{"id":18638,"date":"2016-12-16T03:21:21","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T03:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18638"},"modified":"2016-12-16T03:21:21","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T03:21:21","slug":"parks-commission-needs-west-texas-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18638","title":{"rendered":"Parks commission needs West Texas voice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"pd-canyon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s strange at times the things one can notice when thumbing through a publication.<\/p>\n

The Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine, for example, contained a little surprise for me. I found it on Page 11 of the magazine.\u00a0I\u00a0noticed\u00a0a list of the governing commission that sets policy involving the state’s many state parks.<\/p>\n

I’ll tell you what I found: None of the TP&W commissioners hails from West Texas. The commissioner who hails from the farthest western portion of the state is Anna Galo, who’s from Laredo — which is South Texas, on the Rio Grande River.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to make a huge deal of this, but it does rankle me that West Texas — which has its share of state park jewels throughout our vast landscape — doesn’t have any political representation on the board that’s appointed by the Texas governor.<\/p>\n

I recall when Amarillo businessman Mark Bivins served on the commission. He’s since cycled off. Why couldn’t he have been replaced with\u00a0another West Texan?<\/p>\n

I remember back when I was writing editorials for the Amarillo Globe-News, we asked then-Gov. Rick Perry to select someone from the Panhandle to fill a vacancy on the Texas Supreme Court. I looked then at the roster of justices and noticed they all came from that corridor that sits between Interstates 35 and 45. They all resided from Houston to the Dallas-Fort Worth region. We urged the governor to look west for a Supreme Court justice.<\/p>\n

And he did! He chose Phil Johnson, chief judge of the Amarillo-based 7th Court of Appeals, to the state’s highest civil appellate court. Good for Gov. Perry!<\/p>\n

Gov. Greg Abbott also can do West Texas right as well by filling the next vacancy with someone who lives in this part of the state.<\/p>\n

We have voices out here, too, governor.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s strange at times the things one can notice when thumbing through a publication. The Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine, for example, contained a little surprise for me. I found it on Page 11 of the magazine.\u00a0I\u00a0noticed\u00a0a list of the governing commission that sets policy involving the state’s many state parks. I’ll tell you what … Continue reading Parks commission needs West Texas voice<\/span> →<\/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":[9,18],"tags":[2006,3951,6399],"class_list":["post-18638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-state-news","tag-greg-abbott","tag-rick-perry","tag-texas-parks-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638","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=18638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18640,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638\/revisions\/18640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}