A few years back, I left my life in Austin to move back home to the Texas Panhandle to raise my family, help my aging dad and build a business in the community where I grew up. As a girl who was raised in a rural community and an agricultural family, I always felt a void in my city life.
Not everyone understands this feeling, and not everyone values the life we live in rural Texas, but a few of us do. Generally, we’re conservative, we are present in our faith, we work hard, and we are often unheard. There is a small but mighty group of us working to advocate for rural Texas in state government, and to bring a better understanding of issues that impact our communities.
So when I heard recently that one of those champions for rural Texas, former Texas Rep. Glenn Rogers, had been stripped of an administrative appointment by Texas A&M University, I felt a strong calling to speak up about the situation.
In 2021 and 2023, the Legislature created the Rural Veterinary Incentive Program (RVIP) to encourage the recruitment of young veterinarians into rural communities. Rural places experience shortages of veterinarians – just like we do with nurses, doctors and teachers – mostly because the pay in rural communities is lower, making it harder for students to pay back their education expenses and creating a financial disincentive to return home or move to a community like the one I live in.
Opinion
RVIP helps us build our rural workforce. It’s a critical public health investment. And with threats facing Texas, such as the new world screwworm, it also becomes a matter of national security.
As a former policy director in the Texas Senate, I also know that the long-term viability of programs like these depends on good people who understand the fabric of rural Texas communities. Folks like Rogers, with his experience and expertise, are critical in a program like the RVIP.
Texas A&M recognized Rogers’ value last fall when it recruited him to begin reviewing applications for the program. And rightly so. Rogers was a joint author of the legislation that created RVIP. He has served as president of the board of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners. He’s a Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine Outstanding Alumnus. And he is a rural practitioner and animal health expert. If those qualifications are insufficient for an advisory role on rural veterinary policy, it is fair to ask what qualifications would be?
This month, Rogers’ appointment, which should have been a formality, was listed on the consent agenda for a meeting of the Texas A&M Board of Regents.
But Rogers’ appointment was pulled from the consent agenda, and he was dismissed from his service to the RVIP after Texas Scorecard – a scorched earth “conservative” group funded by West Texas billionaire Tim Dunn – posted a single story on its online “news” blog about the Rogers appointment, calling him a “critic of Governor Abbott.” It looked to me like Rogers had become the latest casualty in an ugly political game.
As Dallas Morning News readers likely know, Rogers has become a critic of Abbott, but only after the governor, a fellow Republican, spent big to defeat Rogers and a handful of other rural Republicans in the 2024 primary campaign after those lawmakers opposed the governor’s school voucher crusade .
I reached out to A&M’s interim president Tommy Williams to ask why Rogers had been pulled from consideration for RVIP. He said the decision was entirely his.
“No one from the Governor’s Office — or anyone in state government — contacted me about this matter,” Williams wrote in an email. And to my disappointment, he added a sharp rebuke of Rogers, who helped create the program: “Appointed roles are a privilege, not a right, and it is my duty to exercise sound judgment in determining what is in the best interest of the university.”
Here is the sad reality. The days of sending representatives to Austin and into the top of academia who value independence, representing one’s district and doing what’s best for the people, are near extinct in Texas. Propaganda, intimidation and fear are being used as weapons to control our thinking and our actions. Appointments and electoral success are driven by loyalty to billionaire agendas and personalities, not by principles or constituent needs.
Rural Texans don’t need loyalty tests. We need solutions. We need serious legislating to address the serious problems we are facing, like a shortage of veterinarians. The Rural Veterinary Incentive Program was created to solve real problems in places that are too often overlooked. That work requires people who live with the consequences in rural Texas, not people policing who’s allowed in the room.
If rural expertise can be sidelined without explanation, then rural communities will continue to pay the price for decisions made far from their reality.
Suzanne Bellsnyder is editor of the Texas Rural Reporter.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.
If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com