By now, you're pretty familiar with Rick Perry's operating style. In a nutshell, it's:
Stay out of Texas
Speak only about the future, and then only in vague generalities
Reinvent the past through unsubstantiated claims of a "Texas Miracle"
Burn the evidence
Maybe this last part could account for the wave of wildfires lately. There's been an extra effort to cover our Secessionist-in-Chief's tracks.
As reported in Houston Chronicle Blog
When then-Gov. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his office released a treasure trove of information relating to his years as Texas' chief executive.
Some 3,125 pages detailing Bush's appointments during 1995-1998 allowed news organizations to remark on the exact number of lobbyists and campaign donors with whom he met. The records showed which state lawmakers Bush conferred with - and on what subject - and detailed how much time he spent reviewing capital punishment cases prior to executions. The records showed when he arrived at the office, when he took time off for the gym and when he went home.
In short, the documents provided a portrait of the leadership style of a candidate for president of the United States.
Of course, what we REALLY needed was a glimpse into the leadership style of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the other puppeteers who would be running the White House for the next 8 years. But, I digress...
Rick Perry, probably with good reason, given what might lurk in the electronic closet, has decided to
...bar the public from viewing details of his travel, his daily schedule and most of his emails.
Don't bother filing a formal request for the information either:
Over the past decade, the Perry administration has withheld information in response to some 100 open-records requests, instead seeking review by the Texas Attorney General's Office. In two cases in the past year, Perry's office acknowledged it failed to meet legal deadlines for responding to the requests, or otherwise delayed in violation of well-established procedures outlined in the Texas Public Information Act.
Most of the withheld documents involved contracts, bidding and oversight of programs in which state money flows to entrepreneurs, privately held companies and universities from Perry's two economic development funds, the Emerging Technology Fund and the Texas Enterprise Fund. In some cases, the requests involve entities headed by Perry campaign donors and political appointees. Perry also chose to withhold information when third parties complained they would release proprietary information or violate trade secrets.
Among the information withheld from public view were communications between Amazon and the governor and his staff concerning the company's recent dispute with the state of Texas over a $269 million sales tax bill.
He has declined to release staff notes and emails relating to the Emerging Technology Fund and records relating to appointments to the advisory committee that oversees its grant applications. He also withheld emails and telephone logs relating to a $4.5 million Emerging Technology Fund grant awarded to Convergen Life Sciences, a company owned by campaign contributor David G. Nance.
Having been involved in document requests during legal discovery and other proceedings, I understand the desire, even the need, to safeguard proprietary information. There are ways to handle that while still conveying the non-proprietary information.
Secrecy, or as we sometimes call it, confidentiality, is an essential element in the normal course of business. Once that business morphs into criminal activity - real or potential - the public's "need to know" starts to take on more significance in the deliberations.
One aspect of Perry's Reign of Error that has attracted repeated requests for documentation concerns the review of Cameron Todd Willingham's clemency request.
The Houston Chronicle has a lawsuit pending regarding Perry's decision on a clemency request in 2004 by Cameron Todd Willingham, whose capital murder conviction stirred debate over the science of arson investigations. Perry refused the newspaper's request to release his staff's analysis or comments about Willingham's request for clemency, which raised new evidence. Willingham was executed Feb. 17, 2004.
Perry must have his reasons for the continued stonewalling on this issue, his claims of not losing any sleep over any of his many executions notwithstanding. Maybe if he thought that the records would come to light during his campaign, he'd have the sleepless nights that he so richly deserves.
For now, though, he's drifts off to sleep secure in the knowledge that his e-mails are automatically purged.
Houston attorney Joe Larsen,who represents the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said he believes Perry's office is violating state law by automatically purging all staff members' computers of emails older than seven days. Perry's office has said it prints and saves documents subject to open-records laws and government document retention schedules. Larsen said he believes vital records are lost by the automatic purge policy and notes that state law requires records be saved in an electronic, searchable form.
"There is a huge cache of information regarding Perry's time as governor of Texas that is gone or virtually inaccessible - information in which the citizens of the entire country now have vital interest given his candidacy for president," Larsen said. "For those who believe limited government is a basic conservative value, this pattern of shielding his office from public scrutiny should give pause."
