July 3, 2009 - The Austin Chronicle

NEWSSpecial Session Could End in FireworksIf Gov. Rick Perry gets his way, the legislativespecial session that starts on July 1will be over before the July 4 holiday.If he can pull it off, it will be the shortestspecial session of his tenure as governor – allseven specials he has called since takingoffice in 2000 have run for almost the full 30days allowed by the Texas Constitution. Butthis time Perry’s staff has engineered a highlyrestricted call, dealing with three pieces of outstandingbusiness from the regular session.The greatest acrimony is not over why Perrycalled the special session, but when andhow. The regular session finished on June 1,and Perry announced on June 9 that lawmakerswould need to come back – but he didn’tprovide a date. The prevalent rumor was workwould start right after Independence Dayweekend, but when he issued the call onJune 25, he only gave legislators six days’notice that they needed to return to theCapitol. Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, saidthere were rumors that Perry was working on“a very short time frame [with] the Fourth ofJuly holiday as an incentive to get this shortorder of business done.” However, she said,“It certainly would have been nice to get a littlemore warning.”The big issue now is transportation. Firstis Senate Bill 1, releasing the $5 billion inTexas Department of Transportation generalobligation bonds that legislators failed toauthorize in the regular session. Lawmakersalso failed to pass the TxDOT Sunset bill, aswell as the Department of Insurance, RacingCommission, Office of Public InsuranceCounsel, and State Affordable HousingCorporation Sunset bills: so SB 2 saves theagencies from closure.The need for those measures was clearand well established, but Perry hasextra business in mind. Whileignoring pressure from conservativesto bring back the divisivematter of voter ID and bipartisancalls for reforming theChildren’s Health InsuranceProgram, Perry added theestablishment of the TexasTransportation RevolvingFund to SB 1. That could berisky for a short session since theoriginal language, filed in the regularsession as SB 1350, never made it to theHouse floor and lawmakers may want a fulldebate. Finally, there’s SB 3, another issuearising from the failure of the TxDOT Sunsetbill. In 2007, the legislature passed a moratoriumon comprehensive development agreementsfor new toll roads but granted exemp-tions for a handful that were already in negotiations:SB 3 continues those exemptionsfor four years.While there’s little disagreement that theseare all major issues, the legislation proposed,especially the Sunset bill, is raisingquestions. To keep the agencies open, Perryproposes bringing back the terms of HouseBill 1959 – the Sunset Safety Net bill. Simplyextending the life of those five agencies andadding them to the 2011 Sunsetschedule – when the massiveHealth and Human Ser vicesCommission is up for review –would make that cycle impossiblyhuge. So the proposalreschedules what agencieswould be reviewed in 2011and 2013, to rebalance theworkload. Sunset AdvisoryCommission Chair Carl Isett,R-Lubbock, called this “the shortestpath to ground: to reauthorizethose agencies, come back in two years andpass the reforms that were contemplated inthe full Sunset bill.”But HB 1959 was a stop-gap measureintroduced at the last minute purely becausethe main Sunset bills didn’t pass. In terms ofgovernmental oversight, it’s like losing a tire,putting a doughnut on your car, getting to themechanic, and, instead of buying a new tire,getting a replacement doughnut. That’s frustratingfor Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who,as vice chair of the Senate Com mit tee onTransportation & Homeland Security, said hespent the regular session “up to my elbows”in the TxDOT Sunset process. Perry’s planrestarts the process, and an exasperatedWatson said, “We just did it.”Isett counters that, even without a full bill,Texas Transportation Commission ChairDeirdre Delisi can still use the Sunsetreview to reform TxDOT: “We’ve clearly shownthe direction we want them to follow, and, tothe extent that they implement those recommendations,it’s that much less legislationwe have to pass next time.” When all fiveagencies come back in 2011, he said,“We’ve already done the full-blown review, sowe’ll just have to look at what’s changed.”Yet even with both Republicans andDemocrats publicly saying they don’t plan tosabotage the session, there’s no guaranteethat all this legislation can be handled inthree days. Perry may be planning for anearly sine die, but, Watson warned, “If youcome back, who knows how it extends?”