Four Senate Democrats called this morning for a top-to-bottom review of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, saying the governor needs to intervene to clean-up an agency almost wholly owned by polluters. Sens. Wendy Davis, Kirk Watson, Rodney Ellis, and Eliot Shapleigh took turns reviewing the litany of TCEQ failures - from potentially illegal meetings between a TCEQ commissioner and Asarco representatives to the denial of public hearings on cement kilns.

Sen. Davis (D-Fort Worth) honed in on the case of Glenn Shankle, the former TCEQ executive director who issued two extremely valuable radioactive waste disposal permits to a company, Waste Control Specialists, that he is now lobbying for.

“Right now industry is having its way with regulators and it needs to stop,” said Davis.

That TCEQ nearly always sides with polluters is not exactly news. The real question is: What are concerned lawmakers going to do about it? The senators promoted their various reform bills but suggested that industry lobbyists had prevented many of them from even getting a hearing. In the absence of significant action from the Lege, the senators are pushing for a thorough house-cleaning directed by the governor, a proposal that is frankly fanciful.

Let’s be honest: Rick Perry has exactly the TCEQ that he wants. Shapleigh calls the problems at TCEQ “systemic and pervasive.” If so, that’s due in large part to Perry’s appointments to the three-member TCEQ commission.

Over the past nine years, the appointees have been remarkably consistent in their pro-industry approach (with the exception of Larry Soward, the dissenting ‘1’ in many of the commission’s 2-1 votes). The commissioners pay lip service to the environment and public concerns but in the end almost never disappoint the polluters.

If you want to understand the general ideology of Perry’s proxies, consider that shortly after Kathleen Hartnett White stepped down as TCEQ chairwoman in August 2007 she signed on as an expert with the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation, a group so pro-corporate that Wendy Gramm (of Enron fame) chairs their board.

Installed at TPPF, Hartnett White has produced a string of alarmist papers on greenhouse gas legislation. In one commentary, she calls carbon dioxide - the main driver of climate change - a “harmless and beneficial gas,” a phrase that appears to be in currency among climate change deniers.

Bryan Shaw, the newest commissioner, shares Hartnett-White’s views on climate change, namely that it’s fiction. Perry is good at picking people who aren’t going to do anything to upset the apple cart.

Shapleigh is preparing a letter to Perry, calling for the TCEQ review. We’ll post a copy here when it comes out.