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Ross Ramsey co-founded The Texas Tribune in 2009 and served as its executive editor until his retirement in 2022. He wrote regular columns on politics, government and public policy. Before joining the Tribune, he was editor and co-owner of Texas Weekly. He did a 28-month stint in government with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Before that, he reported for the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Times Herald, as a Dallas-based freelancer for regional and national magazines and newspapers, and for radio stations in Denton and Dallas.
Legal arguments about how the Texas House should run have picked up, but it's still too early to tell whether Attorney General Greg Abbott will weigh in and whether, if he does, it'll make any difference in the final outcome. Full Story
The state's biggest phone companies and their competitors are fighting over a fund that subsidizes companies that provide phone service where it would otherwise be unaffordable. AT&T;, the biggest, says the Universal Service Fund doesn't cover its costs. Competitors say the company gets at least twice what it should. Full Story
Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn won't get a cakewalk in 2008, but neither will the Democrat who faces him a year from November. Full Story
Just as state officeholders were racing to stock their election accounts by an end-of-month deadline, the state and federal courts got busy on the subject of campaign finance. The state's highest criminal court had good news for former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, while the nation's highest court had good news for corporations and unions and groups that campaign on so-called issue ads in the last week's before elections. Full Story
Gov. Rick Perry finished off a tumultuous session by vetoing 49 bills — well short of record of 82 vetoes he set after his first session as governor — and cutting about $650 million out of the Legislature's state budget. Full Story
Texas Republicans have been licking their chops lately about the prospect of a presidential race with Hillary Clinton topping the Democratic side of the ticket. Their hope? That she turns off Texas voters so badly it'll help all the Republicans and hurt all the Democrats. Full Story
One way to attract attention: Start chattering about the governor's inclination to break his 82-bill veto record. That's the signal watchers in the press and lobby are getting from Gov. Rick Perry, and it has bred a mini-industry of speculation about what might be and might not be on the chopping block. We've heard talk — thoroughly unsubstantiated and mentioned here only to illustrate the point about speculation — that Perry might whack the legislation fixing problems and making adjustments to the state's new business tax. So-called "special items" for colleges and universities in the state budget — that's where they make appropriations for specific projects and programs outside the regular operations of the schools — are on the gossip channel. And the governor has yet to sign a watered-down highway bill that went to him after he vetoed a stronger version in the final days of the session. Full Story
House Speaker Tom Craddick had the tenacity to withstand a three-day siege at the end of the legislative session, but it cost him some of his own supporters in the House. The question now is whether the next elections will replace enough of the rebels for him to hold on for a fourth term. Full Story
A lawyer we know was out drinking with a lobster the other night and saw a group of the House's anti-Tom Craddick rebels sitting at a big table having a good time. Nothing wrong with that, he said, except that he was guessing Craddick was sitting next to a telephone somewhere, writing notes in his tiny scrawl on a legal pad, talking to people, working. Full Story
Gov. Rick Perry's agenda was DOA this session, caught in the swivet over HPV vaccines. Full Story