I'm not quite sure what to make of this story about the city of Dallas balking at giving temporary housing to some 40,000 special-needs people in the event they get evacuated from Houston during a hurricane.
Texas officials, haunted by last year's images from New Orleans of poor and elderly citizens left behind in Hurricane Katrina's wake, have formed a plan in which coastal cities would be paired with inland destinations that would house "special needs" evacuees, those without the means or ability to escape on their own.At a recent meeting in Corsicana, an official with Gov. Rick Perry's emergency management division asked North Texas officials to reserve shelter for as many as 40,000 such residents from Harris County.
But Kenny Shaw, director of the city of Dallas' office of emergency management, told the Houston Chronicle that sheltering that many needy, disabled or elderly evacuees - and possibly their pets - would be a stretch.
"It would be a little bit of a chaotic situation if we got 40,000 people," Shaw said. "We are not going to be able to house anywhere near a 40,000 special needs population."
The state can't make any city take special needs evacuees, meaning if "Big D" ultimately refuses to open shelters for them, they'll have to be transported even farther away to wait out the storm.
[...]
Houston and Harris County opened facilities to tens of thousands of Louisiana residents after Hurricane Katrina. At the peak, Sept. 4, there were 27,100 people sheltered in the Reliant Park complex and the George R. Brown Convention Center.
The most sheltered at any given night in Dallas' convention center, Reunion Arena and Dallas County's old jail complex was 3,000, Shaw said. He said slightly fewer were housed in those three facilities during Hurricane Rita.
"Once we got to the 3,000 point, that was pretty much all we could do. We began distributing them to other cities in the Metroplex," he said.
[...]
Robie Robinson, Dallas County's director of security and emergency management, said he shares Shaw's capacity concerns. Even with 16 counties to draw on, most of the resources are located in the four most populous: Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton, which have a combined population of 5 million."Forty thousand would be very, very tough to absorb," Robinson said. "It's fascinating. The challenges never end. Initially you have to get a grasp on what's the worst case scenario."
Dallas Mayor Laura Miller infuriated staffers in Gov. Rick Perry's office last year when she complained of Dallas' evacuation overload and struggle to find shelter for Katrina evacuees. At that time, Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt called Miller's complaints "unbelievable" and "so much whining and nay-saying" in an e-mail she sent to the governor's staff. But she's not repeating those complaints this year.
"The fact of the matter is if a community says it can't house more than a given number, there's nothing you can do to force it," she said.
Miller did not respond to a request for comment on the shelter issue Tuesday from the Chronicle.
I have to agree with Kathy Walt here - if Dallas says they can't handle more than a set number of evacuees, I don't know what you can do (short of waving money in front of them) to make them change their minds. I think they are perhaps being a little conservative in their estimate of what they can take on, and maybe part of the problem here is that "Dallas" makes up less than 40% of the Metroplex by population. Laura Miller and Kenny Shaw can't dictate to Collin County, for example, and we all know how generous they are with their resources.
It makes sense to try and secure space for the people who will need the most assistance ahead of time. It seems to me, though, that if the Governor's plan for this isn't taking into account this kind of pushback from the cities he's targeted as shelters for those folks, then his plan is fundamentally flawed. Maybe it's time to wave some money around, assuming there's anything left after the property tax cut stampede from the special session.
It'd be nice to get more of a Dallas perspective on this, but the Morning News just has an AP wire story that recapitulates the Chron reporting. I feel like there has to be a next move, though, what with tomorrow being Opening Day of hurricane season, so perhaps we'll see a fuller response from the Capitol shortly.
In related news, SciGuy gets medieval on the "We're all gonna die!!!" school of hurricane forecasting. Check it out.
Looks like the Astros may be getting close to signing Roger Clemens for the rest of the year.
Astros owner Drayton McLane negotiated deep into Tuesday night with Roger Clemens' agents, and he appeared on his way to finalize the deal in Houston early this morning."We worked on it last night, so that's why I’m going to Houston right now," McLane said as he boarded his private airplane in Temple on Wednesday at 7 a.m. "We've worked to try to get this thing done."
McLane said it's too early to say if a press conference will be called for today to announce the deal, but he remains optimistic.
"Just sit tight," he said.
[...]
"We've been close, but we just haven't gotten a deal done," McLane said. "Hopefully we'll get something done today."
I'm actually a little surprised it's taken this long, given that Clemens was free to talk to the Astros as of May 1. He has had other suitors, of course, so perhaps it just took awhile for him to make up his mind about where he'd prefer to play.
I was amused last night to hear John Kruk on SportsCenter bemoan the fact that Clemens would get to bypass spring training if he signed now. He seemed to think that there could be an epidemic of players retiring at the end of one year and unretiring during the next season, then signing midyear contracts like the one Clemens may ink. Let's put aside the question of whether Roger Clemens or John "I ain't an athlete, lady, I'm a baseball player" Kruk would be more in need of a team-sponsored conditioning regimen. The point of spring training is to get ready for the season. If Roger Clemens or Curt Schilling (whom Kruk and Harold Reynolds cited as someone who might try the nefarious Retirement Dodge to avoid playing pepper in Fort Lauderdale) or anyone else can show up on May 1 or June 1 in baseball shape and ready to go, who cares if they did their time in Florida? Spring training is a beloved tradition and a cherished ritual, but it's also just a bunch of games that don't count in the standings. What matters is those games that do count. How you get ready for them is not as important as being ready.
I'll update this post when the next announcement comes down the pike.
UPDATE: Clemens signs. Thanks, Patrick!
It's nothing I haven't written before, but I like it when folks such as Harvey Kronberg agree with me, in this case about the real outcome of the special session.
First, [the West Orange-Cove plaintiffs] correctly said that the recently passed legislation was more about reducing school property taxes than it was about creating a stable funding source for public education.Second, the Legislature permitted school boards a maximum of four cents per $100 they could raise their property taxes. After that, any tax increase would have to be approved by the voters.
That may make some political constituencies happy, but it is an expensive proposition to conduct an election and may be an insurmountable obstacle for many small- and medium-sized school districts.
Finally, the school districts said the state is already telling them how to spend up to 97 cents of each dollar. Additional mandates from the state will eat up the rest.
Trust me. The Legislature can't help itself. There will be more mandates
The plaintiffs correctly point out the state is treating locally raised property tax dollars as if it were its own money which deprives local school boards of any meaningful spending decisions.
When that three to four cent cushion evaporates over the next few years, school districts will be right back in court fighting the back door statewide property tax the Legislature just passed.
Chris Bell is out there talking about this, too. He's also right that the expanded reliance on TAKS testing as the one true measurement of all things scholastic is misguided at best and counterproductive at worst. Standardized testing certainly has its place, but no single metric can do it all.
We're definitely getting into election season, because the fundraiser emails are coming fast and furious into my mailbox. Here's two from this week to be aware of, both scheduled for Thursday. First up, Chad Khan.
Hon. Rodney Ellis/ Hon. Hubert Vo
Hon. Adrian Garcia/ Hon. Ronald Green
Hon. Gordon Quan/ Hon. May Walker
Hon. Jay Aiyer
*list current at time of printing
Invite You to a Fundraising Reception for
Chad Khan
Democrat for State Representative District 126
Thursday, June 1st
Beso Restaurant
2300 Westheimer (near Kirby)
6:00 pm to 8:00pm
Valet Parking Available
To RSVP, fax this form to: (713) 247-9605 or e-mail anna@outreachdevelopment.com
For more information please call Anna at (713) 247-9600
And next (in the order that they arrived in my inbox, anyway), Kristi Thibaut.
Dear HDF Members:Please consider joining us for a Fundraising Reception on Thursday, June 1 for Kristi Thibaut at the home of Jeff Steen, 5621 Willers Way (77056) from 6-8 pm. A current member of the HDF Board, Kristi is running for the State Legislature from District 133. She is the ideal candidate for the District and will be a great voice in the Legislature! Please consider stopping by to say hi and support her candidacy.
To RSVP by email, send to rsvp@lonestarstrategies.com
There is a fundraiser tonight for the family of the 17-year-old high school student from Spring who was viciously assaulted last month (see here, here, and here if you need a reminder of the details of the attack). His family has a lot of medical bills to pay, so if you can attend, please do. Details below:
The family of the hate crime victim is in urgent need of financial support for the drastic medical bills that have accrued. The young victim is still in critical condition, struggling through various medical procedures.The host committee invites you to participate and donate to this worthy cause
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. (remarks at 6:30 p.m.)
Beso
2300 Westheimer
Houston, TX 77098Corporate donations can be sent directly to the following account:
Galvan Family Trust
Bank of America ACCOUNT NUMBER 005864404494For more information please call :713.550.7712
Please RSVP: Marisol181@hotmail.comHost committee at time of printing:
State Senator Rodney Ellis State Senator Mario Gallegos Commissioner Sylvia R. García
Rep. Jessica C. Farrar Rep. Ana E. Hernández Councilwoman Carol Alvarado
Hon. Sheila Jackson Lee Bill Sadler Marisol Rodríguez
Adrian Collins Karen Becerra Karen Domino
Olga Rodríguez Graci Garcés Sadie Rucker
Brandon Dudley Claudia Flores Rodas Loi N. Taylor
Max Cárdenas Ángela Mejia Armando Walle
José Jiménez, LULAC Deece Eckstein, People for the American Way
Thanks for any help you can offer.
Previously, I noted that US Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D, San Antonio) and three of his colleagues sent a letter to Governor Perry expressing their concerns over the manifest failures of the THHSC privatization effort. At the time, I could not determine who the other signers of that letter were, so I sent an inquiry to Rep. Gonzalez's office. I got a response today, so here for your reading pleasure is the letter in question:
The three other signers were Reps. Al Green, Lloyd Doggett, and Chet Edwards. Now we just need to find out if Governor Perry has a response.
Another story from the weekend: A new 300-bed drug treatment facility is set to open next week. It's already in demand.
As of last week, county probation officials said, 170 men and 48 women were waiting.Officials hope to cut the waiting time and ease jail overcrowding when they open their new 300-bed drug treatment facility, for men on probation, in the renovated Peden Building.
They expect to open a portion of the center - at 600 N. San Jacinto, a stone's throw from the downtown jail complex - on June 5, with the rest of the building going into use in early July.
The center, one of five county residential treatment programs, is designed to help men complete their probation and become productive members of society.
"Some people don't need to be incarcerated, but need intensive treatment," said Kim Valentine, interim director of the county's Community Supervision and Corrections Department.
State District Judge Caprice Cosper said that jailing substance abusers without helping them overcome their problem does little to prevent them from breaking the law again and clogging the court system.
"The fact is, most judges don't want people who want treatment sitting in jail," Cosper said. "As judges, we have a responsibility ... to see that people put on probation are given the resources they need to succeed."
County officials also hope the new center will help relieve the overcrowded jail, where the daily inmate population hovers around 9,000.
Link via Grits, who has some more background info on the Harris County jail overcrowding issue. Like Grits, I think this is an important piece in the puzzle, but by itself will do little to address the long-term problems with Harris County's jails. It is a step in the right direction, though, so maybe it will serve as an inspiration to the decisionmakers for the future. We'll see.
Via Kimberly, I present to you the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time. You can mourn the CueCat if you want to, I'm getting an involuntary shudder thinking about PointCast, which our help desk quickly decided it would not support. As someone who makes his living through BlackBerry servers, I suppose I owe them a debt of gratitude for pioneering the concept of push applications, but man, did their implementation suck. As did everything else on that list, so read 'em and weep.
Metroblogging Houston has a heard-from-a-friend report that the late, lamented Cactus Records might be reborn under new ownership at the same location. I say take it with a grain of salt, since a move like this would have (I presume, anyway) made much more sense when the inventory was a part of the deal. But hey, you never know, and if it turns out to be true, then you saw the link here first.
From the weekend, we had this story about the real estate investors who bought the land that Astroworld once inhabited. The biographical stuff doesn't interest me that much, I was looking for clues about what's next for that property. Alas, this is all I got:
The deal on the 104 acres is scheduled to close Wednesday, but McIver won't show his cards until after that happens.While he mentions the phrase "mixed-use" development when asked about how he envisions the property long term, he said that he's still evaluating his options.
"I would hope the project would be something the city and the people of Houston would be proud of," McIver said during a recent interview.
Another unknown is what role he will have in what's built on this vacant parcel. While McIver said he's not going to flip the property, most often he has bought and sold land for others to develop, often after making some improvements.
In short, who knows? We'll have to wait a little longer to find out, and nothing may happen until after the property has been flipped again. Stay tuned.
Taking a "serious" look at Bigfoot in Texas.
Sure, there's the Bigfoot conference in the East Texas town of Jefferson each October, and that's where a permanent Bigfoot museum is envisioned.But here at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Institute of Texan Cultures, an exhibit and lecture series called "Bigfoot in Texas?" is lending long-sought credibility to a scientific inquiry that has struggled to gain academic respect.
Viewed by many scholars as a figment of folklore, for others Bigfoot is an elusive creature hiding in the damp woods of East Texas, where scores of sightings have been logged over the years.
Giant footprint casts, photographs, videos and other artifacts are offered as evidence in the exhibit, which opened April 8 and ends July 30. Items and information including eyewitness accounts were provided by the Texas Bigfoot Research Center and other private investigators who pounced on the institute's invitation to assemble the displays.
Experts say the exhibit is the first backed by a university since a 1978 conference in Canada. The institute's Bigfoot project director, Willie Mendez, said he got the idea last year as he pondered what to do next after a highly popular event on dinosaurs.
"I love what I do and I want to keep these doors open," he said. "I thought, 'What else is out there that would attract people to come in?' "
He conferred with UTSA and other academics before enlisting the Dallas-based research center, with its extensive archives and 50 volunteers with assorted expertise.
"These guys have some incredible investigators with them - wildlife biologists, DPS officers. They're doing a really good job," Mendez said.
Yet, the institute asserts strict neutrality on the issue of Bigfoot's existence, as suggested by the question mark in the exhibit's title.
"We don't take any stance on it at all. The way the exhibit is set up is - you decide. We present the pros and cons and at the end of the exhibit, we ask you whether you believe. So far the vote has been 2-1 'yes,' " Mendez said.
If 2/3 of the people viewing this exhibit come away from it thinking that Bigfoot is real, then the exhibit is a failure, scientifically speaking. I've written about this before, and I'll say it again. You don't have to catch an actual Bigfoot to make me believe. Just find a body. Or a bone. Or hell, a DNA sample. All over North America, there's evidence of animals that lived thousands and millions of years ago, and you expect me to believe we can't find one Bigfoot skeleton? Please.
It's interesting. With the relentless expansion of human development into the traditional habitat of various animals, we see story after story of unfortunate encounters between people and alligators, people and bears, people and mountain lions, all taking place in what was once the exclusive domain of those animals. Where are the stories of human encroachment on Bigfoot territory? Why has no one been forced to kill a Bigfoot to defend family, property, or self? Is their domain so wild and so remote that no exurban real estate speculator has ever set sight on it? Or is there perhaps a more prosaic explanation?
Now, I've not been to the UTSA-ITC exhibit, so it's possible I'm being excessively harsh on them. Maybe they do lay out the facts accurately, and it's just the visitors who are the failures. Like everything else about this phony phenomenon, however, I rather doubt it. For shame.
Congratulations to Barry Bonds for hitting home run # 715 yesterday. Whatever you think of him today, and however you think he covered the last steps on this journey, that's a hell of a feat for a truly outstanding player. Tim Kurkjian puts some of Bonds' greatness in perspective.
He slugged .809 in a five-year period: Ruth is the only other player ever to slug .800 in any season. Bonds is the sole member of the 700-home run, 500-steal club; only four players are in the 300-300 club, and no one else is in the 400-400 club. Bonds is the first player since Williams in 1941 and '42 to lead the major leagues in home runs one year and in batting the next (Bonds did so in 2001 and '02). And he has done most of this playing his home games at AT&T Park, one of baseball's most challenging ballparks for a hitter.Of all his amazing numbers, his strikeouts might be the most amazing. In an era in which former Blue Jays shortstop Manny Lee once struck out 100 times in a season without hitting a home run, and in which Adam Dunn struck out 195 times (72 looking), Bonds rarely strikes out. In 2004, Bonds became the first player since George Brett in 1980 to have more home runs than strikeouts in a 20-homer season -- Bonds hit 45 that season, with only 41 strikeouts. The Rangers' Brad Wilkerson, for instance, struck out 37 times this April.
Bonds has been pitched to more cautiously than any player in history. He is the all-time walks leader; in 2004, he walked 232 times, more than Willie Mays' two highest season walk totals combined, and 62 more than the Babe's season high. Bonds has more intentional walks in this decade than anyone has in his career since the statistic became official in 1955. In 2004, he had more intentional walks -- 120 -- than any team in baseball history. That year, he was walked intentionally eight times with no one on base. In his career, he has been walked intentionally 69 times with first base occupied; the next four active players have 28 combined.
I don't know if Bonds will make it to 755 or not, but I would not bet against it. After he hit Number 715 yesterday (Olivia and I were watching the Tennessee-Michigan softball game - she kept calling it "baseball", which was close enough for me - when ESPN cut away to witness the historic blast; we were more fortunate than some radio listeners, even if we never did find out who won the softball game) Harold Reynolds suggested that Bonds would not take the logical step of playing as a DH in the American League next year just for the purpose of surpassing Aaron, because he would not be playing at a certain level of excellence. I'm skeptical of that reasoning because it didn't stop Pete Rose from continuining his pursuit of Ty Cobb long after he stopped playing at a Pete Rose level. Other factors may enter the picture, but I think if Bonds can play next year, he will. I think he wants to be the home run king, and if he falls short of that goal it won't be by his choice.
Be that as it may, whatever happens Bonds will forever be remembered for this feat. And don't weep for The Babe, as his legacy is doing just fine, thank you very much. If and when Bonds hits #756, may Henry Aaron be celebrated as much for establishing the mark for Bonds to reach as Bonds is for reaching it.
From Phillip Martin:
Since the commencement of the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq, there have been 3,057 coalition deaths, of which are 2,754 Americans, including 234 native Texans. Below are the names, ages, hometowns, and date of death of those native Texans that have died in the past few years.The average age of the 234 Texans is 25.8.
We ask that you take time from your holiday schedule to stop, reflect, and pray for those brave men and women who have fought and died while serving their country.
I can't say it any better than that. I wish I had more to offer to these valiant men and women and their loved ones than my sincere condolences and gratitude. Please read Phillip's list, and remember their names.
UPDATE: Aaron Pena remembers Edinburg's fallen sons.
For those of you in and around Killeen, Mary Beth Harrell will be leading a Memorial Day service at the Central Texas Veterans Cemetery in Killeen at 4:30PM. Eye on Williamson has the details.
Here in Houston, the San Jacinto Democratic Veterans Brigade will have their annual observance from 9AM to 5PM at Hermann Park along Fannin, west of Hermann Circle Drive. See Stace for more.
Juanita and The Muse report from the latest CD22 candidate forum for Republicans vying to become the Chosen One. This one was in Fort Bend. There's also podcasts available at Elam's site starting here if you've got the time.
Meanwhile, there may be a joint forum in the near future, around the time that DeLay actually departs. Stay tuned for that.
UPDATE: Bob Dunn adds his report, as does Mike Fjetland.
State Rep. Rick Noriega, whose imminent deployment to the US-Mexican border as part of President Bush's plan to bolster the patrol with National Guard troops has been discussed here before, talks some more about what lies ahead for him.
Noriega, D-Houston, had just returned from 14 months in Afghanistan last year when he was recalled to active duty for Hurricane Katrina. Houston Mayor Bill White asked that he serve as "incident commander" at the George R. Brown Convention Center after the Reliant Astrodome overflowed with New Orleans evacuees.Then, after Hurricane Rita hit southeast Texas and western Louisiana the next month, Noriega was deployed to help set up shelters.
"I just hope and pray that we don't have a hurricane," Melissa Noriega said this week. "I don't think there is anyone who has a better perspective, or who would be a better choice, to deal with what goes on at the border. Rick is experienced and measured and he has a light touch. He will do a great job. I just hope they don't need him in two places at once."
Members of the Texas Army National Guard recently completed hurricane preparedness training, Noriega said.
"This brings a significant challenge for the state," he said. "There are different needs for the Guard in different sectors of the state. Are we getting stretched too thin? I think that's a legitimate question.
"Gov. Perry is the commander in chief of the Texas Army Guard, and it is his responsibility to say 'We can do these missions' (or) 'We can't do those missions,' " he said.
He added, "If you ask a soldier, the soldier is always going to say, 'We can do the mission.' If you ask a politician, he is always going to say ,'I defer to my ground commanders.'
"I just hope that, at the time you have people deployed in the Valley, you don't have to evacuate people from another part of the state," Noriega said.
As for his feelings about being sent to the border, Noriega noted that he "wears two hats" as a soldier and a politician. "Putting on my 'public official' hat, I think that a lot of this exercise (patrolling the border) is terribly transparent," he said. "It is political. I will just leave it at that."
I don't have anything to add to that right now. My best wishes to Rep. Noriega and his family while he's away from them serving his country again.
UPDATE: State Rep. Aaron Pena welcomes his colleague to his neighborhood.
Just filing this for future reference.
Conversations with panelists who sat in judgment of Lay and fellow former Enron executive Jeff Skilling revealed a spiritual group of Texans who went into the jury room teetering back and forth and came out confident the two prominent Houstonians broke the law.[...]
Once the group chose human resources professional Deborah Smith as forewoman, Delgado, principal at Golfcrest Elementary in southeast Houston, said it tried to get organized.
"We went to the indictment and to the jury instructions. We had to understand what our task ahead was, understand what we had to accomplish," said Delgado, taking a break from checking teachers out of the school for the summer.
Wendy Vaughan, a Katy roofing supplier and fitness company owner, said the group began plowing "diligently through every single count."
"We were really just ironing out places where there may be reasonable doubt," said Vaughan, 38.
[...]
The prospect of sending another human being to possible lengthy confinement was troubling, some jurors said, but not enough to skew deliberations, said Fernandez, 43.
"With me working in the (court) system, I told them, 'If any of y'all are thinking about punishment, that's not our duty at this time. Our duty at this time is guilt and innocence.' "
Jurors interviewed generally agreed the evidence and testimony of others ultimately overpowered the testimony of Lay and Skilling.
[...]
Multiple jurors named former Enron treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. and former investor relations chief Mark Koenig as the government's most effective weapons.
Glisan, who calmly pinned Enron's woes on misdeeds by Lay and Skilling, particularly impressed Delgado.
"He was the only witness who, when he was testifying, looked directly at Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay," Delgado said. "He never took his eyes off of them."
Meanwhile, former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow's past behavior repulsed a few in the jury box.
"When you get your children involved in a scandal," Delgado said, clearly annoyed as he recalled how Fastow funneled money through his family and allowed his wife to serve a yearlong federal sentence on a tax charge without intervening. "We knew he wasn't credible one way or the other."
Lawyers on both sides scored high marks, with Skilling's defense team led by Daniel Petrocelli drawing raves for his style, organization and approach.
"I think Mr. Petrocelli comes off as very charming. I was very impressed with his presentation," said Vaughan, who added that Lay defense team leader Mike Ramsey's absence because of surgery didn't seem to have an adverse effect.
Fernandez said prosecutors did an "excellent" job.
"I was very impressed by (Enron Task Force leader Sean) Berkowitz, and I was impressed by John Hueston," she said.
Personally, I get the impression of a group of people who did their best to evaluate the evidence and deliver honest verdicts. Which, frankly, is what I expected from the beginning. I have no opinion about many of the issues that will be raised on appeal, but the question of whether a fair trial was possible before Houston jurors or not is one that I believe should be immediately swatted down.
The Accenture/Texas Health and Human Services outsourcing debacle is getting some attention from Congress.
Declaring it a failed experiment that is harming the neediest in the state, a group of Texas congressmen including Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, a San Antonio Democrat, urged state leaders Wednesday to immediately cease a plan to privatize the screening of welfare applications.
The story does not mention the names of the other Congressmen, and some Google News searching on my part came up dry. So, I called Rep. Gonzalez's office and left a message with his media guy. I will post the letter when I get it.
Gov. Rick Perry's spokeswoman, Kathy Walt, did not directly address the congressional request, but noted that Perry has confidence in the privatizing effort and in Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins, the point man for the outsourcing plan."The governor certainly believes that privatization is an appropriate cost-saving approach," Walt said.
You wanna own this loser, Mister Governor, you go right ahead. Please tell me how much money we've saved so far and how much of that phony $646 million projection is still on track. Be sure to show all your work.
Actually, I can see one place where we may save a few bucks, now that you mention it:
Texas signed an $899 million contract with Bermuda-based Accenture LLP last year to have the company develop an "integrated eligibility system" that would quickly and accurately determine the social services for which applicants qualify.But the program has been beset with problems. The HHSC has twice postponed expanding the system outside of a small pilot project in Austin. The contractor's employee training program has been criticized, and a massive computer foul-up has resulted from an inability of various software programs to communicate with each other.
The program's critics say the foul-ups have led to people not receiving benefits they were entitled to. Others, they say, have been improperly denied benefits because of misinformation provided by poorly trained Accenture employees.
Not paying the rest of the contract would lead to savings, I must admit. Assuming we don't get sued, that is. If that's the basis of Governor Perry's faith in this program, well, I've underestimated the man.
The strongly worded letter was signed by four Texas Democratic congressmen and delivered late Wednesday to Perry, Hawkins and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.Hawkins' spokeswoman said the commission planned to push ahead.
Strayhorn, a Republican running against Perry as an independent in November's gubernatorial election, applauded the congressmen "for getting involved in this Accenture mess."
"The governor implemented this plan in haste," Strayhorn said, terming the privatizing effort a "perfect story of wasted tax dollars, reduced access to services and profiteering at taxpayers' expense."
She has undertaken an audit and review of the Accenture contract and promised to provide answers to questions raised by state Democratic lawmakers who oppose privatization.
As you know, I'm no fan of Strayhorn, but that audit of Accenture is the sort of thing for which she was put on this Earth. I daresay she will leave no stone unturned.
Meanwhile, THHSC is also ganging up on Accenture.
A host of computer problems and poor training of contractor employees, resulting in misinformation to applicants and improperly filled out forms, has caused Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins to indefinitely postpone the [privatization rollout].In addition, Hawkins has canceled the planned furlough of thousands of state workers and relieved the contractor of some of its duties.
It is not clear how much the state is considering penalizing Bermuda-based Accenture LLP, with which it signed a five-year, $889 million contract last summer.
It marks the first time the state has said publicly that its dissatisfaction with the contractor's performance may draw sanctions.
[...]
Anne Heiligenstein, deputy executive commissioner for social services, said the agency is reviewing options for recovering unexpected costs and delays in its Integrated Eligibility system, which determines who qualifies for food stamps and the Children's Health Insurance Program, among others.
But if the commission decides to impose financial sanctions, it could be months before a specific dollar figure is negotiated.
[...]
The rollout delay will likely negate some of the $646 million the commission told the Legislature it expected to save by outsourcing to the company.
That's assuming there ever was $646 million in savings to be had. I will not concede that point.
Meanwhile, you need to read this email to Anne Heiligenstein from Annie Landmann, the Chief Clerk of the House Committee on Human Services. I agree with HHSC Employee, it's an insult to the people who are still working there. There's more from HHSC Survivalist, who reprints a letter from the USDA to Albert Hawkins denying the state retroactive funding "from the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) for costs incurred by the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System (TIERS)/Intergrated Eligibility and Enrollment Services (IEES) Project" because "the State chose to move forward without prior approval despite knowledge of the associated requirement and the risk of losing federal financial participation without prior approvals." And finally, Father John finds common ground with Molly Ivins.
Some stuff from Thursday that got lost in the Enron verdict-a-rama:
Task force chief dismayed Perry lacks authority to order evacuations
The chairman of Gov. Rick Perry's hurricane task force said Tuesday that he was disappointed the Legislature did not grant the governor power to call for mandatory evacuations.Giving Perry such power, Jack Little said, was one of the top priorities out of the two dozen recommendations made by the task force Perry convened after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The goal of the task force was to determine what went right during the storms, and what should be fixed in time for the coming hurricane season, which begins June 1.
"We just felt like it was important in this state for the governor to be given that authority," Little said.
[...]
The evacuation bill was withdrawn earlier this month, during the waning days of the special legislative session on school finance, by sponsor Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton. Bonnen later explained that he had been told by an aide to the governor that Perry wasn't going to add it to the Legislature's agenda.
Bonnen said the bill wasn't fully understood by some local officials, and that Perry wanted to avoid confusion.
If you weren't going to have this on the call for the special session from the beginning, then I think it was right to not try to shoehorn it in at the very end. I'm still skeptical about the need to give the Governor's office more power, but I'm willing to be convinced. I just don't think I could be convinced by a bill passed in haste, without some public hearings.
Speaking of hurricane stuff, there's now a plan in place to better handle shelter for folks who have to be evacuated out by state or local authorities.
Under a new statewide evacuation plan, shelters will be set aside for people who evacuate cities such as Galveston in buses provided by emergency officials, Nancy Bass, the state's mass care emergency coordinator said Wednesday during a Texas Hurricane Conference workshop on evacuation of "special needs" citizens.Busloads of people from Galveston and Brazoria counties arrived at inland shelters in Huntsville and Katy during the Rita evacuation only to find that other evacuees already had overwhelmed the facilities. Many people on the Galveston bus, including children, elderly, those in wheelchairs and even some of their pets, wandered for hours in the night, finally being taken in by officials in Fairfield and Centerville, far beyond their expected destinations.
This year, evacuee groups organized by local emergency management officials will be sent to shelters reserved for such groups, Bass said. The facilities will not be among those publicized as available for the general public and evacuees who are making their own ways off the coast, Bass said.
Seems reasonable, as long as there's enough publicized facilities for everyone else.
Finally, Perry is touting his plan for better use of contraflow lanes, and SciGuy gives us the gloomy news that hurricane season is getting longer each year. So be prepared to keep those hatches battened down through at least December this time around.
Nice article on Barbara Radnofsky in the Tyler Morning Telegraph. For an article that's supposed to be about her, it actually is - her words, her positions on issues, and so forth. Quite a refreshing change from the usual ten-second-summary of her campaign followed by a half dozen paragraphs quoting her opponent's spokesperson that I see all too often in campaign coverage. Incumbents generally get plenty of ink devoted exclusively to them. It's only fair - and, not to put too fine a point on it, balanced - to do the same for challengers.
Via Eye on Williamson, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has admitted that there's still a few bugs in the school finance system.
In a visit with the Chronicle editorial board this week, Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst devoted much of his presentation to touting the improvements to public education to be funded by the new state school finance plan, which includes an expanded business tax and reductions in school property taxes.Dewhurst acknowledged the predictions of Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn and the Legislative Budget Board that the revamped business tax and one-dollar hike in the levy on cigarettes may leave the state confronting shortfalls of nearly $25 billion over five years. According to the lieutenant governor, the plan will consume the current state surplus of $8 billion.
I got a robocall from Dewhurst yesterday in which he breathlessly told me about how the Lege just cut my property taxes by a third, gave teachers a pay raise, and instituted more accountability in schools. Funnily enough, the subject of looming budget shortfalls never came up. Still, as EoW notes, it's nice to see that the Lite Guv has settled the fuzzy math question.
Over at Kuff's World, I've got the news that the injunction against the state that forced it to deal with the West Orange-Cove school finance lawsuit by June 1 of this year has been lifted. All the relevant documents are posted for your perusal.
The one you really need to look at is the plaintiffs' response, which does not oppose the state's motion but which lays out their continuing concerns. Like I said on Wednesday, this is not over yet.
UPDATE: Here's the Chron story.
So it's been a day now since Jeff Skilling and Kenny Boy Lay were convicted on multiple felony counts related to Enron's collapse and death. As you might expect, the Chron has wall-to-wall coverage of the verdict and reaction to it. I'll leave that to you to read; there's not much I can reasonably add to all that, but I will note that it's all pretty much favorable to the prosecution, as you might expect after they nearly ran the table. For an opposing view, I recommend Tom Kirkendall. I can't say I generally agree with Tom here, but he's been the best at presenting an alternative perspective on the matter. Read what he says and come to your own conclusion.
There is one thing I do want to address, and that's this.
If you want a date to mark the beginning of the end of the Bush Era in American life, you may as well make it this one: May 25, 2006. The Enron jury in Houston didn’t just put the wood to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. The jurors took a chain saw to the moral claims of the Texas-based corporate culture that had helped fuel the rise to power of President George W. Bush.
Hogwash. Enron ceased being about Bush in any non-meaningless sense in 2002. That's when this was supposed to have been a political liability for him. Lord knows I certainly fell for the idea that it would be. (Consider that another item in the Why I Should Never Make Predictions file.) I seem to recall another issue coming to the forefront in 2002 that pushed Enron off the stage and will much more clearly define the "Bush Era" for years to come. Right or wrong, most people decided a long time ago that Enron and Bush were at best tangentially related.
