Justin Berry, a Republican candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, is promising to bring a pragmatist’s eye to the Legislature, which he says he’s honed over 12 years of service on the Austin Police force.
Berry, the vice president of the Austin Police Association, is running on a platform of controlling property taxes, improving public safety, criminal justice reform, and building more east-west roadways in Travis County.
The seat for which he is running, HD-47, is held by Rep. Vikki Goodwin, who won in 2018 with only a slim majority – 52.4% of the vote – becoming the first Democrat to hold the seat since its creation in 2011. Her win was part of a ‘blue wave’ in 2018, which swept a dozen House Republicans from office, including many who represented wealthy, suburban areas like HD-47.
The district includes western portions of Austin as well as Bee Cave, Lakeway, Lago Vista, and Jonestown. Prior to 2018, HD-47’s long-time GOP incumbent Paul Workman had won his reelection bids fairly easily. Now Republicans are hoping to reverse 2018’s losses in former strongholds like HD-47.
In order to win the seat, Berry will first need to defeat four Republican primary opponents: attorney Jennifer Fleck, attorney Jenny Roan Forgey, former Marine Corps officer Aaron Reitz, and former City Council Member Don Zimmerman. (Editor’s Note: Only Berry and Fleck have advanced to a primary runoff election scheduled July 14).
In an interview, Berry spoke about his background and his views on public safety, criminal justice reform, and property taxes.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. What experiences have prepared you for the Legislature?
I’ve been a police officer for 12 years now. I went to school at Sam Houston State University, got my degree in criminal justice, and two weeks after I graduated I was in the police academy at Austin PD. I’ve been there ever since. I went back to Sam Houston State later and got a master’s degree in leadership and management.
I’ve worked in a variety of roles, mostly in a patrol function, but I’ve also worked undercover assignments, property crimes, and violent crimes. I think my experiences as a police officer really set me up for success as a legislator. Police are public servants just like legislators. We get called every day from people regardless of their race, their ethnicity, their gender, their socio-economic status. People call us looking for help to solve a problem, whether it be domestic violence, the homeless person outside their business or storefront, maybe they got in an argument with somebody, or they’re looking at committing suicide.
Whatever it is, you’re called to help them with their problem. So I believe that I’m in a unique position to take my experience of providing solutions for people’s problems and doing the same thing as the next state representative for HD-47.
Was there a particular event, idea, or issue that sparked your candidacy for the Texas House?
I get tired of watching politicians fail our community because they’re pandering for votes. They tell people one thing and do another. Or they know there’s a problem but they only provide a half-solution. I think there’s a big lack of statesmanship right now in our current politics, on all levels of government – local, state, county, federal. We need to restore statesmanship, because when you carry those philosophies of servant leadership and statesmanship, it becomes about the people you serve. And then it’s not about you.
What would be some priorities for you if you were to be elected to the Legislature? What would you aim to do?
Property taxes is a big one. I’m very glad we passed SB 2 last session that put a vote trigger out there. But we left a loophole open for property appraisals to come in and artificially inflate your property value. I want to close that loophole out. I also want look at maybe electing our appraisal boards.
We need to look at funding east-west roadways to help alleviate our traffic congestion. If you look on a map of Travis County, we have I-35, Mopac, and 130 that run north-south, but we don’t have any major east-west roadways.
And I’ll work on public safety. We’re dealing with a violent crime wave, we’re dealing with this homelessness crisis. And if you hear the governor talk, he’s making public safety a priority this next session.
A number of legislative leaders have have said that they want the next legislative session to be about criminal justice reform. How do you balance that priority with public safety?
I think they go hand-in-hand. We do need criminal justice reform, that’s a fact. But there are a lot of people on the left that are really trying to push decriminalization and de-policing and make everything not a crime, as if all of a sudden we don’t have crime anymore. Well, no, the behavior still there. Decriminalizing something doesn’t necessarily take away people committing that action.
I want to focus on recidivism reduction. That is, how do we take someone that committed a crime and they’re in prison, how do we set them up for success when they get out? See that’s the key. I talked to drug dealers a lot when I used to do undercover work. And I always ask them, if you could do anything else other than being out here slinging crack, would you do it? And they said, ‘In a minute.’
But the problem is that they’re convicted felons, so they have a felony record. They don’t know anything else. They don’t want to work three minimum-wage, low-paying jobs, because it’s still not gonna pay the bills, especially in an area like Austin, which is having a affordability crisis on top of everything else.
In the meantime, we have a shortage of electricians, plumbers, and truck drivers. Well, if you’re going to be sentenced to prison for four years, if you’re a non violent, non-sexual, non-habitual offender, I think you should go to a place that looks more like a learning institution. We should teach people how their behavior harms their community, but also give them the job skills they need, so they don’t feel like the only option they have in the world is to sling crack on the corner.
