Thursday, August 13, 1998

Rylander just keeps on annoying

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN - There's something about Carole Keeton Rylander. ... After some thought, I conclude it is that she's ... just ... so ... annoying. It's annoying even to have to think about her.

Her latest exercise in hypocrisy, brought to our attention by the Dallas Morning News, is to have broken her own pledge not to take campaign contributions from energy companies with business pending before the Railroad Commission, on which Rylander now serves.

Two years ago, WFAA-TV/Channel 8 in Dallas pointed out that Rylander, who ran promising an "ethical housecleaning" at the RRC, took hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas companies she regulates. In 1994, her nine-point ethics program called for a ban on commissioners accepting political donations from those with business pending before the RRC. Rylander said in '94 that Democratic commissioners' decisions were tainted by the contributions they receive from individuals and companies they regulate, "particularly in cases in which the contributions arrive while the donors have disputes pending before the commission."

Rylander accepted $5,000 from an Enron lobbyist on Aug. 23, 1995, the day after she voted to exempt Enron from a state rule governing space requirements between oil wells. The other two commissioners voted against Enron.

Rylander got a $1,000 contribution from the Union Pacific PAC on Dec. 5, 1996, 12 days before the commission voted to exempt the company from state rules on well density.

A Texaco executive contributed $1,000 to Rylander on Nov. 7, 1997, 12 days before a hearing on Texaco's request for an exception to the well-spacing rule and less than a month before the request was granted. All told, the Morning News found Rylander had accepted almost $19,000 in contributions from people involved in contested cases over the last two years.

In another incident not covered by the Morning News, Rylander accepted $2,500 from George Mitchell of Mitchell Energy Co. on Dec. 5, 1996; $2,500 on Nov. 3, 1997; and $1,000 on March 17, 1998. In June of '96, the RRC pledged an "intensive investigation" into water pollution in Wise Country after eight families won a $204 million verdict against Mitchell Energy & Development Co. Plaintiffs' attorneys accused the RRC of contributing to a cover-up in the case. The jury found the company had contaminated parts of the Trinity Aquifer and concealed it for years.

After the review, the RRC staff recommended an administrative penalty against the company of $2.24 million. The commission offered the company a $1.12 million penalty to settle the complaints that did not require the company to admit any wrongdoing in polluting the water.

In another typically annoying Rylander move, we now find her running for state comptroller after serving less than a year of her six-year term on the RRC. In 1990, when Rylander had the thankless task of running Claytie Williams' gubernatorial campaign, she showed up at Ann Richards' office in the state treasury demanding, "Where's Ann?"

Rylander offered to set up a card table in the lobby of the Treasury to keep an "Ann Watch," because she said Richards was "campaigning for higher office at the same time she's milking the taxpayers for $74,698 a year for a job she is not doing." Rylander is now campaigning for higher office while milking the taxpayers for roughly $79,000 and refusing to say if she's putting in 40 hours a week at the job she is paid for.

In her annoying way, Rylander insists there is no hypocrisy involved. Here's her history, according to Steve Ray, until recently the Scripps Howard Austin bureau chief: "Rylander quit the Austin school board to run for Austin mayor with one year left on her six-year term. She quit as mayor with four months left in her third two-year term when she was appointed to the State Board of Insurance."

After a singularly undistinguished stint there, she quit with more than three years left in her six-year term to run against Rep. Jake Pickle. "Then six months into her first full term on the RRC, she announced her candidacy for comptroller," Ray said. Since 1991, she has run three times for the RRC, each time promising to stay in that post if elected.

On first inspection, Rylander seems full of energy and rather bubbly - she used to be a cheerleader. She only starts to be annoying when you've met her twice.

Austinites, of course, will never forget it was Mayor Carole Keeton then-McClellan who, despite the efforts of wiser heads, played a critical role in keeping the city involved in what is locally known as The Nuke, the South Texas Nuclear Project - one of the most awful white elephants ever hung around the necks of taxpayers. The money-eater nuclear plant (original cost estimate, $1 billion; actual cost, $6.2 billion) has been a colossal failure.

Rylander's opponent in the comptroller's race is Paul Hobby, the impressive son of our old Lite-Guv Bill Hobby. Young Hobby made his own reputation as top aide to the incumbent Lite-Guv Bob Bullock. It's him or the dingbat who brought us The Nuke.

Creators Syndicate, Inc.