Rick Perry has gotten quite comfortable as governor of Texas, even when the temporarily vacant mansion burns and he breaks his collarbone on a mountain biking ride.
He likes appointing the members of every board and commission. After eight-plus years in office, all the state’s governing boards are his appointees – a considerable number of them Perry political campaign donors.
He fills judicial vacancies. Five of the nine members of the Texas Supreme Court are Perry appointees, though all five were subsequently elected.
Perry is the vetoing-ist governor in history. Only 37 after this year’s regular legislative session, a new Perry low.
Perry knows how to use the perks, like the plane and the ability to travel around the state accompanied by several state troopers on his security detail.
Perry has made a show of signing bills at the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson (expanding Tier One research universities), Houston (a tax cut for 40,000 small businesses), the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (supplemental appropriations for the school, plus windstorm insurance), and Corpus Christi (windstorm insurance again).
Oh, and San Antonio. In front of the Alamo, no less, to sign a private property rights constitutional amendment proposal – even though constitutional amendments are solely the Legislature’s job; the governor has no legal role in the process.
But Perry had vetoed an eminent domain bill in 2007. With an intense TV ad war coming up with U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 GOP primary election, Perry wants to make sure he is seen waving the property rights banner, with a symbol of Texas freedom as a backdrop.
Perry also was on the news in the state’s three major television markets, plus lots of smaller ones. Not a bad investment for Perry of his time and your money.
Perry certainly didn’t invent what amounts to campaigning at taxpayer expense. There’s a thin line between the public duties of a governor or a United States senator or other elected official and their campaign performances – right on up to the president of the United States.
All of these bill-signings around the state were designed to inform the public outside Austin of what their government has been doing and, not incidentally, to try to keep Perry’s name identification high – and hopefully boost his positive rating and lower his negative. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s the only one who gets to call a special session, to set the topics for legislators to consider – and, of course, to keep his name in play.
Perry had been in Houston several weeks earlier, in a business establishment, to dramatize his refusal of $556 million in federal stimulus money for unemployment benefits. Now Perry’s getting blasted by none other than the Houston Chronicle in an editorial, as the Texas unemployment rate has gone over seven percent.
Since Perry’s turndown of the federal money, the Texas Workforce Commission is contemplating issuing up to $2 billion in bonds to repay the money the state will have to borrow from the feds for unemployment coverage anyway. Perry maintains that accepting the strings to broaden unemployment coverage that go along with the stimulus money would cost Texas in the long run.
“That coldly ignores the fact that thousands of Texas workers who could have received the additional benefits won’t,” the Chronicle said, “while Lone Star employers will still be paying significantly higher unemployment taxes. Instead of getting our fair share of stimulus dollars, Texas will instead be a borrower and issuer of new bonded indebtedness. Quite a price to pay for a political gesture.”
One place where Perry might have preferred less publicity was in the dust-up over the resignation under pressure of now-former Texas A&M University President Elsa Murano.
Her resignation from the helm of Perry’s alma mater came after Mike McKinney, chancellor of the A&M System, gave her a poor review for involving the A&M faculty too much in her decision-making process. She also didn’t hire McKinney’s choice as her vice-president for research.
The move, and other McKinney initiatives, caused a furor on the College Station campus. Last week, the Texas A&M Faculty Senate passed a resolution of “no confidence” in McKinney by a 55-to-9 vote.
McKinney is Perry’s former chief of staff and longtime buddy from their “Pit Bull” days in the Texas House of Representatives. Perry also appointed all the current A&M regents.
McKinney told the faculty senate that “Any idea that [Perry] is involved in the day-to-day operations of Texas A&M is flat wrong. In the 25 years that I have known Rick Perry, he has never once mentioned even a thought about being president or chancellor of A&M.”
“He likes serving as governor of Texas and intends to continue doing so,” McKinney said. “The conspiracy theories of some secret plan are simply illogical.”
Veteran political writer Dave McNeely can be contacted at davemcneely111@gmail.com.
