To quote Mel Brooks, it’s good to be the king.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst will not be denied his steroid testing money.
The Texas Education Agency had included the $1 million cost of the steroid program among its $135.5 million in proposed cuts. But state leaders left in $750,000 for that program as they cut $1.2 billion from the current two-year budget.
Dewhurst had championed the 2007 bill that created the testing program at a cost of $6 million over two years. The program produced 11 positive tests from a pool of 29,000 student-athletes tested in that time.
Some of the other education programs that were not spared include several initiatives aimed at helping low-performing high schools.
As with the Governor’s McMansion, the cost of the item in question is not the point. It’s a trivial amount of money in context. The issue is the lack of leadership, the putting their own narcissistic priorities above things that do actual good. The rest of us can go hang, they got theirs.