Call Him Unimpeachable?

Poor Gov. Rick Perry.

It's not enough that he has Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn nipping at his heels about this or that budget fiasco every other day, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison waiting in the wings for the right moment to make her grand entrance, and even GOP operatives floating Don "Mr. Moneybags" Evans as yet another potential rival to the Mansion. Now a handful of legislators have taken it into their heads to start talking impeachment. It's getting so the governor can't cross the border for a few days to lecture the Mexicans on energy policy without somebody taking the opportunity to stick pins in his effigy back home.

The impeachment buzz may not amount to much, at least in literal terms, but it was serious enough that a procedural memo circulated the Capitol discussing what it would take – the signatures of 50 representatives – to bring the matter to the House floor. When the story broke last week (initially in the Brownsville Herald), the only reps who would go on the record were Alpine's Pete Gallego and Fort Worth's Lon Burnam. Burnam – who insists he was not the initiator of this particular goose-chase – has a reputation for being a Lone Liberal Wolf, but that's hardly the case with former prosecutor Gallego, generally so soft-spoken that when he's really angry his eyebrows rise a bit.

Gallego told reporters that the central question was not, in fact, impeachment, but what process would be required to determine whether the governor has broken the law.

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Outsourcing the Consiglieri

The discussion has focused on three episodes, each of which has featured the governor dancing on the edge of ethical impropriety, if not outright illegality. The first was Perry's irritated comment a few weeks ago to a group of Dallas school district officials, saying they should not hope for a better deal on school finance from the courts, because Perry happened to know that his appointees to the Texas Supreme Court would vote in favor of the state. That sounded enough like tampering to make a couple of those justices run for verbal cover.

More recently, Strayhorn accused Perry of manipulating a legislative audit of her agency in an attempt to find favoritism in her tax case decisions (or, as she put it, asking the taxpayers to fund the governor's "political opposition research"). The governor's office duly dismissed Strayhorn's charges, and whatever the truth of the matter, Perry has been sufficiently insulated by the Legislature, which targeted its own punitive measures at the comptroller, to make it unlikely that a battle on those grounds can be more than rhetorical.

But the third line of inquiry apparently holds more promise. As was first revealed by Republican Sen. Jane Nelson of Lewisville in the blowup over "slots for tots," last December the Lottery Commission paid $250,000 to a Las Vegas law firm to draft special interest legislation that would have legalized slot machines at a half-dozen venues across the state. The specific firm was hired at the suggestion of Perry chief of staff Mike Toomey, whose defense has been that he was only "passing on a name" recommended to him by Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, chair of the House Public Education Committee. (Grusendorf apparently keeps lists handy of Vegas lawyers in anticipation of just such an opportunity.)

Called on the carpet by the House Licensing & Administrative Procedures Committee, the Lottery boys were more than a little shame-faced, but claimed the Attorney General's office lacked the "expertise" to handle such a complex matter as fleecing the rubes. (It's the Legislative Council, never previously known to be stymied by legal complexity, that is actually charged with drafting legislation, but maybe they were out that day.) Although the AG's office purportedly signed off on the contract, it's difficult to see how such an arrangement would not have violated prohibitions against a state agency using its funds to influence legislation. Maybe there's an exception when the agency writes the actual bill itself.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Jim Dunnam says he was not among those Dems initially researching the impeachment process, but added acerbically that the Lottery Commission's after-the-fact explanation is "bullshit. ... The Legislative Council, on a daily basis, is drafting complex bills on the most arcane subjects." Dunnam said that there are many more unanswered questions about the casino bill and that the whole episode reflects an unusual "arrogance" from those in charge. "I'm not saying that the lobby doesn't sometimes draft legislation. It happens. It's just unprecedented that the taxpayers have to pay for it."

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Seven Come Eleven

It may now take a little while longer to get those questions answered, since Licensing Committee chair Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview, abruptly canceled the committee's next meeting when he learned of this "partisan" effort to "score points" against the governor. (Flores, who had backed a massive, unsuccessful gambling package during the regular session, had during the failed special session gotten in high dudgeon about the slots-for-tots proposal – because no casino was promised to the Valley.) Flores may not want to touch the hot potato, but the Sunset Commission is expected to consider the matter this week, and as Gallego pointed out, it's not only Democrats who want some answers. Sen. Nelson has been the point woman for the anti-gambling forces at the Lege, and according to the Herald, at least one Republican rep said he too is interested in learning the mechanics of impeachment.

I don't know if Vegas bookies give odds on such things, and no doubt they'd be long ones against the governor actually being impeached. But the Big Push to impose casinos into Texas – under the guise, like a streetwalker in a cheerleader skirt, of funding public schools – is just not going away. Likewise, questions about growing coziness between gambling interests and state politicians will not disappear just because Perry's spokespeople say they're "sad and disappointed" about the impeachment inquiry. Considering the governor's sad and disappointing record on education and social services, both steadily deteriorating under his watch, it's a small wonder that the question hasn't come up before.

As Gallego succinctly put it, "I think it's criminal to spend $250,000 for lawyers in Vegas rather than on the schoolchildren of Texas. Whether that is impeachable is another question."