Is Ted Cruz ever going to feel some pressure about abortion?

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

News item #1:

Whatever happens in Arizona in November, we got a preview of the difficulty Republican candidates will have in states where high-stakes ballot initiatives literally put abortion on the ballot. Shortly after Arizona’s high court ruled that the state must go back to the 1864 abortion law which forbids virtually every abortion, Kari Lake, probable GOP Senate nominee (and governor over the water) released a remarkable statement. She first denounced the 1864 law, which she said she supported as recently as last fall. She said she opposed today’s ruling. She then demanded Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Republican state legislature “come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.” She then said that the decision will be up to voters in the ballot initiative that will be on the November ballot — that is, the initiative she actually opposes.

So let’s review. Lake opposes the law she had consistently said she supported. She denounces the court decision which ruled that the old law is in effect. She thinks the decision should be left to the states. She also opposes abortion. Also, Arizona is a state.

She also wants Governor Hobbs to solve the situation. Which would presumably mean making abortion legal. Even though Lake opposes abortion.

News item #2:

Just two weeks after the Florida Supreme Court upheld a 15-week abortion ban and cleared the way for a six-week one to take effect, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is publicly attempting to soften his stance on abortion.

Even before the Florida Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, which focused on the six-week ban, but also allowed abortion and marijuana citizen initiatives to appear on the ballot in November, Democrats have painted Florida as their best bet, albeit by a long shot, for Senate pickup in 2024. With a new six-week ban fresh on voters minds as they head to the polls, Democrats are increasingly hopeful that the ballot initiative will juice turnout and help make Florida winnable for Democrats again after Donald Trump won the state by 3.4 percent in 2020.

After the Florida rulings and a poorly-timed (for Trump) Arizona ruling — which put a near-total abortion ban from the 19th century back on the books in the state — Trump bluntly told reporters that he would not sign a national ban into law if he wins the election. That’s just days after he made a big, long anticipated, non-announcement on his abortion positioning: that the issue is best left to the states.

Now Scott is clearly feeling some heat as he campaigns for reelection in the fall. The Florida senator told The Hill in an interview published Monday that he would support replacing Florida’s six-week ban with a 15-week ban, which is quite a walk back for the “pro-life” Republican who, at the time of its passage, said he would’ve signed the six-week ban into law if he were governor, too.

“So if I was writing a bill, I’d think that 15 weeks with the limitations is where the state’s at,” he told The Hill. “I think it’s important we do what there’s consensus (for).”

“If I was writing a bill, I think 15 weeks is where the state is,” he continued. He also pulled out the old, tired, baseless accusation that Democrats want to “allow abortion up until the moment of birth” in defense of his softening stance.

“I’ve been pro-life, and I think we need to continue to the importance of being pro-life and I think the other thing is we ought to be very clear that Democrats are barbaric. They want — they’ve already voted to allow abortion up until the moment of birth,” he said.

I bring these up to say that abortion and having the right to an abortion suddenly yanked away is a huge issue in the 2024 election, and yet I see little evidence of this right now in Texas. I’m trying to understand that.

There are important reasons why there’s such a focus on Arizona and Florida – a newly bluish swing state along with the center of US political gravity since at least 2000, the sudden change in status for abortion brought about partly by wingnut legislatures and partly by wingnut Supreme Courts, the presence of abortion rights referenda on the November ballot, and of course the Senate races, where Democratic wins would vastly improve things from that perspective. I think the sudden change in status plus the referenda are the big reasons, and that combination forced the Republican Senate candidates to respond.

Things are a little different in Texas, where abortion has basically been outlawed since 2021 and we don’t have a referendum process. It’s neither as immediate here nor as hands-on. While Democrats can hope to alter the makeup of our Supreme Court, there’s no majority at stake, and nothing short of flipping the State House is likely to alter the course of the 2025 legislative session, though only in a “not make things measurably worse” sense. The odds of that are quite long, and it’s another thing no one is talking about.

That said, it’s not like there haven’t been enormous, consequential abortion stories out of our state in recent months. There’s Kate Cox and Amanda Zurawski and her co-plaintiffs. The mifepristone case originated here. The EMTALA case didn’t originate here, but EMTALA was overridden here by the same combination of an extreme zealot judge hand-picked by the litigants and a handmaidenesque Fifth Circuit that lives to serve for these situations. We’re in this mess in large part because of Texas. It just doesn’t get talked about in those terms.

Obviously, the main person who should be talking about this is the one with the biggest megaphone and the most to gain from it, and that’s Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred. And to be fair, Allred is talking about abortion. That it’s not getting the same level of media attention is not something he can control. I’m writing this post in part because that part of the equation is driving me crazy. What do we have to do to get some attention on this?

Well, for one, I think having more Democratic candidates and officeholders also talk about this would be helpful. Having it come up in damn near every conversation would be helpful. Pestering the allies we have in the national media about this would be helpful. Just having someone directly ask Ted Cruz about mifepristone, EMTALA, the fact that women have to flee the state to save their lives, that would all be helpful. Believe me, if there were a magic wand I could wave, I’d wave it.

Maybe the weight of this issue will eventually make a difference. Maybe nothing will, and the campaign will continue on with a primary media focus on other things, other places, other people. I don’t know. But if I have one goal for right now, it’s for what I asked in the title of this post. Will Ted Cruz ever feel the need to say something “moderate” about abortion? It would be a pretty big damn deal if he did. That he hasn’t so far feels like a big missing piece of the puzzle. And it will keep making me crazy as long as it happens.

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Uplift Harris can proceed

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

So says a judge.

A district judge on Thursday ruled Harris County’s new guaranteed income program can proceed, denying the Texas Attorney General’s office request for a temporary injunction. The state sued Harris County earlier this month, arguing the initiative to provide financial assistance to low-income residents violated a Texas statute prohibiting gifts of public funds.

Harris County Commissioners Court approved the plan last June to send $500 monthly payments to around 1,900 low-income households over the course of 18 months. The $20.5 million Uplift Harris program is funded by federal pandemic recovery dollars.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis called the ruling a “victory for families struggling to make ends meet,” while also acknowledging the legal battle likely isn’t over.

“We stand ready to take our fight all the way to the Texas Supreme Court to protect Uplift Harris,” Ellis said in a statement.

[…]

Paxton’s office on Thursday argued Uplift Harris violated the Texas Constitution because it doesn’t serve a public purpose, the participants are randomly selected and there are insufficient controls in place to restrict how recipients use the money.

An attorney with Paxton’s office said the funding would serve no public benefit if a recipient spent the money on a trip to Las Vegas.

“If the community member won and brought all the money back, that could be a benefit,” Judge Ursula Hall wryly noted.

The Harris County Attorney’s Office defended the program, arguing the public purpose is supporting low-income residents, and the lottery selection method is a common tool widely used by public programs, including some operated by the state.

The county also blasted Paxton’s office for filing the lawsuit after recipients had already been notified that they had been selected.

“Because the State has sat on its hands over 10 months despite much public discussion and even a request for an Attorney General opinion from Senator Paul Bettencourt, it cannot come into court on the eve of the program’s start and seek emergency relief,” the county argued in its response to the state’s request to put the program on hold.

[…]

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said Thursday it’s unclear whether Paxton’s office will challenge Austin’s efforts, as well.

“I think trying to assign some sort of logic or intellectual consistency to Ken Paxton’s actions is probably an act of madness,” Menefee said.

However, Menefee said he did feel certain about why Harris County had been targeted.

“One is so they can mention Lina Hidalgo’s name 100 times and hopefully get some media off of her,” Menefee said. “And two is because the participants in our program are low-income Black and brown folks, and I think history has shown that state officials aren’t too favorable to those types of people.”

See here and here for the background. I’m glad my initial pessimism turned out to be unwarranted. Paxton could appeal, but unlike situations where he’s challenging a restraining order against a state law, he won’t be able to stop Uplift Harris by doing so. He got his political moment as Christian Menefee noted, so maybe that’s enough. We’ll see. The Houston Landing has more.

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SD15 rounds two and three

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

If it weren’t for the HCAD elections on May 4, the SD15 special election would be the headliner.

Molly Cook

Molly Cook and state Rep. Jarvis Johnson both say they take every election seriously, and that includes their head-to-head matchup on May 4. That’s when a group of Houston-area voters will turn out for a special election to decide which Democrat completes the 2024 term of new Houston Mayor John Whitmire, whose decades-long tenure in the Texas Senate ended when he was sworn into City Hall at the start of this year.

