MAY – The May Community Center, May Elementary Council of Students, and May High School Beta Club presented a Republican Primary candidates forum at the May High School Auditorium Thursday night, which was attended by all four Brown County Judge candidates and all three Precinct 2 County Commissioners candidates.
Candidates were allowed two minutes for opening and closing comments, the last of which concerned why citizens should cast votes in their favor. May ISD students then posed questions to the candidates. The following are excerpts of the comments and answers from Brown County Judge candidates Terry Blevins, Shane Britton, Molly Kay Smith, and incumbent Paul Lilly – who was not at Tuesday night’s forum at Victory Life Church – in the order in which the questions were asked:
Opening comments
Terry Blevins – My name is Terry Blevins and my platform is simple: do the right thing in all things at all times, do the right thing. I’m only making three promises: availability, accountability, and commitment. I will be available to the public for which I will faithfully serve.
I could go on and on about what my qualifications are, but mostly it boils down to multiple business ownership, having a lot of irons in the fire at the same time, and the fact that this judgeship requires more than the title would suggest. There are 117 duties listed on the TAC website that list each one of the functions of the judge that far exceed the judicial. This is a multi-faceted job that requires the ability to function in many capacities simultaneously. I have proven my ability to multi-task.
Shane Britton – It’s important to remember that government is owned by you, the people. Every penny we spend, every dollar we collect comes from you. If you own the business of the county government, we’re just stewards of your money, that’s all we’re doing. It’s not my money, it’s not Judge Lilly’s money, it is not the commissioners court’s money.
This is a business; it should be run like a business. In order to run it like a business, when you have an opening, you take applications. That’s what we’ve done is we’ve applied for the job of county judge. It’s no different than any other job. You apply, you interview, you tell them your qualifications and they decide who’s the most qualified and select somebody.
I’ve worked in the county courthouse. I’m qualified to be the county judge. The other candidates haven’t worked in the county courthouse. They haven’t been in there. They’ve been in the county court. They haven’t done the things that a county judge does, and they’re not qualified. Qualifications matter and you pick candidates based upon qualifications.
Molly Kay Smith – My name is Molly Kay Smith and I am a thinking conservative. I’m a farmer, rancher, conservationist, small business owner, property owner, and property taxpayer. I graduated from Brownwood High in 1995 and Baylor University with a Bachelor of Science and Education in 1999. I paid for my own education and built my own cattle business.
I think I can bridge the gap between rural and urban cultures. As a candidate I am not going to make promises I cannot keep. My primary goal for our commissioners court is to improve our morale. As the chair who oversees the commissioners court, I will implement proper parliamentary procedure.
My No. 1 focus and priority will always be water conservation. Our Texas population is growing, but Lake Brownwood is not. Our law enforcement is my next priority. Our community safety is imperative. I support our sheriff’s department 100 percent. Serving as head of emergency management, I will ensure that communication of our available resources reaches all the residents of Brown County, both rural and urban.
The position of county judge does not require a law degree. The State of Texas will provide the adequate training necessary for me to perform all the required judicial duties.
My greatest assets are I have a strong desire to learn, but most importantly I am teachable. I am not afraid of conflict and the uncomfortable conversations that most people run away from all together. Uncomfortable conversations about race, child abuse, and mental illness will lead to bridge building and civil behavior among everyone.
I will lead by example, and I am comfortable serving in that position. I am from Brown County and for Brown County. I want to take Brown County from good to great.
Paul Lilly – I was elected by almost 70 percent last time, that was a huge show of support, and I became the first new county judge in two decades. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me back then and to listen to me today and invest in your future just as I do.
They’re exactly right, the county judge is a very unique position. It’s not designed, even though it’s the title of judge, it was not ever intended to be occupied by an attorney. Over three-fourths of the county judges in the 254 counties are not lawyers, and I think that’s a good thing. It brings a different perspective.
The county judge does have a whole host of responsibilities. I see some of you in here that have been before my court for probate matters when you’ve lost a loved one or family member, and we also have guardianships. Now that I can resume seeing criminal cases you can add that as well. Whenever you add all these together, over the last three years alone I’ve presided over 690, I believe, cases and that’s a lot for a county judge.