This trial and this verdict were about the misdeeds of two CEOs. I may not have been following the testimony obsessively, but I read enough to know that their politics and former connections weren't even a subtext. It was about what they did and what they should have done. A nice parallel to the Bush Administration, sure, but that's about it. TAPPED is right - this is gratuitous piling on to Bush by a previously deferential media now that he's down and isn't about to get back up. Not that I object to that per se, but let's just say that some of this attitude might have been nice a little earlier than now.
Anyway. Houstonist has even more reading, if all those Chron links weren't enough. And of course, we can't begin to move on from this until we know what the cats think about the verdicts.
Good news: the Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill (HR5417, discussed here), passed out of committee on a bipartisan 20-13 vote. Every Democrat who voted, voted in favor, along with six Republicans. I'm especially pleased to see that my rep, Sheila Jackson Lee, did the right thing after being "undecided" as recently as an hour before the vote. Kudos, Rep. Jackson Lee. Now let's hope the full House and Senate take this sucker across the goal line. Stay tuned.
I know I haven't been following the trials of former Enron honchos Jeff Skilling and Kenny Boy Lay, but apparently the jury is back and we're about to get some verdicts. So consider this a placeholder for when they're in, with more to come later.
Hat tip: Progressive Texan.
UPDATE: Guilty, guilty, guilty! While I was waiting for the Chron to reload (it eventually crashed - too much traffic, I guess), Tiffany just called to say she heard it on the radio. Skilling went down on 19 counts, with acquittals on 9 others, while Kenny Boy was convicted on all ten counts six counts from one trial and three more (by Judge Lake) in the other. More when the Chron powers back up.
UPDATE: Finally, here's the Chron story.
The jury heard 16 weeks of testimony and arguments and made its announcement early on its sixth day of deliberations. The eight-woman, four-man panel found Lay guilty of all six counts. They convicted Skilling on 19 of the 28 counts against him.U.S. District Judge Sim Lake set a sentencing date of Sept. 11.
Lake found Lay guilty of three counts in his personal banking fraud trial.
More from Loren Steffy and Trial Watch, which says Lay was convicted by Judge Lake on four counts of bank fraud, not three. Whatever, it's guilty all around.
UPDATE: Dwight links to a bunch of bloggers' reactions to the verdicts. (If you link to me linking to Dwight linking to these other bloggers, we'll be one step closer to Meta Blog Nirvana.) Also, Loren Steffy has two posts where jurors give their reasons for convicting. Trial Watch reports on Kenny Boy surrendering his passport and posting bond.
Eye on Williamson has a followup to the story on how the effort by State Sen. Steve Ogden to divert funds from Planned Parenthood clinics to "first-term providers" has been a disaster in Texas for many women. Check it out.
Didn't get to this one yesterday, but Governor Perry signed HB2, the most starkly partisan of the five tax bills from the special session, into law.
Gov. Rick Perry signed a law Tuesday assuring that revenue from new, higher state taxes will help pay for school property tax reductions and, he said, promote "greater tax fairness."But Democratic challenger Chris Bell said the measure was misdirected and should be repealed.
House Bill 2 is the second of five tax and education-related bills approved during the recent special session to get Perry's signature. It would spend all the revenue from a new, expanded business tax, a $1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax and tightened sales tax collections on used cars to help recoup the revenue lost from cutting school operating taxes in most districts by about one-third over the next two years.
After that, two-thirds of the revenue generated by those taxes will pay for further property tax cuts and one-third will be spent on the public schools.
[...]
Bell said he generally supports the new business tax. But repeating concerns expressed by Democratic legislators and some educators, he said some of the additional money should be spent to boost school funding, not just to lower property taxes.
"I think that (House Bill 2) is one of the measures that's going to need to be undone, if we're going to be able to realize any new revenue to face the problems that we have here in Texas," he said.
I don't think there's any question that HB2 as is will cause problems in the near future. As I said in my post on what the West Orange-Cove plaintiffs will do next, I see only three possible outcomes: Less property tax relief, more taxes somewhere else, or further cuts in spending beyond even the draconian, to-the-bone cuts from 2003. If I were a betting man, I'd put my chips on an increase and/or expansion of the sales tax, because there's already support for it in the Republican caucus. Watch those straws in the wind carefully next January, because we ought to know fairly early on what changes will be proposed.
I believe we have a new definition of "out of touch": Uncritically citing a Colbert Report segment as support for your position that evil liberal forces are out to get you.
Poor Tom. How the mighty have fallen.
Here's an email action alert that hit home for me:
Dear Charles,This is an urgent action alert. Your House member, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, is one of the key votes who have still not declared whether they will support Net Neutrality during an important committee vote Thursday morning.
It's late in the day, but please help secure a "yes" vote for Net Neutrality. This issue is critical—it's about whether we save the free and open Internet.
Can you call Rep. Jackson-Lee right away to urge support for Net Neutrality during Thursday morning's vote?
Here are the numbers - it's best to call the Washington, D.C. office and then your local office:
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee
Phone: 202-225-3816
District Offices:
Houston: 713-861-4070
Houston: 713-691-4882
Houston: 713-655-0050Some tips when calling:
1) Urge your representative to support the bipartisan Sensenbrenner-Conyers Net Neutrality bill (HR 5417) in the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, and then ask if she will support it without amendment. (Saying without amendment is key.)
2) If you get a voicemail option, leave a message. They will get it before Thursday's vote.
3) If you do call or leave a voicemail tonight, please consider calling again Thursday morning. Every call counts big time.
Help us keep tally of who is voting the right way. Please click here to let us know you called and to share how it went:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1815&id=7772-6935528-OPZ3PyNVU2ZyiTRk3drD.g&t=3
Thanks for helping to save the Internet.
–Eli Pariser, Adam Green, Noah T. Winer, and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
I just called from home. The person I spoke to at the DC office (don't bother with the Houston office, they'll just tell you to call DC) said Rep. Jackson Lee was "still on the fence" about this. I urged her to support the Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill without amendment. If you're in CD18, please take a moment to make this call, too. Thanks.
BTW, I'm pleased to see that the Chron got this one right.
If those who provide links to the Internet are allowed to dictate what portions of it the public can access, diversity of content and services will wither as the medium is auctioned to the highest bidder. Congress must guarantee that the Internet retains its status as a vibrant free marketplace of the mind.
Well said. Now please call Rep. Jackson Lee if you're a constituent of hers and let her know where you stand on this.
UPDATE: More reps to call. Pleaes check and see if any apply to you.
Some time before close of business on June 1, the state of Texas will file a motion to lift the injunction imposed by the State Supreme Court ruling in November that declared the property tax system unconstitutional. The plaintiffs in that case will not oppose the motion, meaning that it will be lifted as a matter of course.
That will not be the end of the story, not by a longshot. I talked with one of the attorneys for the West Orange-Cove plaintiffs this week and asked him what they will do from here. The answer is over at Kuff's World.
Wow. This Chron article on the results of the unofficial Fort Bend County survey of CD22 Republicans may have set a new standard for lame. That's saying something.
A survey of Republican voters in Fort Bend County showed Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace as the favorite to replace U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on the November ballot.Wallace received 640 votes while state Rep. Charlie Howard got 292. Tom Campbell, an attorney who ran unsuccessfully against DeLay in the March primary, got 216 votes.
[...]
"I do not see it as being a scientific survey," Campbell said. "I'm not sure exactly what it does except to show some indication of people's preferences."
Howard said survey respondents could have been influenced because the survey was mailed at about the same time Wallace sent out an announcement to voters that he was running for the post.
"And, there was no deadline on when the survey had to be in. I have had people call me as late as yesterday saying, 'Hey, I'm filling this out and I am going to put your name down and want to make sure you still want the job,' " Howard said.
The survey was mailed last month to Republican primary-voting households in Fort Bend County. The results were tabulated at the party's executive committee meeting last week.
Yes, last week. Fort Bend Now had the story on Saturday, with a pre-release piece on Friday. I'll get to that in a minute.
The survey generated 1,325 responses for 29 different candidates, said Fort Bend County Republican Party Chairman Gary Gillen."It listed all the folks who were actively being talked about or had suggested that they might be interested in serving in that position," Gillen said
[...]
Former party Chairman Eric Thode sent the survey last month to about 18,000 addresses.
The process for filling the opening starts when Republican Party precinct chairmen from the four counties of the 22nd District each select an elector. The four electors will then vote for a candidate for the November general election.
Some GOP members said it was a waste of money to have the local party send out a survey. Gillen said the survey cost the party about $6,500.
He said the real opposition to the survey came from party members who did not want to see their particular candidate poll poorly.
"The most important thing that comes out this process, in my opinion, for the Republican Party is that the nominee we select be electable," he said. "And I think this gives the precinct chairs who will be making these decisions a little bit more information than they had before."
There is so much more to this story than what's in this limp article that I almost don't know where to begin. How about these two stories from FBNow, which have much more detail and a long string of comments to give you the full flavor of how controversial this poll was. Then there's Chris Elam, Juanita, and The Muse. Read all that and compare it to the Chron piece and ask yourself why in the world it took them four whole days to come up with something that unenlightening. Sheesh.
With the untimely passing of Harris County Treasurer Jack Cato on Monday, the local Republicans now need to field a replacement candidate. Lucky for them, they've got someone who is uniquely qualified to hold this position.
Two-time mayoral candidate Orlando Sanchez, who unsuccessfully challenged County Treasurer Jack Cato in this year's Republican primary, is a leading candidate to replace him on the fall ballot, party leaders say.[...]
Republican County Chairman Jared Woodfill and other party leaders said Sanchez will be a formidable candidate because he was endorsed by 256 of 454 precinct chairmen in the primary election against Cato.
"Orlando will be very strong. He has worked with precinct chairs for years," Woodfill said.
The GOP nominee will be opposed in November by Democrat Richard Garcia, who advocates abolishing the treasurer's office.
At least two county commissioners also believe it may be time to abolish the obscure office, which has no real power. That would require statewide voter approval of a constitutional amendment. Several other counties, and the state of Texas, have abolished the treasurer's post.
Yes, who better to run for the most meaningless countywide office than Orlando Sanchez? When the show fits, you've gotta wear it.
The treasurer's post pays $96,000 a year, and its main function is to disburse payments authorized by Commissioners Court.[...]
Commissioners El Franco Lee and Garcia said that with Cato's death, the county should consider abolishing the treasurer's post. "This may be the right time," Garcia said.
To abolish the post, the Legislature would have to put the issue before the statewide electorate, and voters would have to pass a constitutional amendment. The Legislature almost never puts such an issue before voters if a commissioners court and the county treasurer do not request it, Eckels said.
Sanchez opposes abolishing the post.
Of course he opposes it. Who wouldn't want a job that pays $96K a year to distribute checks? Fiscal conservativism is so 1994.
The state of Texas abolished its office of Treasurer in 1995. What is Harris County waiting for?
There's a new SurveyUSA poll on the Texas Governor's race. Here's the result:
If the election for Governor of Texas were today, and you were standing in the voting booth right now, who would you vote for? Democrat Chris Bell? Independent "Kinky" Friedman? Republican Rick Perry? Independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn? Or some other candidate?
18% Bell (D)
16% Friedman (I)
41% Perry (R)
20% Strayhorn (I)
1% Other
3% Undecided
Basically, that's a five-point dip for Strayhorn and a three-point gain for Bell, which stands in contrast to the previous poll that showed Strayhorn ahead of Bell by ten. Perry is two points better this time, while Friedman is the same.
1,200 Texas adults were interviewed 5/19/06 - 5/21/06. Of them, 1,021 were Registered Voters. Of them, 605 were judged to be "likely" voters. Crosstabs reflect Likely Voters.
That's an expectation of 59.3% turnout, which means I have the same problems with this result that I did with the other one. I'd really love to know how SUSA is coming up with this likely voter model. I'm going to have to see if I can find a contact to ask about that.
Interestingly, the first Rasmussen poll showed Strayhorn significantly ahead of Bell, which was then followed by a second result that showed the two of them virtually tied. That's basically what happened here with SUSA. I don't know what to make of that - it may just be random weirdness.
What is consistent is Perry's hovering in the 40% range. If Bell can consolidate Democratic support, that's a figure he can surpass in November. While I still believe that these polls are not taking into account historical rates of straight-ticket voting, which would guarantee Bell at least 20 to 25% of the final total, it's clear he has his work cut out for him in this regard. Would someone please mail this result to Ben Barnes?
By the way, I think a poll designed to measure the preferences this year of people who have voted straight ticket for either party in the past would be a great idea. Everyone is guessing what the effect of Strayhorn and Friedman on the ballot will be with people who normally stick with one party. Why not ask them and see what happens? Maybe I'm right and straight-ticket Dems say they'll do what they always do, and maybe I'm wrong. Why guess when you can measure? C'mon, pollsters, you know you want to do this!
SUSA link via Political Wire.
Both the Chron and Express News political blogs note that Governor Perry is rolling out an ad campaign to tout property tax relief. In doing so, he's playing quite a bit fast and loose with the math. From the E-N blog Strange Bedfellows:
Higher home values will produce larger school property tax cuts, which may explain why the governor's campaign used home sales prices to come up with an average $2,000 tax savings that Gov. Rick Perry touts in new TV and radio spots.Homes sales prices are much higher than what homes are assessed at for tax purposes.
Perry campaign spokesman Robert Black says Perry used homes sales prices compiled by the Texas A&M Real Estate Center as a way to determine "the average value of the home.""If you want to know the best barometer of what homes are worth in the state, it's what they are selling for," Black says. "That's the best number we can come up with."
But home sales prices have little to do with property taxes - and the average San Antonian should not count on a $2,000 tax cut - not even over the next three years as the small print disclaimer says in the ad.
The average home sales price in San Antonio has ranged between $155,000 and $163,000 during the first three months of 2006, according to A&M's Real Estate Center.
But Bexar County's average home value is $117,300, according to the Bexar County Central Appraisal District.
The difference between home sales prices and their value for taxes "is precisely the reason why the governor has been calling for sales price disclosure," Black says.Sales price disclosures would produce more accurate information for tax assessments.
That $117K figure is almost identical to the average assessed value for HISD as cited in the Chron post. Let's review what the Perry camp is up to:
1. They start with a figure - sales price - that is not the basis of how property taxes are assessed, meaning they're overestimating to begin with.
2. They do not take into account increases in assessed values, which even with tighter appraisal caps in place would reduce their figure further.
3. Property taxes and school taxes are two different beasts. The former may be going down, but the latter very likely isn't for most people. Those increases are not taken into effect.
4. They assume that the budget math will be in place to allow the full reduction to $1 per of $100 value in 2007, which is probable but by no means assured.
5. They overlook the other tax increases, which will hit smokers the hardest.
6. To top it all off, they round up from their already inflated calculation of $1936 to $2000.
Pretty darned impressive, if you ask me. Gotta give it up for the Governor - he's never been one to let such muddlesome details get in the way of his story.
Oh, and did you notice the irony in Perry's call for sales price disclosure? Given the gap between average actual sales price in Bexar County and average tax assessment, requiring the sales price on houses to be disclosed will almost certainly have the effect of causing the initial assessment after a sale to be higher than it would have been otherwise. If you think new home buyers should start out paying more property taxes than they currently do, that's exactly what you'd want.
FYI, my webhost is experiencing email delivery issues. The last email I received was at 11:20 AM. If you've been trying to reach me since then, I haven't gotten it yet. You can try my alternate address, cakuffner - at - gmail - dot - com, or wait it out. I'll post an update when this is resolved. Thanks!
UPDATE: I've gotten some email since I posted this, but there's not an update from Dreamhost saying it's been resolved yet. So, if you are still having problems with my offthekuff email address, try the gmail one. Thanks!
Former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen has died at the age of 85.
Bentsen, in failing health for more than a decade after a stroke in 1995, died at his home in Houston, said family spokesman Bill Maddox.[...]
On the state political stage for almost half a century, Bentsen was a link to the heyday of Texas Democratic politics, when the regular wing of the state party was the fiefdom of then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, Bentsen's most influential early mentor.
Although Bentsen helped Johnson in the 1950s to fend off a conservative challenge for control of the party, Bentsen gained his own first statewide victory in 1970 by defeating Texas' reigning liberal icon, Sen. Ralph W. Yarborough, in the Democratic primary. In the general election that year, Bentsen beat Republican George Bush, delaying his fellow Houstonian's national political ascent.
True to his Tory Democratic roots, Bentsen was an unabashed advocate of his state's oil industry and an early proponent of cutting corporate and capital gain tax rates.
I've noted before that Bentsen was not exactly a hero to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. This is not to say that there wasn't much to like about the man. There was plenty to like, but he was what he was.
Bentsen, however, could pull laurels even from the ashes, and he enhanced his standing as an astute politician in 1988 as the dogged Democratic vice-presidential running mate of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.In the vice-presidential debate that year, Bentsen hammered Republican Sen. Dan Quayle, with an artful putdown that found its way into everyday speech.
When his younger opponent compared himself to President John F. Kennedy, Bentsen, his voice dripping with disdain, retorted: "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."
Among the things that there were to like about Lloyd Bentsen, this would be at or near the top of the list. That quote gives him immortality.
When Clinton was elected in 1992, he asked Bentsen to become his Treasury secretary. Some presidential aides indicated the move was principally to get Bentsen out of the Senate — and the chairmanship of the Finance Committee, a position from which Bentsen could have blocked some of the new Democratic leader's more liberal economic proposals.Many intimates believed that not long after arriving at the neo-classical Treasury Building next door to the White House, Bentsen wished he had never left Capitol Hill.
Easily the worst aspect of Bentsen's ascension to Treasury was the loss of his Senate seat to Kay Bailey Hutchison. I've no doubt that he would have won re-election in 1994 - hell, he probably would have been only nominally challenged. That most likely would have merely delayed the inevitable in Texas, but who knows? Maybe if he'd been around to campaign for the statewide ticket in 1998, John Sharp would have beaten Rick Perry for the Lt. Gov. job, and Paul Hobby would have held off Carole Keeton
Rest in peace, Lloyd Bentsen. Greg has more.
The Morning News had a story on Sunday about The Big Buy (see my review here) and the possible Democratic strategy of running against Tom DeLay in November even though he won't be on anyone's ballot.
"DeLay becomes a symbol," said Glenn Smith of the liberal advocacy group Drive Democracy. "And the symbol floats free of his particular circumstance in or out of power. That's a political fact."Democrats are counting on that as they try to wrest control of Congress away from Republicans. They hope that voters will still see Mr. DeLay, who is awaiting trial on charges that he misused corporate funds to elect Republicans to the Texas Legislature in 2002, as the personification of a wider "culture of corruption" in GOP-dominated Washington.
Republicans say that's wishful thinking and that Mr. DeLay will be a distant memory to voters by the time they cast ballots in six months. Political analysts tend to agree, though they say general dissatisfaction with Washington could hurt Republicans with or without Mr. DeLay in the mix.
[...]
Republicans say Mr. DeLay's resignation, effective next month, has robbed Democrats of the high-profile bogeyman they were banking on to make that message stick.
"They were using Congressman DeLay across the country as their poster boy," said Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill. "When he decided not to run, that argument was gone."
Plus, Washington political analyst Charlie Cook said, voters don't believe that Democrats in Congress are more virtuous than Republicans when it comes to ethics.
But he said invoking Mr. DeLay as "code for Republican corruption" does feed a broader mood of voter discontent, which could work against the GOP in November.
[...]
"He may be gone, but the corrupt machine he built lives on," said Toby Chaudhuri, a spokesman for the liberal advocacy group Campaign for America's Future.
The group plans to continue using Mr. DeLay in TV spots in contested congressional districts. On its Web site, it still features a photo of Mr. DeLay and the headline: "DeLay is Out, Now Help Expose His Cronies."
[...]
Democrats still hope to take the seat as one of the handful they need to win the House, but without Mr. DeLay on the ballot, it's unlikely Mr. Lampson can count on such high-profile support. Still, he's optimistic.
"Round one is clearly in my corner," Mr. Lampson said last week.
But the incumbent's departure leaves Mr. Lampson seeking election in a Republican district against a yet-to-be-determined GOP opponent not saddled with the kind of ethics problems that bedeviled Mr. DeLay.
John Cobarruvias, a local Democratic leader, acknowledged that Mr. DeLay's departure has "taken a little air out of this on the national level, definitely."
Mr. Lampson said Mr. DeLay's ethical miscues are well-known to voters in the district, which includes portions of Harris, Brazos, Galveston and Fort Bend counties.
"I don't have to go out and remind them," he said. "It's ingrained in a lot of these people in this district, and it will resonate."
At the same time, Lampson campaign manager Mike Malaise said, don't be surprised if the campaign runs TV ads this fall featuring Mr. DeLay.
First, while there may be a little dampening of enthusiasm at the national level thanks to DeLay's departure, there's not any in CD22 itself. I get several emails a week from Cobarruvias on behalf of the Bay Are New Democrats announcing fundraisers, blockwalking, and other Lampson campaign activities. Believe me, the Democrats in CD22 are focused on winning that race.
Second, even if national fundraising drops off a bit, so what? Lampson already had $1.7 million in the bank as of March 31. He'll easily crack $2 million, if he hasn't already done so. He's armed for this fight, which is more than his as-yet-unnamed opponent can say.
Next, while no candidate (not even Lampson before DeLay's dropout) can run an all-DeLay-all-the-time campaign, there is and will be plenty of material for a few attack ads or mailers. This is because Republican Congressfolk all around the country, especially those moderates-in-name-only from the Northeast, have tied themselves tightly to Tom DeLay for a long time. They've taken his money, they've given to his defense fund, they voted to rewrite their own rules to let him stay as Majority Leader after he'd been indicted, they voted to remove the members of the Ethics Committee that had the gall to admonish DeLay, and they vote with him 90+% of the time. The mailers and advertising copy write themselves. Again, no campaign can run on this alone, but there's no reason to believe this line of attack should be abandoned, either.
And while the Chosen One surely won't have DeLay's level of ethical and legal problems (who could?), he or she is likely to have some specific ties to DeLay that can be exploited in any number of ways. That's most probably going to be the case if the Chosen One is from Fort Bend (David Wallace, Charlie Howard, Andy Meyers), but I'd bank on it regardless of where the replacement candidate comes from. DeLay's gravitational field is too great to think that any area Republican prominent and connected enough to replace him on the ballot is free of any of his taint. It just doesn't work that way. Some connections will be more obvious than others, but you can bet they exist for any viable replacement possibility. (Yes, this means I think Tom Campbell doesn't have a prayer of being the Chosen One.)
Finally, even after DeLay officially resigns and is removed from the ballot (who knows when that will be), he's still going to be in the news, thanks to the ongoing appeals process in his money laundering trial. The Abramoff investigation is still out there, too, with DeLay buddy Ed Buckham apparently next in the line of fire. It won't be a daily drumbeat as it was before he cut and ran, but it'll be there, and every story that features him will be a reminder of why he quit and why he symbolized so much that was bad.
So yes, you will see DeLay on your TV this fall. How could it not be that way? The man himself may be gone, but his legacy lives, and that's very much a viable campaign issue.
Are you a blogger who plans to go to the state Democratic Convention in Fort Worth and blog about it from there? If so, then read this first so you can get properly credentialled. While you're reading that, here's some good news from the Texas Democratic Party:
There will be a section on the arena floor reserved for bloggers, where Internet access is available. Additionally, a separate room equipped with Internet access and hard phone lines will be available for all members of the media.
Now go fill out that credentials request, which Vince has kindly provided here (Word doc), and all will be well.
Via Eye on Williamson, here's audio and a transcript (Word doc) of Mary Beth Harrell being interviewed on an Air America show called Your Local City. They're going to have a bunch of candidates stopping by in the coming weeks, so take a look at their website and check the schedule. Too bad AA doesn't run in Houston, but at least you folks in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio can tune in.
Well, I'd say there's good news and bad news in this.
A hectic, above-normal tropical storm season could produce between four and six major hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico this year, but conditions don't appear ripe for a repeat of 2005's record activity, the National Hurricane Center predicted today.There will be up to 16 named storms, the center predicted, which would be significantly less than last year's record 28. Still, people in coastal regions should prepare for the possibility of major storms, said Max Mayfield, the National Hurricane Center director.
"One hurricane hitting where you live is enough to make it a bad season," Mayfield told reporters.
Last year, officials predicted 12 to 15 tropical storms, seven to nine of them becoming hurricanes, and three to five of those hurricanes being major, with winds of at least 111 mph.
But the season turned out to be much busier, breaking records that had stood since 1851. Last season there were 15 hurricanes, seven of which were Category 3 or higher. Eight hurricanes have hit or affected Florida since 2004.
In the center's detailed 2006 prediction report, meteorologists were not forecasting a repeat of last year because water in the Atlantic is not as warm as it was at this stage in 2005. Warm water is a key fuel for hurricane development.
"We do not currently expect a repeat of last year's record season," the forecast says.
Well, that's good. The fact that water temperatures in the Atlantic are not as high as they were at this time last year is good (though my understanding is that the temps in the Gulf of Mexico are higher this year than last, which is not very comforting). And apparently there's supposed to be no influence from El Nino and La Nina this year. That's good, too.
But man. Sixteen predicted storms, compared to 12-15 last year. I don't know if the forecasters have already adjusted outward to make up for their gross underestimation last year, but I sure do hope so. I can't bear the thought of this year being any worse.
Harris County Treasurer Jack Cato passed away earlier today.
Cato, 70, has been county treasurer since 1999. From 1995 to 1998 he was the spokesman for the Houston Police Department. Cato also spent 25 years with KPRC-TV working as a photographer and reporter. Cato is married and is survived by two children and seven grandchildren.In March, Cato beat Houston former city councilman and mayoral candidate Orlando Sanchez to remain the Republican nominee for Harris County treasurer. Cato was to face Democrat Richard Garcia for the job.
Harris County Commissioners Court will move the assistant treasurer, Linda Langlois, to fill the treasurer position until the November election.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
I've mentioned before that I knew Jack through the local tournament bridge scene. He was a good guy, a colorful character, and a tough competitor. He will be missed. Rest in peace, Jack Cato.
UPDATE: More here.
I suppose I should say something about Barry Bonds finally catching up to Babe Ruth in the career home run department. I addressed this topic almost three years ago when Bonds spoke publicly about his pursuit of 714 and ultimately 755. I don't think my feelings have changed much. Both Barry and The Babe are alltime great players, and wherever you choose to rank one in comparison to the other, it doesn't take anything away from either one's accomplishments.
In a sense, it's a testament to Ruth's immortality that we're even focusing this much attention on a player's ascension to Number Two on a career totals list. I don't recall there being this much fuss when Pete Rose moved into second place on the alltime hits list. (Quick: Who did Rose pass on his way to Ty Cobb? Answer here.) Jim Caple explored that theme over the weekend, but for me, the go-to guy for all things historical is Steve Goldman, who writes about how The Babe's place in history is secure in part because of where in history he appeared.
By the 1920s, the average American household was receiving more than one newspaper. The number of radio stations jumped from five in 1921 to over 500 in 1922 and over a thousand in 1923. In 1922, the year Ruth struggled with multiple suspensions for illegal barnstorming and fighting, a grand total of 100,000 radios were manufactured. By 1925, it was estimated that 50 million Americans were listening in. The first World Series broadcast--starring the Babe--aired in 1921. Newspaper circulation increased dramatically. Syndicates were created to distribute content nationally, so when New York World columnist Heywood Broun wrote “The Ruth is mighty and shall prevail” after the Yankees won the 1923 World Series, the entire country read his words. Much of the new media was produced in New York City, and in a wonderful coincidence, as of 1920 that was exactly where Ruth could be found. Simultaneously, the economy took off; after some post-war doldrums from 1919 through 1921, the Gross National Product rose annually with no inflation and little unemployment, so people had the funds to spend on these new forms of entertainment and information.
Babe Ruth was the right superstar in the right place at the right time. He transformed the game of baseball, both in how it was played and in how it was perceived by the public, and he did so right as a media boom that was hungry for content was springing up around him. Whatever you think of Barry Bonds' achievement in equalling Ruth's home run total, it's not his fault that he's competing with that.
On a side note, I see that Patrick Hruby has attempted to take a scientific approach to the question of how many homers Bonds might have if he'd never used performance enhancing drugs. The number he comes up with is 616. Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you that Bonds shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame because his numbers were all inflated by steroids.
I still don't know what kind of political fallout there may be from Rick Perry signing HB3 into law, but that doesn't stop me from writing about it at Kuff's World. Come see me try to work it all out.
I think we're seeing a shift in the rhetoric about conservative disgruntlement, by the way. Look at the following quote from Harris County Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt, who's as big a hero to the Cut My Taxes Now! crowd as anyone, from today's Chron.
Bettencourt said Perry violated longstanding Republican Party principles and an important political rule: "You don't hack off the base because it's the base that gets you elected."But he added, "I gave Perry my endorsement in 2004, and I haven't withdrawn it." And, he said, he wasn't sure that many Republicans, despite their anger, will abandon Perry.
Translation: Perry may be an SOB, but he's our SOB. Note that Steven Hotze did not get a mention in this story. This is the only place that the idea of base voters sticking it to Perry by staying home in November is brought up. That may simply be shortsightedness on Clay Robison's part, but it also may be an acknowledgement of the stark truth that Hotze doesn't carry nearly as much weight as he thinks; at least, not at the statewide level. It's possible that the real rebellion will be in 2008, after people realize that the much-ballyhooed property tax cut isn't worth all that much to them, and the 2007 Lege is forced to deal with the fiscal consequences of this year's actions. But hey, at least Rick Perry won't have to worry about that. He won't be on the ballot that year.
The Sunday Chron had a story in the business section about fierce competition among the satellite parking lots at Intercontinental Airport.
We entered the market as the only player somewhere upwards of 30 years ago, and today there's got to be up to eight competitors,'' said David Grocer, a spokesman for Park 'N Fly. "We have a lot more competition.''[...]
Local parking operators say the abundance of land around Houston airports has given companies a cheap way to get good returns on their investments. But with so many companies now, they have to fight for every customer.
Complimentary newspapers and bottled water are common, and almost all offer discount coupons in the newspaper, online or in the mail, but the services offered by some can be more elaborate.
[...]
But for many customers, convenience will be the deciding factor, no matter how low rates drop.
Barbara Mingarelli, who travels as part of her job at GlaxoSmithKline, has always used Park 'N Fly when flying out of Intercontinental, even though it's more expensive than most of her other options.
"The service is so good I just wouldn't. The drivers are always happy and are always willing to help," she said. "It's worth paying for the extra vans and the help."
I've said this before and I'll say it again: When we finally do get an airport shuttle service in this town, it's these parking lots that they'll be competing against. No offense to the city's cabbies, but this is where the action is. It's a straight price-for-convenience tradeoff. It'll be interesting to see how the shuttles try to differentiate themselves in the market. When they finally get the chance to do so, that is.
Never one to let an opportunity pass by, Carole Keeton Strayhorn has announced that if elected Governor, she will repeal the new business tax. Here's her press release (Word doc):
"Gov. Perry said he was signing the largest tax increase in Texas history with 'passion and joy'," Strayhorn said. "I will repeal the tax hike with passion and common-sense fiscal responsibility." "This law leaves Texans with a $23 billion hot check," she said. "It is bad public policy and I will blast it off the books after I am elected governor."
Yoo hoo, Steven Hotze! I have a Ms. Strayhorn on the line for you. She asks that you overlook her fondness for gambling, and the fact that she'll need to act like a Democrat so she can stitch together a big enough coalition to win in November.
What's ironic about this, given the nature of the coverage of the Governor's race so far, is that Strayhorn's announcement seems to have drawn almost no press. The only real hit I got doing a Google news search on "Strayhorn repeal business tax" was this Waco Trib piece. More typical was this DMN story, which spoke about other things Strayhorn wants to do but didn't explicitly mention this item, though Dallas Blog thought so. How Strayhorn plans to push such a repeal through the Lege, never mind how she plans to fund schools, is left as an exercise for the reader's imagination.
Anyway. We'll see how loudly she beats this drum, and how much response she gets for it. It's still not clear to me how well the bills passed in the special session will go down with the public. I think there's a lot of potential to move opinion on it one way or another. Rick Perry starts out with the advantage, since the special session actually Did Something this time around, which is what everyone said needed to happen going into it. How much of that advantage he finishes with is what I'm not sure about.
Interesting article about demographic changes in Texas and their effect on the electoral landscape.
The Asian-American community, which is approaching the growth rate of Latinos in some parts of Texas, contributes to a shifting demographic landscape that may eventually return the state to Democratic control, according to a panelist discussing the group's emergence Saturday at the George R. Brown Convention Center.The diversity of the cultures and languages encompassed by the Census Bureau category of "Asian" makes it difficult to reliably chart voting trends, said Robert Stein, dean of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. But he added that the group clearly resists voting Republican; a shift that is otherwise common to upwardly mobile populations.
Stein spoke at the seventh annual convention of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development.
