Five days after an explosion at a fertilizer plant leveled a wide swath of this town, Gov. Rick Perry tried to woo Illinois business officials by trumpeting his state’s low taxes and limited regulations.
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Raymond J. Snokhous, a retired lawyer in West who lost two cousins —
brothers who were volunteer firefighters — in the explosion, said,
“There has been nobody saying anything about more regulations.”
Texas has always prided itself on its free-market posture. It is the
only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers’
compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country,
Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it
prohibits smaller counties from having such codes. Some Texas counties
even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move
there.
But Texas has also had the nation’s highest number of workplace
fatalities — more than 400 annually — for much of the past decade. Fires
and explosions at Texas’ more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants
have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states
combined for the five years ending in May 2012. Compared with Illinois,
which has the nation’s second-largest number of high-risk sites, more
than 950, but tighter fire and safety rules, Texas had more than three
times the number of accidents, four times the number of injuries and
deaths, and 300 times the property damage costs.
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“Businesses can come down here and do pretty much what they want to,” Mr. Burka said. “That is the Texas way.”
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