get out of the house to be put on a constitutional calendar in November. There are only 86 Republicans in the Texas House. And so we have to have Democrats voting with us on some of those important issues in order to get those in front of the voters so the voters can actually exercise their rights, voice their opinions, and receive the property tax reduction. Same thing with the cost of living adjustment for retired teachers. And so there are times when we need to be not like Washington DC, where there are extremes, and there’s no collaboration. There’s never any effort to try to find common ground on some of these some of these basic issues. We need to make sure that Austin doesn’t turn in Washington DC.”
District 71 Rep. Stan Lambert discusses new laws regarding the border, education funding & more
House Bill 1898 pertains to a grant program aimed at funding the provision of children’s hospitals and mental and behavioral health services to children in the state. The bill has been linked to funding grant hospitals that facilitate the transition of children. However, Lambert stated that he does not believe that this bill will impact the ban on gender transition for minors.
“Before that, I want to say that we had another bill that basically banned gender transitioning in the state of Texas. No more will there be any type of medical procedure in a hospital or any kind of medical facility that would allow a person under the age of 18 to receive that type of procedure from a medical professional or a physician. So that is the law; that is what I voted for. And that is what is going forward. I stand behind that today. I don’t think that 1828 was really something that really impacted that bill or changed the direction of what that Bill intended to do, which was to ban all transitioning of gender modification. So I think that it’s very important that we continue to make sure that the real message here is that we have banned any type of gender transition for minors.
A highly debated issue during the recent campaign was the use of school vouchers. Lambert reported that during special sessions, he personally witnessed an overwhelming ten-to-one opposition to vouchers.
“What I did was vote the way my district was telling me how to vote. Currently, we rank somewhere between 42nd and 43rd in the entire country, and how we fund public education in the state of Texas, we’re the eighth largest economy in the entire world. Now, that doesn’t match up, as we’re 43rd in this one category, and yet, we’re eighth in the nation in the whole world in terms of our economic development and output. So I think we can do a lot better. I think part of the reason why maybe some schools are struggling, because there’s needed to be improved, is because of the funding issues. Our teachers typically are paid about six to $10,000 less than the national average. That’s why we’re having a hard time retaining good, experienced teachers. So, my first priority is to fund public education and give free public education, which is constitutionally mandated that we provide free public education to all students. I think that’s our first priority before we take on a whole new system of how we’re going to fund education,” Lambert shared.
Lambert shared that one of his top priorities was generating excess revenue that could be invested in education, health care, road maintenance, and more.
“I think we’ve just continued to do what we said we would do from the very beginning; when I ran eight years ago for this job, it was an open seat. As you know, the primary focus was on continuing to keep our economy growing and keep it strong because as long as our Texas economy continues to grow, it provides the excess revenue that we can use to invest in public education, health care, and roads and transportation. So that was the number one priority,” Lambert said.
Another one of his top priorities is public education.
“The second was to improve public education. In 2019, we passed House Bill Three, I believe, which would provide additional funding for public education. But what people don’t realize is that ten years ago, back in 2010, when I was on the Abilene school board, we cut about 5.5 billion out of education. So the house bill that we passed in 2018 really was just kind of catching us up,” Lambert said. “Then we had inflation and COVID. So we continue to kind of fall back in terms of the amount of funding that we’re providing our school districts and our teachers, providing them the resources they need to be successful. We rank, as you know, 42nd out of you know, out of 50 states; we can do a better job than that.”
During his time in office, he has also focused on supporting the Second Amendment and being a pro-life representative.
“The other two things we promised to do were to continue to protect the Second Amendment and to be a pro-life representative, and we’ve done that. We’ve also done some things locally, as far as helping with economic development; Great Lakes Cheese Company, we’ve provided some help through the governor’s Enterprise Fund to help learn and bring that good company and the jobs with that. In this last session, we’ve been able to secure the funding for the permanent tanker base for the Texas A&M Forest Service, for which we work hand in hand with city officials Don Green, Robert Hanna, and Lynn Beard. So that is another victory for the Big Country. Because it’s really important when you live right in the middle of a major area where there are a lot of lot of fires, you need to have access to those large tanker planes in order to try to cut off those fires as quickly as possible before they get a chance to spread. So those are just a few of the smaller, smaller accomplishments, but I think they’re gonna make an impact on our community,” Lambert shared.
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Although Lambert is proud of his accomplishments in office, he is also looking towards the future to address important issues such as education funding and border security.
“Obviously, the funding issue as far as public education has got to be addressed. Somehow, we’ve got to figure out a way to convince the governor to take the voucher component out of funding public education and act on it separately from the bill that would fund public education and provide teachers with the raises that they so deserve and so much overdue. That’s going to be the number one issue, I think,” Lambert said. “Border security continues to be a growing problem, obviously. Eight years ago, when I first ran, we were only funding, giving Governor Abbott about $800 million to the biennium for the biennium to secure the border. That has grown out to over $5.1 billion for the biennium, and so continuing to provide the resources and the funding necessary to continue to hire additional DPS to continue to support our Texas military and provide the additional equipment and technology that’s necessary, all because the federal government has not stepped up and done their job.”
Lambert shared that the number one issue he and others are trying to tackle is the amount of fentanyl that is in the state.
“The number one issue that we’ve heard from all of our constituents throughout our entire district. And we’re hearing other colleagues around the state say it’s the number one issue for them as well. So we may live 300 miles from the border, but fentanyl, it didn’t take very long for the fentanyl to get to I-20 or human trafficking to get into our area. You talk to local law enforcement. It is it is a problem that we’re dealing with. I think we had our first, unfortunately, our first death in Taylor County just a few weeks ago as a result of fentanyl that was combined with a maybe a prescription drug or something. So it is a problem. It is something we have got to address. We have continued to address the influx of migrants. I say it is not going to slow down. It’s going to continue until we get help from the federal government. Texas continues to need to step up to the plate and help private provide the security we need,” Lambert explained.
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Lambert is seeking a fifth term and has served in office since 2017. This is his message to the people of District 71:
“I was born here. I have spent almost my entire life in Abilene in a Big Country. My roots are here. We love this part of the state. We chose to move back here, back in 1991, because we wanted to raise our family here. The things that are important, the values that we believe are so important, like faith, our family, the relationships, the amount of opportunities that we have to do so many different things in this area as far as being benevolent, being generous, helping others that are falling through the cracks or more vulnerable. That’s what this community is all about. That’s what the Big Country is: its neighbor helping neighbor. And I want to continue to keep that active, keep that very much involved as part of our day-to-day lives. And so I just asked for your support. I want to continue to serve you, and I’m very humbled and honored to be the representative, and I hope that you’ll vote for me on March 5.”
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