The Midday Brief: Jan. 28, 2011

Your afternoon reading:

• "Hundreds of nursing homes, including dozens in Dallas-Fort Worth, may close if lawmakers cut Medicaid as leaders propose, industry officials said Thursday." — State budget cuts may mean hundreds of nursing homes close, industry warns, Trail Blazers

• "Comptroller Susan Combs hosted a get-together for female legislators this week, a kind of welcome-to-Austin confab. She was a House member once herself. She was asked what her next step might be, and while a campaign is likely three years away, Combs said she's taking a shine to the lieutenant governor's race." — Combs tells lawmakers she's looking at Lt. Gov. race, Trail Blazers

• "The state Department of Information Resources on Friday eliminated 22 jobs, all of which were filled, because of the state’s budget crisis." — State’s Dept. of Information Resources trims 22 jobs, Postcards

New in The Texas Tribune:

• "In police departments across Texas, tens of thousands of rape kits have been sitting on the shelves of property storage rooms for years — thanks to strained budgets, overworked crime labs and a law enforcement philosophy that such kits are primarily useful as evidence if a stranger committed the assault. Victims’ rights advocates and some lawmakers say they'll work to pass legislation this year to take that evidence out of storage and create a DNA database that would help track rapists and perhaps even identify those who have been wrongly convicted." — Thousands of Texas Rape Kits Never Tested

• "Between ERCOT, ICROT, and TxDOT, I can't keep track of all these acronyms. What, for example, is UTIMCO?" — Texplainer: What is UTIMCO?