The Washington Times, a conservative-leaning periodical based in the nation's Capitol, ran an opinion piece by Gov. Rick Perry today extolling the virtues of limited government, using the Lone Star State as evidence, and, of course, slamming the kind of big, perpetual, all-encompassing government that reigns (pardon the pun) inside the beltway.

"In Texas, we have long based our approach on individual liberty and initiative, believing that families, entrepreneurs and individual citizens deserve the opportunity to strive and succeed -- with minimal government interference," Perry wrote. "After regular, 140-day legislative sessions every two years, Texas lawmakers go home to live under the laws they pass."

In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Mark Davis of WBAP Dallas, Hutchison announced that she would be resigning her position as Texas' senior U.S. Senator in October or November to focus on challenging Gov. Rick Perry for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary. She has not settled on a specific date, saying that she wants to do as much as she can to fight Obamacare, cap and trade, and other major leftist initiatives in Washington.

Former Speaker Rep. Tom Craddick (R-Midland) July 17 was officially named the 2010 National Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Board of Directors. ALEC is a consortium of conservative legislators from around the country. He will take office for one year starting at the States and Nation Policy Summit in December.

Millions of Americans would actually lose private insurance under the federal health care reform bill, a study from the Heritage Foundation and the Lewin Group stated in a recent study.

About 88 million could lose their private, employer-based coverage, as they could be transitioned out of their current plan as employers opt out of continuing their existing coverage, a press release from the Heritage Foundation said.

A Travis County grand jury has indicted Rep. Kino Flores (D-Palmview) of 16 counts of tampering with a government record and three counts of perjury, the Austin American Statesman and Dallas Morning News reported on Friday. The upshot, the grand jury handed down charges that Flores knowingly failed to represent sources of income on financial statements that lawmakers are required to submit to the Texas Ethics Commission. The statements in question go back to 2004.

According to the Statesman, Flores could face up to two years in state jail and a fine of up to $10,000 in fines for the tampering offenses, and one year in a state jail and up to $4,000 in fines for the perjury.

The full indictments can be viewed here.

Col. Steve McCraw, who has served as Gov. Rick Perry's emergency management director and director of homeland security since 2004, will head up the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency announce on Friday. He will take over for Col. Stanley Clark who resigned abruptly in May over allegations of sexual harassment. Clark had taken over for Col. Tommy Davis who was forced to retire in August 2008 following the arson at the Governor's Mansion.

“We are fortunate to have someone of Steven McCraw’s caliber to step in as the new director of DPS,” said Allan B. Polunsky, Chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission. “His resume is distinguished and impeccable. He will undoubtedly build on the solid foundation and history of the Department and lead it forcefully into the future.”

Perhaps now the Perry campaign can stop wisecracking about how it's not too late for Kay Bailey Hutchison to flake out of the race again. She announced today at the Dallas County GOP headquarters, saying:

"I'm running for governor because I want results, not politics."

She announced that her exploratory committee was officially closed and that the first leg of the campaign for Governor of Texas was starting. She said that a formal statewide announcement tour would happen in August.

She also announced that she has raised about $6.7 million and currently has a total of about $12.5 million cash on hand for the race.

Perry today announced that Rob Johnson is leaving his position as Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's chief of staff to manage Perry's reelection campaign.

"Rob is one of the smartest and most respected political strategists in Texas," Perry said. "Along with his innate leadership ability, his political experience and firm grasp of key Texas issues will be a huge asset to our campaign. I’m glad he is part of our team."

Perry identified several other key positions in his campaign:

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples announced yesterday that he will be running for reelection in 2010, and two major farmers' advocacy groups endorsed him right out of the gate.

Said Staples: "I am running for re-election as Commissioner of Agriculture to continue the pursuit of common – sense solutions that promote and protect Texas’ agriculture industry and ensure state government works for the people, not the other way around."

Dallas attorney Eric Johnson announced this morning that his campaign received a total of $65,000 in contributions between June 5, when he filed papers to begin raising money, and June 30. Johnson is looking to run for the Texas House of Representatives from House District 100 against Terri Hodge (D-Dallas), who is currently under federal indictment for bribery.

Johnson received over $60,000 in monetary contributions from over 300 individuals and nearly $5,000 in in-kind contributions. His press release boasts over 70% of the contributors to Johnson's campaign were individuals who gave $100 or less.

