An amazing thing has just transpired in the upcoming election for Amarillo City Commission.

Only one candidate filed to run against any of the five incumbents whose names will be on the ballot. Just one single individual.

Why the amazement? I would have thought many candidates might be stampeding to City Hall to file, given all the noise about some of the commission’s decisions in the past couple of years.

Silly me.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2013-03-01/hopefuls-file-near-deadline

The lone candidate is 32-year-old Terry Van Baughman, who’s filed to run against Mayor Paul Harpole. Good for Van Baughman, who I don’t know but who he is but he is to be commended for standing up for his view of good city government, which I hope we’ll learn more about as the campaign unfolds.

The other four commission members, though, are getting a free ride back into office for another two years. It puzzles me a bit, though, to understand why.

It’s not that commissioners have done a bad job the past two years. I think they’ve done well, but some of the decisions they’ve made have caused some teeth-gnashing among the vocal minority of residents who complain about seemingly everything.

* The commission enacted a ban on the use of handheld cellphones while driving their motor vehicles. Some folks have been circulating petitions trying to get the matter put to a vote.

* Commissioners decided to expand the deployment of red-light cameras at intersections around the city, another decision that has cause grief among the complainers.

* The city allowed tax abatements to businesses that were relocating in the downtown district, most notably a Toot ‘N Totum convenience store that’s under construction. That decision fueled complaints among other business owners ticked off that they don’t get that kind of break on their property taxes.

* The city is moving ahead with plans to redevelop downtown, even though there’s been painfully slow movement on any tangible construction projects. Yes, the Potter County Courthouse complex has reopened – and it looks nice; but that’s a county project.

I’ve long argued for competitive local races. And this year should have produced plenty of them at City Hall. The 2011 municipal race did feature a lot of folks running, but many of them were drawn by the absence of three incumbents seeking re-election to the City Commission.

This year, it seems the task of unseating incumbent commission members is too daunting, even for the gripers among us.

Congratulations to the commissioners who have no one facing them. As for the Harpole-Van Baugham race for mayor, let’s hope it sheds plenty of light on both men seeking to become the city’s titular head of government.

University of Texas System regents are being scrutinized carefully for what many contend is “micromanagement” of the system’s flagship campus, UT-Austin.

Oh, how this reminds me a bit of a dust-up that occurred many years ago at a much smaller university system. It stunk then and I sense that a smell coming from this latest university system kerfuffle.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/01/lawmakers-prepare-review-university-management-ut/

The UT board of regents, most of them appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, is under the microscope for the way it is treating UT-Austin President Bill Powers, who recently was honored on the state Senate floor by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for being an agent of “reform.” Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, is suggesting his committee is going to look long and hard at Powers’s relationship with the regents, and he certainly should, given the UT System’s place in the higher ed hierarchy in Texas. “This sort of thing comes up, and we find other systems with glitches and upheavals occasionally,” he told the Texas Tribune, “but right now, it’s the University of Texas.”

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said that micromanagement was “absolutely” occurring at UT. “I’ve heard that there are some regents who are still skipping over the chancellor and over the president to go directly to deans or other personnel and issue directives,” she said. “I thought lessons had been learned, but obviously not.”

Not long after I arrived in Texas back in 1984, the Lamar University System – which by the way no longer exists – got entangled in a serious meddling matter with Lamar Chancellor C.Robert Kemble. If memory serves, many on the board didn’t like Kemble’s management style. They nitpicked his every move on the Beaumont campus. Kemble eventually resigned the Lamar chancellorship and the board installed the man they wanted, Lamar grad George McLaughlin.

McLaughlin was a nice enough guy, but was was academically unqualified for the job – in my view. He lacked the level of hands-on classroom experience I thought at the time would be necessary for the job as chancellor.

The point here is that university politics can poison the academic environment at any institution of higher learning. It did for a time at Lamar, which eventually surrendered its system status and was rolled into the Texas University System, along with schools such as Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin University.

“I believe in reform. I know Bill Powers believes in reform,” said Dewhurst on the Senate floor. “That’s why I’m particularly troubled when I see UT regents going around this man and this administration.”

This fight can get real nasty in a big hurry. The individuals in charge would do well to take stock of the stakes involved.

Reason and a semblance of sanity may be returning to the Texas Legislature – or at least to a key state Senate committee.

The Texas Senate Education Committee has recommended returning $1.5 billion to the state’s education fund, which would return some of the money that’s been slashed from public education during the past two legislative sessions.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/02/28/senators-add-15-billion-public-education-budget/

The panel’s recommendation restores $40 million for pre-kindergarten programs and $20 million for the Virtual School Network.

Understand that this by no means a guaranteed restoration of the money. It has to be approved by the full Senate, by the House of Representatives and signed by Gov. Rick Perry, who’s made a lot of political hay in recent years by decrying what he calls “waste” in government.

But the money should be restored because it is – to coin a phrase popular among liberals – an “investment” in the state’s future.

