Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Thursday, December 5, 2019
Update your email preferences.

• The Texas Education Agency is recommending that a Fort Worth teacher be reinstated after being fired in June, reports Cary Cheshire. High school English teacher Georgia Clark was fired by Fort Worth ISD after she posted a social media message to President Donald Trump asking him to remove illegal aliens from her home city. The school board claimed her comments were “racially insensitive and discriminatory.”
      
• A review of the teacher’s social media activity shows she was largely asking the president to enforce the law. “Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated,” Clark wrote in a message on Twitter last spring.
      
• TEA Commissioner Mike Morath found the school district violated Clark’s First Amendment rights and ordered she be reinstated with back pay or receive back pay as well as one year’s salary. FWISD is going to fight Morath’s ruling, calling it a “technicality.”

• Unlike 15 other states, Texas has no term limits for its state legislators. For example, Midland Republican Tom Craddick has been in the Texas House since before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. As Brandon Waltens reports, only 11 members of the House aren’t seeking re-election.
       
• Of those 11 House members, only four are simply retiring from public life. Four more are leaving the Texas House for new government jobs or to campaign for a new office. Three are leaving under a cloud of scandal.
     
• In the Texas Senate, where 16 seats are open for re-election, only Democrat State Sen. Jose Menendez (El Paso) is retiring after serving in the Texas Legislature since 2001.
   
• The benefits keep many coming back. While legislators are paid only $600 per month, they also get $221 per day when the legislature is in session. They can also collect a per diem every time they go to Austin for legislative business outside of the session. Waltens reports that often adds up to more than $25,000 in additional per diem allowances.
      
• The real prize is the pension. Yes, the part-time legislators get a pension – which is pegged to the full-time salary of a state district judge. Legislators are vested at eight years in the legislature. After 12 years, they can start collecting payments at the age of 50. Every year past 12 years in the legislature translates into a higher pension payments.