Thursday, April 09, 2009
Averitt Advocates Consideration of Social Good
Yesterday’s debate over Senate Bill 16, Sen. Kip Averitt’s sweeping clean air bill that calls for enhanced scrutiny of power plant locations and established incentives for the creation and adoption of cleaner technologies may have offered a window into the mindset of future Legislatures.
Sen. Mike Jackson attempted to amend the bill with a reasonable-sounding transparency requirement that all regulatory agencies conduct and publicize an extensive cost-benefit analysis on each new permit before granting approval. Jackson explained that he wanted everyone to be given a view of “what we are spending money for and how much gain we realize for amount of money spent.”
SB 16, for the first time, requires regulators to look at the bigger picture, going beyond just fiscal cost, when considering new permits. In laying out his opposition to the amendment, Averitt perhaps gave a glimpse of how the definition of “cost-benefit” might shift in a greener Texas.
“At some point, we have to realize there is a social good to doing some of our programs – for example, clean air. We can put up coal plants in downtown Houston that don’t have clean air components to it, and it would certainly lower costs of electricity. But, it would be devastating to the air quality,” he said. “At some point, we have to see if there is a social good being accomplished by our expenditures and permitting procedures.”
SB 16 tentatively passed 22-9
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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