Stefan Wray, the creator and maintainer of Austin-based blog site savetexasaccess.org, has been nominated for the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival.

This award is given annually to the person who uses technology in a hands-on / grass-roots fashion to help level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots.

savetexasaccess.org is a project of the Texas Access Group, or TAG, an informal network of Public, Educational, and Government access television stations in Texas.

The latest blog entry on the site, http://www.savetexasaccess.org/node/15, is called The Committee That Never Met.

It focuses on a Texas legislative oversight committee that was directed in 2005 by SB 5 to, among other things, study the impact this new video franchising law on the “continuation of public, educational, and government access channels.”

It appears that the Lt Governor’s appointments were too late in 2006 for this committee to convene. The study was never conducted. Hence, the implementation of SB 5 proceeds without any legislative oversight.

Stefan Wray is the Communications Director at Public Access Community Television.

For more information on the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award, please click to 2006.sxsw.com/interactive/dewey_award/