The following are the answers to our special end-of-session quiz game, Sh*t My Texas Legislator Said.
Sh*t My Texas Legislator Said: Answers
Drop and Give ‘Em 10
The governor, lieutenant governor and speaker directed all state agencies on Friday to cut their budgets by an additional 10 percent. Last week, those same agencies had their current budgets trimmed by a total of around $1.2 billion in an effort to close a projected $18 billion budget shortfall in the next legislative session. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports.
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Ramsey on what the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll says about the governor’s race, education, immigration, and other issues; Grissom on a far West Texas county divided over Arizona’s immigration law; Ramshaw talks health care reform and obesity in Texas with a legendary Dallas doctor; M. Smith on the Collin County community that’s about to break ground on a $60 million high school football stadium; Aguilar on the backlog of cases in the federal immigration detention system; Philpott of the Green Party’s plans to get back on the ballot; Hu on the latest in the Division of Workers’ Comp contretemps; Mulvaney on the punishing process of getting compensated for time spent in jail when you didn’t commit a crime; Hamilton on the fight over higher ed formula funding; and my sit-down with state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin: The best of our best from May 24-28, 2010.
TribBlog: It’s Lehrmann
Gov. Rick Perry has appointed Judge Debra Lehrmann to the Place 3 seat that Harriet O’Neill will soon vacate on the Texas Supreme Court. Lehrmann, a Fort Worth District Court judge, won the Republican nomination for that seat in a runoff against former state Rep. Rick Green, R-Dripping Springs.
TribBlog: The 10 Percent Solution
Fresh off of asking for five percent cuts from state agencies and actually approving $1.2 billion of what was proposed, the state’s top three leaders are asking for ten percent cuts in the amounts the agencies will be seeking next time the Legislature meets.
The Brief: May 28, 2010
The Dallas DA’s mea culpa, a hurricane season like no other, 10 more years of border violence and a possible goodbye to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Kenneth Cooper: The TT Interview
The world-renowned Dallas doctor who essentially invented jogging as exercise talks with the Tribune about health care reform, the crisis of obesity in Texas, and what lawmakers must do to shore up the physical-education legislation they passed last session.
Plug it, Mr. President
There was mixed reaction in Texas to the president’s remarks yesterday on the response to the Gulf oil spill, which critics have labeled “Obama’s Katrina.” KUT’s Matt Largey reports.
Hudspeth County, Arizona
A commissioner’s court resolution supporting Arizona’s controversial immigration law has split rural Hudspeth County in far West Texas, whose 3,000 residents are largely Hispanic. Commissioner Jim Ed Miller, who introduced the resolution, says he simply wants the federal government to do its job and stop illegals from crossing the border. “Now what the hell is wrong with upholding the law?” he asks. But commissioner Wayne West, who opposed it, describes the prospect of law enforcement asking people to prove their citizenship as “nothing but pure harassment.”



