Standoff At Perry Press Conference? What Does This Mean In Terms Of Access For Bloggers?

A tipster sent Capitol Annex and other blogs a note about a story at Capitol Inside [sub. req'd.] concerning a standoff at a gubernatorial press conference earlier this month which we were unaware of.

Check out this:

It wasn’t exactly the showdown of the century, but a brief confrontation between a top advisor to Governor Rick Perry and a registered lobbyist before a news conference Tuesday raised a few fundamental questions about public access at the Texas Capitol and the flow of public information under the pink granite dome.

The incident occurred when Dick Lavine of the Center for Public Policy Priorities refused to leave the governor’s press conference room at the request of Press Secretary Robert Black before the governor arrived to discuss the recommendations of the Texas Task Force on Appraisal Reform. The room on the second floor of the Capitol was packed at the time with reporters, television crews and Perry staff members who had gathered to hear Perry discuss the task force’s findings with its chairman, Dallas lawyer Tom Pauken.

Lavine, who was passing out press statements before the news conference got under way, held his ground after Black told him that the event was restricted to media representatives. Lavine, a longtime Capitol player who watches out for the interests of low-income Texans as the CPPP’s senior fiscal analyst, indicated that he wouldn’t make an exit unless Black also forced a lobbyist for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation to leave the room as well.

Byron Schlomach, the TPPF’s chief economist, was standing against a wall on the other side of the press conference room. TPPF Communications Director David Guenthner also attended the press conference and distributed statements on the appraisal reform study to reporters while he was there. In addition to Schlomach and Guenthner, TPPF President and CEO Brooke Rollins was on hand to participate in the press conference as a member of the appraisal task force that Perry appointed last year. Rollins stood beside Perry and Pauken at the front of the room during the event.

The TPPF and CPPP are generally viewed as rival organizations with Lavine’s group more likely to win support for its positions from Democrats while Republicans tend to agree more with Schlomach’s organization. While the TPPF applauded the task force’s recommendations, calling them “a framework to achieve true taxpayer protection,” the CPPP blasted the report as a guise for a move to shift taxes from the rich to the poor. The governor agreed with the conservative group’s positive assessment of the report by the Pauken task force.

When Lavine appeared incalcitrant about leaving the press conference before it had begun, Black decided to drop the issue before tensions flared any further. The representatives for the CPPP and the TPPF remained in the room for the entire news conference.

This raises a lot of interesting questions, including whether or not bloggers would be allowed at such an event, since we remain “uncredentialed” media.

And, while the CPPP (and, I dare say, even the dreaded TPPF) aren’t exactly like, say, a lobbyist from TXU or Exxon wandering around a press conference, I don’t see much of a fuss about CPPP or TPPF folks at a presser. A TXU lobbyist, sure. But the “think tanks” are in a different class in my view.

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