And for a tax bill that's been on the ground for 48 hours — with few surprises after all the leaks of the four months — that's remarkable. This one's going to sit out for 19 days before legislators convene to officially consider it, plenty of time for opponents to chew on it.

The tax bill assembled by two dozen business leaders and former Comptroller turned tax consultant John Sharp hasn't attracted a big cheering section yet. But passing a tax bill is more about the opposition than the support, and only a few groups have come forward to spit, including lawyers, who think it's a personal income tax and that the exemptions on pay are too low; and doctors, who say the state ought to credit them for charity care against any new taxes it imposes on their businesses.

Gov. Rick Perry and Sharp have been working up a marketing rollout to promote the tax. The details are sketchy, but they and their troops have talked about a possible run of television and radio ads, and a direct mail program that would promote the benefits of the property tax cut to homeowner/voters. They're also doing the normal things — like holding press conferences all over the state to get local coverage promoting the plan.

Their first step, partly complete, was to minimize opposition. They removed a proposal for a half-cent sales tax increase, replacing that revenue stream with surplus money already in state accounts. That removes objections to sales taxes voiced by Democrats, who think those taxes rest too heavily on lower income Texans. Realtors and construction companies won provisions that let them deduct some broker payments and payments to subcontractors as costs of goods sold. Businesses get a choice of which kinds of things they want to deduct — employee or other costs — when they're figuring their tax bills. That solved a problem balancing the worries of labor- and capital-intensive concerns. Retailers and wholesalers, which often operate at lower profit margins, would pay only half the tax rate paid by other businesses. Bankers get to count interest they pay as a cost of goods sold, deducted from the new receipts tax. And so on.

Next, Perry has to sell lawmakers on the idea. The last two big state tax increases were in 1987 and 1991. Both times, the state was strapped for cash and facing new or continuing court orders that made spending cuts impossible. This time, they're trying to pass a state tax while there's at least $4.3 billion in the state's accounts and indications that high sales tax and fuel tax revenues will add another $2 billion to $2.5 billion.

Democrats have said they want more money for public education — not just a swap of state for local property taxes. They, and some Republicans, too, have said teachers ought to get a pay raise out of this fight (for back of the envelope purposes, a $1,000 increase in pay costs the state roughly $300 million a year). Perry says he'll limit the special session agenda to the tax swap, but has also said he'll consider other items once that's done and gone. His plan leaves enough of the state surplus in place for the first year of a teacher pay raise, but using it for that (or anything else) summons the specter of a tax increase or difficult budget cuts during next year's regular session.

Meanwhile, a faction of Republicans wants to skip the tax talk and use the surplus to temporarily patch school finance. That might hold the courts at bay until a permanent solution can be worked out in January, but there's also bipartisan opposition to spending the surplus. The budgeteers from both parties say it would set the table for a tax increase in January. Because of the time it takes to get a new tax up and running, that wait could force a more expensive solution than what's available now.

And there's an argument — started by the Center for Public Policy Priorities and gaining traction at the Capitol — that all or part of the surplus is illusory (get a full copy of their report here). The money is there, but the state's growing population pushes up the cost of government even if no new programs are added. Some items in the current budget are underfunded and will force a supplemental appropriations bill — a draw on the surplus — at the beginning of next year's session, they contend. Those costs gobble up most of the surplus money and if lawmakers spend it on school finance, they'll have to find new revenues or make new cuts to bring the budget into balance.

A counter-argument comes from the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, which recommends using the entire surplus for property tax relief, to dedicate future surpluses to the same sort of relief, to adopt constitutional limits on spending increases, and to continue the state's reliance on consumption taxes, like the sales tax.

The tax commission uses some surplus money — the exact amount isn't spelled out in their plan — to cover some of the costs of property tax relief between September of this year and May 2008, when the new business tax would be collected for the first time.

What's in This Thing?

Don't want to read a tax bill? We've extracted highlights from the tax legislation assembled by Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Tax Reform Commission, which included former Comptroller John Sharp and 23 business leaders from around the state. (There's a list of the whole crew on their website, at www.ttrc.state.tx.us, and you can get a copy of the legislation there as well. Also available on the commission's site: Their report, titled "Tax Fairness," which says the tax plan would increase the state's share of the cost of public education to 50 percent from the current 34 percent.  

Property tax cuts

• The cap on school property taxes would be lowered to $1.30 from $1.50. Most school district tax rates are well over $1, but not all of them. The tax bill would knock rates down 50 cents, in two whacks, but only until the rate is $1. Below that, and school districts wouldn't have to cut. And since the court said the schools have to have discretion over their rates, the state can't stop local officials who want to use some of the headroom to increase education spending in their districts.

• The tax break for homeowners wouldn't come all at once; the first year break would be 17 cents under the Sharp commission's plan, followed by another 33 cents a year later. On a $150,000 home (ignoring deductions), that would save the taxpayer $255 in year one, and a total of $750 in year two and thereafter (depending on what the local school board does with future tax rates).

• State officials on the November ballot have a sweetener built into the tax bill: Local tax officials have to mail a letter to property taxpayers telling them about their tax cuts — at the beginning of October. Those letters should land about two weeks before the start of early voting. A letter like that would generally come from the state's top tax official, the comptroller. But the legislation calls for the Secretary of State to write it and sign it for the county folks to mail. That takes Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who's running against Perry, out of the equation and puts Roger Williams, a Perry appointee, in the position to share in the glow of the tax cut.

Business tax increases

• The current corporate franchise tax would be repealed and replaced by a new tax on adjusted gross receipts. To figure its taxes, a company would start with its gross receipts and subtract its choice of cost of goods sold or employee compensation. A company would subtract its out-of-state business. At most, a company would apply taxes to 70 percent of its gross receipts. After it computed its "margin," it would multiply that by its tax rate, and send the resulting dollar amount to the state. Some businesses own real estate, and they'll get some of the property tax break that's funded by the new business tax.

• The tax rate for retailers and wholesalers would be one-half of one percent. For everyone else in the business world, it would be one percent. Businesses would pay the tax whether they make or lose money, so long as their deductions don't outrun their gross receipts. That's also true of the current franchise tax, and it's a defense against claims that this is an income tax in disguise.

