Look on the bright side, folks, over the past couple of years there has been a shift in the way these statements are being made. Once upon a time, they wouldn't have bothered coming up with a reason why they wanted to do this, they'd just have done it. Now they have to go through the personal humiliation of justifying themselves so they can hide their motivation in the shadows for fear of ridicule on the world stage.
Here, the DPS director is accusing his own department of conspiring against itself, based on the firmest evidence of all, 'newspaper reports he has read.'
On top of which he's under confident enough of his position to walk the tightrope of semantics in an effort to squeeze through the narrow gap between being honest. As in, 'There is no gain here for Texans, I'm just doing this to be a PITA' and his ludicrous justification, which is', My own department sneaked this through behind my back and I only found out by reading the paper.'
The values of the Texas DPS include:
Integrity: 'We demonstrate through our actions honesty and respect for others' and...
Accountability: 'We seek and accept responsibility for our conduct.'
Neither of which is he in accordance with, but his aims are incompatible with the strategic goals of the Texas DPS which are to:
Prevent crime and terrorism
Save lives and protect property
Maintain public order
...and to provide effective, efficient and secure licensing services
In any organisation I have ever worked for, the response to a winger like this would have been, 'Not even close, HR offer many courses to help employees with communication difficulties to express themselves,' but from the sound of it, Texas doesn't work like that. The state has become a byword in the UK for general weirdness and creepiness, but I imagine most of its citizens are quite normal folk, who just get along with each other and try to live a quiet life?
