While we'll give them an A for effort, the Statesman's trumpeted City Budget Project ain't exactly the searchable, taggable, citizen-journo Web 2.0 monster you'd hope it'd be. No, instead it relies on this newfangled technology called the Portable Document Format (PDF). Much like you can find, eh – here.

As for those promises of interactivity and discussion, we found this well-reasoned, non-alarmist chestnut:

Wanting to know how such a facility could exist which admits it harbors illegal aliens, I went to their website. There I was appalled to find out that the City of Austin provides support for the facility.

We've got to hand it to them – somehow the Statesman managed to make the budget more tedious. Bravo!

Full budget analysis arriving in tomorrow's print edition. Cîao!

It's a red letter day for UT Austin, since Pres. George Bush has nominated assistant professor Benjamin Eric Sasse to become assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The White House press release talks up Sasse as an assistant professor at UT's prestigious Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and an expert on questions of organizational strategy, leadership and management. What they kind of gloss over, or completely ignore, is that he's the same Benjamin E. Sasse that was executive editor of Modern Reformation, a publication that calls for "a new Reformation in American Christianity" and a "pan-Protestant coalition" while advocating a literalist interpretation of scripture. He also co-edited Here We Stand!: A Call from Confessing Evangelicals.

Can't think why they'd leave that off his resume.

Speaker Tom Craddick made his claim to seemingly unlimited power in the last Lege session. But now two ex-speakers have weighed in on the debate, and against Craddick.

First, ex-speaker Rayford Price (62nd legislature, 2nd-4th called sessions, 1972-1973) submitted his take on the issue to the Attorney General. Greg Abbott has been dragged into the House fight by Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, and has been looking for expert opinions, like that of Price, on what the regulations say. Price argued that Craddick and his parliamentarian/consigliere Terry Keel were wrong to say that the speaker couldn't be removed by the House, because they were arguing that he was a state officer and therefore could only be removed by Senate-approved impeachment. He wasn't just talking from his gut: Price said that, since the speaker isn't listed as an officer on the state constitution, it's House business and House business only. He also disagreed with the concept of mandated two-year appointments for the speaker.

Then on Sunday, in an interview with the Paris News, Pete Laney (73rd-77th legislatures, 1993-2002) says he never thought that the House couldn't replace him if they felt like it. He attacked the power grab as un-American, and against the spirit and letter of House rules.

So either two ex-speakers, including Laney, who is regarded by many as the fairest and most competent speaker in Texas history, are wrong, or Craddick is.

The Texas Republican Party has announced its new executive director, former state rep Talmadge Heflin. Unusual name, unusual guy: Like pretty much anyone in the public sphere, Heflin comes with some baggage. It's just that some of his is, well, pretty unusual.

The 11-term Harris County rep was chair of the House Appropriations committee, and there's a lot of reps who see his tenure in the big budget seat as bad news. Policy-driven politicians on both sides of the chamber look to the budget mess he left behind, while more pragmatic pol-watchers can see that some GOPers regret his electoral inheritance. After all, back in the GOP landslide glory days of 2004, somehow Heflin managed to lose his seat to Dem newb Hubert Vo.

But that's not the weird thing. Nor is the fact that, as a pundit for noted conservative pressure group (read "one-note free market fans and regular witnesses at any tax-related Lege committee meeting") the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he could play off his own reputation for slashing expenditures and still demand that lawmakers break the spending cap to cover the property tax refund.

No, Heflin's baggage is pretty unusual. In 2004, he was caught up in a bizarre adoption scandal. The story goes that Heflin and his wife tried to take custody of Fidel Odimara Jr. The only problem was that the boy's mother Mariam Katamba, an undocumented native-born Ugandan, was working in the Heflin's house illegally at the time. The Heflins and their lawyers tried to claim that Katamba had asked them to raise the child, but also that she was an unfit parent and posed a grave danger to the child. The matter ended up in court and the Heflin's motion was finally thrown out by the judge.

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the staged photo-op that was the launch of Victory '08!, the Texas Republican Party's next push for electoral glory. So where's the Democrat equivalent?