• Sole proprietors would be exempted. So would partnerships, if the partners are people (and not companies or whatever). Passive entities — businesses that make their money primarily from investments instead of from business activity — would be out.

• Businesses with total revenue under $300,000, or whose tax bill would amount to less than $100, would owe nothing. That $300,000 limit would be adjusted every two years according to the Consumer Price Index, rounded to the nearest $10,000. As with current law, that last dollar in income could prove expensive. A company with gross receipts of $300,000 would owe no tax, but a company with $300,001 in gross receipts would owe taxes on all of its business — not just that last dollar. In the worst case, that'd be $2,100, though in most cases, it would be a much smaller amount. Still, it could make for some interesting late-December prices at small businesses.

• The provisions exempting proprietors, partnerships and small businesses would keep well over half the state's businesses out of the taxpayer class.

• Businesses wouldn't be allowed to deduct more than $300,000 in compensation to one employee from their receipts when they're computing their taxes. Like the cap on small businesses, that limit would be tied to the Consumer Price Index.

• The compensation a company can deduct would include actual pay, stock options that are expensed by the company, health and retirement and other employee benefits. The $300,000-per-employee cap applies to the total of all of those things.

Miscellany

• The bill includes a $1-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes, or a nickel per cigarette; taxes on other tobacco products would rise to 40 percent from the current 35.213 percent.

• The bill has a section that requires the 1,000 biggest businesses in the state — identified by the comptroller from income and employment data — to file reports as if the new tax had been in place in 2006 and to compile a report for the Legislature from that data to show how much money would have come in. It's not supposed to identify the companies, but apparently is intended to be a guide to budgeteers who start a regular session in January.

• Another provision anticipates a challenge to the new tax on the basis of constitutionality. Read that to mean a professional suing on the grounds that this is a personal income tax. The case would go to district court and appeals would go directly — and quickly — to the Texas Supreme Court, skipping the intermediate courts that might slow things down.

• What's known as the "Liar's affidavit" is in here; it forces people selling and buying cars to use the higher of their sales price or the blue book value (maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation) as the basis for the sales tax.

• If it passes this spring, the new business tax would come due for the first time in May 2008, based on activity in 2007. If lawmakers don't do anything until January, they'll have to figure out what dates they want to use. The slow startup is one reason they're using $1 billion from the state's surplus in the tax plan. That money will be replaced, commissioners said in their report, by revenue from the new tax that will be up and running in two years.

House Starts

What happens in the special session on school finance is mainly up to the 150 people in the Texas House of Representatives. Not that the Senate's unimportant, but when the state needs to raise new money, it has to start in the lower chamber. And that's where the first signs of success or failure in a special session will appear. (It's also why the handicappers aren't paying much attention to the Senate at the moment.)

The House has to decide whether it wants to pass a tax bill, and if so, how so. A tax bill that includes a number of different taxes — what's known legally as a general tax bill — is open to big changes in the Senate and in conference committee. A narrowly defined tax bill is safer from amendment, but lacks the protection of a big bill, which lets members explain their vote for a distasteful thing by pointing to a favorable thing that was part of the overall package.

If the House doesn't pass a tax bill — if, for instance, it passes a bill appropriating some of the surplus to finance a school tax reduction — the only option open to the Senate would be to go along or pass nothing. Tax bills have to start in the House. It doesn't matter at that point what senators want to do about school finance; the House is in control.

To do what the governor is proposing will require both a tax bill and an appropriations bill. Perry's plan is out of balance without using part of the state surplus.

Reviews, Notices, Kudos, Jabs, and Even Endorsements

The state's top legislative leaders gave the release of the plan tepid receptions. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he and the Senate "look forward to reviewing the recommendations." House Speaker Tom Craddick stayed out of the top of news stories with this quote: "I am happy to hear that the Texas Tax Reform Commission has released its report." He said he was looking forward to the public hearing on it. Democrat Chris Bell, who's running for governor against Perry, said the Guv's plan is flawed because it doesn't put more money into schools and because it uses money from the state surplus. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, whose agency will be putting numbers to the bill, teed off on Gov. Perry — her target in the November gubernatorial election — saying his bill raises taxes and doesn't do anything for schools.

Perry's office touted a study from the Perryman Group that said (without the benefit of fiscal estimates from the comptroller) the tax bill would result in a $794 million increase in gross state product, an increase of $216 million in personal income for Texans (almost $10 for every human in the state), and an increase of 11,265 permanent jobs. Those changes, according to that estimate, would in turn generate an extra $301.2 million in state tax revenues.

Teacher groups like the Texas State Teachers Association and the Texas Federation of Teachers want the Legislature to put more money into schools. So do House Democrats, who objected to what they called "deficit spending" — the surplus — and the absence of new money for schools.

The lawyers who represented the school districts in court say more resources for the schools are implicitly called for in the Texas Supreme Court's decision in the case.

The Texas Association of Builders and the statewide association for Realtors endorsed the plan, as did the newly formed Texas Association of Manufacturers.

The Center for Public Policy Priorities called it the "best business tax proposed to date", but remained critical. That outfit says the proposed tax is a net tax cut (because it uses surpluses to balance). And they're not convinced revenues from the new tax will grow as quickly as revenues from the tax it's replacing, which could cut into future school spending.

From a Philip Morris spokesman on the proposed $1 increase in cigarette taxes: "Texas should not be raising taxes on consumers when the state has a budget surplus." The tobacco company calls the nickel-per-smoke increase a hit on consumers. The Texas PTA singled out the cigarette tax as their favorite provision of the bill, saying it'll cut teen smoking.

How Far is Too Far?

He won the fight and it's three weeks old now, but Rep. Tommy Merritt says he'll pursue the defamation lawsuit he filed against his opponent before the primaries.

Merritt sued Mark Williams during the campaign, alleging the level of BS dished by his fellow Republican had crossed the line between smash-mouth politics and character assassination. Williams said on Election Night that he would support the party nominee. And during the campaign, he maintained that the things he said about Merritt were true.

