Burnt Orange Report

Scandal After Scandal...

By Andrew Dobbs

I am a History major at UT and I tend to focus on Texas and Southern Political History. I wouldn't call myself an expert on the history of Texas politics, but I would say I have a pretty good understanding a nice perspective in these sorts of things. Having explained that, I have to dig really really far back to find as much abject and unfettered corruption in such a diverse number of programs as now exists under Perry-Craddick-DeLay.

Today, two new scandals have begun to emerge or rather have developed further. The first scandal has to do with the ongoing controversy surrounding Tom Craddick's selection as speaker:

Friends and family of House Speaker Tom Craddick have raised $108,900 in donations from corporations to aid a political committee designed to help the speaker. (...)

The committee, Stars Over Texas PAC, has raised $33,250 from individual donors but has garnered three times that amount from corporations ­ including a $100,000 check from AT&T, state filings show. (...)

"With the unprecedented level of scrutiny from Democratic prosecutors, Democratic organizations and the press, the Stars Over Texas PAC will adhere to the highest standards of legal and ethical activities," said GOP consultant Ray Sullivan. (...)

Tracy King, a government relations specialist with AT&T, said the reasoning behind the donation was a way to be helpful to "the agenda makers and dialogue makers."

"In Texas, you look for the opportunities to support organizations and individuals that are helpful to you, or supportive of you, or could be supportive of you," she said.

Ms. King said AT&T is working in the home state of SBC, and they have found, "It's very difficult for any competitor of SBC to really get a seat at the table, and we really want a seat at the table. (...)

The Stars Over Texas PAC was formed in December with the goal of donating to Republican legislative candidates who will support Mr. Craddick's leadership in the House. For the last nine months, Dallas businessman Bill Ceverha has served as treasurer.

Mr. Ceverha, a longtime booster and adviser to Mr. Craddick, also was the treasurer for TRMPAC, the PAC that has been the subject of the Travis County grand jury investigation for how it spent $600,000 in corporate contributions. (...)

Mr. Sullivan said Stars Over Texas was started by the speaker's daughter, Christi Craddick, a former lobbyist. Ms. Craddick is paid $83,000 annually from her father's political campaign account to work on his behalf.

Craddick apparantly never heard the line "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." This guy is already in the hotseat for his TRMPAC bullshit in 2002 and now he's back to playing his old games again. Maybe he's addicted to corporate cash. Maybe he, DeLay, Perry, Ceverha and all the others need to form the world's first CCAA chapter- Corporate Cash Addicts Anonymous. They need to admit that they are powerless over corporate cash and their lives have become unmanageable...

The second scandal deals with the spreading rot in the health and human services here in Texas:

A deputy human services commissioner awarded a $1.2 million consulting contract to a company whose lobbyist employed the commissioner's former business partner as a consultant.

Gregg Phillips oversaw the Texas Health and Human Services Commission's award of a public information contract last year to Accenture to develop a strategy to inform the public and state employees about a state social services overhaul.

Accenture's lobbyist in seeking the contract was Strategic Partnerships Inc. of Austin.

Shortly after Phillips became the No. 2 director of the state social services agency in March 2003, Strategic Partnerships hired Phillips' former business partner, Paige Harkins, as a "senior strategy consultant" to advise companies how to lobby Phillips for contracts.

Strategic Partnerships' founding partner Mary Scott Nabers said Harkins never directly lobbied Phillips and never worked on the Accenture account. Nabers said she also was unaware that Phillips' wife, Helen, continued to work with Harkins in an unrelated business venture. (...)

Nabers said she knew Harkins and Phillips had been partners in a Georgia-based company that Phillips had founded, Enterject Inc. But Nabers said Harkins had told her that she and Phillips had severed all business ties.

The Georgia Secretary of State lists Phillips' wife, Helen, as the chief financial officer for Enterject. Phillips said his wife is just a part-time bookkeeper for the company.

Phillips last week announced plans to resign from the social services agency effective Sept. 3 for personal reasons. (...)

Suzy Woodford, executive director of Common Cause of Texas, described Harkins employment by Nabers as a "sweetheart deal" because of Harkins' relationship with Phillips and his wife.

The Chronicle reported earlier this week that Enterject earlier this year had won a $670,270 contract from the Texas Workforce Commission to process immigrant green cards. Commission Executive Director Larry Temple said an internal audit proved he played no role in awarding that contract.

Okay, so this one is trickier to understand. Gregg Phillips is the number 2 guy at the state Health and Human Services Department and in that capacity awarded a contract to Accenture. Accenture's lobbying firm is Strategic Partnerships Inc. and SPI has Paige Harkins on the payroll. Harkins used to be Phillips' business partner and in fact, Phillips' wife Helen is the CFO of Harkins' company Enterject. Enterject, by the way, got a $670,270 contract from the agency that is run by its CFO's husband. Complicated, but very crooked.

Add this to the $20 million+ of CHIP money that just went up in smoke and several other huge scandals and it looks like our social services in this state are overrun by corruption. Essentially the GOP leadership has appointed big business people who are so greedy they take advantage of the poor in order to make themselves and their cronies even wealthier. This is despicable and Texas deserves better.

More tomorrow, I'm sure. In the meantime, find someone good to give some money to. Our links are on the side of the page- they need it to kick assholes like these out of office.