Burnt Orange Report

TV Time

By Vince Leibowitz

I made an appearance on "Face to Face" with Neal Barton, anchor of the 5, 6 and 10 p.m. news for the Tyler NBC affiliate, KETK Region 56 this afternoon during the station's 5 p.m. news cast.

"Face to Face" is a little two-minute segment Neal Barton does weekdays at five where he basically talks current events and politics with local political peoplel.

Lately, they've had a lot of Republicans on, so I was asked to come and give a perspective from the "other side."

Sadly, since it is a live segment, there are never any snippits of it on the station's website. And, since it's only two minutes, there is not a lot you can really get in to.

I was asked about school finance and children's healthcare.

I can't remember word for word what I said about school finance, but I mentioned the VLT proposal, and that I believed it would be what the Republican leadership ended up settling for after they rejected business tax hikes. I also noted that legislators need to be careful in repealing Robin Hood because so many schools in East Texas--specifically all of the districts in Van Zandt County--benefit from Chapter 41 "recapture" funds. And, of course, I noted that the majority of Texas schools are recipient schools, while a very small minority are "donor" schools under Share The Wealth. I also think I said that VLTs were an "inappropriate" way to fund public education. I wanted to use Bob Glaze's catch phrase, "gambling has always been a sleazy way to fund education," but I thought better of it and came out with "inappropriate."

On CHIPS, I do remember pretty much verbatim one good quote I got in, which was, "There's only a small surplus this biennium, and it's not enough to restore all of the cuts the Legislature made last session. In spite of all of the outcry over the cuts--especially in the last election--I suspect the Republican leadership is going to try and see just how little they can actually get by with restoring."

Needless to say, I was honored to be asked, and hope to be asked back again sometime in the future. Hopefully, though, they'll get my name right on the overline next time though.

Right before the commercial break preceeding my segment, I was sitting at the anchor desk with Neal Barton and was actually reading his teleprompter--unaware that the camera on the far right of the studio was going to cut to me and that he was going to be voicing over a live image of me. I realized this when I looked up to the in-studio television high above the newsroom and saw my self looking up at...myself. I think I had been on screen for four or five seconds, which probably means the audience saw me look perplexed when I saw my name misspelled on the teleprompter. I think this is especially true because one of the camera men reminded me to "smile" on the break (and, of course), look into the camera if I wanted to make a point (which I did). Not sure if I smiled or not--not much to smile about regarding the Lege these days.