Williams was one of five Republicans challenging incumbents with nearly all their financing coming, via a PAC conduit, from Dr. James Leininger of San Antonio. Leininger, an advocate of publicly funded vouchers for private schools, knocked off two of his five targets. But Merritt, after filing the lawsuit and after he ran ads featuring his wife talking about how nasty the politics had become, survived the challenge. Now he'll press forward with his lawsuit.

Unsparked

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks recused himself from Carole Keeton Strayhorn's lawsuit against the state. She went to court over Secretary of State Roger Williams' statement that he'll go over every signature on her petitions before he'll put her on the ballot as an independent candidate for governor. She's for sampling, which is faster. Williams says the presence of two or more candidates presenting petitions -- her and Kinky Friedman among them -- complicates the process since signing more than one petition disqualifies a voter. He says they've got to check them all to get it right. The courts will settle that, but Sparks is out: He said in the attached order that he and his wife signed Strayhorn's petition.

The recusal sends the case to U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, also of Austin, and gives Strayhorn a rare chance to list the support of a federal judge for a political campaign. Judges can't endorse candidates, but in this case, the lawsuit flushed out Sparks' preference.

Yeakel met with the lawyers for the state and for Strayhorn — Randall "Buck" Wood of Austin is arguing her side — and set a hearing for May 1. Their argument is that sampling is faster than checking every name on every petition for every candidate, and is for all practical purposes just as accurate. Waiting for two months for verification, on the other hand, would stymie campaigning and fundraising, since supporters of Strayhorn (and Friedman) wouldn't have any assurance their candidate's name would appear on the ballot.

A spokesman for Williams says it took the state two months to verify petitions for presidential candidate Pat Buchanan in 2000, and that was using sampling. Ross Perot, who got on the ballot by petition in 1992, got on a little bit faster than that. They got the two-month time frame from past experience, he said.

Report the Cracker Jacks, Hide the Prize

If you missed it, the Texas Ethics Commission has provided what some agitators say is a roadmap for funneling gratuities of any size to public officials.

Bill Ceverha, a former House member who's now on the board of the Employee Retirement System, got a check from Houston homebuilder and GOP political financier Bob Perry, and he reported it, as required by law, saying he'd received a check. He didn't say how much it was for, however, and Texans for Public Justice and Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, among others, complained to the Texas Ethics Commission.

That panel went into closed session to talk about the issue and while their deliberations were secret, the commission is not going to require Ceverha to say whether the check was for $1,000 or $1 million. In the eyes of the TEC, he met the legal requirement by reporting that he'd received a gift: a check. The argument on the other side was that the check was just the conveyance for the real gift of money, but that apparently didn't get any traction.

The check came into Ceverha's hands after he lost a civil suit that bankrupted him: a state district judge held him responsible — as the treasurer for Texans for a Republican Majority PAC — for money used in several campaigns in 2002 that wasn't reported legally.

The ruling appears to mean that a public official is okay if a gift goes on the books as a check even if the amount is unreported. Other laws on bribery and corruption might apply — it's still illegal to take a private paycheck for official action — but if the giver doesn't specify a purpose or a quo to go with the quid, it appears to be okay to write a check. And to take one.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Texas is one of the lowest-tax states in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That outfit says Texas collected $1,434 in taxes per capita in 2005 and reported that only South Dakota, at $1,430 per capital, was lower. The national average was $2,192. And the states on the high-tax end of the list were, in order, Vermont ($3,600), Hawaii ($3,478), Wyoming ($3,418), Connecticut, $3,300, and Delaware ($3,229).

• The counting wasn't complete when we put this issue to bed, but Rep. Carter Casteel, R-New Braunfels, hadn't gained any ground on Nathan Macias in her recount of the March primary. She lost on Election Day by 45 votes; that number has wiggled some — in Macias' favor — but the results hadn't changed. Casteel had said she was skeptical about turning around the result but felt she owed it to supporters after such a nail-biter.

• Brian Keith Walker, in a Republican runoff in HD-11 in East Texas, won endorsements from Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America; the Texas Club for Growth and the Texas Free Enterprise Fund.

• Tan Parker, in the runoff in Denton County's HD-63, gets an endorsement from Scott O'Grady, the pilot shot down and then rescued almost a week later in Bosnia. O'Grady's now a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary.

• Former pro golfer Terry Dill, who finished out of the money in HD-47 in Austin, endorsed Alex Castano in the runoff against Bill Welch. Another first-round loser, Rich Phillips, also endorsed Castano.

• Boyd Richie picked up another endorsement in his bid for Democratic Party chairman; former House Speaker Pete Laney added his name to the list. Richie's helpers say he's already got 40 of the 62 votes he needs to win from the State Democratic Executive Committee next month.

• The Lone Star Project, a Washington-based hive of Texas Democrats, has baked up an election simulator that purports to model the gubernatorial election for you. It's an actual spin machine, if you think about it, making the case for Democrat Chris Bell against Gov. Rick Perry and showing how difficult the Democrats think it would be for Carole Keeton Strayhorn to pull off a win. It's interesting to fiddle with, and you can do it yourself on their website: www.lonestarproject.net/2006votesim.html.

Political People and Their Moves

Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt is Gov. Rick Perry'snewest appointee to the Texas Department of Information Resources.

Perry named T. Paul Furukawa of San Antonio and Mamie Salazar-Harper of El Paso to the Family and Protective Services Council and reappointed Cristina "Ommy" Strauch of San Antonio to that panel. Furukawa is executive director of Children's Association for Maximum Potential. Salazar-Harper is president and owner of M Rentals, and Strauch is a human resources consultant.

Monica Piñon is leaving the offices of Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, for a new job at the Texas Department of Insurance.

Move Mark Moreno back to Houston and back to the UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where he's the new veep for government relations. Laura Smith, previously with Texas A&M's Health Science Center, moves into Moreno's job at the UT Medical Branch.

Dick Sherron of Beaumont will get another run as president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Jon Means of Van Horn was elected first vice president at that group's convention and G. Dave Scott of Richmond will be 2nd veep and secretary.

