| Forgive me if this isn't still fresh "news" -- but I'd thought these tapes were long ago released. I had no idea this was still going on.
In 2005, there was a great deal of discussion that the influential millionaire, James Leininger, was holding private meetings with members in a room off the back hall of the Texas House. The Observer requested those videos, to determine whether or not a man who has spent millions of dollars on his pet issue -- school vouchers -- was, in fact, in the back halls of the Capitol. So now, two years, later, why haven't those tapes been released? The latest Texas Observer editorial: he Texas Department of Public Safety has now spent more than two years and almost $166,000 in lawyer fees fighting a Texas Observer request to release information we believe should clearly be made public. Attorney General Greg Abbott agrees. A state district judge agrees. The state public records law is on our side...
On October 24, in a courtroom at the University of Texas at Austin, DPS will try again to keep the information secret, this time in an appeal before the Third Court of Appeals. If that fails, and it probably will, we have no doubt DPS will go for a fourth strike by appealing to the state Supreme Court. This is patently absurd, especially since DPS is claiming they can't release the tapes because they are "protecting us from terrorists" -- despite the fact, as the Observer article points out, that those cameras are in plain sight to anyone who walks in the back hall. So unless Leininger is a terrorist, the DPS needs to stop wasting the taxpayer's money and hand over the tapes. Now. |
