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March 22nd, 2012:

Just keep cutting till we tell you to stop

I have two things to say about this.

Now more than ever

Looking to get an early start on shaping budget discussions for the 2013 legislative session, the Texans for a Conservative Budget Coalition recommended Tuesday that lawmakers plan to reduce welfare spending, increase local control for public school districts, and consolidate or eliminate general revenue spending for several state agencies.

“The roadmap is very clear,” said Julie Drenner of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank and member of the coalition. “Government must prioritize spending on essential government functions only. When lawmakers look at questions, they must ask themselves only two questions: Do I reform it, or do I eliminate it?”

The coalition’s other members include the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility and the Texas chapter of Americans for Prosperity.

[…]

State Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, said the coalition’s proposals would damage the state.

“This proposed policy-making agenda is a pending disaster in this state for women and men of all ages, including college students, minimum-wage workers, public schools, educators, and public servants,” she said. “We cannot expect to undercut essential state programs … and still expect Texas to thrive in the future.”

The coalition began during the 2011 legislative session and is based on the tenets that the Legislature should not raise taxes, increase spending or balance the budget using the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund, or “Rainy Day” Fund.

It has reconvened now to address issues that are likely to develop as lawmakers create the 2014-15 state budget.

“The message we want to send with the revival of this coalition is, ‘That wasn’t the end,’” Joshua Treviño, the TPPF’s spokesman, said of the budget reductions in the 2011 session. “That was just a good start.”

1. This is basically the Paul Ryan Budget Plan for Texas. Protect a few things that the rich and powerful like, ensure those folks have to pay as little as possible, and cut the hell out of everything else. It has nothing to do with “priorities” or needs or anything else except lowering taxes for those who least like paying them. I guarantee you, every spending cut these guys would propose will be accompanied by an even larger revenue cut that will ensure the need for more of the same in the next budget. The goal is to exempt themselves from paying for anything.

2. Every Democrat needs to be talking about this. If it’s an election issue nationally (and it is), it’s an election issue here as well. According to Robert Miller, House Speaker Joe Straus is out there talking about “his priorities for the upcoming session as education, transportation infrastructure, water and positioning Texas for continued economic success while meeting the needs of a growing state” and that “Texas is a center-right state, it is not a far right state”. That’s not compatible with what these guys are saying, so either Straus doesn’t mean it, or these guys will attack him as a threat to their vision. Oh, wait, they already are. Straus may hold them off for now, but they’re not going to go away, and they are the direction the GOP is going. This is what Democrats need to be talking about. If the Republicans get into a high profile intra-party fight about it, so much the better, but it’s on us to make the case that they’re doing it wrong and we’re the better choice. A statement from Rep. Mike Villarreal that came out after this story appeared is beneath the fold, and EoW has more.

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More details on the city’s crime lab plan

It’s starting to come into focus.

An independent crime lab could cost nearly 20 percent more than the current police-run operation, a high-level Parker administration official told a City Council committee this week.

Andy Icken, the mayor’s chief development officer, who is overseeing the project, said the annual budget of $22.8 million could rise to $27 million in its first years after its separation from the police department as it attempts to tackle a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits.

I don’t know about you, but I’d consider it money well spent to reduce that backlog of untested rape kits. As noted in the story, the crime lab isn’t being touted as a money-saver, but obviously the price tag is always an issue. I would think that as long as future costs are not projected to rise too much, this should not be insurmountable.

On Monday, Icken and [City Attorney David] Feldman unveiled what the board would look like. It would have five members: someone who understands the judicial system, someone with law enforcement experience, a criminal defense attorney, a forensics expert and someone with a finance background.

The Parker administration is looking for those people now and plans to come to the council in April with the local government corporation plan and five board nominees.

This structure would still allow the city to join forces with the county in their spiffy new building if the governance issue can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Since the county’s lab has excess capacity, if not an excess of cash, that might help reduce that rape kit backlog faster, which in turn might help keep the cost down. I have to believe the city and county will eventually work that out – it just makes too much sense not to. Stranger things have happened, though.

Outsourcing Texas border security

What could possibly go wrong?

Gen. John Abrams

A little-known private defense contractor from Virginia has quietly received about $20 million under a series of no-bid contracts with the State of Texas to develop its border security strategies, an effort that included shaping the state’s public message on the increasingly controversial nature and extent of violence spilling into Texas from Mexico.

According to an internal Department of Public Safety memo, the role of Abrams Learning and Information Systems Inc. expanded dramatically after Gov. Rick Perry, then in the midst of a campaign for governor, ordered an acceleration of border security operations that the state wasn’t equipped to handle on its own.

Over the next 4 1/2 years — ALIS, founded in 2004 by retired Army Gen. John Abrams — would become intimately involved in nearly every aspect of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s border security apparatus, according to documents obtained by the American-Statesman through the Texas Public Information Act. Its assignments ranged from refining the state’s Operation Border Star campaign and coordinating the role of National Guard troops along the border, to setting up the state’s joint intelligence support centers and creating a multimillion-dollar high-tech system to map border crime.

Despite the firm’s work on the state’s most important border operations, ALIS flew so far under the radar that outside of law enforcement, few state and local leaders knew of its activities. Several officials who have worked closely on border security issues said they had no knowledge of the firm until contacted by the Statesman.

State Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, said he plans to call for an investigation into the state’s relationship with ALIS, saying that the state had outsourced vital security operations to a firm with “less accountability and less transparency than I would expect from state agencies.”

Even a keen observer of the Department of Public Safety could easily have been unaware of the contractor. Despite more than half a dozen contracts totalling $19.2 million, according to the Texas comptroller’s office, a review of the minutes and agendas of the state’s Public Safety Commission meetings between 2006 and 2011 revealed no public discussion about the firm’s role and only passing references to the firm’s contracts.

Department policy did not require contracts such as those with ALIS to be presented to the commission until September 2009, according to DPS officials.

Nor does the website of the Legislative Budget Board, the only agency charged with gathering information on state contracts, reveal the extent of the ALIS role; it shows just two contracts worth $2.1 million.

[…]

In August 2010, the DPS enlisted Abrams to develop a public and media outreach strategy to “position Texas border security efforts in a positive light,” paying the firm to develop talking points, presentations, testimony and the “orientation” of senior government leaders. Abrams created a public relations campaign featuring 36 principal messages, including “The success of Texas border security and law enforcement efforts are critical to preserving you and your family’s safety and way of life” and “Border Security is a Federal Responsibility but a Texas problem” — the exact language contained in an earlier Perry speech and a common refrain during Perry’s presidential campaign.

A draft document obtained by the American-Statesman, titled “Border Security Public Outreach Themes and Messages,” includes talking points that would seem to boost the firm’s standing. In touting Operation Border Star, the state’s principal border security strategy, the document says that law enforcement agencies “join with private companies” to “reduce border-related crime.” The messages were meant to be used by the agency’s public information department and to guide agency interactions with the media.

DPS officials say they contracted with ALIS on media outreach because they wanted the public to know about Mexican cartels recruiting Texas students to carry drugs and other threats such as smuggling operations and public corruption.

Rodriguez said he thinks ALIS’s public information work represented a conflict of interest. “They are giving talking points to officials so they can make the case for more public money for border security, which they can then use to pay for more contracts,” Rodriguez said. “(ALIS) was doing this to make themselves more relevant.”

Abrams was one of those retired generals who spent the year 2002 on TV and in the newspapers as a “military analyst” beating the drum for an invasion of Iraq, so he knows a little something about this kind of sales job. You really need to read the whole thing, then when you’re done go read the Alternet story that came out a couple of days before the Statesman published theirs. Among other things, Alternet reporter Tom Barry points to a February report from the Texas state auditor that called into question the way some federal grant money for border security was spent:

The audit reviewed a representative selection of cases among the $265.9 million in federal grants and subgrants to DPS — in the areas of homeland security, border security, emergency management, and law enforcement interoperability.

Among the findings of negligence and incompetence were these startling instances:

  • A draw-down of $755,509 in federal funds to issue a duplicate payment to one subgrantee.
  • Five of the six procurements (83%) examined by the auditor in the cluster of federal grants for homeland and border security were not bid competitively as required.
  • DPS categorized four of the five procurements examined by the auditor as “emergency procurements,” and in three of those four DPS was unable to document why they were processed as “emergency” contracts.
  • DPS has no system to track, administer, monitor federal subgrants – as federal guidelines require, leading to routine occurrences of duplicate payments, dipping into one federal fund to pay for unrelated programs, and failure to submit required reports and audits.
  • Complete failure to track interest rates on unused federal funds and to remit those funds, as required by federal grant guidelines.
  • Access to law-enforcement databases by contract programmers who lacked proper authorization or clearance.

Grits flagged both of these, and summarizes as follows:

Sounds like the McCaffrey report and the recent Spring Break warning are all part of a broader public relations campaign. For that kind of money, there’s likely more misinformation coming, or else this was the most expensive PR advice Texas taxpayers ever paid for.

Just a reminder that no matter what the budget situation is, Rick Perry and the Republicans in the Lege will always find money for the things they think are important. Go read and find out how that money has been spent without you knowing about it. More here and here, and a statement from US Rep. Silvestre Reyes is beneath the fold.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of March 19

The Texas Progressive Alliance has a spring in its step as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff wrote about the forthcoming end of the Women’s Health Program in Texas.

PRESS RELEASE: May 16, 2012 For immediate release Texas Governor Rick Perry calls for reforms to men’s prostrate exams.

The US Department of Justice refused preclearance on the Texas GOP’s Voter ID law this week. WCNews at Eye On Williamson calls it A Victory for voting rights in Texas.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is Guilty of being a Woman in Republican Theocracy.

The Green Party of Texas fielded 56 candidates for federal, state, and local offices, and because the Texas Democratic Party did not in two statewide races, the Greens are virtually assured of ballot access in 2014. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has the news.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme amid all the talk of the Republicans’ war against women wants to know why a judge let a man convicted of sexually assaulting a relative for years got probation?

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw explains why Rick Perry is No Mighty Mouse . It seems Texas’ contribution to the War on Women does not include Govenor Oops playing the hero. Check it out.

The more BlueBloggin listens to Rick Santorum and Grover Norquist, the more America is at risk of losing its elder generation, Republican Formula, America’s Elderly Reap The Whirlwind.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about a number of posts this week about how the Texas forced sonogram law is state-mandated rape. In one of these posts Neil discussed the three Texas State Senate Democrats who voted for this law, and about just why this law is state-mandated rape. It is up to each of us to work hard to oppose and repeal this cruel law.