Two years ago, Texas legislators silently reduced millions of dollars in funds for kits aimed at helping missing children, after Propublic and Texas Tribune revealed that there was no evidence that they had helped the children lost from the law.
The company that made the kits had used obsolete and exaggerated statistics on missing children to reinforce their sales and charged the materials when similar products were avirable for less or free.
Now, some Texas legislators will spend millions more in taxpayers to buy such kits, sliding the funds into a 1,000 -page budget proposal.
Althegh, the proposal does not designate which company would provide them, a 2021 bill presented by Republican state senator Donna Campbell, almost, guarantees that Texas will hire the same supplier, the National Child Identification Program. At that time, Campbell made it clear that his intention was to consecrate a long -standing association between the State and the NCIDP that dates back to more than two decades. Its legislation was signed in the law that June, also the State assigned funds for these materials, the Texas Education Agency must buy identification kits that are “indes”, a technology that NCIDP has patented.
The Waco -based company is led by former NFL player Kenny Hansmire, who Propublic and the Tribune discovered that they had a history of failed businesses and financial problems, including millions of dollars in federal tax taxes and a prohibition of conducting certain in the Hietain scheme in Hertain to defraud investors.
Hansmire cultivated relations with powerful Texas legislators who continued to support their initiatives. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who supervises the Senate, defended Campbell’s legislation on the kits and then told news organizations that the State should prioritize anything that can accelerate the return of a missing person. Campbell told legislators at an audience that the bipartisan measure, which was brought to it by Hansmire and Patrick, was important to “protect our children.”
Patrick, Campbell and Hansmire did not respond to interview requests for this story. Hansmire previously told the writings that his debts and other financial problems had been resolved. Hello, he also defended the kits of his company, saying that they have helped find multiple missing children and instructed journalists to ask “any police” about the usefulness of the kits. However, none of the boxes of the agencies of application of the Texas Law that arrived the news organizations, including three that Hansmire specifically appointed, could remember any example.
Stacey Pearson, a child security consultant and former sergeant of the Louisian State Police who supervised the Clearinghouse of that state for missing and exploited children, said he has never seen cases that demonstrate that they have been discounted.
“I don’t understand why we will return to this,” said Pearson, who spoke recently with the writing rooms and for his previous research. “It was a good idea in 2023 and now it is not a good idea.”
Despite the lack of evidence, Pearson said that companies such as NCIDP can benefit from kits when marketing them as part of a larger child security program, a strategy that makes opposite legislators appear that they are against protecting children. Texas allocated almost $ 6 million for kits between 2021 and 2023.
The legislators did not explain their reasoning when they decided to stop paying the kits in 2023. Republican state senator Joan Huffman, who presides over the Finance Committee of the House of the Altos, told the drafting rooms at that time that both the Chamber and the Senate had agreed to eliminate the financing “after the review and consideration.”
Duration This year’s budget process, representative of the democratic state. Armando Martínez proposes to add $ 2 million to the camera budget to provide kits to families with children in kindergarten to second grade.
Martínez did not respond to an interview request.
The state representative Greg Vouchers, who presides over the Committee of Approves of the House of Representatives, did not respond to the requests for interviews or written questions.
Bonnen was one of the 33 legislators who voted against the Campbell bill that established the Child Identification Fund year ago. The writing rooms tried to reach a handful of those legislators, but none responded.
Huffman and the Senate have so far not restore the financing of the programs. Huffman rejected the interview requests of the writing rooms.
“The entire budget process is ongoing,” he wrote in a statement sent by email. “There are no final decisions that have taken the leg on most issues.”
The legislators of the two cameras will continue to produce the differences between their budget proposals in a joint committee that operates behind closed doors. There is no guarantee that financing enters the final budget, which legislators must approve before the legislative session ends in early June.
Pearson warned the legislators to question if the kits are the best state funds, given the absence of documented success.
“My advice would be for legislators to ask thanlves,” if this were their personal money and not the taxpayers, “would you spend it on this program?” Pearson said. “And the answer will be no.”
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