Quotes of the Week

John Sharp, laying out the Texas Tax Reform Commission's proposal: "My greatest hope in this is that for the next 50 days, politicians in Texas will set aside their personal and political goals on behalf of what the greater good of the state of Texas is about. My greatest fear is that that won't happen."

Former Texas Comptroller John Sharp, talking in The New York Times about some lawyers' opposition to paying a new business tax: "They think God sent them here not to pay any taxes, and by God, they want to do what God wants and that is not tax themselves."

Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, assessing the influence of educators in the last election, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "They were pretty much opposed to everything we tried to do. But let's give them their due. They targeted Kent [Grusendorf] and they beat him. The reason you are seeing many taking a fresh approach is that we are, shall we say, acknowledging their existence."

Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, on the mood of the House: Right now you couldn't get 76 members of the Legislature to spit in the same direction, much less pass a tax bill."

Rick Scarborough, who contends Tom DeLay's public faith has made the congressman a target and led to his political and legal troubles, quoted in the Washington Post consoling DeLay after a speech: "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell, quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Republican officeholder running for governor as an independent: "Please don't be fooled by Mrs. Strayhorn. She can call herself an independent; I can call my dog a horse, but it's still a dog."

---

Texas Weekly: Volume 22, Issue 39, 3 April 2006. Ross Ramsey, Editor. George Phenix, Publisher. Copyright 2006 by Printing Production Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. One-year online subscription: $250. For information about your subscription, call (800) 611-4980 or email info@texasweekly.com. For news, email ramsey@texasweekly.com, or call (512) 288-6598.

Exclusive: Tom DeLay Says He Will Give Up His Seat/The embattled former Republican leader tells TIME that he will leave Congress and not seek reelection
By MIKE ALLEN/SUGAR LAND, TEXAS
Rep. Tom DeLay, whose iron hold on the House Republicans melted as a lobbying corruption scandal engulfed the Capitol, told TIME that he will not seek reelection and will leave Congress within months. Taking defiant swipes at "the left" and the press, he said he feels "liberated" and vowed to pursue an aggressive speaking and organizing campaign aimed at promoting foster care, Republican candidates and a closer connection between religion and government.Link here: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1179853,00.html

U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, is quitting. What's that mean here?Though he won the Republican primary last month, DeLay can get off the ballot by declaring his residency is in another state. That would disqualify him for a Texas seat in Congress and allow the GOP here to put another Republican on the ballot for CD-22. Polls showed DeLay in trouble from a challenge mounted by former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, a Democrat who moved from Beaumont into DeLay's district. DeLay won his primary -- he had four challengers -- with 62 percent of the vote. And he told Time, which broke the story of his plans to resign, that he could have won the race. But he also said he didn't want to risk the seat, with Republican control of Congress relatively thin. Lampson had a good shot against DeLay, but a Republican without DeLay's baggage could easily take the wind out of the Democrat's sails. When DeLay won reelection in 2004, he got 55 percent of the vote. George W. Bush ran almost 10 percentage points stronger in the congressional district, an ominous sign for a Democrat without DeLay's record to run against. DeLay, though a Texas politician, wasn't involved in state politics most of the time. But he weighed in heavily on congressional redistricting two years ago, helping pass the current maps that added a critical handful of Republicans to his majority in Washington, D.C. His effect on elections here was usually negligible, but it promised to shake Republican trees far outside his own congressional district this year. The scent of the scandals around him has reached beyond his own home base to other Republicans, who'll be hoping now to get some fresh air. DeLay's decision should buoy other Republicans who were, in effect, answering for the former House majority leader's alleged sins. Coattails work in both directions, and Republicans all over Texas were having to talk about him. His departure could change the dynamics in races that seem unrelated, like the one in Waco -- where Democrat Chet Edwards is near the top of the GOP's national congressional hit list. For Republicans elsewhere, it helps change the subject. Voters might not be talking about DeLay, or ethics, or Jack Abramoff, come November. That'd be a plus for the GOP.

Members of Congress are generally less important to Texas politics than to national politics and with the exception of redistricting, that's been true of Tom DeLay. But he played big in Texas redistricting and in the Texas legislative elections that preceded it, and those efforts led both to a great triumph and to DeLay's downfall.DeLay created a political action committee -- Texans for a Republican Majority -- to help take over the Texas House for the GOP (the Senate was already in Republican hands). In the 2002 elections, after TRMPAC and other groups targeted more than a dozen races -- seven close ones in particular -- they won the House. That new Republican majority elected Tom Craddick as the first Republican speaker since Reconstruction. And, in fits and starts, that new majority drew congressional maps that flipped the partisan alignment of the Texas delegation to Congress and solidified the majority that DeLay headed in the U.S. House. In the last stages of that map-drawing exercise, DeLay came to Austin to close the deal. Gov. Rick Perry was out of the state at the time, and Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst couldn't get the last pieces into place. DeLay did a round of shuttle diplomacy between the two sides of the state Capitol, and the maps were complete. A panel of federal judges blessed the results, the elections were held, and DeLay's goals were met. But his troubles started right away. U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, was unseated in his new district, but before he was out of Congress, he filed ethics complaints against DeLay that began the majority leader's decline. An early sign of weakness appeared in the 2004 election, when DeLay won another term but only got 55 percent of the vote. He ran almost ten percentage points behind George W. Bush in that congressional district -- a sure sign that his support was eroding even among Republicans. Prosecutors and grand juries in Austin, investigating complaints about Republican conduct in the 2002 elections, zeroed in on TRMPAC and then on DeLay and a handful of political associates. They were particularly interested in corporate money that apparently was used to help candidates in seven races. Corporate and union money can't be used directly in elections, and TRMPAC's treasurer, Bill Ceverha, already lost a related civil suit on that topic. DeLay and two others were indicted and face criminal charges. In Washington, meanwhile, scandal swirled around lobbyist Jack Abramoff and, in part, his ties to DeLay and to current and former aides to the congressman. Opponents were emboldened. Former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson of Beaumont -- one of the Democrats unseated by DeLay's redistricting effort -- moved to CD-22 to run against DeLay. The incumbent drew three opponents in his own primary. And former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman said he would collect signatures to get on the ballot against DeLay as an independent. DeLay told Time and the Galveston County Daily News -- the publications he chose for his resignation announcement -- that his polls showed his chances of reelection were in jeopardy. Rather than risk a Republican seat in Congress in a referendum on him, he said, he wanted to get out of the way to let another Republican run. Without him as a foil, chances for the Democrat and for other challengers shrink in what DeLay and others say is solid Republican territory. It could dry up fundraising for Lampson, who was outpacing DeLay in the money race before the resignation announcement. And don't count Lampson out: His fundraising to date would make him a formidable candidate even if it slows now that DeLay is out of the contest. DeLay said he wants to focus on helping Republicans and his own charities from a spot outside of Congress. But he still has the Texas charges pending, and the Abramoff investigation ensnared another former top aide to him at the end of March. Deciding against reelection frees him to defend himself in court without simultaneously defending himself before the voters in CD-22.