But both Cook and Johnson also have an eye on the election scheduled for May 28, which is the runoff date for the Democratic primary in Senate District 15. They were the two leading vote-getters in March, and the runoff winner will advance to November’s general election and be considered a heavy favorite to serve a full four-year term in the seat vacated by Whitmire.

“Being a senator for six months is not as appealing or as important as being the senator for the regular (legislative) session come January,” Johnson acknowledged.

The “Texas Two-Step,” as the candidates’ campaigns have called it, starts next Monday with the start of early voting for the special election. Some of the other Democratic candidates in the March primary initially filed for the special election as well but subsequently withdrew, setting up back-to-back battles between Cook and Johnson.

Rep. Jarvis Johnson

Johnson, a business owner and former Houston City Council member who has served since 2017 as the state representative for District 139 in Northwest Houston, led the six-candidate field in the March primary by receiving more than 36% of the vote. And the most recent campaign finance reports filed with the state show he has been the leading fund-raiser in the race and had about $75,000 in cash on hand as of early April.

Cook, an emergency room nurse, activist and grassroots organizer who is seeking to become the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Texas Senate, had about $40,000 remaining at the end of the last reporting period. She received almost 21% of the vote during the primary after previously garnering nearly 42% of the vote in her 2022 primary challenge against Whitmire.

Cook said she’s proud of the support she’s been able to secure and called it “extremely impressive” that she’s been able to fundraise about as well as Johnson, who received about $80,000 in campaign contributions during the last reporting period compared to about $73,000 for Cook.

“Each one of these races is a brand-new race,” she said. “We’re very excited.”

As with the HCAD elections, the candidates first have to make sure that people know there’s an election on May 4, for which early voting starts on Monday. I’ve been getting some mail from both candidates, more Molly than Jarvis, and it’s a little testy as two-candidate showdowns often are. I think SD15 will drive much of the HCAD turnout – there are other area elections, but as far as I can tell they’re all being run by those entities and not the Harris County Clerk, which means that people will have to vote twice, at two separate locations, so they’re unlikely to drive anyone to the polls for HCAD – but that’s not the same as saying that SD15 will drive overall turnout. It’s low profile and relatively low stakes, and we are just not used to voting in May in Harris County, at least outside of a primary runoff context.

As that story noted, there was a candidate forum for SD15 on Wednesday. The Chron covered it.

If Houstonians found recent political debates to be largely uneventful events, then they were in for a big surprise Wednesday night, when state Rep. Jarvis Johnson and emergency room nurse Molly Cook took to the stage. The two candidates, running to succeed Mayor John Whitmire in the Texas Senate, repeatedly clashed over their backgrounds and records ahead of back-to-back elections.

[…]

During a debate Wednesday evening, organized by the Bayou Blue Democrats, Johnson took aim at Cook for her lack of experience serving in elected office. Cook, striving to close a 15-percentage-point gap behind her opponent, in turn leveled sharp attacks against Johnson for the state representative’s voting and donation records.

The district has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold, encompassing several of Houston’s most prominent neighborhoods, such as Montrose and the Heights. The winning Democrat in the runoff will face local businessman Joseph Trahan, the sole Republican to enter the race for the seat, in November.

The story goes into more detail about the issues raised by the candidates in the debate. You can read the rest, and you can and should listen (or re-listen) to my interviews with Jarvis Johnson and Molly Cook, especially if you voted for someone else in March. I’ll have the usual early voting info post up on Sunday. Get out there and vote, for HCAD and for SD15.

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Dispatches from Dallas, April 19 edition

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: news about the upcoming election, including what we know and don’t know; the bond package here in Dallas; lots of shenanigans and high-handedness from the Fort Worth GOP; Dallas’ former mayor on his work with No Labels; a bunch of stories about big money in local and state politics and its connection to some unsavory bigotry; hey, we had an eclipse; and a zoo baby. And more!

As always when we have an election coming up, I’d like to remind you to vote. Need help? Check out the Texas Tribune guide.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of the Police, after we enjoyed the Police Deranged for Orchestra as part of Stewart Copeland’s SMU residency earlier this week. Apparently there’s an album of this music coming out later this year and probably a tour from Copeland, so keep an eye out if you love the Police.

Let’s start with election news: next week is the beginning of early voting for the May election. And let’s talk about Tarrant County, which as our host has noted, has already seen County Judge Tim O’Hare putting a thumb on the scale. You can find a full list of candidates for the three open positions in this article. The Star-Telegram has endorsements (one, two, three). The Star-Telegram didn’t endorse O’Hare’s preferred candidate in Place 2; in fact they note she didn’t respond to repeated requests for an interview. They didn’t endorse Chuck Kelley, the candidate O’Hare allegedly tried to force out, but said everyone in the Place 3 race could do the job even though they preferred another candidate (as it happens, the one O’Hare endorsed in Place 3). Last night the Fort Worth Report and the League of Women Voters held a debate, which dealt with both the missing Place 2 candidate (she didn’t show up there either), and with O’Hare’s potential election influence.

For what it’s worth, using the search our host suggested in his post about the lack of news about these elections, I found two articles about candidates in Dallas County: this piece mentioning an endorsement in a Dallas County race from Progress Texas and the same Y’allitics story Charles got. I got nothing from a search of the DMN. I did have a chance to go to a local Dem group’s meeting on Wednesday about the May election, but unfortunately had a prior commitment. I’m looking forward to hearing from the guy who runs the group because that’s my best prospect for hearing anything significant about the DCAD races. That said, we, like other Dallas homeowners, got our DCAD tax bill recently, and ouch. CultureMap and D Magazine have some thoughts on the rising property valuations.

The other big thing on the May ballot in the city of Dallas is our bond election. Axios has two good summaries (one and two) and the Dallas Observer has some things that were left out of the package. The discussion of housing recalls to my mind that Mayor Johnson has been pretty adamant over time that the city not be in the housing business. He doesn’t win often but he seems to have gotten the better of things in the bond package. Unsurprisingly, one of the items on the ballot includes funding for a new “Cop City” DPD training facility in South Dallas. Also unsurprisingly, the neighbors aren’t interested in having it nearby. Between this and the way state law will disfavor cities cutting funding to the police, I think my vote on the police section of this bond package is settled.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of little local elections in the suburbs and exurbs of the Metroplex, most of which are ably covered by the Fort Worth Report. One that has drawn my attention is Bedford’s mayoral election, which elicited two stories from the Star-Telegram: one about the candidates, including a guy who tried to get Trump to pardon “Joe Exotic” from the Tiger King story, and the other one about the wild story that guy is telling about the sale of a city property. Another exurban story is from Denton, where out of town developers are spending big on the election. Both of these stories draw on local anxiety about additional suburban and exurban development around Dallas and Fort Worth, which is also a big driver with a lot of the school board elections. The city, in whatever form, is coming for a lot of these places; they don’t want it; but if there’s money in it, what the residents want doesn’t matter that much.

In other news:

