How to Keep Your Nursing License in the Age of Ebola

            If you spend any time around a nurse’s station you’ll hear certain common themes in the chatter. First is, one hopes, what the patient wants, then what the doctor wants and, finally, most imponderable of all, perhaps most worrisome to the individual nurse, what “the Board” expects, in other words, the Board of Nursing. In this case, the Texas Board of Nursing which is the licensing and regulatory agency for the 370,000 nurses in the state. As part of the reaction to the first Ebola cases in Texas and how that care was handled, there’s already speculation about how doctors, hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and President Obama will approach public health menaces in the future. But the first two domestic victims of the infection were Texas RNs and the Board of Nursing should also be watched.

            To understand caregiver practice in this state and even in the rest of the country there’s a single precept or rule that governs the comportment of anyone holding a nursing license: the primary responsibility of the license holder is not to the hospital, nor to the physician—something that doctors even today still have a hard time understanding—but to the patient.
            This idea has been distilled to a frequent bit of wisdom heard among RNs when presented with an iffy situation. “You can always get another job, you can’t get another license,” which may seem obvious, but as the first reports emerge on how Ebola Patient Zero Thomas Eric Duncan was treated in a Dallas emergency room it’s something to keep in mind. Duncan was sent home with a high fever after reporting he arrived from an infection hot zone. The charting that has been released is contradictory and confusing. Mr. Duncan's family has said they believe he was treated to a lesser standard because of his race, a complaint heard in hospitals across the country, that being black or Hispanic or uninsured leads to being shown the closest exit or being given second rate care. Nursing association leaders have complained about lack of equipment and insufficient protocols in Dallas. All of this combines for a case that is likely to be dissected and studied. The Texas Board of Nursing is also likely to weigh in at some point, especially since this case seems to resemble the index case for bad nursing care in the state: Lunsford vs. the Texas Board of Nursing, circa 1980. 

             Martha Lunsford was a hapless RN whose name has been used to frighten a generation of nursing students, hers being the archetypical example of what not to do in a hospital. A synopsis of her handling of heart attack victim Donald Floyd thirty years ago, written by the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, affirming Lunsford’s suspension by the Board, is still instructive today.

“Floyd, traveling through Raymondville with Farrell on their way to Houston, complained of great pressure and pain in his chest accompanied by a pain and numbness radiating down his left arm. Farrell also testified that Floyd was extremely anxious and quite grey in color. Farrell, in her search for medical help, found a physician sitting at the nursing station outside one of the treatment rooms. She requested his assistance, but was instructed to seek help from a nurse because he was quite busy. Farrell insisted that the physician help Floyd, who she explained was suffering from chest pains, but was again instructed to seek the assistance of the nurse on duty. Appellant Nurse Lunsford then approached the nurse’s station and was instructed by the physician to send Floyd on to Valley Baptist Hospital in Harlingen, twenty-four miles away. In instructing appellant, the physician pointed to the hospital’s only cardiac care equipment then in use on another patient.”
            Nurse Lunsford testified that the written nursing policy was that anyone presenting at Willacy County Hospital who did not have a local MD was to be shown the door. Lunsford did what the physician ordered with the result that, per the court opinion, “Floyd died shortly thereafter, less than five miles from the Willacy County Hospital in Raymondville.” Later, Nurse Lunsford lost her license permanently for allowing another cardiac patient under her care to bleed out following a procedure. She said in an interview a few years ago that the worst part for her personally was when a young woman in nursing school, who was dating Martha Lunsford’s son, asked if she was the same RN who the student was hearing about in class. The bottom line is that doctor’s orders and hospital protocols are all fine but RNs are still required to do what is best for the patient. You can find another job but the Board of Nursing can be merciless.

The face of the Texas Board of Nursing for the last two decades has been Kathy Thomas, the BON executive director, a former pediatric advanced practitioner and Army nurse who has an understanding but no-nonsense reputation. She is apparently the longest-tenured agency head in Texas government. In answer to written questions submitted before the Ebola outbreak she discussed the changing role of nursing practice and discipline in the state:

 “The Board of Nursing has regulated RN education and practice for over 100 years and that covers a lot of ground in the evolution of healthcare, technology and science. The amount of information and skills required for safe practice has certainly changed.” Of Board discipline, which is often what most interests nurses, she noted, “The issues reflect the environment so, for example, as electronic medical records have replaced paper charts, documentation has new challenges. Over the past five years complaints have grown for two major reasons: One, as the nursing population grows, so do complaints. They generally reflect about 1% of the nursing population. Two, criminal background checks have revealed information that the Board was unaware of before these background checks were done.” Ms. Thomas said that the three leading causes of discipline for nurses in Texas are substance use/abuse, criminal conduct and failure to follow minimum standards—the last being something like what led to Nurse Lunsford’s fall and which will likely be part of any review of the care of Patient Zero in Dallas. That means Kathy Thomas and the Board are also now in the hot seat, mistakes have been made in the hospital, the question is what will be learned? 

One hint is that blaming the doctors and the hospital is probably not the way to go for those nurses questioned. That’s what Nurse Lunsford tried. Interestingly the Board of Nursing includes a number of African-Americans who are also likely to want to be reassured about the standards of care for the late Mr. Duncan, a black man. Students are encouraged to attend Board hearings if only to learn what may be the hardest lesson of all. The members of the Board are not friends or associates, even if he or she is a brother or sister nurse. The Board is there to protect the public and in a collectively-governed profession like nursing, often described as functioning like a beehive—in contrast to the independence of physicians. That means toeing a line that has been established through consensus. Which may be why talk at nurse’s stations often sounds social as well as professional: who is a “good nurse” or “bad nurse” or, worst of all, a “scary nurse,” like Martha Lunsford. The courts have ruled those distinctions are mostly up to the Board. 

            The trip line for what gets RNs in trouble is much lower to the ground than for physicians, certainly. If you listen to a meeting of the Texas Medical Board, for example, in which disciplinary discussions can range over how many extra prescriptions for hydrocodone the doctor was giving to a patient who didn’t need the narcotic in the first place or whether the MD was having sex with a patient in his or her consultation room, which would mean the patient was paying for that service too, suffice it to say that if you’ve reached any of those milestones in discussions with the Board of Nursing you can probably go ahead and mail your license in because you’re done. The profession of nursing is evolving—as reported by Ms. Thomas. As new threats to public health emerge, the Board still has traditional concerns such as the RN’s responsibility to the patient. But also a newer and equally urgent worry based upon what happened in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas: protection of the nurse by the hospital.          