It's easy to get off the ballot under Texas law: Either take a bus or get hit by one. Unless he dies or is incapacitated, Tom DeLay has to move out of Texas to get his name off the ballot, and to resign. The race for his spot on the ballot is already well under way.DeLay says he'll declare himself a resident of Virginia -- a state with a personal income tax, no less -- when he resigns. DeLay, who won the GOP nomination in last month's primary, would be disqualified and Republicans in his district can then get about the business of putting someone else on the ballot to face Democrat and former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson and possibly, former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who's gathering the 500 signatures he needs to get on the ballot as an independent running for non-statewide office. The district includes parts of four counties: Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston, and Harris. GOP precinct chairs from each of those counties will elect one of their number, and those four designees will meet to pick DeLay's replacement on the ballot. If they lock up and can't make a decision, the ball goes to the 62-member State Republican Executive Committee. Names in the hat so far include Tom Campbell, who came in second to DeLay in the GOP primary, Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace, and possibly, state Reps. Robert Talton of Pasadena and Martha Wong of Houston. Stockman, who served one term as a Republican, is ineligible for the party's nomination because he didn't vote in their primary last month. State Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, says he's not interested in a run for Congress, since he has three little kids at home. The precinct chairs choose their candidate for the November ballot, and that's the person who'll be running against Lampson and Stockman. They have until early September to name a replacement. But there's potentially another election before that one. Gov. Rick Perry will have to call a special election to replace DeLay for what's left of his term. The Guv's got two options: call an election on the next uniform election date or call it an emergency and set a relatively quick election. DeLay says he'll stay in office until next month; the next uniform date after that is in November. If Perry calls it an emergency, there will be a special election between now and November. The winner of that affair would serve until January, when the winner of the November election would take over. And the special election, whenever it is, will be open to all comers of all political persuasions. The local party people have an option, too: They can name their candidate before an emergency special session or wait to see who wins it.

House Democrats want the Texas Ethics Commission to reconsider its decision on gifts. The TEC ruled that Bill Ceverha was right when he reported receiving a check -- without reporting the amount of it -- from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry (the two men later told The Dallas Morning News that it was a $50,000 check, and that they'll report a second check for the same amount in a few weeks).Here's their letter (if the pages don't appear below, you can download them from our Files section by clicking here):

House Speaker Tom Craddick isn't promoting the Perry-Sharp tax bill in meetings with House members, but he's pouring cold water on the idea of using the surplus, according to members who've been through it and the handouts he's giving them.Craddick's putting these two unsigned pieces of paper in the hands of members. The first is an assessment of how much of the money in the state's piggy bank is available for tax relief, starting with $4.275 billion and subtracting all but $45 million for state obligations that haven't shown up in the appropriations process yet. Page two is an explanation -- provided, apparently, by the governor's staff -- of the proposed business tax. (If the pages don't appear below, you can download them from our Files section by clicking here.)

