Career prospects for Tom DeLay?
Call me a humanitarian if you must, but I've been really concerned about what Thomas Dale DeLay is gonna do.
A felony indictment is serious stuff. I know it's hard to think about the future right now. But what's going to happen if he gets convicted and loses his seat in Congress? What will he do? How will he make rent?
Could DeLay just go back to his old job as an exterminator?
Maybe not.
In Texas you have to be a licensed pest management professional with the Texas Structural Pest Control Board to work as exterminator.
In the interest of being helpful, I contacted the Texas Structural Pest Control Board to see what it would take for DeLay to renew his license, and to discreetly ask if a felony conviction would be a problem.
Turns out, the application form asks for your criminal background. DeLay would be required to disclose his criminal record, and the Texas Department of Public Safety would do a full criminal background check.
I spoke with someone in the legal department who told me that a criminal conviction could be reason to deny a pest control license but not necessarily. He said the Structural Pest Control Board looks at criminal problems of applicants on a case-by-case basis.
Whether a conviction would bar you from working as an exterminator depends on the nature of the offense, and the amount of time passed.
For instance, he said, convictions for theft, sexual assault, and property and drug offenses tend to be reasons for rejecting a license (can't have rapists and thieves going into people's houses to kill termites -- makes sense to me).
He said they tend not to approve applications from applicants fresh out of prison -- they want to see evidence they've re-adapted to society.
So I asked him what about a white collar fraud case -- say, money laundering -- for which the applicant received probation but no jail time (I'm assuming DeLay could plea down to probation rather than time in the state penn).
The legal department said it'd be borderline call. Yikes. (Not sure if you could get special treatment as a former Majority Leaders of the U.S. Congress.)
Hope he's not forced onto the dole. We'll keep our fingers crossed for you Tommy!
A felony indictment is serious stuff. I know it's hard to think about the future right now. But what's going to happen if he gets convicted and loses his seat in Congress? What will he do? How will he make rent?
Could DeLay just go back to his old job as an exterminator?
Maybe not.
In Texas you have to be a licensed pest management professional with the Texas Structural Pest Control Board to work as exterminator.
In the interest of being helpful, I contacted the Texas Structural Pest Control Board to see what it would take for DeLay to renew his license, and to discreetly ask if a felony conviction would be a problem.
Turns out, the application form asks for your criminal background. DeLay would be required to disclose his criminal record, and the Texas Department of Public Safety would do a full criminal background check.
I spoke with someone in the legal department who told me that a criminal conviction could be reason to deny a pest control license but not necessarily. He said the Structural Pest Control Board looks at criminal problems of applicants on a case-by-case basis.
Whether a conviction would bar you from working as an exterminator depends on the nature of the offense, and the amount of time passed.
For instance, he said, convictions for theft, sexual assault, and property and drug offenses tend to be reasons for rejecting a license (can't have rapists and thieves going into people's houses to kill termites -- makes sense to me).
He said they tend not to approve applications from applicants fresh out of prison -- they want to see evidence they've re-adapted to society.
So I asked him what about a white collar fraud case -- say, money laundering -- for which the applicant received probation but no jail time (I'm assuming DeLay could plea down to probation rather than time in the state penn).
The legal department said it'd be borderline call. Yikes. (Not sure if you could get special treatment as a former Majority Leaders of the U.S. Congress.)
Hope he's not forced onto the dole. We'll keep our fingers crossed for you Tommy!
posted by bda at 9:00 AM
1 Comments:
Enjoyed a lot! » »
Post a Comment
<< Home