(Updated) Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, got three bills affecting ethics and lobby regulation passed on the local calendar. What was unusual about that? They weren't on the local calendar.We have to give credit where it's due: the Texas Legislative Service noted the discrepancy and flagged subscribers. Harris, the author of all three bills, is the chairman of the Senate Administration Committee that's responsible for assembling the local calendar and seeing it through in a weekly session in the always empty Senate Chamber -- a "trust me" system where the vote is always 31-0. Two of the three unscheduled bills (SB's 1009, 1010, and 1161) require lobbyists to report buying gifts worth under $50 that are delivered to legislators somewhere other than in the Pink Building; and allows lobbyists to represent clients that conflict with each other if the clients know about the conflict. The third gives candidates and officeholders some slack if they file reports late with the Texas Ethics Commission. UPDATE: Michael Grimes, an aide to Harris, says they goofed thinking the bills were eligible because they had been on previous local calendars but held back. The current plan is to let the Senate bills rest in purgatory and to pass the House versions, which have already passed in the lower chamber and are now in Senate State Affairs. "We weren't trying to do anything nefarious," he said. We've also learned more about the ethics bills in question. The gift bill would allow lobbyists and others to give food baskets, for instance, to lawmakers as gifts without sitting down to eat with them. The current deal on food is that you can't buy it for a lawmaker unless you're also there to eat it. Meals would still be under the old rule. And supporters of the "late reports" bill say they're just trying to make it easier and less punitive for filers to correct non-material mistakes.

Barkley, Evans, Connor, and a mess of gubernatorial appointmentsKinky Friedman, one of only two people definitely running for governor of Texas, went and got the same hired hand who helped make Jesse Ventura the governor of Minnesota. Dean Barkley, founder of that state's Independent Party, will be campaign director and chief strategist for Friedman. Barkley, appointed by Ventura to fill in when U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, said the Ventura candidacy increased voter turnout. In Texas, where 29.3 percent of eligible voters showed up for the last governor's race, he's hoping to repeat the performance. Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans signed on as chief executive of the Financial Services Forum, which describes itself as a group 18 CEOs of large diversified financial institutions designed "to promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States, and that ensure an open, competitive and sound financial services marketplace." Former Texas Secretary of State Geoff Connor is joining the Jackson Walker law firm's Austin office, where he'll work on administrative, regulatory and governmental affairs. He did government stints in the governor's office, the agriculture department and the Commission on Environmental Quality, and also worked as a lobbyist, before becoming the state's chief elections officer. Appointments Gov. Rick Perry appointed Lupe Fraga of Sugar Land and Gene Stallings of Powderly to the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents. Fraga is chairman and CEO of Tejas Office Products and chairman of the Dallas-Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. He's an Aggie alum, and played baseball there. Stallings is an Aggie, too, and was the school's head football coach, an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys, head coach at the University of Alabama, and for the St. Louis-turned-Arizona (football) Cardinals. The Guv appointed Cindy Lyons, a CPA from El Paso, to the state's Finance Commission, which oversees state-chartered financial institutions. Perry named Andy Sheppard of Rockwall to the Texas Polygraph Examiners Board, which regulates Sheppard and other lie detector operators in the state. Carlos Chacon of El Paso and Whitney Wolf of San Antonio are Perry's latest picks for the Texas Skill Standards Board. He directs federal sales for Computer Assets; she's VP of labor relations for SBC. Add three names to the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners: James Walker II of Houston, president of James S. Walker Architects; Rosemary Gammon of Plano, a national account manager with Orthofix, Inc.; and Peggy "Lew" Vassberg of Lyford, president of Valley Designs, Inc. The governor picked Kenneth Mitchell of El Paso for a spot at the State Office of Risk Management. He's the president of an insurance agency there.

Write about legislation for an audience interested in government and politics and you get some feedback. But write about a wedding on the House floor...Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey, is supposed to get married on the House floor, during a break in the usual proceedings, on Friday, May 6, to Mr. Norman Tolpo. We noted that a couple of weeks ago, and said it was unusual. Maybe, but three exceptions came quickly to the minds of readers. Former Rep. Bill Carter, R-Fort Worth, and his wife Virginia, who was a Senate employee at the time, got married in the House Chamber. Helen Dey Valdez, (Dey then, Valdez now) got married to her former husband in a ceremony that required a House resolution for permission, in 1993. And former state Rep. Ralph Wallace was married in the House Chamber in 1979, also after a special resolution. Thanks (honest!) to the emailers for the history lessons.

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's appearance at a rally against new toll roads in the state prompted the crowd to change its road chants to political chants against Gov. Rick Perry.There, at the South entrance to the Capitol right outside the governor's state offices, the crowd of about 150-200 broke into chants of "No more Perry!" and "Impeach Perry!" Strayhorn was hard against toll roads, blaming the resurgence of the idea on Perry and his appointees at the Texas Department of Transportation. She also took several swipes at the contractors who won the right to build the first part of the Trans-Texas Corridor, an enlargement of the state's highway, rail and other transportation systems being implemented by TXDOT. A Spanish company dominates that consortium, leading Strayhorn to a "TXDOT, not Euro-DOT" line. And she said the roads ought to be approved only after public votes. Perry aides shot back with a list of past performance reviews from her office they said sympathetic to toll roads. But she refuted that item by item, saying the reports talked about toll roads, sometimes in the context of solutions to transportation problems, but didn't endorse them.

The growing list of potential candidates for 2006Former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont, has filed his papers and is officially raising money to challenge U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land in next year's elections. The districts are barely adjacent -- a finger of Lampson's old district touches DeLay's. After the GOP-dominated Legislature redrew his congressional district, Lampson lost to Republican Ted Poe. Houston City Councilman Gordon Quan is also considering a run against DeLay. Richard Morrison, who lost to DeLay last year, has said he won't seek a rematch. • Republican attorney and banker Francisco "Quico" Canseco of Laredo says via press release that he deposited $1 million into a federal campaign account, to be used in his race to succeed U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, should Bonilla run for the Senate spot currently occupied by Kay Bailey Hutchison if she decides not to seek reelection next year. Hutchison has been looking at running for governor, and told voters years ago that she'd limit herself to two terms in office. Bonilla says he won't run if she does, and Canseco won't run if Bonilla stays put. Canseco says the state's "Hispanic Republican seat" should remain just that if Bonilla moves on. He says the contest, if there is one, would cost him $2.5 million to $3 million. Republican consultant Todd Smith is signed up for that one. And of course there's a website: www.cansecoforcongress.com • This one's just a website so far, but along those same lines: Juan Garcia III of Corpus Christi is starting up a campaign for U.S. Senate. He's a naval aviator and Gulf War vet who left the service last October. He claims college degrees from UCLA and John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Harvard Law School. He doesn't note his party affiliation anywhere on his website, which can be found at: www.garciafortexas.com