The Texas Tribune Business Model

Who said there are no second acts? Booted from the leadership of Texas Monthly for bad numbers, not his real crime, bad journalism, Evan Smith is now running the Texas Tribune both as editor and CEO. As easy as it is to be jealous of his success, as we say in the African-American community, you have to give a nigger his due. Smith and his financial backer—venture capitalist John Thornton—are doing something admirable in the Tribune by creating valuable content in an information age.

About Evan Smith’s interviewing style: There are basically two approaches to questioning, whether it’s People magazine doing the asking or the FBI. 

Oprah is at one extreme where the conversation is just as much about the interviewer as the interviewee and the answers don’t matter so much. Smith and his people at TT operate fairly close to the Oprah tradition. It’s a surprisingly effective approach even in public affairs. What’s impressive about the vibe the Tribune puts out is that its journalists have taken a leaf from the Obama book, early in his first administration, when addressing conflict in the Mideast the president reminded Jews and Muslims that everybody has a narrative. That applies in Texas as well. The bureaucrats who actually run the Lone Star State Capitol day-to-day have something to say. In the proper non-threatening setting, public servants talk and talk and talk and Smith and his people listen. 

What the Tribune really does that’s better than anybody else: not words but numbers, stats, files, literally accessible at your fingertips. There’s bill tracking, governor’s pardons, state employee salaries, prison populations and more, all there or at least more there than anywhere else, maintained in databases that are handy. If Evan Smith and crew never did anything else they’ve already helped change journalism. In fact it’s all about numbers even in understanding the inner working of the website. 

Evan Smith’s salary was an early preoccupation of Tribune management and a pre-emptive declaration was made that he must be paid well. “During the initial stages of the business, the founders determined that a high caliber leader who could lead with integrity and high standards was necessary to ensure the success of a nonpartisan news organization,” according to the Trib’s Form 990 required of non-profits. “CEOs of major foundations and web-based companies, as well as leaders of other public service organizations including ProPublica, MinnPost and PBS were approached to further determine appropriate compensation levels.”

Although the current Form 990 is late being posted, Smith’s last cited salary was $300,000 plus change. He has some memberships covered, as well as what must be his tab at the Quorum Club, for Austin's movers and shakers, or the like, that's a work-related expense, and it’s of note that the salaries and bonuses of three names on the Tribune masthead, Smith, executive editor Ross Ramsey and chief fundraiser April Hinkle approach 20% of the budget. Salaries like these seem reasonable enough, actually. Austin is an expensive town and these are talented people, the real issue isn’t how much they’re being paid but where the money is coming from and what effect that source of funding has on the news. In that respect—Austin, we have a problem.

Arguably the biggest story in Texas in the last year or more besides the success of the Tea Party has been the showdown between University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall and President Bill Powers of the Austin campus. In a way the Tribune itself is responsible for the original smackdown reporting, a great piece about a “forgiveable loan” program offered by the UT Law School Foundation which provided hundreds of thousands of dollars each to law faculty, who did not have to repay the money. Call that practice what you will. The Tribune entered the eye of the storm at that point.

          It wouldn't be fair to say that all the bad blood between President Powers and UT System leadership has been due to the cash. Bill Powers, who describes himself as a liberal, was a thorn in the side of the more conservative Board of Regents even before details of payments became known. It’s said that Governor Perry doesn’t care for President Powers and that’s a heavy weight for any public university leader in Texas to carry, especially with this governor, who can’t let anybody think he can be punked. Since the original Tribune report broke—as the story developed a life of its own—including impeachment hearings for Regent Hall and shows of support from various sources for President Powers, it’s been instructive to watch the Tribune’s coverage which has been, generally speaking, to roast Regent Hall slowly over a low flame. Until recently at least, when Hall’s fortunes took a sudden turn for the better. 

            The missing detail in countless pieces of Tribune reportage has been that the University of Texas at Austin, i.e., Bill Powers, is the news site’s major business partner in recent years. Those one-line admissions at the end of Trib stories that UT Austin is a contributor to the website don’t do the relationship justice. They’re practically fucking—Evan Smith and President Powers—in a businesslike way. 

What we’ve seen in the last year and a half or so is battle by proxies, with Governor Perry represented by Regent Hall and President Powers’ flag waved by the Tribune. In the later case, for a price. This hasn’t been an example of journalism at its best but it has been journalism at its most entertaining. The Tribune tried simultaneously to do two things—protect President Powers and take Regent Hall down. In the end Evan Smith almost hit his numbers.

A recent reluctant release of information on spending by UT Austin shows that during roughly the same period as the fight between Powers and Hall, the Tribune received about $200,000 from the university (the exact amount isn’t clear from the figures released by President Powers), for ads and sponsorships of the Tribune and Evan Smith’s various events. That sum may include money from the business school and LBJ School of Public Affairs which also do business with Smith’s non-profit news source, to say nothing of the campus radio station KUT which does polling with/for the Tribune and for which Smith allegedly pays the university forty large.“Transparency in all things,” Evan Smith likes to tell audiences, “even your own business,” although he has previously objected to efforts to make public the extent of his ties to KUT. 

We only know that the $200,000 does not include $63,000 a year Smith also receives as a lecturer at the LBJ School, or the deals the Tribune gets for various festivals that take place on the Austin campus which have included rent-free use of university space. In the context of a significant on-going business relationship it’s almost certainly not coincidence that the Tribune did not report, as others have, that Powers himself also received a large Law School Foundation loan and—as the Austin newspaper pointed out—did not follow the rules correctly in getting the money. The Tribune represents the majority of state government reporting today—as Evan Smith himself likes to note—and was heavily focused for a long time on the alleged sins of Regent Hall. In the midst of the showdown in September of last year the editor-in-chief wrote to President Powers after a Tribune event on campus: “It was the best festival ever, Bill, and UT-Austin and your team are absolutely one of the main reasons. We had so many people, so much energy, and so many media organizations on this campus. And so many students participated—an unprecedented number. It really came together. Sincerely grateful, E.” 

From Powers: “Thanks, Evan. I had the same impression. You are great partners.” Prior email included birthday wishes from Smith to President Powers, all in the timeframe of the dispute with the Renegade Regent. Smith has previously been an invited guest in Powers’ presidential box for Longhorn games. That’s cool—it’s not a big deal—but exactly how does that translate into impartiality? It is part of a pattern, though. At Texas Monthly, according to study done at the UT School of Journalism, Evan Smith was documented to be first editor of the magazine to provide the business side the calendar of journalistic production, in order to synchronize ads to content. At magazines, that’s kind of expected, although perhaps not optimal. At a newspaper it’s something different altogether. Evan is fond of telling audiences, as he recounts the Tribune’s successes, that he often thinks of himself as editor “in the morning” and chief fundraiser/CEO “in the afternoon.” A much more likely scenario is that he is fundraiser and editor simultaneously, all day long. 

