State Representative, District 28

John Zerwas, M.D., had a tough fight to win the District 28 seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 2006, but he has easily handled the competition in the three following races.

The Republican from Richmond was the top vote-getter in a seven-way race in the 2006 Republican primary and won a runoff election followed by the general election to take the seat vacated by Glenn Hegar, who successfully ran for the Senate. He handily defeated his Democratic opponent in 2008 and 2010 and in November was elected to his fourth term in an uncontested race.

The 28th District covers Wharton, Waller and part of Fort Bend counties. As representative of the district, Zerwas has championed education, individual property rights, tax relief, immigration control, Medicaid reform and quality health care. Zerwas was appointed to the appropriations and public health committees in the 82nd Legislature.

Zerwas and his wife, Cindy, graduated from Bellaire High School in 1973. They were married five years later. He graduated from the University of Houston and went on to earn his doctorate in medicine from Baylor University. He is an anesthesiologist with Greater Houston Anesthesiologists, a group he helped form in 1985 and led as president from 1996–2000. Zerwas has also served as chief medical officer of the Memorial Hermann Healthcare System.

He helped form First Colony Church of Christ in Sugar Land, and he was one of its first deacons. Zerwas also helped form a Boy Scout troop in the Pecan Grove area.

What is your top legislative priority for the session and why?

I think my top legislative priority will be to address some of the concerns around public education. I think in the last session we were sort of forced to make some tough funding decisions with regard to public education, and we made some tough decisions around accountability, also. I think we need to be sure we address the funding issue in a more fair and equitable way so we can be sure school systems in the Katy area have adequate resources to teach our children.

Do you think the Legislature will address gun control measures?

I think it's really top-of-mind for people, and I think there will probably be some proposed legislation that will attempt to try to address this situation. A lot of people feel very strongly that if the people in the school setting were able to have their weapon that perhaps an individual like this would not have killed as many people as he did. The other area around this whole issue does need to be addressed. I think it's the common thread through all of these mass killings, and that's mental health. We have a big mental health challenge in the state of Texas and across the whole nation. We really need to determine: are we adequately identifying people with mental health issues; are we getting them the treatment that they need; and when it comes to the sale of weapons, have we established a clear enough vision that prevents guns from getting in the hands of people with serious mental health issues? The mental health bar that we have right now is so high that most people fall under it and don't have any restriction on acquiring weapons. The greatest weapon that anybody owns is between their two ears. If there is some derangement there that would lead somebody to commit such a heinous crime, such as this or the others that we're aware of, it behooves us to look at what we could have done to perhaps have intervened in that.

What are the greatest needs in your district?

I do think that the greatest need in our district is again around education. People come to Katy, I think, in a large degree because they are attracted to the school system that we have here. It's very reputable, and it continues to provide our kids with great educational opportunities. I think we need to be sure that we from a legislative perspective continue to provide the necessary resources and a fair accountability system to allow them to continue to do some of the great work that they're doing. Part of what goes on in Katy, because of the growth, is the need for developers to have certain things that allow them to develop communities. These are largely called municipal utility districts and a lot of these are created during the legislative session for expediency. We'll see quite a few of those this legislative session, which is a reflection of the recovery of the economy.

Will funding levels for public education be restored in this session?

I do think that we will see some of the funding levels—the things that got cut in the last session—restored. Part of that is we heard loud and clear during this two-year period of time the things the schools are having to do to accommodate the funding decreases. The other side of that is we will have a budget surplus this year. We did get more revenue in than we anticipated, and I think we'll be able to use that budget surplus to help fill the holes not only in the education arena, but in the health care arena.