As a county judge you wear many hats and right now in the middle of COVID, one of the biggest hats is that I’ve tried to keep day-to-day and week-to-week communication with you about COVID response. Ultimately that falls under the umbrella of the county judge in my role as director of emergency management. It’s been a rough two years, there’s not a soul out there that hasn’t been affected by COVID. But we came through it, we stuck together, and we made the tough decisions and we’re coming out on the other side of it now.
What we’ve accomplished the last four years, just imagine what we can accomplish the next four years, especially, and I pray, that over the next four years we won’t be having to deal with COVID much longer.
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What are your two top priorities if you are elected?
Terry Blevins – My top two priorities are going to be infrastructure and technology. You guys are growing up in the technological age where a lot of the technology is at your fingertips, you’re growing up with it, you’re accustomed to it.
Brown County is not ancient, but we’re not up to date. We need to invest in technology to make things smoother, more economical, more cost effective, so forth.
Shane Britton – Absolutely No. 1 is taxation. They’re taxing the common man out their home and that starts with spending. Spending is out of control, frivolous spending. In the last three years Judge Lilly has been in office we’ve collected a million dollars in additional tax revenue. That’s completely unacceptable, particularly when you’re getting millions and millions of dollars from the federal government in COVID relief. We have to get taxation under control, property taxes under control, and it starts with spending.
Second of all, we’ve got to reopen the court. Unfortunately, Judge Lilly has absolutely not presided over 800 cases in the last three years. It’s more like 200. We’ve got to reopen. He chose to close the county court to criminal cases because he’s a reserve deputy in Hood County. So, he decided to serve the citizens of Hood County instead of the citizens of Brown County. He closed his court to criminal cases and had to move all of those cases to the county court-at-law.
On the day Judge Lilly took office there were 650 misdemeanors pending in Brown County. Today, there’s over 1,000. That is not sustainable, we can’t continue that, it’s a crisis level. We’ve got to get that under control.
In addition to that, because he’s not an attorney, he’s had to transfer all juvenile cases to the court-at-law. Judge Moss is responsible for all family law cases in Brown County. He cannot do his job and Judge Lilly’s. And unfortunately, if you have a county judge who is not an attorney, he will continue to do that because the judge will be incapable of hearing those cases.
Molly Kay Smith – My No. 1 focus and priority will always be water conservation. Our Texas population is growing but Lake Brownwood is not. I will always be researching and educating our community about our most precious and valuable resource. Without ground water and surface water nothing else matters. I will always be forward thinking, educating our county about more efficient ways to conserve water, more efficient water consumption methods and more efficient water storage for our county.
Our law enforcement is my next priority. Our community’s safety and security are imperative so we can continue to grow our small businesses. Our neighborhoods will thrive, and communities of people will integrate more and engage more in each other’s lives. I support our sheriff’s department 100 percent. Strong law enforcement will affect a strong community that is thriving and growing economically. I will help our county law enforcement by listening carefully to all their needs and provide all the necessary resources for an efficiently run department.
Paul Lilly – I can take all the attacks on me, I’ve got thick skin, I’m used to it.
The No. 1 priority is we must find a way, and the only way to do it is to work with our legislators, we’ll have a new state senator and new state representative, and I talked to everybody’s who running for those positions, the leading candidates, about how we can accomplish this task. What I’m referring to is we have to get the property appraisal tax system under control.
Your tax rate, at least at the county level, has remained the same. As a matter of fact, at .56, .57, it’s one of the lowest in the state for a county of our population. But when your property continues to be re-evaluated every year and becomes worth more, then they tax you more. We’ve got to find a way to spread that taxation. We don’t have a state income tax, so the state primarily depends on property tax. What we need to do is we need to find a way to spread that load out instead of hoisting it all on property owners or residents.
A lot of you live in apartments and I promise you pay property taxes also. Property taxes are rolled into the rent that you pay for your apartment. The owner of that property is not taking that in the pocket, they passed that cost on. What we have to do is find a way to balance that so that burden doesn’t fall completely on you. It’s just completely out of control.
And Mr. Britton was correct in one aspect. I don’t know where he got his numbers, but we do have a greater revenue that we’ve collected over the past three years. That’s a good thing because by doing that, we did not have to raise property taxes to keep up with evaluation. How we have that additional revenue is by new businesses and new homes being built in the county, so those people are coming on our tax role. That allows the county to operate very efficiently and keep our tax rate as low as we can.
