With less than six weeks until election day on Nov. 4, the first of two scheduled gubernatorial debates was held in the Rio Grande Valley city of Edinburg on Sept. 19.
Democratic Party nominee for governor Wendy Davis, a state senator from Fort Worth, and Republican Party gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott, Texas attorney general, fielded questions from Carlos Sanchez, editor of The Monitor, a daily newspaper in McAllen, and Telemundo’s McAllen news anchor Dalila Garza. Abbott and Davis responded to questions for 60 minutes on topics such as border security, economic development, education and education funding, abortion and visions of the future.
On education, Abbott said, “I want to put our trust where it belongs, and that is with our teachers, and get all these one-size-fits-all mandates from Austin, Texas, off the backs of our teachers.” Davis said she voted against legislation that cut $5.4 billion from the state education budget and that Abbott has been defending those cuts in court ever since they were passed and those cuts have led to overcrowded classrooms and teacher layoffs, and shortchanged school children. Davis said as governor she would “fight to make sure our schools have more resources, not less.”
Davis confronted Abbott over a comment he made in February, in which he seemed to express a view that law enforcement problems in the Rio Grande Valley were like “third-world country practices that erode the social fabric of our communities.” Abbott said he was in Dallas when he made the comment, and he was not referring to the Rio Grande Valley in particular, but to fighting corruption statewide.
The next gubernatorial debate is set for Sept. 30 in Dallas.
Texas adds jobs in August
Texas Workforce Commission on Sept. 19 reported Texas added 20,100 seasonally adjusted total non-farm jobs in August, and over the year, employers have added 395,200 total non-farm jobs.
And while the unemployment rate was 5.3 percent in August — up slightly from 5.1 percent in July — it remained below the national unemployment rate of 6.1 percent.
Every major industry in Texas showed positive annual growth, said TWC Commissioner Representing Employers Hope Andrade.
Andres Alcantar, chair of the Texas Workforce Commission, encouraged Texas veterans to visit their local Workforce Solutions office “to take advantage of the many tools and services that allow them to translate their military skills and experience into good-paying civilian jobs.”
Statue honors innocent man
Gov. Rick Perry was present in Lubbock on Sept. 17 for the dedication of a statue honoring the late Timothy Brian Cole, a Texas Tech University student who was wrongfully convicted of rape and died in prison in 1999, after 14 years of incarceration. Perry granted Cole, who always maintained his innocence, a posthumous pardon in 2010.
At the ceremony, Perry spoke in honor of Cole and recognized Cole’s late mother, Ruby Cole Session, who was instrumental in passing legislation that created the Tim Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, allowing families of deceased exonerees a process to receive funds from the state for their wrongful conviction.
Cole’s case was brought by the Texas Innocence Project, an organization that fought for DNA testing in 2008 that ultimately proved his innocence.
Deposit sets state record
The Texas General Land Office on Sept. 17 reported its deposit of more than $1 billion into the state’s Permanent School Fund, “crushing all previous records.”
Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said the record earnings that made such a large deposit possible “are due in large part to hydraulic fracturing technologies, which has private companies competing to outbid each other for access to Permanent School Fund lands that previously were of marginal value.”
Now valued in excess of $34 billion, the Permanent School Fund helps pay for the state’s share of elementary and secondary public education.
Included in the record-breaking deposit was more than $461 million from “savvy investments,” Patterson said. “We’ve had a good run,” added Patterson, who will leave office when his term expires in January.
Ed Sterling works for the Texas Press Association and follows the Legislature for the organization.
