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"It's pretty clear that e-Texas is an attempt by Carole Rylander to build a relationship with an emerging group of folks who up to this point have had tenuous ties to government," says Dee Simpson, political director of the Texas AFSCME labor group, which represents state prison guards. Simpson is among only a few union officials who admit to giving any thought to e-Texas and its potential effects on state employee job security.

The e-Texas mission to make government consumer-friendly via the Internet is not novel. At the urging of an El Paso senator, the Legislature passed a bill during the 1999 session that required the governor to convene a committee to do something remarkably similar.

The governor's ten-member task force is chaired by Phil Barrett, the director of e-business and technology research for the state Department of Information Resources. Barrett says his panel has a specific assignment to develop an experimental Internet site to handle simple government transactions, such as renewing a driver's license. Ironically, the comptroller's office is helping develop it.

"I believe e-Texas is looking at very many of the same issues we are looking at," Barrett says.

Mark Sanders, Rylander's special assistant for communications, says, "The more eyes that are looking at this, and hands that are working on it, the better product we are going to have at the end of the day."

But the duplication adds to the debate about Rylander's real motives with e-Texas. It also raises questions as to whether her emphasis for it to move government services to the Internet is actually a cover to disguise a bigger purpose: to open the floodgates of privatization. E-Texas allows Rylander to curtsy to the business sector, which can benefit from further outsourcing. She in turn can benefit politically from businesses rewarding her with financial support.

Ed Sills, communications director for the Texas AFL-CIO, says the labor organization will keep close tabs on e-Texas. "There is no question there are opportunities out there to serve people well by having government use technology and the Internet," Sills says. "But we think e-Texas is a stalking-horse for massive privatization proposals. And those need to be closely examined on their merits on a case-by-case basis."

E-Texas will suggest new areas of privatization to the 2001 Legislature, and Sills says lawmakers ought to consider those recommendations with a healthy dose of skepticism. Rylander is in the process of soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the private sector to help pay for e-Texas. The money would go into a special agency account. She spins this wedlock as a positive example of public-private partnership and as a way to save taxpayer money. The private sector, not the state, will cough up the $400,000 in travel, meal and lodging expenses for the approximately 150 task force members.

"It would be foolish for anyone to believe that a $1,000 or $5,000 contribution to e-Texas in any way is going to have any kind of impact on the work we are going to do and the recommendations that we are going to make," Sanders says.

But others see the co-mingling as a taint on the task force's independence. "Polls have shown that Texans don't think it's ever appropriate for politicians to take contributions from those who have business before their agencies, and we as a state do not allow legislators to take contributions during the session from lobbyists and others who are advocating positions," says Tom Smith, state executive director of Public Citizen, a government watchdog group. "So why are we allowing large business interests to contribute to fund a government study which will create policies that will benefit those same large business interests?"

The e-Texas task force to focus on outsourcing is chaired by Bill Hammond, who says his committee will take a thoughtful approach in recommending which services should be shifted to the private sector. Hammond, an advocate of outsourcing, has been president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business and Chambers of Commerce since April 1998.

"We're not in this to get business for our members," Hammond says. "We are in it to reduce the cost of government, if possible, and make government more customer-centric than it is now."

Hammond says he expects his so-called competitive government task force to get help from Bill Eggers, a top Rylander aide. Eggers co-authored the 1995 book Revolution at the Roots, which offers glowing accounts of privatization efforts nationally. The book is a bible for outsourcing proponents. Hammond sounds like he prefers that representatives of state employee unions, who have been the most vocal critics of privatization, do not become members of his task force.

"As far as getting input from them, we'll be happy to do that," he says as a compromise.

Sanders says Rylander wants people involved on e-Texas task forces who follow her philosophy that government is bloated and should be streamlined. "For over a year the comptroller campaigned across the state for smarter, smaller governmentŠ.We are giving the public what we told them we would give them. Is e-Texas going to come out and recommend a return to the Great Society? The answer is no."