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All Coverage

  • Making Bad News Out of a Budget Surplus

    By Ross Ramsey

    Sheesh, before you get all bothered about the grand mal disaster in the state budget, take a breath. There is no grand mal disaster in the state budget. What you've got -- as we've noted in detail over the last couple of months -- is a situation where the state has several agencies with budget messes of varying degrees of difficulty, and plenty of money to clean it all up. What you've also got is a presidential campaign and lots of people who'd like to put this in the worst light. Full Story 

  • State Long-Distance Phone Codes Stolen

    By Ross Ramsey

    The Texas Department of Public Safety's Capitol Police have started a criminal investigation of fraudulent use of the state's long-distance phone network by college students who apparently got hold of agency calling card numbers. So far, that investigation involves four state agencies whose phone usage recently took unexpectedly large jumps. The investigators think college students across Texas have been using calling card codes to steal tens of thousands of dollars worth of phone time from the state's Tex-an (pronounced Techs-ANN) phone system. Full Story 

  • Property Taxes Too Cheap to Meter

    By Ross Ramsey

    Lawmakers knew that letting new companies sell electricity in Texas would bring some financial drama to a staid industry, but they predicted it would take two years to get that far down the road. As you might have heard by now, they were wrong, and the price tag on the mistake is hovering in the $50 million range. Full Story 

  • Sweet Nothings Trump Nasty Somethings

    By Ross Ramsey

    Not that anyone expected unpleasantness or noise or a floor fight at the state GOP convention, but there sure were a lot of relieved Republicans on hand when the thing was over and no figurative blood had been spilled. There was no ugly fight amongst the factions. The statewide elected officials were not left off the list of national delegates, as some had feared they would be. The platform didn't take on any wacky, headline-grabbing new provisions. Full Story 

  • Official Spin: Sick, But in Recovery

    By Ross Ramsey

    If you stick with the riff that the bad ol' Democratic Party is dead, then be ready for this to turn into a slasher movie; the corpse will certainly rise for a sequel, if not soon, then certainly in a year's time when the Republicans are picking their way through a post-George W. Bush landscape. Full Story 

  • From Roadkill to Road Warrior

    By Ross Ramsey

    About a year ago, the people in the highway business in Texas were fresh off of a legislative victory. They had killed a bond program that some thought would endanger future funding of roads. They feared, among other things, that the interest on those bonds would eat into money that would otherwise be spent on roads, and by extension, on road builders. Full Story 

  • Ducking Opportunities to Stumble

    By Ross Ramsey

    Unless there's a sudden change of heart, George W. Bush won't be speaking to the state GOP convention in Houston. That's not news. But in the rush of coverage, nobody stopped to try to figure out why the candidate decided to ignore his own tribe. Full Story 

  • Governing on Eggshells

    By Ross Ramsey

    It's quiet in Texas politics and government at the moment, but only part of that can be attributed to the annual lull that comes with summer. Much of it is a result of presidential politics. Full Story 

  • A Break for Prison Guards

    By Ross Ramsey

    Texas prison guards who've been on the job for more than three years will get a pay hike of $138 a month on top of the $100 a month given all state employees during the last legislative session. That means their pay will rise a total of $2,856 annually, almost as much as the $3,000 pay hike the Legislature gave to Texas teachers last year. Full Story 

  • Acronyms of the Week: T.D.E.D., F.U.B.A.R.