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What qualifies you to be a judge beyond a law degree and why should I vote for you?
Terry Blevins – The first thing I’m going to answer there is the State of Texas does not require a law degree to be a county judge. I want to dispel that rumor and myth and repetitive statement from Shane. You do not have to be an attorney to be a county judge.
Referring back to this tax situation, it’s being complicated. Taxation is simply a reflection of government spending. They want to blame everybody else for everything. Taxation boils down to government spending. When you overspend, we all get overtaxed, it’s that simple.
Shane Britton – Mr. Blevins is exactly correct; you do not have to be an attorney to be a judge. In 1876 when the Texas Constitution was written there weren’t attorneys in every county. There were very few attorneys outside of Austin, there weren’t attorneys everywhere so they could not require a county judge in 1876 to be an attorney.
The reason it’s important in Brown County is our criminal justice system is set up to have a county judge who is an attorney. When you’ve got three courts – county court, county court-at-law, and district court – when you take one-third of the court capacity out because you don’t have an attorney hearing that case, what you’ve done is effectively shut down the court system.
That’s never been an issue in the entire history of Brown County, every single county judge has been an attorney, prior to three years ago. What we’ve seen in the last three years is we’ve completely crippled the justice system in Brown County. It’s not sustainable. We can’t continue heading to where we’re headed.
Specifically, the question about qualifications beyond being an attorney, for 25 years I’ve been doing the job. For 21 of the 25 years, I’ve been the county attorney. Before that I was assistant district attorney. I’ve practiced every single day in the county court.
Molly Kay Smith – I think building my ranching business 16 years ago qualifies me to manage our county budget. I have always lived within my financial means, made astute financial decisions regarding my ranching business, have excellent credit and pay property taxes. I have skin in the game.
I think if I can manage my own business and personal finances in a way that is fiscally conservative, I can manage those same values while serving our as rural county budget officer.
I am always forward thinking and trying to manage my business more efficiently. As owner and operator of a ranch, I know that I must maintain a calm disposition while dealing with emergencies on the ranch. Dealing with life and death scenarios on a regular basis, adjusting my farming practices with unforeseen weather patterns, and crisis animal emergencies have prepared to serve as our head of emergency management.
Paul Lilly – In addition to being judge the last three years which has been a distinct honor, prior to that I had three decades in public service, most of it was in law enforcement. I wore a uniform for my country, for my state, and worked my way up to the ranks of chief and it was very rewarding.
I do have a degree in government, I have a master’s degree in criminal justice and a doctorate in forensic psychology and criminology, which is a fancy word for criminal profiling. I still teach part-time for Tarleton and enjoy that greatly.
But the best qualification a leader can have is there’s no need for a true leader to tear others down to try and make themselves look taller. You’ll never be successful when you do that. You have to understand that the community expects you to lead in a positive manner, to try and lift everyone up and to try and focus on our attributes and not our areas where we’re deficient or lacking.
The position has a multitude of responsibilities. I’ve tried to lead us through COVID and preside over the cases in my court. Every probate case that comes across my desk is a case, so is every civil matter when someone sues someone, so is any appeal from the Justice of the Peace court.
Shane was right, I can start hearing criminal matters again. I had to stop for a while I served as a volunteer deputy sheriff. I put my uniform on for free and serve in counties that need the help. The Supreme Court ruled just this past week that you can be a judge in one county and be a reserve deputy in another, so I get to re-open the criminal aspect, and I’m excited.
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If you received a 1 million dollar grant to be used for the county in any way you choose, what would you do with it and why?
Terry Blevins – We’ve got an aging infrastructure in our county that needs addressing and, again, as I stated earlier, technology. The way of the future is going to be technological, and we need to invest in technology. There are many areas throughout the county that could benefit from upgrades in technology and infrastructure.
I’ll throw one out there. The average sheriff’s officer starts out at $42,000. The average police officer in the State of Texas starts out at $52,000 a year. We’re an average sized county yet our sheriff’s department deputies make less than the average of the state. I do believe that’s unacceptable.
