All I can Say is WOW!! We had a great turn out today in support of Mayor Bill White and his run for Governor of Texas! It was a pleasure to have Diana Maldonado as our host and the Williamson County Democratic Party for allowing the use of their office for this event. While I saw a fair number of old faces in attendance, I am overwhelmed at all the new faces!
The WC4BW Team is also thankful that many of the local candidates were on hand as well. This is very inspiring to our team and to the Bill White Campaign as well. The momentum is definitely building and we can do a lot good work between now and the primary, and even more between now and November! Thanks to all of you who attended today, and spread the word. Your help is compounded by the help you recruit in this campaign effort! Let’s make this happen!
I posted about the exclusion of the other five candidates for governor from tonight’s debate here, an entreaty that fell on completely deaf ears. I also had a compilation of news and blog articles on Shami last month, and my 2007 meeting on e-Slate issues with White, before and after.
The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the city of New Orleans for the Saints’ stirring Super Bowl victory, and reminds them that the “hair of the dog” trick doesn’t really help with the hangover.
This week at Texas Vox Citizen Sarah geeked out on the new energy generation plan presented to Austin City Council. May not sound too snazzy but there’s enormous potential there to reduce carbon emissions, build up our local economy, and improve public health with this plan, so she thinks it is pretty cool.
Neil at Texas Liberal commented that office building janitors in Houston have set up a Facebook page as they prepare for a new round of contract negotiations in 2010. All work has merit and all people should be paid a living wage.
We have two candidates vying to be the next Chair of the Williamson County Democratic Party (WCDP). They are Paul Stempko and Gregory S. Windham. The WCDP Communications Committee had the candidates put together their biographical information and their answers to several questions, which can be perused here, In Their Own Words . . .[PDF]. From the questionnaire on why the chair of the WCDP is so important.
The strength of the Texas Democratic Party depends on the hard work of volunteers and political activists
in the county parties. County Democratic parties are the focal points of political campaigns and building the Democratic Party. The people who take leadership roles in their local Democratic Parties are critical to the local, state, and national Democratic Party success.
During each Democratic Party Primary Election, Democrats throughout Texas elect the local leaders of the Democratic Party, including a Precinct Chair for each voting precinct and a County Chair to lead the local party for the next two years. The Precinct Chairs and the County Chair make up the Executive Committee that organizes Democrats in the county to support Democratic candidates, handles the finances of the local party, and runs the primary election.
County Chairs are expected to lead their county’s Executive Committee. In order to do this, they must work closely with candidates, precinct chairs, party activists, and the Texas Democratic Party staff to build a network of volunteers. They provide critical support to Democratic campaigns and are essential to turning out the Democratic vote and winning electoral victories.
The will also be appearing at a candidate forum next Saturday.
“MEET THE CANDIDATES” PUBLIC FORUM
WHO: Candidates running for County Chair of the WCDP
The Candidates are:
Paul Stempko
Gregory Scott Windham
WHEN: Saturday, February 13, 2010, 2:30-4:00
WHERE: Moody’s Restaurant
309 N Hwy 183
Leander, TX 78646
WHY: To become an informed voter!
This is the only event where both candidates are scheduled to publicly present their arguments for why we should elect them.
County Democratic Party Chairs are elected at the Primary Elections.
Your only chance to make your voice heard will be during the March 2, 2010, primary election or during early voting (begins Feb. 16).
Come. Meet them. Mark you calendar now!
SPONSORS:
West Williamson County Democrats
East Williamson County Democratic Club.
Questions?
Contact Karen Carter 512-260-6965;
KarenCarter2008@aol.com
Via Williamson County for Bill White, they are hosting a “Kick Off” event:
Williamson County For Bill White Kick off WITH MAYOR BILL WHITE!!
Please join State Representative Diana Maldonado as she hosts Mayor Bill White for the Williamson County for Bill White Campaign Kickoff!
Date: Saturday, February 6, 2010 Time: 10:30am – 1:00pm Location: Williamson County Democrats Office, 110 North Interstate 35, Suite 170, Round Rock [MAP]
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has blasted Gov. Rick Perry in recent debates and television ads as driven by the desires of lobbyists, but at least 23 former Hutchison aides have gone onto lucrative lobbying careers in Washington, according to Senate records.
And last year, Hutchison hired a former lobbyist for data company Choicepoint as a senior adviser in her Senate office.
In an ad that began airing Thursday, Hutchison’s campaign says lobbyists loom over Perry’s office, influencing major policies such as compulsory vaccinations for young girls and toll road contracts.
The senator’s attacks are hypocritical, Perry’s campaign aides argued, because of her longstanding association with lobbyists. Hutchison’s aides say that unlike the governor, she has never been unduly influenced by them.
In this corner, Rick:
Hutchison’s team highlights two former aides who lobbied for proposals that are Perry hallmarks: The Trans-Texas Corridor toll road plan, and a controversial executive order requiring young girls to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer.
“This mandate was driven by lobbyists and special interest in Austin,” Hutchison told a Dallas Republican women’s group Tuesday. “It was no coincidence that a former Perry chief of staff was a lobbyist for the company that manufactured the vaccine.”
Hutchison was referring to Mike Toomey, a former Perry chief of staff who was a top Austin lobbyist both before and after he worked for the governor, represented Merck, which makes an HPV vaccine.
Perry aide Dan Shelley met with state transportation officials on behalf of Spanish construction firm Cintra before going to work for Perry. Cintra won some of the state’s biggest road contracts, including for the Trans Texas Corridor, which has since been dropped.
“This is about having ethical standards so that the revolving door doesn’t start to affect policy in a way that hurts Texans,” said Jennifer Baker, a Hutchison campaign spokeswoman. “There are strict ethical guidelines in the Senate. She has fought for them, and she’ll bring those standards to Texas when she’s governor.”
In this corner Kay:
Perry’s campaign aides say his decisions weren’t influenced by lobbyists. They say the governor has enforced his own policy that prohibits former aides from lobbying his office for one year. Federal law places the same blackout period on former Senate staffers.
Earlier this week, Perry’s team tied Hutchison’s vote for the 2008 bank bailout program to lobbying by a former chief of staff, Dick Ribbentrop, who now works for Swiss bank UBS and lobbied on that issue, according to Senate records.
“It’s a clear connection,” said Mark Miner, a Perry spokesman. “The senator is being hypocritical in making accusations when the fact of the matter is her own staff is leaving to become lobbyists and she is hiring staff members who were lobbyists.”
Senate records show that Ribbentrop lobbied for the New York Stock Exchange for three years before he became her chief of staff in 2005. He left her office in 2007 to join UBS, where another former Hutchison aide, John Savercool, is a senior lobbyist. Lobbying laws don’t require lobbyists to indicate which lawmakers they contact on an issue. Ribbentrop didn’t return a message seeking comment.
In 2009, Hutchison rehired a former aide, David W. Davis, as senior adviser after he spent four years as vice president for government affairs at Choicepoint. She rehired another former aide, Lisette Mondello, whose husband once worked for Hutchison and now lobbies for Southwest Airlines and the Port of Houston Authority.
Baker said Davis never lobbied Hutchison when he worked at Choicepoint.
She added that Hutchison has supported laws that prohibit former Senate aides from lobbying the Senate for a year after leaving office.
That’s too close to call. Probably best we don’t elect either one of them as Governor of Texas. The pro-Rick blog put it this way:
More than cronyism… people hate hypocrisy. Kay is an amazingly huge hypocrite on this issue. It seriously amazes me that she would go down this path…
Better the lobbyist shill, than the hypocrite it seems.
Nevertheless, Greenville’s Bob Deuell told members of our editorial board this week that he would support a one-time boost of 10 cents a gallon in the motor fuels tax — the same increase that Republican John Carona of Dallas has called for.
Deuell has shown in the past that he can be more reasonable than some in his party. We’re still not there yet, but we’re getting closer to the where enough elected politicians will finally recognize, what many of us have known for a while - that an increase, and indexing of the gas tax is the best way to pay for roads in Texas. It’s a tough sell but not impossible, and a skilled politician can support it and get elected. And as long as it done in a way that tax payers are assured the money is going for roads, it is politically feasible.
But the decline is dramatic. A year ago, Combs forecast essentially flat sales taxes receipts in the budget year that started Sept. 1; instead, they’ve decreased by 12.9 percent in the first four months.
To meet Combs’ biennial revenue estimates, Texas needs to collect nearly $44 billion from its revenue workhorse, the 6.25-percent state sales tax. It produces 57 percent of state tax revenue and about a quarter of overall funds, including federal money.
