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This legislative session, in my work representing Texas’ Hill Country, I’ve championed a set of bills that may seem unrelated at first glance: halting ill-sited battery storage facilities, stopping poorly planned quarries and rock-crushing plants, working to block a rail line that would cut through hillsides and ranches, and filing a bill to let homeowners simply remove ashe juniper trees — cedar trees — on their own property, if they choose.
What do these efforts have in common? They defend what’s natural.
Most people understand that putting a highly flammable and potentially toxic battery next to an elementary school might not be the best choice. It’s easy to explain as well why a massive, rock-blasting quarry next to a host of historic and protected sites and parks is ill advised. But — what was that last bill, about the trees?
It might seem out of place at first glance. Yet it’s at the heart of something deeply American. Besides our landscape, clean air and water, and the animals and plants around us, humans are natural, too. And as our American founding fathers knew, we the people have natural rights which are nothing without the fundamental right to own property.
But in Austin, at least, those rights are being chipped away in quiet, bureaucratic ways. Want to remove a cedar tree on your own land, maybe to build a sandbox for your kids? You’ll be forced into an expensive, paperwork-heavy permission process that will cost and delay you for weeks or even months.
Paperwork, fees and a long wait to remove a tree on your property? Not very Texan. I filed a bill to fix it. It will let people manage their own little piece of the American dream, with a little more freedom and a little less red tape.
Texas Hill Country’s rugged beauty and rich heritage absolutely deserve our protection. But so do the rights of the people who live here. And when those values come into tension, we must be thoughtful — but we must also be clear. Respecting the land should not mean regulating its stewards into submission.
Some of the responses I’ve received to this effort have been eye-opening. I’ve had advocates in my office declare that no tree should ever be cut down. Others want to go to the further extreme and include every kind of tree in the bill. But what I haven’t heard nearly enough of are those speaking for the homeowners — especially low-income families — struggling under costly, arbitrary restrictions from their local governments.
This is a simple bill: HB 3798. It’s targeted. It’s reasonable. And it’s rooted in the same principle that makes Texas strong: trust in the judgment of Texans to care for what’s theirs.
Rep. Ellen Troxclair is a wife, mother, and small business owner in her second term serving District 19 in the Texas House, honoring her constituents’ mandate for conservative, pro-Texas & pro-child policy. House District 19 encompasses Blanco, Burnet, Gillespie, Kendall counties, and part of Travis County.
Note: For an opposing view on Rep. Troxclair’s tree bill, please see “Anti-Ashe juniper bills hit Texas Capitol, again,” by the Sierra Club’s Craig Nazor.
