{"id":4918,"date":"2016-03-11T19:08:31","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T19:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=4918"},"modified":"2016-03-11T19:08:31","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T19:08:31","slug":"texas-delegation-ranks-near-bottom-of-environmental-scorecard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=4918","title":{"rendered":"Texas Delegation Ranks Near Bottom of Environmental Scorecard"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas<\/strong> – The Texas congressional delegation ranks near the bottom of the new annual scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters. In fact, U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both R-Texas, scored \u201czero\u201d for their votes on key environmental issues, and the state\u2019s 36 House members only voted what the League considers \u201cpro-environment\u201d 24 percent of the time.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Doyel, who heads the Texas League of Conservation Voters, said the delegation\u2019s GOP members almost unanimously opposed environmental issues in favor of Big Oil.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it\u2019s 90 percent ideological, and I think the other 10 percent is that they\u2019re looking at their donors,\u201d she said. \u201cHere in Texas, we do have a lot of funders that are within the energy community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Canoeists<\/a>

Canoeists enjoy an afternoon at McKinney Falls State Park near Austin. The Texas congressional delegation consistently voted against conservation measures designed to protect such waterways. Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife<\/p><\/div>\n

Texas has 25 Republicans and 11 Democrats in the House, and 18 of the GOP members were rated at zero percent. Doyel said the few environmental advocates with near 100-percent rankings from Texas all are Democrats – including Joaquin Castro from San Antonio, Eddie Bernice Johnson from Dallas and Beto O\u2019Rourke from El Paso.<\/p>\n

Doyel said the major environmental issues in the 114th session of Congress included water resources, climate change, carbon limits and clean energy – and Texas Republicans almost unanimously voted against them. She said they even voted against protecting the Texas prairie chicken.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the bills that national scored on was prairie chickens and protection, and the Republicans voted against protecting the prairie chicken, which is up in the Panhandle,\u201d she said. \u201cLike, seriously, you\u2019re against protecting the prairie chicken?\u201d<\/p>\n

Doyel, who became the Texas League\u2019s director in September, says she believes conservation is a Texas value. She said she plans to spend the next few years meeting with Republican officeholders to try to convince them to improve their conservation voting records.<\/p>\n

The scorecard is online at scorecard.lcv.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas congressional delegation ranks near the bottom of the new annual scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters. In fact, U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both R-Texas, scored \u201czero\u201d for their votes on key environmental issues, and the state\u2019s 36 House members only voted what the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4920,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions\/4920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}