  • The Star-Telegram asked locals what issues were on their minds and came up with “the economy, taxes, health care, education and affordable housing”, adding “Immigration also came up, but not to the same degree as it does among politicians”. Apparently Tarrant GOP Chair Bo French thinks it’s the number one issue.
  • Speaking of Mr. French, he and the party are getting sued by an elected precinct chair whose election French refused to certify. French decided the guy was a Democrat so he refused to certify the election and is now calling for closed primaries here in Texas. So keep an eye out for that talking point.
  • On the related subject of election integrity, we now have news from Tim O’Hare’s pet project, the Tarrant County Election Integrity Unit about voting fraud in the March election: three voters, all over 70 years of age, each voted during early voting and again on Election Day. This was out of a vote total of more than 105,000. No word yet on whether the voters will be charged.
  • O’Hare also got into it this week with his fellow commissioners over a contract for communications with a conservative political marketer who has close ties to Don Huffines and worked on Ken Paxton’s re-election. The contract was passed on a party-line vote.
  • The Star-Telegram isn’t pleased with the high-handed way O’Hare handled the would’ve-been court reorganization we discussed recently. We’ve seen how O’Hare does business; shaking a finger isn’t going to change him. Tarrant County voters need to get rid of him and his majority of county commissioners.
  • Here are two items that are not directly related but say a lot about politics in the Metroplex. The Dallas Morning News has Local Texas GOP groups lay groundwork to restrict IVF, but the state party isn’t so sure and the Star-Telegram has an opinion piece Pro-lifers hitting Trump on abortion should see that saving babies means winning now by local talk radio host Mark Davis. I leave the connection as an exercise for you readers.
  • Former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was, unsurprisingly, in the middle of the No Labels search for a third-party candidate and he’d like to sell you on how they’ll find their candidate eventually. Talk to the man if you’re looking for a bridge.
  • On March 30 Kansas City Chiefs’ wide receiver Rashee Rice and an SMU player friend of his were racing down Central Expressway and crashed. Fortunately nobody was killed, but there were injuries. Rice and several friends fled the scene. The latest items in this ongoing story are about how the SMU player who was racing Rice has been suspended and the lawsuits filed against Rice by people injured in the wreck. Apparently the two vehicles were going just under 120 mph seconds before the crash; the speed limit on that section of Central is 70. This story rates a mention here because State Senator Royce West is Rice’s lawyer.
  • The other reason I brought it up is as a lead-in point to speculation that the mysterious Project X on a recent Dallas City Council agenda is actually an effort to move the Chiefs to Dallas, which is apparently on Mayor Johnson’s agenda. Kansas City refused to give the Chiefs a better stadium, as covered here by Talking Points Memo, so they’re threatening to bail. Given the politics of the NFL and its markets, I’m not sure Dallas is a viable destination for a team, but I’m sure a lot of locals will enjoy the fantasy.
  • Here’s an update on the November city charter election in Dallas from the DMN. Pretty sure that everybody else in town is feeling like me, which is “call me after the bond election and the runoffs”.
  • A lot of locals here in Dallas have complained that the new ForwardDallas land use plan is going to change the character of neighborhoods by allowing things like duplexes and triplexes. Sounds like we don’t need to worry about that because Dan Patrick and his cronies in the Lege are going to solve our zoning problems by tightening up zoning laws in Austin.
  • Also on Patrick’s plate: apparently someone he knows up in Grayson County is unhappy about a cement plant. So finally someone is going to do something about cement plant approvals. I have been hoping for someone to put a stop to approvals of cement plants in Dallas but I have to admit I didn’t expect it to be our Lite Guv!
  • Sounding the drum: here’s this month’s article about how Dallas’ police and fire pensions are underfunded.
  • Two stories whose connection is obvious to people whose politics or jobs don’t require them not to make the connection. One: More intense tornadoes hit this Texas metropolitan area in the past 20 years, study finds. Two: Texas and Oklahoma have the highest home insurance costs in the U.S..
  • Here’s another round of recent stories that are all connected if you’re paying attention:
  • My congresswoman, Beth Van Duyne, put a full-page in the New York Times to ask their cops to move to North Texas. I have no words for this one.
  • Mayor Johnson is pissed off about T.C. Broadnax outmaneuvering him to get out of his job as City Manager with his golden parachute. He’s floated the old “there oughta be a law” and we’ll see whether anyone in the Lege will actually act on that. Or maybe Mayor Johnson will put it in the next City Manager’s contract.
  • You may remember that a few months ago, a Dallas pastor took over as CEO of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition from Jesse Jackson. He resigned this week effective immediately. I’m not sure whether this is worth putting a pin in; I’m just noting it because I mentioned when he took the job back in February.
  • Earlier this week President Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan discussed the Houston-to-Dallas high speed rail line, prompting Amtrak to push on it as well. I’ve been waiting on this project in one form or another since I was in college; I think I’ll believe it when I see it and not until.
  • I talked earlier about the Dallas Express, which was a Black newspaper here in Dallas that closed in the 1970s. The Dallas Weekly is another Black newspaper that’s been operating since 1954. James Washington purchased the paper in 1989 and his family currently operates it. He died earlier this month at his home in Atlanta. His civic involvement here in Dallas, as listed in the DMN obituary, is quite impressive. I didn’t know about the Dallas Weekly until I read this story, but I’m adding it into my RSS feeds and will be looking at their articles for inclusion in my news here in the future.
  • D Magazine has a Q&A with author Megan Kimble who has a new book about Dallas Highways out. City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways went on my reading list immediately. Somewhat related, the Star-Telegram has photos of I-30 from its early days in the late 1950s to the late 1970s, when it was “freed” from tolls and was designated part of the interstate.
  • Dallas has a new Poet Laureate: Dr. Mag Gabbert. I didn’t know this was a thing but I’m glad to learn about it.
  • Right up there with messing with Texas is messing with the Rangers’ fan music. Don’t do it.
  • Maybe you heard we had an eclipse last week. Perhaps you would like some pictures. D Magazine; Dallas Observer; KERA; DMN featuring a great photo of the eclipse over the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. According to the Star-Telegram, actual numbers of visitors were at the bottom end of the estimate. Also in case you were wondering what to do with those eclipse glasses, reuse them for future eclipses, donate them for reuse, or recycle the cardboard.
  • Last but not least, it’s a giraffe! The Dallas Zoo tells us that a boy calf was born on April 1. If you’d like some footage of him the zoo’s Instagram page has you covered.
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    Good luck finding any info about those county appraisal board elections

    Posted on April 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    As you know, I’ve written a bunch about the HCAD Board elections, including doing interviews with four of the candidates, so that you my readers and anyone else who stumbles across this page can hopefully know a little something about who is running and what they’d do. In my recent post about the Tarrant County races, I noted that at least fifty Texas counties are having these elections in May, all for the first time ever. And that made me wonder, how much does anyone know about these elections and who is running in them?

    The answer is, pretty damn little. Do what I did in writing this post, which is a Google news search for “[relevant] county appraisal district election”, and see what you get. (Go here and sort by population to find the relevant counties, which are the ones with at least 75K people.) You’ll probably find the original Trib story about these new elections, which is how I learned about them. For Houston-area counties, you may find the Houston Landing story from early April, which until yesterday was still the only real news story I’ve seen about the Harris County races. You’ll probably find some stories about primary races for Tax Assessor, which doesn’t count.

    And beyond that, for most counties, nada. Nothing for Collin, or Denton, or Galveston, and up until this week nothing for Bexar and nothing else for Harris. For Harris County, we had that Houston Landing story and then finally, published on Tuesday night, this Chron story that resulted from a press conference held by the three labor-endorsed HCAD candidates; my post for that is here. It has a lot of ground to cover, from the reason for the election to who the candidates are. There was nothing for Bexar County until yesterday as well when the San Antonio Report did its own overview, and it’s a good one. And may I just say in reading that, where exactly was the Bexar County Democratic Party during the filing period? It sure looks like there are a lot of Republican candidates running for those offices in a very Democratic county. Someone was asleep at the switch there. Sure would be nice to see those questions pursued.

    Anyway. For Dallas I got this WFAA story that was mostly about a Y’allitics podcast episode about the fact that there is an election and you should vote in it. I didn’t listen to the episode, so maybe it had more than that, but that story didn’t give me much. That Tarrant County story I blogged about on Tuesday was pretty good, as it had candidate names and partisan identifications. Tarrant County even had a candidate forum yesterday, which kind of blows my mind given everything we’re now talking about. For Montgomery and Fort Bend counties we got a couple of extremely bare-bones stories that at least listed the candidates’ names, though there was no further information about any of them. Note that one of the Montgomery candidates and two of the Fort Bend candidates are unopposed, which sure makes a mockery of the claim that this is somehow more democratic than an appointment process. (I will assume the Montgomery default winner is a Republican, I haven’t checked on that for the Fort Bend unopposed candidates.) But hey, it could have been worse.

    Three candidates running for a seat on the El Paso Central Appraisal District Board of Directors were unopposed and have been officially elected without having to go through the May 4 election.

    The three candidates – Alfred Phillip Gonzalez, a retiree; Melody Jimenez, a consultant; and Silvia Serna, a grant analyst – were certified as unopposed and therefore elected, according to the CAD election cancellation order approved by the current board on March 26.

    The election would have cost the CAD about $600,000.

    “We were lucky as there was only one candidate for each place (Place 1, Place 2, and Place 3) who will now take office on July 1st of this year. This allowed us to cancel (the election) and save that expense,” CAD Executive Director and Chief Appraiser Dinah Kilgore told El Paso Matters.

    Whoopiee. Congrats to these candidates, again about whom we know nothing. Well, I assume they’re Democrats, or at least not Republicans, because if any of them were Republicans and they just got elected countywide in El Paso by default, I’d hope that would be considered newsworthy.

    There is one place where there has been actual and useful coverage of these races and the candidates, and that’s Travis County. KXAN, the Austin Monitor, and the Austin Chronicle have all done a creditable job. The latter was quite interesting to me, so let me share a bit of it:

    Pooja Sethi, the newly elected chair of Travis County’s Democratic Party, did not mince words about the stakes of the May election. “It could impact how our schools are funded, access to our parks and libraries, and the ability for our cities and counties to provide services and amenities residents depend on,” said Sethi, who also serves as chief of staff to state Rep. Vikki Goodwin.

