By J. Lyn Carl, GalleryWatch.com
Austin, TX – Less than 24 hours after the Texas Legislature stripped the State Comptroller's Office of two high-profile programs, Republican Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn took her case to the people.
And her comments sounded a little like a campaign speech.
It is widely acknowledged that some members of the Senate and the GOP leadership wanted the e-Texas and Texas School Performance Review programs removed from Strayhorn's jurisdiction as retaliation for the less-than-flattering remarks the comptroller has made in recent months about the leadership and the legislature.
An amendment to HB 7, the government reorganization bill, removed the two programs from the comptroller's office and handed them over to the Legislative Budget Board. Many Republican members of the House and Senate Democrats rallied in support of the comptroller, but their efforts were futile. The Senate passed the Conference Committee on HB 7 on Friday and the House passed it on Sunday. It did not pass either House without considerable debate. On Sunday, Rep. Terry Keel (R-Austin) railed against the bill, calling it a "political shot at the comptroller."
Fearing the worst, Strayhorn Friday sent a letter to Gov. Rick Perry urging him to veto HB 7. She said in her letter, "Had these programs not been administered well, I could understand efforts to move them elsewhere. But we have done a grand job. They are forces for positive and conservative change in Texas government."
Today, Strayhorn spoke to the Greater Houston Partnership Business Issues Luncheon, and addressed the implications of HB 7 and removal of the two programs long administered not only by Strayhorn, but by previous comptrollers.
Strayhorn said that the e-Texas and Texas School Performance Review programs have won national and international acclaim and have recommended more than $16 billion in savings for Texas taxpayers while clearly benefiting Texas schoolchildren.
"Yesterday, these programs were stripped from the Texas Comptroller's Office - not Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office - but the Texas Comptroller's Office," she said. "Texas taxpayers and Texas school children and the Texas Comptroller's Office are being punished for me telling the truth.
"I was telling the truth when I said we had a budget shortfall. I was telling the truth when I said the budget did not balance. I was telling the truth when I said there was $700 million available in early July to restore cuts before critical health care was eliminated for frail elderly and medically needy children. And I was telling the truth when I said new fees, charges and out-of-pocket expenses were going to cost Texans $2.7 billion more over the next two years."
Strayhorn laid the blame for the moving of the programs squarely at the doorstep of the governor's mansion. She said Gov. Rick Perry last week "behind closed doors in the Pink Granite Building told the House Republican Caucus he wanted these programs stripped from the Comptroller's Office because 'it was so personal.'"
"What I say behind closed doors is the same thing I say standing on the Capitol steps in the sunshine," said Strayhorn.
The comptroller then listed things she described as "personal to me," including 160,000 Texas children who lost their health insurance, thousands of jobs that have disappeared, and higher education expenditures per student decreasing "under this governor's administration;" skyrocketing homeowner property tax rates and insurance; unacceptable inequity" in the state's public education system; and the state's transportation crisis.
"And what is most personal to me is the lost civility, the lost dignity, the lost honor, the lost effectiveness, and the lost spirit of bipartisanship championed by then-Governor and now President George W. Bush."
Strayhorn cited Sam Houston, who just before the battle of San Jacinto was reported to say, "We are nerved for the contest and we must conquer or we will perish."
That being said, Strayhorn boasted, "I, too, am nerved for the contest.
"This administration can take away every desk and every chair and every program in the Texas Comptroller's Office, and I will still tell the people of Texas the truth."