| Vince Perez is the State Representative for House District 77 in El Paso. He serves as deputy whip for the Democratic Caucus, a member of the MALC working group on immigration, and is the only freshman representative on the Democratic Policy and Steering Committee. From 2013-2020, he served as El Paso County Commissioner for Precinct 3.
Representative Perez earned a reputation as a reform-minded leader who helped modernize many functions of El Paso County government. He effectively led several policy reforms and initiatives in the areas of criminal justice, budget management, economic development, and transportation.
In 2013, he voted to approve the County's first Comprehensive Mobility Plan, which provided over $400 million in new transportation infrastructure for El Paso County. All county projects were delivered on time and on budget. In the same year, he voted to expand access to healthcare by approving over $150 million for the construction of state-of-the-art primary care clinics throughout El Paso County under the County Hospital District.
In 2014, as a result of his office's research and analysis, he called for a state investigation into the judiciary's longstanding appointment practices of private criminal defense attorneys for low-income individuals. Representative Perez found that a small number of private attorneys were being over-appointed to hundreds of criminal defense cases. As a result, the county was providing in inadequate defense for defendants, excessively incarcerate low-level defendants not yet found guilty, and creating extensive backlogs in criminal court dockets.
The Texas Indigent Defense Commission (TIDC), the state agency that oversees indigent defense throughout all 254 Texas Counties concurred with Representative Perez's findings and compelled the judiciary to devise and implement a plan to change its practices.
That same year, he successfully proposed the creation of the County's first pretrial office to promptly assess a defendant's safety risk to the community, their mental health background, and their need for public defense. He also successfully expanded the operations of the county jail magistrate to 24-hours a day, 7-days a week to ensure defendants could promptly appear before a judge and processed without delay.
Under his leadership, El Paso County also became one of the first counties in the nation to implement the "CourTools model" by the National Center for State Courts to provide judges and the general public information about the efficiency and cost of court operations.
While other counties such as Harris, Dallas, and Galveston were the subject of multimillion dollar lawsuits for their criminal justice practices, El Paso County was spared from such litigation, and is now a national leader in best practices for criminal justice.
In 2016, Representative Perez was named the "National County Leader of the Year" by American City & County Magazine for his leadership in county governance and county-level criminal justice reforms. He was the first County Commissioner in Texas to earn this recognition.
In 2018, Representative Perez successfully proposed the creation of the County Economic Impact Fund to promote economic development in the Borderplex region. This fund is the first of its kind among Texas's 254 counties, and is intended to diversify the types of economic development incentives and tools available when attracting companies to the El Paso region.
In 2019, an Amarillo-based company sought approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to transport and process over 100,000 pounds of medical waste a day at a site in El Paso's Mission Valley (and HD 77). Representative Perez discovered that the applicant lied in its application to the commission by grossly underreporting the number of homes within a one-mile radius of the proposed facility. Her presented his office's findings and testified before the Commission in Austin and for the first time in the Commission's history, the application for a medical waste facility in Texas was denied.
Representative Perez also served as the Chairman of the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization Transportation Policy Board, Chairman of the Central Appraisal District Board of Directors, and also served on the Texas Border Trade Advisory Committee.
Vince earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He lives in El Paso's Mission Valley with his dogs, Lady and Whiskey. |