Tag Archives: Gov. Rick Perry

Texting ban bill needs to become law

Say it ain’t so, Texas Senate.

Please tell me you are going to follow the Texas House’s lead and send a bill banning texting while driving to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott. And please, governor, tell me you’re going to sign this bill into law.

Why am I asking these things?

I ran into a Texas House member Sunday and he told me he thinks there’s a chance the Senate won’t approve a bill that the House approved by overwhelming numbers about three weeks ago.

The state needs to enact a law that all but five other states already have enacted.

It would write into state law a prohibition against sending text messages while operating a motor vehicle. Is there a more stupid act than that?

Granted, motorists shouldn’t have to be told not to engage in such stupidity, but they do.

That’s where the state ought to come in, not to babysit the nimrods who cannot stop texting while driving — but to protect the rest of us traveling on our public streets and highways who are put in imminent danger by the dipsticks who cannot put their texting devices down.

Several cities across the state have enacted ordinances against this kind of (mis)behavior; Amarillo is one of them. Out-of-state motorists driving through Texas don’t know which cities have bans and which do not. A statewide ban that is promoted aggressively across the nation would make it clear that such idiocy won’t be tolerated in Texas.

The 2011 Legislature sent a texting ban bill to Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. But the governor vetoed it, issuing one of the most ridiculous veto messages imaginable, saying the bill was too intrusive, that it micromanaged Texans’ behavior on the road.

The Texas House has done its job. Now it’s the Texas Senate’s turn.

Well?

Show us the money, governor

Give credit it is due to Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

He lured a massive corporate operation from California to Plano, a Dallas suburb. Perry also danged about $40 million in front of Toyota to make the move halfway across the country.

That’s 40 million public dollars, yours and mine.

However, the governor is acting as if the public doesn’t deserve to know the details of the transaction.

http://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perry-seeks-keep-details-toyota-incentives-secret/

He’s keeping the financial incentives secret.

Wait a minute, governor. That’s our money, isn’t it? I know you’re a man of means, but you didn’t write a personal check to the Toyota honchos, did you?

The governor’s office has gotten Freedom of Information requests from the Texas Observer and the Houston Chronicle. The idea is that since it’s public dough, the governor owes it to, um, the public to explain the incentive package that went to Toyota in the public’s name.

Perry’s office has declined the request, saying that revealing the details would reveal to competing states Texas’s economic strategy and enable them to sweeten deals that might lure prospective companies away from here.

The Observer’s Forrest Wilder reports: “Perry’s attorneys argue that releasing any information before the deal is finalized ‘would seriously disadvantage Texas by allowing other states to directly approach this entity with competing incentives.’”

Still, the governor isn’t messing with his own money. It’s ours and the governor should tell us what he’s doing with our money.