Episode 4 – Kirk Watson

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] This’ll is Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Way take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. For more. Visit LBJ dot utexas Study. Teoh Welcome

[0:00:21 Speaker 2] to policy on Purpose. I’m your host, Angela Evans, and I service the dean

[0:00:25 Speaker 3] of the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin

[0:00:30 Speaker 2] Today we’re talking about all things policy and public service with a very special guest. I’m very happy to welcome Texas Senator Kirk Watson.

[0:00:38 Speaker 0] I’m happy to be here. I appreciate it.

[0:00:40 Speaker 2] So a little background on the senator. He was elected to the Texas Senate in 2006 to represent District 14 which includes Bastard County in parts of Travis County, including Austin. But the senator’s political history in Texas goes back much farther. From 1997 to 2001 he served as mayor of Austin and is well known for his ability to build consensus around environmental conservation in transportation improvements. Among many other things, the overall quality of Austin in Texas is air, water, roads, health and educational services and the character of its sky scapes are rooted in many of Senator Watson’s efforts as mayor and

[0:01:20 Speaker 3] now a senator, although he would never admit

[0:01:22 Speaker 2] that. So, Senator, I’m going to start with my first question. You began your public career at an early age and have persisted in your commitment to public service. What is it about public service that has inspired you to take the step to move from practicing law to run for office and what has fuelled his passion to continue?

[0:01:40 Speaker 0] Well, I’ve always had the itch to be involved in service in some way, and I think part of it is the house I grew up in. My mother was a registered nurse, and I kind of grew up in the hospital that she worked in. She worked in a Children’s hospital, and I can remember I could give you specific stories about watching how families and parents of sick kids and kids that she worked on the surgical floor. She was not a surgical nurse, but she worked on the floor when the Children would come in. You know how the impact she had on people’s lives because she was serving them by helping take care of their Children. Sometimes when they were clearly not at their best, right? They had a sick child. They were very worried. So that was a big part of my father was a lifelong public servant. He was kind of a late bloomer, and he woke up one day after having been married and had two kids. Said who I got do something else. So I went to night school and got his college degree at night school, and from there stayed with, uh, he was a federal employee and he considered what he did, the work that he did to be the highest calling because he was serving the public. Hey also was on the school board when in the school district that I grew up in and he was president, that school board. So he had some elected public service. But mostly it was just that he wanted to touch people through his day to day job.

[0:03:09 Speaker 4] So I always I think I always had the inch, in part

[0:03:11 Speaker 0] because that’s just we grew. I grew up in a house of service, so I was involved. I did things I was onboard and did those kinds of things. But what prompted me to finally say I’m gonna do this is I got sick. Really? Yeah. Um, I’m a cancer survivor. A zai teas. I’m supposed to be dead a couple of times over. And what happened was when my cancer, when I had a recurrence and a big surgery after they found another tumor in my abdomen. And they did that they went in and removed lymph nodes and did all that. I decided at that point I was gonna do something different, and I didn’t know what that looked like, but I gave myself about 18 months to figure it out. Then I thought, You know, the mayor’s office is open. Maybe I’ll run for mayor of Boston. And I’ve always liked public policy. I’ve always liked service. I’ve always thought maybe I want to run. But I’ll tell you, one of the gifts of cancer was that it gave me the freedom to say Okay, I’m gonna I’m really going to do something different. The other gift was, you know, by the way, running for mayor of Austin made me the only person in America that thought being mayor of Boston was better than chemotherapy.

[0:04:21 Speaker 4] But but one of the other gift, waas. If I didn’t like it, it wouldn’t cancer,

[0:04:26 Speaker 0] and I would try it and see what happened. And the truth of the matter is, I fell in love with it. And so it’s been a real pleasure of mind that the voters keep blessing May by giving me an opportunity to serve.

[0:04:38 Speaker 2] And during your career, you have worked on so many issues with both Democrats

[0:04:42 Speaker 3] and Republicans across a broad array of the political spectrum.