"Asian-Americans are coming into the electorate at higher rates than any other group," he said.
Stein made his comments during a panel discussion of a national report that names Houston as an emerging hub of the Asian-American community.
The report, "A Community of Contrasts: Asian-American and Pacific Islanders in the United States," also lists Atlanta, Minneapolis, Las Vegas and Seattle as cities being transformed by a growing Asian presence.
That report can be found here (PDF). It should be noted that as recently as 2004, Asian-Americans were considered a group with no clear partisan preferences. It's not a surprise that there might be a shift towards the Democrats, given national trends, but more data is always nice. The article doesn't really articulate the connection between "greater Asian-American voting strength" and "more Democrats".
The Asian-American population in Harris County nearly doubled between 1990 and 2004, from 110,000 to 217,000, panelists said. The growth rate in nearby Fort Bend County was even faster, increasing from 14,000 to 67,000 in the same period, according to the report.
And there's a couple of good Democrats who happen to be Asian-Americans running for office in Fort Bend County. We'll see how they do.
What should be the last round of appeals in the Tom DeLay money laundering case has been filed by the Travis County DA's office.
Prosecutors in the case against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay have asked Texas' highest criminal court to reinstate an indictment accusing the former House majority leader and two associates of conspiring to violate state election laws.The appeal filed with the Court of Criminal Appeals Friday had been expected. It likely postpones a trial for the Sugar Land Republican on a separate money laundering charge.
[...]
At issue is whether the conspiracy statute applied to the state's election code in 2002.
Defense attorneys say it didn't, pointing out that state lawmakers changed the law the next year to explicitly apply to the election code.
Last month, a three-judge panel of the 3rd Court of Appeals sided with DeLay. The ruling said that while the state's argument had merit, the court was bound by legal precedent set by the Court of Criminal Appeals.
At least, this ought to be the last round of appeals over the DeLay indictments. Ellis and Colyandro still have appeals pending, and for sure any eventual convictions will also be appealed. No word on when the CCA will rule - I'd guess early to mid July. Previous bloggage is here.
Remember that survey by mail of Fort Bend County that was intended to take an unofficial pulse of who the Chosen One for CD22 should be? Well, the unofficial results are in, and unintentional humor is following quickly on its heels.
The Fort Bend County Republican Party released complete results Saturday from the highly publicized mail-in congressional candidates survey sent out in April by former party chairman Eric Thode."The survey was conducted in an effort to survey voter opinion on which the majority of Fort Bend County Congressional District 22 voters would like to see as a replacement to Congressman DeLay on the November general election ballot," the party said in a prepared statement.
As reported Friday morning, several precinct chairs attempted at a Thursday night party meeting to have the poll results shredded, or locked up. Ultimately, the county Republican Party Executive Committee directed party Chairman Gary Gillen to include a disclaimer along with the poll results.
"This survey was conducted early in the process of selecting a nominee. Many candidates, whose names appear on this survey, are no longer candidates for the nomination for Congressional District 22," the disclaimer states. "Many other candidates have come forward since this survey process was initiated, and did not appear on the survey; therefore the results of this survey are inconclusive."
You can just smell the embarassment from here, can't you? Wait, it gets better.
As also reported Friday, the three candidates receiving the most votes were Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace, state Rep. Charlie Howard and DeLay primary opponent Tom Campbell. Next came Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, Judge John Devine and state Sen. Mike Jackson (see chart at right for complete survey results).Among write-in candidates named in the survey was DeLay, his wife, Christine, and Democratic CD-22 candidate Nick Lampson. Lampson got five votes to three for Christine DeLay and just two for Tom DeLay.
Yes, Nick Lampson got as many write-in votes as Tom and Christine DeLay combined. (It could have been worse for the FBGOP, too.) And David Wallace, who's having a hard time making it to candidate forums, is the leader. All this for a 6% return rate and $10 per response.
Juanita has more. To think, DeLay hasn't even resigned yet, much less been declared ineligible for the ballot. The fun is just beginning.
UPDATE: The Muse adds on.
Couple of updates here on where Net Neutrality stands, from Art Brodsky and MyDD. It's nice to see more Congressional candidates make an issue out of this (and kudos to David Harris and Tim Barnwell for being at the front of the line), but it'd be a lot nicer to see a lot more of them take this up.
On a related note, this bit by Matt Yglesias about the netroots-versus-Mike McCurry flap (McCurry is flacking for the telcos in their fight against Net Neutrality, and has taken a sadly typical "Help! I'm being oppressed by a bunch of rowdy online hooligans!" approach) is spot on:
One of the most neglected aspects of the blogosphere, in my opinion, is that precisely because it's (mostly) composed of people who aren't professional journalists, it's composed of people who are professional doers of something else and know a great deal about what it is they "really" do. Consequently, the overall network of blogs contains a great deal of embedded knowledge. The consensus that emerges from that process can, of course, be mistaken but even though the most prominent people expressing that consensus may not be experts in the subject at hand (the most prominent bloggers tend to be generalists), the consensus will almost always be grounded in some kind of well-informed opinions. If you want to push back on that, in other words, you'd better know what you're talking about and not treat your audience like a pack of mewling children.
Amen. The sooner some people figure this out, the better for all of us.
Tiffany and I attended the fundraiser/Houston premiere for The Big Buy last night. This was the first time she had seen the movie - I of course saw an earlier version that was released just prior to DeLay's indictment in Travis County. That movie ended before those indictments were handed down; this one includes all that, plus much of the fallout from it, up to and including DeLay's resignation announcement. It was also done in more of a noir/crime story style, with DeLay being mostly a presence in the background, with the main characters being Ronnie Earle, the players who were involved in the TRMPAC/TAB business, and a host of commentators.
This one is about Tom DeLay. It still includes much of the original film footage of Earle and the TRMPAC/TAB gang, but the focus is squarely on The Hammer now. It's more pointed in its perspective, and as a montage at the end on DeLay acolytes John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Bob Ney, and John Doolittle attest, it ties the business in Texas more closely to the national Republican Party, its control on Congress, and its scandals. A segment in which Jim Hightower talks about bills that passed by fewer than the five votes the 2003 redistricting gained the GOP was an effective way of emphasizing that.
A list of the people who are in the movie is here. The addition of Bev Carter and Jacqueline Blankenship was a bonus and a treat. They open the movie now, being filmed as they drive around Fort Bend County and talk about DeLay and the local GOP. In the Q&A session after the screening, filmmaker Mark Birnbaum said that guys like them can shoot a lot of footage before they get a moment that makes them go "YES! That's so in the movie!" He said it took about five minutes with Bev and Jackie to get one of those moments.
(Bev was in attendance last night. I had a nice chat with her before the showing. She hadn't seen the movie yet and wasn't even sure she was still in it. Any doubts she may have had were settled quickly, that's for sure.)
Future screenings of the movie are here. Media coverage of the event are in the Houston Press, the Chron, and the Galveston Daily News. Couple of points of interest here, first from the GalvNews:
DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty said, while the outgoing congressman doesn't much like how he is portrayed in the movie, certain scenes might become part of his defense against state charges of money laundering brought by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.DeLay's attorney Dick DeGuerin confirmed that there is a good chance the film will play a role in the congressman's defense.
"We are going to use part of that film to prove (Earle) was lying to the public when he was telling the lawyers for Tom DeLay that Tom DeLay was not a target," DeGuerin said Friday.
Much of the film - which had its Houston premiere Friday - follows Earle. Those scenes, said Flaherty, not only show Earle was a politically motivated partisan, but that the Democratic district attorney lied to lawyers representing DeLay.
Flaherty said the congressman, who announced he would resign from office June 9, was told by Earle's office repeatedly that he was not the subject of a criminal investigation. Flaherty maintains that Earle was obligated to inform DeLay he was a subject of the investigation.
DeGuerin said the film possess some ethical problems for Earle.
"Lawyers are not supposed to misrepresent the truth and clearly he was misrepresenting what the facts were about," said DeGuerin.
I'm not sure what they're talking about here. I don't recall anything in the movie prior to DeLay's indictment where Earle clearly - or even obliquely - indicates that DeLay was being targeted. There's some footage from a press conference, done after the TRMPAC indictments were handed down, in which a reporter asks if DeLay was next on the indictment list. Earle gave a statement that anyone who committed a crime was a target. Perhaps there's something that I can't tell from the movie but that a DeLay attorney might. Obviously, I have no way of knowing that.
One thing that the Press story notes is that DeLay's attorneys aren't the only ones with a keen interest in the film:
Last October, attorneys for James Ellis, one of three DeLay aides indicted in September 2004 by an Austin grand jury, filed a motion to dismiss the indictment claiming "outrageous government conduct," in part because of Earle's zealousness and transparency with Birnbaum and Schermbeck. Ellis's attorneys also want some 100 hours' worth of unused video shot by the two -- and they're more than happy to turn it over, should it come to that.
Actually, Birnbaum said after the screening that they've retained counsel in Austin, and will turn footage over to the judge to decide what the defense gets to see, if it comes to that. Birnbaum and partner Jim Schermbeck also said that they and the movie take up about two pages of a thirty-page complaint filed by Team DeLay against Earle. They didn't seem too concerned about it, but they did note that since DeLay himself was indicted, Earle has not spoken to them at all. Now that DeLay has been formally charged with a crime, the situation is different.
One other thing from the Press story, since Pink Lady wanted to know when the Austin premiere would be:
As it is, the movie will not screen in Austin before DeLay goes to trial in the near, or distant, future -- if he ever stands trial at all. The filmmakers worry it will taint the potential jury pool; Earle likely shares their fears, though he will not comment on the movie till after any and all legal proceedings are complete.
I can bring my DVD with me to the Bloggers Caucus if y'all want me to. Someone else will have to supply the player and the television, though.
Overall, despite some audio problems with the projection, I enjoyed the new version of the movie, as did Tiffany. I think this will serve as a good single source for anyone who doesn't know what all the fuss is about. Schermbeck and Birnbaum said they wanted to make a movie that people outside Texas, who wouldn't know the local players, would be able to follow. One attendee piped up at the end of the Q&A to say she was from Michigan and had no trouble with that.
Other points of interest from the reception and the Q&A session:
- Schermbeck confirmed for me that the new subtitle "Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress" was added at the behest of the distributor. He also told me that Jim Turner, the attorney for John Colyandro whom I thought was impressive, is Willie Nelson's attorney, too. Trial lawyers do lead interesting lives in this state.
- Though the film made mention of DeLay's presence in Austin during the redistricting battle of 2003, there was no footage of him there. Someone asked why this was so. According to Schermbeck, there were two TV stations that had film of DeLay in the Capitol - WFAA in Dallas, and News 8 Austin. Neither would release their video to Schermbeck and Birnbaum - News 8 Austin told them this was still an ongoing story, and that they may have to do a piece on the filmmakers themselves, so no dice.
- Chris Bell made one appearance in the movie, and got a round of spontaneous applause when it happened.
- I asked a question during the session about the demand by defense attorneys for their extra footage. After answering it, Schermbeck (who had originally emailed me last year about the movie and sent me the screener DVD that I reviewed back then) said some nice things about me and this blog to the audience, which I definitely appreciated. He said he found and contacted Bev Carter after reading about her here.
- Finally, according to Franklin Foer, things are a bit lean on K Street these days. He's still in Congress, but it sounds like we've already entered the post-DeLay world. Link via Ezra.
The I-45 Design Workshop that I've mentioned before took place two weeks ago today, on May 6. Here's a report from the event.
John Wilson, president of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention and a member of the I-45 Coalition, told the 60 attendees the coalition must continue to be proactive in dealing with the expansion project."Last fall we had a lot of dialogue," Wilson said. "We got answers to questions before regional approval was granted. TxDOT conceded at the very last meeting to answer our questions.
"We got initial assessments of right-of-way impacts, we got an initial analysis for arterial improvements and we got an explanation of cost estimates."
Wilson said that while initial cost estimates for the project were about $15 million per mile, that estimate is now $70 million per mile, which would make the project a $2.1 billion undertaking.
Addressing concerns about the potential taking of right of way, Wilson said the current width of I-45 and its access roads is 225 feet.
TxDOT's preferred configuration for the expanded freeway includes 247 feet.
"The point is they have not met the objective (of staying within existing right of way), but they've come close," he said.
[...]
Jim Weston, president of the I-45 Coalition, said the goal of the design workshop was to not only brainstorm potential ideas for the expansion, but also keep residents aware they need to remain vigilant.
He said the coalition would present the ideas produced at the workshop to TxDOT.
"We're not trying to come to a consensus," he said. "We're just trying to determine what people want."
Some of the ideas floated at the workshop included covering the portion of the freeway that runs underground near North Main, and adding greenspace, as well as eliminating some of the access roads and feeder streets.
"There are downsides to those ideas too," he said. "If you take away some access or feeder streets, you're potentially limiting access to businesses."
TxDOT is in the schematic planning and environmental study phase of the project, which is expected to take two years.
As part of that phase, the department is required to host two "scoping meetings" that will be open to the public.
Those meetings have yet to be scheduled, but are expected to be held in the late summer.
If anyone reading this attended the workshop, please do feel free to add you comments about it below.
It's a Star Trek memorabilia auction at Christie's.
The Oct. 5-7 auction will take place on the 40th anniversary of the debut of the legendary sci-fi television show, which spun off five series and 10 movies.When informed of the auction a month ago by the head auctioneer at Christie's, "I started laughing. I don't know what other reaction makes sense," said Leonard Nimoy, who immortalized the role of Mr. Spock in the original series.
"I don't think anybody 40 years ago had any idea that it would get this big," Nimoy said. "It was a day-to-day struggle to keep the show on the air, frankly."
The items up for sale, beamed up from the studio archives of CBS Paramount Television, include props, spaceship models and set pieces from every era of Star Trek, said Cathy Elkies, director of special collections for Christie's.
"What makes Star Trek really unique is that there are really several generations of Star Trek fans," Elkies said. "I expect them to be really quite active as buyers."
Yeah, someone's gonna make a fortune off of this. I admit, if I had a few hundred grand lying around with nothing better to do, I'd consider a bid on Captain Kirk's chair. Probably just as well that I can't afford it, since we've noplace to put it anyway. Oh, well.
Vince scores a nice coup by getting an interview with US Rep. Henry Cuellar, who was unsuccessfully targeted in the March primary by many netroots activists, myself included. It's a good read, and I join Vince in coming away from it with more respect for the man, though I'd still rather have Ciro Rodriguez in his seat.
Having said that, this is a very good point:
CAPITOL ANNEX: Congressman, as you no doubt recall, your primary election this spring was one that was a very big race for the blogs, both Texas and nationally. You were the subject of a lot of criticism, some of it was harsh. Did you ever wake up in the morning and think, ‘what did I do to these people,’ or ‘what did I do to deserve this?’CONGRESSMAN CUELLAR: You know, all of them [the bloggers] had their opinions, and I respect them. I wish that some [bloggers] had given more consideration to my record at the state level. There were a lot of issues of importance that I took the lead on iat the state level: the Texas Plan which was a college funding program, I was the author of the first CHIP program which became the model for the whole state, the Colonias. If you go to my campaign web page, www.henrycuellar.com, you can see some of that and that I took the lead on a lot of issues that were important to them. I was very active [as a legislator].
I try to do the same here [in Congress], and this is my first term, but I’ve passed ten amendments out from the House floor to the Senate. That is very uncommon. I’m in first place with the rest of my freshman class, in second place among all 202 Democrats, and in fourth place among all the congress [in terms of amendments passed by the House and sent on the Senate].
It is very different here in Congress than it was in the Texas Legislature. I am a Democrat and will always stay a Democrat, but I am a big believer in bi-partisanship. Bi-partisanship is a big ting in the capitol [Austin], but when you come up here [Washington, D.C.], it’s a different story. There are more situations where, as a Democrat, you are expected to vote a certian way with Democrats.
I came up here after having had all of my training at the state level, where Democrats like Bill Hobby - a strong Democrat - Lloyd Bentsen, and Bob Bullock were all a big part of that. Bullock was a big believer in bi-partisanship. But, when you come up here, you are expected to follow the party line whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, it’s a big difference.
I came in and tried to keep my bi-partisanship. To me, my district will always come first, and party second even though a lot of the times we are expected to follow the party line even when that might not be the best thing for your district.
I wish some of them [bloggers] had called me and asked me about my record and some of this.
Cuellar's right about this: The greater netroots community should have reached out to him and tried to get his side of things before the primary, or at least before we all made this race such a priority. Once that infamous Bush-hug picture came out, that was that. I'm as guilty as anyone of this. This is not to say that we would have liked or agreed with whatever answers he might have given to whatever questions about his record in Congress we might have asked, and it's not to say that we'd have turned our attention elsewhere if we'd bothered to ask. The point is that we should have bothered to ask. Next time I will try to do better on this point.
Now then. Cuellar's record in the State House, at least the parts of it that he highlights here, sounds good enough. But that's for his resume in the 2004 primary, not the 2006 version. If Zell Miller had decided to stay in the Senate and had gotten challenged by another Democrat in 2004, his generally good record as Governor of Georgia would have rightly carried no weight with any voter that was ready for a change. As the incumbent, what matters is his record in that office. If his next term in Congress looks more like that State House tenure he described, the 2008 primary will be much more tranquil for him.
Further, while Rep. Cuellar clearly values bipartisanship, I say it's a means to an end and not an end unto itself. Bipartisanship in the name of passing good legislation is a worthy thing. Bipartisanship for its own sake is meaningless. To me at least, results speak louder than appearances. In this case, what got blogger blood boiling was crossing party lines to vote for things that we believe are bad, such as the bankruptcy bill. Maybe there was a good reason for that vote - to get back to point #1, we should have asked what it was - but if you believe it was a bad bill, then being bipartisan on it is a demerit, not a boon.
Frankly, I think the reason why the concept of "bipartisanship" is revered by a certain segment of the pundit class (*cough* David Broder *cough*) is an artifact of Congress from the era when Democrats had 250+ seats in the House. Back then, the alignment was not Dem versus Rep but Liberal versus Conservative, with members from each party on each side. Or North versus South, for that matter - your average Northern Republican (think Connie Morella or Jacob Javits) was far more liberal than your average Southern Democrat (think Charlie Stenholm or Phil Gramm, who switched parties in the 1980s). Nowadays, ideology is much more in line with party membership, at least inside Congress. Whether that's a positive development or not is certainly open to debate, but let's at least recognize why "bipartisanship" isn't what it used to be.
Anyway. As I said, I respect Rep. Cuellar for taking the time to talk to Vince. I'll keep an open mind for 2008, but I'll definitely be watching to see how Cuellar does in the next term.
UPDATE: Stace adds his thoughts.
Rick Casey writes about State Rep. Rick Noriega, who is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the National Guard and who fully expects to be one of those 6000 troops that President Bush is sending to the US-Mexico border. Greg has already highlighted some of it, along with related items of interest, but the whole thing is required reading. Check it out.
Meanwhile, US Rep. Silvestre Reyes writes a pair of letters (both PDF) to President Bush.
One letter addresses the ways in which National Guard deployment along the border would detract from the military readiness. The other addresses the potentially dangerous fashion in which a militarization of border could skew Mexican and Latin American politics against the US.
In all of the demagoguery and BS over immigration, very little has been said about the fact that our actions do not occur in a vacuum. As Rep. Reyes' second letter notes, Mexico's Presidential election is coming up soon, and the stakes are high.
[Mexican President Vicente] Fox is conservative and pro-business and has generally good relations with the White House. But Bush is widely disliked in Mexico."Installing National Guard support bases on the border is a way of warning Mexican voters . . . that the relationship with the United States could get dangerously complicated if a president is elected who does not understand the gringo power or is looked dimly upon by it," columnist Julio Hernandez Lopez wrote on Monday in La Jornada, a popular leftist newspaper.
Candidate Felipe Calderon of Fox's conservative National Action Party is leading the presidential race in polling, but the left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is close on his heels.
The Mexican Constitution bars Fox from running for a second term. Lopez Obrador and a third candidate, Roberto Madrazo, have accused Fox of being Bush's lapdog.
We've seen quite a few elections in Europe decided by which candidate ran on the strongest anti-American platform. Shouldn't we be concerned about this happening in Mexico? I'm not seeing much evidence to suggest that anyone in Washington is.
As long as we're talking about Texas Monthly, there was a nice piece in Wednesday's Chron on its editor in chief, Evan Smith. Apparently, he's also a 40-year-old ex-New Yorker. I'm definitely going to have to compare notes with the guy some day. Check it out.
Greg and Ryan both point to this Texas Monthly preview piece (available for the standard Limited Time Only) on Chris Bell's gubernatorial campaign. Lots of themes there that have been harped on here and elsewhere, plus some good background on Bell and his campaign. Do read it while you can.
Oh, and as you do, consider that Rick Perry's popularity took a nose dive in May (the crosstabs are pretty consistent, too). I don't want to make too much of this, since his popularity always dips when the Lege is in session, and he's going to get a lot of mostly good press for the passage of the TTRC tax plan (for which he's taking a victory lap around the state). Stil, the data here indicates a loss of support among conservatives, and that will bear watching. Bell says that the outcome of the special session makes this a two-person race between Perry and himself. I'm not so sure about that, but we'll see.
Anyway. These Texas Monthly stories are generally very good reads, so do check it out.
According to a Mapquest survey, Houston is tough to navigate.
Houston's grid is jumbled and inconsistent. In the Heights, streets are numbered, but without reason numbers turn to letters. In downtown, street names change without clear definition. Gray and Alabama turn into West Gray and West Alabama. East Gray is nowhere to be found.Or try to explain why Elgin turns into Westheimer or the difference between the Southwest Freeway and U.S. 59, or the Gulf Freeway and Interstate 45.
Nitpick time - in the Heights, some streets change from numbers to names, not letters. At least, the places that I know of where start out but don't finish up being numbered, they change to names. It's a problem either way, though these are small side streets we're talking about. Going from Elgin to Westheimer, Wheeler to Richmond, or Hillcroft to Voss, is more confusing in my opinion.
What threw me for a loss when I first moved here was the fact that from downtown to Westpark, US59 runs east-west, despite being a north-south road. It was disorienting to be driving on or parallel to a nominally north-south thoroughfare and having the evening sun directly in my eyes.
As with most things about Houston, though, once you're here for awhile you get the hang of it. Well, some of us do, anyway.
For the survey, 3,000 adults were sampled in the nation's top 20 major cities. Fifty-four percent of Houstonians said they "sometimes or often" get lost in the city, whereas 57 percent said visiting family and friends had no problems navigating here.
Having lived here for almost 20 years now, I never get lost in Houston. I'll consult something like Mapquest before I head out to an unfamiliar part of town, but once I get there I never have a problem. In general, friends and family who visit us get around OK with directions we give them. We live close to both I-10 and I-45, so it's pretty easy to get almost anywhere from our house, and that helps.
For what it's worth, the hardest place I've had to navigate lately was in and around Napa, California. That was because the roads and interchanges were very poorly signed. Say what you want about Houston, you can usually tell what street you're on and what intersection you're approaching. The rest I can put up with.
Mayor White had his chat about the city's WiFi plans last night.
Mayor White, who is in no danger of setting speed records, nonetheless gamely manned the laptop and personally answered dozens of questions from some of the 650 people who participated in the event."When the mayor types, people listen," Garfield said, adding that the online turnout far exceeded his earlier expectation of a few hundred. "I am pleasantly overwhelmed and surprised."
Many of the questions dealt with the cost of equipping the city with WiFi - $30 million to $50 million; when the project would be completed - sometime in 2007 or 2008; and how far the network will reach - 600 square miles.
A citywide wireless network is more than just bytes and connectivity, White said.
"We are a massive technology user," White said of Houston, "but a lot of people don't think of us that way." With a wireless network in place, Houston would take in big step in enhancing its image as a tech-savvy town, he said.
"This kind of interactive display," White said of the online chat, "means that the public is excited to see it happen."
The city is considering bids from five companies seeking the contract. The bidders include: Earthlink Municipal Networks, Redmoon Broadband Inc., Convergent Broadband, nextWLAN Corporation and Houston Wi Fi Ltd. Company. The company charged with building the network will do so at its own cost, sparing taxpayers. It would then sell the service to users.
Garfield, of course, is Michael The High Tech Texan Garfield, who has a list of the questions asked and a behind the keyboard view of the event. I have to agree with Dwight here - it'd be real nice if someone would post a transcript of the chat, so that those of us who missed it could know the answers to all those questions, too.
Dwight also has background info on the companies that submitted bids to provide the service, plus a link to a spreadsheet from the city that gives contract information and other details. I too wonder how SBC and TimeWarner will respond to this. The issue of municipal WiFi may not have survived the process that led to the passage of telecom legislation last year, but I'll be surprised if it doesn't come up again in 2007. There's too much at stake for it to not get resurrected.
By the way, I'm blogging this from the Orlando airport, where they conveniently provide free WiFi access. See how much more productive we can all be when the Net is widely available?
That's the Texas Push-Button Bureaucracy-Eliminating Paper-Pusher Massacre, also known as the great Texas Health and Human Services Commission privatization scam. The article the describes it does a nice job on the history and current status of this fiasco. Link via Eye on Williamson, which has more.
I mentioned before that there will be a fundraiser showing of The Big Buy this Friday at 7 PM at the Angelika Theater downtown. That showing is sold out, so there will be a second one immediately following, at 9 PM. Tickets start at $25, with the proceeds benefitting Texans for Public Justice and Drive Democracy. As with the 7 PM showing, go here if you want to attend.
The latest 50 state approval ratings for President Bush are out, and they contain some surprisingly bad news for him in Harris County. I've got a post on it over at Kuff's World.
Tonight's the night to chat with Mayor White about the citywide WiFi initiative. Go to HighTechTexan.com and create a user ID if you want to be able to ask a question. One point you can discuss, which Tory brings up in his blog report of the conference call, is the use of the new wireless network for traffic light coordination. I can't make this one tonight, so if anyone here does join in, please either leave a comment about it or link to whatever blog writeup you do. Thanks!
I'm going to return to a theme for a minute here. Take a look at this bit from Gardner Selby's piece on why the special session was good for Governor Perry, where Selby discusses the potential downside.
No matter how often Perry stresses tax cuts, he'll also be held responsible for billions of dollars in tax increases (on businesses, cigarettes and used-car sales). Critics such as Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, challenging Perry for governor, will paint him a fiscal fool.She has ammo: Legislative advisers estimate the new taxes will raise $2.5 billion less each year than what's needed to pay for the tax cuts, leaving future lawmakers to hunt other state funds or cut from the budget - or (gulp) raise taxes again.
Selby doesn't mention who might hold Perry responsible for those new taxes, which is a bit surprising since they haven't exactly been quiet about it. Quorum Report fills in the blanks.
The efforts of Texans for No Taxes, chaired by Steven Hotze and Norman Adams, has been strongest in Houston, in no small part because of the assistance of radio-station-owner-turned-senator Dan Patrick. Last night, the Harris County Republican Partypassed a resolution that called on Perry to veto the state's new business tax, calling it "an end-run around the Texas Constitution's prohibition against a state income tax." Out of 470+ precinct chairs in Harris County, only 1 voted against the veto resolution.[...]
Texans for No Taxes issued its own statement, threatening to take "a long hard look at other candidates" if Perry could not be swayed from the support of his tax proposal.
"Gov. Perry has stated that he does not care about the Harris County Republican Party's opposition to his business tax because he takes our support for granted. He doesn't think that we have anywhere to go," said Hotze. "The governor should take a step back and listen to his conservative base, which helped him get elected. Perry needs to remember who brought him to the dance. This vote clearly demonstrates that there will be political fallout for the governor unless he vetoes HB 3. Harris County accounts for the largest Republican voting block in the state."
Hotze also told QR that the Harris County Republican Party resolution will be circulated to all of the other county chairs in the state as well as businesses that will find themselves new taxpayers. He and his allies will seek to insert a plank in the State Republican Party Platform opposing the Margins Tax.
The state party convention will be in San Antonio in early June.
Asked to defend his decision to conservatives who might vote for another candidate, Perry said that much of it came down to communication. Once constituents contacted his office - and were fully informed by both the business tax and the tax cuts in the bill - most understood and even supported the efforts of the state.
On the one hand, 469 out of 470 signers to that document urging Perry to veto the very legislation he's championed is an impressive statement. On the other hand, to be blunt, there's a reason why Perry thinks they don't have anywhere else to go. Who exactly is Steven Hotze going to endorse in November? It won't be Chris Bell - Hotze would sooner cut off an arm than endorse a Democrat. Carole Keeton Strayhorn? Well, she supports gambling, has decided that she's now against vouchers, has regularly blasted Perry for cutting CHIP funds, and her main criticism of the new business tax is that it won't raise enough revenue to pay for the property tax cuts that Perry wants. Kinky Friedman? An even bigger supporter of gambling, and a supporter of gay marriage to boot. I have a difficult time envisioning Hotze selling out his social conservative principles to spite Rick Perry for a new business tax, and I say that as someone who thinks Steven Hotze is an opportunistic, grandstanding egomaniac. The Libertarian candidate, whoever that is? Nothing says "I am irrelevant as a political entity" quite like endorsing a candidate who has no chance whatsoever of winning. Hotze has way too much ego for that.
The one thing that Hotze could do that might have an impact is to urge his followers to not vote in November, or at least to not vote in any race that features a Republican incumbent or candidate who supported HB3. He's currently hinting at that.
Hotze said there will be "political fallout" for the governor if he doesn't veto the business tax.He said Perry and the Republican-controlled Legislature have so alienated the conservative base of the party that many voters will stay home in November.
"I think the Republicans will be hit hard this season, and they're going to deserve every lick they get," he said.
Hotze wouldn't say whom he will vote for in the governor's race, adding, "Voters have an opportunity there to make a choice."
Saying that people may choose to stay home is not the same as urging them to do so. The former is nothing; the latter is at least a viable way to exert influence. It's also not a very satisfying way to go, especially since it all but guarantees that no one will pay any attention to you for the duration of the campaign, but at least it's something. This is why I have a very hard time taking Hotze seriously. He hasn't taken any serious steps towards doing something that really would have an impact.
In less than 20 days, Perry is going to sign HB3 into law, and at that point it's put up or shut up time for the Hotze crowd. Either endorse another candidate, overlooking all of the places where you and that candidate are a bad fit, declare definitively that you will sit this election out and let the chips fall where they may, or sit down and be quiet because your threats have no meaning. Believe me when I say that no development in politics would please me more than for one of the first two options (especially #2) to come to pass. But until I see some action, it's all just talk.
So the Lege wrapped up its business yesterday and went home, having sent all of the tax-related bills to Governor Perry for his signature. So now what? Well, to start off wit, Perry is denying that the massive cut in property taxes will cause future budget problems.
The problem is not with the plan, [Perry] said, but with questionable figures prepared by his political rival, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.The comptroller, an independent candidate trying to unseat Perry in November, challenged him to veto the legislation, which she called the "largest hot check in Texas history."
Perry said the five-bill package, which will cut school operating taxes in most districts by about one-third over the next two years, is "very, very good legislation that will make Texas, I think, one of the continual No. 1 places in the world to do business."
The lost property tax revenue will be recouped through a new, expanded business tax, a $1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax, tightened sales tax collections on used cars and part of an $8.2 billion budgetary surplus.
[...]
Legislative budget experts have predicted the school tax reductions, beginning next year, will continue to cost about $2.5 billion a year from state revenue, in addition to what is raised by the higher state taxes.
Strayhorn said the potential deficit was even higher, a cumulative $23 billion over the next five years that will erode funding for health care and other state services or require higher state taxes.
Those "Legislative budget experts" are the Legislative Budget Board, which is the official, nonpartisan expert in these matters. I don't know where Strayhorn is getting her more pessimistic numbers from, but I'd guess she's starting with some less optimistic assumptions about the state's economy over the next few years. Which is not Rick Perry's problem:
Perry predicted that revenue from the new business tax will grow and that overall state tax revenue will increase with economic growth spurred by the property tax cuts. He said several economic experts agree with that outlook, but that Strayhorn neglected to take those factors into account in making her revenue projections.
Ah, yes, the classic "These tax cuts will pay for themselves" gambit. That sure has worked well at the federal level, hasn't it? I'll stick with the LBB and its projection of a $13 billion revenue shortfall over the next five years, thanks.
Ross Ramsay of Texas Weekly has said that property tax cuts are now the state's biggest program. Money to pay for them has got to come from somewhere. Don't be shocked if an increase and/or expansion of the sales tax gets proposed in the next session. Let's not forget, that was the original idea for how to pay for property tax cuts. Many Republicans wanted to try that failed route again instead of the TTRC business tax. I doubt they've changed their minds.
The owner of a home valued at $150,000 in the Houston Independent School District will see a total property tax savings of $750 over the next two years, said Rep. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood.
All this for $375 a year; less than that for many people, and diddly squat for renters. Hope it was worth it.