– Richard Whittaker$4 Million Later Austin loses lab to WacoWhen the Department of VeteransAffairs’ brain imaging lab leaves Austin forWaco, there won’t be much to move. An MRImachine used for research belongs to theUniversity of Texas. The lab’s director wasfired in January, and the plan he developedto study and treat returning veterans withtraumatic brain injury has been scrapped.Most of the money is gone, too. Of the $6.3million in taxpayer money allocated in 2004 tothe Central Texas Veterans Health CareSystem to fund the lab, a little more than $2million is left, says VA spokeswoman DianaStruski. What remains, she says, will be usedto clear out the Brain Imaging and RecoveryLab’s offices at the J.J. Pickle ResearchCenter and terminate the lease with UT.After spending more than $4 million, theAustin lab is closing without one veteran havingbeen studied or treated. Last month, theVA announced that the BIRL was moving toWaco, where researchers using a $3.5 millionmobile brain scanner at the VA’s Centerof Excellence for Research on ReturningWar Veterans will conduct brain research.The ousted director of the BIRL, neurologistRobert Van Boven, says that much ofthe wasted money was gone before hearrived. “By the time they hired me, they hadalready pissed away one-third of their money– $2.1 million,” he says. A July 2008 reportby the VA Office of Investigator Generalbacks up his accounting.When Van Boven took the BIRL’s helm inJuly 2007, he wrote a formal protocol to exclu-sively study traumatic brain injury in veteransreturning from battle. He reallocated theremaining $4 million in BIRL funds for a fouryearTBI study, and the budget was approvedby his bosses at the Central Texas VA.But before the research began, Van Bovenbutted heads with his superiors. The dayafter the BIRL’s official grand opening in January 2008, Van Boven was suspended fromhis leadership role and reassigned to clinicalwork. He was fired in January of this year.The federal Office of Special Counsel iscurrently conducting an investigation intopossible whistle-blower reprisals; it is illegalfor a federal agency to fire an employee fordisclosing misconduct.Beginning in the fall of 2007, Van Bovenbegan reporting misuses of BIRL funds to hisbosses at the Central Texas VA, based inTemple. Van Boven alleged that an ongoingstudy of diabetes-related eye dysfunction –begun before he was hired – was outside theBIRL’s mission. Moreover, he reported that anendocrinologist and a contractor conductingthe research were not qualified researchersand had little or no data to show for contractwork billed to the VA and hundreds of hoursof brain scanner time, for which UT chargedthe lab $486 per hour.Van Boven’s superiors at the Central TexasVA – including Edward Sherwood, then chief ofstaff, and Paul Hicks, associate chief of stafffor research – refused to act on his disclosures,so Van Boven went over their heads to officialsin Washington, D.C., adding accusations of mismanagement.His disclosuresresulted in two VA Office ofInvestigator General reports –released in July andDecember 2008 – that partiallysubstantiated claimsthat the research was faultybut did not verify his allegationsof mismanagement.Late last year, a VA committeewas set up to considerclosing the lab. “Thepanel has met, and therecould be a possible recommendationto close theRobert Van BovenBIRL,” Struski said inDecember. However, after anoutcry from veterans’ groupsand a letter from four Central Texas congressmen,the VA announced last month that theBIRL would be moving. “We looked at theduplication of efforts between the BIRL andthe Center of Excel lence’s missions, geographicaccess to active members, and not havingduplication at two sites,” Struski says. Shewas also quoted in a June 22 Washington Postarticle as saying that problems uncovered atthe lab were “part of the decision” to move.Mild TBI and post-traumatic stress disorderare a dual affliction seen in manyreturning war veterans and an area whereexperts agree that more study is needed.The center, which broke ground in April, andits mobile brain scanner will be better able toThose with medium and severe TBI, shesays, tend to be hospitalized and are beingserved at other facilities, such as the newNational Intrepid Center of Excellence forTraumatic Brain Injury, which opened last yearin Bethesda, Md.Van Boven, meanwhile, has taken a positionwith the U.S. Army as clinical director ofthe TBI program at the Irwin Army Com munityHospital in Fort Riley, Kan. Neverthe less,he continues to fight the BIRL closure. “Whatreally pisses me off is that nobody has beenheld accountable for the waste, fraud, andmismanagement at the Central Texas VA,” hesays. “They want to deny the problem, coverup the problem, bury the problem, and at thesame time use it as an excuse to shut downserve outpatients with mild TBI, Struski says. the BIRL.”– Laurel CheskyJANA BIRCHUM20 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E JULY 3, 2009 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m