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June 24th, 2010:

Greens booted from the ballot

A judge in Austin has ruled in favor of the Texas Democratic Party in a motion to bar the Green Party from the ballot this fall on the grounds that the funds used to collect their signatures were illegal corporate contributions.

Attorneys for the Green Party said they would quickly appeal to the Texas Supreme Court in hopes of meeting a July 2 deadline to get the list of candidates to the state secretary of state for a spot on the ballot.

“We have to have the right to carry these nominees over to the secretary of state’s office and if that’s prohibited, the election moves on without the Texas Green Party nominees,” said attorney Steven Smith, a former Republican state Supreme Court Justice who is representing the Green Party.

State District Judge John Dietz ruled that restricted corporate money was used to support the signature drive and did not comply with state election law. The judge said he expected an appellate court to stay his decision.

“We’re obviously never happy about making it difficult for parties or interests to get on the ballot, but we couldn’t stand for corporations coordinated by the inner circle of Rick Perry’s office trying to buy access for another party,” said Chad Dunn, general counsel for the Texas Democratic Party.

The most interesting testimony concerned Rick Perry’s former chief of staff.

Mike Toomey, a lobbyist and former chief of staff to Gov. Rick Perry, personally paid for an aborted effort to qualify the Green Party of Texas for the ballot, according to court testimony Thursday morning.

The testimony came from Garrett Mize, who led the failed petition effort beginning last fall. He said Toomey paid him $2,000 a month for about six months with a personal check.

[…]

Mize was approached to run the effort by a family friend, Stuart Moss, who at the time worked for a Republican political consulting and public relations firm run by former Perry communications director Eric Bearse. Bearse said Moss no longer works for him.

Mize quit the effort in April after he grew uncomfortable that Republican interests were driving the initiative and not informing the Green Party.

That wasn’t the only money being spent by Republican operatives working hard to get the Greens on the ballot, of course. There was a whole lot more where that came from.

A group with ties to Republicans paid $532,500 to gather petition signatures to land the Green Party of Texas on this year’s state ballot.

At least one high-ranking Green Party official thinks that money was a corporate donation.

[…]

In a June 10 e-mail to other Green Party officials, state party treasurer David Wager said, “I was promised by a representative of Take Initiative America that the organization was not a corporation and that he would comply with all disclosure requests. Today I was informed that the organization is in fact a corporation and they will not disclose their donors. They claim that their collection of signatures and in-kind contribution was not political. I don’t agree. In my opinion, we have no choice but to refuse the signatures.”

That sure sounds like a problem to me. Did you notice how many professional Republicans are helping out the Greens in this effort? Smith, Toomey, Andy Taylor, David Rogers, Cleta Mitchell – it’s almost as if this were really important to them.

Anyway. The Greens will appeal to the Supreme Court, where anything can happen, so they may yet have a chance. The Trib and the Lone Star Project have more.

Cuts for thee but not for me

Nice!

That comes courtesy of the Back to Basics PAC, and the Trib says they’ve bought $250K in airtime for it. More like this, please.

Mayor Parker’s first budget passes

The deed is done. We know the basic shape of the budget from earlier stories, so I just want to highlight a couple of things. First, an amendment to trim Council members’ budgets that ultimately was defeated:

City Councilman Al Hoang and others backed an effort to apply the same 2 percent budget cuts required of many city departments for fiscal 2011 to council members, who have been allocated $392,222 in the coming year to pay staff and take care of other expenses.

The proposal, which would have required a cut of nearly $8,000 per council office, was rejected by 11 council members. Only Hoang, Councilman Stephen Costello and Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck voted for the measure. The cut would have saved an estimated $110,000.

“I think it’s disingenuous to ask departments to cut their budgets, and not cut our own,” Hoang said in a statement. “We were elected to lead by example, not by decree.”

Councilwoman Jolanda Jones opposed the cuts, saying that council member budgets are used almost exclusively to pay the salaries and health care costs of staffers and should not be compared to departments that can cut spending on equipment or freeze hiring to reach budget targets.

She called the proposal an example of “form over substance.”

“If someone calls my office and I don’t have staff or resources to help them solve their problem, they’re going to be mad at me. … They’re going to be mad at the city,” she said.

I tend to agree with CM Jones that there are better avenues for finding savings. I don’t object to the attempt by CM Hoang, and I do agree that elected officials should lead by example; some, as we know, are better than others at that. But it’s not the Council members themselves who are directly affected by such cuts, it’s their staffers. For the small amount of money in the context of the budget that’s involved, I don’t think the return is worth it.

The other matter of interest was the bilingual budget amendment:

The most controversial item council considered — a proposal to end the practice of paying a $70 monthly stipend to bilingual employees – was withdrawn by Clutterbuck after Parker promised to review the program.

