The Texas Senate Nominations Committee delayed another Rick Perry nomination to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice after rookie Sen. Sylvia Garcia uncovered during questioning that San Antonio businessman Terrell McCombs had not listed all the businesses he owned on his application, reported the Statesman's Mike Ward.
The episode follows the recent Annette Raggette ignominy, in which a nominee declared on her application she wasn't related to a state official though her brother in law and long-time business associate Oliver Bell is the board chair. Bell now says he "should have been paying more attention" when he recommended her for the board, which strikes me as not a particularly credible reaction. Grits must admit a small measure of pride that a short post on this blog started the ball rolling on the committee's investigation of Raggette and Bell's relationship.
In response to the Raggette and McCombs embarrassments, the Nominations Committee created a new rule this week "to require for the first time that all nominees provide up-to-date information on their applications and personal financial statements, and certify in writing that all the information is correct, before they will be considered for approval by the Senate," wrote Ward, who continued, "In investigating the Raggette nomination, senators said they were disturbed to find out that her application and others submitted by nominees had not been fully filled out, that some information was more than a year old and that many nominees’ backgrounds had not been verified or only undergone a cursory check."
It really does seem these nominees aren't being vetted well.
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