Davis continues to pound Abbott over chemical disclosure ruling

WACO - Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis highlighted the deaths and injuries from last year's explosion in nearby West on Tuesday as she accused her GOP opponent for governor of working to hide information from Texans about chemical facilities' hazardous caches.

Attorney General Greg Abbott "is not working for you. He is an insider working for other insiders against hard-working Texans," Davis said, framing a legal opinion by Abbott's office restricting state disclosure of chemical facilities' information into her overarching campaign theme of Abbott-as-inside-player.

The Abbott campaign dismissed the Davis claim and said the attorney general simply applied the law.

Davis is pounding on the disclosure issue with a "Texans Deserve to Know Tour" that began Tuesday with stops in Fort Worth and Waco. The tour also will include San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Austin and El Paso.

If elected governor, Davis said she will make disclosure of the information a priority.

Koch donations

"Texans deserve to know where these chemicals are located," the Fort Worth senator told supporters at the Waco building that houses the local branches of the Democratic Party, her campaign and Battleground Texas, a group working to make the state competitive for Democrats.

"A candidate for governor should have more concern for the people of the state that she wants to run than to let them sleep next door to explosives and not only not say a word about it, but actively seek to hide that information from them," said Davis, her use of the feminine pronoun drawing cheers.

Davis cited donations to Abbott from Koch Industries-related interests, which she said would benefit from his disclosure decision. The Dallas Morning News reported that Abbott has received more than $75,000 from Koch interests since the April 2013 explosion in West.

Abbott's office this past May said that the Texas Department of State Health Services did not have to release information about hazardous chemicals kept on site at private facilities, citing a state homeland security law approved in 2003.

Abbott "did not change any law or policy," said his campaign spokesman Matt Hirsch on Tuesday, but simply applied the state law, "which prevents state agencies from releasing information that could be used by terrorists to build bombs or target certain facilities."

The 2003 law was supported by every Democrat and Republican then in the Texas Senate, Hirsch said.

The chemical information is gathered under state and federal law, and for three decades had been available to members of the public. The information helped show how much of the volatile chemical ammonium nitrate was stored at the West Fertilizer Company before last year's explosion and about its storage elsewhere.

Tammie Hartgroves, of nearby McGregor, president of Texas Democratic Women, said the issue resonates with people in the area, who were affected by the West blast, and she thinks it will do the same with voters statewide.

"I think it's cronyism, taking care of his buddies and big business. Wendy's more attuned to us, the common people and the everyday people whose lives are affected by these decisions," Hartgroves said.

'Just ask'

Abbott initially suggested that people could "simply ask" companies about the substances kept on site, a suggestion mocked by Davis. Requests for the information submitted by the Houston Chronicle to companies and local emergency response agencies produced mixed results. Abbott later proposed allowing families to get safety information through local fire departments.

Asked about that 2003 law and the security concerns cited by Abbott's camp, Davis said she did not believe there would be a safety concern if the information once again was disclosed by the state.

"Texas has been disclosing this information for the last 30 years, even after that law was passed, and Greg Abbott is merely scrambling for a way to excuse his actions - actions that clearly demonstrate that he is prioritizing, as an insider, other folks on the inside who are supporting him through large campaign contributions at the expense of the safety of Texas families," she said.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said the issue is a good one for Davis, though he does not think it will, by itself, win over a large number of swing voters or mobilize Hispanics. However, he said, it fits neatly into her broader strategy of painting the GOP as too extreme and in industry's pocket, and of showing how lower-income people's daily lives are affected by GOP leaders' decisions, since poorer people are more likely to live near chemical facilities.