A Republican Candidates Forum, organized by the Brown County Republican Party, took place Tuesday evening at Victory Life Church. The three-plus hour event featured introductory and closing comments, along with question-and-answer sessions, with candidates for Brown County Judge, County Commissioner in Precincts 2 and 4, and Justice of the Peace in Precincts 3 and 4.

The following are the excerpts from the comments and questions answered by County Commissioner Precinct 4 candidates George Huseman and incumbent Larry Traweek.

George Huseman

Opening and closing comments

My name is George Huseman. I’m a 30-year combat veteran. I served in the Army for 30 years, 7 months, and 5 days, 22-plus years active. The rest of the time I was a law enforcement officer. First of all I’m a Christian, that’s my No. 1 thing. I’m a father, husband and American.

I’m going to tell you what you’re not going to get if you vote for me. One thing you see around election time is these people that you hardly ever see smiling, shaking hands and using all these words like leadership – one of the most misused words in politics. So if you want a politician, don’t vote for me. I don’t play along to get along, I don’t get in the good old’ boy system, I do my research. When you use the word leadership it gets mixed up with a thing called “likership.” When things come before like tax abatements, your tax dollars, I work for you if I’m elected. You are my boss, I’m your employee, I’m held accountable for every decision I make.

Regarding his qualifications for the job

A county commissioner does a lot of things. Obviously, we’re accountable for the roads in Precinct 4, but more importantly we’re accountable for the budget. I have gone to the county commissioners court and sit there and watched what goes on there. The good old boy system is alive and well and it just doesn’t work for Brownwood, we’re too big now. There are too many things that come up. The wind and solar thing, questions came up with what I saw go on with that. We learned our lesson with Kohler and 3M and giving people tax abatements cause they promise these jobs, and we saw what happened when it comes to federal overreach. Yeah they gave us jobs, but they also took them if you didn’t take the jab. That’s against the local people for those companies because they did the best they could, but we learned a hard lesson. I will never let the federal government, or the state government take your rights away.

Regarding where to spend funds aside from roads and bridges

I want to see infrastructure in Brown County. We have a very large population of elderly. When our water goes out at Brookesmith, I want to know the five W’s and the H – who, were, what, when, why and how. I want it up on a website and a phone that we’ve got a water break on County Road 105. We’ve got five guys working on it and hope to have it up at 12. When you pick up the phone and you call and it says we have a water break, well thanks I knew we had a water break or I wouldn’t have called. We need to have it out there for communication with the people and there’s plenty of money to do that. The same thing with the electrical grid. People need to know what’s going on. If I have an elderly parent that needs something, if their refrigerator goes out, I need to know it’s going to be two days before we fix it so I can get so help over there or get a generator to them. There’s money for that. We need to support our emergency management; we need to support our sheriff’s department cause law and order is everything we do.

Regarding how American Rescue Plan funds should be spent

I want to see it used to help our citizens to know what’s going on in our county. We have to support our law enforcement and emergency management because that’s what it boils down to. But again, we have to have leaders that are going to stand up for your rights ,.. it matters who’s in office and I will work for you, the people. I will always answer my phone day or night, and if we disagree, we’ll disagree. I’ll never take credit for something I didn’t do. That’s what leaders do. You don’t have to be the smarter person in the room to be a good leader, but you have to be smart enough to surround yourself with smart people.

Regarding his thoughts on tax abatements for renewable energy projects

As a business owner, I don’t mind solar. I’m going to put solar on my hill, but I’m not going to ask my neighbors to pay for it … It’s your land, if you want wind or solar on it, that’s fine. Just don’t ask the rest of the us to pay for it, it’s that simple. As a business owner, if you come to me and you have a federal and a state tax abatement and tell you have to have a county do it, that’s called a bad business plan. Everybody here would like one. It takes leadership. We didn’t need to spend $60,000 on a law firm in Austin to figure out we needed it … As Brookesmith is finding out now, all that money that was proposed to them isn’t as much as they thought.

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Larry Traweek

Opening and closing comments

I’ve been in office for 15 years and along with all the budget and courthouse stuff we handle, I all take care of 200 miles of road – 100 of which is paved and 100 of which is base. I strive to keep the taxes low. After all, I’m a taxpayer also. The material budget I have to work with is about $250,000 and it takes $80,000 to $100,000 to build a mile of road. That doesn’t let you do a whole lot, but we do the best we can with what we’ve got and will continue to do so.

Regarding his qualifications for the job

15 years. I’ve been in business for myself for many, many years … I know how to work, and I know how to work for the public because that’s what I’ve done all my life. We custom combine, we farm, we ranch, we deal with the public all the time. As a commissioner you can’t do everything you want because the money’s not there. You do the best you can. This good old boy system, we’re commonsense country people. We just have friends and that’s what it’s all supposed to be, good friends, good neighbors. I treat nobody different.

Regarding where to spend funds aside from roads and bridges

We’ve got a lot of buildings and it takes a lot of money to keep that up. We’ve got to keep the sheriff’s department in good shape. They’re one of our main deals in the county. Another thing, we’ve got children out there that need help. They can’t help what happened to them, we have to keep clothes on them, we have to keep food in their bodies. That’s what the Bible says, help your neighbor. As far as spending it quick, this COVID deal’s not over yet. We’ve got to keep some of that just in case. This thing, we hope it winding down, but we don’t know that.

Regarding how American Rescue Plan funds should be spent

We have to spend our money wisely; we can’t just give it to whoever for whatever. Again, with infrastructure we need to spend it on what helps the most people. It was said we need to spend it as quickly as we can. You don’t spend it as quickly as you can because this deal’s not over. We may need some of it. We’ve got several buildings – the jail, the museum, our courthouse, infrastructure is one of the main things because if we let our infrastructure go to pieces we go to pieces, too.

Regarding his thoughts on tax abatements for renewable energy projects

They really worked good last February, didn’t they? We all like to froze to death. The solar panels we’re going to end up with. They got the solar panels, we got 100 percent of the tax money. It’s a win-win for everybody, that’s just the way it turned out .., The government’s already given them enough money. If they can’t support themselves, I’m not for it.

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More information on each candidate can be found at Candidates | Brownwood News

To watch the forum in its entirety, click the following link: Candidates Forum Live Stream | (koxe.com)

Stories on the Justice of the Peace candidates will be published later Wednesday.