[0:04:46 Speaker 2] For instance, in just this past legislative session, you introduced two

[0:04:50 Speaker 3] bills taking aim at sexual assault on campuses of higher education, and

[0:04:54 Speaker 2] they had broad bipartisan support. Can you talk a bit about your approach to formulating policy

[0:04:59 Speaker 3] in the face of ideological differences and at times, you know, true blue

[0:05:03 Speaker 2] opposition? What tactics

[0:05:05 Speaker 3] have you found to be the most effective?

[0:05:07 Speaker 4] Well, I would say

[0:05:08 Speaker 0] the first tactic, if you will or the first thing is you have to listen carefully to hear what people might have A Z issues, and sometimes they’ll articulate one problem. But they’re really saying, Ah, different one because of whatever the politics of the

[0:05:31 Speaker 8] time, all right,

[0:05:33 Speaker 0] uh, or the politics of the issue. So it’s not uncommon for me to spend a lot of time listening to members, but also to different advocacy groups and groups that may be initially opposed to your legislation. I follow a rule that I’m not going to get my concept for perfection very often on something. So what I look to do is I don’t I don’t demand my concept for perfection on something because I may be able to get a big change in policy but not get everything I want. One of the bills was very important to me. It would require that private universities also have a sexual assault policy. Public universities had that requirement, but private universities didn’t as part of the initial bill on that. It also required that is part of that sexual assault policy. There would be a requirement of affirmative consent, so the schools, when institute, that is a policy that didn’t make it. But I wasn’t going to kill the bill because that didn’t make it. There was progress to be made, including, by the way, the progress of requiring that there be online a mechanism for online reporting and anonymity. In certain instances, so we made real progress, but we didn’t get everything I wanted.

[0:06:51 Speaker 4] And then the other thing I

[0:06:51 Speaker 0] would say is there has to be some effort to be relentless on some of this right? You may not win the first time, and there may be other ways to skin the cat. And so you look for other vehicles in another area that I feel pretty strongly about his public information. I had a bill. I had a couple of bills that I passed out of the Senate as stand alone bills that would have created greater well, actually, what they would have done is they would have fixed the Texas Supreme Court case that I think a couple of cases, two cases that blew holes and are open government laws are public information laws. This would have fixed that well. I passed him to stand alone, bills the over the house and they’re dying in the house. So a house bill comes over and I work to get those bills as amendments on this different house bill so that I can send it back to the House in hopes that it will now pass even his amendments. To do that, I had at one point get the chair of one of the committees to help suspend the rules so we could have a hearing quickly on one of those amendments, the point being that you have to be relentless and look for other opportunities and always working with folks to try to figure out if they can help you, maybe seek those other opportunities

[0:08:10 Speaker 3] I find When I was in Washington, D. C. And working for the United States Congress, it was the members who were proactive and going out to people in saying, Look, this is what I’m going to be doing Can you support me? And they got the ideas quickly as to what were some of the problems people would have with what you were saying, and then they were able to actually build at into some of their thinking. And this is something that I’m hearing you say,

[0:08:33 Speaker 0] Yeah, the way I would say it a little differently is be biased toward action, be biased toward action and not fear that you might fail. But there’s there’s another part to that, and that is that, you know, don’t do something you knows, and everyone happening on Lee always going to do is create problems and maybe even create problems for people you’re going to need on something else. Uh, you don’t need to create those problems. And I try probably don’t always succeed in being as good as this is. I would like to be or as good a person as I’d like to be. But I try to develop relationships where people don’t think that what what my goal is is is Teoh create an unnecessary enemy, um, or put them in a box. Um, is instead is there a way for us to work on this? And, you know, I learned that if I tell you for the great lessons my first session in the Senate, I had a bill that meant the world to May. It openly did not become law. But Senator Florence Shapiro from Plano was killing my bill. She had ever happened. There’s on tell. She even had my best friends on the floor, tied up vote knowing that, and I one day went to her and said, Uh, center, can we walk through my bill and you tell me what it is you hate so much about my bill and we spent several hours on two separate days going through that bill, and I made so many changes in that bill, and some of them were great improvements. And Senator Shapiro, she stood up on the floor and normally this doesn’t happen. But when I moved to suspend the rules to bring that bill up, a lot of people were looking at her and she stood up and she talked about how I had worked with her on that bill. Now she had worked with me is what really happened. She’s a dear

