The Texas Association of School Boards is not looking for a new direction. It is looking for a better lobbyist.

On September 22, TASB’s board named former State Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston, Texas, as its next executive director, effective October 1.¹ VanDeaver resigned his House District 1 seat the day before.² TASB President Tony Hopkins praised him as “a leading voice in policy discussions on public education” and said rural district experience was a “key reason” for the hire.

That is a polite way of saying TASB hired a man who spent twelve years in the Texas House protecting the very system TASB exists to feed: more local spending, more property taxes, and influence at the Capitol paid for by the taxpayers who finance those school boards.

VanDeaver’s record is not a close call. VanDeaver earned himself a career grade of an F on the Fiscal Responsibility Index,³ earning an F in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023. On the 2025 Index he earned an F with a score of 59, barely above the House average of 58 for the session, and nowhere near the Taxpayer Champions who actually fought for Texas families.

Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying

Taxpayer-funded lobbying is essentially government using your money to lobby the government, usually for more of your money or more government power, or against pro-taxpayer reforms. School districts pay TASB dues out of local tax collections. TASB then advocates in Austin, and taxpayers have no say in the matter. 

This is why the legislature must ban Taxpayer Funded Lobbying completely. 

And the numbers keep getting worse. Local governments across Texas spent as much as $41 million on contract lobbying in 2017,⁴ about $75 million in 2021,⁵ and as much as $98.6 million in 2023.⁶ A 2026 Texas Public Policy Foundation analysis put the most recent session as high as $111.5 million.⁷ That’s money that could have been spent on fixing potholes, improving public safety or going towards classroom education. Instead, it was spent on lobbyists. 

VanDeaver did not spend his House years trying to shut that machine down, but rather just the opposite. In 2019 he voted to kill Senate Bill 29, a bill to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying by local subdivisions.⁸ He had already taken campaign money from firms that represent taxpayer-funded clients, including HillCo Partners and Focused Advocacy.⁹ Between 2020 and 2022, while sitting on education-related work in the House, he was a paid consultant for Powell Law Group.¹⁰ The firm markets government affairs work to school district leaders who want to influence legislation.¹¹

The Same Fight, New Title

TASB has used that model against the very reforms Texas families keep asking for. It fought Texas’s first school choice program. In April 2025, VanDeaver was one of only two House Republicans to vote against Senate Bill 2,¹² the education savings account bill that finally gave parents a way out of a system TASB exists to defend. The other Republican no vote was former Speaker Dade Phelan. Every Democrat on the floor voted no with them.

The Republican Party of Texas later censured VanDeaver.¹³ He announced he would not seek another term, quit his term early, and walked straight to TASB. 

TASB is taking a lawmaker who voted to keep taxpayer-funded lobbying legal, who took money from the lobby that lives off it, and who stood with the education establishment against parental choice, and putting him in charge of the association that collects dues from more than a thousand districts.

What the Texas Prosperity Plan Requires

The Texas Prosperity Plan is explicit: Ban taxpayer-funded Lobbying. End the unethical cycle of local governments using tax dollars to work against taxpayer interests, and elevating the interests of government over the interests of citizens. 

TASB’s hire is a signal, months before bill filing opens for the 90th Legislature, that the association intends to keep using public money to fight reform. A ban that only stops contract lobbyists while leaving association dues untouched is a loophole TASB already knows how to drive a truck through.

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1. https://www.tasb.org/news-insights/press-releases/tasb-names-gary-vandeaver-as-executive-director ↩︎
2. https://www.ketk.com/news/your-local-election-hq/east-texas-state-rep-gary-vandeaver-resigns-from-office/ ↩︎
3. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/legislators/gary-vandeaver/2025-index ↩︎
4. https://www.texaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2017-11-PolicyBrief-TaxpayerFundedLobbying-CEP-DeVore-1.pdf ↩︎
5. https://texastaxpayers.com/amount-spent-by-local-governments-on-taxpayer-funded-lobbying-increasing/ ↩︎
6. https://www.texaspolicy.com/press/tppf-releases-a-new-research-paper-shedding-light-on-taxpayer-funded-lobbying ↩︎
7. https://www.texaspolicy.com/when-government-lobbies-itself-why-texas-should-ban-taxpayer-funded-lobbying/ ↩︎
8. https://legiscan.com/TX/rollcall/SB29/id/867546 ↩︎
9. https://dallasexpress.com/state/rep-vandeaver-tied-to-taxpayer-funded-lobbying/ ↩︎
10. https://texasscorecard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/vandeaverg-2022-pfs.pdf ↩︎
11. https://www.plg-law.com/government-relations/ ↩︎
12. https://journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY46FINAL.PDF#page=9&seqNum=1352 ↩︎
13. https://texasgop.org/resolution-of-concurrence-with-the-censure-of-state-representative-gary-vandeaver/ ↩︎