Ms. Delisi, who on Wednesday announced her decision not to seek a 10th term of office, said on Friday that she believes her efforts in the Legislature have laid the groundwork for benefits that will be enjoyed years down the road.
“As far as Temple and Bell County go, we plowed the ground for so many years and it seems like now we really have a good crop coming up,” she said.
“There will be others that will come after me who will get to harvest, but I was able to be a part of making that happen,” she added.
Listing the “Top 10” areas of legislation she feels were highlights of her career, she led off with educational issues. Being on the Committee on Public Education, she said her work on the committee helped the state come up with a constitutional school finance system.
“The Legislature can’t function unless that happens,” she said. “We had numerous special sessions, and I was very pleased with that legislation.”
As chairman of the Committee on Public Health, medical issues were high on her list as well.
“I carried legislation to implement a statewide trauma system,” she said. “It is seamless from the volunteer fireman … to ambulances to community hospitals, all the way to being air-flighted to a level one trauma center.”
She said the bill, which will probably take a decade before it is fully implemented, is still moving forward and creates a dedicated funding source based on emergency room visits, with a percentage going to rural areas.
She also cited her involvement on transformation of the Temple campus of the Texas A&M medical school into a four year college.
“This year has been very affirming to me because we now have all four years of a medical school in Temple,” she said, adding that classes have already begun.
Also a backer of transportation issues, Ms. Delisi was instrumental in ensuring frontage roads to be part of the package of widening efforts on Interstate 35.
“I’m really encouraged about that even though we are under a fine layer of dust right now,” she said of current construction in the area. “It’s a very encouraging thing to see. Before we know it we will have some of these major traffic and safety issues solved on I-35.”
Ms. Delisi has been involved in military issues during her years as a state representative, helping secure a state veteran’s home for Temple and the state veterans’ cemetery in Killeen.
She passed legislation dealing with reciprocity for military children in school, allowing greater acceptance levels when they come to Texas schools.
“We were being very hard-edged about saying (to the students) ‘You didn’t have Texas history in the seventh grade,’” she said, referring to prerequisites and ease of transferring records.
“Some of these families were moving every two years,” she added.
She said the legislation aimed to take some of the pressure off military families moving to the state.
“We want to be as military-family friendly as possible in Texas,” she said.
Some of her legislation included a tuition-free opportunity for children of severely wounded Texas soldiers. The legislation called for 5½ years of college education.
Part of her work in the Legislature dealt with water rights, an issue she said is very important in the state.
“Bell County is floating on an oasis of water,” she said. “Lots of counties and cities are very thirsty, most of them south of us.”
She said legislation she helped get through the Legislature says that no matter what the population of an area is, existing contracts of water basins that are “givers of water,” such as in Bell County, trump new contracts from areas seeking new sources of water.
“This is an important issue for my district and I’ve always watched over it very carefully to make sure that that language stands,” she said.
She proposed a constitutional amendment, approved by voters, limiting the state debt to no more than 5 percent and has passed a number of Medicaid reform bills. She rewrote the retired teachers health insurance program, which has since become solvent.
She said she worked to increase and expand penalties to allow prosecutors more power to battle counterfeit document “mills,” which she said is a “huge problem” in Texas.
Ms. Delisi said she is satisfied with her work over the past years but realizes there is much more to be done in the coming sessions that others will handle.
“You can always do more,” she said. “I keep looking over to a corner of my desk and seeing some things that are intriguing, but that won’t be finished for 3 or more years,” she said, including issues such as property taxes and trans-portation funding.
“The groundwork is starting to pay off,” she said of work already completed. “It was an absolute pleasure to be part of the team.”
rstinson@temple-telegram.com
