This Week in Texas: February 8, 2012

Posted February 8, 2012 in The Mignon Memo

Here is this week’s redistricting update.  We still have no official maps and the rescheduled April 3rd primary date is looking like he impossible dream.  April 17th has been floated as an alternate date but unless some maps are approved soon, the primary date keeps moving down the calendar page.  The state unveiled new redistricting maps on Monday, saying some of the parties in the litigation signed off on them.  Other groups cried foul and the judges in San Antonio told all sides to keep talking.

Governor Rick Perry appointed three members to the Texas Finance Commission last week.  The new members include Darby Byrd Sr. of Orange, the retired president and CEO of Orange Savings Bank; H. “Jay” Shands III of Lufkin, president and CEO of First Bank and Trust East Texas, and board chairman of First Bank of Conroe and Balcones Recycling; and Victor Leal of Amarillo, president and CEO of V. Leals’s Management and Leal’s Mexican Restaurants as well as the former mayor of the City of Muleshoe.

Jay Kimbrough, former deputy chancellor of the Texas A&M System, has been hired by the Texas Department of Public Safety for the newly created position of assistant director of DPS.  Kimbrough will oversee homeland security for the state’s law enforcement agency.