By Jeff West

SDN Staff Writer

State Rep. Scott Campbell came to Snyder Wednesday to meet with teachers and try to answer charges that many of his votes in the last session of the legislature were anti-education.

Before the meeting, the local branch of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association distributed a flyer listing 12 votes that the group said affected teachers. Of those, 10 of Campbell’s votes got frowning faces and only two received smiley faces.

“Looking at that list makes us look like the sorriest scoundrels that ever walked the face of the earth. I am not a scoundrel,” Campbell said. “My mother was a teacher and I think there is not a more noble profession on the face of the earth.”

The first-term Republican house member from San Angelo said the votes came at the request of the Texas House leadership who urged legislators to do what the leadership felt was necessary to cut spending and avoid a tax increase.

“What we faced was the state had been spending money out the kazoo since back in the ‘80s and we had hit the wall,” he said. “The simplest thing for us to do was to raise taxes and everybody go home, but that was not the solution that the leadership in the state wanted to address.”

Among the votes the group seem most concerned with was reducing a $1,000 supplement to $500 and linking it with health care, voting to allow full certification of teachers without requirements for training and allowing teachers to be put back on probationary status without their consent.

The CTA did give him good marks on returning the $1,000 in 2005 and for voting against giving state money to home school students.

Campbell said the only way to get anything done in the legislature is compromise, and he said he often did not know the full meaning of some of the 3,000 votes he cast during the last legislative session.

“I’m trying to be a good guy and trying to help my friends in rural Texas,” Campbell said. “I’m just one little guy in my first term, I don’t have the clout that someone who has been there 30 or 40 years.”

When asked about specific bills and his reasoning for the votes he cast, Campbell said he did not remember the details of specific bills and often relied on the advice of the leadership and friends in the legislature.

“I want to make everybody happy and fix everybody’s problem, but I’m one of 150 guys and I can’t fix everybody’s problem,” he said. “It was never the intention of any of us to do anything that would be detrimental to your family life or your financial situation.”

Campbell complained that he only had two office staff members and himself to try and keep up with all the various issues and often had to just call someone to learn about a bill.

Charlotte Clifton, president of the Snyder Classroom Teachers Association, said she thought that she and the state organization had tried to inform him on the issues.

Campbell said that it was possible that a special session would be called in the middle of April.