House Elections Committee To Consider Primary Date Legislation, “Ceverha Act”
By Vince Leibowitz on Mar 5, 2007 in 80th Legislature ![[Post to Twitter]](/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
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At 2:00 this afternoon or upon final adjournment the House Elections Committee will meet to consider several bills in public hearing.
Two of these bills are of particular interst.
HB 996 by Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) which would move the primary up to February to give Texans a bigger steak in the nomination process for presidential candidates, will be up.
In addition, a bill that could aptly be called the “Bill Ceverha Act” is on the agenda.
HB 225 by Todd Smith (R-Euless), which also has several companion bills by other lawmakers, would require that public officials who receive gifts in the form of negotiable instruments or cash disclose the amounts and other information in detail:
(d)Â For a gift of cash or a cash equivalent such as negotiable instrument or gift certificate that is reported in accordance with Section 572.023(b)(7), the individual filing the statement shall include in the description of the gift a statement of the value of the gift.
Of course, we can thank Bill Ceverha, a former Republican legislator, former official of Tom DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority, and member of the board of the Employee’s Retirement System of Texas for this legislation.
Ceverha previously received a $50,000 check from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry and simply listed it on his ethics filings as a “check” with no value.
The Texas Ethics Commission ruled that Ceverha did nothing wrong because Texas law doesn’t specifically require disclosure of the dollar amount, and urged the Legislature to address this. This is one bill that attempts to do this.
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