Did Representative Break Ethics Laws?
An Associated Press investigation claims Republican State Representative Joe Driver from Garland double dipped on travel expenses. The AP investigation finds that Representative Driver billed both the House of Representatives and his campaign for some travel expenses. That might be a civil or criminal violation. The problem says Texans' for Public Justice analyst Andrew Wheat is that it's really hard to find this information in the first place which makes this kind of thing easy to hide. "There's no one at the Texas Ethics Commission, there's not an ombudsman at the Texas Legislature that oversees this." Wheat says this incident may actually be a blessing in disguise for ethics reform groups who have been trying to fix this problem for years.