I'm still mulling over the political implications of all this. Eye on Williamson takes a preliminary stab at it. The conventional wisdom already seems to be that Perry has guaranteed himself re-election. I think he's definitely in better shape than he'd have been if another session had gone down in flames, but I think the jury's still out on the question of how much better off. Will people be happy with their modest tax cuts (for this year, anyway) and that the schools will open on time, or will they be unhappy that school funding is no more settled now than it was in April? Will Chris Bell, or anyone for that matter, be able to cut through the idea that just because the Lege didn't fail this time around doesn't mean they were successful? Will the disgruntled Steven Hotze wing of the GOP actually retaliate against Perry, or at least perhaps their state reps, in November, or is that just so much hot air?
I don't know yet. There's too many possibilities. I'll be interested to see the next SurveyUSA approval numbers for Perry, to see if he gets a bump or not, and to see how the crosstabs break down. And I'll still be thinking about it, and hopefully working through some of it here. For such a clear resolution to the session, it's all quite a muddle.
I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this Chron story on the Netroots. I just have one question: Why wasn't anything written about the political blog scene in Texas? There's plenty of us out here, after all. Governing Magazine did a pretty good article on Texas blogs covering the Lege last year, so it's not like we're completely obscure. Dallas Blog recently provided a nice long (though not fully complete - the Texas 'sphere is big and growing) list of blogs of interest. So where's the local angle in the Chron story? Surely that would have been worth exploring here.
If you're reading this site, you already know all this. I just find the disconnect a little puzzling. Better luck next time, I guess.
I got to participate last night in a conference call with Mayor White and the city's Director of Information Technology Richard Lewis to talk about the upcoming WiFi rollout (see Dwight and Michael Garfield for a preview). The call was pitched to bloggers, who as you might expect are generally favorably disposed to the concept of ubiquitous Internet access. From a practical perspective, the call went very well - lots of good questions about different aspects of the plan, and I thought the answers from Lewis and the Mayor were thoughtful and thorough.
The basics of the Houston plan are described here. The Mayor stressed things like "public service, public access, public safety", as in those are the three things they want out of the WiFi project, in that order. (Public safety, i.e., HPD and HFD, will join in on this later, after some investment is made in their equipment and the new network has demonstrated it can handle the load.) The city gave a presentation to some 65 service providers in which they described their RFP, and they hope to get bids from as many of them as possible, including companies like SBC and Time-Warner. The RFP calls for open architecture, to allow for scalability and easy adoption of new technologies as they emerge, and for covering the entire 640 square miles of Houston as rapidly as possible - Lewis thought within two years was doable, though he said he wouldn't erally know until the providers responded. Some designated areas in Houston, such as parks and libraries, will have free access to the system. Some low-income areas of the city may also get free acess, though that hasn't been defined yet. Businesses will have the option of paying for improvements to the system to meet their specific needs. Other governmental agencies, such as Metro, will be able to participate in the project.
That's most of what i remember from the call. Basically, I thought the city's plan was well thought out, and I'll be very interested to hear the particulars of the winning bid. If you want to know more, you can join in on a live chat with Mayor White, to be done in front of City Hall on a WiFi-enabled laptop (natch). It'll happen at 6:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 17, and you can access the chat at HighTechTexan.com.
There was at least one Chron reporter in attendance (not counting Dwight, whose post above has his report from the call), but as of this writing I can't find their story. So, your coverage comes from Houston Democrats, IsoDes, Brains and Eggs, who was less impressed than I, Lair, Houstonist, and Business Unusual, which also provides an MP3 of the call (that I can't link to from the hotel PC I'm using).
UPDATE: More from Greg, the Muse, and Progressive Texan, who gives a comprehensive play-by-play of the call.
I just want to take a moment to endorse this response by Utah Democratic Party Chair Wayne Holland, Jr. to Paul Begala's arrogant and condescending remarks about the 50 State Strategy. I can understand the tactical reasons for wanting to concentrate on certain areas and certain races. I don't blame Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi for wanting Howard Dean and the DNC to take a different course. They're being consistent with their priorities, even if I disagree with them on the merits of their argument. But I have no use at all with the dismissive attitude that Begala has for the concept of building infrastructure and thinking long term.
Howard Dean is doing the job he was elected to do. To those who would say that this is not the right time to work on rebuilding state and local organizations, I have to ask: When would that right time be? There's always a reason to shoot your wad now, and there's always an election coming up. We've put this off way too long. If you disagree, by all means give your time and money to the DCCC, the DSCC, or your favorite candidates instead of the DNC. Just please recognize that there's more than one way to win, and that the next election comes sooner than you think.
I'm here in Orlando for another exciting Wireless Enterprise Symposium, so bloggage may be a little light for the next few days. Click the More link for a picture of Olivia to make it up to you for that.
I'll be back soon.Posted by Charles Kuffner
Rhymes with Right is not happy with Tom DeLay's June 9 resignation date.
Why am I unhappy? Because the resignation will not take place before the Texas GOP convention on June 2-3 -- when I had hoped to see the party's new standard-bearer announced and given a rousing launch to his/her campaign. Instead, the formal selection process cannot even begin for a week after convention ends.Assuming, of course, that the man doesn't dally about switching his residency and notifying the party here in Texas.
[...]
I'll say it loud and clear -- I wish that Delay were leaving office TODAY, so we could hasten the process along. Actually, having been nominated, I wish he would have stuck it out no matter what the polls said on his reelection chances. Better yet, I wish he had not sought the nomination, since there is every indication that he had been seriously considering a withdrawal from the general election as early as the day he filed for reelection.
It is going to be a long month for me and the rest of the precinct chairs in CD22.
Key point to remember here is that DeLay's resignation does not do anything to disqualify him for the ballot in November. He still has to establish residency in Virginia, and even then there's likely to be a challenge to that by the Lampson campaign. Who knows when this could be settled? Note that if the Chosen One isn't selected by August 29, which is 70 days before the election, the whole Gang of Four process is moot - the State Republican Executive Committee gets to pick the nominee. You think there's grumbling about an opaque, antidemocratic process now, wait till that happens.
RwR is also understandably unhappy about Steve Stockman's likely presence on the ballot. If nothing else, the fact that Stockman has persisted in attempting to qualify for the election certainly kills the ridiculous notion that had once been floated that Stockman was running to help DeLay win. Like RwR, I think this is good news for Lampson.
At the risk of making my Austin readers giggle, this article about Houston businesses that remind people of Austin is a good read. Mostly, I like it because it gives some love to our neighborhood hangout the Onion Creek bar and coffee house.
[L]ocal entrepreneurs like Onion Creek owner Gary Mosley have shown that Austin-style businesses can originate in Houston.Many of his patrons describe the Heights cafe as pure Austin. Onion Creek has a fireplace and cozy clubhouse ambiance. Outside is a lot of deck space.
Onion Creek is among the first places in town to host a Saturday organic farmers' market.
Houston native Mosley fell in love with Austin and surrounding Hill Country when he attended the San Marcos Baptist Academy. He'd go river rafting and notice that people around Austin "had smiles on their faces."
In contrast, Houston is a more rigid, money-driven town, said Mosley, who wore a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, sneakers and a boyish grin.
"For a town to be so close to Austin," he said, "I didn't understand why there weren't more businesses with an atmosphere and mind-set like Austin's."
He decided to create a haven from the Houston rat race: "I wanted people coming in flip-flops. All different races. People enjoying the music, just being themselves.
"A business is a reflection of the employees and ownership," he said: "Are they uptight or are they laid-back?"
The Heights is an ideal Houston spot to cultivate the Austin feel, said Mosley, who opened Onion Creek more than three years ago.
You know, some of us who remember favorite old places in Montrose and the Heights would say that Onion Creek is building on what they once cultivated. That's what I think of when I go to Onion Creek, anyway - Austin has never entered the equation for me, though I can see what Mosley and author Kaplan are getting at. But hey, whatever works. I just sometimes wish Houston would get credit for being what it is, which is more than meets the eye and different things to different people, instead of always talking about what it isn't.
This Chron editorial from Sunday somewhat gently points a finger at the Harris County Commissioners' Court for the jail overcrowding debacle.
Recently, Harris County Commissioners Court approved $22 million for 160 guard positions and a 15 percent starting pay increase. It would cost $1 million per month to transport hundreds of county inmates and house them in jails around the region.The county's jail crowding problems have festered for years. But commissioners waited until they were running headlong into a crisis to provide the resources to correct them. Their poor planning has forced the sheriff into a race against the clock to hire dozens of new personnel and get them trained. That's a sorry model for recruiting employees in any business; it's especially negligent for a workplace as dangerous as a large jail.
Throwing money at jail crowding is not the best way to resolve the issue. A more holistic solution will require that all parts of Harris County's judicial system work together to determine whether so many inmates should be remanded to the county jail in the first place. Sheriff Thomas contends Harris County judges and the district attorney's office should stop letting nonviolent offenders negotiate plea bargains that permit them to serve their time in his jail rather than in state facilities.
Thomas says that's the case for almost 2,000 of the approximately 9,100 inmates packed into county facilities. As long as the plea bargains are made, the county must spend the money to house the inmates.
Inmate advocates and defense attorneys charge that the county's criminal judges pile so many conditions on probation that only offenders with excellent family and community support can avoid revocation and subsequent return to jail. Many inmates languish in jail because they cannot afford bond.
The county is doing a better job diverting substance abusers into treatment programs, but there are still too few such spots for women. And there are still too many sufferers of mental illness in the criminal justice system because Texas has failed to provide adequate mental health care.
It would be nice to know if they actually agree with the "inmate advocates and defense attorneys" instead of merely presenting their argument, but at least they did present it.
Commissioners' Court is certainly not blameless. After the Chron's original reporting on this topic last July, there was a followup story with county budget guru Dick Raycraft, in which he said that after receiving a report in 2003 that warned of a spike in county jail inmates, Commissioners were supposed to reconvene a special committee on criminal justice to study responses. That hadn't happened by July of 2005, and as I said before, I can't understand why it's just now that the Court has approved more money for hiring additional jailers. What in the world took them so long?
I still think the buck stops with Sheriff Tommy Thomas, and Grits cites the local judiciary. Clearly, though, there's plenty of blame to go around.
Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal's office is subpoenaing documents from two companies that hired former Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado as a political consultant.
DA investigators have spent the past couple of days in San Antonio and the Austin area subpoenaing documents from a couple of political consulting firms for which she’s done contract work.Alvarado's personal financial statement on file at City Hall shows that she's worked for something called the Horizon Consulting Group and a Rudy Rodriguez in San Antonio, as well as a Capital Development firm and Harold Oliver, whose address is listed in McQueeny, Texas.
District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal confirmed that subpoenas were served to those firms, and he said his office is investigating potential conflicts of interest. He declined to elaborate.
Alvarado's spokesman said she works as a consultant for businesses seeking government contracts in other cities.
The documents don't reveal how much money she collected for this work.
In a written statement, Alvarado's spokesman said, in part, "Like almost every other member of City Council, Council Member Alvarado has earned income in the private sector during her time in office. ... All of the private sector work she has done has been appropriately reported on her financial disclosure forms in compliance with City ordinances. Council member Alvarado urges anyone contacted by the District Attorney to cooperate fully."
Hard to say if this is anything substantive. According to an earlier Chron story, which also reported on the city's efforts to force the four employees who were paid improper bonuses to pay the money back:
Rosenthal said his office also asked Alvarado's attorney, Rusty Hardin, for copies of her tax returns. His investigators haven't determined whether a criminal investigation is warranted. They're simply "trying to be thorough," he said.
Either this is nothing, in which case this will be the last we hear of this, or it's not nothing, in which case a grand jury will be empanelled and indictments will be sought. While I imagine this ranks next to an IRS audit on the Pleasantness Scale for Alvarado, it's still not particularly indicative of how and where this investigation ends. As before, if criminal charges are ever brought against any of the Fired Four, Rosenthal needs to know as much as he can about Alvarado's activities so he can deal with any counteraccusations the defense makes at trial. There may someday be a shift in focus for this investigation, but as yet, this isn't it.
Here's a story from earlier this week that I didn't have a chance to get to: Residents of the Sunset Heights expressed their displeasure to Mayor White over the process to request minimum lot sizes.
[I]t wasn't until three concrete slabs, foundations for upscale two-story homes, sprouted on the lot that Tony West suspected the quality of life in his Sunset Heights neighborhood might be under assault.Within weeks, West and others petitioned the city to protect 34 blocks of the near-downtown residential area from high-density construction under an ordinance giving residents a say in how densely their neighborhoods may be developed. No residence, they argued, should be built on a lot smaller than 6,000 square feet, the neighborhood standard.
City planning commissioners rejected the request 7-6 in January, after other neighborhood residents expressed opposition and the Greater Houston Builders Association protested the size of the proposed protected area.
[...]
Activists argue the ordinance should be strengthened to regulate the size of houses that can be built in established neighborhoods. They say that a means should be created to appeal adverse planning commission decisions.
Building interests think the ordinance should clearly define what constitutes sufficient neighborhood support for a petition.
Planning commissioners have received approximately 200 petitions to establish minimum lot sizes since the ordinance was adopted in 2001. As of last month, 138 had been approved; only six, including Sunset Heights, had been rejected.
Under the city law, petitioners must establish that their effort has "substantial support" among neighborhood residents and that at least 75 percent of lots in their neighborhood meet the proposed size standard.
If petitioners meet those and other requirements and draw no opposition, their request can be passed directly to City Council for action.
In contested cases, planning commissioners intervene. If they approve the petition, it moves on to the council. If they reject it, the decision cannot be appealed.
Most of the neighborhoods petitioning for minimum lot sizes for protection under the ordinance have been in the Heights area, said Mark Sterling, Houston Heights Association land use chairman. Such older near-downtown neighborhoods, with their single-family dwellings and mature trees, increasingly have come under redevelopment pressure.
There's more coverage of this in the This Week section. The reason why this particular application was rejected was apparently because the area covered by the petition was unusually large.
Tory doesn't quite understand what the fuss is about.
Many neighborhoods would kill for this kind of nice, context-sensitive, upscale development. I think they have much more character than the usual Houston townhome developments. Splitting the lots also keeps housing affordable, which keeps the neighborhood's cool, funky character. If they lot sizes get locked big, they'll have to get covered with expensive McMansions, the whole neighborhood will gentrify, and people will be even more unhappy.
If the Sunset Heights, which is north and west of where I live, is anything like the Houston Heights, then having smaller lots is by no means a guard against out-of-character McMansions. I could take you by quite a few of them just driving to and from Olivia's day care. The main difference is that the smaller-lot houses are much more likely to squeeze close to the boundary lines. And while the houses in the picture Tory provides certainly look nice enough, if the neighborhood doesn't have some tool available to it to put a check on the not-so-nice stuff, then they're basically at the mercy of whatever Perry Homes or whoever wants to do. That's not a comforting thought.
And that's the crux of the complaint here. The Sunset Heights folks are saying they followed the rules and got turned down, and now they feel like they have no recourse. They could pursue deed restrictions, but that has to be done on a block-by-block basis, which is time and labor intensive. Meanwhile, the guidelines for making a successful application for minimum lot sizes are unclear, there's no appeals process for when you lose, and more lots are being divided and built on while they fight to be heard. I can certainly see why they're not happy.
Finally, the question, also raised by Tory, of whether or not imposing a minimum lot size may cause the residents to hamper their future resale value is not clear to me. What a neighborhood like this has going for it beyond its proximity to downtown is its heritage. There are people who pay a premium for that. Maybe that balances out the ability to sell to a developed looking to turn your lot into two new houses, maybe it doesn't, but maintaining the distinctiveness of a place like the Sunset Heights definitely has its own worth. I haven't heard anyone suggest that the Woodland Heights is in any peril by having deed and lot size restrictions. Why should the Sunset Heights be?
Advertising on demand. It's an idea whose time has come.
Tivo today has announced today the release of Product Watch. This new capability will allow users to select favorite categories or brands and TiVo will deliver ads that match the criteria to their main menu.
I think Dwight is right: This idea comes close to being something potentially cool, but just misses.
TiVo should work with advertisers to tag each commercial so they can be individually identified. Then, The Canadian -- and hey, maybe even me, too -- could tell TiVo to record ads when they are aired and save them for later, just as it does with TV programming.Want to see the Apple vs. PC guy ads? Tell TiVo you want 'em and they'll be waiting for you. Not expanded, long-form versions, but rather the ads everyone else has to wait around to see.
Imagine snagging all the Super Bowl ads in one sitting, without having to watch a boring, overhyped football game! Budweiser ads, but no pompous announcers, blind referees and overpaid, steroid-laced athletes! The mind simply reels . . .
In other words, make requesting and recording specific ads, or classes of ads, be like requesting and recording TV shows. I know I hear about certain ads - ones that are cool, provocative, titillating, or just so dumb they have to be seen to be believed - that I'd like to see for myself, but it's a random thing whether or not I'll ever come across it in my regular surfing. This would simplify matters considerably.
And yes, I know, one can often find these ads on the web somewhere. Sorry, but my TV screen is much bigger, websites are sometimes down due to overload or copyright reasons, and sometimes they just don't display properly in whatever video viewer you happen to have installed. This is an alternative I'd prefer if it were available.
Just when you thought it was safe to blog about other stuff this weekend, the Senate Finance Committee managed to slip through a proposed constitutional amendment that would cap school property taxes at $1.15 per $100 valuation. The bill is SJR7, authored by Steve Ogden, and passed out of Finance on a 10-2 vote (three absences), with a plan to do committee hearings tomorrow, Mother's Day, at 5:00 PM. The full Senate would be reconvened on Monday to vote on it.
Here's a little tidbit from the fiscal note to grab your attention:
Local revenue reduction due to the maximum tax rate reduction is $4.6 million in FY 2008 growing to $5.3 billion in FY 2011. The resolution does not speak to a replacement of this local revenue. The state cost would depend on the enabling legislation affecting school funding formulas.The provision relating to the rate of appraisal increase is not self-enabling, and therefore does not have a fiscal impact within the context of this estimate.
In conjunction with the tax rate reduction described above, the provision increasing the local homestead exemption would reduce local revenue by $497 million in FY 2008, increasing to $500 million in FY 2011. There would be a corresponding cost to the Foundation School Program beginning the year following the increase in the exemption.
The net effect of the homestead exemption increase and the maximum tax rate reduction results in the amounts reflected in the tables above; local revenue is reduced by $5.1 billion in FY 2008 increasing to $5.8 billion in FY 2011.
Emphasis mine. Is it just me, or does anyone else think we've done plenty to reduce revenues for schools this session, and not nearly enough to ensure them for the future? The good news is that since this is a constitutional amendment, it'll take 100 votes in the House to pass. You might consider giving your rep a call to make sure he or she doesn't screw this one up.
Have you heard that there may soon be two additional members of Congress? That and a slightly more outrageous proposal over at Kuff's World.
UPDATE: In approving a comment at KW, I just discovered the first spammed comments there. They appeared exactly two weeks after the blog went live. Just a data point for those who follow such things.
According to QR and the Dallas Blog, the Senate has just about wrapped up all of the business in front of it, meaning that they and the State House will get the weekend off. At this point, there's nothing else to do except wait for the tax hikes and spending cuts that will follow in the next session to make up for the revenue shortfalls that are built into all these bills.
Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden said the school finance plan is the "biggest shift in methodology for funding public schools in our history.""We're basically saying that the state must assume at least 50 percent of the responsibility for funding our schools," he said.
But the Bryan Republican admitted that the huge property tax cut could make it difficult for the state to pay for health care, prisons and other needs in the coming years.
He said the options then will be to cut state programs or raise other taxes.
"We will not have as much free cash flow if we cut taxes to $1 than if we didn't," he said. "I recognized there could be some problems in the future beyond 2008, but I thought they would all be manageable in some way, so I said, 'Let's go!' "
Ogden said provisions included in the bill will help reduce appraisal growth by lowering the trigger for a tax-rate rollback.
If you need this boiled down to sound bites, this was a bigger tax cut than we could afford, and we will be forced to pay for it in other ways next year and beyond. But hey, at least everyone can go into November saying they passed a bill to lower property taxes this year. Who cares about what happens after the election?
That's all I've got for now. Read Capitol Annex, PinkDome, and Eye on Williamson for more.
One last item is the denunciation of standardized testing by Rep. Cheri Isett, who is filling in this session for her husband Carl, currently serving with the National Guard in Kuwait. Her full speech is here (Word doc).
State Rep. Gene Seaman, one of the Dems' top targets this cycle thanks to the strong challenge he's getting from Juan Garcia, is apparently fully aware of how much peril he's in. The Red State shows hic concern. Check it out.
And we're still not finished yet: Late yesterday, Speaker Craddick promised to send HB5 back to the Senate for being insufficiently doctrinaire.
Speaker Tom Craddick said the House will reject the Senate version of the tobacco bill because it dedicates 5 percent of a $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase to health care instead of spending all of the money to replace revenue lost from lowering school taxes.[...]
Craddick said he thought the cigarette tax will pass, but a parliamentary objection will be made today to health care dedication.
He said he will uphold the objection and send the measure back to the Senate.
"They (senators) knew when they sent it over it was coming back," Craddick said. "They can change the rate and the date, but they can't change where it's dedicated."
According to QR, Al Edwards performed one last act of service for Craddick by raising the point of order against HB5. Nothing like giving tobacco lobbyists something to do with their time and money. Back to you, Dewhurst. (DMN link via Aaron Pena.)
Meanwhile, I solicited some feedback on that CPPP analysis of the Senate's version of HB1, also known as CSHB1 (the CS, I believe, stands for "Committee Substitute). Here's the response I got from Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer:
H.B. 1 as amended would place the Legislature in a dire spot. The critical element to remember here is that the revenue created by H.B. 3 may only be dedicated to property tax relief pending the outcome of H.B. 2. The
Williams Amendment to H.B. 1 guarantees two things: 1) that future Legislatures will be drowning in deficits, and 2) they will not have the tools necessary to overcome those deficits.The math is very simple. Today, every penny in property tax relief requires at least $120,000,000 in taxes to make up for that lost revenue. That is something on the order of $4 billion dollars that has to be taken out of the General Revenue in order to keep funding up to its current levels. With the spending cap, this would force future legislatures to cut the State budget 16% a year. That means there will be cuts in schools, CHIP, healthcare for seniors, and environmental enforcement just to increase property tax relief.
If only there was an easier, cheaper way to provide property tax relief to Texas homeowners. Well, there is and it's something that won't be spoken of during this session, because of the machinations of the Leadership of the Texas Government. The Learn & Live plan as proposed by Houston State Representative Scott Hochberg would have provided more property tax relief for the average homeowner by tripling the homestead exemption at a fraction of the billions of dollars that Williams' amendment costs.
I am truly concerned about Republicans who claim to be fiscal conservatives, yet pilfer the treasury and the surplus at the expense of Texas children, teachers and taxpayers. It's as if we have not learned our lesson from our Federal counterparts. I for one do not advocate trying to drown the baby in the bath water of crippling deficits.
One more piece of analysis from the Public Eduation Advocates' Report:
The Senate finally passed CSHB 1 after several days of negotiations, walkouts and assorted drama. There are some good things in the bill (a $1,500 techer pay raise – almost enough to make up for lost ground since 1999, a modest gain for equity in a higher guaranteed yield on up to four cents' worth of new tax effort) but this is still a bad bill and the House should not concur in the Senate amendments:
- CSHB 1 creates two statewide, grand-scale programs of incentive pay that will intensify the already-excessive focus on the TAKS exam, stressing "pay for test scores" as the measure of teachers' merit. The bill pours hundreds of millions of dollars into this ill-conceived incentive program, instead of providing teachers the minimum $3,000 pay raise needed to make up for the erosion of teacher pay since the last state pay raise in 1999.
- CSHB 1 could turn more than 1,200 neighborhood public schools across the state over to private education organizations.
- It would allow private, for-profit corporations like Edison Schools, Inc., to take over our public schools.
- It allows charter schools to take over management of neighborhood schools. This could massively expand this already mismanaged and troubled program.
- These private education management organizations WILL NOT be accountable to local voters. The mechanism ignores the “local control” mantra of many state leaders:
- The commissioner’s decisions are unappealable and unaccountable.
- There’s no mechanism for allowing a school, once taken over, to be “given back” to the local districts.
Since CSHB1 is a lot different than the Get Out Of Dodge HB1, expect the debate over it in the House to be much more heated, and the final vote to be fairly close. It's conceivable that it could fail, if enough Republicans object to this provision or that enough to vote against it. I don't think that will happen, but you never know.
UPDATE: See, this is why predictions are bad:
By a 136-8 vote, Representatives concurred with the Senate rewrite, which includes a $2,000 pay raise for every public school teacher, new money earmarked for high school improvements and a requirement that the school year start in late August every year starting in 2007.Perry, who’s told political supporters he’s happy to see the measure progressing, will likely sign it into law. His spokeswoman, Kathy Walt, stopped short of saying so before the House action today, but said: “The Legislature can be proud of what they’ve done.”
Not close at all. Color me a little puzzled here.
The Legislative Budget Board estimates costs to HB 1 through August 2007 of $3.9 billion, more than doubling to $8.7 billion the next year and $10.1 billion in ‘09 before dipping to $9.8 billion in 2010 and rebounding to $10.3 billion in 2011.One yardstick: The state currently spends around $33 billion a year in state revenue on everything.
No one debating HB 1 on the House floor said gadzooks at the number. Nor did anyone say no problema.
Paying the costs of future tax reductions, said Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, the proposal’s sponsor, “is not going to be easy… It’s going to cost more when I wake up tomorrow than it will today.”
Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, charged the Republican majority with fostering illusions for taxpayers in a session that has already seen proposals reach Perry creating a new business tax and a mandate that used-car sales reflect the actual value of vehicles.
Another illusion, he said, is the idea that intended changes will improve schools; he called language enabling private companies to take over schools lagging behind state performance expectations “vouchers steroids.”
At this point, all I can say is I hope they do something about this next session. Bear in mind that there's already talk about having to hike the sales tax another half-point. Isn't that something to look forward to?
From QR:
Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) tried to force the bill to conference committee but his motion was tabled. He noted the Senate version included school privatization that was comparable to vouchers -- an issue that could not survive a vote on its own in the House.Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) later raised a point of order on the bill on the germaness of such matters as self-administered medications in CSHB1, but Craddick did not sustain her objection.
Outgoing Rep. Carter Casteel (R-New Braunfels) warned that language getting the tax rate to $1 within two years will soon lead to other tax increases. She asked Rep. Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) if lawmakers were telling Texans that they'll have a property tax decrease now "but get ready, sister, because we'll be back for more?"
She said that the bill will lead to a funding shortfall approaching $5 billion in 2008 and in 2010, it could be twice that. "I'm thinking you didn't get a steak, you got a piece of bacon" with HB 1, she said.
[...]
Voting no were: Reps. Burnam, Coleman, Farrar, Noriega, Oliveira, Rodriguez, Veasey and Villarreal.
Lots of people expressing lots of concerns, but only eight Nays. What else is there to say?
UPDATE: Here's Rep. Garnet Coleman's statement on HB1:
State Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) said today that House Bill 1, which was approved today by the Texas House, cut $400 million in funds promised to Texas school children last year and used that money to pay for a tax holiday for big oil and big business. Under the tax plan, businesses will have their property taxes cut in 2007 but will not pay the new business tax until 2008, resulting in a windfall of $400 million for the big oil, insurance, and utility industries alone."Today, a Texas House majority sent Texas voters a message that giving a big tax break to Exxon is a higher priority than keeping a promise made to provide $1.8 billion for our children's schools," Coleman said.
"Fifty-eight House Members voted to send HB1 to a conference committee with the hope that we would put our children's schools first, but Exxon snagged a $400 million tax holiday almost as quickly as gas shot up to $3 a gallon," he added.
Coleman explained that last summer, the House voted for an Appropriations Bill that included a rider that locked away $1.8 billion for education. House Bill 1, as passed today, rescinded that $1.8 billion commitment and provided only slightly more than $1.4 billion for public education.
"Even with an $8.2 billion surplus and a $4 billion Perry tax plan, HB 1 cut $400 million from the amount the House promised to use for our children's schools just last year," Coleman explained.
Coleman explained that in 2003, the Legislature cut over $3 billion from proven educational improvement initiatives that prevent dropouts and enhance basic classroom instruction.
"Texans were told that this special session was about improving our children's schools, but instead, this session cut $400 million from education funds approved in 2005 and never bothered to address $3 billion that has been cut from education since 2003," Coleman said.
Coleman explained that schools and other critical state needs will suffer from the HB1 and HB2 tax scheme that will shoot a $5 billion "hole" in the budget for 2007-2208 and even larger potential deficits in the future.
"Our children's schools should be our highest priority, but this special session had everything to do with a tax cuts for the powerful special interests and gave our children's schools a little candy for one year while cooking up a recipe for long term starvation and failure," Coleman concluded.
I'm about ready to take this to the weekend. Look for some lighter stuff soon.
Grits follows up on post blaming Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas for the Harris County Jail overcrowding woes, and explains the role of the judiciary in this mess.
In 2003, Texas passed HB 2668 requiring judges to sentence defendants to probation and drug treatment instead of incarceration in a so-called "state jail" facility for the lowest level drug possession offense - e.g., less than a sugar packet full of powder. The goal was to shift up to 4,000 non-violent offenders per year out of prison and onto probation, saving tens of millions of dollars and helping avoid the state's own overcrowding crisis. So far so good.But in Harris County, which prosecutes about half of all such offenders statewide, judges found a loophole and prosecutors routinely and aggressively push for it. State law allows judges to order county jail time as a condition of felony probation. Usually county jails are used as punishment for misdemeanors and for defendants awaiting trial.
So even though they "probate" drug users' sentences which diverts them from state prisons, judges instead are sentencing those probationers to the county jail where Harris County taxpayers pick up the tab instead. They don't have to do that - hardly anybody else does, and that's what makes the Harris County overincarceration crisis a self-inflicted wound. They'd more than make up the 500 people they're being told to lease space for if they just stopped sentencing probationers unnecessarily to jail time.
He's the heavyweight champion in crime and punishment matters, so I'm not going to quibble with any of this. I do agree that there's blame to go around, and frankly my reading of what he's written here suggests that DA Chuck Rosenthal needs to share in this as well, since I'd bet that quite a few of these probation-jail sentences arose from plea bargains. I'd certainly like to see some of the Democratic candidates for criminal and district court judgeships make an issue of this in their campaigns, since the bottom line effect is an extra one million dollars a month being socked to Harris County taxpayers.
The reason I singled out Sheriff Thomas, though, is simply that the jails are his concern. It doesn't matter to me that it was bad sentencing by the judges that helped put the jails in a tight spot. It's his job to do something about it before it becomes a crisis. If that means speaking to judges about the effect they're having on his jails, calling press conferences to publicly blast them for it, or something else, then he needs to do it. He may not be the cause of the underlying problem, but that problem was still his to handle. He has failed to do so, and for that reason I say the fallout is his responsibility.
City Council has put off the vote on airport shuttles after complaints from cab companies.
The five-year contract has come under fire because it would go to only one vendor, a SuperShuttle franchise in partnership with Yellow Cab. That would create an unfair monopoly that would put taxi drivers out of business, some cab company representatives say."In America, everything's based on competition. And when something is monopolized, the service becomes very poor," said Joni Jones, a service representative with Liberty Cab who was one of a dozen people who expressed the grievances of cabdrivers at the City Council's public session this week.
Mayor Bill White said he sympathizes with taxi drivers and would prefer to contract with more than one company, but he's not sure the market would support that.
"It's a service we were convinced was risky enough so that we needed to start with one vendor," White said.
Let's clear one thing up right away: Having only one vendor doing the shuttles is not a monopoly because the market isn't "airport shuttles". The market is "airport transportation", and that includes shuttles, taxis, limousines, city buses, driving yourself, getting a ride, and maybe someday a rail line. I discussed some of the factors that might lead someone to choose one option over another. How many shuttle companies there are isn't really a factor - price, convenience, and time are. The lack of choice for shuttles specifically will only really matter if the shuttle company does an exceptionally good or exceptionally poor job.
I do have sympathy for the argument that the process for deciding which company gets the exclusive contract was not fair. I'm happy to review that and to give City Council enough time to go over the details, ask questions, and make changes as necessary. Maybe we shouldn't allow an exclusive contract, and maybe the market really can't support more than one. I don't know, but I don't object to more study on the issue. Let's just keep this moving, because in the end, having a shuttle option will make the airport transportation market a broader and more competitive one. As Joni Jones points out, that's the American way.
Governor Perry is feeling confident about now, and I can't say I blame him.
Signaling the likely passage of tax cut legislation, Gov. Rick Perry today opened the special legislative session's call to include new funding for the state's college's and universities.Perry's order will allow lawmakers to debate tuition revenue bonds - a special form of financing that allows institutions of higher education to pay for new construction out of tuition revenue.
Because the legislation always lists specific projects at specific universities, the tuition revenue bond bill often is used by legislative leadership as a bargaining chip to get reluctant lawmakers to back pieces of legislation.
