From a tipster:
Oliveira's amendment (floor amendment #4) to SB 482 is a "sell-out" amendment: Dunnam cut a deal to get a coal plant out of his district if he supported this amendment, which allows (but does not require) PUC to review rates if a major district is charging more than 2 cents over the
average. But the language is permissive, so it doesn't make the PUC do anything. They are
selling it as a rate reduction... which would be about 1 cent savings, if that. The deal is that
it does nothing, it has no teeth, for several reasons, including so that Cohen and Noriega can
vote for it and look like they've done something for utility rates. Because... both of them have
conflicts of interests with this stuff: Noriega works for Centerpoint, Cohen's daughter works for
a utility company and her daughter supports her financially.
Pinky Dear, check your facts. Rep. Cohen runs a $6M non-profit agency and is appropriately compensated for her work. In addition to funds, we can all assume she accumulated during her long marriage to her husband, who was a CPA, she hardly needs her daughter to support her.
Tsk tsk.
Better be careful Penguin, people go to hell for saying things like that.
Don't you just love how desperate the Craddick D's are that they have to start trashing everybody after their "leader" Sly goes down on a series of huge defeats. Like Dunnam carries Harnett's vote around in his back pocket (and please recall, Hartnett was one of 8 total to vote against Dunnam's TYC amendment to Jessica's law). If this is the best that Colin Strother can come with for them, they're even more pathetic than I thought they were.
Well, there's a ton of reasons why Rep's would want to vote for this, and not just because two could directly or indirectly benefit from the utility industry.
My understanding of it is that a few Rep's - I won't name any names here - attempted to offer an amendment to reregulate the market. When that was ruled not germane, two then supported the Oliveira amendment -- not just because that would allow them to oppose Turner, but because they would've been allowed to offer up their own amendments later in the day.
There's no doubt that Oliveira's amendment was weak; no the PUC wouldn't have been required to do anything different. Just remember that it's King who sold out first to water the bills down so much.
RSS
Just a few of the sweetheart (backroom) deals with these bills. Never thought I'd say it, but thank goodness for Talton.