What do you do when you’re 60-plus, retiring from teaching, and looking for a challenge?
Start writing legislation.
That’s what Jean McCloud decided to do. At the suggestion of a friend, she ran for office in the Silver-Haired Legislature – and advocacy group for the elderly – and won.
Now in her fourth term, she represents seniors in County Commissioners Court District 2, an area that includes a portion of our neighborhood, at both the state and national levels.
The non-partisan Silver-Haired Legislature mirrors the organization of governmental legislative bodies. Candidacy and voting rights are extended to anyone over 60, and candidates campaign where their constituents gather, from nutrition centers to senior centers and retirement homes.
Biennial elections, overseen in this area by the Senior Citizens of Greater Dallas, come complete with absentee ballots and polling places throughout the country. Once elected, the 116 representatives state-wide – five from Dallas – write and present legislation to the Texas Legislature.
It’s an activist cause that requires commitment and energy, says Lynda Ender of Senior Citizens of Greater Dallas. And McCloud, she says, has both.
Not only does McCloud work tirelessly – meeting with an identifying issues of concern to her constituents, serving as chairwoman of the Legislature’s Human Services Committee and acting as a member of the Legislative Active Committee – she plays a key role in drafting proposed legislation and in promoting it in Austin.
This legislative session, for example, McCloud will work to retain the state’s Department of Aging and Human Resources as distinct entities.
“That’s our number one priority,” she says. “The Sunset Committee has proposed that they be combined, but we think they’re separate.”
McCloud believes seniors experience enough difficulties gaining access to the system as it is. To introduce a new bureaucracy would be detrimental to the interests of her constituents.
Ender, who once worked for State Sen. David Cain, believes people such as McCloud are particularly effective in influencing legislation. The political process is about education, she says. She finds McCloud, a former teacher, adept in explaining positions to legislators and their staffs.
A current issue in which McCloud has great peronal interest in funding for residents of nursing homes. The vast majority of nursing home residents receive Medicaid, McCloud says, and current rules allow them to retain $30 per month for personal expenses such as hair care.
“It’s not enough,” she says. “You can’t even stay clean (on that amount).”
McCloud proposes that residents be allowed to hold back $40 – hardly a munificent sum, she says, but an improvement that is practicable, even given the large number of people involved.
McCloud encourages seniors to stay abreast of issues that concern them and to contact her through the Senior Citizens of Greater Dallas at 214-823-5700.
