Austin, Texas – Following a controversial and bizarre Texas Senate committee hearing on the impact of Texas’s laws, which blacklist companies for responsible investing practices, Unlocking America’s Future is calling out state lawmakers for hurting retirees and taxpayers.
“Texans are paying the cost of these harmful laws,” said Kyle Herrig, spokesperson for Unlocking America’s Future. “The extremists, who are wasting tax dollars in a losing fight against responsible investing, have sunk to a new low. Threatening to jail investment professionals because their expert advice doesn’t match your extremist politics isn’t just wrong, it’s un-Texan and un-American.”
Lowlights from the hearing include:
- The agency, which manages the blacklist, failed to provide a solution for companies who want to appeal and remove themselves from the list.
- A lawmaker suggested that state Attorneys General consider jailing individual investment agents for engaging in responsible investing.
More details on the hearing are below:
The law is as confusing as it is costly.
- When asked how financial firms could be removed from the Texas business blacklist—the entire point of the committee meeting—the agency responsible for managing the investment of public funds failed to offer a concrete solution.
- Legislators were not provided convincing explanations for why the state blacklisted several firms that are heavily invested in Texas’s oil and gas industry.
- Invited witnesses did not meaningfully engage with various reports showing these anti-ESG laws cost Texas over $600 million lost in economic activity.
One Republican senator suggested Attorneys General investigate and jail individual managers at financial firms for responsible investing practices.
- During a back and forth with representatives of the Leonard Leo-funded Foundation for Government Accountability and Consumers’ Research, state Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock asked if there are individual agents who have gotten jail time for responsible investing practices and suggested it might be an area for state Attorneys General to investigate.
Real people are impacted by Texas’ dangerous laws.
- At no point in the Senate hearing did lawmakers hear testimony from the real people bearing the cost of this reckless policy.
- In the House interim hearing on the same subject, a retired Houston area public school teacher criticized anti-responsible lending laws saying, “I’m deeply concerned about proposals restricting [the Teacher Retirement System] from working with firms considering ESG factors in investments. Pension funds should prioritize maximizing returns, securing our retirement, and keeping costs low for taxpayers, not politics.”
For more information and to read our full report on the impacts of political extremism, please visit Textremism.com.
