The Young County Republican organization hosted Texas Senate District 30 runoff election candidates Shelley Luther and Drew Springer at the Young County Arena last Tuesday. The candidates gave their address to community members and answered questions from those in the audience. In the forum, the candidates were given 10 minutes to explain themselves and their platform. Following their introductions, those in the audience were asked to give questions to either one candidate, or both candidates. Forum Q&A What is going to replace property taxes in the county after you said you will abolish them? (Addressed to Luther) Luther - "So what I am mainly focusing on are the school property taxes. A lot of people that live in their homes, they either don't or their kids have gone away (...). Public school should be funded by the state, and we can do that if they cut their government spending. I don't want to add a tax to create more funding for schools. The government spending is outrageous. We spend millions of dollars, actually billions of dollars on illegal immigrants. We throw our veterans out on the street. We pay for their housing. We pay for their medical, their schooling, the hospital bills. That's all on us. We have an open border that we haven't taken care of. We also have corporate welfare that our government spends our money on that we don't agree with. There is a contact tracing bill that our governor spends money on that we don't agree with. There is also taxpayer funded lobbyists, where your tax money goes directly to lobbyists in Austin to work against you. The bills need to be cut in Texas. That could cover the amount that is paid to our schools. The rest of it could be a consumption-type tax on non-essential products. Hostess Cupcakes, sodas, anything that is unhealthy. Anything like milk, bread, diapers, we are not going to have a consumption tax to. But what that does is it makes illegal immigrants pay their fair share of taxes and it also makes it to where if you want to buy a luxury-type item, which I figure a Hostess Cupcake is kind of luxury, you pay an extra one or two cents sales tax on that and only the people that afford it will buy those things. So, if we cut government spending a lot and I mean a lot. This is a process that is going to take at least 10 years, but we've also got to cap the taxes where they are and we need to make appraisal positions elected positions."