Legislative Priorities & Record

Main Issues

Second Amendment

Freedom of Religion

10th Amendment

Family Values

Budget & Government Spending

Taxes

Jobs & the Economy

Education

Healthcare

Other Issues

Representative Frank serves on the Natural Resources Committee where he is a vocal proponent of a more interconnected state water supply and in favor of policy changes that will allow for a more long-term water security.

Also serving as the Vice-Chair of the Human Services Committee, Rep. Frank’s focus on seeing government provide core services more efficiently led to his authorship of House Bill 5 and House Bill 6 in the 85th Legislative Session to reform Child Protective Services (CPS) and its parent agency, the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS).

Author of HB 3859 (2017) seeks to grow and maintain a diverse network of child service providers to meet the needs of abused and neglected children in Texas by protecting the rights of religious Texans to adhere to their faiths without fear of retaliation in the courts. Concurrently, it insured that families of whatever background who want to be foster parents have pathways available to them to become foster parents.

Legislative Priorities & Record

Healthcare Costs

In the US, we pay twice as much for healthcare than the rest of the first world, for similar outcomes. This is because we don’t have a true market in healthcare. To make healthcare and insurance affordable, we must bring transparency, competition, and engaged patients.

Border Security

Over 7 million illegal immigrants have entered the US through the southern border since President Biden took office. The federal government continues to neglect its duty to secure our southern border, resulting in a dangerous humanitarian crisis. While immigration and border security are traditionally under the jurisdiction of the federal government, the Texas Legislature is and should continue doing everything it can to compensate.

Education

The two most important factors in a child’s education success are involved parents and great teachers. When the Legislature considers public school finance and other education reforms, we must do a better job of prioritizing parents and teachers.

    • Every child has unique needs and parents know their child better than anyone else. We must take measures that will empower parents to be more engaged in their child’s education and academic success.
    • Additionally, while the Legislature has increased public education funding each session over the last decade, teacher salaries have remained stagnant. We must do better to ensure funding increases are passed on to teachers.

Water Availability

Constituents tell me they care deeply about water availability and affordability. Thus, when I’m considering water-related issues, I’m focused on these two questions:

  • Will this increase water availability?
  • Is this a reasonable price, and is the money we spend going to truly improve availability?

Property Taxes

  • The Legislature reduced property taxes by $5 billion in the 86th Session, and by a historic $12 billion in the 88th Session.
  • We should continue to use state surplus dollars to reduce the burden of property taxes, which will put us on the path to eventually eliminate school property taxes.

Medicaid

The Texas Medicaid system is an important safety net for millions of people. We must continue to improve its operations so it better serves those covered by Medicaid, and we must ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent efficiently and effectively.

Child Welfare

James plans to build on the successes of previous sessions, continuing to support programs that help strengthen families and reduce the number of unnecessary family separations.

Committees

Beginning in 2025, Rep. Frank serves on the following committees:

  • Public Education
  • Public Health
    • Chair of the Sub Committee on Disease Prevention and Women’s and Children’s Health

Past Sessions

In the 88th Session of the Texas Legislature, ending in 2023, Representative Frank personally carried several key bills that were passed:

Human Services

  • SB 593 – Simplifying Child Welfare Licensing and Regulation. The inspiration for this bill came from my own experience fostering and adopting two of our six sons. It addresses unnecessary training (that turns away potential foster parents), mandates a third-party audit of the rules governing foster care and adoptive services, and will simplify and streamline the regulations, so more good parents and providers are available.
  • HB 730 – Reforming Practices of CPS Investigations. The state needs to reduce the number of unnecessary removals of children from the parental home. This bill tightens the timelines on child safety placements, requires verbal notification of rights to parents who CPS investigates, and incorporates several important legal changes in the court proceedings in CPS (most notably, limiting ex parte hearings).
  • SB 24 – Ensuring Thriving Texas Families. This bill took several measures to streamline the administration of the state’s family support services. 2 types of services in particular: 1. Services for struggling families, intended to prevent issues growing to the point of necessitating CPS involvement. 2. Services for those experiencing a crisis pregnancy, such as classes to promote healthy pregnancy and childbirth, family formation, and family self-sufficiency. Optimizing the state agency operations of these services will help to ensure a continuum of care and support for families.

Healthcare

    • HB 711 – Healthcare Competition.  As the healthcare industry becomes more and more consolidated, it has become rife with anti-competitive practices. The consumer is always the victim when competition is removed.
      HB 711 prohibits certain anti-competitive provisions used by insurance companies and medical providers to prevent patients from accessing more affordable care.
      Particularly, it prohibits: 
      • Gag clauses, which restrict price transparency.
      • Most-favored-nation clauses, which restrict providers from giving better rates to competing insurers.
      • Anti-steering and anti-tiering clauses, which restrict insurers or employers from encouraging patients to get care from competing providers.
    • SB 2193 – Direct Primary Care Program. This program will allow uninsured employees of small businesses to access direct primary care at Federally Qualified Health Centers.
    • HB 4928 – Funding for Wichita County Hospitals. In 2019, the Legislature granted Wichita County the authority to operate a county health care provider participation program, which enables local hospital providers to draw down federal funds. However, this was going to expire in 2023 and this bill extended the authorization.

Other Areas of Concern

  • HB 1393 – Increasing Annuity Option for State Retirees. There are several retirement annuity options for state employees, but all of them are fixed. This bill creates an option that is initially less than it would have been otherwise but increases each year.
  • SB 888 – Protect the Cottle County Courthouse. Cottle County’s historic courthouse in Paducah was found to be in violation of certain state requirements for fire escapes. Building new fire escapes onto the courthouse would be expensive to the county and not necessary to maintain its safety. This bill allows Cottle County to maintain its historic courthouse.
  • HB 699 – UIL Equal Access. This bill ensures schools that decide to allow homeschool students to participate in UIL activities will not be arbitrarily moved up in classification.

James Frank Campaign Office
1206 Hatton Road
Wichita Falls, TX 76302

Phone: 940-689-VOTE (8683)
E-mail: votejamesfrank@gmail.com

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James Frank District Office
1206 Hatton Road
Wichita Falls, TX 76302

Phone: 940-767-1700
E-mail: james.frank@house.texas.gov

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