Don’t count on Abbott to punish is high-rolling donors or to investigate them even if it puts finding a cure for cancer at risk:
Fanned by the Texas media, the CPRIT scandal rocked the Texas biotech and life sciences sectors and outraged Texan taxpayers. But Governor Rick Perry’s signing of the new SB 149 CPRIT reform bill last week barely made any waves in the news.There aren’t many Senate bills that I can easily remember by number. In fact, for all of the controversy and political wrangling associated with Obamacare, I can’t even remember the U.S. House and Senate bills for the Affordable Care Act. However, for some odd reason, SB 149 — the Texas State Senate bill authored by Senator Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound to significantly reform the way CPRIT does business in Texas, seems to have stuck in my mind. Last Wednesday, a few headlines hit the news wire reading, “Governor Rick Perry Signs SB 149,” and I knew right away that, in large part, the CPRIT scandal had finally come to a close.
What I found particularly interesting, however, is how, in spite of a really nasty, disillusioning scandal like CPIRT having a largely happy ending for Texas taxpayers — the reformers got everything they wanted, from considerably more transparency to radical changes to avoid conflicts of interest — the Texas media largely downplayed Governor Perry’s signing of the bill. In this way, a scandal that started with an indignant outcry from the media and Texas residents ended as a footnote.
The palpable decline in coverage and attention to the CPRIT matter didn’t begin at the end, however: even the big news of the Texas Senate Unanimously Approving The Reconciled CPRIT Reform Bill, which BioNews Texas reported on back in late May, didn’t make waves in the media, in spite of the fact that the reconciled version of SB 149 included some radical changes to the cancer research funding agency, including the dissolution of the CPRIT Oversight Committee, a move that was insisted upon by the Texas House version of the bill. The House bill also ushered in another major organization change — a significant reduction in the power and influence of CPRIT’s Executive Director, instead seeking to replace that position with a governing panel.