Cheri Isett will take Rep. Carl Isett's place in the House during the special session. The Lubbock Republican is in the Navy Reserve and was called to Iraq and appointed his wife to fill in for him. They run an accounting business together, and also home-school their kids; for Cheri Isett, that could be a reasonable basis to hope for either a long session or a short one.• Republican Drew Darby filed the latest lawsuit of the primaries, contending Rep. Scott Campbell, R-San Angelo, zoomed over the line with mailers and radio spots accusing the challenger of being a lousy father and husband, among other things. The two are in a runoff next week. • Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Steve Smith has filed suit over the results of the March primaries, which he lost to Justice Don Willett, an appointee of Gov. Rick Perry. Smith is questioning vote-counting irregularities in Tarrant and Gregg counties and also wants the courts to give him a peek at the Texas GOP's election records. • With all of the votes counted -- and recounted -- Nathan Macias was the winner over Rep. Carter Casteel, R-New Braunfels. Macias, one of five candidates backed almost exclusively by Dr. James Leininger of San Antonio, got to the finish line 53 votes ahead. • Lorraine O'Donnell, who lost to Rep. Pat Haggerty, R-El Paso, by 105 votes, didn't report a late $75,000 contribution from Leininger that allowed her to close the race with television ads. The El Paso Times reported she didn't file a required notice with the state ethics commission; the top fine for that sort of thing is treble damages, or $225,000. O'Donnell told the paper she opposes Leininger's pet cause: publicly financed vouchers for private schools. • Take Gina Parker out of the running for chair of the Republican Party of Texas; she says she'll instead pursue a "leadership role" with the national Eagle Forum. Between that and Nate Crain's earlier decision not to run, it's starting to look like Tina Benkiser will get another term in the office without a serious challenge. • It's on the website of the Texas Association of Business, and that outfit even sent out a press release touting it, but their form for figuring a business' taxes under the Perry-Sharp plan was done by the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. References to TTARA are omitted on the TAB version. It is darned useful, though, and you can get a copy at www.texasweekly.com/documents. • Republican House candidate Alex Castano got 100 percent of the votes on the Texas Railroad Commission: all three commissioners endorsed his campaign. He's running against Bill Welch, who lost a very close race to Susan Combs when the Agriculture Commissioner was first elected to the Texas House in 1992. Combs isn't on the endorsement list, but her husband, Joe Duran, endorsed Castano. Welch is leading easily with trade and lobby groups, most recently adding the Texas Civil Justice League and TEXPAC, the political action committee affiliated with the Texas Medical Association. • Department of (forehead-slapping) Corrections: Rep. Jim Keffer is from Eastland, which is 70 miles from Weatherford, where we had him located in a recent issue. How embarrassing. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, sent a little thrill through the Pink Building a couple of weeks ago, suggesting lawmakers should lower local property taxes with money already collected from taxpayers rather than raising taxes. Now he's modified that position.The state should escape a court judgment that the local school property tax is illegal, he says, and that can be done by using some or all of the state's $4.3 billion surplus. He also says he wants to replace the state's corporate franchise tax. Read that with current events as a filter: Chisum is endorsing the tax bill touted by Gov. Rick Perry and former Comptroller John Sharp, and he's sticking with the idea that probably has the best chance of undermining that very same tax bill. Chisum says the House ought to start the special session by passing a bill that would temporarily satisfy the courts. He'd do that by using $2.8 billion of the surplus to reduce those taxes by 17 cents (most school district tax rates are at or near the state limit of $1.50 per $100 in property value). Then, he says, they should work on the $5.9 billion plan baked by Perry's Texas Tax Reform Commission. It includes a new tax on business receipts (companies could choose to deduct their costs of goods sold or their employee compensation), a $1 increase in cigarette taxes, an increase in smokeless tobacco taxes, and it would use about $1.4 billion of the surplus. What would be the incentive to pass a tax bill after the courts' problems are solved by spending some surplus money? More tax relief, he says. The bill put together by Sharp and the other tax reform commissioners would lower taxes 17 cents the first year -- just like Chisum's bill -- and would add 33 cents in cuts the second year. Districts would be allowed to raise their rates -- that local control over tax rates is a key part of the court rulings -- but Texans would potentially have their school taxes cut to $1. Meanwhile, Rep. Bill Keffer, R-Dallas, is giving succor to the small government advocates in and out of government, saying the new business tax is a bad idea and that the Legislature ought to use the surplus to cut rates and to cut other state spending to finance those tax breaks after the surplus is used up. Keffer, part of a panel assembled by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said he views the surplus as an overpayment of taxes; he wants the state to give it back to taxpayers. And he told the mostly sympathetic crowd that he's against the Perry-Sharp plan because it gives government a new source of revenue he doesn't want to give it: "We have to expect that it would probably go up." Though he was deferential to Perry and Sharp, he starts in the "No" position. "The only thing permanent about this proposed solution," he said, "is the tax." Keffer and Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, both said lawmakers should try to find a way to limit increases in local school taxes without running afoul of court orders to give the locals "meaningful discretion" over their own taxes.

Folks who want to spend the state's surplus on school tax cuts are meeting arguments that the surplus is already used up. ``People who want to finance tax cuts and replace the corporate franchise tax with a new business tax are meeting arguments that the surplus ought to be used first.`` Some lawmakers resist the idea of fixing school finance without getting some reforms in education along with all the money stuff.`` And there's a faction that doesn't want to do anything about school finance unless there's some new money in it for teachers.That's just the legislators. All kinds of stuff is getting passed around and talked about outside the Pink Building, from sheets to figure out what a tax bill would look like, to petitions to bring teacher pay and per-student spending up to national averages, to pleas for ever-so-slight adjustments to the deductions in the tax bill. You name it. But the thing is holding together, so far. House Speaker Tom Craddick and his staff has been briefing members and trying to get a feel for what they're willing to do. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who's in the position of waiting to see what the House will do on taxes, is doing the same, though less formally. Gov. Rick Perry is marketing the thing. He and Democrat John Sharp -- the sometimes buddy, sometimes rival who led the panel that drafted the plan -- are touting trade group support for the bill, working editorial boards and civic clubs, and they've even hired someone to raise money to pay for the promotional effort, whether that turns out to be direct mail or TV or whatever. Alternatives are starting to surface, although criticism of the tax bill has been muted. The state's hefty surplus is attractive to lawmakers who'd like to start the property tax relief but don't want to vote for new taxes, and all three of the state's top leaders are pushing the notion that the money isn't really available for education. Craddick is discouraging use of the surplus, according to members who've been through his sessions, and the handouts he's giving them. (You can get a copy in the Files section of our website, at www.texasweekly.com/documents.) One sheet is an assessment of how much of the money in the state's piggy bank is available for tax relief, starting with $4.275 billion and subtracting all but $45 million for state obligations that haven't shown up in the appropriations process yet. Page two is an explanation -- provided, apparently, by the governor's staff -- of the proposed business tax. The argument is that hurricanes, textbooks, Medicare, tuition revenue bonds, and money for employee and teacher retirement funds will eat up all but $1 billion of the surplus and that the rest is needed to pay back money squirreled into the current budget by delaying payments from the last day of a budget period to the next. At some point, that becomes an argument against the Perry-Sharp bill, which requires $1.4 billion from the surplus to balance. Like most government budgeting, there's a little Alice in Wonderland thrown in: The surplus money isn't available, except when it is. On the Senate side, after a fumble over income taxes, there's some talk of consumption taxes. One idea is to leave the sales tax rate as it is while expanding sales taxes to services not now taxed. Politically hazardous exemptions like funeral services and newspapers would be left out, but service taxes could bring in a lot of money. Sales taxes are more attractive to some conservatives because they're more transparent -- customers see the tax. With a gross receipts tax, the cost gets buried in the price of the product. On the other end of the political spectrum the concern is about the regressivity of sales taxes -- they take more, proportionately, from the poor than from the rich. Leaving the rate alone and taxing some services, however, is less regressive. A lot of services are invisible to most consumers anyway, like consultants, or architects. The notion is that some Democrats might be persuaded. But tax bills have to start in the House; the Senate can't mess with taxes until they have a bill in front of them. One more idea looking for traction: There's a theory on the Senate side of the building that Gov. Perry can't write an agenda for the special session that both includes school finance and excludes education reforms. As we understand the argument (which will fall to the lawyers and the schemers at some point), school finance requires changes to funding formulas. Those formulas are in the education code, and once you let lawmakers into that area of state law, you can't keep them from taking up other education matters.

