In the lead-up to Rick Perry’s Senate confirmation hearing for U.S. Secretary of Energy today, most of the attention has focused on his embarrassing gaffes and goofy persona. Make no mistake, the real danger of Rick Perry administering billions of dollars in government contracts and overseeing the world’s largest nuclear arsenal isn’t his shallow intellect or overall silliness – it’s his long history of pay-to-play politics and corrupt cronyism.
Lone Star Project Director Matt Angle on Rick Perry’s Confirmation Hearing:
“Don’t be fooled by his shallow intellect and silly persona. The one constant in Rick Perry’s career is corruption.
“Perry honed pay-to-play politics in Texas to a fine edge. He kept both hands in taxpayers’ pockets, pushing special favors and millions of dollars to his friends and cronies.
Rick Perry’s Record of Corruption
Perry’s corrupt record is extensive and not too hard to find. We’ve laid out below just some of the contract scandals, crony deals and other ethical missteps that best define Rick Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas. If Perry is properly vetted at today’s hearing, expect at least some of these defining episodes in his career to be revisited:
Lone Star Project Director Matt Angle on Rick Perry’s Confirmation Hearing:
“Don’t be fooled by his shallow intellect and silly persona. The one constant in Rick Perry’s career is corruption.
“Perry honed pay-to-play politics in Texas to a fine edge. He kept both hands in taxpayers’ pockets, pushing special favors and millions of dollars to his friends and cronies.
Rick Perry’s Record of Corruption
Perry’s corrupt record is extensive and not too hard to find. We’ve laid out below just some of the contract scandals, crony deals and other ethical missteps that best define Rick Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas. If Perry is properly vetted at today’s hearing, expect at least some of these defining episodes in his career to be revisited:
- Double dipping: The first pockets Rick Perry looks to fill are usually his own. His personal greed is best reflected in a double-dipping scandal where Perry was taking his $150,000 per year salary as Texas Governor while also drawing a full pension as a retired government worker. Perry kept the double payments secret until he was forced to disclose the income during his 2012 Presidential run. Perry’s two-fisted grab of taxpayer funds outraged both Democrats and Republicans in the Texas Legislature who passed legislation to outlaw Perry’s actions.
- Exploiting Cancer Research: Few examples expose Perry’s pay-to-play politics more clearly than his history of giving special access to campaign contributors who received state grant funds intended for cancer research. In 2007, Texas voters approved the multibillion-dollar Texas Cancer Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), which was created to help find life changing cures for cancer. The fund was designed to provide grants to scientific organizations and medical centers after a rigorous and competitive vetting process. CPRIT fell into scandal under Perry’s watch after he gave his campaign donors easy access to grant dollars. In one case, a start-up company with a Perry donor as a key investor received $11 million dollars from CPRIT without proper review or oversight.
- Promoting HPV Vaccine for Lobbyist & Donor: In 2007, Governor Perry ordered that all 11 and 12 year old girls in Texas receive an HPV vaccine. This order was highly controversial on both sides of the political aisle even though some Texans were pleasantly surprised that Perry would show sensitivity to young women at risk from a sexually transmitted virus. However, it quickly became apparent that Perry was not acting out of concern or taking a progressive view on a public health matter. It turns out that Perry’s former chief of staff and political confidant, lobbyist Mike Toomey, had been retained by the pharmaceutical drug company that made the vaccine and had donated to Perry’s political campaign while Perry was considering whether to sign the executive order mandating the vaccines.
- Texas Enterprise Fund: Early in his first full term as Governor, Perry pushed through the creation of the Texas Enterprise Fund, a taxpayer-funded program to give businesses an incentive to relocate or expand into Texas. Companies were supposed to apply for grants after agreeing to move operations to Texas and meet specific job creation goals. A 2014 audit found that the fund had awarded over $200 million to companies that never submitted formal applications or were given taxpayer money without proving they had reached job creation or economic development goals. The Texas Enterprise Fund was so corrupt and dysfunctional under Perry’s watch that it was nearly disbanded before being entirely revamped and reorganized after he left office.
- Failed Veteran Treatment: Perry aided an Irving, TX medical clinic that wasted over $2 million in taxpayer funds to perform a failed medical study that risked the health of veterans by “spinning them upside down in a chair”. State Rep. Chris Turner requested a formal review of the clinic by the state auditor and now the clinic is being forced to repay the state $287,000. The contract with the facility was promoted by Perry. In fact a Dallas Morning News review of his official calendars showed that Perry “visited the clinic at least three times, and that his office was closely involved with arranging for funding.” Earlier this year, Perry was featured in a video praising the clinic as part of a fundraising event.
- Emerging Technology Fund: Governor Perry pushed for the creation of the Emerging Technology Fund, a fund designed to promote research and technological advancement in Texas. The fund doled out more than $400 million to tech companies and Texas universities. However, a 2011 state audit found that the Fund, created by Perry, “lacked transparency”. Furthermore, a Dallas Morning News report revealed that Perry had used the Fund to direct dollars to large campaign donors. In reaction to the controversy and to avoid further scandal, in 2015 the state legislature voted to shut down the program entirely.
- Texas Youth Commission: When Perry was Governor, scandal rocked the Texas Youth Commission (TYC)– which is the Texas juvenile corrections program. Reports confirmed that youth commission staff had tormented, beaten and sexually abused young boys at a west Texas boy’s school. After news broke regarding the West Texas facility, reports surfaced of widespread sexual abuse across the state at other youth facilities. A New York Times article from 2007 cites 150 complaints at 44 state facilities of sexual abuse and mistreatment. In reaction to the news reports detailing abuse, Perry appointed an ombudsman to investigate the problems at state youth facilities and initiated a series of reforms. However, further investigation revealed that the Perry – along with then Attorney General and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott – had been notified of the ongoing abuse as part of a Texas Ranger investigation months before the scandal broke in the press. Perry and Abbott appear to have sat on the report during the months prior to their re-elections in 2006. Even after Perry acted on the scandal, his efforts unraveled. According to the Dallas Morning News, Perry’s second appointment to the ombudsman position was forced to resign after two months after her appointment for “trying to smuggle contraband – including a knife, a cellphone and prescription drugs – past security officials and into a TYC facility in Crockett, in East Texas.”
- Trans Texas Corridor: What has been considered as Perry’s “biggest failure”, the Trans Texas Corridor, was a multi billion-dollar toll road project proposed and conceived of by Perry—the plan can be fairly called a “boondoggle”. The Perry-plan called for massive private land seizures that even state Republicans widely criticized. And, in typical Rick Perry fashion, the project was rife with cronyism. The plan required private rather than state financing. According to a New York Times report, a consultant representing a European company, who the state was soliciting for the project, said that representatives of Governor Perry asked his clients to donate $100,000 to a corridor advocacy group with close ties to Perry. After years of criticism, Perry’s plan was killed in 2009.
