Texas+Water Editor-in-Chief Dr. Todd Votteler talks with Glenn Hegar, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, about initiatives from the Comptroller’s office to ensure the state’s water supplies meet future demand.
Hegar was elected as the 36th Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts in November 2014 and was re-elected for the second time in 2022. He is Texas’ chief financial officer — the state’s treasurer, check writer, tax collector, procurement officer, and revenue estimator. As CFO for the world’s ninth-largest economy, he monitors Texas’ financial health to ensure it maintains strong fund balances.
Hegar has worked to bring public and legislative attention to long-term financial obligations facing the state, such as health care coverage for public school teachers and employees, infrastructure maintenance, and state employee pensions — needs that have caused major financial difficulties in other states and which rarely receive adequate attention in the give-and-take of Texas’ biennial legislative budgeting process.
Before he was elected as Texas Comptroller, Hegar served in the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate, where he worked on a wide range of problems affecting Texans in areas including water issues. Hegar is a 1993 graduate of Texas A&M University and a graduate of St. Mary’s University, where he earned a Master of Arts and his law degree. At the University of Arkansas, he earned his Master of Law. He is a sixth-generation Texan who grew up farming land that has been in his family since the mid-1800s.