State Rep. Tom Craddick, who is expected to become the speaker of the Texas House in January, received tens of thousands of dollars in income from energy companies benefiting from a tax cut he sponsored in 1999, a government watchdog group reported Tuesday.
The tax measure, which provided a temporary severance tax exemption for marginal oil and gas wells in Texas, was championed by then-Gov. George W. Bush and was approved overwhelmingly by Texas lawmakers.
Craddick, R-Midland, who is in the oil and gas business, was the House sponsor. [...]
The watchdog group said Craddick's royalty payments included between $10,000 and $24,999 from Pioneer Natural Resources, which received a $1 million tax cut from the legislation.
Pioneer was created in 1997 in a merger orchestrated by former Bush business associate Richard Rainwater. Bush declared the tax break an emergency, which helped to speed up legislative passage of the measure. [...]
Craddick, who has announced that he has enough votes to be elected the first Republican speaker of the Texas House in modern times, had previously been criticized for his business ties.
Also in 1999, during a debate over electric deregulation, Craddick carried an amendment to give Cap Rock Energy an edge over other electric utilities in Texas. A year earlier, he had been paid $28,500 for brokering a separate business deal for the company.
Craddick's daughter, Christi Craddick, also received $30,000 in lobbying fees from Cap Rock in 1999, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported earlier this fall. Subsequently, a spokesman for the Craddicks announced that Christi would no longer be a lobbyist while her father was speaker.
I normally don't give a damn about Texas politics, except we're beginning to see that it is an incubator for the diseased politics wafting out of the White House. If Texas is the rough draft, how far can we sink as a nation?
By the way, how's that Enron/Cheney criminal investigation going?
