Texas Public Policy Foundation Board of Directors: Power, Influence, Money

This week I shed some light on the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF): who it is, what it does, and how it is funded. The driving force behind the so-called “breakthrough solutions” and a host of other conservative policy initiatives, TPPF exerts enormous influence in Texas politics. This is in part because of the people in power behind the TPPF, as the TPPF Board of Directors is a who’s who of the most powerful, influential, and wealthy people in Texas. When you take a look at who is the on the Board of Directors it is easy to see that TPPF is not just interested in “educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach,” but in imposing a ultra conservative free market fundamentalist ideology.

Connections to Rick Perry

Governor Perry has a long history of rewarding campaign donors with appointments to state committees and boards. The Associated Press report that Perry accepted nearly $5 million in political campaign donations from people he has appointed to state boards and commissions since taking office in 2000. While not all of the over 2,400 people that Perry has appointed have been campaign donors, some of his largest donors have been appointed to such prestigious positions as the Texas A&M University and University of Texas boards of regents. This year Perry appointed three people to the Board of Regents overseeing Texas A&M University, and together they had contributed more than $1 million to Perry’s campaigns. While Perry has not direct authority over the TPPF, the individuals on the Board of Directors mirror the connections of those appointed by Perry to committees and boards.

Nearly all of the TPPF Board of Directors have ties to Texas Governor Rick Perry. Boards members have worked directly for Perry, been appointed to commissions by Perry, support Perry’s political campaigns, and donated significant amounts of money to those campaigns. According to Texas Ethics Commission record, members of the TPPF Board of Directors have donated a total of over $1.3 million to Perry’s campaigns. The President of TPPF, Texas A&M University graduate Brooke Rollins, served as Perry’s Deputy General Counsel, and later as his Policy Director. Dr. James Leininger, Chairman Emeritus, is one of the biggest wallets in Republican politics in Texas, and has donated over $314,000 to Perry’s campaigns. Owner and president of Phil Adams Company, board member Phil Adams donated over $340,000 to Perry’s campaigns. Board member Victor Leal, owner of Leal’s Mexican Restaurant in Amarillo, served as the Governor Perry’s appointee to the Texas Tax Reform Commission, the Texas Economic Development Corporation, and the Texas Facilities Commission. Board member Ernest Angelo, Texas oilman and Republican politician, Chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission under Governor Rick Perry.

No Stranger to Scandal

The Chairman of the Board of Directors is Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm, the wife of former United States Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm is an economist at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, a conservative free-market fundamentalist think tank, where she focuses on promoting the deregulation of the energy industry. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration, and then in 1988 was appointed as Chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It was during her time on the commission that she was instrumental in pushing through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation which specifically benefited Enron. Gramm then promptly resigned from the commission, and five weeks later was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

Gramm’s role in securing exemptions for Enron and appointment to the Board of Directors came with significant financial benefits. According to a report by Public Citizen, ''Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.'' While on the Board of Directors she served on the Enron's audit committee, which completely failed to monitoring the company's accounting practices. A US Senate report on the Role of the Board of Directors in Enron’s Collapse, found that despite the Enron’s Board of Directors protest that they could not be held accountable for misconduct that was concealed from them, “much that was wrong with Enron was known to the Board, from high risk accounting practices and inappropriate conflict of interest transactions, to extensive undisclosed off the-books activity and excessive executive compensation.”

Vance Miller is the Chairman & CEO of the Henry S. Miller Companies, which in the early 1980’s was doing $2 billion in business and the company became the largest real estate brokerage firm in Texas and the 7th largest in the nation. However, the company overextended itself during the savings and loan crisis, and Miller was sued for $23 million the Federal government for debts incurred during the crisis. Miller did not filed for bankruptcy, but in 1998 his attorney claimed that he had no ability to pay the debt, which then amounted to approximately $26 million. Despite this debt to the tax payer, Miller has been able to contribute $269,094 towards Governor Perry’s political campaigns.