Critics want to look at corporate contributors for conflicts of interest but the Tribune is devoted to state policy and its ethical underbelly involves government not corporate sponsors. Among the Tribune’s biggest “partners” are the state’s public universities. 

If for example you review the TT website, A&M stories are without exception positive, detailing university outreach or new programs: C’mon now, this is Texas, it’s not like controversy is hard to find. Choose an A&M campus at random—Corpus Christi for example, where leadership seems to be particularly challenged—and the university president has been using public funds to pay his dues at the Corpus Christi Yacht Club and his administration refuses to release details of a big drone development program. It's not like there are no hard questions to ask. Certainly the Tribune tries to go soft in order to encourage disclosure, but it also seems not to be above picking targets according to who’s paying. 

            As the Hall story developed critical mass it was interesting to see who denounced the “renegade” regent. The first cut is always the deepest. The main accusers seemed to be Senator Judith Zaffirini, Democrat of Laredo, reported in the pages of the Tribune, and Representative Jim Pitts of Waxahatchie at the hearings of the Select Committee on Transparency brought to us without commercial interruption by Speaker Joe Straus. As it would turn out all three—Straus, Pitts and Zaffirini—while complaining that Hall was on a witch hunt—were in jeopardy from what he was looking into. Surprise. The Tribune’s coverage was mentioned during the impeachment hearings and even footnoted in the final report recommending Hall’s trial. That maybe is merely coincidence, and good reporting, nothing else. 

More likely is that journalists are part of this story, a big part, especially in the context of the new interplay between traditional news sources and upstart online operations. It’s not pretty having to sort out roles and responsibilities, who gets money from what source and the issue of who is the reporter. A particularly apt example—of a similar kind of preferential reporting and how it arises—comes from California not Texas, and points to the selectivity in reverse you see in Austin at the Tribune. 

This incident also involved a familiar player from the University of Texas.  

Almost five years ago, the same time the Tribune started to publish, the Bay Citizen was launched with the same business plan—but in Northern California, an online startup promising to reveal how the world really works, through the eyes of good reporters. 

The very next year the Citizen ran an extraordinary report that University of California President (former University of Texas Chancellor) Mark Yudof had spent $600,000 of the university’s money to rent a home for his wife and himself. For one year. 

The context was mind-boggling: California was in the midst of a budget meltdown, the University of California was in the worst financial straights imaginable—calling for large tuition increases accompanied by student protests daily

Yudof’s wife, at taxpayer expense, was modifying an elevator for her own use in the rental, capped by the trashing of the property, leaving a $50,000 repair bill for which the university was also responsible. Neither the San Francisco Chronicle which is the Hearst paper in Baghdad by the Bay—traditional first responder for University of California Office of the President news—nor the Los Angeles Times followed the story, even after Yudof was reprimanded publicly by the regents. The Times higher education reporter, who has been covering UC for a long time and has consistently soft sold UC, tried to cover Yudof’s ass by writing about the poor state of repair of the UC president’s official residence but not the reprimand by the regents. Chronicle reporter Nanette Asimov wrote nothing at all. In this case, personal relationships between traditional journalists and the people they cover, something which startups are supposed to avoid, appeared to bar “doing the right thing.” In the case of the Tribune there seems to be a simpler dynamic at work. It’s all about money.

“From the beginning, we talked about this has got to be a sustainable model,” Evan Smith said in meetings of non-profits two years ago and again last year. “What that means is you’ve got to diversify your sources of revenue. You’ve got to have enough buckets so that if one bucket is not as high at the end of the year as you anticipated another bucket is overfull and flowing into that bucket.

“We literally have been willing to put a price tag on everything up to the point at which it compromises our integrity. We’re running a business here.” 

             Evan specifically noted in these talks to the non-profit community, as he taught others what he just learned, that while big donations from corporations—foundations and the rich, and such—are welcome, his business model relies more on smaller regular donations, on a yearly basis, which exactly describes what he’s getting from Texas’s public universities. What a coincidence!

            This is, like, regular income—reliable cash flow from the people of the state. UT, A&M and Texas State University System are all among those paying. In what may be another example of editorial payola—the evidence is only circumstantial—but points to Evan Smith and the Chancellor of the Texas State System, Bruce McCall. Last year the Tribune ran a piece on the sudden departure of the first Latino president of a public university in the state. Richard Maestas of the Big Bend campus was literally in West Texas one day and recalled to Austin the next. Locals say they knew an administrative hit was in progress when Texas State officials arrived by plane at Alpine’s tiny airport in the Trans Pecos, on the morning in question. It was like something out of Conrad—Maestas’s methods had been judged unsound in Austin, out there in the High Desert. He was to be terminated, no further duties, removed from his office but Texas State would pay out his salary for the rest of the year. To set the scene.

A Tribune story noted the abrupt removal and as followup—nothing. That Dr. Maestas was removed by Texas State leadership a week after he fired the football coaching staff could have been established right away, and eventually was—people were talking openly about his dismissal. But no definitive cause was given. Nor has it ever. The original Trib story was updated but the obvious next piece was never done. There was no “good” story possible here for Texas State: Chancellor McCall either screwed up hiring Maestas in the first place, or firing him later, since his tenure in Alpine was so short. Texas State System, which is the same kind of sponsor of the Tribune as A&M—less than UT Austin but still worth about $100,000 a year—didn’t want the other shoe to drop. Indeed, as part of its publicity contract with Hahn Communications, Texas State is advised to spend lavishly with the Tribune. Hahn’s contract also promises help placing stories in senior legislators’ hometown news, during the legislative session. Nothing is left to chance. Everyone who counts is properly connected to everybody else. Increasingly, the Tribune provides the wiring. At a price. It’s a business model—a startup model—take risks, be willing to make mistakes, don’t look back. That’s what Evan Smith advises his non-profit audiences. That is what he has done and it is mostly good. Mostly.

The recent spotlight has been on the University of Texas and for good reason. Among the accusations against Regent Hall was that, while looking at possible cooking of fundraising figures by President Powers, Wallace Hall somehow forced out the law firm Vinson & Elkins, which was involved in the fundraising review. Those of us with institutional memory will recall Vinson & Elkins as lawyers for Enron, the most corrupt company in America of its generation, and Bill Powers as an Enron board member, so the real question was not if the law firm was forced out but how V&E was placed in a post-Enron position of trust in the first place. Another accusation against Regent Hall appears to have greater validity. That he targeted Bill Powers. Once again there may have been good reason. 

