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TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
EDINBURG
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Presidential advisors visit Valley
Commissioner says consumers are being ‘screwed’ By JAY ROOT AND NEENA SATIJA TEXAS TRIBUNE
Texas consumers are “getting screwed” by unscrupulous businesses — everything from gas stations to pawn shops — because the cashstrapped Department of Agriculture has not been able to perform many of its basic regulatory functions, according to new Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. The department is supposed to check gas pumps for accuracy, verify that grocery store scanners work properly, attest that precious metal scales are producing accurate measures and even inspect taxicab meters to verify that people aren’t being overcharged. But after the department saw its budget cut by about one-third in 2011, Miller said,
Photo by Gabriel Cristóver Pérez | Texas Tribune file
This file photo shows Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller at The Texas Tribune Festival on Sept. 20, 2014. it has struggled to keep up with its duties. He noted that the department will collect an estimated $7.8 million less in fees and income from self-supporting programs than hoped in the 2014 and 2015 fiscal
years, and faces a huge backlog of work left over from his predecessor. For example, there are nearly 2,000 cases involving suspected violations that haven’t been reviewed going
back two years, according to department figures. Some $1.5 million in penalties that have been assessed has gone uncollected. And the agency has never once in its history inspected a taxicab meter, Miller said. “If you get a notice in the mail that you’re in violation, well, if you’re a pesticide applicator, or its eggs or fuel pumps or gold and silver scales or whatever it is, you’ve been out of compliance all that time and the consumer is getting screwed,” Miller told The Texas Tribune. “So we’re trying to figure out how to work through that backlog.” Miller is asking the Legislature for nearly $50 million to restore the agency to pre-2011 levels, and says he
See AGRICULTURE PAGE 11A
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR
KINGPIN CAPTURED
Karl Rove, James Carville discuss 2016 front-runners ASSOCIATED PRESS
EDNIBURG — The short-term political squabble between President Barack Obama and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over whether to negotiate with Iran will become the dominant foreign policy conversation this year, agreed former presidential advisors Karl Rove and James Carville, who spoke in Edinburg Friday morning. The duo — one Republican and the other Democrat — had an hour-long conversation in front of a gathering of more than 100 Rio Grande Valley residents at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance. Moderated by Texas Tribune Editor Evan Smith, the event was hosted by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership and IBC Bank. Rove was the chief political stategist to former President George W. Bush and Carville was the chief political strategist to former President Bill Clinton. Both weighed in on the ongoing dispute between Obama and Netanyahu in response to an audience question. Both warned of the gravity of this debate and the ultimate implications for a volatile region if the Obama administration is able to negotiate some sort of nuclear treaty with Iran. In exchanges that often drew laughter from the audience, the duo spent most of the hour assessing the current Democratic and Republican front-runners for president in 2016. Democrat Hillary Clinton must avoid the temptation of running a campaign for a third term of Obama, Carville said, while taking care not to offend strident Obama supporters. And Jeb Bush, the current front-runner in the Republican field, has had a lot of unforced errors as he transitions from state to national politics, Rove said. "He’s very smart, but this is a different kind of stage," he said.
TEXAS DPS
Drug values re-examined Department will now use price points not specific to Texas ASSOCIATED PRESS
United States for methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking, rose through the ranks of a gang known as La Familia, which terrorized Michoacán state with kidnapping and extortion. As its leaders were killed, the gang renamed itself the Knights Templar, and its violence prompted frustrated citizens to form vigilante groups. The national government sent contingents of police officers and soldiers to Michoacán in January 2014 an effort to restore calm in the state. The effort succeeded in flushing out many of Gómez’s top lieutenants, but he remained at large and continued to release videos. Although the government has managed to weaken the Knights Templar in Michoacán, the state remains unsettled, and several new violent criminal groups have appeared there, including
AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Public Safety has changed its valuation method for drug seizures just a week before submitting a border operations report to lawmakers in which it will seek more funding. The department is using 2012 data compiled by the White House based on national retail sales, rather than 2014 Drug Enforcement wholesale prices that are specific to Texas, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Officials say that they adopted the new method in order to rectify inconsistencies in prices used in local, state and federal illegal drug seizures in Texas. “There is value in using pricing data from an independent national-level agency,” department spokesman Tom Vinger said. Under the new system, the drugs seized during a law enforcement effort in the Rio Grande Valley are valued at more than $1.8 billion. It would have been worth about $161 million with 2012 data. “Actually these numbers look worse if you really look at it (because of) the price points,” department director Steven McCraw said. “In Texas we actually deflated the numbers a little bit so we wouldn’t be questioned as to why we were trying to make the numbers higher.” Several criminologists say describing bulk seizures with retail-level prices skews the value of the drugs when they were seized. Wholesale prices measure the impact of seizures on criminal organizations better, according to Peter Reuter, a senior economist with the RAND Corporation and a criminology professor at the University of Maryland.
See KINGPIN PAGE 11A
See VALUES PAGE 11A
Photo by Marco Ugarte | AP
Federal police patrol as part of increased security outside the SEIDO, the organized-crime division of Mexico’s Attorney General Office where high profile detainees are sometimes shown to the press in Mexico City, Friday.
‘La Tuta’ was one of the most wanted drug lords in Mexico By ELISABETH MALKIN NEW YORK TIMES
Photo by Marco Ugarte | AP
An armed and masked federal police officer stands guard as part of increased security outside the SEIDO in Mexico City, Friday. The leader of the Knights Templar cartel, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez," was captured early Friday.
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican police said Friday that they had captured the leader of the Knights Templar drug gang, a former teacher who taunted the authorities by conducting interviews from hiding and releasing videos in which he talked about his close relationships with his state’s political bosses. Servando Gómez, known as La Tuta (the Teacher), was one of the mostwanted drug kingpins still at large in the country. He had been thought to be hiding out in the remote western part of Michoacán, his home state. But he was captured in the state capital, Morelia, on Friday without a shot being fired, the police said. He was eating a hot dog at a street stand when he was apprehended, local news reports said. Gómez, 49, who is also wanted in the