SENATOR CARLOS F. TRUAN    

A STRONG LEADER IN TEXAS EDUCATION

The Honorable Carlos F. Truan has served longer than any other member of the Senate. He became the first Hispanic Dean of the Texas Senate in 1995. First elected State Representative in 1968, he served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 1976. In 1985, he was elected President Pro Tem and honored as Governor-for-a-Day. As State Representative, he exposed institutional child care abuses in Texas and sponsored the Texas Child Care Licensing Act of 1975. He also authored the Texas Public Housing Authority Act (1969), the Texas Bilingual Education Act (1969), the Texas Adult Education Act (1973), and the Interstate Placement of Children Act (1975). Senator Truan devotes much of his energy to protecting the environment and improving higher education. He has been instrumental in providing funds for construction and academic programs and authored the Minority Doctoral Incentive Program. In 1993, he created the Childhood Lead Registry. Prior to this legislation, there was no way to identify and track children suffering from childhood lead poisoning. He was instrumental in obtaining funds to expand health care education and services and authored landmark legislation to help identify causes of birth defects through the establishment of a Birth Defects Registry. In 1995, he authored 64 bills and resolutions; 41 became state laws. He established a diabetes registry, an international trade and technology center, and was successful in stopping several anti-environment bills that would have prevented citizens from participating in Texas' rulemaking process on pollution cases, limited cities and counties from developing plans to protect wildlife habitat, and prevented Texas from passing state laws stronger than federal laws to protect our Texas air and water. He also worked to respond to the issues that face Texas as a consequence of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), addressing the implications of expanded trade on all aspects of Texas' transportation and human resources systems, from highways and bridges to the environment, health care, housing, education, and technology. Senator Truan is the only member of the Texas Legislature who participated in both major insurgencies of contemporary Texas history, the “Dirty Thirty” ethics coalition of 1971 and the “Killer Bees” in 1979. The “Dirty Thirty” consisted of 30 reform-minded State Representatives who stood firmly in favor of a full investigation of the Sharpstown Bank scandal that rocked the State of Texas. The “Killer Bees” were 12 Senators who prevented the Senate from having quorum to adopt legislation that would have manipulated the presidential election of 1980 in Texas. Born in Kingsville, Texas, Senator Truan earned his B.B.A. in Business Administration from Texas A&I University in 1959. He has been in the life insurance business for more than 35 years. (Article from the Hispanic Journal)

We are very proud in having our school named after Senator Truan!