Highlights from our interview with Representative Mihaela Plesa, Democratic state representative for Texas House District 70 (southwest Collin County).
Lone Star Standard: Your family is from Romania. Are there any lessons you can learn from that experience?
Plesa: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting because, growing up, I was told these horror stories of why my grandparents left Romania. And communism was banning abortion, right? Women, who had already had children, who might be having complications with their pregnancies are forced into horrible conditions, horrible medical practices. And so, a lot of people here in America might remember the orphanage crisis that was happening in Romania in the 90s. Those were the stories that I grew up on. Those are the things that I heard about, but also censorship, the way the Communist Party was banning books, the way they were putting off education. Also, the way that they were running the healthcare system was with a lack of resources for people, even to the point where when my grandparents and parents were growing up, there was even a lack of electricity. The government would shut off the power for a couple of hours. I see these similarities with Texas life right now. We’re hearing women who are having to go into litigation with the state to get access to health care. We’re hearing about women who have to leave the state to get access to health care. We can’t keep the lights on. Anytime there’s a bad storm or a hurricane, we’re hearing about hundreds or thousands or even millions of people who lack power. That’s critical. Those are things that should be the government's number one top priority. Keeping the lights on, keeping the water clean, keeping the roads functioning.
Lone Star Standard: One of the first bills you filed was about health literacy in Texas. Why did you bring that forward?
Plesa: That was one of the first bills that we actually had a draft for. And just so happened to be the first bill that I filed. But, the reason why that happened to be one of the first bills that I put into draft and started working on with stakeholders is because when I was knocking on doors in my community, it was one of the, besides education, the number one thing that we were talking about at the doors was people's access to healthcare information. How do you navigate their insurance programs? How to navigate Medicaid? How to navigate Medicare? What the access to that looks like in Texas. Our state is constantly seeing an influx of people moving in from states like Florida, California, Illinois, all over the place. And what they’re often times finding out is there’s a reason why we say Texas is the least insured state in the nation. It looks different in Texas than it does in, say, Vermont. And when they come here, they realize, oh my God, this isn’t covered, or these things are different, or I have to through these hoops and jumps, loopholes and things like that to get care. There’s an educational factor in there. But also for the people that are native Texans. They also need to understand why it’s important for them to have prenatal care, preventative care, why it’s important for us to continue with our dental care, why it’s important for us to get our eyes checked out, our ears check out, our neurological systems.
Lone Star Standard: What discussions are taking place about abortion in Texas?
Plesa: Honestly, I do not think that we’re going to see any changes and this is not something that I say lightly. But, at the end of the day, we just got to accept where we are in the state. We’re not having conversations about rape and incest. We’re not having conversations about women leaving the state. We’re not having conversations about why maternal mortality has increased in our state. Why infant mortality now is on the rise after we’ve spent the last 15 years trying to make that number go down. We’re seeing almost a ten percent increase in infant mortality. These are the silent births. These are babies that are not going to make it. And, so, it’s a very cruel environment that women are living under and we are not having conversations about how we make it less. We saw that with the Supreme Court. We see that with the AG. The conversations are actually about how to make it more restrictive, how to restrict transportation, like literally how to prevent women from moving across the state. This is crazy stuff we’re talking about. We’re talking about restricting contraception. We’re talking about in-vitro fertilization. For everything my Republican colleagues have been saying about not coming for in-vitro, the Governor of this state has said it’s something that we need to look at. And that’s very concerning.
Lone Star Standard: How is school finance and recapture affecting your district and should we get rid of it?
Plesa: Well, I don’t know if we can totally scrap it and replace it. I don’t think we could totally get rid of it and that’s not necessarily what I’m advocating for. I know there’s other districts who are going through recapture. I would say, they’ve stretched their program. Because there’s certain things that districts do, as they become bigger recapture districts, they convert to copper pennies then to golden pennies. And there’s all these initiatives that go before voters as they get to a position where you are Austin ISD or Plano ISD. But what we’re seeing is now Frisco is becoming a part of recapture, Allen is becoming a part of recapture. And, so, we need to create systems where they don’t experience the shock that Plano has experienced in the last 30 years. We need to create systems that are sustainable, that’s really what we need to focus on as we are talking about things like vouchers, talking about expanding charters or homeschooling or some of these other programs in our state. Recapture needs to be a part of that conversation. And I think that, once again, that’s not a partisan issue. I’ve had multiple colleagues on the other side of the aisle come and say, “hey, I see you filed these five recapture bills. They’re very interesting. Can we talk about them?” Unfortunately, there aren’t very many lawmakers that are willing to come and start talking about recapture reform. It’s not one of those issues that people are excited about. But it’s a very, very important issue.
Representative Mihaela Plesa of Texas House District 70, which includes parts of Dallas, Richardson, Plano, and Allen, is a first generation Romanian American. She discusses education, women's health and reproduction, THC and compassionate use, and more.
This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-31-mihaela-plesa.