In May, 2008, Larsen filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General's Office on behalf of a Wisconsin blogger and open government advocate seeking Perry emails. The AG declined to intervene on the grounds that the governor's office said it followed the state's document retention schedule by printing and filing protected emails.
Larsen finds that implausible.
"It is unlikely, logistically almost impossible, that Perry's office actually kept a hard copy of all emails that would have fallen within the records retention schedule," he said. "It's just not going to happen in a busy office."
Most major corporations have established procedures for document retention. For instance, companies working on US Department of Defense contracts generally consider an e-mail a "document", and require that it be retained for years. So that idiotic chain letter from your sister-in-law gets the same treatment as an e-mail conveying competitive bid information.
The federal government is pesky that way, but if Perry has his eyes on the Oval Office, he'd better get used to the idea that he'll be living in a fishbowl, not in a $10,000-a-month rent-a-mansion with heavy drapes blocking out the sunlight.
If he's got nothing to hide, one wonders why Perry's office can't provide something as simple as a travel calendar. We've got a better chance of locating Waldo or Dora the Explorer or Amelia Earhart.
Let's continue our search below the hole in Perry's reasoning...
During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Democratic challenger Bill White accused Perry of hardly working, noting that his official schedule for one six-month period provided evidence he worked an average of seven hours a week, and included 38 weekdays with "no state scheduled events." Perry responded, "Just because it is [not] written down doesn't mean I'm not out there working for the people of Texas."
The converse is probably true as well: just because something IS written down doesn't mean that evil doings are NOT taking place, at the appointed location or elsewhere. Texas encompasses 266,807 square miles. Lots of things can get lost in a place like this.
While we're on the subject: don't you wish Bill White had been elected as our governor? Sigh.
In contrast to Bush's extensive appointments records, Perry has left the country without it being reflected on his public schedule. Reporters learned that he took a 2004 trip to the Bahamas with San Antonio businessman James Leininger, a Perry campaign donor, and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist after being spotted scuba-diving by a tourist. The trip did not appear on his schedule released under the state Public Information Act. At the time, press secretary Kathy Walt acknowledged that Perry had begun releasing a far less complete report of his time after hiring a new scheduler. She also noted that "the Open Meetings Act and the Public Information Act have certain exemptions."
The idea of Perry, Leininger, and Grover Norquist scuba-diving together is extremely disturbing on so many levels that I need to take a break to get some brain bleach. Back in a moment.
Okay, that's better. Where were we? Oh, yes: secret travel.
Most of Perry's travel is paid by campaign funds and detailed reports are not required to be disclosed. After the Bahamas trip, newspapers requested and got copies of the expenses paid for Perry's Department of Public Safety security detail - and noted that the state picked up the tab for scuba equipment to accompany the governor. Since then, Perry has blocked public viewing of his security detail's travel expense reports.
It's almost as if Perry forgets that he's working for Texas citizens. You know, those hard-working, long-suffering folks who pay his salary and rent his spacious mansion and cover his travel and security costs? I know, we're small potatoes compared to the people who "really" support him through their pay-to-play deals, but still...
The Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News have sued for the records. Two lower court rulings favored the newspapers, but the Texas Supreme Court in June agreed with Perry that his personal safety concerns were grounds for withholding the information.
"Personal safety concerns"? Even if we give this a moment's credence, how would Perry's safety be imperiled if we found out about his travel after the fact? It's not like someone's going to stalk him retroactively. While it's true that many state-of-the-art businesses are being launched here in the Lone Star State, but time travel is not among them.
Before that ruling was announced, proposed legislation keeping the governor's travel security expenses private drew controversy in the Texas Legislature. The bill died in a Senate committee after lawmakers objected that the public should know if a state official misused a travel security detail.
Perry leaned on lawmakers to include language in a school finance bill passed in the Legislature's special session that would keep secret for 18 months the travel vouchers of his security team. Until then, the public would be able to view only summary reports that disclose a trip's destination, but not specific businesses visited or the names of family members accompanying the governor.
Perry will no doubt claim that his travels must also be kept secret because God is his co-pilot. You can't very well be telling people where God is going to show up. That could cause all sorts of problems with crowd control.
So for now, it's Rick Perry who continues to "move in a mysterious way".