State Rep. Betty Brown was taken to task on several different issues by her opponent Lance Gooden Thursday morning at a public forum, sponsored by the Lone Star Republican Women at the Republican headquarters in Athens.

Many of the issues had to do with teachers’ pay, transportation and illegal aliens. Gooden attacked Brown, saying that people are tired of incumbents that will not fight for the folks back home.

“I’m running because people in my district ask me to,” Gooden said in his opening statements. “You have already received smear campaigns in your chair about me today, and I am not going to run my campaign that way.”

Gooden said people are tired of calling their elected officials in Austin, and getting the run-around. He said it is time to take action.

“Representative Brown is a nice lady, but this election is not about who the nice lady is, it’s about who can do the best job for this district in Austin,” Gooden said.

Gooden took Brown to task on the state budget, saying it has almost doubled since she has been in office.

“It’s hard to say she is going to be conservative with the budget and that she is going to pinch penny’s when the budget has doubled in 10 years,” Gooden said. “That is unacceptable and I can tell you that will be a priority when I get to office.”

Brown said the state has done a pretty good job over the past 10 years keeping spending down and balancing the budget.

“I’m not saying that we cannot do better in keeping the budget down and holding our spending,” Brown said. “In fact we have proposed legislation that will keep our budget down to population increase plus inflation and I think that is a very realistic way to do it.”

Brown says when the state was $10 billion in the hole in revenue, they had to make some very deep cuts to manage that shortfall of money.

“This was shortly after 9-11 and we didn’t choose to raise taxes as other states did,” she said. “Texas now is being held up as an example of how you can bounce back after a devastation like that. I’m proud to say I was part of that.”

One of the questions that was submitted before the forum, asked why votes on the house floor were not made public, especially with the computer age?

“With the thousands and thousands of bills and that many votes, it’s just not that simple to make them available,” Brown said. “I will get that information to anyone who calls and asks for it. Most bills go through so many changes, but I am willing to share every vote I cast and I believe you should know that.”

Gooden said things are much different in Washington.

“You can get on the Internet and see every vote that comes up,” Gooden said. “Usually when you open your newspaper, they will have how every person voted on any issue. We don’t have that in Austin and I think we should have.”

On the issue of border patrol, Brown says that the state is forced to deal with something that is not just a state issue. She feels it is a federal issue as well and Texas has not gotten the help that is needed.

“We have dedicated more money the last three session to help the sheriff patrols,” she said. “There are more drug trafficking and murders in those area than anywhere. Those people need as much help as they can get. I just don’t think the federal government is helping us.”

Gooden said Brown voted to give children of illegal aliens in-state tuition and thinks that is a contradiction of wanting them out of the states.

“We talk the talk, but we don’t really do anything,” Gooden said. “It’s my theory that the Democrats don’t do anything because they want the votes and the Republicans don’t do anything because they want the cheep labor and so nothing gets done.”

“In that session of the legislature, we did take a vote to allow in-state tuition for children who were going through our schools and graduating here,” Brown said. “If they are born in the states, they are citizens.

“In the next session of the legislature, we saw where so many were taking advantage of that and we overturned that vote. I was certainly not in favor of that.”