It’s no surprise that Republican members of the Texas House of Representatives will stoop to any low to help out well-moneyed campaign contributors and the religious right. Nevertheless, it seems as though Rep. Fred Brown (R-Bryan) has sunk to new depths among even his most corrupt colleagues by holding a hearing on oversight of a state board which is presently reviewing a complaint against his business partner.

Brown, chairman of the Regulatory Sub-Committee of the House Appropriations Committee, has called a hurried hearing for Tuesday in Austin to determine whether or not the Texas Medical Board has been too aggressive in policing the state’s physicians.

Brown, incidentally, is the business partner of Dr. Ryal H. Benson III, who has a disciplinary action pending before the board.

Members of the Texas Medical Board believe that Brown’s antics amount to a conflict of interest–something Brown denies:

“There’s certainly a conflict of interest here,” said Timothy Turner, a medical board member from Houston. “There seems to be an ulterior motive for this hearing.”

Dr. Benson also has donated to the campaign of Mr. Brown, Republican chairman of the regulatory subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

“He’s one my constituents,” Mr. Brown said. “There is absolutely no conflict of interest.”

Brown can say that all he wants, but the fact remains that scheduling a hurried hearing to chide a state board that is investigating a complaint against your business partner and campaign contributor is most certainly a conflict of interest.

Brown claims that he is holding the hearing because of complaints received about the medical board from physicians:

Mr. Brown said the hearing was prompted by multiple complaints from doctors that the board is unfair. “My immediate question is, are they [the board] spending our resources in the wrong areas?”

However, Medical Board members say Brown’s actions are essentially a specific vendetta related to his business partner and campaign contributor:

Mr. Turner said he spoke in March to one of Mr. Brown’s legislative aides, whose full name he could not recall. The aide said that Mr. Brown “was not happy” with the board, Mr. Turner said, because it was “messing with his good friend Royal Benson.”

A complaint against Brown’s business partner pending before the medical board is, of course, not Brown’s only problem. Typical of many Republicans, he somehow managed to forget to pay some taxes:

He and Dr. Benson formed the Physicians Insurance Group of Texas, a low-cost health network, in 2005. In September, the Texas secretary of state revoked the company’s charter for nonpayment of taxes.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Brown said when asked about the charter forfeiture. “I’m not managing that company. Some guy in Houston manages that company.”

If you are a founding partner of the company, wouldn’t you know who “some guy in Houston” was and keep track of whether or not he’s paying the taxes? Evidently not in Fred Brown’s world.

Other than his business partner’s complaint, a right-wing Houston radio host is evidently another reason Brown has decided to schedule Tuesday’s hearing:

Mr. Brown has been urged to convene a hearing of the regulatory subcommittee by Dr. Steven Hotze, a Houston-area physician. Dr. Hotze is also a radio talk-show host who has compared the medical board to a Communist regime holding secret trials.

Medical board members have said privately that they believe Dr. Hotze has hired a private detective to check their backgrounds. “If I did have one, I sure wouldn’t admit it,” Dr. Hotze said.

He said the case of a Dallas doctor motivated his crusade against the medical board. The medical board has accused Dr. William Rea of “pseudoscience” in treating patients for chemical sensitivity. Some of his treatments are potentially harmful, the board charged in August, including injections of jet fuel and natural gas.

In a letter to patients last month, Dr. Rea denied the charges and said the medical board was acting as a stooge of “despicable” insurance companies.

“When this happened to Bill Rea,” Dr. Hotze said, “I went, ‘Enough’s enough.’ ”

Dr. Hotze has used his radio show to encourage doctors to attend the Tuesday hearing. “Rep. Brown has relentlessly pursued his goal of reforming the TMB,” Dr. Hotze wrote in a September e-mail to colleagues and supporters. “The hearing should be explosive.”

I suppose it’s easy to be “relentless” when your finances are at stake through a complaint against your business partner.

Tags: Tom, DeLay,, Nick, Lampson

Tags: Tom, DeLay