The comptroller takes a pass on a pay raise. The first take on pay raises from Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn was that she'd take the extra $33,000 per year included in the budget by lawmakers and approved by Gov. Rick Perry. But Perry's political office was critical, saying in essence that the governor's fellow Republican isn't worth the money. She decided not to take the money after all, but did thank the governor for signing the bill that would make it possible. Non-judicial statewide officeholders other than the governor all got raises in the new state budget. So far, Strayhorn and Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs have turned down the money. It's a nice raise, taking them to $125,000 annually from the current $92,000. That's $33,000 a year; the average starting school teacher in Texas gets a total annual salary of $32,894, according to the American Federation of Teachers.  

James Steinberg, the deputy national security adviser to then-President Bill Clinton, will be the new dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. He's replacing Bobby Ray Inman, who's been the interim dean since Edwin Dorn left the job last year. Both Inman and Dorn remain on the school's faculty. Charla Ann King is the new COO at the Texas Racing Commission. She's replacing Paula Flowerday, who's been at the agency for years and is leaving to move to North Texas, in the agency's words "due to family commitments." King had been an aide to Texas Workforce Commissioner Ron Lehman, and also did tim at the State Bar of Texas and the Texas Sunset Commission. Robert Shepard is the new chairman of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, replacing Jerry Farrington in the middle seat. Farrington will remain on the board. Shepard, a George W. Bush appointee who was reappointed by Rick Perry, had been vice chairman. Trey Trainor is leaving the House -- he's the chief of staff to Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford and clerk of King's Regulated Industries Committee -- to become general counsel at the Secretary of State's office. SOS Roger Williams is also from Weatherford, so there are local ties all around (Trainor is from there, too). He'll replace Ben Hanson in Williams' office. Press corps moves: This item is ridiculously late, but Brandi Grissom, who worked for the Associated Press in its Austin bureau during the legislative session, is the new Austin Bureau for the El Paso Times. Gary Scharrer, who held that job for years, moved earlier this year to the San Antonio Express-News. Steve Taylor, who had been doing the "Border Buzz" section of the Quorum Report, has started his own electronic newsletter, focusing on government and politics from the perspective of Texans who live and work on the state's border with Mexico. The Rio Grande Guardian can be found at www.riograndeguardian.com, and combines original reporting and newspaper clippings. 

Put Republican Rich Phillips on your list of people who'd like to succeed Terry Keel, R-Austin, in the Texas House. We warned you that HD-47 would have more names, and so it does. Phillips, a self-employed management consultant, was once the public affairs director for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, and he worked in George H. W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992. Click here to check out his website. Jimmy Evans, a lawyer who's also seeking to replace Keel, has also filed the initial papers to run for that seat. 

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn said earlier in the week that she raised $1.5 million for her challenge of Gov. Rick Perry in the GOP primaries next March and that she had $7 million in the bank at the end of last month.  Now the details are coming in, as you can see from this list of people and organizations that gave her $10,000 or more during the truncated fundraising season that began on June 20 and ended June 30. Some notes are in order to fill in blanks you'll see below. Ryan & Co. is a tax consultancy in Dallas that employs, among others, former Comptroller John Sharp. AtlanGroup of Dallas is a dental practice owned and operated by David and Martha Al-Ameel. Scooter Griffin, described by the campaign as an old friend of Strayhorn's, is the name behind MML Ventures and Family Land Heritage Trust of Kilgore.

 

Gov. Rick Perry raised $2.3 million during the last ten days of June, but his campaign got confused about how much money they had in the bank. After first reporting cash on hand of $8.4 million, they revised the number a few hours later to $8.8 million. The goof, according to campaign manager Luis Saenz, was made when someone double-counted a radio advertising buy and somehow managed to record it as an expense in June and in July. It was in July, he says, and the campaign added $400,000 to what it had first reported as money in the bank. Perry's list of big supporters is a few lines longer than the comptroller's, as you can see below: