UM Women press agenda with lawmakers

 

 

150 churchwomen set
legislative priorities at
Jan. 23-25 assembly

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
Texas United Methodist Women are pursuing an agenda during the 79th Texas Legislature based on faith in the future.
Children’s health care, public education funding, clean energy and criminal justice reform topped the list of legislative priorities they approved last month in Austin.
More than 150 women from across the state attended the 17th Annual UMW Legislative Assembly Jan. 23-25.
One-third of the women were from the Southwest Texas Conference, said Liz Rose of Ingleside, event registrar.
Southwest Texas churchwomen adopted five specific priorities. Event chair Barbara Ford Young of San Antonio said UMW members in Southwest Texas are being asked to lobby their legislators to:
n Finance quality public education.
Churchwomen voted to support a personal income tax as the most fair and effective way to fund public education. In fact, UMW representatives from five of the six conferences at the meeting said they would support an income tax.
“We have no other choice,” said Young, a member of St. Paul UMC, San Antonio. “We have been fighting for quality education, but no matter what we try, it has gone downhill. Quality public education is a must for the state, and if a personal income tax is the only way to fund it, then we just have to bite the bullet.”
Rose said Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, told her an initiative for personal income tax “will never pass.”
“I told her, ‘Of course it won’t,’” said Rose, a member of First UMC, Portland, “‘as long as that’s what you say when you first hear about it.’”
n Restore the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“Our goal is to make health care available to every child who needs it,” Young said. “We don’t want to just restore CHIP; we want to enhance it.”
The 78th Legislature cut the program as part of efforts to balance the state budget.
Churchwomen are challenging lawmakers to expand the insurance program to cover 1 million Texas children by January 2007.
n Reform the criminal justice system.
The prison system looks at the failure rate on third-grade state achievement tests to project the number of prisons Texas will need, Young said.
“Our criminal justice experts should be finding ways to restore relationships and communities, not calculating which individuals and families the state is going to toss in the garbage,” she said.
n Improve the environment.
Churchwomen are supporting proposals that would increase the availability of renewable energy in Texas.
“The bills are out there,” Young said. “They just need to be supported.”
n Reform campaign financing.
“If we cannot get quality people representing us,” Young said, “then all of these issues will be lost.”
Marcy Garza of Pharr said the most important part of the UMW’s legislative agenda would be communicating it to the state’s 100,000 UMW members and mobilizing them to action.
“Many of the people in our churches feel that their voice doesn’t matter, that lawmakers don’t listen to them,” Garza said. “As UMW leaders, our mission is to explain the issues to them, show them how to get involved and prove to them that citizen advocacy does make a difference.”