Want to know where our globetrotting Governor is? Don’t bother checking his official schedule ’cause it won’t tell you.
Defending a trip he took to the Bahamas with a group that included campaign donors, Gov. Rick Perry suggested Texans can decide what’s right.
“Where I go and who I talk with is, you know — it’s a pretty open piece of information that the people of the state of Texas by and large make a decision,” Perry told reporters when asked about the trip.
“You know, was it appropriate for me to go and stay at the White House the following week and talk to the president? I think so.”
But Perry’s travels are made public selectively.
His campaign-financed Bahamas trip — which included Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, and donors Jim Leininger and John Nau — wasn’t announced by his office.
It didn’t appear on copies of his schedule released under the state Public Information Act.
Neither did his overnight stay at the White House, though his schedule noted a dinner there.
Nor did his trip to Texas fund-raisers with President Bush.
The schedule Perry makes public is his “state schedule,” which doesn’t include his political schedule or, said spokeswoman Kathy Walt, personal items or “spur-of-the-moment activities, or activities for which he needed no schedule.”
Emphasis mine. This is why you wouldn’t have known about his little powwow in the Bahamas with Grover Norquist and James Leininger had he not been accidentally spotted by some noseybody on a boat. Add this to his Double Secret Budget Ideas and you begin to wonder if there’s anything he isn’t reluctant to disclose.