Wallace Hall is reported to have shown an abnormal interest in Powers’ travel and in his wife: if you look at Texas Department of Transportation flight logs for the period prior to the showdown, President Powers appears as one of the most frequent users of state airplanes in circumstances in which this use is not approved. 

President Powers made a series of small-plane flights, at thousands of dollars per aircraft use, to cities where there was commercial service readily available. He didn’t need for example to take a state plane as lone passenger with two pilots and at a cost of almost $4,000 to fly 375 miles to talk to the president of the University of Oklahoma. But he did, even though there is commercial passenger service to Norman, OK. 

Power's wife appears on some of the passenger manifests as an employee of the president’s office and if nothing was made of these violations at the time it’s probably because among the other passengers on one of these Longhorn Air flights were then-Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court Wallace Jefferson and Associate Justice Harriet O’Neill. 

Both High Court jurists retired shortly thereafter. The point is that where there’s smoke there’s usually fire at UT, and for that reason it helps to know Powers’ origins in his present position. He had a godfather, named Mark Yudof. Yudof served as an assistant dean at the law school when Powers was first a professor there, UT Executive Vice-President and Provost Mark Yudof later groomed Powers for a position of authority at the School of Law, when Mark Yudof became chancellor of UT System he helped make Powers president of the biggest and most prestigious university in the state. If President Powers’ tenure has been ethically-challenged, so was that of his mentor. The issue that will remain the defining aspect of the Hall-Powers fight is legislators’ improper influence on admissions. It did not start with Bill Powers but he has embraced the practice with apparent zest.

Favoritism shown to the children of the connected likely occurs at all the campuses in the state, maybe in the nation; at some schools it’s written into the rules. But not here. The favoritism was extraordinary in regards the UT Law School and marked by literally incredible testimony of Rep. Jim Pitts, powerful Republican chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, who has announced his retirement from office. 

Rep. Pitts claimed that his request to President Powers to get his son into the Law School was a mere “form letter,” he accused Regent Hall of a variety of sins, while denying that he himself had done anything improper. The same dubious defense could be made by senators Zaffirini and John Carona, Republican of Dallas, who was recently defeated in a primary race. Both used stroke to achieve dubious admissions. It makes you feel almost sorry for Powers, it's almost a form of blackmail, could he really afford to reject the application of the son of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee? Not likely. And then there was the bad press. As crooked admissions suddenly became the most interesting issue in higher education, the Tribune was placed in an uncomfortable position still trying to protect the man who, it was suddenly clear, acted on legislators’ pleas. Executive editor and Tribune #2 Ross Ramsey opined that Regent Hall really presented a challenge to the rights and privileges of legislators to use influence. 

“Wallace Hall,” this amazing defense of corruption began, “has been poking at this for more than a year, in a way that has prosecutors and impeachment-minded lawmakers questioning what he has done and why he has done it,” Ramsey wrote just after the Hall story suddenly changed directions. 

“Would it be more surprising that elected officials can get people into top schools according to a kind of time-honored friends and family plan, or that they do not have the clout to get someone who is marginally-qualified into, say, a state college of law or business?” 

The Tribune editorial argued that the public wants a legislator who can get the job done—who can get someone on the phone for example—or, in the case of the University of Texas, write a letter that will get an otherwise-unqualified student into class. (A contrary argument, which was not made, is that the public expects a fair process in admissions to public universities.) Ramsey was correct however in his use of the term “marginally-qualified,” to describe many of the legislators’ kids, since the issue of influence arose when these privileged students didn’t pass their exams. 

The Trib #2 was writing his defense of university President Powers in a context in which it was suddenly not clear who was more at risk, President Powers or the renegade regent. “Hall is critical of UT-Austin for allegedly having done the bidding of lawmakers,” Ramsey wrote, “but the real threat is to the lawmakers themselves. It is their clout that he is questioning,” a strange claim to make unless the Tribune editorial board believes that there are two sets of rules, one for legislators and one and for the rest of us. Since Ramsey's column, other state universities have moved to cover their own tracks. Both A&M and the medical school at Texas Tech have said that they will only release documentation on legislators’ influence after requestors pay $110,000, to each school, for a records search. One of the complaints against Regent Hall at the impeachment hearings was that he attempted to avoid charges for open records requests. We now know why. 

Similar barriers to release were recently offered by UT Southwestern Medical School and Texas State University System. At UT Medical Branch on Galveston Island where corruption has a long and storied history, medical school officials have said they will not look for influence-loaded correspondence because the search would not be administratively feasible. “Please be advised,” wrote UTMB records manger Becky Wilson in July of this year, “that UTMB’s database does not track information you are seeking. To determine which applicants may have had a legislative inquiry would require a manual review of thousands of applicants files.” 

Ms. Wilson is not denying that the practice exists, mind you—so-called “legislative inquiries”—only the university’s willingness to look for them. It’s important to remember that Gov. Perry chose the nuclear option here. He didn’t have to. He did the right thing, which was easy for him here because he’s an Aggie, not a Longhorn. It's no skin off his scrotum. But it is skin off ours, the public's. Cronyism is against society’s rules for a reason, it’s inefficient as well as unfair, but after being used here, the revelation of improper influence in admissions will now be hard to get back in the bottle. There are a lot of scenarios possible of what we have been seeing for the last year or so at the Capitol but a cynical bet is that the governor wanted to get rid of Bill Powers and that proved more difficult than first foreseen. Wallace Hall was chosen to “look for something” on Powers—and, as it turned out, there was something to find. The public should be happy that a corrupt system has been exposed but it’s hard to believe UT or anyone else is going to do an exhaustive and complete review of legislator influence, as UT has promised. These are bodies that everyone, including legislators and probably the governor, want to keep buried. Wallace Hall kept his head down and plowed forward even when he was being accused of every wrong in Texas short of the Kennedy assassination. Personally, not much is known about him, but from his behavior he must have a big pair. Early on he was specifically chosen for investigative tasks as a regent, which sounds very much like he was brought in for a specific purpose, an administrative hit, so to speak. He certainly seems to have taken his work seriously. In the end, he got there and he has done the public a great service. 

Evan Smith, for his part, has shown that the weakness of his business model is mostly ethical. He’s also shown he’s a formidable guy. If you ignore his reliance on the state for funding, in Smith you’re left with a kind of journalistic impresario not often seen in our remarkably staid profession. You've heard of yellow journalism, this is the green kind. 

