The El Paso Times reports that the State Legislature passed that bill giving the Texas Rangers the authority to investigate public corruption.
House Bill 1690 moves the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting corruption out of the Public Integrity Unit in the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and places it with the Texas Rangers. Prosecutions would be handled by the various district attorneys.
That means that public corruption cases in El Paso would be handled by the El Paso District Attorney. Our current District Attorney, Mr. Jaime Esparza, seems to have a policy of not prosecuting elected officials while they hold office. Maybe not even afterwards.
I guess we’ll have to depend on the feds to fight local corruption. As usual.