Ron Dipprey, after three years at the Texas Chemical Council, is retiring (for the second time) this summer. Hector Rivero, who is current at DuPont, will leave that post to take Dipprey's place. Dipprey retired from Dow Chemical several years ago and worked as a freelance lobster for a couple of years before taking his current job. No word yet on Rivero's replacement at DuPont. Monty Wynn is leaving the comptroller's office to join the Texas Municipal League; he's replacing Snapper Carr, who left TML to lobby for Hillco Partners. Former Denison Mayor Jerdy Gary is Gov. Rick Perry's choice to chair the Grayson County Regional Mobility Authority. Perry reappointed banker Jeff Austin III of Tyler as chair of the Northeast Texas RMA. Michael Peters, a criminal court at law judge in Houston, was publicly admonished by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct for a couple of "creative" sentences. A woman who starved two horses was sentenced to a bread and water diet for three of her 30 days in jail. A man who illegally dumped chromium was ordered to drink a non-toxic concoction that included some less dangerous pollutants he dumped. Peters didn't back down when told those sentences were illegal; thus the spanking from the commission. Deaths: Harris County Treasurer Jack Cato, a former TV reporter and Houston Police spokesman who won political office in 1999 was seeking a third term this year, of heart failure. He was 70.

Dan Patrick, the Houston radio owner and talk-show host who won an expensive and hotly contested Republican primary for state Senate in March, bought a Dallas station and will be on the air in the Metroplex by September. Patrick, in a press release from his campaign, announced he's buying KMGS-AM, based (officially) in Highland Park. Parts of his KSEV-AM show in Houston and Edd Hendee's show on that same station will be simulcast in Dallas, he said. "With the addition of KMGS, we will now have the potential to reach nearly 50% of the people who vote in November elections and close to 60% of the people who vote in Republican primaries," Patrick said in the statement. He aims to stir up conservatives in and around Dallas County, where Democrats have made some inroads in local offices that had been solidly Republican. "We look to rejuvenate and mobilize conservatives so they can impact local, state and national politics in the Metroplex as has been accomplished in Houston," Patrick said. He'll add some local hosts, including Rep. Bill Keffer, R-Dallas, one of a small group of Republican legislators who opposed Gov. Rick Perry's successful effort to triple state business taxes to help pay for cuts in local school property taxes. Patrick isn't a member yet, but spoke out against the new business taxes while legislators were debating school finance.