A recent article in the New Yorker discussed the concept of “disruptive innovation” in a journalism context (studied and rejected as a new business model for the New York Times) in which the traditional wall between the editorial and business sides of a publication is allowed to fall. Evan Smith has already done that. Twice, if you include his time at Texas Monthly. While the Hall-Powers coverage has been one-sided, that’s small price to pay (mostly borne by Regent Hall) for the good that this conflict ultimately did, and for the on-going good the Tribune does. There may be corruption at work here, in the Tribune-UT axis, but if there is, the heavy isn’t Evan Smith. 

It’s John Thornton, the Tribune's money guy..

 

If you look at investments made by the University of Texas Investment Management Company—the 21-billion-dollar bank account that funds UT System. If you look at the past few years UTIMCO has had investments valued at almost $190 million with Mr. Thornton’s Austin Ventures. The current figure, per UTIMCO, is about $50 million. 

Last year the Bay Citizen, which outed Mark Yudof’s expensive housing back in the day, merged with an organization called the Center for Investigative Reporting and the CIR has continued looking into operations at the University of California and recently published another interesting story. In the last decade, of the top ten university investment funds in the country the absolutely worst-performing was UC, per the CIR report. Number nine on the list, the second worst performance was a familiar name: UTIMCO. 

You would think that the performance of the huge UT investment fund would be a fertile area for Tribune reporting: maybe one of the website’s much-praised databases, showing state investment returns and bonuses paid. But in almost five years the Tribune has produced no examination of this sensitive area of state policy. That’s a surprise because the really juicy scandals at UT in recent years have almost always involved UTIMCO—as long as there’s been a UTIMCO—the last two decades or so, yet the only two significant mentions of UTIMCO activities in Trib history have been two interviews—one of them video and one print—of UTIMCO CEO Bruce Zimmerman in which he was allowed to praise his own company’s performance undisputed. In the most recent, the written interview, a few weeks ago, Zimmerman claimed that in his seven years as CEO, $3.7 billion has been added to university coffers. 

That may be true but what he failed to add—and was not asked—was a different standard, what the CIR measured, how he has performed against his peers. That’s how you tell if an investment fund is making money.

One might also mention that Bruce Zimmerman has received $6.4 million in bonuses in the last five years alone. UTIMCO president Cathy Iberg has received $4.3 million in bonuses in the same time, a period of improving but still lackluster returns. Indeed, when last we looked Zimmerman’s brother-in-law was a partner at Austin Ventures. According to UTIMCO, the Austin Ventures returns have been acceptable but it’s probably also true that John Thornton has made more money from the University of Texas than he has “given” to the Tribune. For Smith and Thornton both, relying on the University of Texas has turned out to be an effective business plan. The issue here is connectedness more than corruption. 

The world is getting smaller everyday and certain businesses, like venture capital, and the new journalism, rely on relationships that aren’t communicated clearly by a single line at the end of a story. Ditto, the law. Austin has become a particularly wired town and that includes the courthouse. Gregg Cox, the prosecutor who’s investigating Regent Hall, is a Longhorn booster and knows President Powers personally and has declined to recuse himself. Once again, also on this legal front, we won’t be getting the real story about why UT's shit happens the way it does. Not if the Texas Tribune has anything to say about it.

Who Audits the Auditor?

        Some of the most informative and satisfying moments in the follow-up to the extraordinary cheating scandal in El Paso schools actually took place at a meeting in the State Capitol early last year. In a case that featured reports of truancy officers going to homes to keep low-performing refugee kids—desaparecidos as they are called—from going to class, it’s hard to imagine anything that could be more bizarre than what students and teachers already endured in E.P. Independent School District, but at the Texas Capitol all things are possible and legislative hearings can be as strange and unnatural as anything seen in crazy classrooms. 

The principal witness of the House Select Committee on Transparency that day was John Keel, longtime State Auditor. John Keel’s testimony was not intended to be about what his office had or—more importantly—had not done after the first reports of scholastic wrongdoing in West Texas. But Democrats on the committee smelled blood and that’s what they got.

The venerable Mr. Keel later described his own testimony during the legislative session as “bob and weave” yet it seemed, really, he sat there and took a beating. The State Auditor was on the defensive as he described his performance on a number of investigations from cancer research to Governor Perry’s varied economic endeavors. The hearing was like watching a young Ali—or a couple of young Alis—against an old George Foreman. First out of the corner was Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer of San Antonio. The lawmaker asked an apparently innocent question about authority to audit local schools. He connected on his very first punch.

John Keel explained that his office has authority to investigate all state entities—but has no mandate to look at the workings of cities or counties in Texas. The auditor has statutory review of river authorities (Brazos, Colorado, Red et al) but, the auditor left unsaid, the politics can be pretty heavy-going. “We do very little work at school districts. It depends on the nature of the money,” Keel told the committee. As if that weren’t explanation enough, which it would turn out not to be, he repeated, “We do very little work on school districts.”

Next at the microphone was Rep. Naomi Gonzalez of El Paso who is actually a product of the schools in question. As the Republican chairman ran interference for Mr. Keel and reminded The Committee of the clock’s few remaining minutes Rep. Gonzalez pressed home basically a single question phrased as two: Does the state auditor—you sir, in other words as she put her question in a cordial and businesslike manner—“have the authority to audit a school district?” She asked again, “What exactly are those parameters when you get involved?” 

Mr. Keel said he would get back to her with a written response, which her office says he never did. “I’d like to go back and check with our general counsel,” he told the committee six years after he was first contacted by the El Paso delegation about corruption in hometown schools. Little matter because—as in a courtroom—at a committee hearing in the Capitol you don’t ask a question for which you don’t already know the answer. It may be why the members are meeting in the first place. They just want to hear you say it for the record.

At the end of the hearing someone threw Mr. Keel an easy one, something he could hit—about his opinion as an experienced state official.

 “It’s a pretty good idea for me,” said the auditor, the state’s chief numbers guy, a CPA described even by his friends as having a personality like stone, “to keep most of my opinions to myself.” 

John Keel is old Texas from a well-known fifth-generation-Austinite, Irish Roman Catholic family whose members, like the Johnsons and Bushes, have mostly worked in public office. For the Keels public service has been, until recently, often on the administrative not elective end. John Keel’s origins are not as well-known as those of his famous cousin, former State Rep. Terry Keel who was sheriff in Austin before arriving at the House of Representatives and eventually becoming Parliamentarian. Running for office, after all, lays someone naked to the public eye in a way that serving as a high bureaucrat—what the British call a mandarin—does not. 

