Perry forces Hispanic Veterans Group to Close Office
By Byron LaMasters
This has been in the news for a couple of weeks now, but it made the Dallas Morning News again today. A Hispanic Veterans group that opposed redistricting is now being punished by Governor Perry. He cut $300,000 from their budget, which is forcing them to close their office in Dallas.
A Hispanic veterans and civil rights group will close its Dallas office Tuesday, the third office to shut down since Texas Gov. Rick Perry cut off money for the organization, which has opposed Republican redistricting efforts.
The American GI Forum already has closed offices of its National Veterans Outreach program in Fort Worth and Austin, ending job training and assistance services for local veterans. Seven workers have lost or will lose their jobs, said Ignacio Leija, vice president of service operations.
Mr. Leija said the closings were permanent. The other offices' leases have ended, and the Dallas lease will be up at the end of the month.
"We can't wait. We've had to close the office," Mr. Leija said.
Mr. Leija said the GI Forum was never told why its $300,000 grant from the governor's office was not renewed at the end of July.
Kathy Walt, Mr. Perry's spokesman, said new standards were being drafted for organizations that receive the money. The decision not to renew the American GI Forum grant was part of that standards redesign, she said.
Mr. Perry's office told The Associated Press last month that the group could reapply for the grant. But Mr. Leija said the organization had not been told it could reapply.
So, which party is playing the race card, again? It's time to expose the say-one-thing-and-do-another Republican hypocrisy with minorities. Heck, with everyone.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at August 12, 2003 06:00 PM
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And does Governor Goodhair have a copy of these new "standards" that he can give us right now, to explain this away?
Or are these "standards" still under construction?
Where are these standards and when did anyone else get to know about them?
So, which party is playing the race card, again?
It's evident which blog is.
The American GI Forum organized strident, partisan and quite bitter resistance to an issue Governor Perry has put his entire political credibility behind. And you question Perry's decision to hold back his discretionary funding from such a group? What sort of unrealistic political make-believe world do you live in? To fail to punish such opposition would be political suicide...and to sanctimoniously decry such payback is either naive or specious.
Note that in this context, the fact that the GI Forum is overwhelmingly Hispanic is absolutely irrelevant. Except, perhaps insofar as their reflexive opposition to the policy initiatives of a Republican governor.
Note also that I have not resorted to the official line of Perry's office - that the money was withheld from a number of groups in a bureacratic snafu, and they are not singling out GI Forum - in the interest of debating the point on your terms...because it still doesn't stand up as a racist issue. As a partisan issue, I acknowledge (in spite of the "official line" from Perry's office)...but not a racial one.
"Retraction due?"
Looks like the Gov.'s already issued it, Harden.
[/sarcasm]
Why would BOR retract it? Just because it got too hot and Perry blinked doesn't mean that the whole thing goes down the Memory Hole (outside of the Trailer Park, I mean).