[0:10:22 Speaker 4] friend of mine now, and, um,

[0:10:24 Speaker 0] we we became very close, but it was because she was willing to help. I was willing to listen and we made good changes. We passed out of the Senate, but it died in the house

[0:10:34 Speaker 3] again. That’s another example. I think one of the things that we worry about a lot is that students are our people or get into an echo chamber. They talk to people that I agree

[0:10:42 Speaker 2] with him and

[0:10:42 Speaker 3] they don’t know how to talk to people who may distribute with them on how to make a foray out to those

[0:10:47 Speaker 4] folks. These two things about that one

[0:10:49 Speaker 0] is you got to be willing to talk to people that might disagree with you.

[0:10:53 Speaker 4] And Number two is You can’t be afraid that they may know something. You don’t know what this is all about, right? It’s all about

[0:11:01 Speaker 3] making things right. So it’s not about

[0:11:03 Speaker 4] they probably do know something. You don’t know if I need to learn it.

[0:11:07 Speaker 2] I know the health care

[0:11:08 Speaker 3] is a major priority for you, and you just talked about that. You’re a cancer survivor.

[0:11:13 Speaker 2] Ah, you were instrumental in the creation

[0:11:14 Speaker 3] of the medical school Ut Austin and he had been passionate advocate for mental health as well. So it’s just not the physical part of our health system.

[0:11:22 Speaker 2] Five years ago,

[0:11:23 Speaker 3] you set out with an ambitious list of 10 goals you wanted to accomplish in 10 years.

[0:11:28 Speaker 2] Can you talk about why health

[0:11:30 Speaker 3] issues are so important to you?

[0:11:31 Speaker 0] Well, we’ve kind of talked about it. I mean, look, I’m I’m sitting here doing this podcast because of early, effective and frequent healthcare. There’s no question. I mean, I had a disease that kills folks, but because of early, effective of frequent healthcare. I’m living a pretty blessed life, you know, when I walk on that senate floor and I think you know this pretty special. I’ve got a grand baby coming in November, my first grandchild, and I’m going to see that grandchild. Both of my parents died of cancer. My dad when he was 66 then 13 months later, my mother when she was 62 when she was first diagnosed, she was 41 years old. We thought she had We had very little time with her, and her rule of life became. Give me six months because who knows what they’ll invent. That’ll keep me alive. No. Six months and who knows what I’ll see? And she lived by the way from 41 to 62 so she got to see a lot of good things happen, died way too early, but still a lot of good. But my point being, I think there’s almost an obligation for May to make sure that others have opportunity like I had because I had access to health care. I’m very pleased to 10 goals in 10 years that you that you referenced has resulted in so much good happening is gonna make such a difference for the health care of Travis County and for people that can’t afford.

[0:12:59 Speaker 3] Tell our listeners about some of the things that

[0:13:01 Speaker 4] yeah well. Of the 10 goals in 10

[0:13:03 Speaker 0] years, one of them was a medical school, the University of Texas at Austin. Another one was a modern 21st century teaching hospital. The third was uniquely Austin health clinics in neighborhoods where people can get access to health care. One was better behavioral health care in this community, and I could obviously that’s four. I mean, they’re six others and we can go through. But But we

[0:13:26 Speaker 4] have a medical school now, a medical

[0:13:28 Speaker 0] school that has one of the few population health departments in the country that’s going to make a difference in regardless of people’s ability to

[0:13:35 Speaker 4] pay. And now

[0:13:37 Speaker 0] they’re just opening their clinical services. It’s going to help the folks that have don’t have the kind of access I had to early, effective and frequent healthcare. It’s going to help there. We have a modern 21st century safety net and teaching hospital that was built and paid for by the Seton Healthcare family at no cost to taxpayers. That’s all part and parcel of this. And we’re also, you know, the Southeast Community Health and Wellness Clinic, things of that nature.