It’s said nonetheless that John Keel was brought up alongside Terry, “like wolves,” as a former adversary noted, by Terry’s father Thomas Keel who was for many years director of the Legislative Budget Board, also at the State Capitol. John learned his numbers early taught by someone, Uncle Tom, who knew how the State of Texas makes money and pays its bills. That may be part of the problem—not the State Auditor’s knowledge base but his extended family. There are so many Keels and they are so well-connected which may be why John looked so wary last legislative session, about questions that were both asked—and not asked at all. The undercurrent of the questioning can be described as an effort to understand the Keel family as well as John or Terry. The Keel cousins are “made guys” at the Texas Capitol, an underworld term that also sometimes serves in Austin.

John Keel’s conflicts of interest—in a position as sensitive as State Auditor—it's like appointing a member of the Gambino Crime Family as director of the FBI. In a statehouse famous for influence-peddling and questionable deals, no doubt, so extensively corrupt that it seems almost mean-spirited to single out any one conflict. But if you had to chose one, one fact of life in the affairs of the State of Texas that might explain why the State Auditor’s integrity is compromised and why he was probably the wrong guy to expect action from about a scandal that started in El Paso but which implicates state officials in Austin—it is this:

Suppose, for a moment, the fraud hot-line rings at the State Auditor’s Office.

Suppose someone is denouncing the way, for example, burial plots are handed out as patronage in Austin—as freebies to the deserving and sometimes-undeserving elites. That is a claim that has actually been made, repeatedly, about the State Cemetery, a few blocks east of the Capitol, last resting place to Stephen F. Austin, Ann Richards, “Big John” Connally and many other Lone Star heroes and heroines and not a few also-rans. Suppose John Keel got the call. Keel’s office could investigate, it’s certainly within his authority as auditor, but the Keel family through reservations for the living including two yet-to-be-named spouses has nine burial plots already set aside for themselves, a whole little row in Statesman’s Meadow, more than all the Bushes and Perrys and Richardses combined. The Keels are a made family too.

 

On paper John Keel’s expertise is without parallel.

He knows the State of Texas better than most anyone can claim. He worked for former state rep/secretary of state/comptroller/lieutenant governor Bob Bullock way back when, at the Comptroller's Office, when Bullock was in his prime and his game was tightest, which means something even today to Republicans and Democrats alike. It means John Keel is good like most of Bullock’s people were—although not necessarily good in an ethical or right-versus-wrong sense because that’s not what’s meant when you say someone is good at the Capitol. 

Keel was an aide to Bullock who was the last patron before Gov. Perry, the last strongman in the state—back in the ‘80s and later when Bullock was president of the Texas Senate, in the roaring 90s, just before the old pol met and found common cause with Governor George W. Bush in the waning months of the millennium. John Keel according to who you’re talking to—either was never one of Bullock’s rat-pack drinking-buddy let’s-chase-the-secretary-around-the-desk kind of assistants of which Bob Bullock had quite a few—or he was, yes, very much a party guy, booze and babes, drinking til dawn like many of the rest of the early-mid Bullock crowd, before he gave up booze, Bullock not Keel. There’s no doubt about one thing: “Keel was a numbers guy,” said a former lobbyist who worked in the Capitol when Mr. Bullock ran state government. Bullock respected a good accountant, which John Keel is said to be, because Bullock’s power in government was based on having better numbers than anyone else. Keel was one of “Bullock’s number guys” and that’s saying a lot, good and bad.

Later, still back in the day, while Bullock was lieutenant governor, John Keel became director of the Legislative Budget Board just like his Uncle Thomas. When John Keel was appointed, as Speaker Craddick proudly proclaimed at the time, there had only been four directors of the Legislative Budget Board in history and two of them were named Keel. After Mr. Bullock’s death, and after W made the move to D.C., the then-serving state auditor—who had a reputation for “sticking his nose in things that didn’t concern him,” as a high-ranking Democrat explained—angering both D’s and R’s—made the fatal error of criticizing Gov. Rick Perry. A big, big mistake, what can you say? The old auditor was out. John Keel was in. He’s been in ever since. The last decade, the last few years, especially the last two or three years, have been rough. The questions about how he handles investigations are getting tougher, it seems, as the scandals get worse. John Keel knows the Capitol like no one else. Arguably, he knows the state’s numbers better than anyone else—and he knows when things don’t add up. Yet his audits seem only to confirm what has already been in the newspaper—until El Paso where his own integrity was placed on the line and his reputation with the power structure in Austin was first called into question.

When John Keel spoke at the Transparency Committee, before Representatives Martinez-Fischer and Gonzalez, his remarks were not limited to schools. He was asked about a number of recent investigations/reports by his office. The Office of the State Auditor had, for example, gone over the books of the Governor’s much-criticized Emerging Technology Fund but had not audited Governor’s much-criticized Texas Enterprise Fund, he admitted. In the case of the billion-dollar Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, on the day Keel testified CPRIT was getting national headlines for insiderism in grant-awarding. An indictment was coming from the district attorney. Extraordinarily, John Keel explained that his audit of CPRIT was produced without reviewing email, even though email was the original source of revelations of grant-awarding abuse. The auditor said that his own investigation had relied on information provided by the CPRIT Foundation—which has since been closed down by the legislature on the assumption it was a kind of slush fund. Let’s start there for analysis purposes.

John Keel's appearance before the legislature came at a particularly sensitive time for his family, too. Cousin Terry, head of the Texas Facilities Commission—housekeeper and landlord for state government—was at that moment being roasted in the press for attempts to sell or lease pieces of prime state land in Austin's super-hot real estate market in a process that was described by the daily newspaper as highly non-transparent. The Auditor’s Office report issued shortly thereafter ignored concerns raised by legislators and the press and concentrated instead on facility maintenance and costs per square feet of rentals for state office space, which no one really questioned but after issuing the audits John could say he audited Terry. The Sunset Commission, which also reviews state agency performance, issued a report that was not as family-friendly for the Keels, condemning Terry’s “quick acceptance and use of authority with limited direction, involvement or oversight,” in fact John's report on Terry was not even placed on the auditor’s website until there was an inquiry from the public if John Keel had ever investigated operations at the state agency run by his cousin. An open records request led to a response from both Keels that they have not communicated any time recently by email, private or public.

Responding to a legislator’s question during another committee meeting, John Keel said he was unaware if top executives of state agencies file financial disclosure reports, an amazing answer from a man who has been in the Capitol for four decades, the last nine years theoretically reviewing conflicts of interest. The Auditor himself does not file a disclosure form with the Ethics Commission, btw. His cousin Terry Keel’s disclosure shows only that he has been buying condos in downtown Austin, at 1801 Lavaca, near the state office complex he was attempting to develop as a state official. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it was John Keel’s handling of the CPRIT Foundation that seemed to draw more interest from legislators—second only to corruption in El Paso schools. 

