March 16, 2015      11:03 AM
Updated: On a party line vote, Senate State Affairs votes to take the PIU out of Travis County DA's office
"My impression is it would politicize it more," Zaffirini says; Huffman rejects that
Voting
along party lines, the Senate State Affairs Committee on
Monday voted to recommend the full Senate approve a proposal to move
the state’s public corruption watchdog out of the Travis County District Attorney’s
Office.
For
the better part of an hour, Sen. Joan
Huffman, R-Houston, defended her bill while Democrats picked it apart and
testimony was offered suggesting it would make public corruption much more
difficult to prosecute. Somewhat emphatically, Huffman said she’s not carrying
the legislation on behalf of Lt. Gov. Dan
Patrick, Gov. Greg Abbott or
anyone else. This is her bill alone, Huffman said.
As
written, the bill aims to move the prosecution of an officeholder to that
official’s home county instead of Austin when they are formally accused of abusing
their power. Huffman explained that under her revised version of this, the District
Attorney in the official’s home county could be removed from a case if there
was a potential conflict of interest.
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