    Appraisal districts play a key role in determining what a property owner’s tax bill looks like every year and how much revenue local governments have to work with. City Council members, county commissioners, and school board trustees are responsible for setting tax rates, but those rates are applied to property values determined by the appraisal district.

    Republican legislators opposed to higher taxes authored and passed Senate Bill 2 last year, which turned three of these previously appointed positions into elected ones, and the two Republican candidates who have filed in this race have lengthy public records opposing taxation and government spending (except on policing). Both declined interviews with the Chronicle. One of the liberal candidates, Daniel Wang, put Democrats’ concerns simply: “The GOP wants to defund local government. Screwing up the appraisal process is one way they could achieve that goal.”

    Voters will now elect three officials on the board of directors for the Travis Central Appraisal District – the frequently criticized third-party organization that assesses the property values that local governments use to set tax rates. (These elections will only occur in counties with more than 75,000 people, as is laid out in SB 2.)

    Historically, the appraisal district’s board has had two core responsibilities: hiring the chief appraiser who runs the district and approving the district’s budget. But now, they will also appoint members to the Appraisal Review Board – the group of volunteers who settle disputes between property owners and district appraisers over assessed property values.

    […]

    Beyond fairness to taxpayers, [Democratic candidates] Wang, [Dick] Lavine, and [Jett] Hanna all warn that inaccurate appraisals can affect school funding. Regularly, the Texas comptroller conducts an audit known as the Property Value Study to assess the accuracy of a district’s appraisals. If “local values” in Travis County are more than 5% off from “state values,” the comptroller can make Austin ISD pay the state more money into the recapture system.

    Another path to undermining the appraisal process lies through that volunteer Appraisal Review Board. SB 2 changed its selection process to require appointments receive a majority vote from the appraisal district board, including two of the elected members – giving the electeds an effective veto over the full board. (It means a hypothetical volunteer that received a 7-2 vote would fail, if the two nay votes were elected directors.)

    “The veto power given to elected directors is a real Trojan horse,” Lavine said. “That’s where the mischief could really occur.”

    Bettencourt has defended the new law as a way of holding districts accountable, but state Rep. Gina Hinojosa warned that it could be part of the Texas GOP’s broader attack on the state’s property tax system. “There’s no doubt in my mind that including these elections in the property tax bill was a calculated effort to bring in more conservative and Republican viewpoints into the taxation process,” Hinojosa told us. “In Travis County, we run the risk of the chaos agents who run things at the Legislature having a hand in how we make local decisions related to funding for public schools, parks, and libraries.”

    Now that’s how you do it. I learned quite a bit from this article about the race in a different county. How nice it would be to learn something about the races in my own county that I didn’t have to write myself. How nice it would be for anyone in those other counties to be able to learn any damn thing at all about these elections and their candidates.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

    The Chron covers the HCAD elections

    Posted on April 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    At long, long last.

    Most Houston-area property owners likely are unaware that the amount of taxes they owe is decided, in part, by a group of local appraisers overseen by a little-known board of directors. But for the first time they are being asked to elect three of those board members on May 4.

    Texans who voted for a ballot proposition last November to lower property taxes may have noticed that, at the bottom of the measure, they also voted to add three seats to their local appraisal district’s board of directors that would be elected positions, rather than appointed. Five months later, candidates now are running for those board seats, though some are not quite certain why the positions are up for election in the first place.

    Even some members of the Texas Legislature are unaware that these races are underway, State Rep. Christina Morales, a Houston Democrat, said Tuesday.

    “In one of the group texts, I said, ‘You realize there’s an election on May 4?’ And two in the group said ‘I had no clue,'” Morales said. “These are my colleagues who voted on this piece of legislation.”

    The proposition was put on the November ballot after the Texas Legislature passed a bill creating the newly elected positions pending voter approval.

    Additionally, Morales argued the election date was set for May, rather than November, to ensure very little attention or participation in a contest that she says shouldn’t even be held at all.

    “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to bring politics into the taxation process,” Morales said. “Having another election that’s just after the primary and before the runoff means that we will have a low voter turnout. It feels as though that’s intentional.”

    […]

    HCAD board members have the power to hire and fire the chief appraiser, a position held by Roland Altinger since 2016.

    The new appraisal district seats are nonpartisan, with no party listed for the candidates on the ballot. While Bettencourt has not yet endorsed candidates in the three HCAD races, Morales said at a news conference on Tuesday that she’s supporting a slate of candidates for the HCAD board endorsed by the Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation – Kathy Blueford-Daniels, Melissa Noriega and Pelumi Adeleke.

    Blueford-Daniels, a candidate for the place 1 position running against Ramsey Isa Ankar and Bill R. Frazer, said one of her priorities would be increasing public awareness of exemptions to reach taxpayers who don’t realize they’re able to lower their bill. Blueford-Daniels is a former HCAD board member who also previously served as a Houston ISD trustee.

    Noriega, a former Houston City Council member, stressed that taxes are necessary in order to fund services from ambulances to police departments to school districts. Noriega – who is running for the place 2 position on the HCAD board against Janice W. Hines, Kyle Scott, Jevon German and Austin Pooley – said she’s also questioning the purpose of the election.

    “The appraisal district isn’t broken,” Noriega said. “As Rep. Morales said, we’re not absolutely sure this needed to be put into law, but it’s here, and you need folks that are fair, transparent, that have some sense of what’s at stake and do a good job.”

    Adeleke, a first-time candidate who works in global business development at Amazon Web Services, said her goal is to ensure a more transparent process. She’s running for the place 3 position against J. Bill, Amy Lacy, Mark V. Goloby and Ericka McCrutcheon.

    You can finally add this to that Houston Landing story from a couple of weeks ago to tell you something about these elections. Hope you’ve been listening to my interviews, because that’s all you’ve gotten otherwise. This article was clearly written because of the press conference that the three named candidates held, which makes me wonder if we were going to get any coverage if the issue hadn’t been forced in this way. I’m going to pull my head out of the gift horse’s mouth and leave that be for now.

    If this article is your introduction to the HCAD elections, you’ve probably still got a lot of questions about why we’re doing this and who you’re being asked to vote for. The candidates themselves were asking that first question, which remains a matter of speculation about Paul Bettencourt’s motives. One thought I’ve heard is that this could be a way to replace existing chief appraisers with ones that are more inclined to slash rates for ideological purposes. I’d rather not test that hypothesis. At least now I know who the HCAD chief appraiser is. Now let’s see if the Chron offers endorsements in these races. Early voting starts Monday, so there’s no time to lose.

    UPDATE: Houston Public Media also had a story yesterday, also clearly based on that press conference. A bit more on the background, not as much on the candidates.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    Book ban law stays blocked

    Posted on April 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Good.

    Key portions of a law signed last year by Gov. Greg Abbott requiring booksellers to rate books for sexual content when selling to schools will not go into effect after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to re-consider an earlier decision.

    It’s a win for booksellers, especially independent ones, who sued the state last year saying the law violated the First Amendment and would devastate their businesses.

    Valerie Koehler, who owns Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, said she was happy about the ruling, but the law has already caused a chilling effect that has led to lost orders.

    “The damage to us is mitigated by the fact we don’t have to review every book and rate every book that we’ve sold to the school library,” Koehler said of the court’s decision. “But the damage has been done in terms of the libraries across the entire state have changed their policies in a way that make it hard for new books to get in.”

    School libraries have become a target of the right in recent years, with lawmakers and activists petitioning to pull dozens of titles off the shelves, many of them related to LGBTQ identity and relationships.

    […]

    In January, a panel of three judges on the conservative-leaning 5th Circuit sided with their argument and blocked the book-rating requirement from taking effect. The panel found it violated their freedom of speech and put bookstores and publishers at risk of “irreparable” financial harm. The judges let stand another section of the law establishing statewide library standards that ban “sexually explicit” books in public schools.

    The full 17-member appeals court, which was weighing whether to re-consider the previous decision, voted 9-8 to let it stand.

    See here, here, and here for some background. Nine to eight is too close for comfort, but it counts. Whether this gets appealed to SCOTUS is an open question – I think it’s more likely than not, but who knows – and there’s a good chance SCOTUS might just ignore it. Of course, the next Lege could rewrite this law to make it slightly less unconstitutional and hope that’s enough to sway at least one of those Fifth Circuit holdouts. About the only thing we can do about that is elect a better Legislature. Add this to the list of reasons to be motivated.

    Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Texas blog roundup for the week of April 15

    Posted on April 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready for some Stormy court action as it brings you this week’s roundup.

    Continue reading →

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , | Leave a comment

    Interview with Kathy Blueford-Daniels

    Posted on April 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Kathy Blueford-Daniels

    We come to the end of my interviews with candidates for the HCAD positions. I might have tried to broaden the field under some other circumstances, but in this case I felt it best to concentrate on the candidates who were actually worthy of consideration in this partisan (disguised, but still partisan) context. I think that part of it will be more clear in the runoffs, but one step at a time. Today’s candidate, who is vying for Position One, is the one person running who can say from experience what this job is about because she’s done it before. Kathy Blueford-Daniels is a former HISD Trustee who served as an appointed member of the HCAD Board while she was representing HISD. If you want someone on this board who can step in on day one and do the job, here you go. She has been endorsed by the Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation for this race. I spoke to her most recently last August about how she saw the HISD situation at that time. Here’s what we talked about this time:

    PREVIOUSLY:

    Pelumi Adeleke, Position 3
    Austin Pooley, Position 2
    Melissa Noriega, Position 2

    See here and here for what we know about these HCAD positions. Early voting for this race and the SD15 special election runs from April 22-30. Get out there and vote.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Allred maintains his fundraising pace

    Posted on April 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Gonna need to keep that going.

    Colin Allred

    U.S. Rep. Colin Allred raised over $9.5 million for his U.S. Senate campaign in this year’s first quarter, surpassing the campaign of his rival Sen. Ted Cruz.

    Notably, Allred has also raised more money than Beto O’Rourke did by this point in his own history-making run against Cruz in 2018.

    O’Rourke raised over $6.7 million in the first quarter of 2018 against Cruz. The El Paso Democrat’s haul that quarter was the biggest of any Democratic Senate candidate in the country.

    Cruz raised over $6.9 million from his official campaign this past quarter, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Still, the conservative senator remains a formidable fundraiser, bringing in over $9.7 million across his fundraising entities. That includes money he has raised for other candidates.

    O’Rourke broke new ground for Democrats in Texas with his meteoric rise. His team had to establish new campaign infrastructure where a Democrat hadn’t won state-wide office in over 20 years. Alumni of O’Rourke’s campaign and other Democrats in Texas have credited O’Rourke’s near success for providing a better launching pad for future Democratic candidates.

    O’Rourke’s fundraising operation took off exponentially just before the general election in 2018. He broke records for a senate race, raising over $38.1 million in the third quarter — more than twice he had raised in the prior two quarters and more than twice Cruz had raised cumulatively since the start of 2017.

    Yeah, the hill gets a lot steeper as we go. That said, adding this quarter’s haul into the previous amount, Allred is approaching $30 million in funds already raised. He should be able to get to Beto’s overall figure of $80 million. Getting a better result for the money, that’s another question. He’ll have what it takes to run the campaign, and that’s a critical start.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Travis Scott makes his argument to get out of the Astroworld lawsuit

    Posted on April 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    He has a reasonable case. Not saying I’d buy it, but it’s not ridiculous.

    Superstar rapper Travis Scott should not be held responsible for planning failures before the 2021 Astroworld tragedy or the delayed process of ending the show as it spiraled into disaster, his lawyer told a Houston court Monday.

    Scott is asking a judge to dismiss him from the case brought by the parents of Madison Dubiski, a 23-year-old who was one of 10 festival-goers who died.

    All 10 were killed by compression asphyxia, which means they were unable to fill their lungs with oxygen because they were so tightly packed into an area in front of the stage during Scott’s set.

    The hearing came as the first lawsuit stemming from the disaster nears trial on May 6. The trial’s outcome could serve as a bellwether for hundreds more relating to deaths and injuries at the festival.

    Scott and his business partner in the ill-fated festival, the international concert conglomerate Live Nation, also argued Monday that if they are forced to go to trial, they should be allowed to attempt to shift blame for poor crowd management to the Houston Police Department and Houston Fire Department.

    […]

    Scott’s attorney, Stephen Brody, downplayed the role the rapper played in the planning and lead-up to the festival. Scott’s duties were limited mostly to marketing and creative matters, Brody argued. The litany of planning missteps the plaintiffs have identified do not apply to him, Brody said.

    Even Scott’s demand that he be the sole performer to use the stage where the crowd crush happened, which experts say may have contributed to the overcrowding there, was approved by the venue operator, Brody said.

    On the day of the performance, when concertgoers were packed so tightly that many could not breathe, Scott’s lawyer argued that in the specific case of Dubiski, there was no way Scott could have saved her life by stopping the show earlier.

    On the night of the festival, 37 minutes passed between when police and fire declared it a “mass casualty” event and when Scott’s performance came to an end.

    Although there is much debate over why the show took so long to stop, Dubiski was transported to a medical tent before the point when Scott was told to end his performance, Brody said.

    “Tragically, Madison Dubiski is already receiving care in the medical tent, according to plaintiffs’ expert, by 9:55 that night. So whether the show had been stopped at 10 p.m. or 10:11 p.m., tragically would have made no difference to Ms. Dubiski,” Brody said.

    Plaintiffs’ lawyer Noah Wexler pushed back on the idea that Scott’s role in the lead up to the festival was limited.

    “This event was Travis Scott’s festival, Travis Scott’s event, and it was created through his tour agreement with Live Nation,” Wexler said.

    Wexler noted that several festival organizers had tried to stop the event from ending with Scott’s solo performance on a stage reserved for him alone, only to be overruled by people in Scott’s camp.

    “It was Travis Scott demanding to be the only one playing at the conclusion of this oversold festival, knowing that all the patrons would migrate to that stage and there would be nothing else to attract them to,” Wexler said.

    See here, here, and here for some background. The Chron has more.

    “This event was Travis Scott’s festival and it was crafted through his tour agreement with Live Nation,” said Noah Wexler, one of the attorneys representing the victims, responding to arguments that Scott wasn’t central to the concert’s planning.

    Monday’s hearing came three weeks before the planned start of the first trial related to the concert tragedy where a crowd crush killed 10 people and injured scores of others. District Court Judge Kristen Hawkins did not make a decision on Scott’s involvement on Monday.

    Scott’s attorneys in March filed a motion asking for Hawkins to issue a summary judgment in favor, arguing that he couldn’t be held responsible for the planning and security of the concert because he primarily acted as a performer. Brody said there were examples of Scott stopping the show four times, but said the artists wasn’t aware of the greater peril in the crowd until the show had ended.

    “He did what he does at all of his performances,” said Steve Brody, one of Scott’s attorney. “If he sees in issue in the crowd, he does stop. He stopped four separate times.”

    Motions filed over the first part of this year have laid out two main arguments about responsibility for the disaster: that the people planning the concert knew about safety concerns before hand and that efforts to stop the show once the danger was apparent were too slow.

    […]

    Wexler argued that Scott’s agreement with concert promoter Live Nation gave him a large degree of control of the show. Scott’s attorneys argued other people were trusted with the responsibility of planning and security.

    “There’s no evidence of extreme or outrageous conduct on the part of my clients,” Brody said.

    Scott, a Houston native, wasn’t present in the courtroom. Instead, dozens of attorneys, their staff members and reporters watched more than three hours of arguments about who should and shouldn’t be on trial on May 6.

    Scott wasn’t the only defendant who argued they should be removed from the case. Monday’s hearing also included arguments for summary judgment by lawyers from Apple Inc., which live-streamed the concert; ASM Global, the company that manages NRG Park also made arguments seeking summary judgment; B3 Risk Solutions, the staffing company hired to provide a safety management team to the concert and Unified Command LLC, which set up the festival’s closed circuit cameras and command center.

    Apple’s attorney accused the victims’ attorneys of attacking the company’s First Amendment rights through arguments that blamed the tech company for building up hype for the show and accused it of ignoring the crisis in the crowd.

    “A live-streamer at an event has no affirmative duty to ensure an event is safe or to rescue concert-goers from harm,” said Apple attorney David Singh.

    Both stories have more so go read the rest of each. This is all pretrial stuff, the actual trial starts in May. Expect it to take quite some time.

    Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Some Tarrant Appraisal District drama

    Posted on April 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Of interest.

    A candidate for the Tarrant Appraisal District board alleges County Judge Tim O’Hare tried to pressure him into dropping out of the race.

