Democratic Party candidate for Texas Comptroller of Accounts Sarah Eckhardt is crisscrossing the state, talking with voters about what the comptroller actually does, and how she would use the powers of the office to be a watchdog for the public.
Eckhardt is a former county prosecutor who went on to be elected to the Travis County Commissioners Court, and then county judge. She is now a three-term state senator running against North Texas real-estate developer Don Huffines, who says he wants to “DOGE” Texas.
“I think when he says “DOGE-ing” Texas what he really means is dodging taxes,” Eckhardt said in a telephone interview with The Concho Observer, “He’s very, very committed to helping his corporate buddies, and the rich and powerful, dodge taxes.”
Eckhardt said she sees this election as a referendum on education.
“It definitely is,” she said, “People want to know where their money is going. We have a $1 billion subsidy in this voucher program, mostly going to students who have never been in the public school system, and whose parents never intend them to be, while more than 130 public schools have closed across the state.
“Most communities’ experience of government is through their public schools, and we love our public schools. We’re invested in our public schools.
“The idea that the king of vouchers is now our comptroller, looking to siphon money out of the public system is outrageous.
“This billion-dollar voucher program is going to balloon to $5 billion, and that money is going mostly to exclusive private schools and AI-powered online schools… he got a $100,000 contribution on the last day of the filing period from an AI school that promises to educate your child in two hours a day.
“Huffines will just provide more corporate giveaways, more corporate tax breaks and more no bid contracts to extremely wealthy individuals and companies … there’s a $3.2 billion subsidy for data centers coming through the comptroller’s office, and there’s a $100 million no-bid contract that just went to Elon Musk for Starlink.”
Eckhardt said it’s time for Texans to get their priorities figured out.
“Nine school districts have been taken over by the TEA, and meanwhile, we’re subsidizing large corporations… at $3.2 billion on this data center, we could pay down the operational deficit for every single school district in the state of Texas.”
Eckhardt pointed to a meeting where Huffhines told attendees his priority was “Jesus, family and work” after being appointed to the position he was running for by Gov. Greg Abbott in late July.
“I think many of the employees took that to mean ‘His God, his family’ … I guess maybe he’ll let you work if you pledge allegiance to his God and his family,” Eckhardt said.
As someone with extensive experience in government and criminal justice, Eckhardt said she is very concerned by Huffines’ financial reports, including a disbursement of $2.5 million to a communications firm run by a 24-year-old family friend, and substantial contributions from people who might reasonably expect to get contracts or favorable treatment in exchange for their support.
“Before coming to the senate, I spent 22 years in local government,” Eckhardt explained. “As a county judge, I managed billions in public assets and managed to cut taxes three times.
“So, I have plenty of experience, and I’m ready to help state government partner with our local governments, which is where most of our services come from, so that we could see real dividends from our public safety, our emergency response, our courts and our hospitals.”
Eckhardt said she was disappointed by how things work in the state senate.
“Once I got to the Texas Senate, it was clear that the powers that be were mostly interested in telling us what to think, where to pee, and how to pray as a way to divert our attention away from the fact that we are not delivering services to the folks,” she said, “They’re busy giving massive payola to the friends of the rich and powerful and punishing everybody else.
“We’re not getting what we bargained for. We’re not getting a good value as taxpayers.
“If you get a high-level Republican off of one side, and promise not to quote them, who has any knowledge of how our budget system works, they will tell you it is absolutely unrealistic, irresponsible, and dangerous to say we’re going to get rid of the primary source for funding public schools in the state of Texas without any plan to replace it with an alternative revenue source.
“This is completely irresponsible, but it sounds great politically. I mean, heck, nobody likes paying their property taxes, but public schools, hospitals, courts, emergency response, roads — these all these things have costs, and they’re paid for by your taxes.
“When the rich and powerful don’t pay their fair share, and they get huge tax subsidies, that means the rest of us have to pay more, and that’s what’s happening.”
On Data Centers
“I have a lot to say about that.
“Having been a county judge, I hear some of my colleagues saying, ‘Well, these local county judges just aren’t doing what they need to do to protect the community against these data centers,’ and my response to that is: well, that’s because the Texas legislature won’t give local government any authority to protect their citizenry, and frankly threatens to punish local elected officials if they try to buck the system.
“We saw that in Hood County. All they wanted to do was declare a moratorium while they explored what authority they did have to keep these data centers from taking their water and running up their energy costs, and the message from the top is, ‘You better not!’
“In fact, the data center company sued them under mandamus and said, ‘We’re going to sue you for everything you’ve got because you don’t have the authority to prevent us from getting this permit.'”
On Lack of Leadership in State Government
“People don’t quite understand that county governments and local school districts are an arm of the state.
“School districts and county governments exist to do the will of the state, and when they aren’t given the authority — or the funding sources by the state — they can’t protect us.
“Almost all of what we experience as good governments: police, fire, highways and roadways, hospitals, emergency response, courts — almost all of that is paid for by your local government on behalf of the state using property taxes.
“But the state government is routinely blaming the local government, who are doing their best under decreasing authority and decreasing funding mechanisms by the state.
“These guys have been in charge for 30 years at the state level, but if things aren’t working, they always blame somebody else.
“They blame local government, they blame inflation, they blame woke culture, whatever the hell that is — but somehow, it’s never their fault?”
On Local Governments Tightening Their Belts
Eckhardt said it’s pretty difficult for those local governments keep up with unfunded mandates from the state when there’s 3.5-percent cap on property tax increases, but no cap on inflation.
“That 3.5-percent cap on municipalities and on counties, in a good year where nothing special is happening, they could probably make it on that.
“But then you get unexpected expenses that come through — like the 287G agreements counties have to enter into with the federal government for ICE, which then makes costs at your county jail balloon.
“That 3.5 percent cap means you’re not going to be able to cover those costs and be able to fund your sheriff’s pay scale into the future.
“You might have to renegotiate that. You might need to take a look at any kind of emergency response that you might have been considering with regard to flooding or hardening your community against extreme weather. Any kind of social services, those are the first to go, frankly.
Eckhardt said that is particularly devastating in a state with the largest uninsured population in the U.S.
“When those social services go away, a lot of folks are left with zero recourse,” Eckhardt said. “There’s no hospital in the county and they don’t have any recourse.”
More About the 287G Agreements
“Part of what a county judge manages are our personnel, our law enforcement personnel, as well as our hard assets, like our county jail.
“Every county must have a jail or partner with another county to share a jail. Those county jails are to hold people who are accused or convicted of a criminal offense, but under the ICE programs, those county sheriffs can be conscripted to do immigration work that has nothing to do with local law enforcement.
“They can be conscripted to go pick up folks who have no criminal history, and to hold folks in the county jail who have no criminal history. So, that takes up personnel hours and jail bed space for people who are not a threat to the community, even though they may be here without documentation.
“So, you may have a family violence case where officers can’t make an arrest because they have no space at the jail to hold that individual so they can’t harm their spouse again.
“In too many of our jails, those beds are being taken up by construction workers who have no criminal history, they’re just undocumented.
“Let me be clear about this. It’s largely an unfunded mandate, and that unfunded mandate is coming straight out of your property taxes.
“There is an Office of Governor Grant and also a pot of money administered by the Comptroller’s Office that sheriff’s offices can apply for to reimburse them for some small portion of that unfunded mandate, but it’s a capped amount, distributed by formula, and it’s not guaranteed to be funded in the budget. It does not cover all the costs.”
