Bay Area Houston

Seriously. It’s not satire.

Every six years, on a staggered schedule, every Commission in Texas is subjected to a “Sunset Review”. This review includes a self evaluation of the Commission and public comments, resulting in a bill that addresses the needed improvements to guarantee the Commission is performing per law. Here is the catch. If that bill fails to pass, the Commission fails to continue.

The Texas Ethics Commission is under Sunset Review and will be addressed in the 2025 legislation session. As per The Texas Tribune the Commission has no authority to collect fines and late fees. Instead they can only refer the individual/PAC to the Texas Attorney Generals office of Collections. This office has done little besides sending threatening letters to those who refuse to pay. Case in point, Harris County Department of Education Trustee Eric Dick who owes $40,000 and has refused to pay.

Since Paxton took office in 2015, the ethics commission has referred 2,500 unpaid fines to the attorney general for enforcement, the Tribune found. During that time, Paxton’s office has filed just 175 enforcement lawsuits, or 7% of the cases referred to it. Most occurred early in his tenure. After filing none in 2020 and 2021, the attorney general’s office brought 18 cases in 2022, 25 last year and just one so far in the first six months of 2024.

Because of this inaction elected officials just ignore the Commission and refuse to pay. In all the Commission is owed $3.6 Million. I’ve seen this before. The Republicans will now blame the Commission and will fail to pass the bill preserving the Commission instead of giving them the power to collect the debt.

Public comments are due by August 15, 2024. You can provide comments here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024 at 7:40 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.