"I am humbled by the level of support we received from our friends and family during the last three weeks of June," said Johnson. "I am truly blessed to have such strong support, especially in the faith and non-profit communities in which I have worked for years, and also in the business and legal communities. I look forward to reaching out beyond my friends and family for support in the months to come."

Johnson, a first time political candidate, is touting his community service record at various public schools and community centers in HD 100.

" … [P]eople know that I am serious about making House District 100 a better place to live, learn, work, and retire."

Gov. Rick Perry issued the following statement on the special legislative session:

"I am pleased that lawmakers passed legislation to continue the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Department of Insurance and three other state agencies, and authorized the issuance of $2 billion in transportation bonds that were approved by Texas voters in 2007.
 
"With more than 1,000 people moving to Texas each day and a growing economy, improving transportation in our state continues to be a top priority of mine. I had hoped to reduce uncertainty regarding several major transportation projects across the state by extending the comprehensive development agreement authority for local and state transportation agencies. Although the CDA bill did not pass, we will continue to work with legislators and local officials to find transportation solutions for our state."

And on the other side of the aisle, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie said the session was a case of "the good, the bad and the ugly." The good -- "the Republican politicians who control the legislature are getting out of town before they do any further damage to our state." The bad -- "this special session offered more of the same misplaced priorities from do-nothing Governor Perry and his fellow Republicans, who once again failed to address skyrocketing insurance rates, traffic congestion and children's health insurance. In fact, a special session could have been avoided had the Republican legislative majority been willing to work with Democrats to address these important issues in a timely manner during the regular session instead of placing a higher priority on a divisive partisan agenda." And the ugly -- "Governor Rick Perry’s decision to add only one additional issue – expansion of private toll road contracts – to the special session. ..."

At the end of the House Transportation Committee hearing today, Chairman Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) left the CDA renewal bill HB 3 pending -- a routine matter under normal circumstances, but when the governor wants the lawmakers in and out in three days, it means the bill is on life support.

Following the hearing -- during which lawmakers bombarded Texas Department of Transportation assistant executive director Bill Russell with questions about HB 3 -- Pickett said that he liked the bill but did not perceive much support for it among his colleagues in the House.

He said he would continue to work with the committee members in the House and the Senate, as well as the leadership, on the bill, but did not appear to be in any hurry to move the legislation to the floor by Friday as long as his colleagues had serious problems with it.

“We have up to 30 days,” he said.

Lawmakers and Texas Department of Transportation officials held an hour-long staff-briefing in the capitol auditorium today to go over the three major pieces of legislation on the call for the special session, which starts tomorrow at 10 a.m.

They first looked at HB1-SB1, which looks to allow the Texas Transportation Commission to finally issue $5 billion in bonds under Proposition 12, passed in November 2007.

It also creates the Texas Transportation Revolving Fund, from which loans can be paid to other transportation entities for other projects, which would be paid back in interest. Counties could receive such funds for example. This way money could be "continually recycled" for transportation funding, passing back and forth from one entity to another. Up to $1 billion in Prop 12 bonds could be deposited into the new fund. One of the issues raised at the briefing was whether money from the revolving fund could be doled out to private entities to build toll roads. TxDOT Chief Financial Officer James Bass pointed to page 8 line 21 of the bill indicating that private entities cannot receive money from the revolving fund.

Also, Bass said, depositing Prop 12 bonds into the revolving fund does not free those bonds from the limits placed on them under Prop 12.

House Transportation Chairman Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) suggested that some of the money from Fund 6 could be appropriated into the revolving fund. "In Fund 6, we're just spending," Pickett said. "We're just cutting a check, and giving you the money. If we put some of the fund 6 money into the revolving fund, we're lending the money out, so it's coming back to us plus interest."

Gov. Rick Perry today announced he will be calling a special legislative session to begin Wednesday July 1 at 10 a.m. On the call will be:

*Continuing the five state agencies whose sunset bills did not pass the Legislature in the regular session and face abolition. The agencies are: the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Department of Insurance, Texas Racing Commission, Office of Public Insurance Counsel and Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation. Also, Perry wants the legislators to change the review schedule for certain state agencies to balance the Sunset Advisory Commission’s workload, which would be all but unmanageable in 2010 otherwise;

*Allowing TxDOT to issue general obligation bonds, which the voters approved in Proposition 12, for highway improvement projects, and for the creation, administration, financing and use of a Texas Transportation Revolving Fund to provide financial assistance for transportation projects; and

*Continuing comprehensive development agreements by TxDOT and regional mobility authorities, to design, finance, build and maintain transportation infrastructure. This will probably turn out to be the most controversial item on the call.

