No concession freeze or kill-TxDOT bill - Lege divided, Governor vetoes HB1892

2007-05-19

TOLLRADSnews

Friday May 18 came and went without the Texas Legislature (Lege in local slang) managing to get agreement on a substitute for the HB1892 Kill-TxDOT/freeze-concessions which the pols who crafted it concede is a crude bomb with an overly large blast zone and likely costly colateral damage. But the Texan pols efforts to craft a legislative weapon with more precision guidance characteristics - SB792 - this week foundered over details of the target set. Whose road is to be spared and whose would be targeted could not be resolved as between house and senate.

With the constitutional deadline looming and no precision guided legislation coming out of the Lege sausage factory, Governor Rick Perry vetoed the HB1892 Kill-TxDOT/Freeze-concessions bill.

In theory the Lege could over-ride that veto next week and explode that big crude HB1892 bomb all the same, but by all accounts that is unlikely. Even though they built it and signed off by overwhelming margins in House and Senate these blind bombmakers acknowledge it's unintended victims would be numerous, and liable to be stirred into awful retribution, so they are reconciled to the Governor having dismantled it.

So next week at the Lege it's back to trying to fashion the precision guided munitions in the form of SB792 Mark 27 or something.

They've only got another week before they are all sent back, mercifully, to the nursing homes, child care centers, mental asylums, drug rehab, jails, and homeless shelters from where the Lege's membership is apparently recruited. (A little editorializing there.)