That doesn't really say much, does it? Let's try this:
Tuition revenue bonds are bonds issued by public colleges and universities to pay for construction needs. They are usually paid off by the state but colleges use their tuition revenue as collateral on them.According to Perry’s office, the Lege can now discuss:
- Legislation that provides for the issuance of revenue bonds or other obligations to fund capital projects at public institutions of higher education.
- Legislation that provides for an appropriation to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to fund debt service on revenue bonds or other obligations on capital projects at public institutions of higher education.
- Legislation relating to appropriations to pay for damages and disruptions suffered by Lamar University and its related institutions caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
- Legislation relating to the recovery and securitization of reasonable and necessary hurricane reconstruction costs incurred by certain electric utilities outside of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas area.
That's a bit better. I'm not sure how much of this can or will get done with sine die happening next Tuesday, but I guess we'll see. Between the Bills has the Perry press release.
One item that the Lege will thankfully not take up is stem cell research.
The House was able to sidestep the stem-cell debate when the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, the state’s center for cutting edge stem-cell research, took itself out of the bonding package.The author of the bond bill, Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria, had planned to accept an amendment that would have restricted embryonic stem cell research in facilities built with the bonds.
She abandoned that plan in the face of opponents who said an interim House committee studying the issue should settle the stem-cell debate in 2007.
Charming. I can hardly contain my excitement over that prospect.
And finally, via QR, something that should get taken up but probably won't:
Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) filed legislation on Thursday that would undo the eligibility changes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program ordered by the Legislature in 2003.He argued the eligibility changes - an assets test, shortening the enrollment period from 12 to six months, among others - contributed to the significant decline of children in the low-cost insurance program over the last two-and-a-half years.
This would be a good time for Speaker Craddick to reward Turner for his loyal service over the last two sessions by letting this bill come to the floor for debate. What do you say, Tom?
It's official: Tom DeLay has an exit plan for himself.
Rep. Tom DeLay, the once-powerful majority leader whose career was undermined by scandal, said today that he would resign from the House on June 9."As you are aware," the Texas Republican wrote House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., "I have recently made the decision to pursue new opportunities to engage in the important cultural and political battles of our day from an arena outside of the U.S. House of Representatives."
He told Hastert he would resign at the close of business on June 9.
Sweet. I happen to know that a big ol' group of Democrats and bloggers will be gathered together in a bar that very evening. I have a feeling a few beers may get raised in honor of this momentous occasion. Juanita has the full text of DeLay's letter for us all to revel in.
I suppose the only bad news is that it means this list is no longer operative. That's a price I can live with.
And now we can really start to focus on who will be the Chosen One. Take this with however big a grain of salt you want, since I run in Democratic circles and not Republican ones, but I've heard that State Rep. Robert Talton is going to be the choice. According to what I heard, County Judge Robert Eckels is saying he's got enough support from the Gang of Four to secure the nomination. This information is at least third-hand, and could very well be a bunch of hooey, but if I can't pass stuff like this along in a blog, then what's the point? Make of it what you will.
If it is Crazy Bob on the ballot, that means a replacement candidate for HD144 needs to be found as well. That would also give a boost to Janette Sexton in her quest for that seat. Talton, oddly enough, has good support among trial lawyers and organized labor in HD144. Getting him out of the way would make it easier for a Democrat to consolidate support. Whoever replaced him would also start out pretty far behind in the campaign.
But that's getting way ahead of things. What matters is that Tom DeLay's days are now not just numbered, but also denumerable. Start that clock ticking, and stock the fridge with beer. Party time is June 9.
Via Rawhide at PinkDome, it's 169,000 signatures for Kinky Friedman. That should be more than enough to ensure his place on the ballot, and more than enough to nullify any crackpot theories about what kind of signature verification helps or hurts whom.
Karl-T projects a final vote tally based on primary turnout, extended to include petitions as primary proxies. Like him, I think that's an unreliable measure, but what the heck. I'm still not convinced that turnout this year will be unusual for a non-Presidential year - for sure, it ain't gonna be fifty-eight percent - but I will not be surprised if it's a bit elevated. It'll be interesting to sift through all the data afterwards, that's for sure, and I don't envy any pollster the task of determining a likely voter model. My hope is that we get enough polls from different sources to give us as full a picture of what's happening as possible. The rest will be guesswork and wishful thinking.
In case you missed my late update yesterday, the Senate finally passed HBs 1 and 5. At this point, final passage by the House is expected shortly.
House Speaker Tom Craddick said late Wednesday he would urge House members to accept the Senate version of House Bill 1, which would send it on to the governor."This has not been the easiest task we ever accomplished but we accomplished it," said Senate Education Committee Chairman Florence Shapiro.
The bill spends nearly half of the state's $8.2 billion surplus. It uses $2.4 billion for initial property tax cuts and $1.4 billion for new education spending.
The Senate on Wednesday also voted to raise cigarette taxes by $1 a pack. The tax would be phased in, with 75 cents added onto the price of a pack in January and 25 cents in September 2007.
The Senate also decided to use 5 cents of the new tax for anti-smoking efforts, with the rest going to help pay for property tax cuts. HB 5 passed on a vote of 21-9.
I'm still wrapping my mind around all of this, so I'll save the analysis for later. Phillip, Matt, Nate, and Vince have already started, and they're all pretty damned pessimistic about the effects of this legislation. If you need a little cheering up after that, there's always In the Pink and PinkDome.
Rep. Aaron Pena reminds us that today is the three-year anniversary of the Ardmore exodus. I expanded on his post over at Kuff's World.
And the great boondoggle outsourcing of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC) to Accenture takes failure to another level.
Effective immediately, state workers again will be responsible for processing applications for assistance programs such as food stamps and Medicaid after myriad problems resulted with the private company hired to do the job.[...]
The switch comes about as state Health and Human Services officials acknowledge flaws with several components of the system, which is supposed to help applicants compile the information that's used to determine eligibility for public assistance programs.
State workers will continue to make the determination of whether an applicant qualifies.
Advocates for children and the poor have been critical of Accenture's work, attributing to the company a steep decline in the rolls of the Children's Health Insurance Program and a drop in the number of children covered by Medicaid.
The commission says the problems must be addressed and corrected, although it doesn't have a time frame by which it expects the problems to be fixed.
Among the problems:
Accenture workers have inadequate training and as a result are giving erroneous or contradictory information to applicants.
Program software is incompatible, causing delays in application processing and forcing workers to manually input information.
State eligibility offices are understaffed because of the departure of thousands of state workers who feared they would lose their jobs when Accenture took over.
Those understaffed state offices now will be required to deal with thousands of cases that are to be transferred out of Accenture's control.
"If the contractor is not able to do the job it promised it could do, (the task) is going to again fall on state workers, who are already working in understaffed offices ... which means their already unmanageable caseloads just got bigger, which means more (people) will suffer or not get the benefits they are entitled to," said Celia Hagert of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based nonprofit agency that researches issues affecting low-income Texans.
Let me recommend at this point that instead of reading this article directly, you go to HHSC Employee and HHSC Survivalist, both of whom give you a fully annotated version. Read this HHSC Employee post, too, which discusses the issue of call times as described in this article about "wait times and hold times, and call abandonment". Speaking as a former help desk employee, HHSC Emp is right on. The crucial missing dimension in these metrics is how many calls were successfully handled by the first-line employees who took them. On our internal help desk, we aimed for 80%. I at least woud expect a higher number from this group, but whatever their benchmark is, you can't judge their success without knowing where it's set and how well they're doing in comparison to it. Period.
And what's the one way that all of this can get worse for Accenture? How about an audit of their contract by the Comptroller?
At the request of three lawmakers, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn plans to investigate the contractor in charge of processing applications for Texas' low-cost insurance program for children and running the state's new benefits eligibility system.The contractor, Texas Access Alliance, is a group of companies led by Accenture, a Bermuda-based technology consulting firm.
Strayhorn, who hopes to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry in November, said Wednesday the review will be a top priority for her staff.
"The Accenture contract to me appears to be the perfect storm of wasted tax dollars, reduced access to services ... and profiteering at the expense of taxpayers," she said.
Democratic Sen. Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso asked her Wednesday to conduct a comprehensive audit and performance review, saying it could "shed some light on the ongoing problems that are negatively affecting tens of thousands of Texans."
Later in the day, Democratic state Rep. Carlos Uresti of San Antonio and Republican state Rep. Carter Casteel of New Braunfels said in a letter to Strayhorn that they're "deeply concerned about the viability of the agency's plans" for its new eligibility system.
"Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are funding a problem-plagued plan that threatens the health and safety of our citizens," they said in the letter. "Our taxpayers and vulnerable citizens deserve to know how they will be affected by these questionable policy changes."
This could get ugly, and deservedly so. This fiasco has to be on the short list of biggest policy disasters in recent history. Whatever merits the case for privatizing HHSC may have, the implementation was botched from the get go, in ways that anyone with a lick of sense could see coming a mile away. Go back to that first story, for example, where it talks about "Program software is incompatible" - that's the still-not-working TIERS system, which was a failure in Colorado before its adoption in Texas. Everything that could go wrong did, and it wasn't a case of beggar's luck. This was a self-inflicted wound, and the sooner there's some real oversight of this mess, the better. Thanks to The Red State for the SAEN link.
Long as we've been talking about petition signatures, let's check in with the other notorious independent campaign for this cycle, that of Steve Stockman in CD22.
Stockman has collected more than the 500 signatures needed from registered voters to land him on the November ballot, said campaign spokesman Jason Posey."We are continuing to collect them to show the grassroots effort that Steve has for this office," he said.
But Posey said he didn't immediately know how many total signatures the campaign had gathered, and initially told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the deadline was still a month away.
Stockman's campaign planned on turning in the signatures by the state's deadline Thursday.
Nice to see that the man hasn't lost his organizational touch since being out of office.
Secretary of State Roger Williams' office still has to verify the signatures, a process which will take five to six weeks, said spokesman Scott Haywood.
OK, I'm calling BS here. How can a process that takes 5-6 weeks to verify 45,000 signatures also take 5-6 weeks for 500? Someone needs to explain that to me. I bet I could verify 500 signatures all by myself in less time than that. I hope that was a canned response and not a real answer from the SOS' office.
For those who need a refresher on just what made ol' Steve-o special:
Stockman, who was dubbed "Freshman Flop" and "U.S. Rep. Clueless" during his only term, won election during the 1994 Republican sweep of state offices, defeating 21-term incumbent Jack Brooks, D-Beaumont. Stockman represented the 9th Congressional District, which at that time stretched from east Harris County and Galveston to Beaumont.During his term, Stockman accused the government of "executing" members of the Branch Davidian cult after the 1993 standoff at Waco. And he claimed to have received a fax from a militia supporter that seemingly foretold the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The fax actually was sent after the bombing.
He also called President Clinton "an abortionist."
Lampson defeated Stockman in 1996.
Good times, good times. You just had to be there in the 90s.
Posey said he doesn't think Stockman's rocky tenure in Congress will hurt his campaign this fall."I think he has an excellent chance. In fact, I'd go as far as say he's the front runner in the race at this point," Posey said. "I think like anyone, he's received both good and bad coverage from the media. Most of the negative coverage he's received was unwarranted. Most of the voters realize that."
(must...control...snort reflex...)
Thanks to Greg in TX22 for the link.
The Big Buy, now subtitled "Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress", is having its Houston premiere on Friday, May 19, at the Angelika Theater downtown. Here's the press release that I got:
An explosive new documentary about Rep. Tom DeLay's scheme to steal Congress from the American people will make its World Premiere next week in Houston. THE BIG BUY: TOM DELAY'S STOLEN CONGRESS - by Texas directors Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck - helped push DeLay from office and is now setting its sites on the corruption he fostered in the halls of Congress.It will premiere next Friday, May 19, 2006, at the Angelika Film Center (500 Texas Street, Houston) at a screening that will benefit non-profit groups Texans for Public Justice and DriveDemocracy.org. A press conference with the film's directors, local politicians and activists will take place at 5:00 pm, to be followed by a reception at 6:00 pm and the screening at 7:00 pm.
The World Premiere marks the start of a massive grassroots outreach program to screen the film for hundreds of thousands of voters across the nation, including grassroots premieres in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC, and thousands of house parties in competitive House Districts around the country. The film will also screen theatrically in cities across the country (Dallas and Houston theatrical details are below).
The Big Buy details Tom DeLay's master plan to create a permanent Republican majority in the U.S. Congress in part by using illegal corporate contributions to reshape Texas' political landscape. At the pinnacle of his power, the then Majority Leader used these illegal contributions to take over the Texas State Legislature, redraw the state’s congressional lines mid-decade, and send a half-dozen new hard-right Republican Congressmen to Washington.
The film goes further to describe DeLay's web of co-conspirators in Congress - Members of the House of Representatives who are systematically letting corporations take control of America's Democracy - and to talk about the loopholes in our system that allow this lawlessness to happen.
Framing the story as political Film Noir, The Big Buy chronicles the rise of Tom DeLay from backbencher in the Texas Legislature to the architect of the largest money machine ever constructed on Capitol Hill, and also chronicles Texas DA Ronnie Earle as he investigates that machine. It's this local DA who wins 41 indictments against the operatives, groups, corporations and congressman who Grand Juries say broke the law in order to funnel illegal corporate money to Texas Republicans. The film lays open the confluence of events that led multinational corporations to pour donations into an obscure DeLay PAC dedicated to changing the political landscape of the nation by changing the congressional lines of a state.
Premiere proceeds will benefit two Texas non-profits - Texans for Public Justice and Drive Democracy. Texans for Public Justice is the group who filed the original criminal complaint against Rep. DeLay's PAC for illegally using corporate money to influence Texas' 2002 elections. Drive Democracy is a non-profit that helps ordinary people make their voices heard in the political arena.
Here's the film schedule. You folks up in Dallas, take note, for it's playing there as well:
Show times for the Angelika Dallas (Mockingbird Station, 5321 E Mockingbird Lane):Fri 5/19 - Sun 5/21: 11:00am, 1:00pm, 3:00pm, 5:00pm, 7:00pm, 9:00pm
Mon 5/22 - Thurs 5/25: 1:00pm, 3:00pm, 5:00pm, 7:00pm, 9:00pmShow times for the Angelika Houston (510 Texas Avenue):
Fri 5/19 - Sun 5/21: 11:00am, 1:00pm, 3:00pm, 5:00pm, 7:00pm, 9:00pm
Mon 5/22 - Thurs 5/25: 5:00pm, 7:00pm, 9:00pm
I've written about this before here, and reviewed the film here. It's apparent that the tone of the film is different now, more pointed in its perspective. I'll be very interested to see how it compares to the screener DVD I watched last year.
Tiffany and I will be at that 7 PM Friday show, so if you're there, look for us. If you want to attend and help out with the fundraiser, go here.
Via email from Robin Holzer:
Houston area travelers are invited to participate in a 10-minute survey sponsored by the Texas Department of Transportation, in cooperation with Texas A&M University and the University of Texas-Arlington.
This survey assesses your current use of the highway and transit system, and, obtains your opinion about new express lane ideas currently being considered for our freeways. Please take a moment to answer a few questions about your commute and other transportation ideas. The results of this survey will be used to help regional planners with evaluating and refining Houston area express lane concepts and policies.http://www.houstontravelsurvey.org/
If you have any questions about the express lane concept, please contact Mark Burris at mburris@tamu.edu (Texas A&M University). This information is also provided at the survey site.
I took this last night. I'm probably a bad data point for them, because my daycare dropoff/pickup responsibilities severely limits any flexibility I may have in transportation options. I don't know any coworkers who live near me, let alone have as variable a schedule as I do, thanks to Olivia's non-regimented wakeup time, so car or vanpooling is a nonstarter. I also drive fairly short distances on the freeways - for I-45, the one I designated as my most frequent route, it's basically between I-10 and the 59/288 interchange - and would not consider paying to use a managed lane regardless of the cost. And boy, are they pushing managed lanes, where you pay for the privilege of driving in less traffic.
So, having said all that, take the survey and give them some better data. The more respondents to something like this, the better.
A federal judge Wednesday rejected Carole Keeton Strayhorn's plea that the state should apply statistical sampling to count voter petitions for her independent gubernatorial candidacy.U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, acting nine days after hearing the challenge, said Secretary of State Roger Williams' plans to review voter signatures one by one is a "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" restriction.
Yeakel said the Constitution does not require the secretary to perform statistical sampling in reviewing Strayhorn's collected signatures.
Strayhorn, who carted what she said were more than 223,000 voter signatures to Williams' office on Tuesday, has no plans to appeal Yeakel's ruling, her lawyer said.
"We'll just go on from here," Roy Minton said, though he and Brad McClellan, Strayhorn's campaign manager, wondered aloud why Williams cannot let the public know once they've determined if she's reached the signature threshold needed to qualify for the November ballot.
I still think Williams should have been ordered to accept petitions as they came in, any time before the deadline, and at least done the data entry in preparation for his thorough check, but other than that I think this ruling is fine. And as I said before, all that muttering about "why can't he just count the first 45,000?" is a bit disingenuous, not to mention better for Kinky than it is for CKS.
Speaking of which, according to Rawhide at PinkDome, Kinky is going to turn in 11 boxes of signatures tomorrow. That doesn't sound like much compared to Strayhorn, until you read this.
“As our staff is beginning to consolidate and organize all of the petitions that Ms. Strayhorn turned in yesterday, we have consolidated her 101 boxes (of petitions) down to 12,” says Scott Haywood, communications director for the Secretary of State’s office.Haywood is not sure what the agency will do with the leftover cartons (all 101 delivered Tuesday were slapped with Strayhorn bumper stickers). He made it clear that Strayhorn did not fill boxes to the brim.
“If she had not been so hungry for media attention, we would not have had to waste time consolidating her petitions into a more usable format. By trying to get a bigger play in the media, she has made the process more time-consuming for our office.”
Strayhorn’s campaign manager, Brad McClellan, harrumphed, noting that Secretary of State Roger Williams, an appointee of GOP Gov. Rick Perry, evidently hasn’t verified any of the more than 223,000 voter signatures that Strayhorn says she turned in.
McClellan, saying that the campaign would like any empty boxes back, said: “It’s another political attack. They want to play games with boxes instead of doing their job.”
McClellann said Strayhorn’s campaign organized the petitions in 101 sets. “Try organizing one box full or carrying one full,” McClellan said. “It’s a shame they waste time doing this cheap partisan attack.”
Meow, meow. Anyway, that most likely puts my theorizing about signature-checking strategy to bed. We'll know for sure tomorrow, but the whole kerfuffle is probably a big nothing.
Aaron Pena quotes from a Quorum Report story that says a deal has apparently been brokered on equity and recapture in the Senate. This is was had Sen. Florence Shapiro's hackles up. Sayeth The Rep:
"The compromise plan has the tax rate broken into three tiers. In the first tier, otherwise known as the basic allotment, funding would be equalized to the 88th percentile.This would put every school district in the state at least as “wealthy” as the Dallas school district, be it through their own tax efforts or a tax effort combined with supplementation from the state. Each penny of tax in the wealthy district in Dallas raises, roughly, $32 per-penny per-child. In this tier, additional wealth above $32 per-penny would be subject to recapture.The second tier of the tax rate, or enrichment tier, would be equalized to the wealth level of the Austin Independent School District, which sits at roughly the 94th percentile of wealth. Under the plan, every school district would be able to access four cents of enrichment, without voter approval, in the first year of the plan. These four pennies - actually fairly “rich” pennies - could all be used the first year or in a combination of the first and second year, but no school district would be able to access more than four enriched pennies in the biennium. No recapture would apply to these first four pennies. In order to address concerns of Sen. Florence Shapiro’s (R-Plano), every school district would be able to access those first four pennies of enrichment, regardless of compression rate. So those school districts that might roll back to less than $1.33 could access 4 pennies at least as “rich” as Austin. Districts wealthier than Austin would not be subject to recapture on these four pennies, regardless of how much money they raise."
QR says there's support for this on both sides of the aisle. If the Senate ever does anything more than gavel in and gavel out today, we may find out just what all this means. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, the House is at ease until 8:30 tonight when they deal with the latest Senate version of HB2. There's still some unhappiness in that chamber over what the Senate has done with HBs 1 and 5. Peggy Fikac has the details.
UPDATE: HB1 and HB5 have passed.
Seventy-seven million dollars for the land that the former Astroworld once sat on. Not a bad price for Six Flags, that's for sure. The story says that Six Flags has not announced who the buyer is, so we don't have any clues yet as to what will replace the erstwhile theme park. Whether it's mixed use development or not, I'll repeat my belief that this area desperately needs some decent places to eat.
For what it's worth, I drive by the old Astroworld location from time to time. The first time I did so after the rides were all removed, it took me a minute to realize what was wrong about what I was seeing. It's still a lttle weird seeing that void there.
The Strayhorn campaign has turned in their petitions, and I think it's safe to say that they can feel pretty confident about getting on the ballot.
Independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn announced Tuesday she gave Texas election officials 223,000 signatures to get her on the ballot for the governor's race - almost five times as many signatures as she needs to qualify.[...]
Independent candidate Kinky Friedman plans to turn his petitions in during a noon rally Thursday outside the secretary of state's office, which administers elections and will verify the petitions.
[...]
Secretary of State Roger Williams has said his office plans to verify each signature on the Strayhorn and Friedman petitions, a process that could take two months. Both campaigns claim such a process is intended to delay the certification of Strayhorn and Friedman as legitimate candidates.
On Tuesday, Friedman campaign manager Dean Barkley, with a cigar clamped in his big smile, watched Strayhorn's aides load petitions into pickups for delivery. Strayhorn's staff loaded 101 legal boxes, each half-filled with petitions.
"They definitely have more boxes than we do," said Barkley, who still promised that Friedman will have substantially more signatures than he needs to get on the ballot.
Robert Black, a spokesman for Perry, dismissed Strayhorn's petition collection as a paltry 1.9 percent of the state's 12 million registered voters.
"Even with the help of three expensive signature-gathering organizations, paid petition-takers and more than four months to get her message out, 98 percent of eligible voters said, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' " Black said.
Perry won the Republican nomination in March with the backing of 4 percent of the state's registered voters.
First of all, kudos to RG Ratcliffe for putting Strayhorn's accomplishment in perspective with Perry's. To be excruciatingly accurate, 223,000 signatures is 1.77% of the 12,577,545 registered voters as of November 2005, while the 552,545 votes Rick Perry got in the GOP primary is 4.39% of that total. Paid for or not - and at two bucks a sig, Strayhorn would have dropped up to about a half-million bucks here - I'd say getting the petitions signed was the harder task.
So, kudos to Strayhorn for getting this done. I'm hard pressed to imagine a scenario in which there's any doubt about her appearance on the ballot in November. SOS Roger Williams can take whatever time he wants, I don't think anyone will buy the idea that she can't represent herself as being an official candidate at this point.
Still no ruling on that lawsuit from last week, by the way. SOS Williams' office is now saying it may take only five weeks or so to verify the sigs, not the two months that had been previously stated. I still think he should have been told to get started ahead of time, but that seems hardly relevant now. At this point, I don't see any real harm to Strayhorn's campaign if he takes that much time and checks every name. I definitely disagree with this:
Strayhorn said her campaign's in-house research has verified more signatures than she'll need."All they'll have to do is look at the first 45,000 petitions," she said.
If she were the only independent wannabee, then sure. But see, there's this other guy out there also collecting signatures, and the law says you can be on one petition or the other, but not both. That's why they need to check them all, and if Strayhorn thought about it, she might realize that since she surely has more names in the bank than Friedman will (by that campaign's own admission), her number is a threat to him even if the two groups looked in different places for signers. Assuming Kinky has something more like 100,000 autographs, overlap with Strayhorn imperils his viability much more than it does hers, given that a certain number of these names will be tossed for other reasons.
Now if Kinky turns in 150,000 or more sigs tomorrow, it probably doesn't matter much. But I think Strayhorn needs to think through her strategy a bit more carefully here. Friedman's nonchalance about that lawsuit makes even less sense now. If Strayhorn wises up and drops the issue, he may come to regret it.
Fort Bend Now reports from the top secret, invitation only, you-don't-need-to-know GOP candidates' forum for the CD22 nomination from the weekend.
Two organizers of Saturday’s Harris County GOP candidates' forum say state representatives Robert Talton and Charlie Howard are emerging as front-runners in the campaign for retiring U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay’s November ballot slot.The two were among seven candidates interviewed Saturday by Harris County precinct chairs within DeLay's 22nd Congressional District. Two other candidates slated to speak - Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace and former state representative Brad Wright - did not attend the forum.
Wallace said he didn't attend because he wasn't made aware of it until Thursday evening, and then was actually scheduled to speak to Harris County Republican precinct chairs after the meeting was supposed to adjourn - a half-hour before he had another scheduled speaking engagement.
"All I can say is that I was not invited," Wallace said. "I did not receive any communication at all until late Thursday."
First of all, Howard and Talton? Really? I'm sure their conservative bona fides are all in place, but what record of accomplishment do either of them have? Nick Lampson has a pretty impressive list of things he did while he was in Congress. How are those two going to stack up?
As for poor misunderstood David Wallace, how not plugged in can you be? This may be the funniest thing I've read in a political story this year:
As for Wallace, he said the first communication he had about the Harris County event came from a friend who'd read a political blog making note of the Harris County GOP forum, and told Wallace about it.
Advantage: blogosphere! Or something like that. Where would poor David be without friends who read blogs?
Anyway. Remember that Harris County, like Fort Bend, will have just one vote among the Gang of Four. I don't recall reading anything recently about how Brazoria and Galveston will determine their choices, but there's definitely a subcurrent of discontent that those two small-within-CD22 counties have such an outsized say on who gets to be the Chosen One. If they go their own way and cause an otherwise popular choice to get derailed, watch out.
This bit about fundraising was very interesting:
Wallace said his intent is to continue to campaign hard for the position, "regardless of what kind of roadblocks they put in my way."To date, he said, "things have gone very well. I'm above $1 million in commitments" for campaign contributions. That's important because "this is a $3 million race, at least."
[...]
[Clear Lake businessman Tim] Turner said fund raising for this non-traditional congressional campaign is going to be tricky, especially since DeLay has not yet resigned. While Turner said he’s filed with the Federal Election Commission, he hasn't begun raising money.
Of Wallace's fund-raising efforts, he said, "What happens if he doesn't get the nomination? What is he going to do with that money?"
Turner said he will encourage all unsuccessful congressional candidates to return all campaign contributions, along with a letter urging the contributors to forward their contributions to the winning Republican candidate.
First, $1 million in commitments is not the same as $1 million in hand. I do expect the Chosen One will be able to raise sufficient funds for this race, but that takes time. If Lampson hits his eventual opponent with an immediate ad blitz, how will he or she be able to respond? Note Kathy Haigler's comments here. Lampson's warchest is definitely something the Republicans are worried about, however much bravado they may be giving forth in public.
Second, if we assume that David Wallace really really wants to be the Congressman from District 22, then the last thing in the world he would consider doing is directing his resources towards a Republican who isn't him. Either he gets to be the Chosen One and takes his shot this year, or he (quietly) roots for a Lampson win and takes another shot in the 2008 primary. If Charlie Howard or Crazy Bob Talton winds up in Washington, who knows when he'll get another chance.
No, if Wallace is not the Chosen One, I fully expect him to keep whatever cash and commitments he has for his next race. Maybe he'd run in a special election to fill Charlie Howard's seat in the State House as a consolation prize, I don't know. The point is that CD22 is what he's been waiting for. As long as he still has political ambitions, it makes no sense for him to take one for the team and help out whoever kept him from grabbing that brass ring.
Anyway. Wallace's no-show in Harris County, regardless of whose fault it was, did not help his chances to be the Chosen One, as these three reports indicate. Just remember that none of this really matters until Tom DeLay actually announces a departure date from Congress, something which he still has not done as yet.
The Duncan-Staples amendment to HB1, which restores a measure of equity in funding for poorer school districts, was praised by school groups yesterday, though the bill that contains the amendment was not.
The groups, including the Texas Association of School Boards and Texas Association of School Administrators, said the amendment benefits the vast majority of Texas schoolchildren. But they sent a mixed message, saying they cannot support the overall bill because it reduces local control.[...]
The funding equity amendment, however, has proved the most controversial. It would reduce a funding gap between rich and poor districts and lower the amount of funds that some wealthy districts have to send to poorer districts, requiring the state to replace that money. Estimates of the cost range from $300 million to $700 million a year.
[...]
The Texas School Alliance, which includes the Houston Independent School District and most of the state's urban districts, was among the groups praising the equity provision, the $2,000 teacher pay raise and extra money for high schools.
But the group said it cannot support the overall bill because of requirements that voters approve future tax increases and the potential lack of sufficient state funding in future years.
Senators backing the funding provision touted the support of the school groups.
"We know that the prosperous future of Texas depends on providing a quality education for all children, regardless of ZIP code, and this plan gives all schools a means to accomplish that goal," said Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine.
The Senate is supposed to try to pass HB1 today. I gave some thought to what might happen if they fail to do that at Kuff's World.
Also Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee began discussing a bill that would carve out some exemptions to the broad-based business tax now sitting on the governor's desk.One proposed change would remove a requirement that voters approve any increases in the rate of the business tax, set at 1 percent of adjusted gross revenue for most business and one-half of 1 percent for retailers, wholesalers and restaurants.
Another amendment would help professional sports teams exempt some of their broadcast revenue.
Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said that the cleanup bill will be "revenue neutral," meaning it will not raise more than the $3.8 billion estimated from HB 3, the expanded business tax bill. He said any increases in taxes will be countered by lowering the business tax rate.
Craddick noted that the House withdrew or voted down many of the same amendments when they were offered to HB 3. He said he was concerned about the business tax not remaining broad-based and fair.
Seems a bit dicey to me to be working on exceptions and carveouts when there still isn't fundamental agreement on all of the main provisions of the bill in question. We'll see what happens. Eye on Williamson has more, and the Texas SALT Law Blog has a more detailed rundown of the status of each bill underconsideration. Check it out.
UPDATE: The Public Education Advocates' Report, which I got in email, includes the following:
The Senate Finance Committee has reported out CSHB 1, and the battle over recapture moves from the committee to the full Senate. After two days of negotiations, the differences are still unresolved.
- The Duncan-Staples amendment allows equalization but endangers recapture. It does that by allowing wealthier districts to keep the revenue from additional tax effort (up to four cents) and having the state kick in money to equalize for poorer districts.
- Here’s the problem: If CSHB 1 survives the Senate and goes back to the House, then recapture will be on the table in conference. So it’s important for Senate members to insist that no bill comes to the floor of the Senate until there’s a guarantee that the Senate version, and specifically the state-funded equalization enhancements, survives any conference committee process.
- If Dewhurst, Shapiro, et al. cannot make that promise, then CSHB 1 deserves to die. Remember, many of the Senate “add-ons” are problematic:
- The Magical Disappearing Pay Raise. CSHB 1 promises a pay raise to teachers, but does not give them enough to recover from cuts over the last three years. Plus, it takes away health benefits from 300,000 school support staff like cafeteria workers and janitors.
- Hey, buddy, wanna buy a school? CSHB 1 proposes to turn schools over to private, so-called “not-for-profit” companies that will manage the schools. If you think HMOs have made your health care better, you’ll love this idea!
- Support real accountability. Focus on student achievement, not on teaching to the tests. For instance, eliminate the provision tying a school’s funding to English immersion programs, which sacrifice overall education for “gaming” yet another standardized test.
- Local control. CSHB 1 mandates a uniform start date for the school year and makes it harder for school districts to set tax rates without expensive, time-consuming voter approval.
Message to Senators: Equalization is non-negotiable, and their voters will let them know that if they allow it to be undermined.
I expect you'll hear more of these themes as the session continues.
UPDATE: More from Eye on Williamson.
The city of San Antonio is suing online travel brokers, claiming that they are insufficiently paying its hotel occupancy tax.
Dallas-based Hotels.com and Travelweb and Southlake-based Travelocity.com, a subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corp. (NYSE: TSG), were among 19 firms that allegedly underpaid hotel occupancy taxes in violation of state and local tax laws, according to a press release from the city of San Antonio.[...]
The suit was filed in federal district court in San Antonio Monday morning, said Steve Wolens, of the Dallas office of Baron & Budd P.C., who is working with the city of San Antonio.
[...]
Art Sackler, the spokesman for Interactive Travel Service Association, the group that represents online travel sites, said the suit is misdirected.
"The law applies to hotel operators," Sackler said. "The online travel companies are not hotel operators."
Many large Texas cities like San Antonio rely on hotel occupancy taxes that come directly from local convention and tourism industries, according to a release from the city of San Antonio. For example, there are more than 33,000 hotel rooms in Dallas that generate millions of dollars in taxes for the city each year. It is estimated that Dallas loses $1 million to $1.6 million every year in unpaid hotel occupancy taxes.
