Abbott's strangely timed comments on local pre-emption

See if you can spot the irony in this photo.

"But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment."
Matthew 12:36

Hmm...at first, this sounds really good:

CORPUS CHRISTI — As local control battles rage at the Texas Capitol, Gov. Greg Abbott is voicing support for a much more sweeping approach to the issues that have captured headlines.

"As opposed to the state having to take multiple rifle-shot approaches at overriding local regulations, I think a broad-based law by the state of Texas that says across the board, the state is going to pre-empt local regulations, is a superior approach," Abbott said Tuesday during a Q&A session hosted by the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, an Austin-based think tank.

Such an approach, Abbott added, "makes it more simple, more elegant, but more importantly, provides greater advance notice to businesses and to individuals that you’re going to have the certainty to run your lives."

But then you start thinking about the current legislative session...and you realize that the bill filing deadline was 12 days ago.

Then you consider that Abbott has been governor for two and a half years, during which time this issue has kept bubbling up in various forms, and you realize that he's never actually done anything about it.

Instead, consider some of the items Abbott has declared "emergencies" ahead of local government accountability:

• Pre-K.

• University Faculty recruitment.

• CPS reform.

• Article V Convention.

• Note: In fairness to Abbott, he's also announced some worthwhile priorities (Ethics reform and the border stuff), but it doesn't changed the fact that he's put a bunch of crap seemingly less important issues in front of a systematic approach to local government accountability.

Of course, we would never accuse Greg Abbott of cynically making an inflammatory headline generating comment less than a year out from his re-election secure in the knowledge that the average voter won't realize it's too late for him to do anything about it...he would never do that!

Bottom Line: At this point, when it comes to Governor FoxNews, actions speak SO much louder than words; if he wants to impress us, he should threaten a special session.