Good.
Sen. Joan Huffman
Gov. Greg Abbott has vetoed legislation that would have allowed married elected officials to hide their personal financial business from the prying eyes of Texas voters, according to the author of the legislation.
The so-called spousal loophole provision had been tacked as amendments to two bills that were otherwise aimed at increasing disclosure and eliminating conflicts of interest. State Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, said she never should have accepted the 11th-hour spousal loophole amendment from state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston.
As Abbott’s decision neared and Davis was asked for input, she wound up adding her voice to those calling for a veto.
“I haven’t seen a veto statement, but I have been advised by the governor’s office that both [bills] have been vetoed due to concerns about the so-called ‘spousal loophole’ added by the Senate in the last days of session,” Davis said. “I’m disappointed this Senate amendment put the governor in the position of having to veto two ethics bills that were originally written to make government more transparent and accountable.”
Davis said she would re-double efforts to pass “clean” ethics legislation in the next session of the Legislature.
[…]
The death of the two bills, HB 3511 and HB 3736, represented the final blow to Abbott’s calls for sweeping ethics reform in the notoriously loose Texas Legislature. After a series of far-reaching reform proposals went down in flames at the end of the session, those bills contained several compromise measures that Abbott wanted.
During his State of the State speech in February, Abbott urged lawmakers to “dedicate this session to ethics reform.”
Collectively, Davis’ two bills would have tightened requirements on personal financial disclosures, curbed conflicts of interest on state government boards and commissions, and required state elected officials to disclose government contracts and bond counsel work.
But the bills were marred by the inclusion of Huffman’s spousal loophole amendment. Huffman now faces a sworn ethics complaint, from a Democrat, related to her own spouse’s financial activity. Carol Wheeler, a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, has alleged that the senator filed “false” information by failing to list more than 35 businesses in which her husband has a stake.
See here and here for the background. I never had much faith in Abbott’s embrace of ethics reform anyway, but even if the Davis bills had passed in their pre-Huffman form, Abbott’s continued embrace of dark money makes it all largely moot anyway. There’s no fixing the system as long as a handful of avaricious billionaires and their well-paid henchmen and henchwomen run amok over it.
Didn’t seem too bright by Rep. Davis to allow those amendment anchors to sink her bill.
The amendments were tacked on at the last minute in the Senate. That left Davis with the choice of torpedoing the bill or accepting it and moving on. She chose the latter, then decided to recommend a veto to Abbott. These things happen at the end of a legislative session.