Texas state police Major Stan Clark of Garland will take over as interim head of the Department of Public Safety. He'll hold the post while the board decides on a permanent replacement for Col. Tommy Davis, who resigned.

Mark Miner, formerly the press guy for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, is moving from his present gig in the private sector to be communications director for Gov. Rick Perry, starting Monday. Allison Castle will be press secretary (she's been in the press office there for some time). That takes care of both of Robert Black's titles; he's leaving Perry's shop for the private sector. One more: Krista Piferrer is leaving to handle media for Baptist Child & Family Services in San Antonio. Katherine Cessinger returns as deputy press secretary in her place.

Wallace Jefferson, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, is on track to become president of the Conference of Chief Justices, which represents top judges in the top courts all over the country. He's first vice president this year and slated to be president-elect and then president after that.

In the works: John Sneed, who worked for Dewhurst at both the General Land Office and through his time (so far) as Lite Guv, will be leaving soon to take over at the State Preservation Board. Gaye Polan is retiring from that post. Sneed is Dewhurst's director of intergovernmental relations.

Phil Fountain, late of Rep. Dianne White Delisi's staff (because she resigned early), is joining the Senate Health and Human Services Committee as a policy analyst to Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville. But that new gig will wait until later this year. He's in the Texas Air National Guard and is up for a brief deployment to Iraq starting next month.

Name-calling: It's now called the Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, after the First Lady. She took some classes at Tech, but got her undergrad degree at what was then West Texas State University and her nursing degree at UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

Perry appointed James Matz of Harlingen and Bob McCan of Victoria to the Coastal Coordination Council. Matz, a property manager, is a former county commissioner and mayor. McCan is general manager of McFaddin Enterprises.

House Speaker Tom Craddick named Sarana Savage of Midland to the Health Disparities Task Force, replacing Dr. Hilton Perez, who quit. Savage is a former teacher and state health worker; she's now president of the Midland Community Healthcare Services board.