{"id":7207,"date":"2014-11-24T00:14:32","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T00:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7207"},"modified":"2014-11-24T00:14:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T00:14:32","slug":"but-what-about-your-constituents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7207","title":{"rendered":"But … what about your constituents?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The selection of a new general counsel for the Texas Department of Agriculture brings to mind a question I trust the appointee has considered: Is it fair for a state legislator, who has just won re-election, to abandon his constituents who just placed their trust in him to look after their affairs in Austin?<\/p>\n

Agriculture Commissioner-elect Sid Miller picked a former state House colleague, Rep. Tim Kleindschmidt, R-Lexington, to be the new general counsel for TDA.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/11\/21\/rep-kleinschmidt-takes-general-counsel-job-ag-depa\/<\/p>\n

I don’t know Kleindschmidt. I presume he’s a good lawyer and has represented his constituents diligently during his time in the Legislature. But he just been re-elected to serve along with the 149 other state representatives who faced the voters in the Nov. 4 general election. I’m going to creep out on that limb just a bit to presume Kleindschmidt made some pledges to voters along the way that he’ll serve their interests for the next two years.<\/p>\n

Now he’s out. He’s headed for a key job in an important state government executive office.<\/p>\n

My question to Miller is: With a state as large as ours, and with as many competent “ag lawyers” available, did you really and truly need to\u00a0hire a legislator who’s made a promise to serve his constituents?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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The selection of a new general counsel for the Texas Department of Agriculture brings to mind a question I trust the appointee has considered: Is it fair for a state legislator, who has just won re-election, to abandon his constituents who just placed their trust in him to look after their affairs in Austin? Agriculture … Continue reading But … what about your constituents?<\/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":[18],"tags":[4582,4653],"class_list":["post-7207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-texas-agriculture-commissioner","tag-texas-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207","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=7207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}