Bush legacy of padded salaries....

[shrdlu]

Texans love tradition but it took a conniving carpetbagger to give us a splendid new one: dubya's legacy of padded salaries for public employees. Just certain employees, of course, and the padding comes from special fat cat friends. This copyrighted article is from today's Houston Chronicle (free registration), page one no less, and on Super Bowl Sunday.
In a righteous world it would devastating. But this is bushworld, so who knows?

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2381365

AUSTIN -- Texas residents paid Michael Toomey $135,000 last year to run Gov. Rick Perry's office as chief of staff. The lobbyists and special interests who fund Perry's political account financed an additional $113,281 in pay for Toomey.

That totals $248,281 -- more than double the governor's annual state salary of $115,345.

Toomey's political stipend is part of a system of supplemental pay established in 1995 by President Bush when he was the state's governor.

But the extra pay Bush gave his top aides was a small part of their total salaries. Supplemental pay now is a major portion of the earnings for some of the top administrators for Texas' elected officials, raising questions about potential conflicts of interests.

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