It appears Gov. Rick Perry keeps a more detailed schedule than what his office has previously released this year. In what might have been a mistake by the governor’s office, Democrat Bill White’s campaign — through an open records request — received one day of Perry’s schedule that actually shows details not included in other publicly-released governor’s schedules. The Sept. 15 schedule received by White’s campaign on Tuesday stands out for including typically omitted information like drive times to and from meetings, briefings with staff, names of staff members involved with each event and minute-by-minute breakdowns of what is set to happen at various Perry appearances. No other schedules released this year show that level of detail.
Perry's schedules have been the subject of White's attacks for some time -- their campaign has its own website, Part-Time Perry, devoted to chronicling the (non)work that Perry does on a regular basis. White's campaign is hitting Perry hard for hiding his schedule from the public. From their press release:
"Rick Perry must immediately release the schedule he's been hiding from Texas taxpayers," said White.
"Rick Perry's doing Rick Perry's business while taking a full state salary and charging taxpayers for his lavish lifestyle." Perry's own website quotes him saying, "if the taxpayers are picking up the bill, they ought to be able to look at every item on the receipt."
Perry (in)famously said that there's nobody in Texas that works harder than he does. (See the Texas Tribune video, "Perry Says He Works 24/7, Despite Bare Schedule"). I'd agree to say that there's nobody who looks out for Rick Perry more than Rick Perry. As Bill White has said for months: Rick Perry is in it for himself.
Elise Hu of the Texas Tribune wrote about Perry's spare schedule previously, in her piece: "Perry's Spare Schedule Feeds Transparency Concerns." She also goes into extensive detail about another one of Perry's privacy practices -- deleting e-mails after only keeping them for a week:
Case in point: Perry’s office maintains a policy of deleting its e-mails every seven days, a shorter retention period than almost all other state agencies and major cities. It also allows staffers to decide which e-mails involve state business and thus must be retained, leaving open the possibility that individual employees who aren't well-versed in the law are innocently but irrevocably destroying public records. Perry’s aides have defended the retention policy by saying it simply follows that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But the destruction of documents can make it difficult, if not impossible, to piece together what happens inside the governor's office. In 2007, for example, reporters were unable to determine what Perry knew about systematic abuse inside juvenile jails, and when he might have known it, because his office deleted e-mails long before the scandal broke.
Finally, here's Perry getting extremely defensive about his schedule in his WFAA interview last week, proclaiming at one point that "I consider everything I'm doing state business"
