Grestarian, your reasoning is backwards.
The Texas governor has a right to make line-item vetoes. That right is granted by the Texas Constitution without encumbrance. A Texas statute cannot impinge on the governor’s constitutional powers.
The Texas governor also has a right to explain the basis for his actions. That right is implicit in the executive’s enumerated powers, but it also is independently granted by, among other things, the US Constitution (as incorporated to the States). Perry’s explanation for his line-item veto is core political speech, the very heartland of public discourse. Of course, even aside from the constitutional protections, encouraging such speech also is sound public policy: We want to know why public officials act the way that they do, so that those actions can have the appropriate political consequences. And we especially want public officials to operate as checks and balances on each other.
Now, I agree that the Texas statute could be read to cover the PIU situation. But that reading can occur only in a vacuum, in particular only by ignoring the constitutional protections that accrue to each action of the governor. Perhaps there is authority that says that a series of actions, each not just legal but constitutionally protected, can amount to a criminal act. I haven’t looked for such precedent, but put me down as skeptical that it exists.
The prosecution’s reading makes a hash of the American constitutional/political system. Suppose that rather than a line-item veto, the situation were an appropriations bill, in which a majority of both houses of the legislature “threatened” to pass, and the governor threatened to sign, the “Defund PIU Unless the Mean Drunk Resigns Act,” which lines out all appropriations for PIU unless a particular individual resigns. In the constitutional vacuum that the prosecution hypothesizes, that legislative threat would amount to “coercion” by each member who publicly stated an intention to vote for the act, and the actual legislative votes would be separately criminalized as “misuse” of public property.
Or, take it a step further, and hypothesize that the legislature and governor campaigned on the “Defund PIU Unless the Mean Drunk Resigns Act.” Voting for a legislator, or the governor, in order the get the act passed could subject a voter to liability for aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy!
Let’s take one final scenario. Under the prosecution’s theory, criminal liability attaches to explaining a constitutionally-protected action before it is undertaken, but there is no liability for explaining it after the fact (because there is no “coercion”). This creates the absurd scenario in which Perry saying, “this is why I am going to do what I’m going to do” is illegal, but saying “this is why I did what I did” is not. The motives are the same, the actions are the same, the consequence is the same - but transparency is undermined and the political process weakened, because no political pressure can be brought to bear before the action is performed.