Wolens said that while the suit has been filed on behalf of all cities in Texas, it's possible the city might join the suit later. The city of Dallas' attorney couldn't immediately be reached for comment today.
As Dallas Blog puts it, sites like Travelocity book a boatload of rooms at a fixed discount price, say $75 a night for a room that would normally go for $150, then resell them in between, say at $125. They pay taxes based on the $75 price. Their customer doesn't pay the tax, since they don't do business directly with the hotel. The city claims that the broker should pay the tax based on the $125 price that the customer pays.
I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that the city will lose this suit. This sounds like a legitimate loophole in the law to me. I think San Antonio's hotel occupancy tax - and that of other cities that may decide they have an interest in this - will have to be revisited to pick up this slack. I could certainly be wrong about this. I'll be curious to see how the suit progresses.
Cities are not the only ones with a stake in this:
In addition to the lost tax revenue at the city level, the State of Texas also is losing out as a result of the improper remittance of hotel occupancy taxes, the news release said.
I'm moderately surprised no one introduced a bill this session to close that loophole. Everybody loves a tax that is mostly paid by other people, after all. I won't be at all surprised if this does come up in a future session.
UPDATE: I missed the fact that Houston has contemplated taking this action, though nothing has come of it as yet. blogHouston has the details.
Chris Bell threw a few rhetorical punches at the AFL-COPE convention yesterday.
Mr. Bell had previously focused his fire on Mr. Perry. But he spent much of this speech urging attendees of the AFL-CIO COPE Convention not to be swayed by Mrs. Strayhorn. He said he was the better candidate to represent labor on issues such as wages, workplace safety and union political rights."Carole Strayhorn speaking to a labor convention is like Godzilla running for the mayor of Tokyo," he said.
Mr. Bell, who has been running for governor for more than a year, is trying to convince core Democratic constituencies that if the party's base sticks together, he can win a split vote, despite disadvantages in fundraising and name recognition. But some groups that usually lean Democratic, such as the Texas State Teachers Association, have backed Mrs. Strayhorn as the most realistic alternative to unseat Mr. Perry.
"If we stick together, we don't have to put up with four more years of the Rick and Carole show," Mr. Bell said.
His approach worked, and he got the endorsement. Strayhorn had made some inroads into organized labor before this, so that's a key backing for him in his quest to keep enough of the Democratic base together to outscore Strayhorn and Perry in November.
His full speech is here. Bell is running an online fundraiser right now, if that moves you to help him out.
Note that while the AFL-CIO generally endorses Democrats, it's not always the case. This year for certain, I don't think anything can be taken for granted.
I've been pointing my finger pretty steadily at Sheriff Tommy Thomas for the problem of our county jails being overcrowded, which has led the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to order the relocation of inmates at a cool $1 million per month to Harris County. Today, the Chron runs a letter to the editor from Randall Kallinen, the president of the Houston chapter of the ACLU, who puts the blame elsewhere.
THE three-year-long Harris County jail overcrowding crisis has not changed and the problem lies squarely at the feet of the local judiciary due to draconian practices that, in some instances, are not even practiced anywhere but Harris County. Decreasing the jail population by 500 is simple and does not put the public at risk.Just last year, Judge Caprice Cosper agreed that the Harris County jail population of 941 state jail felons was huge and that the judges planned to address the problem. They did not and now that population is 1,294 - a whopping 70 percent of the state total of 1,850. Most of these jail inmates are nonviolent drug users - not sellers - who are supposed to have benefited by the state's new law to put first-time drug offenders into treatment.
Harris County also leads Texas in the odd practice of giving "jail time as a condition of probation." Even after a jury or plea bargain mandates probation, judges often order some jail time in addition to the probation.
Harris County has a probation revocation rate of 17 percent, which is the highest of any large county in Texas. Harris County judges themselves have noticed the difficulty in meeting the myriad probation requirements yet have not acted to lower probation revocations to put Harris County in line with the rest of Texas.
Forty percent or around 3,700 of the jail's population have not been convicted of a crime but are merely awaiting trial. A few decades earlier only 25 percent of the jail inmates were these "pretrial detainees." Such a difference equates to over 500 more inmates today.
Several judges even jail defendants who have not promptly hired a lawyer after they have initially bonded out of jail. Such jailing violates the law and points to a Harris County judicial predisposition to jail defendants as a solution to perceived problems.
It is time to put the Harris County criminal justice system into a semblance of Texas sanity and for the courts to implement the law's mandated compassion to ease jail overcrowding.
I don't dispute that the judiciary plays a role in this mess. Neither does Sheriff Thomas, who was happy to do a little finger-pointing of his own after the TCoJS lowered the boom last week. The local judiciary's insistence on locking everyone up without any regard to reason or expense is a genuine problem, one that likely won't see any amelioration until the Republican domination of the bench is broken. Once again, I refer you to Grits for Breakfast, which has done all the heavy lifting on this topic.
Having said that, however, I still believe that the buck stops with Thomas. As far as I can tell from searching the Chron's archives, the first reporting on jail conditions was done last July, after the TCoJS nailed Harris County the second time for overcrowding. While I'm certain that smarter bail and sentencing policies by the judges would go a long way to alleviating the problem, the fact still remains that Sheriff Thomas had closed off more than 1600 jail beds due to a staffing shortage. The lack of beds, caused by the lack of deputies, is a huge part of the TCoJS' indictment of our jails. And remember what Thomas said at the time:
Thomas, the sheriff, conceded that the county doesn't have enough jailers to deal with its prisoner population.He also acknowledged that he has not asked county commissioners for money to hire more jailers but said he now believes he must.
So, what happened with that request? The most recent story says that they're attacking the problem "through extensive use of overtime and working aggressively to hire new jailers." Why did it take so long to start hiring? It's been ten months since that first report, after all.
Bottom line is that while the judges play a role, Sheriff Thomas is in charge of the jails. He owns this problem. Whatever he thinks the cause of that problem is this week - judges, the DA's office, the County Commissioners, the TDCJ, cosmic radiation - it's his responsibility to deal with it. If he can't handle that, then let him step aside so we can find someone else who can.
It's been almost two years since the proposal first surfaced, but airport shuttles may finally become reality later this week.
If city council gives its approval, shuttle buses will soon begin picking up passengers at the city's airports and taking them directly to their homes or offices. And it should cost about half the price of a cab ride.Shuttle buses already carry passengers to fixed stops like hotels and parking lots. But officials say Houston's the last major American city without door to door shuttles.
"A passenger can call this service and they'll come pick them up at home and deliver them to the airport," explained Rich Fernandez with the Houston Aviation Department. "They will also pick up other people on the route."
Cab companies have fought the idea for many years. And a lot of taxi drivers -- who spend hours sitting in an airport lot waiting for fares -- still think shuttles could drive them out of business.
I've used this service in other cities, and it's generally very convenient. It's most economical if you're travelling alone (since two people can share a cab for the same price but each would have to buy their own shuttle ticket) or taking a relatively short trip (otherwise a satellite parking lot is cheaper). For sure, if you've got a visiting friend and it's inconvenient for you to drive him or her to the airport when he or she leaves, this will be the best bet.
It's not clear to me from this story if the service is intended as one-way (i.e., to the airport) only or not. Even if it is the latter, if you're carless and at all in a rush you'll want to take a cab, since shuttles won't leave until they're sufficiently full, and they'll make other stops along the way. There will still be a place for cabbies at the airport, it's just that now you will have another option. I'm all for that.
Just a quick roundup of special session coverage, from the Chron, Statesman, Morning News, Express News, and Star Telegram. Key points, from the Star Telegram:
On a 21-10 vote, the Texas Senate adopted House Bill 4, which will raise another $43 million in sales taxes on used cars. The House also gave its separate approval to the same bill, meaning it now goes to Gov. Rick Perry for his signature.Earlier, both chambers adopted House Bill 3, which will raise about $3.4 billion in new business taxes. That legislation, which critics call the largest expansion of business taxes in Texas history, also awaits Perry's signature.
But Republican leaders on Monday remained divided on House Bill 1, which would lower property taxes for school operations by about 11.3 percent next year, and by one third in 2008. Another bill also designed to keep a lid on property taxes -- House Bill 2 -- also remains in legislative limbo.
[...]
House Bill 1, the bill that lowers property taxes, has been approved by the Texas House as well as the key committee in the Texas Senate. But Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, has objected to an amendment added by a fellow GOP lawmaker. Shapiro has promised to use parliamentary rules to keep the legislation from going to the full Senate. Negotiations between Dewhurst, Shapiro and other GOP lawmakers continue.
House Bill 2, legislation that would commit new revenue from increases in state taxes for the nearly exclusive purpose of lowering school property taxes, remains in limbo between the House and Senate. House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, has said a version of the bill adopted by Senate lawmakers violates technical rules of the special session. Dewhurst said those technical objections don't make sense to him, but he's not yet sure of his next move. "I'm talking to senators right now about whether we send it back," to the House, he said.
House Bill 3, the bill replaces the loophole-ridden franchise tax with a tax on gross receipts, has been approved separately by the House and Senate and sent to the governor. A spokeswoman for Perry said it's a good bet he'll sign it.
House Bill 4, which would tie the sales tax collected on used cars to the car's blue-book value, also became eligible for gubernatorial approval with separate approval Monday by both the House and Senate.
House Bill 5, which would raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1, has been approved by the House and by the Senate Finance Committee. It could come up for debate Tuesday or Wednesday in the full Senate.
From the Express News, regarding HB1:
At the very least, the Senate could adopt the House version of property tax relief, which does not contain teacher pay raises, teacher incentive pay, a later school year start date and the equity provision.But Dewhurst, who has been promoting school improvement in TV commercials, said he would "try to persuade" reluctant senators that elevating equity between poor and rich school districts, giving teachers a pay raise of at least $2,000 and increasing school accountability standards make sense.
All Texas teacher groups contend that any pay raise less than $3,000 would not be meaningful. They're pushing to increase pay closer to the national average, which is about $6,700 higher than the average Texas teacher pay.
The major sticking point for Shapiro, who apparently has enough votes to block Senate debate on HB 1, involves efforts by Democrats and Republican lawmakers from property-poor areas to increase school equity.
All school districts would have to raise property taxes to access additional revenue for "enrichment" not considered part of the basic curriculum, but Shapiro says the provision would require scores of rich school districts to raise tax rates significantly more than other districts to get that money.
In other words, the Get Out Of Dodge plan is still potentially viable, though what that means for HBs 3 and 4 is unclear.
Finally, from the Statesman:
David Thompson, a lawyer for the school districts that won the court case , said the proposals provide some discretion for districts. But he added that school officials are withholding judgment on whether the measures provide enough leeway to satisfy the court."There are many things in there that are positives, and I think districts recognize that," he said. "But I think there are some honest conceptual differences over what really is meaningful discretion."
I'll say this again: It ain't over till the judges and the plaintiffs are satisfied. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Here's Harvey Kronberg on the current standoff (thanks for the reminder, Kimberly). Eye on Williamson had flagged that piece yesterday.
The eBay auction to name the latest fermenter at the Saint Arnold Brewery ends today at 11:30 AM CDT. The high bid as I write this is just shy of $1900. Get yours in now while you still have time.
However you feel about the current situation in Iraq, I believe this proposal by Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is something we can all support.
This May we are returning to Iraq with the intention of dedicating a twenty-four station "Internet Cafe" in Taji. Our goal is to make the World Wide Web available via satellite link in outlying areas of rural Iraq where that service is severely limited.Some of the hardware and equipment for this project has already been donated. The remaining need is approximately $140,000 to fund the satellite services and equipment for two years.
The Department of Texas VFW Foundation, a 501(c)3 entity, will manage the collection and disbursement of the tax deductible contributions. Corporate contributors are welcome, and it is our goal to have these resources in hand no later than May 15.
I am asking your financial support in this project. This is a personal priority of mine, ahead of re-election fundraising or any other work. I would sincerely appreciate your help.
Information about the cafe and how you can help are at the link. I'm told by Patterson's press secretary Jim Suydam that Patterson has been hitting up elected officials in Austin to give from their campaign cash. That's as good a use for it as I can think of.
Take a look, and if you agree that this is worthy of support, pass the link along to someone else. Thanks very much.
UPDATE: In the Pink puts it all in perspective.
Darn those devious former chiefs of staff anyway.
A Washington lobbyist who formerly served as chief of staff to Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) pleaded guilty today to a federal conspiracy charge in a continuing corruption probe surrounding disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.Neil G. Volz, 35, who worked for Ney from 1995 to 2002 before joining Abramoff's lobbying firm, pleaded guilty to a single count, admitting that he conspired with Abramoff and others to commit fraud and to violate a federal ban on lobbying within one year of his congressional employment. The alleged fraud involved accepting and offering various inducements in exchange for "official action," prosecutors said.
"Guilty, your honor," Volz told U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle in entering his plea in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Volz faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but he could receive a much lower penalty depending on his cooperation in the continuing corruption investigation, Justice Department officials said.
[...]
The plea agreement draws the investigation closer to Ney. The six-term congressman, who easily won his Republican primary last week, denies any wrongdoing and has not been charged. However, he has been identified as the "Representative #1" who has been accused in court documents of accepting various "things of value" in return for official acts as far back as 2000.
Today's plea agreement also refers repeatedly to "Representative #1," who it says accepted trips, restaurant meals and other gifts or perks in exchange for "favorable official action" and other assistance for clients of Abramoff and Volz.
If you listen closely, you can actually hear the clicking sound that dominoes make as they fall. The only question is whether or not Ney makes like DeLay and hightails it to another state.
Ohio party leaders have been quietly pressing Ney to drop out of the race for reelection to the House. So far, Ney has refused, saying he plans to continue representing Ohio's largely rural 18th District . He won 68 percent of the vote in the May 2 GOP primary against a poorly funded challenger.
As Greg in TX22 points out, perhaps they should have encouraged him a bit more loudly to do that before the filing deadline for Ohio's primaries. Anyone know what Ohio's laws are for replacing nominees, just in case?
Meanwhile, on a different front, the Public Campaign Action Front chronicles Tom DeLay's connections to Brent Wilkes, the gentleman responsible for bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. I wonder what emails may exist for this relationship.
UPDATE: More from The Stakeholder.
The Lege accomplished one task today, passing HB4, the so-called Liar's Affidavit, thus sending it to Governor Perry for a signature.
The House has approved a conference committee version of the “liar’s affidavit” bill.That bill would require buyers of used cars to use a blue book value when reporting the sales price for tax purposes. The committee stripped from the bill an amendment by Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, that would have prohibited insurance companies from giving customers whose cars are totaled less than the presumed value of the vehicle.
If the Senate also approves the conference committee version, the bill will be sent to Gov. Rick Perry, the second piece of his five-part tax plan to make it to his desk.
According to the Quorum Report, the Senate did just that, by a 21-10 margin. That's two bills that have made it all the way through the process. And HB2 is now out of the Senate and back to the House, where I'd guess it will pass by more or less the same nearly-straight-partisan vote as last time.
Note that all of these bills are tax hikes. The bill that would cut property taxes (HB1) is still languishing in the system, under a death threat from Sen. Florence Shapiro, and its fate is unclear at this point. Gardner Selby wonders what happens if HB1 doesn't pass?
A pause in Senate momentum leaves open the politically torturous (or delicious, depending on vantage point) possibility of Gov. Rick Perry signing into law the business tax boost sitting on his desk, but ending up without a school tax cut to tout as justification.Another scenario: Perry, seeking re-election in November, ends up vetoing the very business tax he has championed as a route to reform the corporate franchise tax and a financial source for school property tax cuts starting in 2006-07.
His reasoning for a veto might be that he isn’t about to be the governor who signs in higher business taxes without cuts, yet doing so could also doom the tax for good. To bring it back to life, Perry would have to ask senators and House members, many also seeking re-election, for renewed political courage by voting again to send him the business tax in a fresh special session also featuring a tax-cut measure. (Turn those stomachs.)
[...]
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said today that Perry should sign HB 3 “I’m not concerned with the timing,” Dewhurst said, referring to the tax-cut legislation stalled in the Senate. “All these bills will come together.”
Earlier, Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, termed the prospect of Perry signing the hike without a cut “terrible.” He said, instead, that if this special session craters, Perry could quickly call another session to ensure the tax cut happens - and hold off on signing HB 3 until the tax reduction is on his desk.
“I wouldn’t advise him to sign it right now. The clock hasn’t run on it,” Chisum said.
Perry has 20 days to sign bills after adjournment, so he could do as Chisum suggests. I kind of have to think that this is what he'd do, if for no better reason than one could imagine the commercials that would be run against him - "Perry was for the biggest tax hike in history before he was against it". I just can't see him reversing course like that. But hey, not my decision and not my problem. Stock up on the Tums, Governor, the next week will be eventful for you.
And on another note, the math textbook kerfuffle is not going away.
Texas teachers are fuming over a provision in the Senate's education reform bill that would delay the ordering of new math textbooks for elementary school students.The provision is tucked in a bill that would use part of the state's budget surplus to reduce school property taxes. It was one of several school reform measures a Senate committee added to the bill Friday, including a $2,000 teacher pay raise and bonuses for teachers who raise students' scores on standardized tests.
[...]
If it passes, the State Board of Education will have to stop taking bids from publishers for math textbooks that schools are scheduled to receive in 2008.
That's a huge problem for students and teachers because the books they're currently using were adopted in 1998 and don't cover all the topics included in the standardized test the state began using in 2003, said Colleen Clower, the elementary math coordinator for the Denton school district.
For example, a section on charts and graphs in the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills stumped one third-grade class in her district because it wasn't in their textbooks and their teacher wasn't expecting to see so many questions like that on the test, Clower said.
It's even more troublesome for fifth-graders, who have to pass the math section of the TAKS to be promoted to sixth grade.
"If the state has not provided materials like that to every student and teacher, then how can they legitimately test them over it, much less hold them back a grade," said Penny McAdoo, director of elementary mathematics for the Lewisville school district.
I think that's a damn good question, one that every Democrat ought to be asking every day between now and November, especially if HB1 passes as it currently is.
Wow. Has it really been almost four years since Houston's Olympic-hosting hopes were last dashed? Time does fly. Well fear not, it's time to try and impress the USOC again.
USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth will lead a four-member group today that will meet with Mayor Bill White and city representatives at City Hall to discuss Houston as a potential candidate to host the 2016 Olympics.[...]
USOC officials asked to meet with the mayor, public and private sector officials and Olympic athletes. The Houston delegation will include White, George DeMontrond III, chairman of the disbanded Houston 2012 Foundation, 1992 relay gold medalist Leroy Burrell, and two-time taekwondo gold medalist Steven Lopez.
Don't know that Houston will be taken any more seriously as a potential host this time around, though at least we'll have a completed and successful light rail line to point to as a feature, but I support the effort. I'll worry about the big logistical questions later, if and when Houston survives the first round of cuts. The final IOC decision is not until 2009, so there's no rush just yet.
You know, I'll be glad when May 11 is in the rearview mirror, because then we won't see any more stories about petition signature gathering, which for the most part about as interesting as they sound. This one covers all of the ground that should be familiar to anyone who's read even one of these stories before: Some people are excited about signing a petition for Strayhorn or Friedman, for a variety of reasons. Both campaigns have volunteer signature-gatherers, with the Strayhorn campaign also paying for it. Both campaigns are confident they'll get what they need, but cranky about the process. Etc etc etc.
I guess what frustrates me about articles like this is that if you're going to bother to talk to the people who are supporting the effort, why not try to answer some of the questions that this unprecedented four-way race has raised from the beginning? Questions like:
- For whom did you vote in the 2002 Governor's race? The 2004 Presidential race?
- If this candidate fails to qualify for the ballot, what will you do?
- Have you ever voted in a primary? If so, why didn't you this time?
Yes, what you'll get is anecdotal evidence, and yes, these questions should be asked by pollsters. But so what? Even anecdotal evidence is more than what we have now about how Strayhorn and Friedman may affect the vote this year. Everyone is guessing, and every other story that even mentions the petition process, like the ones about Strayhorn's lawsuit, has hashed and rehashed all the process-oriented details from this piece. Why not tread some new ground?
Oh, and if you've ever wondered how something becomes conventional wisdom:
Friedman and Strayhorn have used different strategies in selecting petition-signing locations: Strayhorn's volunteers frequented school events and have petitions available at law offices, while Friedman has focused more on restaurants and bars.
Kinky got all bent out of shape when Strayhorn's lawyer suggested as much in court last week. To no effect, it would seem.
Interesting article from Sunday about a part of town I don't get out to all that often.
Westchase began developing in the early 1970s on land still grazed by cattle. Today, 25,000 people live in the district, and more than 56,500 work within its boundaries. It is one of Houston's strongest markets for office space.The Westchase District, a management district created by the Legislature in 1995, recently commissioned an award-winning master plan to help it overcome some of the obstacles to realizing its vision. These problems include a severe lack of park space and a suburban-style design that doesn't lend itself to creating diverse, walkable neighborhoods that increasingly attract the most desirable employees for major companies.
"What people want today is the lifestyle," said Jim Murphy, the district's president. "It is critical that we have an environment where people can go out to lunch, recreate or live close to where they work. Corporations recognize and support efforts like ours because they know it's to their benefit."
I think the key to understanding why people want the lifestyle that Murphy describes is because it gives them something they can't get otherwise: More time in the day to do what they want to do. Driving and parking, especially driving any kind of distance or driving through busy thoroughfares with long light cycles, and parking in lots, takes up more time than you think. How much more free time would you have if your commute were reduced to a ten-minute walk? (I've always thought one reason why my freshman year of college was such a success was because I was no longer commuting three hours a day to school, and thus had plenty of time to study and goof off.) And yes, people will even walk in Houston if that's what they get out of it.
Of course, walking doesn't have to be the only option:
The Metropolitan Transit Authority chose not to include Westchase in its rapid transit plan approved by voters in 2003, a decision that has drawn some criticism."The lack of connections to Westchase in the Metro Solutions plan is a huge problem for the region," said David Crossley, the president of the Gulf Coast Institute, a nonprofit research group on urban issues. "Because of its location, it could serve as the gateway from the western suburbs into the urban system."
Metro's plans include possible additional expansions of its transit system, including a route along Westpark that would cut through the southern part of Westchase. Completion of the lines authorized in 2003 is scheduled for 2011, Metro spokesman George Smalley said.
An extension of some kind from the Galleria area would have some appeal, and would certainly go through some reasonably dense and heavily trafficked areas. It'll be worth thinking about.
My musings on the fifty-state strategy are over at Kuff's World.
Vince Leibowitz takes you on a tour of the Texas political blogosphere in a guest post at Dallas Blog. I can just about guarantee that there are some blogs there that you haven't heard of but will be glad you did. Check it out.
UPDATE: Greg notes that no matter how thorough one tries to be about listing Texas political blogs, there's always more out there.
I finally watched this week's Lost on the TiVo over the weekend. Holy smokes! Click the More link to see the spoilerrific stuff.
Okay, first things first. Despite what folks like Linkmeister's commenter thought (and I thought at first), the apparent deaths of Ana Lucia and Libby are not related to the drunk driving arrests of Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros.
The apparent death of Ana Lucia was reinforced by comments from two of the show's executive producers to TVGuide.com. The decision to make the character a short-timer was reached early and was unrelated to Rodriguez's drunken-driving case in Hawaii, where the series is filmed, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said."A lot of this is going to sound like spin, so all we can give you is our word that this is exactly what happened," Lindelof told TVGuide.com. When Rodriguez auditioned for the role she made it clear she was "sort of a nomadic spirit" and would commit to a limited run, he said.
As befitting the convoluted "Lost," however, there was more to the story.
Another issue was that Watros was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence on the same December night as Rodriguez, but separately.
Rodriguez, 27, was sentenced to jail time and fined $500 after she pleaded guilty last month, serving about 65 hours in an Oahu correctional facility. Watros, 37, was fined and had her license suspended for 90 days after pleading guilty to drunken driving in January.
Lindelof told TVGuide.com that he and Cuse knew that it might seem they were trying to make a point rather than advance the story as intended.
"It's going to look like this is the 'Lost' producers' attempt to say, 'Don't drive drunk!'" Lindelof said.
But they decided not to alter the plot line because everything that follows this season "all sort of falls from this event," said Cuse.
Tiffany saw what happened for what it was before I did. They really will trade Walt for Henry, it's just that it won't be on their terms. It'll be on the Others' terms, only no one knows it besides Michael. I don't know how this is going to end, but it's going to be ugly.
(And I may be wrong about Walt coming back. That may just be what Michael believes. We don't know what their deal is with kids, but I bet they don't give them back casually.)
One posibility is that Libby lives long enough to tell people who shot her. It's also possible that the bearded Other dude will clue in Jack or whoever else storms their compound based on the false info Michael gave. Whatever the case, I suspect we haven't seen the last death from this.
(BTW, I'm pissed that Libby is going to die. I really wanted to know her story. Maybe they'll give us a flashback for her as her swan song.)
We're entering the home stretch on this season. I plan on holding onto my seat. You can read an episode recap here. What do you think will happen?
The Harris County GOP precinct chairs within CD22 had a little meeting yesterday to get to know the potential Chosen Ones a bit better. I think this pretty much sums up the whole process:
In closed-door sessions, potential nominees handed out copies of their questionnaires and gave presentations to the roughly 50 precinct chairs. The replacement nominee for the November ballot will be selected by a four-member committee of precinct chairs — one each from Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston and Harris counties.The questionnaires were not made public.
"We are getting all the decision-makers together in one room," said Kathy Haigler, a precinct chair from Deer Park.
Trust us, you voters. We know what's best for you. Don't worry your pretty little heads over the details.
During the sessions, the candidates were asked, among other things, about immigration and homeland security, two high-priority issues among GOP voters, Haigler said.Also, candidates were asked if they thought they possessed "electability."
Did you ask if any of them possessed any "Elvis"? Seriously. Look at the list of Chosen One wannabees: Wallace, Howard, Sekula Somethingorother, Jackson, Talton, Andy Meyers, Tom Campbell, etc etc etc. Do any of them strike you as having That Certain Something? Any of them at all?
(Okay, okay, Andy Meyers is at the forefront of the war on naughty baked goods, an effort that got him Farked on Friday. I suppose you have to have a little Elvis in you for that.)
Put it this way: Let's pretend this is May of 2005. Tom DeLay has announced his retirement, setting off a mad scramble in the GOP primary for CD22. Would you make any of these folks the favorite? That's perhaps not a fair question, because in such a scenario Bob Eckels or Paul Bettencourt might be in the mix. But they're not, and maybe that's an indicator about this year's race. Maybe the reason there's not much star power here is that the real bright lights don't see this as such favorable electoral terrain.
Just a thought. More to contemplate from Capitol Annex, where Vince gives his Photoshop muscles a flex, Fort Bend Now, Truth Serum, and Juanita.
The Chron does a "who wins and who loses" story on the new business tax plan. This is of course useful information, for reasons political and not, but I'm always wary of stuff like this:
Lenin Juarez and Terri King have a partnership in Houston that runs Action Gypsum Supply Co., a drywall supply firm with $30 million a year in sales. They would pay state business taxes for the first time under the bill. The company leases its lands so no property tax relief is expected.Juarez said he can afford the $33,000 a year now, but it might have killed the business when they started it three years ago.
"Three years ago, it would have been a significant impact, an onerous impact," he said.
King said she worries about how the firm will pay the tax when construction goes into one of its cyclical slowdowns. "I don't know that we'll be able to absorb it."
Bill Sadler owns two Houston restaurants: Arturo's Uptown Italiano and Beso. He said the new tax will cost him $30,000 to $50,000. One restaurant is very successful and can easily pay the tax, he said, but the other is a "labor of love."
"It could put me in a position where I don't think it's worth paying on a marginal restaurant, which would put 60 people out of work," Sadler said. "There will be some businesses closed because they are just scraping by."
Any tax is going to affect behavior, and any expense is going to affect profitability. The question is not whether a given business can handle the new tax, but whether it makes for good public policy in the aggregate. Does it provide a sustainable source of revenue for the state without being too onerous for too many businesses? There's some subjectivity in the answers to those questions, but they should not be affected by the answer given by any one business owner.
And for those of you who think having any kind of tax at all is a bad idea because it just contributes to the growth of government, read this. Supply and demand works in funny ways sometimes.
Back to the Chron story, this is more of concern:
[Bill Allaway, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association.] said business support for the plan could evaporate if the Legislature does not guarantee a future reduction of public school property tax rates to at least $1 per $100 of valuation. He said that level of property tax savings is needed to offset the new business taxes."Almost everybody did their calculations at a dollar," Allaway said.
That of course does nothing to quell concerns that this promise of property tax relief will have potentially dire consequences elsewhere in the budget, none of which have had much of a public airing as yet. It also adds fuel to the belief that the whole property tax cut promise is a cynical game being done to get past the 2006 election, since tax rates will have to go back up to account for the gap in revenues. That's the subject of Rick Casey's column, which recapitulates a lot of the issues that have been raised so far.
On a side note, Clay Robison examines the Democrats' proposal to suspend the gas tax for 90 days and has a complaint.
The Democrats don't expect to win a "gas tax holiday." But they are getting some "pro-consumer" publicity and an opportunity to portray the Republicans in power as anti-taxpayer for refusing to advance their idea.They also are being inconsistent.
The Democrats' major complaint during the ongoing special session on school finance has been that Gov. Rick Perry and other GOP leaders have been advancing a plan to cut school property taxes without raising additional money for education.
Yet, their proposal for a 90-day gasoline tax suspension would cost Texas' public schools about $175 million. That's because the state constitution dedicates one-fourth of gasoline tax revenue to education. The other three-fourths goes to highways.
The Democrats say the lost money could be recouped from the $8.2 billion budgetary surplus or through federal transportation dollars.
But it is pointless to transfer funds around if, as the Democrats say and I believe, public education already is underfunded in Texas. Use the surplus to boost, not replace, money for the schools.
The statement from the proposal is:
The cost of the "Gas Tax Holiday" can be paid for by increased federal funding from the transportation bill past last August by the Federal Government. The Federal Highway Administration projects the average annual increase of federal transportation funds to Texas at $788.1 million dollars.
As I wrote before, this is unappropriated money that is outside of the budget surplus. As such, using it to pay for the gas tax holiday would not affect the ability of the Lege to use the surplus to boost money for the schools. That's precisely the reason why I'm okay with this proposal - it doesn't use money that could otherwise be going to the schools. Maybe I'm missing something here (certainly possible), but if not, I don't understand Robison's objection.
(Before we rehash all the other objections that were raised in the comments to that earlier post, please go back and review what was said. There are perfectly sensible reasons to think the gas tax holiday is not a good idea, but unless I've totally misunderstood the accounting here, Robison's is not one of them.)
Didn't manage to get to this yesterday, but (surprise!) email evidence has turned up that links Tom DeLay more tightly to his buddy, Jack Abramoff.
Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned "if someone starts asking questions."House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting free trips from lobbyists. DeLay, R-Texas, reported to Congress that a Republican advocacy group had paid for the spring 2000 trip that DeLay, his wife and top aides took to Scotland and England.
The e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show DeLay's staff asked Abramoff — not the advocacy group — to account for the costs that had to be legally disclosed on congressional travel forms. DeLay's office was worried the group being cited as paying the costs might not even know about them, the e-mails state.
Abramoff's team sought to low-ball the cost estimates and DeLay's office ultimately reported to Congress a total that was a few thousand dollars lower than the one the lobbyist provided, the documents show.
"We should give them the most minimal numbers for cost of the hotel (do not include golf), food and plays," Abramoff wrote two assistants at his Preston Gates lobbying firm in an e-mail from June 29, 2000. One of those assistants, Susan Ralston, now works for top White House adviser Karl Rove.
In a follow-up e-mail to Abramoff, Ralston reported she talked to DeLay's then-deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, who suggested numbers that could be used as cost figures on the congressional travel report. Rudy had gone on the trip with his boss.
"Tony said: $6,800 for flights per person. $300 per night for hotel, $120 per day per person for meals, $500 per day for transportation," Ralston wrote Abramoff. Abramoff's credit card bill shows some costs were higher.
That would be admitted felon Tony Rudy doing all of that creative accounting for his boss. Once again the question is, did DeLay really have no idea at all that his most senior staff were so thoroughly disregarding the law, especially in a case like this where it was directly for his benefit and not their enrichment? I for one have a very hard time believing that DeLay was that casual about the details of his office management.
We've been busy around the house today so I'm a little short on time, but there was some excitement in the State Senate yesterday around HB1. Here's the Chron story:
Tempers flared and several senators walked out in a dispute over how to fund the public schools, but legislation cutting school property taxes, raising teacher pay and making other educational improvements won the key approval of the Senate Finance Committee on Friday.The panel then approved a $1-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax, part of a package backed by Gov. Rick Perry to replace the lost property tax revenue.
Both measures now head to the Senate floor, where Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, vowed to continue the fight she lost in the committee over House Bill 1, the wide-ranging school bill.
