By Olka Forster
On Monday, August 22, Texas legislators on the Sunset Advisory Commission spent nearly 12 hours hearing testimony and reviewing performance reports of various state agencies compiled by their staff. The bulk of the meeting focused on a report concerning the Texas Railroad Commission. The report, which took months of data-gathering to compile, reiterated many of the same points made by environmentalists (including the Sierra Club), health officials, and really anyone with common sense.
I would like to stop here to repeat myself so no one can mistake this scene.
An entire staff of professionals, whose entire job it is to review and make recommendations on state agencies worked for months and did that job. They went to the Texas Railroad Commission, they poured over their scant records, they interviewed the commissioners and their staff, and after MONTHS wrote a professional and concise set of recommendations to make the agency better.
Rep. Dan Flynn (Van), who sits on the Sunset Advisory Commision had some less-than-scrutinizing commentary in response to the report. Here are just a few of the eye-rolling gems from Flynn on how he felt about the review that Sunset staffers wrote.
His reaction to reading the report:
“I thought to myself, why are you so angry at the Railroad Commission? They’ve done a pretty good job.”
To call a report done by people whose job it is to create said report "angry" is beyond the pale of absurd. Disagreeing with the finding of the report is one thing. Diminishing months of work by insinuating Sunset staff let emotions guide their work in order to deligitamize it is a whole other thing. I wonder if his reaction had anything to do with the $25,770 from the oil and gas industry that was contributed to his last campaign.
His view on changing the Railroad Commission name so normal people know what it actually does and to promote “transparency”:
“It’s a historical name. Let people think it has to do with railroads going up and down. It doesn’t take long to figure it out if you’re in the business.”
Right, because the only people who should matter to REGULATORS should be the industry. Nevermind all the Texans who do not know how or who to demand action from when oil and gas operators violate the law. The Railroad Commision is misleading especially to newcomers to our state and those who have not had to deal with the impacts of fracking.
His take on public opinion about the Railroad Commision:
“I haven’t heard any complaints about the Railroad Commission.”
While we do not have access to records of complaints about the agency, it's hard to ignore article after article after article of documentation about the agency not living up to its regulatory function and, sometimes, actively ignoring that part of its job.
Rep. Dan Flynn was appointed to the Sunset Commission to address the legitimate concerns of thousands of Texans. These are people who have to deal with the health implications of contaminated water, air, and land. They deserve legislators and agencies that take their lives seriously and not those who are only committed to upholding a problematic status quo.
In my opinion, Rep. Flynn is not just an indictment of an anti-intellectual political system, he is a true testament to how unfair the system is (seriously, this guy has legitimate power). Stodgy politicians like Flynn are why millions of people are disillusioned with our political process. He asserts his opinion without expertise, diminishes the evidence of experts who have done the work, and holds himself to a standard that gives lip-service to "good moral character" while shutting down any specifications of what that may actually look like.