State Rep. James Frank Talks: Conservative Coalition Chair has Things In-Progress

The Conservative Coalition has about 65 of the 95 House Republicans as members and were discussing what needs to be done next session. Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas  There are very few members serving in the House right now who have ever been through a real open Speakers Race said State Rep. James Frank who represents House Dist. 69 and serves as president of the Texas Conservative Coalition one of the most influential legislative organizations in Austin that includes both House & Senate legislators as members. So during the interim (period between Legislative Sessions) were having meetings and hearings to discuss the issues Property Taxes Health Care Education virtually every major issue trying to get groups of legislators together to discuss what the best solutions will be to propose during the next Session Frank tells Texas Insiders Jim Cardle​ providing some insight into the upcoming 2019 Legislative Session. The Conservative Coalition has about 65 of the 95 House Republicans as members and were discussing what needs to be done next session. And there are certain issues that we vote on in the House where youre either conservative or youre not. If youre not consistently voting conservatively then its not OK to say that you are Frank said​. It doesnt mean the other folks are bad or evil or anything like that it just means theyre not voting with us enough to be considered a member of the Conservative Coalition said Frank whose House District 69 is based in Wichita Falls. One of the problems that conservatives get into sometimes I think is that they dont engage in some of the messier parts of government. For instance whether you like it or not the decisions made by the Texas Department of Child Protective Services (CPS) and whether or not to remove a child from a family is one of the core functions of government   weve got to protect the innocent and unfortunately theres a number of situations where that happens said Frank. But since Were from the government and were here to help you is not always a good thing we as legislators need to make sure that the organizations involved in that area are running well and are not creating more problems than theyre solving.

So last session we passed legislation and gave CPS some accountability tools and I believe theres going to be more accountability in the system than weve had before but in the interim between sessions is when all these bills are implemented. Because thats how the system works we need to make sure that we dont have Red State legislation thats passed and then Blue State regulation thats implemented Frank said.

Often the people implementing things or writing the rules and statutes dont always pay attention to or share the same views as those who passed the bills. In fact it is very difficult and really requires a lot of effort to understand the importance of implementing the bills the way they were intended when they were passed.

The Texas Conservative Coalition and a few other organizations are starting to watch this more closely  but the ultimate goal is to have laws implemented so that theyll help kids. No matter how good the idea is behind a bill we pass if theyre not implemented well and they dont help kids then weve failed said Frank.