This year’s state legislative session has wrapped up and our local lawmakers are sharing their overall thoughts and reactions with us.

State Representative Ralph Watts describes this year’s general assembly as “strange”.

“I kind of look at it as a situation where we tried to climb a couple of mountains that we wouldn’t go to eventually, mountains that we couldn’t go to, and we finally did.  But the good thing about it is we finally passed all the budget bills and we passed them in a way that we live within our means of state government.  Not to too many people’s liking but that’s a good thing.”

However, Watts says they may be looking at another up hill battle next year as the Revenue Estimating Conference has said they don’t expect the state to have much more money next year compared to this current fiscal year.

“Our economy is very sluggish and it’s not growing like it should be.  There’s something systemically wrong or out of kilter but we just aren’t getting the growth that we need to carry on and do the things that people would like to do. That may be a situation we’ll have well into the future, regardless of how the election comes out.  It could be worse.”

We will have more with Representative Watts on today’s Let’s Talk Dallas County during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours.