04.24.07
Hawkins Will Stay?!
Albert Hawkins will keep his job says the AAS, Hawkins could get nod from Senate committee tomorrow. It’s amazing the excuses Sen. Jackson is making. Just imagine if a Democrat said this kind of stuff about an incompetent appointee who’s running a state agency like Mr. Hawkins, what Sen. Jackson would be saying.
In February, Hawkins took some tough questions from senators about Perry’s executive order requiring girls to be vaccinated against HPV.
“He was the closest they could get to the governor, so they could vent their frustration at him,” Jackson said.
Senators also questioned Hawkins on the state’s now-canceled contract with Accenture LLP for call centers to enroll Texans in social services.
Jackson said he believes Hawkins is performing well in a very tough job.
“Just about everything we do could be handled in a different way, but you live and you grow and you learn,” Jackson said.
Here’s the lowdown from the Observer Blog who’s been on top of this story for a while:
But the clear political subtext of the day’s events was a strong push by the offices of Gov. Rick Perry and House Speaker Tom Craddick to save Hawkins’ job despite the fact that the commissioner’s poor decision making has resulted in hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds wasted. The HHSC czar has drawn lawmakers’ ire this session: first he took heat — unfairly in our view — for Perry’s HPV executive order. More recently, legislators of both parties have become angered by revelations that Hawkins moved ahead with the Accenture and TIERS projects despite numerous warnings from the feds and his own auditors that these costly experiments would fail. The Observer has broken much of this story in the past two weeks in exposes on the Accenture contract and TIERS.
And for that Sen. Jackson sayd, “Heckuva job Hawkins”. Just like Rummy and Alberto, loyal ’til the end. If Perry was to fire Mr. Hawkins then maybe, just maybe, Texans would have to hold the governor responsible, and we can’t have that.