{"id":14510,"date":"2016-05-10T12:40:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T12:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14510"},"modified":"2016-05-10T12:40:01","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T12:40:01","slug":"texas-ag-slams-door-on-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14510","title":{"rendered":"Texas AG slams door on transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/paxton.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14511\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/paxton-300x223.png\" alt=\"paxton\" width=\"300\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/paxton-300x223.png 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/paxton-768x571.png 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/paxton.png 940w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ken Paxton&#8217;s tenure as Texas attorney general has gotten off to a rocky start.<\/p>\n<p>First, a Collin County grand jury indicted the Republican politician on charges of securities fraud, accusing him of failing to report income he derived from giving investment advice to a friend. The Securities and Exchange Commission followed suit with a complaint of its own.<\/p>\n<p>Bad start, man.<\/p>\n<p>Then the attorney general accepts the resignations of two top aides and agrees to keep paying them. What&#8217;s worse in this case, according to the Dallas Morning News, is that the AG isn&#8217;t explaining why he&#8217;s\u00a0continuing to pay\u00a0the ex-staffers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/opinion\/editorials\/20160509-editorial-ken-paxton-should-answer-our-reporters-questions.ece\">http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/opinion\/editorials\/20160509-editorial-ken-paxton-should-answer-our-reporters-questions.ece<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Morning News accuses Paxton of bullying the newspaper&#8217;s reporters who keep asking questions about the payments. He&#8217;s not willing to explain why he&#8217;s using these particular public funds in this manner.<\/p>\n<p>The newspaper has blistered Paxton in an editorial. It demands, correctly in my view, that he hold his office &#8212; and himself &#8212; accountable for the actions he has taken regarding the resignations of these individuals.<\/p>\n<p>The Morning News asks a pertinent question, noting that state law allows public agencies to grant paid leave when it finds &#8220;good cause&#8221; to do so. Paxton decided to categorize their departure as paid leave, thus justifying the continued payments to folks who no longer work for the state. The paper asks: What&#8217;s the good cause? The attorney general\u00a0isn&#8217;t saying.<\/p>\n<p>The paper offers this bit of advice to the public as it ponders the AG&#8217;s behavior: &#8220;Voters should take note.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Paxton&#8217;s tenure as Texas attorney general has gotten off to a rocky start. First, a Collin County grand jury indicted the Republican politician on charges of securities fraud, accusing him of failing to report income he derived from giving investment advice to a friend. The Securities and Exchange Commission followed suit with a complaint &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14510\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Texas AG slams door on transparency<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,14,18],"tags":[1243,2652,6130,4585],"class_list":["post-14510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-media-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-dallas-morning-news","tag-ken-paxton","tag-sec","tag-texas-attorney-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14512,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510\/revisions\/14512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}