    Colleyville City Council member Chuck Kelley, who is running for Place 3, said O’Hare first counseled him to not run against Callie Rigney, another Colleyville council member running for Place 2. O’Hare, who has since endorsed Rigney, did not respond to questions about Kelley’s allegations but offered a statement about his involvement in the race generally.

    Kelley said O’Hare told him having two Colleyville residents running might draw too much attention to the race and result in more candidate filings.

    “That seems counterintuitive to the idea of free and fair elections,” Kelley said.

    Ultimately, Kelley opted to run in Place 3. After filing with O’Hare’s office, he said he received two phone calls from the county judge — one immediately after filing, and another several days later. Phone records reviewed by the Fort Worth Report show two calls from O’Hare’s cell phone, on Feb. 1 and Feb. 5, to Kelley’s phone.

    Kelley alleged O’Hare suggested he run for another place or drop out and that, if he didn’t, it could get ugly.

    “I went home and I thought about it some more and said, ‘You know what? I don’t like it when people put their thumb on the scale,’” Kelley said.

    Thanks to legislation passed during the 2023 session, this is the first time in state history that voters can elect people to the appraisal board. Traditionally, board members have been elected by the taxing entities such as Tarrant County or Fort Worth ISD.

    Reforming the Tarrant Appraisal District following a series of scandals, including a ransomware attack and inflammatory comments from the district’s IT executive, has become a rallying cry for Republican elected officials and candidates alike.

    Though the appraisal board positions are nonpartisan, seven of the eight candidates who have filed to run identify as Republicans. The legislation enabling the elections specified county judges such as O’Hare, who run on political platforms, are responsible for receiving and filing candidate applications.

    Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, said placing that responsibility in the hands of a county judge is an unusual structure, and there’s nothing similar in Texas government. City election filings are generally accepted by city secretaries or clerks, while county election filings are generally accepted by the county election administration.

    “It has the potential to return to the old party boss system in the counties, where every county had the political, important player that was the person who ran the county,” Rottinghaus said. “So that bossism is a throwback to Texas politics of old, and this role potentially has a conflict here.”

    Kelley is the only candidate who said he has been contacted directly by O’Hare and asked to bow out. But several others interviewed by the Fort Worth Report took issue with the county judge’s decision to endorse in the appraisal district races. O’Hare endorsed Eric Morris for Place 1, Rigney for Place 2, and Matt Bryant for Place 3.

    Eric Crile, who is running for Place 2, said he was disappointed that O’Hare endorsed his opponent without speaking to him to learn about his ideas for the position.

    “I honestly don’t understand the politics that are coming in from that level of the county,” Crile said. “For what essentially is a position to appoint appraisal review board members, set a budget, and make sure that the district is operating according to the laws prescribed by the legislature and the Texas comptroller.”

    […]

    Rottinghaus said given the political responsibilities of county judges, there is a clear incentive for them to try and control appraisal boards as much as possible. Whether the legislature intended this when they authorized the positions, he said, is unclear.

    “But given that they imbued so much power in the county judge in this process, it’s unavoidable,” Rottinghaus said.

    Emphasis mine; I’ll get to that in a minute. I have a few points to make here, which I shall do in the traditional bullet-point style.

    – While I’ve focused on the HCAD races, this is a reminder that these brand new elections are happening all over the state. By my count, at least fifty counties will be elected members to their respective appraisal districts for the first time ever, with others to join that list in the coming years. For such a remarkable change in governance, this has gotten a remarkably tiny amount of media coverage, at least from what has been visible to me.

    – Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare absolutely has the right to endorse and support candidates in these races. I’d be perfectly fine with Judge Hidalgo doing the same thing here – indeed, I hope she and others will take sides, if not now then for the likely runoffs, because who we elect always matters. That doesn’t mean he went about it in a great way – threatening candidates and expressing distaste for “draw[ing] too much attention” to these races strikes me as awfully icky – but expressing an opinion is in itself not a problem. The fact that O’Hare is an asshole is the problem, but it’s beyond the scope of this post to address that in any detail.

    – Back when I was trying to track down candidates for the HCAD races I thought it was weird that they were directed to the County Judge’s office for their filings. I see that I had good reason to find that strange. There’s a lot we don’t know about the motivation for this change, but as we do know that it came from the fetid mind of Sen. Paul Bettencourt, we can safely assume that there’s something unsavory afoot.

    – The appointed positions on these county appraisal boards are officially nonpartisan, and as these May elections are special elections, there are no party labels that will appear on the ballots for them. It is my assumption that going forward, when these races will be held in November beginning in 2026, that the candidates will compete in the primaries first. However, I don’t know this for a fact. It’s another completely undisclosed and undiscussed aspect of this legislation.

    – The Tarrant Appraisal District has indeed had some challenges lately, from ransomware to rancid behavior. I don’t know whether the former is within the scope of the board and its authority, but the latter seems to be. Both definitely seem to me to be within the scope of Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court, over which O’Hare presides.

    As I said, these elections matter and we cannot afford to be asleep at the switch. I’ve tried to call attention to the HCAD races, and I urge you to listen to the three candidate interviews I’ve done so far, with a fourth to come tomorrow. I don’t know anything about these races in the other counties, so you’re on your own there. Please get to know these candidates and get out to vote for the good ones. If you’re free this morning at 10, you can hear from three of them directly. From the inbox:

    On April 16, 2024, at 10 am, Kathy Blueford-Daniels, Melissa Noriega, and Pelumi Adeleke, the labor-endorsed nominees for three newly-created elected Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) trustee positions, will hold a joint news conference to urge Houstonians to learn about the little-known election and vote on Saturday, May 4th.

    Last year, a new state law created three new elected positions on HCAD, the local board that oversees and appoints the chief appraiser, who is responsible for determining property valuations for local taxing districts, such as the City of Houston and Houston ISD.

    All three candidates vying for office have expressed a strong commitment to homeowners in Harris County. Their shared mission includes a commitment to a property appraisal system that puts the needs of our kids and community first, with transparency in the appraisal and appeals system and fair commercial property valuation.

    As noted that will be at 10 AM at the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation, 2506 Sutherland, Houston TX 77023. Maybe this will get some Chronicle coverage.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    City workers gear up for their next contract

    Posted on April 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Believe it or not, the city has employees who are not with the police or the fire department, and they like earning a decent salary, too.

    Houston’s municipal employees union, HOPE AFSCME Local 123, is expected to begin its contract negotiations with the city next week, with union leaders making a pitch to Mayor John Whitmire that civilian workers are just as essential as police officers and firefighters.

    The current contract for Houston’s municipal workers will expire this summer. Union president Sonia Rico announced that the two sides will start bargaining for a new deal as early as next Tuesday, although the date is yet to be finalized. The contract will apply to the around 11,000 city workers who are not uniformed officers in the police or fire departments.

    Established in 2005, HOPE secured its first labor agreement with the city in 2008 and has negotiated four subsequent contracts since then. Compared to the older, more influential police and firefighters unions, its membership rate is significantly lower at about 30%, Rico told the Chronicle.

    Whitmire has repeatedly stated that while nearly all city operations need more investment, his administration will prioritize improving public safety, including boosting the ranks of police and fire personnel.

    Rico said that civilian workers are no less important. From 311 operators and library workers to Solid Waste drivers and Public Works crews, their support makes the work of uniformed officers possible, she said.

    “Not all heroes drive a fire engine or police car,” Rico, a 311 customer service representative for nearly two decades, told City Council during Tuesday’s public comment. “Without us, the city of Houston simply could not run. We are very much overworked and underpaid at almost every level.”

    Whitmire expressed appreciation for HOPE’s input. He said some union members’ reports have made him aware of alleged bullying and toxic behaviors in various city departments.

    “I look at you as first responders because we could not be doing what we’re doing right now but for your members and all city employees,” the mayor said at the meeting. “We look forward to sitting down, going to work and being very fair.”

    As the story notes, HOPE endorsed Whitmire during the 2023 election, so one would think that the ground is tilled for a negotiation that gives HOPE a raise and still lets the Mayor figure out the financial situation. I mean, we all understand that cutting the budget means either cutting wages and benefits or cutting employees, so that’s a tension that needs to be resolved. We’ll see how it goes.

    Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    A brief robotaxi update

    Posted on April 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Cruise is back on the streets, but with human drivers for the time being.

    A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

    Cruise has announced that it’s resuming tests for its fleet of self-driving taxis in Phoenix, Arizona , though not with passengers just yet. The autonomous vehicle maker says it will start with humans behind the wheel, with no passengers and no autonomous driving mechanisms engaged.

