State Representative Ben Leman was the featured speaker at the Sealy Chamber of Commerce’s recent governmental luncheon at the Legion Hall last Wednesday. Leman spoke about some of the legislation passed this session, as well as answered questions from local officials on Winter Storm Uri.

During the 87th legislative session, Leman said there were additional challenges on top of the ongoing pandemic.

“It was one of the most intensive legislative sessions in the history of Texas,” Leman said. “It was a regular session where we had an incredible amount of bills filled, over seven thousand bills filed. Over one thousand of those bills passed into laws.”

Leman said 20 of the bills he authored passed and he took pride in being a productive lawmaker for the citizens of Austin County.

“Half of my bills came from constituents’ concerns. Jack Brandes, the (Austin County) Sheriff, came to me with a concern about his emergency communication district,” Leman said. “We passed a bill to ensure that Austin County had a voice, that the sheriff’s department had a voice on that emergency communication district and that they didn’t lose that. It was very important for this local population.”

Another important topic to Sealy residents is the fallout from Winter Storm Uri and power outages. During the Q&A, Mayor Carolyn Bilski asked for Leman’s perspective on the February 2021 happenings.

“You had Winter Storm Uri come in and electric power generation failed across the spectrum of power sources for different reasons,” Leman said. “Demand is up, everyone is trying to ramp up power except solar doesn’t show up and nuclear goes down and then wind doesn’t show up either.”

Leman said he can’t blame a private company for sitting on the sidelines by the state requirements and needing to charge.

“They have to charge a higher rate. I blame the state for setting up that higher rate when they passed the structure back in the early 2000s,” Leman said. “They should have had a cap that was more reasonable, that says you can’t pay more than x,” Leman said.

Uri left a large bill for the cities that were passed on to the citizens.

“You may have heard about citizens getting massive bills and we changed the laws to not allow that,” Leman said. “There is not a magic salutation that makes everybody happy and makes it all go away. We were operating under a legal structure that was designed by the state of Texas, flawed in my opinion.”

Leman said he thinks more changes are to come and that he doesn’t believe that this situation will happen again.