Once they’re out, they should be able to earn back the right to vote, and earn back the right to not report that they’re a felon. Because that gives people hope. When people get out of prison, they lose hope. What other incentive do they have not to reoffend? It’s like the Prodigal Son: You made your mistakes, you went away, but let’s find a way to welcome you back into the arms of society again.
If you were to win the primary and you’re facing Rep. Goodwin, how would you campaign against her?
I want to focus on our day-to-day issues that really matter. It’s very easy to focus on hardline partisan issues, but if that’s all we fight for, if that’s all we focus on, we neglect the 97% of other issues that impact everyone’s day-to-day lives.
Let’s focus on improving our roadway systems, making sure we have great public schools, ensuring that we can work on wildfire mitigation issues – because Steiner Ranch still has wildfire risk. Those are the issues that I’m going to focus on campaigning on, emphasizing common sense and good judgment.
To that point – getting things done in areas that are not hyper-partisan – could you think of one or two examples of areas in which you think Republicans and Democrats can work together in the Legislature?
One example of that last session was HB 95, a bill by Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Her office reached out to me because I’m the Capitol a lot advocating on public safety issues and everybody wants a police officer in their camp for gun reform. And I told them, I’m a believer in the Constitution, I’m a believer that the Second Amendment shall not be infringed. I told her, if you focus on legislation that that doesn’t infringe on other lawful gun owners rights, I will work with you.
When she came back to me after a while, we worked on HB 95 together because that bill went after the unlawful gun owner. It was an intercept bill: Instead of waiting on the federal government, the ATF, to go do an investigation on somebody that lies on a background check, it would allow the state to be able to go investigate and prosecute for unlawfully trying to acquire a firearm by deceptive means of lying on a background check. That was something I could support because it didn’t infringe upon lawful gun owners rights.
Criminal justice reform is another area where we can work together. If you look at President Trump’s First Steps plan, that’s a massive criminal justice reform bill that focuses on setting people up for success. Now, I don’t agree with every component of it, but I agree with a lot of it.
One of your primary opponents has voiced support for constitutional carry, the right to carry a handgun without a permit. Is that something that makes you at all nervous as a law enforcement officer?
I think is something that we need to have deeper discussion on. I don’t care if you open carry or conceal carry — that’s a personal decision. I personally carry concealed and I like having that the advantage of surprise, but that’s everyone’s personal decision. But with regard to being able to care without a permit, I’m not opposed to that but there needs to be some screening process. As Republicans, we believe in voter ID laws, making sure that your are a U.S. citizen. Well, you have to be a U.S. citizen to be able to carry a firearm as well.
We need to make sure that people that are convicted felons don’t get to just carry a gun, because they’ve lost that right. We need to focus on a common sense approach that still protects the lawful gun owners and their right to carry a firearm, but that doesn’t make it so hard to get one.
How do you approach the conversation around local control?
I’m a believer in local control but I think the important thing is each level of government needs to stay in its own lane. When we see a local government reach out and start focusing on state or federal matters, that’s not okay.
To get a little more specific, take the City of Austin trying to take away officer discretion, taking away their ability to enforce state laws like the marijuana issue. Or take the homeless issue or even the sanctuary city stuff. Immigration laws are a federal issue. For a city or a state to come in and circumvent federal law is a problem. They should be focusing on filling potholes, making sure that our local economy is doing well.
Would you support a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying?
I’m conflicted on that because I’ve seen firsthand that there are people that have information on issues that can advocate for them, for example, if a community needs a roadway system, or needs funding for a water treatment plant, then it’s not a bad thing, having the local government fighting and advocating for that to provide the services we need. The average citizen does not have the ability to be at the Capitol or at the city government every single day advocating, because they’re working or taking care of their kids.
On the other hand, you see governments that actually advocate for things that harm the community, or they focus on wants rather than needs, and they misuse our taxpayer dollars. I would look at requiring more transparency and accountability with it.
As you’ve been campaigning, talking to voters, what have you learned about the people of District 47?
Overall the people of District 47 are pretty happy. We have a great district, we have great schools, we have a beautiful community, we have a gorgeous view. I mean it’s a nice place to live. But a lot of them are elderly, they’re in retirement. So I think there are a lot of concerns around property taxes. When you’re on a fixed income and you’re retired, people don’t want to be taxed out of their houses.
So we need to look at finding a way to where we can still plan for retirement without having to have worry or fear of being taxed at our houses and I think that is a great concern in HD-47.
Thank you, Justin.
