Par for the Course
July 10th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Another Bush administration nomination, another candidate distinguished for her partisan credentials. This time it’s Diane Rath, Chair and Commissioner of the Texas Workforce Commission. She’s up for Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Rath’s nomination comes weeks after a more blatant political hack, Hans von Spakovsky, was tabbed by Bush to serve on the Federal Elections Commission. If confirmed by the Senate, Rath, who is from San Antonio and whose family has long been part of Republican party politics, would be put in charge of programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Head Start, the Healthy Marriage Initiative and Medicaid health care programs for children, reported the Houston Chronicle.
Rath’s name came up in 2004 in connection with a lawsuit alleging a partisan purge — boy, does that sound familiar — at the Workforce Commission. As reported in a Chron story now available only through Nexis:
Former governmental affairs employee Bruce Homoya in his lawsuit in Travis County district court claims that agency Executive Director Larry Temple purged Democrats from the commission’s legislative liaison department in fall 2003 and replaced them with Republican “must hires.”
Homoya said agency executives tried to find out his party affiliation but could not. Homoya said he was retained after governmental relations director Carol Jones decided he was “more Republican than Democrat.”
Homoya claims he was fired last January when he refused to help implement Jones’ plan to lobby the Legislature for a conservative political agenda in 2005. Homoya’s suit says Jones’ plan was designed for Temple and commission Chairwoman Diane Rath.
“The Jones plan clearly called for lobbying the Legislature by using the agency’s governmental relations department in an illegal manner to further the goals of the executive director and chair,” the lawsuit said.
State agencies are prohibited from lobbying the Legislature.
The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the Jones memo about 10 days after Homoya’s firing in January. The memo described how to turn the agency into a driving force on welfare reform and economic development.
Jones, likely thanks to her over-the-top memo, quickly got the axe. But if the emphasis on economic development (in an agency that handles stuff like welfare-to-work programs) sounds like a misplaced priority, it wouldn’t be the first time. Seems nearly every appointed office in this state just loves bidness — like our Secretaries of State, for instance.
Rath got her start in politics thanks to an appointment to the Workforce Commission by then-Gov. Bush. Before that she worked for voucher-moneybags James Leininger’s Kinetic Concepts, Inc. as Senior Director of Public Affairs. She also named her daughter Reagan after you-know-how, which can’t hurt the resume with these GOP partisans.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Someone should also investigate this woman and her executive director for handing out contracts to friends and business partners.
July 10th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
She is a very ambitious person and, while at the TEC, not the kind to let the details of state law or federal regulations get in her way.
July 11th, 2007 at 6:31 am
[…] into working with Diane Rath, who chairs the Texas Workforce Commission and who President Bush just nominated for a high-level job at the Dept. of Health and Human Services. After reading the news of […]