Shane Britton – The first thing I would do is ask the people who live in the county what they want to do with it. This is your money; this is not my money. I don’t sit on a golden throne at the courthouse and decide how your money gets spent. I’m going to ask you how your money gets spent.
If fact, it’s an interesting question because we did get a grant of $3.6 million in May of this past year. What did we do with that money? Well, we didn’t ask the people what they wanted to do with it. What we did was we had secret meetings with individuals and cut deals with them and decided how we were going to spend that money outside of the courtroom.
What you’re supposed to do is have public hearings, you’re supposed to advertise, you ask people how do you want us to spend the money? Why don’t y’all tell us? Y’all are the taxpayers; you’re the owners of this business. We need to ask you how you want us to spend your money. That’s not what we did.
Molly Kay Smith – As I’ve mentioned before, water will always be my No. 1 priority for Brown County.
Second will be law enforcement.
Third, I care deeply about the mental health of our county residents. I think I can effectively communicate the necessary public education required to help everyone understand mental health issues included PTSD. I will communicate publicly all the resources available to our veterans and non-veterans. I will create a public platform for education and awareness for sex trafficking, child abuse, domestic violence and family violence. These are very serious issues that need to be discussed openly and without reservation.
Paul Lilly – Well that would be awesome, but grants don’t usually work that way. We did receive $3.5 million the first part of last year and we funded all kinds of activities in our non-profit organizations. We’ve helped our Center for Life Resources which provides mental health services to our area.
We are a democratic republic. What that is, as you know, we’re not a true democracy. We don’t ask you to go to the polls every time we have an opportunity to do something. You elect the people to represent you and to make those decisions. You can’t please everybody, there’s just no way. You take the information and make the best decision that you possibly can.
Our deputies now are underpaid, but they’re making 15 percent more than they did three years ago. We’re doing everything we can without having to raise your county property tax.
I would take those million dollars and try reinvesting it in the community. We’ve got some initiatives we’re doing. I see Pat (McLaughlin), our grants coordinator. That position was credited by me three years ago and has gotten us millions of dollars in grants we may not have gotten before. We didn’t have it centralized.
If there’s not a pressing issue and no stipulations on the grant, I like Mr. Britton’s idea of talking to the community. But a million dollars, I promise you after 30 years in government, doesn’t go very far when you have a county of 40,000 people.
We have to find a way to get our county’s rural streets paved. We have so many that are still unpaved and those that are paved are full of potholes. That would probably be a focus for me.
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With us putting our faith in you to make the right decisions, what do you as a judge put your faith into?
Terry Blevins – God.
Shane Britton – How do you top that? Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
But since I’ve got two minutes, I am going to use it. This is just too important of an election to let things slide by. We got $3.6 million dollars last May. Do y’all have any idea how much money was spent on mental health, MHMR and those non-profits he talked about? $150,000. That’s like the interest on $3.6 million.
Don’t let him fool you that he spent a lot of money on these non-profits locally. Over $1 million went to special interests. Deals he cut in his office when nobody else was around.
Molly Kay Smith – I put my faith and trust in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Paul Lilly – A good county judge has two priorities that he must keep and it’s baptism by fire when you become county judge and then a pandemic hits. I’ve held a lot of hands; I recognize a lot of you out there in the audience who’ve been affected by COVID.
I don’t think it’s possible for a person to pray more than I do.
There are two priorities. No. 1, when you’re a good county judge and a good leader No. 1 is put God first and remember that we’re all here but for the grace of God.
No. 2 is the people. You empathize with the people, you listen to them, the people you represent and try and make great decisions.
I’m grateful and I don’t know why Mr. Britton is pointing everything at me, I guess because I’m the incumbent, but yes, we did get $3.6 million out of the first grant. Almost a million dollars, $800,000, went to providing a new radio system for our sheriff and fire department services. Every fireman, when he goes into a building, he should have a radio on his hip where he can communicate and call for help if he needs it. Every deputy who’s out in a rural area should be able to have some reach rather than it just being a weight on their belt that doesn’t work half the time.
What you have to remember when you get grants, when you’re making a decision how to use them, every grant has stipulations that tells you want you can and cannot use it for.
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Closing comments – why should you vote for me?
Terry Blevins – One thing Shane has done is given me an excellent recommendation because he keeps talking about the business of the budget and everything else. I submit to you that I have more business experience than everyone combined in this group before you.
