Highlights from our interview with Texas Representative David Spiller, House District 68
Lone Star Standard: Tell us about your personal life, who you are and what you do.
Spiller: I practice law and live here in Jacksboro, which is in one of the 12 counties in my district. I’ve been practicing law for 38 years. I live here and practice law with my two sons, Mason and Reed. I’ve been practicing for 38 years as part of this practice. I am also the city attorney for the city of Jacksboro for over 30 years. I’ve been general counsel to our hospital district for over 30 years. I’ve also served in public office. I served as a school board trustee here at Jacksboro ISD for 26 years. I think that’s more than anybody else in the legislature. So, I do that. As part of my practice, I do a very broad practice, do a lot of litigation, also, and then advanced credential mediation over a thousand cases. And so, I live here with my wife, Ginger. She’s a retired teacher of 31 years and live here with my two sons, their wives, and, most importantly, my four grandkids.
Lone Star Standard: What more can the state of Texas do about the border?
Spiller: First of all, what we can do is enforce or be allowed to enforce SB-4, the bill I carried the last session to prevent illegal entry, illegal re-entry, and violation of an order to return. So, that case, we’ve not had a trial on the merits but it’s already been through the Fifth Circuit and back to the Fifth Circuit. We had a hearing on that in New Orleans and asked for temporary enforcement of that law. And it’s been a while since the hearing. I was at the hearing in New Orleans but I anticipate a ruling on that very soon and expect a good ruling. It’s in front of a three judge panel. I anticipate that they’re going to allow the temporary enforcement as before. That would make a huge difference. And then, of course, we’ll go forward with the trial of the case on the merits. And so, that’s one of the best things that hopefully is going to happen soon. I think there’s some things that we in Texas can do, insofar as having a border force, something that we probably have DPS do a great deal of the work even though that’s technically not really what they were trained to do. They’ve done a fantastic job through Operation Lone Star and Governor Abbott has done a great job. But I think we as a legislature need to create a border force that could do some of that work and were trained specifically for that purpose, to work with border patrol, as we have and continue to do. I think that it’d be a more efficient use of our funding to do that. And I think we also need to invest, even more so, in our Texas Military Department. By doing so, and we can do that, the Governor would have more authority over some of those things rather than just being at the whim of what the President says. What we have now is not really the most ideal situation.
Lone Star Standard: Why are you concerned about foreign entities purchasing land in the United States?
Spiller: Well, it’s important because it’s a huge threat and under my bill HB 4006, the last session, we were not targeting individuals. There were some bills in the past that talked about citizens or people that were citizens of other countries that are designated not just all foreign countries, but those that are designated in the U.S. Threat Assessment that’s published annually. That’s online for anyone and everyone to see. My bill was talking about countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Those ones. And if you read that report, it’s a very easy read. It’s about 21 pages long. But it entails exactly why these countries are listed on the threat assessment and why we need to prohibit those countries or entities that are controlled by those countries. In 2022 there was a U.S. study that showed that basically one-third of all agricultural land in the United States was owned by foreign entities. And the real problem is that’s about 2 percent of all the land in the United States altogether. And the real problem is that more and more of those are locating next to, adjacent to, or somewhat contiguous to military installations that pose a threat to our national security. That’s the real problem. So anyone that’s an American should say we need to protect our sovereignty, we need to protect our country, we need to protect our military installations. And, so, that’s why we need this bill. And my view is that the bill that I had I thought best addressed the issue.
Lone Star Standard: What are some of the water issues we face as a state?
Spiller: I think it’s a multifaceted approach. I was on a panel last week with Senator Charles Perry who has forgotten more about water than I’ve ever known. So, he is doing a great job. And we talked about a number of things like investing in rural broadband, which is important and we still need to do that especially for my district in rural Texas. We’ve invested in energy. We, likewise, need to continue to invest. And we did the Texas Water Fund. And that’s very important as it is meeting some of those water needs. But I think we need to do more. There was a concern that we would be short of water in Texas with the growth that we’re having by the year 2070. Senator Perry said the other day that’s not right. It’s actually about 2050. So, there’s a lot we need to do and we need to invest in that as Texas to make sure because for us to continue to grow and be the greatest economy in the world, we have to have sustainable water. So, it’s back to your question. There are several things we can do. Certainly there’s demand issues. There are things that we’re doing like desalination of water on the coastline, and we have made some good progress. That’s not cheap though. It’s somewhat expensive. But we also have a problem of transportation. We’ve got to get the water from point A to point B, and sometimes that’s a problem. There also has to be conservation. We do have to stress that there are some things that we can do and so many cities we don’t like to talk about, but so many cities are using treated wastewater. And we have the technology, but again, it costs money to do it. We’ve also got to do something about groundwater. We have aquifers. There’s more going out than coming in. They’re not refilling at the level that they need to. But also 55% of the water we use in Texas is groundwater.
