The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 50, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 11, 2003 Page: 4 of 28
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4
THURSDAY I I DECEMBER2003
THE CANADIAN RECORD
Sheltering Hypocritis...Coitiiiid from Page 3
Back in January, the Observer submitted an open
records request to the ERS that asked for the names
of all former state legislators who were benefitting
from lifetime health care on the public health insur-
ance plan. We thought this information was clearly
public. After all, these are former elected officials
participating in a state-funded program. ERS offi-
cials disagreed and decided to stonewall. ERS
claimed that gathering the information we requested
would cost us $5,180. At the same time, the agency
asserted that the records we asked for were private
and thus exempt from the open records law. So, be-
fore making us pay, ERS officials submitted the case
to the Attorney General's office for a ruling on
whether the documents were public. This made
sense. Why would we fork over $5,180 for informa-
tion that might never be available?
Little did we know we had unwittingly stepped
into a bait and switch. In April, ERS withdrew its re-
quest for an AG ruling. Nobody ever informed us
that our records request was no longer in play. ERS
later claimed that because we had never indicated
our willingness to pay the $5,180 that it wasn't obli-
gated to continue the process. This, we subsequently
learned, was a violation of the rules. ERS had mixed
two separate clauses of the Texas Open Records Act,
an error for which the Building and Procurement
Commission, which oversees state billing proce-
dures, later chastised ERS. For the next six months,
we wrestled with the agency.
ERS continued to insist that we were asking for
confidential material, such as health insurance en-
rollment forms, that it couldn't release. We repeat-
edly pointed out that we simply wanted the list of
names, not private medical records. After three
more open records requests and another protracted
battle before the AG's office, we lost. Attorney Gen-
eral Greg Abbott, who takes pride in portraying him-
self as a great defender of the public's right to know,
ruled against us.
But delays and obstruction apparently were not
enough for the ERS to safeguard its secretive ways.
In May, the legislature passed House Bill 2359, an
omnibus ERS measure. It ensures the information
we sought is forever lost behind a curtain of confiden-
tiality. In Senate committee, a stealth amendment
was tucked into this massive legislation. The provi-
sion allows ERS to ignore any open records request
involving its benefits programs. N or is the agency re-
quired any longer to seek an opinion from the AG's
office. As of September 1, E RS can literally toss such
open records requests into the trash.
ERS argues that this law doesn't shield docu-
ments but simply saves the agency the hassle of ob-
taining an AG opinion about clearly private records.
Lucky them. But what about the public? The privacy
of ERS's clients must be balanced against the pub-
lic's right to know. Many of the records ERS main-
tains are clearly confidential. We don't care about
Gov. Rick Perry's dental x-rays. But exempting the
entire system from public scrutiny is dangerous pol-
icy. Surely, ERS records contain information the
public deserves to know—like, for instance, whether
high-paid lobbyists, while helping to craft public pol-
icy, are receiving lifetime health care at taxpayers'
expense.
Unfortunately, many state agencies, like ERS,
are finding creative new ways to fight the open gov-
ernment law, from the governor's office's refusal to
release its budget documents to the Health and Hu-
man Services Commission shielding details about
major state contracts with private companies. In
fact, officials at the Building and Procurement Com-
mission said that other state agencies had used the
same bait-and-switch maneuver that ERS pulled on
us. The consequence of this trend is not only a secre-
tive government but an increased chance that the
public trust, not to mention public money, will be
abused.
In the end, our eight-month scrap with ERS
yielded little. ERS officials did tell us that nine for-
mer legislators enjoy the lifetime health-care entitle-
ment. We assume some of these people are lobbyists.
But we were never able to obtain the list of names.
ERS officials are adamant that these golden para-
chutes for retired state lawmakers don't cost the
state any money. While former legislators receive
health insurance at the state's discounted group
rate, ERS officials maintain, all nine pay the full pre-
mium, at no expense to taxpayers. It's possible that
leaving these former legislators on the state plan in-
creases the ERS' client pool and therefore helps the
state snag better group rates. But if more is better,
why don't more state employees have access to this
perk?
The former legislators may argue that access to
the state's health plan is part of their reward for
working in the public sector. That's a thin defense.
Last session, right-wing lawmakers justified cuts to
the Children's Health Insurance Program by accus-
ingmany of the low-income families on CHIP ofbolt-
ing private health plans to mooch off the state.
Meanwhile, the favored high-dollar lobbyists of
those very same lawmakers eschew private insur-
ance to remain on the state's health plan.
Sadly, the question of who among these legisla-
tor/lobbyists are hypocrites—benefitting from state
health insurance they could afford to pay, while shut-
ting out the same benefits for low-income Tex-
ans—remains unanswered.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Pearl Harbor Day evokes memories
TODAY IS DECEMBE R 7, Pearl Harbor Day, and I remember it well. I was a child seven years of
age, and living in Canadian Texas. I was on my way to Sunday school at the First Christian Church
when I heard the news. My neighbor Mrs. Hilburn's brother was on a ship that had been bombed.
