?
Headline goes here
In addition to Tuesday's revisions, the Nelson CPRIT reform bill would:
Prohibit members of the Oversight Committee from serving for more than two years.
Prohibit CPRIT employees from maintaining offices at facilities owned by entities receiving or seeking funding from the cancer agency.
Strengthen rules prohibiting business relationships between grantees and CPRIT employees, Oversight Committee members and peer reviewers.
Prohibit members of the Oversight Committee, peer reviewers and employees from serving on a grantee's board of directors or related foundations.
Direct the CPRIT Foundation, which raises funds to supplement the salaries of key agency officials, to publicly report financial information.
The legislation that likely will define the future shape of the state's embattled cancer agency is moving to the Senate floor, after a key committee Tuesday approved a beefed-up version.
The reform bill, unanimously passed by the Health and Human Services committee, would impose stricter regulations to improve accountability and prevent conflicts of interest at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
"Our laws and rules have been twisted in ways that are disappointing and unacceptable," said Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, Senate sponsor of both the new bill and the 2007 measure that created the agency. "This bill reinforces our clear legislative intent that CPRIT be operated in a fair, transparent manner that is befitting of its lifesaving mission."
The legislation contains a number of revisions to the original bill Nelson laid out a week ago. It leans heavily on recommendations made two weeks ago in a damning state audit.
That audit looked at 26 grants and found problems involving $56.3 million of taxpayer money, including an $18 million grant to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson that the Houston Chronicle reported was influenced by a wealthy biotechnology investor and an $11 million grant to a start-up company in Dallas that underwent no review at all.
The audit also identified a third major problem, a $25 million statewide clinical trials network that ran up $1.3 million in "unallowable costs" and was rife with conflicts of interests.
The problems led to the resignations of the agency's three top officials and a moratorium on the awarding of grants until public confidence is restored.
Legislators at two key panel hearings last week blasted the agency for a lack of leadership.
Nelson said Tuesday the Legislature "will not allow the actions of a few individuals to stand in the way of our effort to find treatments and cures for this terrible disease" and added two revisions to her original bill: the removal of the attorney general and comptroller as members of CPRIT's governing board, known as the Oversight Committee; and a requirement that the committee affirmatively vote to approve the grants recommended to them.
Currently, it takes a two-thirds vote by the committee to reject a slate of awards positively evaluated by peer review committees.
The legislation got a mixed review from Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, sponsor of stricter legislation to reform CPRIT. She praised the bill as "closer to implementing necessary reforms and the auditor's recommendations," but called for additional reforms: a sunset review by the state auditor, a prohibition on salary supplements from the CPRIT's fundraising foundation and a prohibition on political contributions by grantees to elected officials who make oversight committee appointments.
Under another amendment, made Tuesday by Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, the bill would set up a process by which grant recipients not in compliance with terms of their contract would have to repay the money.
CPRIT, easily passed by voters in November 2007, has awarded nearly 500 grants totaling more than $800 million.
mayweather vs cotto shumpert hopkins hopkins dear john derrick rose torn acl pacers
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.