Recently, a Texas legislator petitioned the Texas Ethics Commission, asking the commission to repair a law by making a new rule. But as any first year law student can tell you, only the Legislature can amen a law -- no matter how bad that law may be.This case regards a law that requires public officials to declare gifts they receive in excess of $250. Unfortunately, the law fails to require the legislators to declare the value of the gift. If that gift happens to be a check, a legislator could simply declare the check but not reveal the amount of the check. Nobody seems to know if this ambiguous language was written to intentionally create a loophole or whether it was accidental. The representative's proposed change was to expand the definition of "description" to include the "value" of a gift. That makes good sense. But when we examined the law, we found that while the Legislature has passed laws to require "value" to be revealed in many other statutes, they did not here. They even passed on opportunities to correct this omission. We found it is common practice by public officials to NOT include the value of items in public disclosure documents unless specifically required. Most members of the Texas Ethics Commission are frustrated with this "loophole" in the law. Newspaper editorials called on us to close the loophole ourselves. But, just because a law is wrong, unjust, ambiguous or poorly written does not give unelected people like the three of us the right to change it. We do not write the laws, we simply enforce them. If agencies, commissions or even courts can make law, who needs an elected Legislature? And if elected legislators are not needed, elections themselves are not needed. The irony that escaped too many editorial writers is that it was actually one of the people elected to write laws who asked us to re-write this one. We three commissioners come from different backgrounds and different political parties but we all opposed changing this bad law with a rule. We cast our votes based upon the law, not on what we would prefer if we were legislators. Changing a long-standing statute through a regulation is over-reaching and would set a terrible precedent. And such an action would take a responsibility away from the Legislature and make them less accountable to voters. Federal officials such as Supreme Court justices are required to provide a description and the value of gifts. Fifteen state governments specifically require that the value of a gift be reported. Texas has not done it, but should. We ethics commissioners took an oath to respect the law. While it would have been easy and self-serving to make headlines by "making a new law," the public is not served when officials exceed their authority. To do so would be unethical. What kind of ethics commissioners would we be if we took liberties with the law for personal publicity? The Center for Public Integrity, a nationwide non-profit watchdog, ranks Texas third in the nation for our personal disclosure laws, and gives us a perfect score (5 out of 5) on our enforcement efforts. In the past two years, the commission has considered hundreds of sworn complaints, and assessed tens of thousands of dollars in fines to those who have violated our state's election laws. We like to think we do our job well. And we know that job is to enforce the law. The Legislature's job is to write laws. We hope the Legislature re-writes this law as soon as possible. Fischer, Hernandez, and Davenport are Texas Ethics Commissioners.

---

Texas Weekly's Soapbox is a venue for opinions, spins, alternate takes, and other interesting stuff sent in by readers and others. We moderate submissions to keep the really crazy people out, and anonymous commentary is ineligible. Readers can respond (through the moderator) to things posted here. Got something to submit? We're interested in everything from full-blown opinion pieces to short bits to observations or tidbits that have escaped us and the mass media. One rule: Your name goes on your words. Call or send an email: Ross Ramsey, Editor, Texas Weekly, 512/288-6598, ramsey@texasweekly.com.

It was as if the Taliban had commandeered Austin's premiere strip joint: The Texas Ethics Commission, the very state agency created to service the body politic's right to know, orchestrated a cover up of unknown proportions.The dustup started late last year when beleaguered Texas Employees Retirement System (ERS) trustee -- and GOP power broker -- Bill Ceverha reported in a routine public disclosure filing that he had received a "check" as a gift. Ceverha stopped there, failing to disclose the value of this check. Given that it came from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry? Texas' top political donor who gives Texas Republican PACs and candidates $4 million each election -- Ceverha's mystery check could have contained oodles of zeroes.

---

This column first appeared in the Texas Observer and is also available at this link on their website.

