Texas House Insurance Committee Chairman John Smithee has made many of his fellow Texans along the Gulf Coast angry.

They have a point.

Smithee, R-Amarillo, has told coastal residents that windstorm insurance costs should be borne by them alone. Panhandle residents don’t have a dog in that hunt, he has suggested with legislation that observers say will make it virtually impossible for coastal homeowners to insure their homes and businesses.

As a former Gulf Coast resident, I feel their pain.

Nick Jiminez, editorial page editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, noted in a column that the Texas economy is intertwined tightly, that the entire state relies on the coast. The petrochemical complex stretching from Beaumont and Port Arthur to Corpus Christi, he writes while referring to a Perryman Group study, provides 87 percent of Texas’ refined petroleum products. “Every Panhandle farmer with a tractor that runs on diesel or an Amarillo business that depends on goods moved through Texas ports has a stake in reasonable insurance rates for the coast,” Jiminez writes.

Touche, my opinion-writing brother.

We’re all Texans, right? Right?

Although folks today are talking mostly about the weather, I prefer to focus on Amarillo College.

AC’s regents appear to be heading toward a popular choice for the next college president. They’ve elected to look only inside — within the AC ranks — for someone to succeed the late Steven Jones. And to date, they have just one applicant, Paul Matney, who’s been serving as acting president for several months, while Jones battled valiantly against cancer.

The college — not to mention Matney — would have been served better by looking far and wide for a president. But AC has committed to the in-house search, which is the regents’ call.

But just how popular would Matney’s ascension be? Consider this little tidbit.

The AC president’s job is a non-political post, yet Matney wears his politics on his sleeve. He’s a Democrat and proud of it, which doesn’t bother those who know him in the heavily Republican Panhandle.

I attended a luncheon recently. I sat at a table hosted by a longtime Potter County Republican activist. He’s a conservative — and just as proud of his political philosophy as Matney is of his.

Matney passed by our table, said “hello” to everyone there and walked on. My Republican friend then said to his tablemates, “That man needs to be the next Amarillo College president.”

Given that politics so often these days gets in the way of personal relationships and professional respect, that comment looked for all the world like the highest praise imaginable.

Randall County’s Courthouse — which hasn’t functioned as one in decades — is getting a facelift.

Hooray! Except for this little complication: It’ll be on the outside. The inside will remain unusable.

Historic preservationists are giddy at the prospect of the courthouse, which was built in 1909, is going to look pretty. The county had obtained a $1.9 million grant from the state. Pro-courthouse forces then persuaded a majority of county voters — in the election this past November — to authorize spending local money to cover the rest of the estimated $3.2 million job with their tax dollars. What no one said out loud during that campaign, though, was that the money would cover only the cost of the outside of the building.

It still won’t function as a courthouse once its exterior is fixed up. So, the county eventually will have a gussied-up shell of a building. Then what? The county has moved most of its government offices off the square in Canyon.

County residents — and I’m one of them — would hate to see the courthouse knocked down. I’m having trouble understanding the county’s next step once the outside of the building is cleaned up and made presentable.

Former President Bush has it right, and ex-VP Cheney has it wrong.

Bush ventured this week to Calgary, Alberta, and told his audience in his first post-presidential speech that President Obama “deserves my silence,” meaning that he isn’t going to criticize his successor’s handling of the myriad problems he inherited when he took office on Jan. 20. The 43rd president is following the lead of his father, the 41st president.

Good for him. He’s had his time on the mountaintop. It’s time to let the new guy lead the greatest nation on the planet. And, oh yes, President Bush wishes President Obama well and hopes he succeeds in his efforts — unlike some in his Republican Party who wish failure on the president.

Now for Cheney. The former veep continues to pop off. He questions whether Obama’s policies will keep us safe. He second-guesses the policy decisions handed down by the White House.

President Obama deserves Vice President Cheney’s silence as well.

Come to think of it, the rest of us deserve it too.

Has state Rep. Lon Burnam grown tired of serving in the Texas Legislature?

The Fort Worth Democrat has filed a bill calling for a state income tax on individuals or families earning more than $100,000 annually.

What? A state income tax? In Texas, where lawmakers once determined that the only way to enact such a thing is to amend the Texas Constitution, which requires a popular vote? His rationale is that the Texas tax system is archaic and doesn’t fund education, public health or transportation adequately. He’s right. Any dramatic reform of the state’s tax system needs to include the income tax — but it likely won’t happen, given Texans’ longheld antipathy toward a personal state income tax. Just as Social Security is the “third rail” (touch it and you die) on Capitol Hill, the state income tax plays a similar role in Austin.

Give the man credit at least for speaking out before he declares his intention to leave office. Maybe the other shoe will drop soon. Then again, maybe not.

Two Democratic lieutenant governors tried in the 1980s and 1990s to move the income tax debate forward. Bill Hobby tried it first, then backed off it, even though he had announced his plans to retire. Then came the usually fearless Bob Bullock. He, too, floated the income tax idea, only to scurry away from it.

Now comes Rep. Burnam, who’s already filed a resolution to impeach the Republican presiding judge of the state Criminal Court of Appeals.

There must be something in the water in Cowtown.