INTEGRITY CRISES
Dear Texas Legislator,
Our great Land of Texas is suffering from a LACK OF INTEGRITY. Commonly referred to as Public Integrity, it is more appropriately a lack of State Integrity by State Actors.
In the last regular session INFORMED CITIZENS of Texas complained to you, our Legislators, about the lack of funding for the Public Integrity Unit of Travis County, as the only office of District Attorney with statewide jurisdiction to prosecute crimes of public integrity. (Chapter 39 of our Texas Penal Code) Local District Attorneys refuse to perform their duty to prosecute these offenses as they are often committed by the Attorneys they employ and by law enforcement entities their office must work with.
Your response was to grant concurrent jurisdiction to the Office of the Attorney General to prosecute these crime. But the Office of Attorney General has refused and neglected to do its duty to do so. Furthermore; public integrity crimes have been committed by public servants employed in the Office of the Attorney General.
Your well intentioned reform was defeated by the consent provision of the Act. The Office of the Attorney General can refused to grant consent to District Attorneys that want to perform their duty to prosecute public integrity crimes by Assistant Attorney Generals, and the District Attorneys can refused to grant consent to the Office of the Attorney General if the Attorney General wants to perform its duty to prosecute public integrity crimes by a District Attorney or their Assistant District Attorneys.
An Open Records Request by INFORMED CITIZENS to the Office of the Attorney General revealed that this Office has not even attempted to perform its duty to prosecute public integrity crimes since the duty was given to it by the Acts of 2007.
The people of Texas, as Individual Citizens victimized by crimes of public integrity, and collectively as taxpayers whose public funds are utilized in the commission of these crimes, are suffering. Our STATE has been brought into disrepute by revelations of public integrity crimes committed on a massive scale in the major metropolitan areas of Dallas and Houston. Our prisons are overflowing as a result of public integrity crimes committed for political gain or advancement within the bureaucracies funded at taxpayer expense. The economic development of Texas has been stifled as a result. Economic conditions that were favorable to our region have hidden the effect from view. Changes in the economic climate will not allow Texas the luxury of ignoring this problem.
Texas needs a STATE INTEGRITY UNIT, operating INDEPENDENT of the Office of the Attorney General and the District Attorneys seated in the Counties of Texas, well funded to prosecute integrity crimes by those employed at the expense of our Texas Public Treasury. This will provide the Citizen of Texas with the PROTECTION of the Law (LIBERTY). In recent decades, the Citizen of Texas has been subject to Oppression under the color of Law, at the expense of every taxpaying Citizen with damage to the dignity of our State. PLEASE address this grievance in response to this petition.
www.informed.org