And a good time was had by all!
I am adding my 2 cents worth to what Stewart has already told you about our True Courage Awards event Thursday night. It was truly an exciting event for all the TCAN board members, staff, and supporters, and I know especially for our honorees. Much hard work goes into a legislative session by the legislators and their staff. TCAN worked to apply the same amount of energy to fight for and against the bills that related to our legislative agenda this year. Ethics reform, voting rights, open government, and the politics of big money were where we worked tirelessly, found our champions among the legislators, and accomplished much — but much still remains to be accomplished.
I want to thank the many members of the legislature and their staff from both the House and the Senate who came and joined us at this fun event, and give another thanks to Ms. Bettie Naylor for hosting this at the Westgate.
This event was a time for recognition, celebration, and renewed commitment to continue our work together in the future. Everyone was full of smiles and good feelings and that was rewarding for all of us to see. The TCAN team at the conclusion of the event also had a private ceremony honoring our terrific Executive Director Teri Sperry for her great organizing and leadership efforts throughout this legislative session. She is a valued member of the TCAN organization and we just wanted her to know we recognize and appreciate her steadfast devotion and hard work.
During the event we showed a visual presentation organized by our UT interns, Jonathan and Punam, featuring some of the highlights of our work in this session as well as more information about our honored legislators and fellow advocates. Watch for it to be posted soon on the site.
TCAN will continue to work with many of the important advocacy groups that we collaborated with in Austin this session and will maintain and broaden our working relationships with members of the legislature. Though the formal session is ending, we don’t believe our work is done. We hope to continue to develop ideas and proposals for the next session to complete the work we began on ethics reform, redistricting reform, and campaign finance reform, including publicly financed campaigns.
It was gratifying to hear the praise TCAN received from several of the legislators and the staff members at our event who recognized that our work together helped them and benefited the legislative process. That was certainly what we hoped to achieve. And as I told many there, our goal is to give a voice in the legislature to the general public and help stimulate communication and empower people to be involved in the decision making process.
After nearly 140 days in this 80th Texas Legislative Session, at least on this night, we can say… “and a good time was had by all!”
John Courage, TCAN Chair