We left Canadian in 1944 and I have always wanted to return to Canadian, so to celebrate our
50th wedding anniversary, my husband and I made the trip. There were so many memories and so
many places were just as I remembered. The movie theater and funeral home were still there. The
telephone exchange, which I lived next door to, was turned into a resident, and my duplex apart-
ment is now a storage shed.
I wanted to find some of my school friends, but had no luck. The only person was Kat Owens, the
sheriff when I was there, and he was in the cemetery. His daughter, Nona was my good friend. We
went to Mary B. Isaacs school, which is no longer there.
We had lunch at the Cattle Exchange, which I remembered as a hotel. My father worked on the
railroad and I was sad to see the railroad was gone.
Well, I could go on and on, but going back to Canadian was a special time for me and we plan to
make the trip again.
GENA RAGSDALE STEPHENS, Lutz, Florida
State Capitol
Highlights
By Mike Em
mas PRESS HSSBCIHTIBH
AUSTIN—The holidays are
shaping up to be a not-so-happy
time for some Texas children.
Child Protective Services, a di-
vision of the Texas Department of
Protective and Regulative Ser-
vices, has estimated that the num-
ber of child abuse and neglect
cases reported to it will increase
by 15 percent over the number re-
ported in 2002.
In numbers entirely lacking in
any holiday glitter, the division
has estimated it will receive
181,423 reports of child abuse-ne-
glect, a 15 percent increase over
the 157,544 cases that came to
light in fiscal 2002. By way of com-
parison, in 1999, 131,920 child
abuse-neglect eases were
reported.
Though many state health and
human services programs under-
went some severe budget cutting
during the last session, CPS actu-
ally will gain 356 employees dur-
ing the 2004-2005 biennium in
anticipation of an increased
caseload.
Clearly, dealing with victim-
ized children is emotionally drain-
ing work. In fiscal 2002, CPS'
turnover rate was 25.3 percent.
In preparation for next year's
special session on school finance,
the Legislature's Select Commit-
tee on School Finance began tak-
ing testimony last Thursday.
Upshot of the first day's hear-
ing: There's no such thing as a
"good" tax and, as Rep. Kent
Grusendorf, R-Arlington, put it:
"Everybody dislikes some as-
pects of every tax."
Upshot of the second day:
Committee members are inter-
ested in Nevada's first-in-the-na-
tion payroll tax as a state
government income source.
In the new Nevada tax, the
state levies employers less than 1
percent of their payrolls. (Nevada
state law, like Texas, prohibits
personal income tax so employers
pay the tax, not workers. Wages
of government employees, people
who work for nonprofit groups or
sole proprietorships are not taxed
under the new law.)
A Far Cry frga Amanita
Amarillo gets plenty of snow
each winter, but it's a far cry from
another location where an
Amarilloan will get an opportu-
nity to see snow.
Republican state Sen. Teel
Bivins will resign from the upper
chamber in January in anticipa-
tion of U.S. Senate confirmation
of his appointment by President
Bush as ambassador to Sweden.
Bivins is the second member
of the 31-person Senate to an-
nounce his departure, Sen. Bill
Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, being
the first.
Another senator, Gonzalo
Barrientos of Austin, is consider-
ing a run for U.S. Rep. Lloyd
Doggett's seat if the current re-
districting plan makes it through
the court system intact.
Federal judge dies
John H. Hannah Jr., chief
judge for the U.S. Eastern Dis-
trict of Texas, died of a heart at-
tack last Thursday while
attending a judicial conference in
West Palm Beach, Fla. The
64-year-old judge, who grew up in
Diboll, had been appointed to the
federal bench by President
Clinton in 1994.
Fake fir
Not the most pressing matter
in state government, but the peo-
ple should know. It was revealed
last week that the Christmas tree
placed in the House of Represen-
tatives not only is a plastic fir, it
was made in China.
A real Texas cedar, however,
stands on the south side of the
Capitol, just off Congress Ave-
nue. Twenty-eight feet tall and 16
feet in diameter, the tree was har-
vested in Bastrop.
An artificial tree certainly
lasts longer than a snowman. Just
north of the Capitol at the Texas
State History Museum, "Santa
Vs. The Snowman" will be playing
in 3-D through January 16 at the
museum's IMAX theater. For
show times, call 512-936-4629 or
visit the museum's Internet site,
www.TheStoryofTexas.com.
editor@canadianrecord.com
1 rn 11 a:
news@canadianrecord.com
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Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 50, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 11, 2003, newspaper, December 11, 2003; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth220607/m1/4/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hemphill County Library.