"Uh, we don't really bother with one," said Amber Moon, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. The GOP launch event, which was basically some media, a lot of local party organizers, some staffers and a handful of heavy hitters, is a regular occurrence that the Dems seem to consider as a whimsical diversion, rather than a serious campaign kick-off.

What has figured on a lot of people's radar, including quite a few press at the launch, is how early it was. Well, early for the Republicans, that is. The Dems admit that they've been grassroots sewing since February, but the Republicans don't normally start for a good few months yet.

Then there's the fact that the three bigwigs present – Gov. Rick Perry, US Sen. John Cornyn and campaign chair Roger Williams – were all talking about having to build a new grassroots network of local conservative activists. Which is strange, since the Karl Rove inheritance of GOP electoral organization in Texas has reached near-mythic status. Where have they gone?

Even weirder was that Cornyn talked about how the RNC traditionally had ignored Texas because it didn't really need any external assets to stay a safe Republican stronghold. This needed to change, he added.

False alarm at the Capitol Saturday. Around 4pm, the state house and its grounds were evacuated over a bomb threat. Staff (the handful of staffers and maintenance personnel who are in the building on an out-of-session weekend) and tourists were ushered out by state troopers. No word yet on whether it was a phoned-in warning or a suspicious package, but either way it was all re-opened to the pubic within a couple of hours.

Yet the manner of the evacuation could raise some serious questions about emergency planning at the Capitol. There's always a balancing act between safety matters and massing an over-imposing law enforcement presence in a public place: many residents of Washington DC and New York feel that the balance has definitely slipped/been shoved far in the authoritarian direction. However, the handful of troopers on duty were trying to get everyone out of the 22-acre grounds by asking them politely, person by person. To do this, they had to leave the gates unlocked and unguarded. So while they were trying to get people to leave the grounds, others were still blithely walking in to see what the fuss was about.

UPDATE: You can find the city's proposed budget online here.

There's no one in City Hall chambers for the budget presentation! No one! Where's Debbie Russell?

Alright, more folks have filtered in. Toby Futrell, clad in an intense purple, seems a little subdued, having just returned from the Executive Session where they discussed her replacement.

Description of how the forecast gap was closed: Ooooh, pray tell!

Staff only have four or five months of data on the financial forecast, says Futrell. "This year we closed a $27.5 million shortfall going from forecast to budget … essentially in line with the past gaps," she says. That 4% of your gross revenue is a real bitch, huh?

An extra $10.9 million from going at the higher rollback rate eats up the share of the "gap."

In summary, the '08 budget is balanced, at the rollback rate, says Futrell.

PowerPoint graphics in budget officer Greg Canally's presentation are mildly vexing, like a half-assed acid flashback. His description of the budget documents is supposed to make things clearer to us, but I find myself buried under an avalanche of wonktitude.

FYI, official title, theme of the budget: "Building a Sustainable Community." These summer sequels sure are boring …

"Community Priorities" inform the budget, Futrell says: 1) transportation mobility issues, 2) growth management, 3) affordable housing, 4) crime, et. al. Another "survey dimension" is "Customer Priorities:" there, police services rank No. 1.

Blog continues below the fold …

So now Harriet Miers might face contempt charges before the full Congress, and Democrat senators are demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate possible perjury by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

What’s the real connecting factor here? They’re both Texas lawyers. Miers and Gonzales both still hold their license to practice law with the State Bar of Texas. So, if they did end up on the business-end of legal proceedings up on Capitol Hill, could they still practice Lone Star State law?

Quick answer from the State Bar: maybe yes, maybe no. It would all depend on interpretations of the disciplinary rules. The problem is that this is all uncharted territory, so there’s no precedent to follow. And beware, there’s legalese ahead.

Yup, your fearless Chronic scribe, staff writer and City Council columnist Wells Dunbar will be on MSNBC today. Well, his voice at least, doing phone interviews regarding Austin's local government serving as a model for Iraq. (Seriously, the jokes write themselves.)

I should be doing four hits, at 10:22am, 11:37am, 12:10pm and 3:30pm. Tune in!

UPDATE: Lame – the bomb scare at the Long Beach airport is bumping your boy from his 12:10. If I do the 3:30, it'll have to be in-between presentations of the FY 2008 budget – which is being unveiled at City Hall at 1pm.