Months before a construction company won a multibillion-dollar road deal in Texas, a man who had worked for the company before becoming a top aide to Gov. Rick Perry met at least five times with state transportation officials on behalf of the Spanish company, state records show.Dan Shelley, who is now the governor's legislative director, declined to comment on the meetings.
The meetings were documented in visitor sign-in sheets at the Transportation Department's Austin headquarters.
State Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson, a Perry appointee, previously said that he recalled only one meeting with Shelley on behalf of Cintra. He said the other meetings were with department staffers.
He distinguished between meetings that Shelley had with department staff who recommended Cintra and the final decision-makers on the Texas Transportation Commission..
A spokesman for Perry said Shelley's activities did not constitute lobbying, and he reiterated that Shelley and the rest of the governor's staff had no role in the awarding of the $7.2 billion contract.
If there had been any doubt left -- and there really wasn't -- this story pretty much cinches it: Rick Perry is running the most corrupt regime in modern Texas history.
From apparently illegal gambling contracts with Las Vegas law firms to doling out political favors from taxpayer-paid economic development slush funds... from lobby-paid vacations in the Bahamas and Italy to asking Cap Metro to provide his daughter special transportation even though she lives less than half-a-block from the city's largest bus stop... from personal land deals that have made him a millionaire over the past decade to a revolving door of special interest lobbyists in and out of his taxpayer-funded office... this arrogant career politician gives petty larceny a bad name.
And what kind of public policies result?
* More than 170,000 eligible children of working parents stripped of their health care while local traxpayers pick up the tab for their emergency-room care.
*A public school system deteriorating from lack of funding while Perry spend not one, not two, not three, but four legislative sessions pushing through an unprecedented mid-decade congressional redistricting plan at the behest of ultra-partisan Tom DeLay.
*A toll-road scheme that seems designed to tax Texans twice to drive on their own highways while Perry staffers, lobbyist cronies, and campaign contributors line up at the trough.
Oh, for the days of the Sharpstown Scandal.
Posted by: Zangwell Arrow on January 1, 2005 11:24 AMI agree with what you both have said. The only current politician who is more corrupt than Rick Perry is Tom DeLay.
That these two small-time con artists have risen to the top of the state Republican Party is testment to that party's total moral bankruptcy.
Posted by: Oh, Sarah! on January 1, 2005 11:38 AMMy favorite Rick Perry scam may not have been the most illegal or hurt the most people. But it revealed the true depravity of his immorality.
Remember earlier this year when news reports showed that Perry's official payroll had increased 6% even though he had demanded that other state agencies DECREASE theirs by 7%?
Perry promised to lead by example and cut his own office budget by twicxe that -- a total of 14%. Instead, he increased it 6% and tried to hide that fact by shifting the payroll for nine of his employees (two maids, a cook, a butler, and five other personal assistants) from the Governor's Mansion to the Texas Building and Procurement Commission.
Posted by: Gus Rinaldini on January 1, 2005 12:11 PM