Austin – McClatchy News, which owns the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, published an in-depth look at Texas Public Policy Foundation President and CEO Brooke Rollins and the organization’s recent effort to influence a range of public policies at the federal level:
Read the Full Article HERE.
Excerpts:
A conservative Texas think tank that spent much of the last decade fighting the White House over states’ rights is shifting gears to go on offense in GOP-controlled Washington. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has more than 75 employees in Texas, will open a new office D.C. in January. Its leaders plan to increase its D.C. staff from five to as many as 15 employees in 2018, to seek rollbacks and changes to environmental and health care issues, and work on criminal justice reform. TPPF’s president and CEO, Fort Worth resident Brooke Rollins, says limited-government advocates have an ally in President Trump – who campaigned on taking power back from Washington – and they’re gearing up to drive policy back the other direction. “This White House represents the opportunity to completely reinvigorate the idea that the states should be running themselves,” Rollins said in a Star-Telegram interview at the conservative Heritage Foundation in D.C. last month…
A powerful lobbying influence in Austin, TPPF opened a state’s rights division in Texas in 2010 to fight the Obama Administration’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and later the consideration of the Clean Power Plan. In both cases, it argued the White House had usurped Texas’s power to set its own policies. TPPF’s Washington goals include rolling back regulations created by the Obama administration, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment rule, which mandates that greenhouse gasses be regulated under the Clean Air Act. That 2009 finding laid the groundwork for a of host climate regulations that conservatives have railed against since. It also plans to continue work on health care, as Republicans revisit plans to repeal and replace Obamacare in 2018…
Under Rollins, who served as former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s policy director and joined TPPF 15 years ago, the organization has grown from a three-person education and tort reform shop to a top Texas policy influencer with experts on nearly every major issue in the state. It has also expanded its fundraising, from a single major donor, school voucher advocate James Leininger, to a more than $10 million organization in 2015, with corporate donors including Chevron and ExxonMobil. Among state-based think tanks, TPPF is considered a giant…
Rollins serves on Trump’s economic advisory committee, and said she and her organization are working closely the White House’s Office of American Innovation. That office, run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, says its goal is to apply private sector solutions to the nation’s problems. “They’re business oriented people and they want results fast,” Rollins said of Office of American Innovation. “They see an organization like ours… and we’ve been able to implement that in Texas, and they want to understand how to do that here.” Rollins said they’ve been able to collaborate with other advocacy organizations on criminal justice reform – an issue she championed and helped add to TPPF’s policy docket in Texas…“In the old days, did we ever think this was going to be a national [organization]? No,” said [TPPF Board Chairman Wendy] Gramm. “Everybody knows Brooke, and everybody loves Brooke. It’s [her] talent that grew it and made it the organization it is now.”
Read the Full Article HERE.