The Comptroller and ‘Tell the Truth Texas’

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AUSTIN — For the first time in 16 years, Susan Combs’ name was not on a statewide ballot in the Republican primary held a few days ago. After two terms as agriculture commissioner and two more as state comptroller, Combs elected not to run this time. That opened the floodgates for a bevy of candidates, since she was widely expected to run for lieutenant governor — especially if David Dewhurst didn’t run. As it turned out, the Republican primary had a crowded field of folks — most of who vied to prove they were Tea Party aficionados before that was cool in the Grand Old Party. Dewhurst appears to be toast after Tuesday’s primary, when he finished a distant second.

Combs came under fire for grossly underestimating revenue during the 2011 session, when legislators slashed the education budget. Then there was a computer snafu that exposed the private information of 3 million state workers to possible identity theft. She might have been vulnerable to a Tea Party challenger in a re-election campaign in today’s climate.

In the few times I met her, Combs came across as someone more interested in policy and transparency than ideology. Certainly she is conservative, especially when it comes to property rights and spending public money. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Even folks like me, who don’t often vote for Republicans, appreciate tight-handedness when it comes to the public trough. I especially admire Combs’ dedication during her tenure to putting as much government financial data online as possible. As a result, anyone can examine where our money is being spent.

Combs spoke Wednesday night, the day after the primary, to the board of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, on which I serve. As usual, she talked a mile a minute, flipping through printouts while competing with the din from Uncle Julio’s dinner crowd outside our private room. I once told her during an editorial board meeting in Lufkin that the only politician I met who talked faster than her was Carole Keeton Strayhorn — her predecessor in the comptroller’s office.

It’s clear Combs feels a bit liberated by her decision not to run. Peppering her talk with a liberal dose of  “hells” and “damns” and the occasional abbreviation for male bovine excrement, she described her agency’s efforts to compel every school district in Texas to disclose how much money it is spending on construction projects. Incredibly the state comptroller has to file open records requests just as we common citizens must do. Equally incredibly, plenty of school districts flat ignored the requests, citing time constraints or short-handed personnel.

Her agency’s next big project is called “Tell The Truth Texas.” That website will contain a searchable database from which one can find out how much every local government entity in the state owes or is proposing to borrow in upcoming bond elections— cities, counties, schools and hospital districts. The goal is to have it running before municipal elections in May.

Why does this matter? Because local governments for the most part don’t want their citizens to know how much money they owe and how much it is going to cost to pay back that debt. As she put it bluntly, whether it comes to the state Legislature — where she served in the House and jokes — “I was house trained but not house broken, or a typical city council: “They don’t want more open government.”

Combs is right. Folks in government may talk about the public’s right to know but most would just as soon be left alone to run the show as they see fit. They aren’t thrilled about pesky open records requests, whether they come from Tea Party activists (a significant and vocal group of requestors these days); journalists; people who use public records in their business, such as title companies, oil and gas lease folks, private investigators, or people just trying to do genealogy research.

I hope she succeeds in setting into place an online apparatus for continuing the great progress in transparency the comptroller’s agency made under her tenure. Maybe she blew the budget forecast, though she defended herself before her talk the other night by saying she would much rather come in low on an revenue estimate than be overly optimistic and see the state run out of money. Besides, she added, two-year budget estimates are just goofy (my words). And they are, especially in these volatile times.

After Tuesday’s primaries, it is clear the Texas Republican party is now dominated on a statewide level by far-right wing ideologues. That doesn’t bode well for good government, the wonky type that Combs clearly relishes. I don’t think she is going to miss public office, but I suspect those of us who care about such matters are going to miss her.

(To find out more about what the comptroller’s office has put online, go to texastransparency.org.)

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