As far as the taxes, like we alluded to earlier, taxes are a reflection of spending. When you don’t control your spending, when you don’t control your budget, of course you’re going to tax more. Mathematically it really doesn’t matter what your property values are, value versus the need sets the rate. In its basic form, taxation is a reflection of spending. If taxes are high, that’s a reflection of poor spending habits by your government people.
We talked about a democratic republic. That is true, but the public still needs to give input even after your elected officers are elected because they’re not just rulers, they’re servants to the people. That’s what a lot of our elected officials have forgotten. We are servants of the people, we’re not kings or anything else. You’re a servant.
I’m pretty simple. I can run multiple businesses at a time around the country. I’ve been around getting things done and the first thing you’ve got to do in any job is show up.
Shane Britton – Brown County is at a crossroads. There’s a lot of growth, we’re building all over the county, we’ve got a lot of people moving into Brown County from all over, particularly other states. We’re at a crossroads and we’ve got to have leadership in the position of county judge to move us forward. If we don’t have leadership in that position that’s forward thinking and open minded, we’re stuck, and we don’t want to be stuck. We need to restore dignity, integrity, ethics, leadership, we need to restore all that at the Brown County Courthouse.
We need to restore an image. Our image in Austin before the Legislature is horrible right now. They’re laughing at us. We’ve got to restore our image; we’ve got to learn how to cooperate and get along with people outside of our county to move our county forward.
As I said at the very beginning this a job interview. That’s what it is. This is a company that you own, you’re the shareholders of this company, so you are going to be tasked with deciding who you hire. And it’s very important who you hire to run your business. And I’m hoping that you vote for me on March 1.
Molly Kay Smith – I come from a world of problem solving. I think we need a county judge who is proficient in practical experience over legal experience. We cannot ignore the issues that affect everyone – water conservation, specially-trained law enforcement, and mental health issues.
I disagree that our lower-level judicial cases are backlogged so badly that we are in a crisis. Running out of water is a crisis. Due to negligence by our current county judge our judicial cases are behind, but we will catch up. I will deal with this court issue, then I will tackle the problems that affect everyone. I will move on to the people’s business.
I have worked in hard labor my entire life. I farm and ranch alone. I work cattle on horseback, turn bull calves into steers, and deliver calves all hours of the night with only my chains and calf pullers. I can milk out any mama cow to save her cow’s life. I farm with a 4440 John Deere Road Prop Tractor, I grub mesquites and cactus and build fence with my S300 Bobcat Skid Steer, I troubleshoot and repair all of my own farm equipment. I can handle the job as our next Brown County Judge.
Paul Lilly – When you’re an incumbent running for re-election you look at what the focus of your opponent is going to be. When you’re an incumbent it’s one of two things in the democratic playbook, they focus either on your term in office and your accomplishments or they focus on trying to attack your integrity and your very nature.
You will never find anyone on my campaign team attacking anyone else – period. We just will not do it, and we will not get down in the mud and fight at that level either.
You’re more than welcome to focus on the four years, we’ve done fantastic even through COVID. Our cases are behind because for a long time we weren’t able to hear criminal cases and then we had to get into the Zoom project which as you all know poses lots of interesting complications when you’re dealing with the court. We’ve worked it out and I’ve done many, many hearings through Zoom.
We have almost 9 million dollars more in grant money that we wouldn’t have had before over the last three years that we’ve been to collect. We have not raised your taxes at the county level. The county court has no control over school district taxes or sales taxes and things of that nature. All we can set is the local county tax rate, which if you look is among the lowest throughout the state for a county of 40,000 people or less. Our budget is balanced every year. We’ve been able to balance our budget plus give our law enforcement significant increases to get their salaries up.
We’ve had a wonderful three years aside from having to adjust through a pandemic. It’s been a mean three years, but we’ve come out of it doing quite well. Financially we’re in fantastic shape and I don’t anticipate us having to raise county property taxes again this year. I think it’s going to be about the same.
I thank you and I hope to work for you for another four years.
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Early voting begins Monday, Feb. 14. Ballots can be cast at the Brown County Elections Office, located at 613 N. Fisk Avenue. Election Day is Tuesday, March 1.
More information on each candidate can be found at Candidates | Brownwood News