As Chairman of the Senate Intergovernmental Relations (IGR) Committee, Senator Hinojosa deals with local government issues statewide and oversees legislation that impacts our local economies. Our communities are facing challenging issues and our lawmakers have a responsibility to make government more efficient and save taxpayers’ money.Senator Hinojosa has had the courage to expose and bring to light some of our state’s most shameful scandals, including the rampant abuse that was going unpunished at the Texas Youth Commission. As a member of the Sunset Advisory Commission and the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Hinojosa has been demanding accountability and fiscal efficiency within state government.
- Senator Hinojosa recognizes that transparency and accountability are the best tools we have for increasing public awareness and understanding of local debt.
- Supports legislation to prohibit certain bonds that delay principal and interest payments for many years with no installment payments, causing the balance to balloon. This places an enormous undue burden on our future generations simply to pay for the immediate comfort of projects or developments that could be financed differently and is bad public policy.
- Brought the scandals at the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) to the public’s attention and worked with the Sunset Advisory Commission to merge TYC and the Juvenile Probation Commission into one entity, to increase accountability and save taxpayers’ money.
- Supported legislation that forced the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to adhere to strict measures of accountability and reform after an accounting error at the agency resulted in the loss of $1 billion.
- Voted for legislation that abolished the Texas Residential Construction Commission, an agency exposed as a special-interest controlled entity for home builders.