“We do not have the authority to audit private foundations,” John Keel said. “I don’t have the authority to go into that foundation,” speaking of CPRIT. But he was actually answering a different question than what was being asked: The Auditor may not have the authority to audit a private foundation but he does have the authority to subpoena information—from anyone.  

The State Auditor’s Office maintains a “Special Investigations Unit” that has access to Texas Department of Public Safety files and databases and can obtain warrants and subpoenas, none of which John Keel appeared to have done at CPRIT where the Lieutenant Governor, State Comptroller and Attorney General were all on the governing board. “We require access to do our job,” Keel explained to legislators, as if the only compliance he can request is voluntary. In fact the State Auditor’s Office has more confrontational means at its disposal. He has authority to conduct criminal probes across the state. The entire bureaucracy of state government—including tens of thousands of public sector workers and billions of dollars of expenditures and revenues—is technically under Mr. Keel’s microscope. He can for example examine digital devices and email records and, actually, early last year, in a practice reminiscent of the National Security Agency, Keel’s staff was warned by the Auditor's highest levels to instruct email providers not to inform customers when a warrant is served for records and even to include a subtle threat of prosecution, if the warrant is revealed, which means John Keel can play hardball when he chooses. 

“Internet Service Providers are notifying customers when served with a preservation [of evidence] letter, subpoena, or search warrant. To prevent this from happening, include the following language in your preservation letter, subpoena requests, and search warrant applications,” a recent State Auditor’s inner-office edict reads: “’Please do not disclose or notify the user/subscriber of this [preservation letter, subpoena, or search warrant]. Disclosure to the user/subscriber could impede an ongoing criminal investigation or obstruct justice.’” Which begs the question: Why the reluctance to use a big stick at CPRIT or in E.P.?

While originally declining to look at issues at the Texas Education Agency, related to what was happening to thousands of El Paso kids and hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding, Keel’s “Special Investigations Unit” nonetheless found time to do a criminal probe at the Texas Education Agency regarding fraudulent reimbursement for payroll expenses of less than $100,000, like, who cares? And a request by new TEA Commissioner Michael Williams that the State Auditor review how TEA’s own investigators missed the corruption in West Texas was first declined by John Keel citing a heavy workload. His office would not be able to get to the audit until 2014, John Keel said in 2012, seven years after he was first informed of problems in El Paso schools. He suggested TEA might instead wish to use a private contractor for the review. While many people believe that what happens in El Paso is not of any interest to the rest of the state, compared to what happens in Dallas for example, the Auditor’s refusal to become involved, over a period of years, despite early and frequent requests by Senator Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso, and others, in and outside of the school district, was dogged and intransigent. John Keel eventually did the TEA audit and came to the obvious conclusions but only after everyone else. 

Senator Shapleigh wrote these words to John Keel in a letter in August of '07: “I am concerned school district funds and other state resources may have been misused.” That kind of language from a member of the Texas Senate is usually enough to get even the rustiest wheels of the bureaucracy turning. Not so with the Keel machine. Keel’s reply: “The State Auditor’s Office has been monitoring the FBI investigation and relating press stories for a number of months.” He wrote that he had completed an investigation of EPISD, the report of which school officials say they have never seen. Four years after that the auditor reported that his “Special Investigations Unit” did a “preliminary” audit of El Paso Independent School District that, likewise, appears to have never seen light of day. Why? The answer is, once again, John Keel has a big family. With powerful friends.

With a high proportion of immigrant school children the State of Texas seems to be particularly susceptible to skewed populations of test-takers. Although there’s no reason to believe bad practices are limited to within our borders. W's initiative No Child Left Behind was born in the Lone Star State, so to speak, and it makes sense that it was first in crisis in Texas as well. A member of the El Paso delegation in Austin noted that there was even a website, intended for school administrators, devoted to gaming President Bush's landmark national achievement test system. Legislators from other parts of the state who thought the cheating was an El Paso-only problem are said to have reconsidered. “School districts are a big business,” said one lawmaker, speaking of administrators’ bonuses that have been tied to district performance on achievement tests. In a presidential campaign Gov. Perry’s economic “miracle” will bring kudos from many—while his stewardship of public education will be fair game to others. That’s a danger because the money trail from El Paso leads to Austin. 

Every public money trail in Texas goes through Austin. Looking behind the scenes at the test itself, its administrators and “Big Education,” or “Big Testing” means one company—the prime contractor—Pearson. Which has brought private contracting to public education the same way Blackwater brought private enterprise to national defense. Once you get to Pearson it’s a short trip—it seems—to the Capitol. “You have to know what it was like then,” say those who were there then, in Austin, back when the testing craze first hit more than a decade ago. This was the era after George W. Bush had left for Washington with only two policy programs in his pocket, one foreign and one domestic: to invade Iraq and to institute No Child Left Behind as his signature homeland initiative. At that time, back in Austin, Gov. Perry put in a management team defined by two individuals, legislative director Patricia Shipton and chief of staff Mike Toomey, who had been Perry’s roommate in Austin when both men were serving on the Appropriations Committee. 

You may have heard Mike Toomey's name recently as a press whipping boy and the face of “crony capitalism” in Austin when Gov. Perry made his first aborted run for president. Look back—and then fast forward from the beginnings of No Child Left Behind and both Toomey and Shipton have become lobbyists, Shipton, indeed, became Pearson’s lobbyist at the Texas Capitol. Fast forward again, to early last year as the legislative session began: Anger—from both Democrats and Republicans—that Pearson seemed to be getting preferential treatment from the State of Texas. Democrats were incensed that Sandy Kress, the former Dallas schools administrator who “invented” No Child Left Behind, before W adopted it, and who has become a Pearson hired gun, was appointed by Gov. Perry to serve on boards related to education standards even though Kress has a proprietary conflict of interest by working for Pearson. There’s more. Pearson seemed to have an unnatural relationship with state government. Which led—actually—belatedly—to a State Auditor’s report last year. John Keel's audit examined the Texas Education Agency’s relationship with Pearson itself and had three major findings: 

One, that Pearson’s contract to provide state standardized achievement tests (worth almost a half billion dollars) had been awarded even though Pearson was not the lowest bidder. Two, that TEA had allowed Pearson itself to decide how much money the company would not receive for failing to meet performance standards. In other words if Pearson did not achieve contracted-for results, Pearson management not the Texas Education Agency would decide how much money to penalize the company. 