Thomas Schieffer, a Democrat and former ambassador to Japan during George W. Bush's presidency, today formally announced his candidacy for Governor of Texas. It was conventionally known that he would enter the race, but today sealed the deal.

Schieffer said in his speech today that the Democrats in Texas should appeal to centrists, the same way Obama did during his presidential campaign. Schieffer harped on the need for better healthcare and education in the state.

Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) has said that he is "very flattered" by Sen. Leticia Van de Putte's calling him to run for governor. But he is as yet undecided.

"I have a job I enjoy greatly, which is representing the citizens of Senate District 14," Watson said in a statement released today.  "Over the next several weeks, I will evaluate the role I intend to play in serving Texas after 2010. That service may include running for and serving in another office or running for reelection. I intend to give this issue serious consideration, and I do not anticipate making any decisions in this regard until at least sometime after the end of the anticipated special session of the legislature, and probably not until the end of the summer."

Sen. Leticia Van De Putte of San Antonio, head of the Senate Democratic Caucus, has announced that she is removing herself from consideration for a run for governor in 2010, and is encouraging Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) to run for it instead.

"If I believed for a second that it would result in a healthy debate of the issues of most importance to Texas families, I would today be announcing my candidacy for Governor of Texas," she said. "But we have all watched over the years as Perry, Hutchison, and other Republican politicians have launched their scorched earth ‘say anything to win’ vicious attacks against political opponents. To mask their utter lack of leadership, they’ll do so again, and I decline to put my family through it. That I am a Latina would only serve to amplify their attacks."

Two prominent Democratic lawmakers from Houston, Sen. Rodney Ellis and Rep. Garnet Coleman, have sounded off on Perry's vetoes of their bills.

One veto was on Ellis' SB 488, also known as the "safe passing bill," requiring at least three feet of clearance when motor vehicle operators are passing "vulnerable road users" like bicyclists or pedestrians. Ellis said his bill "would have provided protections for bicyclists, pedestrians, tow operators, disabled persons, and other vulnerable road users. I worked with some of the most conservative members of the legislature on compromises and in the end the bill had broad bipartisan support."

Attorney General Greg Abbott has filed an objection on behalf of the State of Texas to General Motors' bankruptcy court petition, certain provisions of which he says would require dealerships in Texas to either waive state law or lose GM's business. GM, which is now mostly owned by the federal government, is looking to require all existing GM dealerships in Texas, over 400 of them employing 27,000 Texans, to sign the new agreement which would, among other things, deny them their legal right to market other brands, and the right to

Abbott called the new agreement a "take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum." Under it, dealers would also be forced to go to court in New York to voice grievances.

"GM is seeking to place short term profit above long held principles; short term accounting above long term accountability," Abbott said today in a statement. "America deserves better; Texas is demanding it."

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR), a watchdog group that pushes for low government spending and taxes, today released its "Fiscal Responsibility Index," a scorecard of how lawmakers fared on taxpayer protection issues. The Legislature was more fiscally conservative than last year's, but is still failing with a score of 52.13 percent, TFR president Michael Quinn Sullivan reported.

“Unfortunately, the session itself was highlighted by missed opportunities; too much was simply not done that should have been,” noted Sullivan. “Not only did the legislature fail to provide much-needed property tax relief, it only provided tweaks to the property tax appraisal system and the state's business tax instead of the fundamental reforms that were needed.”

Last night Gov. Rick Perry, while biking in the hills near his temporary home, broke his collar bone and had to go the emergency room. He's already been released, according to the Houston Chronicle story.

Gov. Rick Perry confirmed today that there will indeed be a special session during a meeting with state leaders about how Texas will handle federal legislation that would look to massively regulate CO2 gases. 

Perry said he was currently in the process of deciding exactly when a special would be, declining to say whether it would be called by September. "We now are to a point where we can say that there will be a special session," Perry told the press. "When is still a little bit up in the air, and we will notify you ASAP." He will announce what issues will be included on the call when he announces when the session will convene, he told reporters.

