It is clear that this move is for the personal well-being of Michael Toomey, not our children. It seems that when there is a legislative hurdle to leap, Perry bulldozes the hurdle with an executive order for Michael Toomey’s interests.

This is a clear case where a bill has been filed and Perry preempted the legislative process. Interestingly, Dept. of State Health Services is the agency responsible for rulemaking on this issue. Who is in charge of rulemaking there? Randy Fritz-the former Toomey lobbyist who was concurrently the legislative Director for “Texans for Lawsuit Reform” and a Philip Morris lobbyist. He was actually named in the Texas Tobacco suit as knowlegable about Tobacco tactics to smear health advocacy groups. He is the Chief Operating Officer at Health and supervises their general counsel as well as rulemaking.

He is the guy that signed the rule changes allowing expanded nuclear dumping in West Texas. This guy was a highly placed Maximus operative who came to the Health Dept. during HHSC negotiations with Maximus at a 60,000 pay cut.

TRMPAC was a broad scheme to create money opportunities for wealth political donors who were connected with certain lobbyists. HB 2292 was part of that scheme. This bill stripped governing bodies from health and human service agencies and put rulemaking all in the hands of the Governor and Al Hawkins. They then use the rules to pay off supporters like the Texas Association of Health Plans, nuclear waste disposal companies, private health providers, drug companies… This would not happen if the DSHS Council was still a governing body instead of advisory.