[0:14:06 Speaker 6] And then

[0:14:07 Speaker 4] if I have my way

[0:14:09 Speaker 0] and I’m making real progress, we will turn the site of the Austin State Hospital into Behavioral Health Center that when people think of getting health care, mental health care at that site the way they will think about it, I predict, will be the way people think about getting cancer carried MD Anderson or cardiac care at the Cleveland Clinic. We have a real opportunity that we didn’t have five years ago. First of all, they’re also stay. Hospital is unsalvageable. It has to be rebuilt, and we were able to get $300 million into the state budget this last session. That will go to a variety of places, but I anticipate that shortly will be announcing that several $1,000,000 will be going to the planning process for that. I’ve already put together the group. It’s being led by Dr Steve Tarkowski. Here’s another part of the opportunity that we didn’t have. He’s the chair of the department of psychiatry at Dale Medical school, the University of Texas at Austin. And we’re gonna have the whole continuum of care worked out on that. We’ve got partners that are looking at, including the Meadows Mental Health Research Foundation. So yeah, you tell him getting worked up just talking about I’m going passionate about it right now. The opportunities are there, and I just feel a special obligation because I’m not dead, and I’m in a position to make a

[0:15:35 Speaker 4] difference on that. Well, we

[0:15:37 Speaker 2] were talking

[0:15:38 Speaker 3] earlier in the series that we hear with the students and not hearing you speak as well. You know,

[0:15:42 Speaker 2] some of the

[0:15:43 Speaker 3] ideas you have you been able to execute, and they really made the community richer. Ah, healthier, etcetera.

[0:15:50 Speaker 2] And when you’re doing

[0:15:51 Speaker 3] this, you’re talking not only about your passion, but

[0:15:53 Speaker 2] one of

[0:15:53 Speaker 3] the things I’m interested in just learning from you. How do you use information and research? How easy is it for you to get what you need and how do you use it when you’re making these? When you’re trying to set your goals and trying to set benchmarks for what you’re trying to achieve,

[0:16:09 Speaker 0] I don’t know how you would do it without having good information. Right? So you I start with the idea that, um, we may have a concept. We may have a passion, but we need to dig down and have the kind of research and data necessary to be able to make decisions that will actually be practical. My approach to things is I typically start off with the question. Why are we doing it? I call that the passion. You know why? Why are we passionate about why are we worked up about this? Why do we want to do this? And I try to force myself and others that I’m working with to really zero in on What’s the real issue here, Dad and many times makes a difference on that as well. I mean, somebody may think it’s the reason that we’ve got this issue or this problem is X. But when you

[0:17:00 Speaker 4] really dig down into yeah, X is part of it. But there may be

[0:17:04 Speaker 0] a y n a Z, and so you have to have some data to help you with that. And my next step is then the possibilities. Well, having good research, having good research about what are the possibilities for how you can address that issue. Well, I mean, we can all sit around, have a beard and come up with five or

[0:17:23 Speaker 4] six. But but they may have no relationship to, and we may miss something. And then the next step is how do

[0:17:30 Speaker 0] you make it practical? Well, of course, you have to have good information to to deal with that as well.

[0:17:37 Speaker 4] So it’s in the way I approach problem solving

[0:17:40 Speaker 0] the way I approach, trying to bring about change or bring about positive results. You have to have good research and data and information every step of the way.