But just one-sixth of the way into the new two-year budget, it has collected only $6.3 billion. Last year, collections from September through December were nearly $7.3 billion.
And the estimates of how big the deficit will be in for the next budget cycle is looking grim. There are “educated guesses” right now of a deficit somewhere between $10 – 20 billion dollars.
The last time Texas lawmakers had to cut the state budget was 2003, when they faced a $9.9 billion shortfall. Next year’s deficit very well could be bigger. Some guesses that have been posed:
$10.8 billion: John O’Brien, director, Legislative Budget Board
$15 billion: House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie
$19 billion to $20 billion: Sens. Royce West, D-Dallas, and Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso
Which brings us to the House Ways and Means Committee. The committee has a Democratic Chair, but an 8 – 3 GOP majority. Here’s what an “An Outside Observer Analysis” [.pdf] said last year when the committees were announced about Ways and Means:
As has been reported here – over and over again – TxDOT has done, and continues to do, a bad job of talking to the public on the issue of transportation. Today at the Texas Tribune there’s an interesting article, and video snippet, of a talk with Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows, A Hard Road. The end of the article shows that TxDOT, or at least Meadows, still doesn’t get it. Here’s his take on the what went wrong with the TTC:
And when staffers do try to do something innovative, he says, the Legislature doesn’t give them a chance.
Take the Trans-Texas Corridor: The effort to create a new approach to statewide travel has been universally bashed for its infringement on private property and its reliance on toll roads — so much so that Perry, its biggest promoter, has abandoned the project. “Did Trans-Texas fail because of bad process,” Meadows asks, “or because it was a bad idea? It has caused this agency to be criticized and damned, but that doesn’t mean the efforts are bad.”
If lawmakers aren’t going to allow for creative ways to find revenue, Meadows says, then it makes the agency’s relationships with them all the more important. The Legislature is “far and away” the best place to secure funds, he says. “I’ve never forgotten that.”
First characterizing the TTC as a project where TxDOT staffers did something innovative and the legislature didn’t give them a chance with is wrong. The TTC was a top down project that was attempted to be forced onto Texans by Perry and was sneaked through the legislature (see HB 3588), and wasn’t. Not to mention the fact that Delisi said just this past Monday that funding is not part of TxDOT work.
Based on anticipated, long-range price hikes, the purchasing power of the state motor fuels tax — 20 cents per gallon — is declining, Delisi said. TxDOT needs a stable source of funding, she said, though it’s not the transportation commission’s role to say where the money should come from.
It wasn’t TxDOT staffers so-called “innovative plan” that was the problem. It was the sneaky way that those who concocted this plan – Perry, Ric Williamson, Mike Krusee – tried to shove it down the public’s throat without their input that caused the TTC so many problems. If Perry and TxDOT would have started this whole converstaion, years ago, travelling the state and getting Texans inuput, instead of travelling the state, after their plan was complete, telling Texans what they had already decided for them, there likely would have been a different result.
But what the intereview with Meadows shows is that the TxDOT commissioners still don’t get it.
Defending the indefensible
Though the Texas Conservative Coalition echoed many of the same sentiments, its Director, John Colyandro, was taken to task by Chairman Senator John Carona for advocating the most expensive road tax while rejecting a more affordable gas tax increase. “How is that conservative?” asked Carona.
While Colyandro stopped short of endorsing Rick Perry’s position of having all new capacity being toll lanes handed over to foreign corporations that charge 75 cents PER MILE to use public roads, he did advocate that private toll roads have a legitimate role as part of a mix of both toll and non-toll roads.
Earlier in the hearing, Carona laid down the gauntlet asking, “I’m looking for someone to come and defend to me that a privately built toll road is less expensive than a free road ’cause it just ain’t so.” While Colyandro and many of the lobbyists and local politicians asked for the moratorium on private toll roads be lifted and remain “one of the tools in the tool box,” none could defend how that funding “option” was more affordable than a gas tax increase. Because it isn’t. It’s rather telling when even a so-called anti-tax advocate lobbies for the most expensive road funding option, but outright rejects the most affordable one. [Emphasis added].
Corporate toll roads are the most expensive for drivers – because of profits, guaranteed profits in many contracts – much more expensive than raising the gas tax. Read her whole report, and she also agrees that the TTC is very much alive. Also be sure to read TURF’s oral testimony[.pdf] and written testimony[.pdf].
