AUSTIN, Texas ― A Texas House panel on Monday found grounds for impeachment against University of Texas System Regent Wallace Hall over his relentless efforts to get the Austin flagship campus president fired, the initial step in what could be the first removal of a governor-appointed official in state history.
The House Select Committee on Transparency in State Agency Operations voted 7-1 on the motion and is scheduled to vote on specific impeachment charges later this month.
Those articles of impeachment would go to the full House for consideration. If approved, the Senate would conduct a trial.
“My efforts as a regent are to serve the interests of our great educational institutions, the students, faculty, and staff who make them great, and the taxpayers who fund them, not to appease a privileged class who abuse them,” Hall said in a statement after the vote.
There have been few impeachment trials in state history and only two have been successful: Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson in 1917 and a district judge in 1975.
“I do not fault him for having an agenda,” said Rep. Carol Alvarado of Houston, a Democrat and co-chair of the committee. “I fault him for the inappropriate means by which he continues to try to accomplish it.”
At issue is whether Hall, a Dallas businessman appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, abused the power of his office in his investigations of University of Texas President Bill Powers through massive open records requests that swamped university and system officials, and whether he violated state and federal student privacy laws or harmed the school’s reputation.