House members -- at least it would appear at this point -- put the kibosh on a special session by voting to make a "technical correction" to Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts' (R-Waxhachie) HB 4583, a budget balancing bill. The correction has the effect of maintaining in existence major state agencies including the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Insurance, so that the state could receive federal stimulus funds.
 
But for all the fireworks to avoid a special session, the Senate is now standing in recess to deliberate over the resolution.

Rep. Ed Kuempel (R-Seguin), who was hospitalized in mid-May after suffering a heart attack, arrived back in the House this morning, greeted by applause from House colleagues, followed by the Senators.

The House adjourned tonight without voting on the Sunset safety net bill HB 1959. Rep. David Leibowitz (D-San Antonio) questioned bill author Carl Isett (R-Lubbock) until the stroke of midnight, at which point Leibowitz moved successfully to adjourn. Speaker Joe Straus said following adjournment that he would weigh options as to how to pass the safety net and other bills.

Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) declined to rule out the possibility of filibustering the sunset safety net bill and acknowledged the local option legislation “absolutely dead” in a meeting with reporters today. The conference committee report to the safety net bill HB 1959 includes the Texas Department of Transportation.

Shapiro today concurred with House amendments to SB 175, “reluctantly … with pause, with great consternation, with anything else that I’ve got inside my body at this moment in time,” she said. The bill places a cap on the top 10 percent rule for automatic admissions to state universities.

The House today appointed conferees for HJR 14, from Rep. Frank Corte (R-San Antonio), a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at strengthened property rights protections by reforming eminent domain. The conferees are: Corte as chair, Harvey Hilderbran (R-Kerrville), Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), Aaron Pena (D-Edinburg) and Kino Flores (D-Mission).

The House conference committee members were named today for House Bill 4409, a disaster preparedness bill that now serves as a lifeboat for reform of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association. They are: Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood) as chair; John Smithee (R-Lubbock), Craig Eiland (D-Galveston), Todd Hunter (R-Corpus Christi), and Ryan Guillen (D-Rio Grande City).

Sen. Kevin Eltife's (R-Tyler) SB 1569, sponsored by Mark Strama (D-Austin) in the House, flatlined at the stroke of midnight last night. It was the first bill following the long local and consent calendar that the Democrats used to stall in order to kill voter ID, which along with a great many other bills is now also dead.

SB 1569 would have expanded eligibility for unemployment insurance in Texas to part-time workers and others -- the strings attached by Washington in order for the state to be able to draw down $555 million in HR 1 "stimulus" money.

Gov. Rick Perry spoke personally with Speaker Joe Straus on the dais today about the top 10 percent rule, which grants automatic admissions to the university of choice to high school students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class. A bill to loosen the top 10 percent rule, to give more recruiting flexibility to the state’s flagship universities, is set to be taken up sometime today on the House floor.

After meeting with Straus, Perry spoke briefly with the press corps and called the bill an “important piece of legislation.”

Higher education students 21-years-old and older who hold concealed handgun licenses (CHLs) will be able to carry concealed firearms on campus grounds not just outdoors (as current law allows) but also inside on-campus buildings like student unions, dorm rooms, class buildings etc., under SB 1164 from Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio), which the Senate today passed to third reading 20-10.

The House May 18 passed Sen. Jane Nelson’s (R-Lewisville) SB 643 to reform Texas’s state schools, which are residential facilities for persons with mental disabilities. Her original bill changed the names of state schools to “state developmental centers,” but the version passed by the House changes the name to “state supported living centers.” Rep. Patrick Rose (D-Dripping Springs) sponsored the bill in the House. The bill passed without objection to third reading.

Said Gov. Rick Perry following the House’s vote: “This comprehensive legislation provides enhanced protection for some of our most vulnerable citizens. A key provision in this bill, the use of surveillance cameras in common areas of state schools, is paramount to preventing, deterring and detecting abuse and neglect of state school residents.”

Lt. Governor David Dewhurst told the press corps today that the Legislative Budget Board has recommended up to another $1 billion in general revenue for Medicaid in the state budget, on top of the $750 million that was already in the Senate budget (but not in the House version). Expanded case loads and more expensive services account for the increased need.