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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.