The state’s 5 million public school students deserve support from our elected representatives. Does more money guarantee that those children will get a better education? Of course not. The quality of their education depends on the quality of their teachers, the involvement of their parents, their physical health, whether they get enough to eat and a long list of other ancillary factors.

Texas, though, cannot continue to cut education because it cannot find expenses to cut in the vast array of other programs. Legislators and their watchdogs can find plenty of waste throughout the state budget.

I do not intend to suggest that public education should be immune from careful scrutiny. I do intend to say out front that public education needs some level of protection against willy-nilly budget slashers.

Our formerly esteemed leadership in Washington, D.C., just isn’t getting what’s happening out here in Flyover Country.

Those automatic budget cuts are about to kick in and the impact will be real.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=866857

New Mexico, with a federal work force that is roughly twice the national statewide average, is going to see a significant job reduction once the reductions are ordered and carried out.

At this point, it no longer matters to me who’s to blame for this sequestration mess, which wasn’t supposed to happen back in 2011 when the budget law was enacted by Congress and signed by President Obama. What does annoy me to no end is the insistence by politicians and many in the media who keep blaming one side or the other on the failure to find a way to reduce the budget deficit. This clearly is a shared screw-up.

What has to happen now is for the bickering parties to set aside what got us here and for them to work out a solution to clean up the mess they’ve created. But everyone keeps standing on “principle,” which is code for cowering in fear of their respective political bases.

Democrats don’t want to touch Medicare or Social Security because it would offend the elderly who support them; Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on the rich, because that would offend those traditionally Republican voters. I believe the president has staked out the more defensible position, which is to reduce the deficit with a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. But he shouldn’t keep heaping all the blame on the other side when he, too, deserves to take the heat.

Frankly, I’ve had it up to here.

Effective governing requires compromise, which is not a four-letter word. We send these folks to D.C. to do our bidding. The last set of polls I saw said quite clearly that we want them to settle this matter. Is anyone listening?

West Texas A&M University students seem to favor a rule that would allow them to pack heat on campus.

The school’s student government association has been conducting an online “poll” to gauge students’ attitudes about concealed handgun carry and have learned that to date about 67 of respondents favor the idea.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=866687

But before the WT student group plows ahead, it’s good to remember something: They don’t run the place; administrators and faculty members do … and they all answer to a governing Texas A&M University System board of regents, which likely will have to sign off on any such notion.

Personally, I believe allowing students to carry guns under their jackets or in their purses is a nutty notion. But that’s just me.

At another level, though, I’m impressed that the WT Student Government Association is taking a keen interest in an issue that exploded on the national scene last December when a madman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 20 first-graders and six teachers before killing himself.

The WT student senate is expected to make a recommendation soon to the administration, the A&M regents and to the area’s legislative delegation on its findings. My hunch is that all the parties – with the possible exception of WT administrators – would be receptive to allowing students to carry guns on campus.

I’m hoping they all give this idea some careful thought and deliberation before moving forward on what well might be a knee-jerk reaction to a grievous national tragedy.

Now that I’m no longer housebound by the weather, I’ve been getting out a bit and hearing one four-letter word on everyone’s lips: snow.

We had a historic storm blow in over us late Sunday and all day Monday. Nineteen inches of it fell, just a fraction of an inch short of the all-time recorded measurement.

But allow me these two quick observations as we (hopefully) are heading into spring and awaiting all the uncertainty that season brings to the High Plains.

* The snowfall did little to alleviate the drought over the long term. Weather experts suggest we need a lot more moisture over a long period of time to get ourselves out of drought conditions. I did hear the National Weather Service chief meteorologist for the region, Jose Garcia, say that the moisture has lessened the fire danger over the short term and it likely will keep the soil moist for a good while. The drought, though, persists. Given that my wife and I do enjoy stormy weather, I am hoping at this moment that spring, which is just three weeks away, will deliver some heavy rainfall … and even some thunder and lightning.

* Amarillo snowplow crews employ an odd method of clearing the snow. I drove down Arden Road this morning en route to a lunch appointment downtown. The street was clear and dry, with snow plowed into a median in the middle of the street. When I returned home after lunch I watched the trucks knocking the snow median down on Arden, spreading it all over the street. The immediate result created slushy – and slippery – street conditions. Then it dawned on me: The crews were knocking the snow piles down to allow it to melt more quickly on the pavement. I just hope the snow melts before the temperature drops below freezing tonight, creating even more hazardous driving conditions once the sun sets. Those folks do know what they’re doing, yes?

We talk often in the Panhandle about the weather, about how it changes quickly. I’ve heard more than one person say in the past two days how they wish summer would arrive.

My answer to all those pleas: Settle down. My mid-August, you’ll be crying the blues over the heat and hoping that the cold weather arrives in a hurry.

Live in the moment. Or, as my mom told me often: Don’t wish your life away.