    By Ross Ramsey

    The honchos at the Texas Department of Economic Development tried to get rid of former legislator Randall Riley quietly, and in fact, the executive director and the chairman of the agency apparently went out of their way to get folks in the Pink Building to talk Riley into quitting. But it finally came to a force-out when Riley got a call from friendlies in the lieutenant governor's office who said TDED Chairman Mark Langdale and Executive Director Jeff Moseley wanted to wring his neck. Full Story 

  • Tweaking Facts in the Presidential Race

    By Ross Ramsey

    You've heard that aphorism: "When elephants fight, the grass suffers." Well, the presidential race shows all signs of doing for the reputation of this fair state what previous contests did for the luster of Massachusetts, Arkansas, California and Georgia. The home states of governors who run for the presidency often come away looking like prospects for visits from the Peace Corps. Full Story 

  • Four Dems in Ohio

    By Ross Ramsey

    The spin engines went into overtime when four Texas Democrats went campaigning in Ohio for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. The official message was a two-parter. Bush's folks touted the bipartisan nature of the deal, strumming a chord they're playing to try to contrast Bush as a non-partisan and his opponent, Democrat Al Gore, as a partisan. Secondly, since Gore's attacks on Bush's record have begun to gather some steam, the four were there to fly the flag and say they were ready to punch anyone attacking the Lone Star State. Full Story 

  • t's Not a Pretty Process, But We Have a Ballot

    By Ross Ramsey

    Even by runoff standards, this was pitiful. One in 25 registered voters actually cast a runoff ballot in Texas this year, with several counties turning in record low turnouts and local races -- as often happens in a runoff -- driving attendance. Republicans turned out 219,974 voters, or 1.9 percent of the 11.6 million Texans who carry political hunting licenses in their wallets. Democrats turned out 246,285 Texas voters -- about 2.1 percent of the total. The 4 percent turnout this year compares with a turnout percentage of 7.37 in the last presidential round in 1996. Full Story 

  • Strolling Through the Home Stretch

    By Ross Ramsey

    To imagine an intrigued and engaged voter, you first have to imagine an intriguing and engaging runoff race, and those are scarce this year. There are but a handful, and fewer still involve incumbents still fighting for their jobs. Full Story 

  • Groundhog Day at Economic Development

    By Ross Ramsey

    The Texas Department of Economic Development could get a new board of directors and be stripped of two of its highest-profile programs if a recommendation from the state's Sunset Commission gets into print as a final report and through the Legislature next session. Full Story 

  • Gov. Bush Won't Be There...

    By Ross Ramsey

    Expect a photogenic skirmish for the benefit of the TV cameras when the Republican Attorneys General Association, or RAGA, gathers at the end of the month at the Barton Creek Resort in Austin. Texas AG John Cornyn is one of the founders of the GOP group and is a member of its executive committee. With the group holding its spring conference in a presidential candidate's back yard, a couple of non-profit outfits -- Texans for Public Justice and the Center for Public Integrity -- are taking shots at him and the group, calling it everything from a bad idea to a protection racket. Full Story 

  • What the Hell Happened Over There?

    By Ross Ramsey

    You know it's an upset when the winner, the loser and the allegedly dispassionate observers are all surprised on Election Day. Nobody even came close to predicting the result of the GOP primary in the 3rd Senate district. In fact, operatives in both campaigns were expecting a runoff and hoping, respectively, for a narrow win that would avoid an April contest. Full Story 

  • This One's His Own Best Friend

    By Ross Ramsey

    If you haven't heard of David McQuade Leibowitz, you haven't been in front of a television set in Bexar County, Texas. The San Antonio trial lawyer is mounting a Democratic primary challenge against Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who won office in a special election in November. And if money is the mother's milk of politics, Leibowitz is one big, big baby: He's loaned himself $429,000 and a boatload of that money is going into television advertising. Full Story 

  • Open to Everything But Vouchers

    By Ross Ramsey

    Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, has politically remade himself a couple of times. He was an elected member of the State Board of Education in the mid-1980s when reformers led by Ross Perot successfully pushed the idea of an appointed board. Having lost that job, he ran for the state Legislature, where he was in the middle of the education reform and school finance wars waged from the late 1980s into the 90s. Then he became something of a partisan, a move that cost him some of his clout and that he's apparently ready to abandon. He says it was fun, but he wants to go back to the education concerns that attracted him to government in the first place. Full Story