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| Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) |
The governor who considers himself one of the state's hardest workers has few official records to back up that claim -- especially compared to the detailed schedules kept by his fellow big-state governors, which were obtained by The Texas Tribune through open records requests.
Gov. Rick Perry's Democratic opponent, former Houston mayor Bill White, criticized the Republican incumbent in June for "working part time" after his schedule for the first six months of 2010 showed an average of seven hours of state work per week and 38 weekdays with "no state scheduled events."
When White first attacked Perry for his seemingly light load, the governor said, "Just because it's not written down on the schedule doesn't mean I'm not out there working for the people of Texas." Perry also challenged reporters to find anyone who can outwork him. Yet in the absence of such records, there's no objective way of knowing how much he works or what he does. In response to questions about holes in Perry's official workday, Cesinger said the office has released all the details it keeps and echoed her boss in saying that serving as governor "is a 24/7 job."
Open government advocates call Perry's spare schedules troublesome.
Critics counter by citing a pattern of the open records policies and practices of Perry's office not matching up with the talk. "This is a governor who's in constant re-election mode, and they're trying to present themselves in the best possible light," Wheat said. "That does not mean a free flow of information."
Case in point: Perry's office maintains a policy of deleting its e-mails every seven days, a shorter retention period than almost all other state agencies and major cities. It also allows staffers to decide which e-mails involve state business and thus must be retained, leaving open the possibility that individual employees who aren't well-versed in the law are innocently but irrevocably destroying public records.
Perry's office has also restricted the release of information related to the death penalty case of Cameron Todd Willingham (left), a Corsicana man executed in 2005 despite a capital murder conviction won on the basis of what a state panel has admitted was "flawed" arson evidence.On the day of the execution, Perry's office got a faxed clemency report about the Willingham case. But it is not known if the governor read it, as his office has declined to release any of his or his staff's comments or analysis of the reprieve request.
The governor's office maintains the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege. "No other Texas governor -- going back at least to Ann Richards -- has released those attorney-client privileged documents," said Cesinger. Still, the Houston Chronicle has filed suit in an effort to get access to the report. "When it comes to human life, there is no place the governor should be more transparent in his decision-making," said Jonathan Donnellan, an attorney for the Chronicle and its corporate parent, Hearst Newspapers, when the suit was filed.
Source: El Paso Times, August 23, 2010
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