"It's not over," she said, announcing she had enough votes to block further debate on the measure, which she was sponsoring but which was hijacked by several Republican and Democratic senators who amended it over her objections.
[...]
Led by Sens. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Todd Staples, R-Palestine, the committee voted to redistribute about $300 million in HB1 to improve funding equity among school districts and allow some property wealthy districts to raise additional local taxes they wouldn't have to share with poorer schools.
The money is part of about $500 million that Shapiro wanted to distribute among high schools for dropout prevention and college preparedness programs.
On Friday morning, Shapiro attempted to head off the amendment by calling for a vote, but Ogden refused to recognize her motion.
She then walked out of the committee room, followed by five other Republicans — Kyle Janek of Houston, Tommy Williams of The Woodlands, Jane Nelson of Lewisville, Bob Deuell of Greenville and Kim Brimer of Fort Worth.
The walkout didn't break a quorum, and the remaining committee members continued working before taking a long lunch break. After lunch, all the senators returned, except Nelson, who had a previously scheduled conflict.
"The solutions being offered by some of my colleagues can best be described as a bridge to nowhere," Shapiro said of the funding change. "They are setting bad fiscal policy for our state that benefits some schools while hurting others."
She also said the provision would doom the bill's chances in the House. She and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have been negotiating with House members on other educational issues, including a $2,000-a-year teacher pay raise, which also is in the measure.
But Staples said the amendment was fair and a step toward reducing the effects of the controversial "Robin Hood" share-the-wealth school finance law.
The committee added another amendment, offered by Williams, that would reduce the school operating tax rate by 50 cents per $100 of property value by the fall of 2007, the goal set by the governor. For most school districts, that would amount to a reduction of about one-third.
School taxes would be cut by 17 cents per $100 this fall.
In order to make up for the 50-cent cut, the state would need $2.5 billion in addition to the revenue raised through the higher cigarette tax, an expanded business tax already sent to the governor and tightened sales tax collections on used cars.
The state has an $8.2 billion surplus now, but Dewhurst, among others, is concerned that will soon evaporate among a host of needs.
But Williams said there is "plenty of money available for us to fund this tax relief."
The committee approved HB1 on a 9-2 vote with three abstentions, including Shapiro.
I'll point you again to the CPPP's analysis of the Williams amendment. They are deeply concerned that it will require a 16% cut in spending on other state services due to a constitutional cap. Given that services were already cut pretty deeply in 2003 when we were in deficit mode, the prospect is not a happy one to contemplate. I feel that there may be an interpretation question within that, however. I'm trying to solicit some reactions to their work to see how alarmed I should be.
One place where there was some Democratic reaction to all this was the Express News.
Today's system creates equitable funding for a little more than 70 percent of the state's 4.4 million public school children. The new Senate proposal would create up to 96 percent equity in a new "enrichment tier" that would allow school districts to levy extra taxes beyond what is necessary for a basic education.But doing so would harm the state's 170 property-wealthy school districts, Shapiro said, and force many to increase taxes to gain additional funds in the so-called "enrichment tier."
Duncan warned that without changing the equity standard, property-rich schools would gain so much financial advantage "that the disparity would shock the conscience."
Shapiro complained bitterly about the efforts to change equity and said the Supreme Court didn't rule on that issue.
"This is the premier 'light your hair on fire' issue," she said. "It causes all of us to fight among ourselves."
But Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, said lawmakers have been laboring for years "to make sure that all children are treated equally in a school finance system."
She downplayed concerns that rich school districts would have to raise tax rates before enjoying additional "enrichment" funds, which, unlike other revenue, they would not have to share with poor schools.
Poor school districts already levy higher tax rates, Van de Putte said. "Why shouldn't it be required of property-wealthy school districts?"
Only one of the 16 school districts in Bexar County (Alamo Heights, the West University Place of San Antonio) counts as property-wealthy, so you can see where Van de Putte is coming from. The Brownsville Herald has more.
State Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, voted for the bill."It's a great step," Hinojosa said. "We need equity in our public school system. ... We couldn't ask for anything more."
Thanks to South Texas Chisme for that link. The Morning News notes that this amendment would prevent the Dallas ISD from losing money to Robin Hood. According to the Statesman, four Republicans and five Democrats voted for this change.
The Williams amendment aside, I have to say this doesn't sound too bad to me. Of course, Shapiro isn't going to give up, and she says she's got the votes to block the bill from coming to the floor. Monday is going to be a fun day in the Capitol. May 16 is the end date for this special session, so there's still time to work things out, which Lt. Gov. Dewhurst sees as a double-edged sword.
Other activity: A modified version of HB5, the cigarette tax bill, passed by a 9-5 vote, with mostly Dems voting no. The House rejected the Senate's version of HB2, which allowed some business tax money to go to schools after property taxes hit a certain level, on a point of order. Dallas Blog has a timeline of events. As always, stay tuned for more.
Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas has appealed the order by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to relocate 500 prisoners in order to bring Harris County's jails into compliance on prisoner-to-guard ratios and other issues.
By appealing the order, which is aimed at ending a three-year inmate crowding problem, Thomas buys the county an extra three months to avoid relocating the inmates."We've been working diligently on this for many months," he said.
During the next 90 days, Thomas hopes to bring the jail complex into compliance with the required 48-1 inmate-to-guard ratio, as ordered by the jail commission. He said he believes that goal can be met by August, when the commission is next scheduled to meet, through extensive use of overtime and working aggressively to hire new jailers.
Thomas estimated the overtime cost at $20 million a year and said his plan may also include putting some enforcement personnel to work at the jails.
I'm glad that this problem is finally getting some serious attention, but why are these steps just being taken now? This is the third year in a row that the county has been in violation. Why wasn't this compliance work done in 2004 and 2005?
Thomas' proposed solution is not popular with everyone.
"The only plan they have is to work people into the ground that are already being worked into the ground," said a guard who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
As Grits notes, a lot of guards speak anonymously on these topics to avoid retaliation.
Thomas also sought to spread the blame around a bit:
Thomas also accused Harris County judges and the District Attorney's Office of circumventing state law by allowing nonviolent offenders to negotiate plea agreements enabling them to serve sentences in the county jail rather than in state facilities."It just defeats the whole purpose of the state-jail felony," Thomas said.
[...]
State District Judge Caprice Cosper denied that the plea agreements circumvent the law. She said the law allowing judges to send low-level offenders to county jails has been in place since 1974. Cosper added that the number of criminal cases filed in Harris County's district courts has increased steadily.
District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal acknowledged that sending state-jail felons to the county jail is an often-used option, but said he doesn't always agree with the practice.
"I certainly try to tell my people that I'd rather have (criminals) go to state jail rather than county jail," Rosenthal said. "And just for (the expense) reason. Who pays for it?"
That's a pretty mealymouthed answer from Rosenthal, isn't it? He doesn't like the practice of sending state-jail felons to county jail, and he tries to tell his people not to do it, but sometimes they do anyway. So, if this is a bad thing, are you going to take any real action about it, Chuck? I should have known if there'd be one person in this story to distract from Thomas' ineptitude, it'd be our feckless DA.
Oh, and in case Harris County loses its appeal and does have to farm out inmates, it won't be able to ask its neighbors for help because their jails are all full, too.
''There's more jail beds today than ever before, but there's no room,"said Terry Julian, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, noting that the county jails in the state are at 86 percent of capacity.[...]
If it does become necessary to ship prisoners, county officials want to keep them within 200 miles. But only two neighboring counties - Montgomery and Liberty - say they have enough room and staffing to spare. Waller County is at 52 percent capacity.
Many counties have built or are building new facilities to keep up with the increasing number of inmates. Eleven jail facilities are either under construction or near completion, Julian said.
In the Houston region, Galveston County is set to open a new 1,171-bed facility this month because its jail has been over capacity for several years.
''It will give them some space, but I bet you that jail fills up quick because they have been without space for some time," Julian said.
Maybe it's time we rethought the whole process a bit, huh? As I noted yesterday, Grits has already done a lot of the work for you.
You couldn't come up with a better illustration of the abject failure that privatization of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC) has been than this story.
State welfare workers who were destined for pink slips to make way for privatized eligibility screeners are getting $1,800 retention bonuses instead, Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced Thursday.With the move to privately run eligibility screening off to a troubled start, the commission has scrapped any plans to lay off state employees during the next 12 months, he said, and will lay off no more than 900 employees during the transition to private call centers.
The state had planned to lay off 1,900 employees by the time the transition was complete, but will now keep 1,000 of those state employees on permanently.
What do you think this is going to do to that Giant Moneysaving Nirvana we were promised when this thing was first shoved through the Legislature? Sure is a mystery why we haven't seen an updated projection on that since that legendary $646 million figure was first handed down, isn't it? Where's the Comptroller's office when you really need it?
All 4,800 eligibility workers currently employed, assuming they are in good standing, and 900 temporary workers will be eligible for a $900 retention bonus this summer and another $900 bonus six months later, commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said.State leaders on the Legislative Budget Board, meanwhile, have promised the commission an extra $85.9 million to keep the state workers, she said.
Forty-eight hundred workers times $1800 in retention bonuses works out to $8,640,000. I presume the remainder of that $85.9 million is for a year's worth of salaries, benefits, and other associated costs for the lucky thousand that will not get pink-slipped just yet.
Maybe - maybe - if there had been a small pilot program for this sucker for a year or so, in which all aspects of the system could be tested, all documentation for procedures could be written and training for them produced, and the first wave of Accenture employees could get up to speed, then we could have a path to real success for this program. But we got this instead. And the people who really need these services are the ones paying for the screwup.
More as always from Father John and Samm Almaguer. Check out also this anonymous HHSC employee's blog. Whoever you are, I hope that retention bonus helps.
Why is there such an uproar over the Senate proposal to eliminate the $500 health insurance supplement for school support staff? Via PinkDome, here's one reason:
Everyone with health insurance is used to seeing their premiums increase every year, but Comal School District employees are about to get socked.Starting Sept. 1, the employee share of health insurance premiums will jump by as much as 180 percent for similar coverage.
"We're trying to do the best we can for the district's employees," said Trustee Charles Burt. "It's not just you going up on costs, it's everywhere."
School Board President Dan Krueger noted that the district will increase its contribution from $226 a month to $250, to help offset the cost, but said he knows it will still be a bitter pill to swallow.
"It hurts me to know we are going to present this to our employees," he said.
Ouch. No wonder teachers are standing with support staff on this. They know how wrong this is.
Matt and PFAW have some other reading on the state of affairs. I've got a post on Kuff's World that tries to sum up where we are now. And just to really brighten your day, the CPPP says that the current path of using state revenues to pay for lowering property taxes to $1 will force a 16% cut in state spending in 2008-09.
We ought to know more about where this session is going by the end of the day today. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Nate excerpts from the CPPP analysis.
There's now a proposal within HB1, still under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee, to require a fourth year of science and math in Texas high schools.
[I]f state lawmakers approve a proposal that's part of the school finance package now being considered, high schools would expect students to graduate with four years of math and science classes under the "recommended" high school curriculum. The curriculum currently includes three years of math and science.The proposal is part of the Senate version of House Bill 1, which its Finance Committee will continue debating today.
[...]
About two-thirds of Texas high school graduates in 2004 followed either the "recommended" or more rigorous "distinguished" plan, said Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe.
That number probably will increase because the state began requiring students in 2004 to follow the recommended path unless they opt out with the approval of a parent or guardian.
Ratcliffe said the agency has not estimated the cost of the proposed math and science change but said the science requirement could be more costly because schools may need more lab space. She also pointed out that qualified math and science teachers are sometimes difficult for schools to find.
House Bill 1, sponsored by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, would give high schools another $500 per student per year, or almost $600 million statewide.
[...]
Debate over education reforms has derailed previous efforts in the Legislature to change the tax structure, which is why Perry has directed lawmakers to focus first on the tax questions.
Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, said that considering an extra year of math and science may need to wait until the next regular, 140-day legislative session, which begins in January.
"I don't find the idea of four years of math and science at all objectionable," Strama said. "I just want to make sure we don't allow the educational reforms to get in the way of lowering property taxes and increasing funding for public education."
For the record, Stuyvesant High School required four years of math and science. It was not uncommon, at least in my day, to take biology and chemistry concurrently, so you could be science-free as a senior, but you still had those two classes plus physics and a year of freshman intro science. Most people came in having already taken algebra, which counted towards the requirement, so you could also be math-free as a senior if you'd passed pre-calc as a junior.
I think it goes without saying that I support this idea, though if it has to wait till a regular session to get implemented I can live with that. I do have to wonder how you can contemplate this on the one hand and a shortsighted, idiotic refusal to buy current math textbooks for fifth graders on another, but then believing six impossible things before breakfast seems to be a prerequisite around here.
As you might imagine, the Science Teachers Association of Texas (STAT) is foursquare behind this proposal. Here's a letter (Word doc) they sent to Finance Committee Chair Steve Ogden expressing that support. As always with things like this, if you have an opinion, a call to your Rep or Senator is never out of order.
Stuff that I haven't had the time or energy to write about lately but figured I should at least mention:
- The upcoming end of the Enron trials. For reasons that I still can't adequately explain, I've not been terribly interested in the whole Jeff Skilling/Kenny Boy Lay trial. They've been interesting enough as these things go, but I just have not been into it. The Chron, Houstonist, and Tom Kirkendall have been more than up to the task
- Whether or not the Astros will sign Roger Clemens. It's starting to take on an NFL draft level of hype around here. The Stros know whatever they pay Clemens will be made up at the box office and in merchandise sales. The Rocket knows he still has gas in his tank. This shouldn't be hard, fellas. Either Roger wants to or he doesn't.
- The recent stories about how Props 1 and 2 may wind up causing some tax cuts. Unlike Kevin, I'm not terribly impressed by what Andy Taylor says regarding enforcement of Prop 2. I seem to recall some braggadicio from Taylor last year about proving massive voter fraud in HD149, which would restore Talmadge Heflin to the State House. Didn't work out so well for him.
- Blog wars!. Okay, it's not really anything like that. Just an observation that there's more liberal blogs in Texas that focus on state and local politics than there are conservative blogs.
- Strayhorn versus Abbott. Now there's a battle.
- Tom DeLay's legal bills. Main point to take away: If DeLay needs this kind of scratch (and undoubtedly more) for his various legal defenses, then he's not going to be able to help seed the Chosen One's campaign kitty. That person will start out with whatever cash he or she currently has on hand, and each day that passes puts him or her farther behind Nick Lampson. On a side note, The Umpire does not think the Chosen One will be Shelley Sekula Somethingorother.
- Why must there be a remake of "Revenge of the Nerds"? Between air guitar contests and this, is there any aspect of the 1980s than can be allowed to rest in peace?
- No Pants Day. Ah, to be in college again.
I heard the KACC disc jockey talk about this, and I had to see it for myself: VH1 is holding an air guitar contest. You make a one-minute video of yourself jumping and flailing to one of four classic rock heavy metal songs, and viewers vote for their favorite. The winner gets to - I can't believe I'm about to type this - compete in the U.S. Air Guitar Championship Finals, to be held in New York City.
I participated in an air guitar contest when I was in college. We did Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", and lost to a team of frat boys and sorority girls who did Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus". It was fun, but I can't say I'm upset that no video of this event exists. The still photos from that entire era are embarrassing enough, thankyouverymuch. The idea that air contests still exist outside of the 1980s frankly boggles my mind. (I suppose 20 years from now I'll be saying the same thing about competitive eating contests, except for the bit about having personal experience in such a matter.)
So, does my astonishment represent further evidence that I'm hopelessly out of touch with modern pop culture, or is everybody else shaking their heads in disbelief along with me? Help me out here.
The statewide hurricane evacuation drill is going on this week, and so far we've learned that there's only so much you can do to keep the highways flowing.
Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, appointed as the incident commander for a 13-county evacuation region during this drill, said dumping 3 million evacuees onto the freeway system - even with contraflow lanes - will continue to jam evacuation routes but he predicted other improvements should make the trip less hazardous.These improvements include such things as starting contraflow lanes sooner and making sure gas stations along the routes remain open and stocked.
Emergency responders at the Houston TranStar control center are particularly interested in how these proposed improvements will work. Harris County was the center of a massive traffic snarl when area residents fled Hurricane Rita eight months ago. Most of the 137 Rita-related deaths were later attributed not to the storm but to the evacuation itself.
"We want people to know what to expect when they get on the highway. We don't want them to think the trip to Dallas will only be four hours. But we also want to make sure there is fuel and rest stops along the way," Eckels said.
At the same time, authorities want to inform residents that they don't have to join the traffic jams if they live outside the storm surge areas that could become submerged by hurricane-force winds blowing water onto the shore. "If you live in Katy, Spring or Tomball, you may not need to make that 15- to 20-hour drive," Eckels said.
All of Galveston County and most of Chambers County are within the storm surge area if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane strikes. Only a section of Harris County lies within the surge zone, generally east of Loop 610 and south of Interstate 10 and a larger segment of Brazoria County that is south of Texas 35.
You can certainly hope that people in non-flooding areas will get the message that they don't have to leave, but you'd better not count on it. People will bug out for a variety of reasons of their own, and all you can do is plan for every contingency. I don't envy anyone that task.
In addition, office of emergency management and homeland security coordinator Frank Gutierrez said, trains will be a factor in the next evacuation, especially of the sick and elderly."We're lining up all the passenger trains available that might be used (on the run from Galveston to Dallas). Each can hold up to 1,600 people," he said.
That's a smart thing to do, and it should ease traffic a tiny bit, but since it sounds like the trains would mostly replace buses, it won't make that much difference.
When hurricane season begins June 1, weather conditions such as warm ocean waters could produce some powerful storms, said Gene Hafele, Houston-Galveston National Weather Service meteorologist.Colorado State University forecasters say nine hurricanes may form in the Atlantic basin that feeds the Gulf of Mexico this year. An average season sees only about five, he said.
However, he noted last year produced the most hurricanes of any season on record - 15 including seven that were major.
You are now free to crawl under your desk and start whimpering.
Harris County jails: Still in violation of state standards.
For the third consecutive year, the Harris County Jail system has failed to meet state standards because of prisoner crowding, an issue expected to be discussed today by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.[...]
During a four-day on-site review in April, commission inspectors found that jail officials have failed to maintain the required inmate-to-guard ratio of 48-1.
At the time, more than 9,000 inmates were housed in the county's jail complex in downtown Houston. The commission report did not state the actual ratio at the time of the inspection.
You can find a bunch of links to previous bloggage on this subject here. Or you can go read Grits for Breakfast, who is the acknowledged Zen master of all this.
Now you may be asking yourself "Why do I care if a bunch of inmates are inconvenienced?" This is why you care:
Terry Julian, executive director of the commission, noted Wednesday that state inspectors in their 2004 and 2005 reports have cited Harris County for the same problem.He also hinted the commission could be ready to finally hold Harris County accountable for the jail situation.
"I cannot say what the commission will do, because they make the decision on that, but I would tend to say yes (they will)," Julian said.
The commission's options include the rarely used measure of closing the jail or ordering the sheriff's office to send some prisoners to other counties - with the accompanying expenses and logistical problems.
In other words, the continued incompetence and mismanagement of Sheriff Tommy Thomas could cost Harris County a bunch of money and headaches. Who knows how many other dangerous inmates may be able to escape under these conditions? All because Tommy Thomas is doing a poor job.
What does Thomas have to say for himself?
The sheriff, however, is optimistic it won't come to that."Hopefully, they'll work with us and give us some time," Thomas said.
Like three more years, maybe? It's nice that you have hope, but what's your plan?
In fairness to Thomas, the Harris County judiciary shares some of the blame here for jail overcrowding.
Thomas also said he would like to explore ways to reduce the number of inmates coming into the jail.A recent study requested by the county's district courts concluded that many low-risk defendants in the county jail may be there because they are unable to afford bond.
That report also states that Harris County judges underutilize Pretrial Services - an agency set up to gather information for the judges on defendants eligible for free or low-cost bonds.
I refer you once again to Grits and his series of articles on how bond issues have stuffed the jails full of people who don't really need to be there. If Thomas can actually make headway with the judges who are responsible for that, then he'll have taken an important step in the right direction. I'm more skeptical than optimistic about that, but we'll see.
UPDATE: So much for hope.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards today ordered Harris County to begin easing its crowding problem by sending prisoners to other county jails in the region.Such an operation could cost the county about $1 million per month.
The commission, concluding for the third consecutive year that the County Jail has failed to meet state standards, told county officials to outsource prisoners to achieve the prescribed prisoner-to-guard ratio of 48-1.
That could mean sending more than 500 prisoners to other jails.
The commission voted on the outsourcing order this morning in Austin.
One million bucks a month. Though dumb-about-bail judges and the penny-wise-but-pound-foolish County Commissioners' Court played a role in this fiasco, the ultimate blame falls squarely on the incompetent shoulders of Sheriff Tommy Thomas. What an inexcusable waste.
Once again, as has been done twice in the recent past, it's time to help the Saint Arnold Brewery name that fermenter.
Oh, the excitement! Yes, our two newest (and last - for a while anyway) fermenters have arrived, been installed, brewed into, but they are lacking one thing. Yes, names! Just like last time, we are selling the naming rights to only one of these tanks. The tank to be auctioned off is the biggest one right at the front door - the first tank you see upon entering the brewery! This is your chance to enter the ranks of the beatified, along with St. Gonzo (a good man) and St. Sambomeister (a good Schnauzer). And you can come out and visit your saintliness and see what is fermenting inside each week. Plus you and your date get eternal free admission to the tour! The proceeds will assist us in purchasing more brewing equipment so we won't run you out of beer.Here are the specifics: the tank will be named St. [you fill in this blank]. It cannot be a company name and cannot cause offense. Other than that, the sky is the limit. It also cannot duplicate any of our existing tank names (so if your name is Adrian, Brigid, Columbanus, Dorothy, Edmund, Florian, Gall, Gonzo, Hildegard, Idesbald, Jacobus, Lawrence, Matthew, Nicholas, Patrick or Sambomeister, we apologize). The last time the bidding was fast and furious. To see the tank and the auction, follow this link.
Bid early and often!
If you're looking for that one-of-a-kind Mother's Day or Father's Day gift, you can't beat that. Happy bidding!
Bob Dunn does a little sleuthing to divine who might be in a strong position to become the Chosen One to replace Tom DeLay as the Republican nominee in CD22 by the Gang of Four precinct chair committee. Naturally, he looks to the moneybags to see who they're supporting:
So if political king-maker Bob Perry's putting his money on a candidate, you'd have to figure that candidate has better than average odds, right?Strangely enough, it appears Bob Perry is placing his bet on someone other than [Sugae Land Mayor] David Wallace.
That would be Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who’s been planning an eventual run at DeLay's seat for years. She says she's got Bob Perry's exclusive support in the race.
In a fund-raising letter, Sekula-Gibbs notes Perry among "Republican leaders and pro-business icons" supporting her campaign. The other mentioned icons are retired Reliant Energy board chairman Don Jordan, Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership President Jim Reinhartsen, and some guy named Jim Baker. Ever heard of him?
Sekula-Gibbs has not been considered a household name in Fort Bend County, but she’s been working hard to change that. Saturday, for instance, she took the time to drive through a downpour to Richmond, to pow-wow with Fort Bend County Precinct Chair Pat Hebert.
If her efforts to win over the Gang of Four cause her to miss a few City Council votes, all I can say is that would be a win-win situation.
More interesting to me is this tidbit:
Rumors are running strong that an attempt is afoot to pack those 38 vacant [precinct chair] seats [in Fort Bend County] with new precinct chairs beholden to one or another favored candidate.Yvonne Dewey, GOP chair in Brazoria County, says if the rest of the counties perceive that's what’s going on in Fort Bend, unhappiness may ensue, along with a simple strategy that applies to the Committee of Four:
"They have one precinct chair" on the committee, Dewey said of Fort Bend County, "and we have three."
As for grumbling in some Fort Bend quarters about Brazoria and Galveston counties each getting a 25% say in picking DeLay's successor despite have far fewer voters in CD-22 than Fort Bend, Dewey offered a Bible lesson:
"The first shall become last and the last shall become first."
It's always good to see a little potential disunity percolating. If only DeLay had trusted the democratic process and dropped out before the primary, none of this would be happening. Which, admittedly, would be a lot less fun, but that's the price you pay for doing the right thing.
Greg in TX22 comments on a different part of this article, on the race to be the FBC Gang of Four representative. I'm going to miss all this when it's over and done with.
Finally, this Chron article on the eventual passage of HB3 by the Senate on Tuesday contains a relevant tidbit about the motivations of Sen. Mike Jackson for his holdout and eventual sandaling on bringing the bill to the floor.
[Steven] Hotze denied rumors that he got Jackson to change positions by promising him the nomination for the congressional seat held by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. DeLay has said he plans to resign by June."I don't even live close to that district. I don't have any influence there," Hotze said. "There's no way I could promise anyone that I could help them."
Jackson said he is interested in running for DeLay's seat, but he said he and Hotze never discussed it in relation to the tax bill.
A rumor to this effect was noted in the comments here. All I can say is give me a break. Does Steven Hotze, the Harris County GOP kingmaker for the last decade, seriously expect me to believe he carries no clout with these precinct chairs just because he lives outside of CD22? Please.
For what it's worth, Rhymes with Right thinks that Jackson's eventual accomodation of HB3 harms his chances of replacing DeLay on the ballot. So who knows?
I was sent this Inside Higher Ed article about our own Senator Hutchison chairing a meeting of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Science and Space. It's amusing in the way that a person trying to score points about a topic she clearly knows nothing about is amusing, if you can get past the fact that she has the power to do something about her little fit of pique.
“U.S. legislatures picking senators before the 17th Amendment?” Hutchison said incredulously to Arden L. Bement, director of [the National Science Foundation (NSF)]. “How can you say this is that important?” She did, however, concede that the topic is “probably very interesting.” (While the NSF is best known for its work in the physical sciences, it in fact has a long, Congressionally authorized history of supporting work in the social sciences.)Wendy Schiller, associate professor of political science and public policy at Brown University, certainly thinks so. She and a collaborator were awarded $212,000 each by NSF to establish the U.S. Election Database for the years 1871-1913.
Schiller, who was reached by phone and had no idea Hutchison would attack her research, said she was once a legislative staff assistant for the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat who actually was a social scientist, and that “I’ve seen projects I wondered about, but this is worthwhile.”
Schiller said there is currently no aggregate record of “who served in the legislatures, where they came from, how long they served, and what they did. It’s a whole chunk of history we don’t even have, except for Mark Twain’s ‘Gilded Age.’”
It goes on from there, with KBH wondering why we're not doing more to compete with India and China, Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens grumbling about science education, and John Sununu complaining about the NSF in general.
Now, I don't have a problem with what Sununu was doing. I don't share his philosophy, of course, but at least the desire to kill NSF springs from a small-government mindset that has some consistency to it, in theory if not in practice. Seems a bit peculiar to me to be fretting about six-figure grants in times of twelve-digit deficits, but hey, at least it's a philosophy. Stevens was off on his own little tangent there, doing nothing in particular. It's a bit hard to imagine anyone was paying attention to him.
I really have no idea what Hutchison was up to. I understand the need for committees like this to exercise oversight on agencies like the NSF. Even those piddling $212K grants add up after awhile, and it is the taxpayers' money regardless of the amount. I guess I just feel like if you're going to question the details of a piece of scholarship, you ought to come prepared first. Have one of your staffers do a little research to see if anyone you consider reputable thinks this study you're criticizing has any merit, for instance. Maybe, I don't know, read the abstract or something. Surely some pre-work is called for, no? This looks a lot more like fishing - and grandstanding - than oversight to me. Sadly, that's about what I'd expect from KBH.
Phillip Martin writes a letter to State Sen. Florence Shapiro:
It has come to my understanding that you recently added a provision to the committee substitute to House Bill 1 that stops the Texas Education Association from ordering new elementary school math textbooks. As you should be well aware, the current math textbooks do not include material that is tested on the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test. Part of HB 1 will also include money for a merit-based teacher pay raise.How are students supposed to pass a test if the material covered in the test isn't in their textbooks? How are teachers supposed to raise their student's TAKS scores - and, thereafter, their salaries - if you are forcing them to teach with textbooks that still say that Ann Richards is Governor? How do you expect Texas school children to keep up with students from other states and other countries if they don't have the tools they need to succeed?
According to the Quorum Report, work on CSHB1 is still ongoing, with the Senate Finance Committee in recess until tomorrow.
Via Eye on Williamson, the process seems to be one of the Senate giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
Texas teachers may see a salary increase of $2,000 under proposed state legislation.But they might lose a $500 stipend that helps cover health insurance.
Teachers' aides and other support personnel would also take a hit, receiving no stipend and no raise.
Groups representing Texas educators voiced their appreciation of lawmakers' attempt to boost teacher salaries but expressed disappointment at the loss of the stipend. Essentially, they say, if the proposed legislation passes, they'll get only a $1,500 raise.
"You can couch it as a pay raise, or you can couch it as restoration [of the healthcare stipend], but it doesn't count twice," said Jeri Stone, executive director and general counsel of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association.
Imagine what this would be like if we didn't have an $8.2 billion surplus. Go look at that EoW post for more about what is and isn't happening with CSHB1.
State lawmakers have chipped away at the stipend since 2001, when they gave educators $1,000 to offset the rising cost of healthcare.It was breakthrough legislation, said Richard Kouri, director of public affairs for the Texas State Teachers Association. The state was taking some responsibility for providing resources for employee benefits.
In 2003, the Legislature took half of that stipend from teachers and cut it entirely for administrators, but lawmakers promised the full funding would return for teachers in 2005. It did not.
According to House Bill 1, support staff, including teachers' aides, bus drivers, custodians and secretaries, would lose their remaining $500 stipend in 2007.
Teachers won't get their stipend, either. They would instead get a $2,000 raise and could set aside an "employee-determined portion" of their salary each year to cover health insurance premiums.
The raise is not enough, teachers groups said, especially if the healthcare stipend is eliminated.
The Lege needs to keep the promises they made. This should not come down to a nasty choice between teachers and bus drivers, or teachers and textbooks. If now isn't the time to meet these obligations, then when will it ever be? Honestly, why are we acting like we've got an $8.2 billion deficit? What, exactly, are the priorities here?
Couple of transportation-related notes to pass along here. First a note on the issue of bike racks on Metro buses. Robin Holzer has been flogging this - see here for background - and it's a low-costidea that makes a lot of sense. Even better, it's beginning to get widespread support among the people that matter - Mayor White, Harris County Judge Eckels, and members of both the Commissioners' Court and Houston City Council. Still, a little expression of support by you to your elected representatives couldn't hurt. A list of names, contact email addresses, and phone numbers, are in that CTC forum link, so check it out. Lyn is also covering this.
Second, as a reminder, the I-45 Design Workshop, sponsored by the I-45 Coalition, is this Saturday, May 6, from 8:30 AM to noon at the Zion Lutheran Church on Beauchamp in the Woodland Heights. See this post for details. As of Monday, they still had space available in the workshop, so drop a note to vm@airmail.net or call Jim Weston at (713) 816-0444 if you're interested.
I sent a note to Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer regarding the feedback to this post on HB120, the proposed gas tax cut. Here's his response to the comments that post has received.
I want to thank Charles Kuffner for allowing me some bandwidth on his blog to describe HB 120, the Gas Tax Holiday. I also want to thank those of you have commented on the proposal. Your comments, ideas, and strategies do not fall on deaf ears.There seems to be some worry in the blogosphere about the gas tax cut being a cosmetic plan that may affect long term behavior. The argument seem to fall like this: 1) one it's cosmetic pandering that is ineffectual, 2) it will make people drive more. It would seem that these two arguments are contradictory.
Here is the thing, right now we have a very limited time frame and a limited call of the Special Session to help Texans make ends meet. The time frame is limited by the nature of the "extra" monies that can fund HB 120, which will expire before too long. The legislation is also limited by the narrow scope of the Special Session called by Gov. Perry. We can't talk about alternative fuels because it is outside the Governor's call, but we can talk about taxes.
Right now, HB 3 is on its way to the Governor's desk. Inside that legislation is a loophole for passive investment interest and a deduction for oil and gas exploration. The Tax bill gave big business loopholes, so why not Texas families?
I don't claim that this proposal solves Texas' gasoline and diesel problem. That would be foolish pandering, but here is what it can do: it can make life a little easier by temporarily suspending the most regressive tax for Texas families. Now, that is the kind of proposal we can all get behind.
I encourage everyone to visit me at www.GasTaxCut.com. Here you can talk about Texas' energy problem and find out more about the specifics of HB 120. I need everyone's help to make this happen. Thank you again for your ideas and time with your help may be we can help save Texas families some money.
Thank you, Rep. Martinez-Fischer. I hope that answers the questions that have been raised. The comments are open if there are more.
Yesterday, I received information about an encouraging poll done in CD14 by the Shane Sklar campaign. I've written about it and posted the memo they sent me over at Kuff's World.