Either of these findings alone might smell to any auditor, a sweetheart deal, yet John Keel thought otherwise. The opening sentence of his audit reads: “The Texas Education Agency complied with most requirements related to . . . its $462 million contract with NCS Pearson Inc.” The third of the findings was actually the bombshell. TEA itself added a clause to the Pearson contract allowing former TEA staff involved in the Pearson contract to leave TEA and go to work for Pearson. Specifically. That makes for a pretty sweet deal—for both Pearson and the right state employees—a kind of revolving door written into the contract between government regulators and private business. Indeed Sen. Shapleigh had urged Keel to subpoena bank records of selected TEA employees to see if any had received money from El Paso in exchange for turning a blind eye to manipulation of test scores. The Senator was trying to establish the vital monetary connection between wrongdoing in El Paso and bureaucrats in Austin. Keel declined—and apparently did not take the next step last year in his Pearson audit, either. There may be a simple reason why. Family relationships—once again—got in the way.

John Keel’s wife Lara is a lobbyist. Her partner at the Texas Lobby Group is Mike Toomey, the governor’s former roommate—former chief of staff—present best friend and major campaign supporter. Far from being an embarrassment—a conflict of interest—Lara Keel’s marriage to the State Auditor has been used to promote Toomey’s company as in website headlines like: “Wife of State Auditor John Keel.” You can’t get much more direct about influence-peddling than that. Lara Keel is literally sleeping with the State Auditor. Or, better, the State Auditor is sleeping with the lobby. And it’s apparently a successful lure to clients. Mrs. Keel has been named the number one female lobbyist at the Texas Capitol for the last few years, while her partner Mike Toomey is usually in the running as number one guy. 

Among Lara Keel’s clients include companies doing business with the state—like the Corrections Corporation of America, a major contractor for state prisons. Apparently no one questions whether Mrs. Keel’s business relationship with the governor’s best friend is unseemly—a conflict of interest—but that may explain why John Keel’s investigations are so tame, or don’t happen at all. 

That was actually the unspoken question at the House Select Committee on Transparency early last year with State Representative Trey Martinez-Fischer et al: Why doesn’t the auditor ever take the next step? Mrs. Keel doesn’t work for Pearson although Toomey’s firm is said to, at one time, have done education lobbying, before John Keel's wife became a partner. That’s not the point. The point is Caesar's wife. “SAO employees (including their immediate family or close family members) who engage in outside employment,” per the State Auditor’s own ethical guidelines, “or in business activities that conduct business with other state agencies can impair their independence and create real or apparent conflicts of interest both for themselves and for the State Auditor’s Office." Keel’s examination of TEA’s Pearson contract found ties between TEA regulators and the company. There were also ties between former Perry administration officials like Patricia Shipton and Pearson. But the Keel audits didn’t mention those. Like not looking at CPRIT email—or not checking the books at the governor’s Texas Enterprise Fund, John Keel’s audits seem always to stop just short of integrity. A Democratic former legislative aide who has tracked the education debate in Texas noted recently that Rick Perry has no one to blame but Rick Perry if Democrats wrap business-government interests like Pearson around his neck. Because Perry’s tenure and performance are both ample cause for suspicion. Rick Perry has been in power so long—almost an entire generation of schoolchildren know no other governor than the man from Paint Creek. He has taken so many contributions from so many people that if you scratch the surface of practically any major state contract or state policy or state deal you find Rick Perry. His fingers are everywhere and, equally importantly, have been for a long time. That’s the Perry connection. You’ll find it everywhere in the Capitol. 

While Barack Obama’s rise, on the other hand, was so sudden that he had practically no political history when he reached high office, Rick Perry has been a major player in Austin for three decades and has left a long, long trail. Perry alone has appointed seven commissioners of the Texas Education Agency since becoming governor in 2001. Robert Scott, who resigned three years ago, under pressure, after presiding over much of the era of good times for Pearson, and almost all of the troubles in El Paso, was Perry’s own education advisor in the Governor’s Office before going to TEA as an administrator. Watchdog groups have noted that many heavy hitters in the Austin lobby scene once worked for Perry—the revolving door—or are high bureaucrats now, running the apparatus of state government for him. (Patricia Shipton, who was once Perry’s legislative director, Pearson’s lobbyist and also a lobbyist for the City of El Paso, is now “strategic legislative advisor” for Speaker Joe Strauss.) That was how the last strongman in Texas politics, Bob Bullock—John Keel’s old boss—ran things too. You have to spread your most loyal people around to work in other state agencies. A high-ranking Democrat said that it was actually Bullock’s plan that Keel become auditor earlier than he did but Bullock got sick and left office before he could help make the change. So it's said. Then came Rick Perry. And the Keels. It’s an extraordinary family, big and well-connected.

Among the Keels who have plots set aside in the State Cemetery: Thomas, who is John’s uncle, formerly of the Legislative Budget Board, and Thomas’ wife Patricia, and Lara and John, and of course Terry. Patrick Keel has a spot, he is Terry’s brother, who was appointed by Governor Perry to the District Court in Austin as a Republican a few years ago and was promptly beaten in the general election. And there’s Mary Lou, another sibling, who is a district judge in Houston, and two as-yet unnamed spouses. A Keel serving in the special forces was killed in a raid in Afghanistan two years ago. The family has done great public service and certainly Thomas Keel, formerly of the Budget Board, is much-admired as a public servant. But in recent years the Keel ambition has been raw—and well-rewarded. 

John’s daughter Kelly's position at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality serving as a $120,000-a-year director is a potential conflict that could jeopardize any meaningful examination of environmental controls, were the State Auditor inclined to do one. No worry, because he is not so inclined. Two other Keels have attempted in recent years to be elected in Austin-area races, one as a county constable and one as a Hays County state rep, both Republicans although the family started, like everyone else in Texas, as Democrats. Lara Keel, John’s wife, sponsors a conservative group that fights for limited government but not limited Keels-in-government. 

This is a family that has grown, literally, by its connections, especially to the governor who is known in his own right for extreme connectivity. Perhaps John Keel was right as auditor when he declined to get involved in El Paso. If El Paso did lead to Austin, in the deeper sense, John Keel was the wrong guy to make the call. His guardianship of state integrity would have been sorely tested if it wasn’t already, which it was. One of the oldest proverbs in Western government may apply here, actually. It’s a rhetorical question first asked by worried Romans: 

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Who watches the watchmen? Who guards the guardians? In the Texas Capitol the question is: Who audits the auditor?