---

In January, Texans for Public Justice filed a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission, arguing that Ceverha's failure to report the amount of that check violated his obligation under Texas law to provide a "description" of any gift worth more than $250. In response to the complaint and a subsequent appeal, the Ethics Commission twice ruled in Ceverha's favor -- arguing that public officials need not quantify the gifts they receive. For the Ethics Commission, this was an act of bureaucratic self-negation. Why bother having a disclosure agency that sabotages public disclosure? Fittingly, the Ethics Commission issued these rulings from behind closed doors. On March 23, agency commissioners secretly made their second and final ruling in favor of Ceverha's nondisclosure. The very next day, they convened a public meeting on the subject. They held this hearing even though the public had yet to learn that the commissioners had just issued a final ruling the day before that made Ceverha mystery money an acceptable "disclosure" standard for cash gifts to Texas officials. The ultimate question addressed at the public meeting: Should the commissioners issue a ruling that clarifies whether public officials must disclose the value of large cash gifts? This question confused government watchdogs, who believed that existing rules already require such disclosure. They saw no need for clarification provided that the commission interprets the existing rules reasonably. Yet the commission now convening this bizarre public discussion -- before the public knew the content of the commission's newly minted final ruling -- already had ruled in favor of Ceverha's nondisclosure at least once. Such weirdness left people entering the meeting uncertain about how to handle Texas' ethics czars. Commission Chair Cullen Looney quickly dispelled these doubts. Appointed by House Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland), Looney railroaded the meeting. He repeatedly cut off discussions related to Craddick pal Bill Ceverha and even interrupted discussions about what the existing disclosure rules mean. Looney insisted that the sole question before the assembly was whether the commission should attempt to clarify whether public officials must disclose the value of cash gifts? In the Looney mind, this seemed to be a yes-no question utterly divorced from the case that raised the question in the first place. This Looney framing of the issue convinced the audience that these commissioners really did need to clarify this disclosure standard -- at least in their own minds. Looney's boorish handling of public speakers, starting with Austin attorney Buck Wood, shocked the watchdogs and media in attendance. Longtime Texas Common Cause Director Suzy Woodford sputtered, "This is not the Ethics Commission I know." Harvey Kronberg dubbed the commission's behavior "Kafkaesque" in his online Quorum Report. Four of the seven commissioners attending the meeting voted to have their agency formally determine whether Texas' disclosure standard for cash gifts truly is as meaningless as the commission's Ceverha rulings suggest. Yet this motion failed under commission rules that require a supermajority for passage. The default result was that the Texas Ethics Commission had just invited every state official to pull a Ceverha. Attendees lambasted the commission. Texans for Public Justice Director Craig McDonald, who filed the Ceverha complaint, said this loophole allows a public official who receives an armored truck full of cash to report the gift as simply "a truck." Rep. Lon Burnham, D-Fort Worth, warned that an official who accepted a mansion as a gift could just report receipt of "a thing" or "an it." Woodford said the loophole even endangered campaign finance disclosures. She warned that a big donor, like Bob Perry, could make large, undisclosed cash gifts to candidates who then could accurately, yet misleadingly, report that they are self-financing their own campaigns. Ceverha himself is the longtime political operative for a major funder behind Speaker Craddick's throne: Dallas oil tycoon Louis Beecherl Jr. Ceverha's job put him in the line of fire. He served as treasurer of Tom DeLay's now-indicted Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), which helped orchestrate Craddick's 2002 speaker election. Craddick then appointed Ceverha to his speaker-transition team and subsequently to the board of the Texas Employees Retirement System, which directs $21 billion in state investments. Ceverha has said that Bob Perry gave him the mystery check to pay legal bills that he incurred defending himself in a civil lawsuit prompted by TRMPAC's 2002 machinations. The state district judge in that case issued a $196,600 judgment against Ceverha in 2005 after finding that he, as TRMPAC's treasurer, failed to disclose $600,000 in illegal corporate contributions to the Ethics Commission. Although Ceverha declared bankruptcy to dodge this judgment, he has said that his related legal bills were four times the size of the judgment itself. Ceverha's bankruptcy -- filed before his own party's punitive federal "bankruptcy reform" took effect -- spawned additional legal expenses by reviving the TRMPAC litigation in federal bankruptcy court. Now the five Democrats who sued Ceverha after losing 2002 House races to TRMPAC-backed candidates are creditors; they and their attorneys are trying to recover their court-ordered judgment from Ceverha. Meanwhile, after Ceverha filed for bankruptcy, Rep. Burnham, Texans for Public Justice and others called for his removal from state office. Critics argue that a financial deadbeat should not oversee a $21 billion state pension fund. In paying for his violations of one political-disclosure law, Bill Ceverha effectively shredded another. He could not have done so without the Ethics Commission's aid. It is hard to believe that the commission would have gone through such painful contortions for just anyone. Since 2001, Ceverha patrons Bob Perry and Louis Beecherl have contributed $1.9 million to the three GOP politicians who collectively appointed all of the ethics commissioners. During this same period, Bob Perry and Louis Beecherl contributed an additional $1.8 million to Texas' state Republican Party. Bill Ceverha is the first flunky to take the bullet for Texans for a Republican Majority's illegal intervention in Texas' 2002 election. If Texas' top donor was willing to help pay Ceverha's legal bills -- and if Ceverha didn't want to disclose the magnitude of Bob Perry's gift -- then apparently the least that the Republican leadership could do was to obliterate the public's right to know about it. That's exactly what their ethics appointees did. Wheat is research director for Austin-based Texans for Public Justice.

---

Texas Weekly's Soapbox is a venue for opinions, spins, alternate takes, and other interesting stuff sent in by readers and others. We moderate submissions to keep crazy people out, and anonymous commentary is ineligible. Readers can respond (through the moderator) to things posted here. Got something to submit? We're interested in everything from full-blown opinion pieces to short bits to observations or tidbits that have escaped us and the mass media. One rule: Your name goes on your words. Call or send an email: Ross Ramsey, Editor, Texas Weekly, 512/288-6598, ramsey@texasweekly.com.

Alex Chadwick of National Public Radio's Day to Day talks to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey about what DeLay's resignation from Congress will mean for Texas politics.Here's the link: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323047

The editors of Texas Weekly, the Quorum Report, and Texas Monthly -- Ross Ramsey, Harvey Kronberg, and Evan Smith -- gabbed about the elections in a recent forum at the University of Texas. It's available online, as is its February counterpart featuring former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff and former House Speaker Pete Laney. Next month, they'll add Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams.But this episode of the Texas Politics Speaker Series was for the nattering nabobs. Check it out at this link: http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/html/pr/speaker_series.html.

Try out this scenario, from Republican consultant Allen Blakemore of Houston: If Robert Eckels (a Blakemore client) decides to run for Tom DeLay's spot as the Republican nominee in CD-22, he'll be giving up his reelection bid as Harris County Judge.That would leave local Republican Party officials with the job of replacing their nominee on the ballot with another Republican. There's no Democrat in that race, so that Republican's appointment to Eckels' ballot position would be tantamount to election as the top official in the state's biggest county. If it's someone like, say, Harris County taxman Paul Bettencourt, there'd be another round: Someone would have to be appointed to serve out the remaining two years of his term before they'd face voters.

Ambassadors, appointments, and a suspicious election...Eric Bost, who headed what was then called the Texas Department of Human Services, is President George W. Bush's choice for U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. Bost is currently an undersecretary a the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the nomination has to win a nod from the Senate. Gov. Rick Perry appointed two Aggies and a lawyer to the Texas State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners, the licensing agent for vets. Janie Allen Carpenter of Garland and David Wayne Heflin of Mission are both vets (and Aggies), and Cynthia Diaz of San Antonio is the deputy general counsel for Mission City Management. Perry named Connie Sefcik-Kennedy of Austin to the governing board of the Texas School for the Deaf; she's a state employee at the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, and a member of the school's Alumni Association. Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams won an appointment to the National Coal Council, which advises the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Deborah Ingraham, after ten years as an administrative law judge for the State Office of Administrative Hearings, is the new director of regulatory and legal affairs for the Texas Electric Cooperatives. Austin American-Statesman reporter Ken Herman -- now in Washington after a long run in the Capitol press corps -- won election to a seat with the White House Correspondents Association. Ever heard him complain about issues in a race? The big item for his group is... "the upcoming remodeling project."