    In California, lawmakers banned the GM subsidiary from operating its vehicles in the state after one of them ran over a San Francisco pedestrian and dragged them over 20 feet in October, after another vehicle threw the victim into the robotaxi’s path. That was just weeks after another incident where one of Cruise’s vehicles collided with a fire truck after failing to properly yield to the truck’s emergency signals.

    The company’s been dealing with the fallout ever since; Cruise first paused operations nationwide and issued a software update to 950 of its vehicles to change how the cars respond to crash events, amidst multiple investigations into the incidents. They’ve caused something of a mass exodus in the company, starting with then CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt and nine other leaders. Cruise also laid off 24 percent of its workforce shortly after.

    Cruise says its intent with renewed testing is to help improve its systems by collecting more road data to continue feeding its machine learning model, and that it hopes to eventually resume human-supervised autonomous tests in Phoenix. It picked the city, it says, based on its “strong history” of supporting automotive innovation and because many of its employees reside there.

    See here and here for some background on the pause, and here and here for more on the first days of Cruise in Houston. I expect it will be awhile before we see these cars on our streets again. I’ll keep an eye out for further updates.

    Meanwhile, in the Things No One Asked For department:

    Two California agencies that regulate robotaxis said they haven’t heard from Tesla about its plans for the cars, even though Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last week that he’ll reveal a new robotaxi product in August.

    The California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, said in separate statements to NBC News that Tesla hadn’t applied for the two permits it would need to operate a driverless car service in the country’s most populous state.

    Two other states that regulate robotaxis, Arizona and Nevada, also said they had not heard from Tesla about its plans.

    The lack of permits — or any attempt to acquire them — raises questions about how quickly Tesla would be able to get a robotaxi service up and running.

    “Tesla’s a long way away from getting that approval,” said Brad Templeton, a consultant in the autonomous vehicle industry.

    […]

    The CPUC handles permits to operate robotaxis as businesses, including for tech startup Waymo’s services in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Tesla has no CPUC permit and hasn’t applied, the commission said.

    “If Tesla wanted to provide a robotaxi service they’d need to follow the same rules as other such companies (i.e., DMV approval for driverless testing/deployment before seeking a CPUC permit). The CPUC has not been contacted for such a permit,” the commission said in a statement in response to questions.

    You can read the story about that announcement here. Elon Musk says this will happen even though the company does not appear to be anywhere close to ready for it. What could possibly go wrong?

    Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Interview with Melissa Noriega

    Posted on April 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Melissa Noriega

    I have two more interviews for you for the now-elected HCAD Board positions, for which I remind you that election day is May 4 and early voting begins a week from today on April 22 and runs through April 30. Today’s candidate is a familiar name, former At Large City Council member and State Rep. Melissa Noriega. She worked for 27 years in HISD in various positions and for three years at Baker Ripley after that. She served on Council for three terms under Mayor Parker, chairing the Public Safety committee. I’ve known her for almost 20 years now and consider her a good friend. She is running for Position #2 and was endorsed by the Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation in that race. Here’s what we talked about:

    PREVIOUSLY:

    Pelumi Adeleke, Position 3
    Austin Pooley, Position 2

    See here and here for what we know about these HCAD positions. I will have one more interviews on Wednesday this week. Early voting for this race and the SD15 special election runs from April 22-30.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

    Trying again on judge shopping

    Posted on April 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    If at first you don’t succeed…

    U.S. Senate leaders introduced legislation to end “judge shopping” — a practice that’s made a federal courthouse in Amarillo with a Trump-appointed judge a destination for conservative litigants challenging Biden administration policies.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced the “End Judge Shopping Act” on Wednesday, which would require judges to be randomly assigned to civil cases that could have state- or nation-wide consequences. The bill codifies a similar rule issued by the Judicial Conference of the United States last month to combat judge shopping. The conference is a congressionally created body that oversees the administration of federal courts.

    David Godbey, chief judge for the Northern District of Texas, wrote to Schumer earlier this month saying that the judges in his district would not adhere to the Judiciary Conference’s rule. Schumer, in response, issued a statement that “the Senate will consider legislative options that put an end to this misguided practice.”

    Texas has several judicial divisions with just one federal judge, meaning that litigants who file suit in that division can usually predict who their case will be assigned to. Conservative plaintiffs suing the Biden administration have flocked to Amarillo, where U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is the only sitting judge, and has handed down rulings in their favor.

    Their cases have touched issues ranging from abortion medication and immigration to LGBTQ worker protections.

    A handful of Republican senators protested the Judicial Conference rule, arguing that it’s Congress’ responsibility to determine how cases are assigned — a responsibility Congress delegated to the district courts.

    “To state the obvious, Judicial Conference policy is not legislation,” Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina wrote last month in letters to several chief judges.

    McConnell, however, also introduced legislation to tackle judge shopping Wednesday. His bill, the “Stop Helping Outcome Preferences (SHOP) Act,” would limit injunctions to the parties in the case or jurisdiction of the judge, rather than having state- or nationwide effect. It would also sanction attorneys whom a disciplinary body of judges determines has engaged in judge shopping.

    Schumer introduced his bill with Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin of Illinois and 38 other Democratic senators. McConnell introduced his bill with Tillis and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas.

    “Former President Trump and Leader McConnell stacked the courts with MAGA judges who are striking down laws, freedoms, and regulations left and right,” Schumer said in a statement. “We can’t let unelected judges thrash our democracy.”

    See here and here for some background. Honestly, Sen. Schumer should include some provision to limit national injunctions as well – I know that tactic was used with great effect and for excellent reasons during the Trump administration, but it’s clearly gotten far, far out of hand now, enough to make even the likes of Neil Gorsuch grumpy. And while we’re doing that, let’s impose some ethics rules on SCOTUS and do something to rein in the lawless chaos monsters on the appeals courts; if we can’t expand SCOTUS, let’s expand the Fifth Circuit. The current state of affairs cannot stand.

    Posted in Legal matters, National news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Bastard cabbage update

    Posted on April 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Because I still like saying “bastard cabbage”.

    Bastard cabbage

    There’s a war raging in Texas this spring — between wildflowers and bastard cabbage.

    Officials say bastard cabbage, also known by its proper name, rapistrum rugosum, poses a threat to the livelihood of wildflowers, which bloom from April to September in the Lone Star State.

    “This invasive plant outcompetes our native wildflowers by blocking sun with its broad leaves, leaving some fields a complete monoculture of bastard cabbage,” said officials with the University of Texas at Austin Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. “It particularly loves disturbed areas, like new roadsides and lands cleared for development.”

    According to the University of Texas at Austin Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, bastard cabbage has surfaced into “natural areas along streams” plus forests. Additionally, officials have recorded bastard cabbage in at least 17 states and multiple Canadian provinces.

    The Texas Invasive Species Institute says the bastard cabbage can form a “vegetative cover of mostly one species”— more specifically a monoculture. History has shown the wild plant typically grows in areas such as agricultural fields, disturbed lands or roadside. Although its unclear how bastard cabbage became prominent in the United States, experts say its seeds spread through contaminated grass seed mixes and even mulching materials. As far as its appearance, the multi-leaf plant can grow between one to five feet or higher. While most of the plant remains greens, there’s portion of it that have a reddish color. It grows from early spring to the summer.

    Of course I’ve written about bastard cabbage before, and of course it would still make a great band name. The Chron had two articles within a week about bastard cabbage, noting that the recent rains has helped it flourish this year; that was the case in 2012, also a spring following a dry year, when I last noted it. The thing about bastard cabbage is that it’s a nice flowering plant, which makes people want to keep it around, but it really is best to try to eradicate it. Know before you grow.

    Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

    Weekend link dump for April 14

    Posted on April 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    “Just as Trump’s mixture of insecurity, anger and grievance bonded him with small-town, white, declining America, his hunger for power and the punishment of enemies bonded him with America’s rising authoritarian movement.”

    An interview with 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ilana Diamond Rovner that is worth your time to read.

    “Opill, the over-the-counter birth control pill, is now available at H-E-B stores and other retailers across San Antonio and Texas.”

    “Godzilla got domesticated because he became a star. Being an unknowable terror is fine for one film, and possibly for a sequel or two. But apparently the thinking is, if you want to keep people coming back film after film, eventually you have to make your monster someone the audience roots for, even if the monster is still nominally a bad guy.”

    “Recently, the FEC approved final rules to make it easier for federal candidates to draw salaries from their privately raised campaign funds and pay themselves a livable wage. This will change the political landscape.”

