As the 88th Texas legislative session enters its seventh week, representatives continue leaving their mark as chairs of the House committees and filing bills that would impact UTRGV and the Rio Grande Valley.
State Rep. R.D. “Bobby” Guerra (D-Mission) filed House Bill 2171 on Feb. 10, which would establish the Texas Center for Rural Health Education at UTRGV.
The Rider asked Stephanie Chiarello, Guerra’s chief of staff, for an interview with Guerra on Feb. 13, but she said he was not available.
However, Guerra sent a statement to The Rider via email last Thursday.
“It is no secret that people who live in rural areas in Texas struggle to find quality, affordable healthcare in their communities,” Guerra wrote in the email. “Since 2010, 12 hospitals in rural Texas have closed, and some Texans must travel more than one hundred miles to reach the nearest hospital. At least 64 Texas counties do not have a hospital. This is unacceptable.”
The representative filed the bill to improve health care in his district after the House Committee on Public Health made several recommendations resulting from a study of border health care, according to a Feb. 13 news release sent to The Rider.
The goal of the bill is to establish a centralized center that researches, makes recommendations for improvements and disseminates the recommendations statewide, according to Guerra’s statement.
“One major deficit in rural health is health care professionals,” he wrote. “Fifty percent of doctors who leave Texas to receive medical residency training never return. The Center would evaluate how to get more health care professionals trained and practicing in rural areas.”
The center would serve as a medical education and service clinic to alleviate the rural health disparities, according to Guerra.
“The bill is just a framework for what will ultimately be the Center,” he wrote in the Feb. 23 email. “I am collaborating with various stakeholders, including UTRGV, a Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center researcher who brought the idea to the Public Health Committee, and the National Center for Rural Health Professions in Illinois to round out the bill.”
Guerra wrote that the bill establishes the center at UTRGV but eventually will be the “flagship Center at UTRGV” to use as a model to develop other centers across rural areas in Texas.
“I am working on a cost estimate, but I can tell you that the cost of an inadequate rural healthcare system is infinitely more than the cost of this Center,” he wrote in the statement.
As of Feb. 13, Guerra has filed 19 bills in the 88th Texas legislative session.
“These new bills are part of my robust legislative package intended to advance the priorities and improve the lives of my constituents in the Rio Grande Valley and the residents of our great state of Texas,” Guerra is quoted as saying in the news release.
In other legislative news, State Rep. Terry Canales (D-Edinburg) was chosen as chairman of the House Committee on Transportation for a third two-year term on Feb. 8.
Canales’ responsibilities will be to determine what bills, if any, will be heard in the committee.
“I have the authority or discretion to hear the bills that I want to hear that I believe are important and exclude those that I don’t believe are important or I believe are a waste of the committee’s time,” he said in a phone interview with The Rider on Feb. 20. “We’re sort of the gatekeepers of good and bad legislation, and we’re tasked with determining that on the front end.”
As chairman for the last four years, Canales and his team have learned that transportation is underfunded and finding new ways to fund it will be a challenge for the committee.
“We’re not doing it the right way now,” he said. “Much of the budget that we have annually for the preservation and maintenance of lane miles eats up much of that budget, and so it doesn’t leave us a lot for other projects.”
Canales said one of the big plans the committee has for the Valley is connecting the ports of entry, which are “billion-dollar economic engines to major thoroughfares.”
“Texas has been in a recession and the United States has been in a recession,” Canales said. “The Rio Grande Valley is not. And the reason is because of our largest trading partner to the south, which is Mexico. Our economy is booming and one of the tools that is crucial for that success are the bridges and they approximately do $40 billion of trade, respectively, each one of them.
“And so, making sure that we have the proper infrastructure that maximizes their efficiency and capacity is absolutely crucial to the Rio Grande Valley. And so, the entire delegation should all be focused on fighting for that infrastructure dollar.”
