I’m a Parks and Wildlife Guy
You know, I kind of fancy myself a “parks and wildlife guy”. I mean after all, since I first entered the Texas Game Warden Academy on October 1, 1990, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has been pretty good to me.
Oh, sure – there were times I got a little upset with them and thought they were being kind of mean.
Like the time I had to stay on a Saturday while I was at the academy to mow because me and three others got caught playing dominoes during study time.
And then there was that time I had to miss the Dave Mathews Band concert in Houston, that I had approved time off and tickets for, because some stupid hurricane threatened the Gulf Coast.
Sheesh. In all fairness though, TPWD made it up to me a couple of years later by NOT cancelling my approved leave during Hurricane Rita. Of course, I had just gotten home from an extended stint in Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina, so – in my mind – it was the least they could do.
Anyway, I had tickets for me and my son to see The Allman Brothers and Buddy Guy in Austin, so I’d have really been upset if we had missed THAT one. Other than those isolated incidents, it has been a pretty good ride.
It was all over social media, but I didn’t believe it at first. After all, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, right? But then, right there in my Facebook feed, it kept coming up. Some state representative somewhere introduced a bill to the Texas legislature that would dissolve TPWD. What??? This is an outrage! MY TPWD???
I waited a couple of days, but lo and behold it was true! Texas State Representative Pat Curry introduced House Bill 4938 – a bill to TERMINATE my beloved TPWD. This wasn’t something I hadn’t heard of before.
Heck, even back in the academy, they taught us about the “Sunset Review” whereby, according to the TPWD website, the mission and performance of TPWD would be reviewed by “legislators and public members” periodically to evaluate a state agency to determine what improvements are needed and to ensure that funds are well spent.
The last Texas Sunse Act review was done by the 87th Texas Legislative Session in 2020-2021. I’ve never been good at math, but state law mandates the sunset review be done every 12 years, so the next one, by my calculations, should start in 2032. So, Rep. Curry might be jumping the gun a bit, don’t you think? Who does Pat Curry think he is, Elon Musk?
Anyway, I try not to get political in these little melodic-less ditties I write every week, but sometimes it’s bigger than me.
Right after the news about the proposed shut down came out, I saw all kinds of rumors about Rep.
Pat Curry being in the deer breeding business and a bunch of other stuff (all said stuff also being gleaned from the internet).
So instead of writing about camping last week, I was ready to lay in to this dude for being a nincompoop for trying to delete my TPWD.
I’m glad I waited though, because since then, and apparently in response to the uproar against his bill, Rep. Curry has tabled it, which means it has been indefinitely postponed. Yay! I guess… I’m not sure what Rep. Curry’s motivations or politics are with respect to H.B. 4938, but I think, in typical politician form, he summed It all up with the quintessential ironical doublespeak we expect from our politicians these days when, after the bill was tabled, he said, as quoted in Texas Fish & Game, “Nothing would have been eliminated – I’m a parks and wildlife guy, I’m a hunter and a fisherman.”
Politicians, man – sheesh!
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