Parker said she will ensure that those receiving the money are proficient in the second language and that the use of it is necessary for their daily jobs. Parker also vowed to ensure that employees only receive tuition reimbursement if the education they seek will help them do their jobs.

My guess is these things will be quietly studied for awhile, then some relatively innocuous recommendations will be made. We’ll see what happens from there.

Statesman slaps Harper-Brown

I guess they weren’t terribly impressed by her video defense against the hand in the cookie jar accusations.

It’s going to be tough to top Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, and her YouTube response to a Dallas Morning News/WFAA-TV report about the 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 she drives that is owned by a firm that has millions of dollars in state transportation contracts.

Harper-Brown is on the House Transportation Committee. And, FYI, her husband also drives a vehicle owned by the firm that provided her Mercedes. Both vehicles feature State Official license plates.

We’ll get back to the details in a moment, but we can’t wait to tell you about how Harper-Brown defends against the apparent conflicts of interest. Actually, in the video, she doesn’t really offer a defense, other than that all of this is a result of liberals, lawyers and the “mainstream media.”

If you watch one YouTube video in your lifetime, please make it this one. There are no kitties playing the piano, but you’re going to love the Harper-Brown performance at http://tinyurl.com/3y47ch8.

If that’s the response she’s going to get for her efforts, then it’s going to be a long summer for Harper-Brown. The DMN is less snarky but still critical, while Lone Star Project, Harold Cook, and the badly missed Pink Dome have more.

Was there no one in Texas that could tell us about our broadband situation?

I’m a little late in picking this up, so bear with me. Last week, the Texas Department of Agriculture published a map detailing where broadband access exists and doesn’t exist in Texas. Democratic candidate for Ag Commish Hank Gilbert, after criticizing the map as being much ado about not very much, then had some strong words about how the study that led to the map’s creation was funded.

“It was inappropriate for the Texas Department of Agriculture to outsource more than $3 million in federal funding to a Kentucky non-profit organization with a questionable record and significant ties to telecommunications companies when federal law allowed the state to conduct this project on its own,” Gilbert said.

He accused [Ag Commissioner Todd] Staples and the Texas Department of Agriculture of bypassing state agencies and public universities within Texas that could have completed the project.

“The fact of the matter is that federal law allowed the state or any of the public universities in Texas to conduct this project,” Gilbert said, citing the provisions The Broadband Data Improvement Act, 47 U.S.C. §1304, which states that multiple entity types-including government bodies-were eligible for the funds.

Gilbert also questioned why Staples would allow the Texas Department of Agriculture to do business with a company that has left controversy in its wake in North Carolina and Kentucky, signed restrictive non-disclosure agreements with telecom companies prohibiting disclosure of detailed coverage information, and has been accused of providing misleading information to the Federal Communications Commission.

Staples’ response to Gilbert’s charges came from his campaign. As yet, as far as I know, there has been no comment from the TDA itself about the substance of Gilbert’s remarks. (For that matter, neither has the Staples campaign.) Politics aside, that’s a pretty straightforward question: Why not fund the study through a Texas university? Surely any number of them could have done it, quite possibly for less than $3 million. This was paid for with stimulus money, so regardless of the actual price tag, it would have been nice to keep it here. It would be nice if the TDA could tell us why it chose not to do that.

Montgomery County wants in on rail district

Get on board, Montgomery County.

Montgomery County may join a regional rail group to upgrade freight lines and add commuter services throughout the Houston area.

“It’s time that we need to be a part of this,” said Commissioner Ed Chance of Precinct 3.

For the second time, Montgomery County Commissioners Court will vote on joining the Gulf Coast Rail District after first rejecting the plan in 2007.

The agency was created by the state Legislature in 2005 to enhance the economic benefits of rail while improving the regional quality of life.

The agency has identified $3.4 billion in freight rail improvements needed by 2035, when freight traffic is expected to double in the area, and nearly $3 billion to build five commuter rail lines out of Houston.

“It is something that everyone needs to do as they look at future transportation issues,” said Mark Ellis, chairman of the district

Among the projects being considered for Montgomery County is a commuter rail line, which would run from Houston to Tomball along Texas 249.

Montgomery County also would be a future stop for high speed rail lines that link Houston with Dallas and San Antonio, said Maureen Crocker, interim executive director of the Gulf Coast Rail District.

This is a no-brainer in many ways. I don’t know what the role of the GCRD will be in eventually delivering these projects, but they will certainly have one, so getting Montgomery County involved with them makes all kinds of sense. Thanks to Houston Tomorrow for the tip.

Texas blog roundup for the week of June 21

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes the official start of summer with a cold beverage and the highlights from the week in blogging.

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