Like several other bloggers, I had the opportunity to speak to Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer about his HB120, which is a proposal to suspend collection of the state gas tax for 90 days. There's a website up that explains the particulars and also offers a petition to sign if you support the idea - Governor Perry would have to add this to the call of the special session for it to be considered. Take a look and see what you think.
I'll be honest, when I first heard about this idea, I thought it was a gimmick, not unlike the US Senate's much-derided $100 bribe rebate that went over like a lead balloon. I've since changed my mind, and this is what convinced me.
We are fortunate because we can afford to give taxpayers a Gas Tax Holiday during the summer months. The estimated cost of HB 120 is 700 million dollars. That's less than 10% of our state's budget surplus. The last time I checked the surplus belonged to Texas taxpayers so it makes perfect sense to give it back in times of need.Moreover, Texas will receive, over the next several years, an average of 788.1 million federal dollars pursuant to Equity Bonus Program, which Congress authorized under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Act (the Federal Highway Bill). I am told by a member of the Appropriations Committee that this money is un-appropriated and can be used to offset the lost tax revenue during the Gas Tax Holiday.
If there's a pot of unappropriated money that can pay for this, so that the existing budget is left intact and we're not essentially borrowing against future obligations to pay for an immediate need, then I can support it. (If it turns out TxDOT already has a purpose in mind for this pile, then we can reconsider as needed.) It's strictly a bit of short-term relief, but I think it will have a salutary effect, especially for people who drive their own vehicles as part of their jobs, like Rep. Martinez-Fischer's neighbor Willie the plumber. I've also heard anecdotal evidence that some charities, like Meals on Wheels, have been hard hit by the high gas prices. If this helps them keep getting the volunteers - and their cars - they need to do their good works, then so much the better.
In the meantime, as with the debate over HB3, it's always interesting to see Democrats pushing for a tax cut that Republicans are opposing. I can't swear that I've seen rivers running uphill lately, but I wouldn't doubt it if someone told me they were. Apparently, Dan Patrick is on board with this, which ought to kick the fun factor up another notch. We'll see what happens, but in the meantime check out the website and judge for yourself.
UPDATE: Vince, naturally, has the most comprehensive writeup of the conference call.
David Harris writes about Net Neutrality and the role that his opponent, Smokey Joe Barton, is playing in trying to kill it. Check it out.
Elsewhere in the good reading department, MyDD reminds us that there's still action to be taken on the issue, and points to this NYT editorial, which gets it right.
Chad Khan, the Democrat running for the open HD126 seat now held by Republican Peggy Hamric, is hosting a breakfast fundraiser on Saturday, May 20, at 8 AM. The location is 4503 El Salvador, which is near 1960 and Veterans' Memorial Drive - here's a map if you need it. A $25 donation is requested. Details are here, or send Anne Weedman an email at aweedman@vote4khan.com for more info.
As a reminder, there's a barbecue fundraiser for Mark McDavid, who's running against Republican Rep. Dwayne Bohac in HD138, this Sunday the 7th of May. Details can be found here. This one's in my neck of the woods, so if it's a nice enough day I may pack up Olivia and head out to it. She's quite the icebreaker at events like this.
Want to let everyone know how you feel about your favorite sports team but don't want to start a(nother) blog? Check out Armchair GM, which is looking for fans to adopt their favorite team and be a part of that community. They're using a Wiki structure for the site, which is a little different, but looks easy enough to use. Looks like the Astros could use someone to maintain their page - if the Texans can find someone to do this, surely the Stros can, too. Check it out and let 'em know if you're interested.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn had her day in court yesterday, arguing that Secretary of State Roger Williams needs to get cracking on petition signature verification.
[Attorney Buck] Wood told U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel that Strayhorn has not turned the signatures in to Secretary of State Roger Williams because Williams has refused to use statistical analysis or to start the process of certifying the petitions until all of the candidates have filed their petitions.Wood said a statistical analysis could be completed in days.
Wood complained Williams wants to verify every signature on the petitions of independent candidates.
Wood said that would take until at least the end of June, a process he said would give Republican and Democratic candidates a "substantial" advantage going into the November general election.
"This is two months of time in which my client cannot credibly represent to the media, to volunteers, to contributors that she is going to be on the ballot," Wood said.
We've been over this before, and I'll repeat myself at the end because hey, that's what I do in these dragged-out stories. What's interesting is some of the testimony given:
Deputy Attorney General Edward Burbach said a complete count is necessary because Friedman also is collecting signatures and no one knows whether four other declared independent gubernatorial candidates are circulating petitions.If someone signs petitions for multiple independent candidates, the signature counts only for the first campaign to capture it. Burbach said the Strayhorn campaign dismisses Friedman as the "Keep Austin Weird crowd," but there may be many duplicate signatures on the two candidates' petitions.
"What the plaintiffs (Strayhorn) are asking you to do is ignore accurate review. What they want is speed," Burbach told Yeakel.
"The duplicate signatures are a major concern to the Strayhorn campaign."
Wood said Strayhorn has no reason to believe there will be many duplicates.
"My client is not soliciting signatures in bars and dance halls, and Mr. Friedman is not soliciting signatures among teachers or around schools," Wood said.
Oh, really?
"It's proven to be more difficult than I thought it was going to be," said Staci Engman, a substitute teacher leading signature gathering in El Paso for independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman.[...]
For now, Engman said, local Friedman volunteers are relying mostly on family, friends, coworkers and neighbors for signatures.
So that's a substitute teacher asking coworkers for signatures. Wonder where she might be doing that?
For once, I agree with Kinky Friedman:
Friedman, who did not join the lawsuit, later jumped on the comment as an insult."Whether the signature comes from a country club or a homeless shelter makes no difference whatsoever," he said.
"Every Texan counts the same."
That's exactly right, and shame on Buck Wood for insinuating otherwise. Wherever Deputy AG Burbach got that "Keep Austin Weird crowd" crack from, shame on that person, too.
Friedman declined to release the number of signatures he has collected."We'll be on the ballot," he said. "I would bet both of us will be on the ballot."
I note that while Strayhorn is trumpeting the number of sigs her campaign has at the top of her most formidable lungs, Friedman is being uncharacteristically coy. Make of that what you will.
Burbach said Strayhorn press spokesman Mark Sanders said in depositions that he is frustrated that the news media will not pay attention to Strayhorn on issues until she is certified for the ballot."This frustration of a lack of free media does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation," Burbach said.
Boy howdy if it did, the line of local candidates with grounds to sue a certain major daily would stretch from here to Oklahoma.
[Judge Lee] Yeakel took the case under advisement and promised a quick ruling."I find this case somewhat more difficult than either side thinks," Yeakel said.
Well, I don't. I'll say it again: Order Williams to start collecting signatures now, then let him verify them in whatever manner he deems appropriate. And make it snappy, because May 11 is fast approaching.
This is what people mean when they say "Don't count your chickens before they hatch".
HB3, Gov. Perry's proposed business tax expansion, was derailed, at least temporarily, today when Sen. Mike Jackson, R-Pasadena, voted against the procedural two-thirds "rule" on third reading. Jackson voted for the procedural rule on Monday, when senators tentatively approved the measure, before switching his vote today.Although not necessarily fatal, the setback does slow progress on the bill and forces Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to regroup and twist some more arms.
The suspension vote was 20-11, one short of the necessary two-thirds. Senate approval would have sent the bill to the governor for signature.
HB3 was approved by the Senate without any changes to the House version, which is why it was on a fast track to the Governor's desk. So much for that, though for how long is anyone's guess.
After voting against consideration of the business tax plan, Jackson was escorted to the governor's office by Perry's deputy legislative director, Victoria Ford.Perry, presumably, will twist Jackson's arm far enough so that the senator will relent and change his vote. If he does, a final vote on the business reform bill could happen later today.
No screams could be heard during Perry's meeting with Jackson.
Ah, to be a fly on the wall. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Here's an AP wire story on the snag. There could be a vote later today, so this could change at any time. And be sure to read the comments for an interesting rumor about Sen. Jackson's motivations.
UPDATE: And the hurdle is cleared.
Amid the backslapping of the Senate's passage of the three HBs yesterday comes this little tempest in a teapot, by way of Cap Inside:
Fireworks could be about to erupt in the Texas Senate over a freeze on new math textbook purchases for elementary students that's being proposed in a property tax relief bill that's been expanded to include public school reforms as well. The Senate is planning to debate spending on textbooks, teacher pay, incentive programs and other education needs this week when it takes up legislation that's been substituted for House Bill 1.The Senate substitute by Republican State Senator Florence Shapiro of Plano would trim 17 cents off the current property tax rate as proposed by the House while earmarking an additional $1.5 billion for public education expenses as well. The revamped measure would save money that could be used for a $2,000 annual across the board pay raise for teachers and other initatives by instructing the State Board of Education not to buy new math textbooks for use by students in elementary schools across the state.
While teacher groups are protesting the Senate's proposed salary increase for them as inadequate, the proposed cutback on elementary school textbooks has math teachers in Texas up in arms. "It is unbelievable that the Senate would consider denying our students new elementary mathematics books that are aligned with the TAKS test," said Jim Wohlgehagen, the president of the Texas Association of Supervisors of Mathematics.
Wohlgehagen said students can't be expected to pass tests on material that's not covered in school textbooks that are outdated. Despite "herculean" efforts by math teachers attempting to prepare fifth graders for the TAKS test, Wohlgehagen said that some Texas students will be held back from middle school because they flunk the math portion of the standardized test.
"Texas simply cannot afford to fall further behind in mathematics proficiency," Wohlgehagen argued. "The issue is simple. Are lawmakers for or against up-dated math textbooks?”
The proposed moratorium on math textbooks comes just two months after Wohlgehagen's group launched a campaign aimed at encouraging lawmakers to back funding for new mathematics instructional materials. Legislators cut back on textbook funding when facing a record state deficit three years ago - and they did not fully restore textbooks funds when the state's fiscal condition had improved by 2005.
How can you decree that kids have to pass a specific test to advance in school, then not provide the materials needed to pass that test? Am I missing something here?
Note again the issue of cuts made in 2003 when the watchword was "deficits" that have not been restored now that we've got a surplus. This is what the Democrats have been fighting for, and it's why they're so vociferous about the restrictions on the business tax set forth in HB2.
The State Senate approved their versions of HBs 2, 3, and 4 yesterday, with HB3 passing through as is. Here's a news roundup of the action:
The Senate made no changes to the business tax bill passed last week by the House. Final passage of House Bill 3, expected today, would send the bill to Perry, a step toward ending a longstanding feud marked by four failed efforts to overhaul the state's tax system in the past two years."I think the Senate and House are aligned to go ahead and have a successful session," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.
The Senate also tentatively approved two other bills that are a part of Perry's tax plan. House Bill 4 would collect more sales tax from used vehicle sales by requiring cars and trucks to be taxed at 80 percent of blue book value. House Bill 2 dedicates most of the new revenue from the tax bills to lowering property taxes.
[...]
The Senate sponsor, Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, shepherded the business tax bill through the Senate without any changes. That prevents the bill from having to go back to the House and lessens the chances that opponents could kill it, Ogden said.
"If we pass this bill, members, it will be historic. It will permit us to cut property taxes by the greatest amount in our history," said Ogden, R-Bryan.
The vote was 18-13, with two Democrats joining 16 Republicans in supporting the bill. Two Harris County Republicans, Sens. Mike Jackson and Kyle Janek, cast needed votes to bring the business tax up for floor debate, but voted against it in the end.
"I didn't want to be an impediment to a tax cut bill coming to the floor of the Senate," said Janek. But he said he'd rather see the cut paid for with higher sales taxes instead of a new business tax.
[...]
Perry on Monday endorsed the $2,000 teacher pay raise agreed to by Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick. A bill containing the raise is expected to be considered by the Senate Finance Committee today.
The Senate voted 21-10 for HB 2, which dedicates revenue from the business tax and other new taxes to property tax relief. The bill was different from the version passed last week by the House, which dedicates all the tax revenue to lowering property taxes.
Upon final passage, expected today, the bill will go back to the House, which can agree with the changes or ask that a conference committee be appointed.
Under the Senate version all new tax revenue would go to lowering the basic school tax rate from $1.50 per $100 valuation to $1.
After that, two-thirds would go to continued lowering of property taxes and one-third to new public school spending.
When the school tax rate drops to 75 cents, any revenue beyond what it takes to make up for lost property taxes would be dedicated to education.
Couple of points to make here. One, as the Statesman article notes, the Senate version of HB4 also differed from the House version, so it too would need to go through a joint committee before it can be passed. I've looked everywhere and I can't see any reporting on what in particular the differences are between the two HB4s, however. The main point of contention will be the Senate's allowance of business tax revenues to go to school funding once school taxes reach a certain point:
Craddick said some House members were concerned about the Senate changes in how revenue was dedicated. "They want it all to go to property tax relief because that's what they said they were going to do, and the other way makes it a tax increase. You don't have a total swap," he said.
My gut feeling is that we've come this far, I'm not so sure anyone who's already voted for these bills wants now to become the one who kills them. I could be wrong, that's just my feeling.
There's another bone of contention, which Capitol Inside notes:
One issue with the potential to knock the special session off track is the question of whether to make local enrichment subject to the recapture provision that shifts funds from rich districts to counterparts with less taxable values on which to base property tax rates. The amount of local enrichment funds that school districts would be able to generate above and beyond the state-imposed cap on maintenace and operations taxes is also a potential deal-killer in the fourth special session on school finance in the past two years. How legislators will structure a proposed pay raise for teachers and other public school employees is also a question that could undermine the push for Perry's tax package. The question of whether any new money should be spent on public schools in a special session devoted initially to property tax relief and finding a way to meet a Supreme Court order also has the potential to sink the remaining parts of a five-piece package that cleared the House last week.
Another thing to note is the vote to bring these bills to the floor, which was 21-10 in each case. Democrats Frank Madla and Ken Armbrister, both of whom are in their final months in Austin, voted with the Republicans all three times. Once again, now you know why there was such joy at Madla's primary loss to Carlos Uresti, and why no one shed any tears over Armbrister's retirement announcement even as that seat gets flipped. The ten Democrats who voted as a bloc released a statement expressing their disgreement with putting property tax cuts ahead of school funding.
Elsewhere, there's optimism expressed in the DMN.
The plan is taking some light shelling in the Senate, but most don't think any of the shots will be fatal. One of the parts that's always been toughest, the business tax, tentatively passed the Senate unchanged Monday and could be on its way to the governor as soon as today."With a few changes, I think all these bills will probably pass," said Senate Education Committee chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.
The main difference between this session and other engagements has been that the Texas Supreme Court ordered the Legislature to come up with a new way to finance schools by June 1. The current system has most property taxes bumping up against a legislatively set cap, and the state constitution forbids a statewide property tax.
"The Supreme Court has given us a deadline," Ms. Shapiro said.
Another major factor is that the state has an $8 billion surplus. "The little room you have in there might just get you over the hump," she said.
This is tempered somewhat in the Express News.
While this special session has moved quickly compared with previous efforts at school funding reform, Dewhurst noted, "I thought we were close last year several times. I'm a little bit reluctant to declare an immediate victory. I don't know when we'll be able to get all of this legislation passed, but I'm very optimistic."
Hard to argue with that.
Finally, Aaron Pena notes Governor Perry's newly-expressed support for a teacher pay raise, and lists all of the bills that have been filed (including one of his own) to make that happen.
Via the Quorum Report, here's something that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere:
Analyst Dick Lavine of the Center for Public Policy Priorities warns dedicating the combined revenues of House Bills 3,4 and 5 only to property tax relief could seriously hamper any additional spending on state services in any supplemental appropriations bill going into the next session.The Texas Constitution caps state tax revenues that are not constitutionally dedicated, pegging that cap to the growth of the state's economy. Those taxes cannot grow any faster than the Legislative Budget Board’s estimate of biannual growth, which is 11.34 percent this biennium. That means, based on a base budget of $50 billion, the state cannot spend any more than $3.6 billion in tax revenues. Combined with non-tax revenues, it puts a cap of $3.9 billion on the current session, Lavine says.
In essence, the state is swapping tax revenues, but the Constitution reads it as new tax spending. Lavine says it only makes sense that the cap be adjusted to recognize the expanded role of state government in the funding of education, accomplished by replacing school property taxes with state tax revenue.
Today, Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) noted that the combination of property tax relief and new educational spending would put the state just $26 million short of the cap. Under House Bill 2, the Legislature also has proposed legislation that dedicates all new revenue to property tax relief, without regard to other state services, Lavine said.
“This squeeze can be avoided only by resetting the spending cap to take into account the significant shift in school funding from local property taxes to state taxes, and by avoiding giving property-tax reduction top priority in all future budgets,” Lavine writes.
Lavine's full analysis is here. Maybe this will turn out to be moot, if nothing more is done with this session after the tax bills are all passed (as it looks like they will be; more on that later), and maybe it won't. Read and judge for yourself.
I was at my desk all day yesterday, including for lunch, so I didn't see any of the immigration rallies that took place. The Chron tells about how some businesses were affected.
Businesses from downtown to North Houston closed to avoid operating with skeleton crews. The worker shortage also forced some restaurant owners to don aprons and cook.In Houston-area schools, many desks sat empty as students skipped class and attended rallies. Traffic also seemed lighter to some commuters, and taco trucks were scarce on the Bayou City's streets.
"It's like a Christmas holiday," said Bruce Olive, co-owner of the Texas Commissary near North Wayside Drive, where 40 drivers park their taco trucks every night. "Nobody went out."
But the Houston economy didn't come to a standstill, and many employers reported business as usual.
[...]
Ziggy Gruber, co-owner of Kenny & Ziggy's Delicatessen on Post Oak Boulevard, found himself in the kitchen making sandwiches Monday.
Management pitched in, working a double shift Monday to help produce a limited menu of sandwiches and soups for diners, Gruber said.
Some of the dining space was closed off because of the smaller staff. And paper plates and plastic ware were used to cut down on dishwashing duties, Gruber said.
He said he supported his immigrant workers' rights to protest and knew in advance at least a handful would attend the rallies.
"Everybody deserves the same opportunity," said Gruber, whose grandfather hailed from Hungary.
As many businesses scrambled to fill shifts, at the three Cheesecake Factory restaurants and the Grand Lux Cafe, dishwashers, cooks and busboys received a $100 bonus to keep restaurants running Monday.
Anyone have a story to tell? Leave it in the comments if you do. Meantime, South Texas Chisme has a news roundup and Dos Centavos has a blog roundup. Aaron Pena has pictures from Austin, while Daily Kos has news and pictures from Denver, New York, and Chicago.
Two more counties to add to those who'll be using emergency paper ballots due to software vendor ES&S's inability to deliver the goods on time: Webb and Williamson. There really needs to be more of an outcry about this. Let's just hope nothing gets too badly screwed up as a result.
We're at a bit of an intermission in the special session (just past it now, actually), what with the House waiting on the Senate and the Senate getting started on its business. That makes this a good time to review what's gone on so far. Let's have a look.
The Texas Observer, hardly a shill for the bidness lobby, says that the TTRC tax plan may not be great, but it could have been much worse.
The Sharp commission's plan eschews any increase in the general sales tax. Sales taxes, which hit lower-income people harder than the wealthy, were ardently pushed by GOP legislators during last summer's two failed special sessions. A 1 percent increase to Texas' already high 6.25 percent sales tax would make it the highest sales tax in the nation. (Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Tennessee now hold the lead with 7 percent rates.)Even the progressive-minded Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP) puts in a good word for the Sharp commission. Although critical of several features of the commission’s final product, the progressive Austin-based think tank nonetheless hails the task force’s efforts. It "may have designed the best new tax proposed to date," CPPP declared in a statement. "[A]s a basis for legislation," the organization adds, the report is a document "that Texans can applaud."
Yet, charged as it was by Gov. Rick Perry to produce a tax scheme that was both "revenue neutral" and lacking a personal income tax, the Sharp commission's plan was destined from the outset to be cramped. Despite his status as a Democrat, Sharp has not won many party members to his cause, says Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat who cites a number of misgivings about the plan. Among them, it fails to provide new money for Texas' under-financed schools and underpaid teachers.
You can see here the basics of the arguments made in favor of HB3 by Reps. Mike Villarreal and Donna Howard, and those against by Reps. Rick Noriega and Garnet Coleman, whose recent op-ed I'm going to quote from:
The House plan took $2.3 billion from a short-term state surplus to pay for property tax cuts this year, and official estimates indicate the plan could drill a $10 billion to $11 billion hole in the state budget over the next five years. Ironically, the same leaders who support this plan have warned there really is no surplus given unmet state budget needs that don't even include restoring $3 billion cut in 2003 from teacher health insurance and proven educational improvement programs.The Texas school population grows by 70,000 kids a year. Texas teacher pay is $6,000 below the national average and a new study warns that almost half of Texas teachers are considering leaving the profession when we already have a severe teacher shortage. The price of gas is crippling school transportation budgets. This year, the Houston Independent School District will pay $7.5 million more for electricity, $5 million more for health insurance and $2.5 million more for property insurance coverage - the same list of expenses we all face.
We all want a tax system that closes loopholes to make everyone pay their fair share, but those tax dollars could be used both to benefit our schools and provide property tax relief. Instead, by cooking up a witch's brew that falls billions short of a being balanced tax swap, the leadership's budget policies could endanger both education funding and other critical state needs like health care, higher education and public safety.
That's how this battle will be fought in the fall, between those who say "We cut your property taxes!" and those who say "They didn't provide a dime for the schools!" (See here for an example.) Since both statements are true, it'll be a question of priorities for the voters. And yes, I know, there's also the Disgruntled Conservatives who are Upset Because They Instituted A New Tax, and who are Threatening To Stay Home In November. I'll believe that when I see it, and I say that as someone who really really wants to see it.
Finally, here's another Observer article on The Tax That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Everybody talks about the Bullock Amendment, but did you know this?
Bullock's amendment requires that two-thirds of all the revenue raised through an income tax go toward cutting property taxes. The other third must fund public schools. That's in the constitution. So legislators couldn't raid income-tax revenue for any other spending goodies unless they first amended the constitution (that ain't gonna happen). Lawmakers couldn't just hike the income-tax rate willy-nilly, either. Bullock's amendment specifies that once implemented, a state income tax can't be increased unless voters approve a rate hike at the polls. It would be the only tax over which the public had control. (In fact, a 2003 Scripps-Howard poll found that when respondents were told of those constitutional requirements, 52 percent said they would support a state income tax.)A state income tax would be a cash cow. In 2004, Lavine and researchers from a Washington, D.C., think tank took the Kansas income tax formula and applied it to Texas. (Kansas is a nice example because it's around the national average on most measures of revenue and spending.) The Kansas system levies a 3.5 percent tax on people who make up to $15,000 a year, 6.25 percent on $15,000 to $30,000, and 6.45 percent on income more than $30,000. In Texas, that would bring in at least $18 billion annually for the state. That means two-thirds (or $12 billion) would go toward property tax cuts - enough to reduce your property tax bill by more than 66 percent (twice the reduction provided by the governor's current plan). The remaining $6 billion raised by the state income tax would go to additional funding for public schools - enough to cover teacher pay raises, new textbooks, facility improvements, English as a Second Language courses, you name it.
Who would pay for all that? Mostly, families with higher incomes. According to CPPP, if we instituted the Kansas system to cut property taxes, 60 percent of Texas households would receive a net tax cut. The poorest 20 percent of households would realize a reduction in their state taxes of more than 6 percent. A family that earns $50,000 a year and that owns a house would pay roughly 1-2 percent less in state taxes. Only the richest 20 percent of families (those earning about $100,000 or more) would see their overall state taxes increase, but by a mere 2 percent. Because their incomes are so high, that slight increase would generate a lot of new money for the state.
So there it is: An income tax such as Kansas' would provide $6 billion in new funding to educate our kids, and in exchange, most Texans would receive a tax cut.
The linked graph measures against percent of income, so it's a little misleading at first. Without knowing what the values on those quintiles are, you can't really judge how much this will hit you personally. I'd expect to do a little worse, but in the long term, who knows? The beauty of this approach is that your tax won't rise any faster than your income, which should address this objection to property taxes.
It's all academic, of course, at least this time around. Thanks to Greg for the Coleman link.
If you hear any alarm bells tomorrow, you can ignore them. That's just the statewide hurricane evacuation drill going on.
The three-day drill - being staged statewide for the first time - will test the evacuation response in the first 72 hours before landfall of the worst-case scenario - a Category 5 hurricane.Numerous improvements are being incorporated into the evacuation plan, including:
- Establishing contraflow lanes more quickly, using shoulder lanes for the first time and preventing Houston-Galveston evacuees from using U.S. 59 north.
- Using the private sector to distribute gas and food.
- Opening shelters as far away as El Paso and Lubbock.
- Providing more efficient assistance to the sick and elderly.
No extra vehicles will be used to clog the freeways to simulate the evacuation exercise.But emergency responders will make the experience realistic by loading equipment, communicating by radio, marshaling forces and setting up shelters.
It's not clear to me how much of this is actually being tested - I mean, I kind of doubt that any contraflow lanes will be opened tomorrow. Still, I expect there will be some useful information gleaned from this test. I look forward to hearing more about it.
One thing I don't understand:
The Texas Department of Transportation is prepared to test its new contraflow plan. Transportation employees will position themselves to implement contraflow lanes during the exercise but will not disrupt traffic.Possible contraflow lanes in the area include sections of Interstate 10, Interstate 45, U.S. 290, U.S. 59 and U.S. 69.
However, Janelle Gbur, Texas Department of Transportation spokeswoman, stressed the use of U.S. 59 as an evacuation route is strongly discouraged for those from the Houston and Galveston area.
In fact, plans call for the exit onto U.S. 59 from Interstate 10 to be blocked, because U.S. 59 already could be filled from evacuees coming from east of Harris County, she explained.
I don't get this at all. Do we think that taking US59 out of the mix leaves enough traffic lanes to handle all the cars evacuating Harris County in the event of another Rita? What road are all of the Harris County people east of 59 supposed to take? And I can only presume Gbur means "evacuees coming from North and East of Harris County" because on my map, 59 heads mostly west once it passes I-10. Does this mean she's worried about the people north of Kingwood? Someone please help me out here, because this is not making sense to me.
In March, Carole Keeton Strayhorn filed a lawsuit against Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams to force him to start counting and verifying ballot petition signatures as they came in and not all at once beginning on May 11, which is the deadline for collection. Today that lawsuit will be heard in court.
Strayhorn's lawsuit primarily is intended to force Williams to speed the process of certifying independent candidate petitions.She and [Kinky] Friedman say they should be allowed to submit petitions for signature verification as they come in.
Williams says the law requires that they all be submitted at once on or before the May 11 deadline.
He has said it could take up to two months after the deadline to certify whether either Strayhorn or Friedman will be on the November ballot.
[...]
Williams said that in the past it has taken two months to count and verify petition signatures. He said he hopes to do it more quickly this time, but he is putting perfection ahead of speed.
"I'd rather get something 100 percent right than 90 percent right," Williams said.
Interestingly, Williams tells a slightly different tale to the DMN, which points out that precedent is not necessarily on the SOS' side.
Mr. Williams' predecessors have used statistical sampling to certify candidates for the ballot. Democrat John Hannah used sampling for Kay Bailey Hutchison in her 1993 Senate race, and Republican Tony Garza followed the same procedure to certify Ross Perot for the 1996 presidential ballot.But Mr. Williams said this year's race is different because there might be two or more independent candidates on the ballot, in addition to Mr. Perry and Democrat Chris Bell.
Under state law, voters can't sign petitions if they've voted in the primary. If a voter signed more than one petition, the one signed first counts.
Faced with that prospect, Mr. Williams said, his office has created a computer program with the names of all registered voters who did not vote in the primary or runoff elections. That list will be compared with an electronic database of the collected signatures.
A private firm, Tela Technologies of Houston, has been hired to enter the names from the petitions into a computer database. It has four weeks to complete the task.
"Once we get that back, it shouldn't take long," Mr. Williams said. "Say, 48 hours."
As I said before, I don't actually have a problem with entering and checking every signature. What I still don't understand is why Williams insists on waiting till May 11 to get started with the data entry, even if he thinks the whole process will take only four weeks plus 48 hours instead of two months. I can't think of any valid reason why the law would mandate the delay. Given everything else about Roger Williams - his fundraising for Rick Perry, his ambitions to run for office, his role in the bogus letter to taxpayers thing - it's pretty hard to see this as anything other than carrying water for the Governor.Of course, given that today is already May 1, and that it will be at least another day or two before any injunction might get issued, the point is becoming moot. Strayhorn may have to settle for generating a precedent for the independents who follow her. Sorry, Carole.
Posted by Charles Kuffner
Here's the latest from Kuff's World, on the race in HD134 between State Rep. Martha Wong and Democratic challenger Ellen Cohen. Also, here's a post on the latest Congressional blogger, Rep. Silvestre Reyes of El Paso. Check 'em out.
David Crossley and Christof Spieler have a good editorial in Sunday's paper about the goals and purposes of a good urban transit system. One point that they make that I think deserves a higher profile:
Although the purpose of the new urban rail and bus lines is to provide an urban framework, it will have a profound positive effect on existing suburban commuter transit service. Once urban activity centers are connected to each other, suburban commuters who now use the park-and-ride service will suddenly find they can get to places by transit that they couldn't get to before.A rider coming in from the Katy area can now go to the Northwest Transit center, at I-10 and 610 west, or downtown. But he or she can't get express service to the Medical Center or even the nearby Galleria or Greenway Plaza. The Uptown and University lines will make that possible.
Those new connections to many places, including Greenway Plaza, downtown, Midtown, Galleria, Medical Center, four universities, the Museum District, the zoo and Hermann Park, Reliant Center, Montrose and many smaller centers will produce a new flurry of suburban transit commuters who suddenly are empowered to go far and wide without using their cars. That's important because four in five trips are not home-to-work, and many suburban commuters must leave the office for errands or business during or after work. If rail allows them to do that, they are more likely to use the commuter system.
The suburban commuter transit that people are talking about already exists, and it is among the best suburban commuter networks in the United States for getting downtown. What we need to do is to connect it to the rest of the centers, as many as possible. What we need is high-quality urban transit.
We have done and are doing a good job in Houston of making sure that people can get into and out of the city. Moving around once you get here is becoming more and more of a problem. Putting the focus on letting people do what they need to do without having to get in their cars - even those who used their cars to get here in the first place - is exactly the right idea.
Another damning article on the lousy, screwed-up state of affairs in the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC) since the privatization effort began.
Problems include:
- State officials on Friday abandoned plans to drop 28,000 more children from the Children's Health Insurance Program, admitting they'd put in place unfair bureaucratic burdens that need revamping.
- A state computer designed for one-stop shopping when checking eligibility for multiple programs is seven years in the making but remains incompatible with the private contractors' systems.
- The federal government's independent checks and the state's official records have shown high rates of abandoned calls and long hold times as the initial call center in Midland started up.
- Clients, their advocates and state lawmakers say they've documented instances of no response to applications submitted, call center operators unable to locate submitted applications, notices of missing information when the requested information was not needed and incorrect denials or delays of benefits.
- State officials acknowledge problems with staffing shortages and loss of expertise in state eligibility offices and too few and inadequately trained staff at a privately run call center.
"This process we're going through is historic. No other state has tried this," Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Gail Randall said. "The rest of the country is looking at us. It should rise or fall on its own strength or weakness. The state could either successfully end up with a good, cutting-edge service model or it doesn't work. We're going to find out. It's a tough thing."The commission has estimated that over five years Texas could save $646 million in state and federal funds by relying more on the Internet and call centers for screening applicants for social services.
So far, because of repeated delays in rolling out the program, the plan has yet to save the state a penny.
Given the inevitable transition expenses in such a project, I'd say it's a cinch that the plan has been a net money loser for the state so far.
Liberal Democrats have long opposed the project, some of them fearing a nefarious hidden agenda to knock the poor and disabled out of social services.And, as tough questions in legislative hearings and letters to Hawkins make clear, conservative Republicans are growing increasingly worried and skeptical about the economic implications of the state's $899 million, five-year privatization plan as well.
"I don't think anybody, regardless of party affiliation, wants to spend money on something that doesn't work," said Mary Katherine Stout, a health policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates for limited government.
"The important thing in all of this is how expeditiously you act to solve the problems. The problems are serious," she said.
I'm glad to hear she thinks that. I just hope she feels that it's worth spending the money that will be needed to fix the problems. For better or worse, we're not going back to how it was before, so the only option is doing whatever it takes to get the new system running as efficiently and effectively as the original. In the meantime, every screwup, every lost application, every improperly denied set of benefits represents real pain for real people, many of whom are children. Whatever financial savings we hope to eventually get from this new system is going to have to make up for that.
(And bear in mind, there really wasn't anything wrong with the original system. It was replaced on faith, nothing more than that. Some day, all of the experience and accumulated knowledge can be replaced, but I have serious doubts that the replacement will be a genuine improvement.)
More on the recent actions by THHSC here, here, here, and here. Thanks to The Muse for the links.