Texans are again safe from the threat of official harassment and intimidation simply by virtue of their contributing to non-profit entities that speak out politically, thanks to a veto by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Gov. Rick Perry
Guys like Geren and Seliger don’t like to be challenged. More importantly, they don’t like sunlight being shown on legislative records that run counter to the pictures they paint of themselves back home. Rather than reform, they want to apply political and regulatory pressure to those who oppose them. That meant prying away at the constitutional privacy protections afforded to those who donate to non-profit organizations.
The threat was very real and personal to many.
A broad coalition of groups and organizations spoke out against a measure that was as improperly handled procedurally as it was misguided in intent.
The governor’s veto of SB 346 sends a welcome and important message: the Lone Star State won’t tolerate infringements on clear constitutional rights or chilling limitations on political speech.
Even as the nation was realizing that the Obama Administration was targeting tea party groups with the IRS in recent weeks, Sen. Seliger and Rep. Geren were maliciously working to undermine bedrock principles of political privacy. Mr. Seliger pushed his legislation sneakily through the Senate’s process — enough so that two-thirds of the Senate, after realizing what he had done, took the extraordinary step of recalling the measure.
Meanwhile, the House Democrats and a minority of the GOP voted to help Mr. Geren ramrod his bill on to the governor for it’s eventual demise. Mr. Geren also tried to attack the language to an omnibus Ethics reform bill, but House-Senate conferees rejected that language
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