Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Thursday, January 21, 2021
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• Continuing a series looking at the lobbyists who whisper in your legislators’ ears, Joshua Pierce profiles Rusty Kelly. He has translated working as the chief of staff to a Democrat House Speaker into a lucrative career influencing public policy in a Republican-dominated legislature.
      
• According to Transparency USA, Russell T. Kelley is the fifth-highest paid lobbyist in Texas, raking in up to $6,384,999 in the past two years. His clients include major corporations, such as AT&T and the Calpine Corporation, as well as interest groups, such as the Texas Beverage Association and the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.
      
• Taxing entities – including Waco, Amarillo, Lubbock, Pecos City, Reeves County, and Collin County – make up approximately 17 percent of his portfolio. 
   
• Ending the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying has long been a priority for grassroots activists as well as the Republican Party of Texas.

• North Texans may be experiencing voter fatigue, if the early turnout in a special state House election is any indication. Erin Anderson reports that just a tiny fraction of eligible voters had gone to the polls when early voting ended Tuesday in a special election to fill the open Texas House District 68 seat.
   
• This is the seat vacated in December by Drew Springer, after he won a special runoff for a state Senate opening.
   
• Election Day in HD 68 is Saturday. There are five candidates in the race: four Republicans and one Democrat. 

• The Democrat-run Austin City Hall is, um, buzzing after they were caught yet again wasting citizens’ hard-earned money.

• Sadly for Austinites, this story is just the latest in city hall’s trail of mishandling citizens’ cash. For example, the all-Democrat Austin City Council overspent $140 million on a flawed tunnel, flushed away $450,000 on two public toilets, wasted $115,000 to clean one public toilet, literally gave away a total of millions to citizens who simply emailed the city asking for cash, lavished $156,000 on holiday parties in December 2019, and threw away a whopping $1 billion on a catastrophic biomass power plant project that only produced energy for six months before it was permanently shut down.
   

• More recently, city officials hired a convicted thief and subsequently were robbed of $1.3 million of taxpayer money.

• As the Fort Worth mayoral contest ramps up, U.S. Rep. Kay Granger (R) has endorsed City Councilman Brian Byrd for the post. Yet, as Robert Montoya reports, Granger’s connection to Fort Worth’s Panther Island redevelopment boondoggle raises questions for Byrd’s plans should he win.
      
• To date, the field of candidates to replace outgoing Mayor Betsy Price includes Byrd, Price’s former chief of staff Mattie Parker, Tarrant County Democrat Party Chair Deborah Peoples, and Councilwoman Ann Zadeh. Also in the race are Mike Haynes and Chris Rector.
      
• The Panther Island real estate redevelopment on the Trinity River near downtown Fort Worth is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle disguised as a flood-control project.
      
• The congresswoman’s son, J.D. Granger, has helped helm the project, and after over a decade and nearly $400 million of federal, state, and local taxpayer funds spent, it’s nowhere near completion. The Trump Administration denied requests for more federal funding for the project last year and required a flood study to be conducted. As of last September, federal funding still hadn’t come through, and the board of the Tarrant Regional Water District—the agency that manages Panther Island—refused to do a flood study.