Beyea/Photo by Noah Dawson
During our primary election forum held earlier this month, we asked Republican Texas House District 87 candidate Richard Beyea, a member of the Perryton ISD School Board, to address whether or not he supported the largest bond package in the school district’s history. Below is the full question and answer.
Question: “In 2023, the Perryton School Board placed the largest bond election in the district’s history on the ballot. Despite your position as a school board member, you did not attend the meeting in which the district called the election. Did you support calling this bond election, and, if so, how do you reconcile this position with the need for further tax relief in Austin?
Answer: “Let me chew on that for a second.
“Uh, yes, I supported the bond election. I was just out of town at the time. Um, we all have, we all have facility needs at our school districts. The idea that we can continue to ignore some of those are not realistic. But, debt is not the way to prosperity. And, uh, the, the, uh, the people that talked a little bit earlier, a couple of you said that we’ve, we’ve continued to increase debt loads. Debt loads on our school level, debt loads on our state level, debt loads on the property. All this stuff comes from the taxpayer, right? Well, I noticed we had a big boom in the oil and gas prices, we had a huge surplus last year. We had a party in Austin, okay. I’m in a small school district. And when we have those big commodity cycles come through, we have to deal with big swings in our revenue base. We go from surpluses in the school to start to risk people, looking at laying off people in our school system. This is a terrible way to do things. We need ta-, we need big tax relief.
“And, guys, quite honestly, every time I, we’ve got a proposition this year talking about removing all the property taxes. Isn’t that wonderful? But, the problem is, you have to pay for something. There’s a par-, second part of that question is not asked: what do I replace it with? We don’t get it, we don’t get off easy, guys. But, the biggest problem when there’s at the federal level, at the local level, at our state level, is deficit spending. Well, not deficit, we’re required to have a balanced budget. But, in the- we are following debt patterns that are more like California was 20 years ago than what Texas is. We need to get control on this spending. Every time I hear a conversation about which taxes do we need next, the first thing that should be done is where, where can we cut spending. Government’s too big.”
We also asked fellow District 87 candidates Caroline Fairly and Richard Beyea tough questions. You can read Bulla’s response to a question about a Democrat she had given money to here and Fairly’s response to a question about her father’s financial relationship with politicians who have endorsed her here. Jesse Quackenbush, the other candidate running in the Republican Primary for District 87 declined to participate in our forum. Whoever wins the primary is expected to face Democrat Timothy Gassaway in November to replace outgoing incumbent Four Price.
We also asked tough questions to Texas House District 86 candidates John Smithee and Jamie Haynes. You can read their responses by clicking their names.
The primary election is set for Tuesday, March 5th. Early voting is February 20th through March 1st.