Wednesday, May 20, 2009
McLeroy’s Zombie Nomination Lumbers Toward Senate
Controversial and quotable State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy had his presumed dead nomination to retain his post revived this afternoon. Senate Nominations Chair Sen. Mike Jackson called a surprise committee meeting and passed McLeroy out of committee with a 4-2 vote.
"Anytime someone by themselves becomes the whole point of discussion, the center of the discussion or the center of controversy, it's time for that person to step aside and I think that would have been a better choice on his part," says Sen. Kirk Watson, one of the dissenting voters who predicts the nomination will inspire "significant discussion" when it hits the floor.
"I've learned to never really be surprised by anything that might happen up here, particularly this late in the session," he says. "But, the impression was that he probably did not have the 21 votes to be confirmed and, as a result of that, would be held up in committee. What this indicates to me is that somebody has indicated that they would change their vote and be a favorable vote on the floor, so they felt safe voting them out of committee."
McLeroy has indicated to Jackson that he has had some level of success lobbying the senators, but Jackson indicated to reporters that the vote will still be "awful close."
"McLeroy's entire term as Chair has been committee after commitee full of chaos and putting politics ahead of kids. He has said he won't listen to experts, and he won't listen to educators," says Kathy Miller, president of the decidedly anti-McLeroy Texas Freedom Network. "I just think the people of Texas deserve better than a lone dentist making all education policy for all Texas students in all of our public schools. There are a number of fair minded and reasonable people on the State Board of Education that the Governor could choose from."
According to Jackson, the undead nomination of Don McLeroy should hit the floor on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
Coming to a Texas highway near you: License plate readers
Deep in the Senate's version of the massive TXDoT bill is a provision that, if not stripped out in conference committee, will allow local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to install license plate reading cameras on Texas highways. The technology - already in widespread use in surveillance-crazy Britain - is very powerful, enabling the government to automatically photograph the license plates of moving vehicles and check the information against databases. If the system finds a "match," officers can be alerted.
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Senate Bill 690: Trimming the Grassroots
Karen Hall’s knees still haven’t recovered from gathering signatures door-to-door for an amendment to Bryan’s city charter. “Democracy is a messy business,” she says, “but we like it.”
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Women to Watch: Rep. Kristi Thibaut, D-Houston
After she lost her first campaign for a House seat from Houston in 2006, Kristi Thibaut showed up in Austin anyway. What she encountered, as she lobbied unsuccessfully for lower utility rates with fellow ACORN activists, was almost enough to make her wonder why she'd wanted that seat in the first place.
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One Weekend a Month, Two Weeks a Year, Five Years in Jail
Sometimes our legislators don't even know what's in their own bills. This morning, Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van) discussed his House Bill 1165 before the Defense & Veterans Affairs Committee and it was evident that he hadn't read - or maybe didn't understand - what all was in it.
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