[0:17:49 Speaker 3] Well, this is music to my ears, because when you’re in a public policy school, some that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. What is the problem? How do you know it’s a problem? And how do you judge data as being valid or not valid? And then the other part is how you have creative options. But in those options, how do you help inform a policymaker about what might what are the advantages and disadvantages of those options? I think part of the things we’re worried about now is it. Some lawmakers do not appreciate information or people think about, you know, false information. So and the plethora of information. So one of the ideas that we have here is how do we make sure that we, when we growing our students, that coming out of the school, that they really understand the importance of in good information, good data, good research but also how to be creative with it in an arena that’s

[0:18:35 Speaker 0] political? Excellent. I mean, one of the biggest threats, in my view, and I don’t think I’m overstating this a real threat to our democracy and the way we go about bringing about policy and implementing policy is that we dismiss information if it doesn’t correspond with our ideological view on, and that’s happening way too much and more and more. I think if you don’t if it doesn’t make me feel good because it doesn’t correspond with what I feel so passionately as an ideological or political point of view. Then it gets dismissed, and we’re doing that way too much,

[0:19:16 Speaker 3] Yes, and this is something we’re really trying to work on. Um, at the school

[0:19:21 Speaker 2] government, transparency and freedom of

[0:19:23 Speaker 3] information are major priorities for you and

[0:19:25 Speaker 2] have been for your career. What challenges do you see as a lawmaker in creating more transparency in government operations? And do you see any downsides to the open government initiatives?

[0:19:36 Speaker 0] Well, start with the with the the challenges a couple of challenges. One is with technology, we might be able to do things that are more efficient. Eso, for example, A couple of sessions ago I worked with then Attorney General Greg Abbott, who’s now Governor Greg Abbott. And we worked on a bipartisan piece of legislation that would create the ability for governmental bodies like city councils and county commissioners cords to meet through a message board, even when they weren’t having the physical meeting together so that they could build some efficiencies in the government. Because, you know, you want to avoid having a quorum and discussions behind closed doors, but they can use a message board that is completely accessible to the public. I mean, we put requirements into that so that they could communicate with each other through the message boards. For example, the City Council uses such a message board, so one of the challenges is trying to keep up with technology. The flip side of that coin is how do you make sure that people aren’t communicating through technology in a way that avoids open government and I think way have some real real challenges in that regard. The other is that there’s a lot of privatization going on with government services, and regardless of how one feels about that, it’s occurring. And a lot of private entities want those tax dollars. They want to make those tax dollars. They want to have those tax dollars, but

[0:21:07 Speaker 4] they don’t want to talk about how they do their business. Well, that is

[0:21:11 Speaker 0] a real problem. And the Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court I mentioned it a little bit earlier, created more opportunity for them to be able to hide their contracts with government.

[0:21:20 Speaker 4] I just don’t

[0:21:21 Speaker 0] think that ought to be the case there are. There’s a really good general rule. If you

[0:21:27 Speaker 4] don’t want to tell

[0:21:27 Speaker 0] the public how you’re spending their tax dollars, then don’t take the public’s tax dollars. It’s just that simple, and I think that’s going to be a real challenge, and I worry about the fact that that we have that hole and and we passed good legislation on the Senate. But we could not get it out of a committee in the House.

[0:21:46 Speaker 6] And then

[0:21:48 Speaker 0] with regard to U, the latter part of your question, which is, you know, there are instances where it might be in the government’s best interest. It will let me rephrase that in the taxpayer’s best interest, if certain things you know, a negotiation that’s ongoing, where you’re trying to gain a benefit for the taxpayer. You know, I never play poker by showing you my cards were in my hand. So when I’m negotiating with somebody, I got to be very careful. If I’m negotiating with somebody to try to get a benefit that by being if you disclose it too early, you might make it where you create a competitive disadvantage for the taxpayers. But those air specific instances and as the general rule, the more public information the better. Well,

[0:22:36 Speaker 2] we could

[0:22:36 Speaker 3] go on very long time, so I’m going to have to have you back. So I really appreciate you being here, and I know everyone’s gonna appreciate hearing what you have to say. Thank you so much

[0:22:46 Speaker 0] for having me here.

[0:22:49 Speaker 1] Thistles. Policy on purpose, A podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Way take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. To learn more, visit LBJ dot utexas dot eu and follow us on Twitter or Facebook at the LBJ School. Thank you for listening