Flock Cameras, Property Taxes, and Jessi Cowart for Texas House District 15

Craig and Kevin have a guest in the studio this week: Jessi Cowart, a lifelong Montgomery County resident from Oak Ridge North who is running for Texas House District 15 as a Libertarian. The seat is open because Steve Toth is running for Congress, and Jessi says that if she wins she would be the first Libertarian ever seated in the Texas House. She came across our radar after our last conversation about Flock cameras, and she has plenty to say about them. First, civil asset forfeiture, which she calls legalized theft. Under the way Texas law is written the property itself becomes the defendant rather than the person, the burden of proof is almost nonexistent, and getting your property back is incredibly difficult even when you are never convicted of anything. Reform bills get filed every single legislative session and die every single session, and she puts that down to law enforcement lobby money rather than any real disagreement, since the Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian platforms in Texas all say they want it ended. Then the cameras. Jessi announced this week that she has drafted the Texas Automatic License Plate Reader Prohibition Act, an outright ban on government use of automatic license plate readers with anti-circumvention language in it. If she is elected on November 3rd, bill filing opens November 9th, and she says this is her first order of business. Her Fourth Amendment argument is not about one license plate seen in public, it is about the aggregate: a searchable database of where you live, where you work, where you worship, and who you associate with. We also get into The Woodlands Township unanimously approving $109,000 for 30 more cameras in December, with roughly $90,000 a year in ongoing cost after that, and the separate $50 million agreement to permanently end the City of Houston's right to annex the community. The longest stretch is property taxes, and she brought the math. Use the state budget surplus, which was running $27 to $28 billion at the start of last session and does not count the rainy day fund, to buy down school district M&O tax debt. Put real spending caps on local government, because Texas has five spending limits on the state and none at all on cities, MUDs, and school districts. Cut things like the $1.5 billion committed over ten years to Hollywood filmmaking in Texas. Then shift what remains toward sales tax without raising it astronomically. She thinks elimination in five years is realistic. Kevin tells the story of buying a house from an older woman who had a 65 and over exemption, and getting handed roughly $5,000 in back taxes two years later. We close on homeowner ground: why the median age of a first time buyer is now 40, why Jessi wants more small starter homes, duplexes, and condos rather than the same single family build on every parcel, her idea for a permit clock so permitting delays stop getting priced into every new house, why developers rather than existing taxpayers should pay for new development, and Craig's 25 year old employee in downtown Conroe who lined up three roommates before he closed on his first house. Jessi Cowart is on Facebook, Instagram, and X, and her campaign site is cowartfortexas.com Every episode with full transcripts: homeownersshow.com/episodes New episodes every week. Rate and review wherever you listen. It genuinely helps. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.