Tagged: CPRIT

Texas Democrats are outraged that Gov. Rick Perry is threatening to veto a portion of the state budget unless embattled Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg steps down.

This spring, Lehmberg was arrested and convicted for driving under the influence in which her blood alcohol was three times the legal limit.

The governor’s office confirmed that Perry is considering a veto of a portion of the state’s budget bill that funds the state’s Public Integrity Unit, which investigates government entities and is headed up by the Travis County district attorney.

The House and Senate established a provision as part of the Senate’s budget that requires passage of a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas oversight bill in order for the group to be funded by the state.  

Early this month Senators passed a set of bills, one authored by Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Dallas, that add a new level of oversight and transparency for the troubled CPRIT.   

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) has been in troubled water over grant funding issues and a lack of transparency. In the wake of the group publicly announcing that it was shutting down its foundation, Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, laid out her bill to the Senate.

"The executive director of that foundation indicated on the record that they had given my office every piece of information that we had requested and she absolutely knows that not to be true," Davis said.

This story as it aired on KUT

  The private foundation that’s given financial support to the state’s troubled cancer-fighting agency says it’s shutting down.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas – known as CPRIT – has its own problems. The agency is being investigated for its handling of some taxpayer-funded grants.

On Tuesday, though, it was the private foundation formed to supplement the salaries of CPRIT’s top executives that brought the wrath of state lawmakers.