    “Let’s direct our energy toward the crisis of belonging. Maybe then we can understand the crisis of belief.”

    “According to these sources, Trader Joe’s commonly solicits product samples and even asks for potential recipe adjustments—a revealing and time-consuming exercise for bootstrapped founders—before inexplicably abandoning the negotiations and releasing its own private-label versions of similar products at lower prices.”

    RIP, Jerry Grote, longtime catcher for the New York Mets, member of their 1969 World Series champion team, also an alumnus of my alma mater, Trinity University.

    “This is one of the most amazing stories to come down the pike in I don’t know how long, published over the weekend in The Washington Post. The short version is that Tim Sheehy, probable Republican nominee for Senate in Montana, is a comical liar and is trying to cover up that lie with a story so preposterous that it’s kind of a joy to run through because it’s so hilariously bad.”

    Please make sure this ad also runs in Texas. Thanks.

    It was fifty years ago now that Henry Aaron hit #715.

    “This is unacceptable and blatant discrimination that not only harms trans, nonbinary and intersex individuals, but limits the potential of all athletes. It’s important to recognize that these discriminatory policies don’t enhance fairness in competition. Instead, they send a message of exclusion and reinforce dangerous stereotypes that harm all women.”

    RIP, Peter Higgs Nobel Prize-winning physicist who came up with the idea of the Higgs boson particle.

    “The new lunar time zone, Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), is all about ensuring the success of future, multinational missions to the moon”.

    Meet Harley Redin, another figure from women’s basketball history that you (like I) had probably never heard of before.

    Happy retirement to Tara VanDerveer, the winningest coach in college basketball history.

    It’s 1864 all over again in Arizona. And it could be 1873 all over again everywhere else if Trump wins in November.

    RIP, Carlos Alvarez, businessman and philanthropist who brought Mexican beers Modelo and Corona to the U.S. and made Shiner beer a hit.

    RIP, Tom Copeland, former executive director of the Texas Film Commission and a pivotal figure in the growth of the state’s film industry.

    If it had been up to David Lynch, you would never have known who killed Laura Palmer.

    “Twitter just doing a “redirect links in tweets that go to x.com to twitter.com instead but accidentally do so for all domains that end x.com like eg spacex.com going to spacetwitter.com” is not absolutely the funniest thing I could imagine but it’s high up there.”

    RIP, Trina Robbins, longtime cartoonist and artist who was one of the most instrumental female voices in underground comix, first woman to draw Wonder Woman for DC. Mark Evanier adds his tribute.

    OJ Simpson has died. I don’t have anything to say about that, but Josh Marshall has a few thoughts if you’re interested.

    “There certainly are more stresses in the modern game that likely contribute to injury, but the truth is that while this spring is bad for elbow injuries, it’s always been this way in recent years. It’s always bad.”

    Love is dead.

    “Roku says it discovered a data breach impacting 567,000 accounts, which the streaming platform found while investigating a security breach last month that compromised 15,000 users.”

    “Real-life ‘Rosie the Riveters’ reunite in D.C. to win the nation’s top civilian honor”.

    RIP, Fritz Peterson, former MLB pitcher mostly for the Yankees who rather famously traded wives with his then-teammate Mike Kekich. Go google those two names if this is a story you’ve never heard before. The trade worked out much better for Peterson than it did for Kekich.

    RIP, Faith Ringgold, artist known for her story quilts depicting African-American experiences.

    RIP, Lori and George Schappell, the world’s oldest conjoined twins.

    Happy retirement to The Dogfather.

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 2 Comments

    Astroworld lawsuit update

    Posted on April 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Drake got himself removed as a defendant.

    A Harris County district court judge on Wednesday dismissed Drake from the sprawling civil lawsuit over the deadly Astroworld concert.

    The Canadian rapper was a guest performer at the November 2021 concert, appearing on stage as people were being injured and killed in a crowd crush during festival headliner Travis Scott’s set.

    Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham, in March asked to be dismissed from the lawsuit, arguing he had nothing to do with the festival’s planning or management.

    Others were not so lucky.

    A Harris County District court judge whittled down the number of defendants named in a civil lawsuit seeking damages over the deaths and injuries caused by the 2021 Astroworld disaster.

    Judge Kristen Hawkins’s April 8 orders didn’t let every company and person out of the massive civil case, however. Apple Inc., the technology giant, and companies affiliated with Astroworld headliner Travis Scott, were denied in their bids to be dismissed, according to court records.

    […]

    Hawkins’ first round of orders Monday didn’t go into specifics about why some companies were dismissed and others remained.

    She signed orders dismissing Eighteentwentysix, a company that produces concert tours; Re: Source Event Group, which designs concert stages; Epic Records, a record label and one of the producers for the concert; and Paradocs, a medical service provider.

    Darryl Platt, Live Nation’s director of operations, was also dismissed from the lawsuit, according to court records.

    Another order denied Apple Inc.’s motion for summary judgment. Also kept in the case, for now, were Front Gate Ticketing Solutions, a promoter and the concert’s official ticket provider; and four concert security companies: Contemporary Services Corporation, Apex Security Group, AJ Melio and Associates, and Valle Services.

    Travis Scott-connected businesses LaFlame Enterprises and Catcus Jack Enterprises also had their requests for summary judgement denied, according to court records.

    See here and here for some background. Travis Scott’s attorneys will make their argument on Monday. My gut says they’ll fail, but I’m just guessing. The trial itself is set for May. Nothing else to add, just nothing this for the record.

    Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Chron overview of the HD139 runoff

    Posted on April 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    While I hope that the Chron runs overviews of all of the primary runoffs, I really hope they run at least one freaking story about the HCAD special election.

    Charlene Ward Johnson

    Angie Thibodeaux is an affordable housing consultant who wants to make homebuying more accessible. Charlene Ward Johnson hopes to use her time on the Houston Community College Board to improve public education funding.

    The two Houston women will face off in a May runoff election in one of the few open Democratic House seats in Harris County. Rep. Jarvis Johnson is vacating the House District 139 seat for a bid to fill the state Senate seat formerly held by Houston Mayor John Whitmire.

    Thibodeaux and Ward Johnson emerged from a group of five candidates in this year’s Democratic primary, receiving 33% and 24% of the vote, respectively. With similar platforms, both Thibodeaux and Ward Johnson cited their experience as what makes them the best candidates to represent the district, which stretches northwest of the city.

    Ward Johnson is currently the District 2 trustee for the community college board. In that position, she said she’s worked to reduce the cost of attendance by advocating for more overall school funding.

    “I decided to run because I do understand the issues of the community,” Ward Johnson said. “I understand what’s been going on in Austin and I have the experience to go there and get resources and bring solutions back to the people.”

    Thibodeaux works as a consultant for the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a nonprofit organization that helps historically disadvantaged people become homeowners. She’s also a former vice president of Bank of America’s Home Retention Division and a former president of the Acres Homes Super Neighborhood Council.

    “For the last 25 years, I’ve been on every end of the spectrum, from the corporate environment to nonprofit to advocacy, outreach and organizing,” Thibodeaux said. “I wanted to run because I know that I can impact and affect policy, particularly when it comes to school, public safety and our seniors.”

    […]

    Angie Thibodeaux

    As for public education, Thibodeaux and Ward Johnson both want to increase teachers’ salaries and see an end to the state takeover of Houston Independent School District.

    Ward Johnson is against private school vouchers and says she wants to introduce legislation that creates a variety of funding formulas for public schools, rather than just one.

    “I will create a different funding formula because our community may have different needs from another community,” Ward Johnson said. “Having just a blanket amount you give for every student does not work.”

    Thibodeaux did not take a stance on school vouchers and said she wants to examine school curriculum to get a better understanding of why the GOP is pushing to promote private education in the first place.

    “I think we need to dive into the details, dig deep and see what the root of the problem is,” Thibodeaux said. “Why are we having this discussion in the first place? What brought the bill about?”

    You can get more information on both candidates from the Erik Manning spreadsheet. I interviewed Charlene Ward Johnson for the primary, and you can listen to that here. I reached out to Thibodeaux for an interview but never got a response. I may try again for the runoff, we’ll see. I will say, if I do talk with her, I hope she has a better answer about vouchers than what she gave here. I doubt she’d ever support an Abbott voucher bill, but how can you be a candidate for the House and not already know what their push to give a bunch of public money to private schools is about? This is nothing new, all that has changed is the ratcheting up of the pressure on Republicans to fall in line even if they see no benefit to their district and constituents, and the willingness to viciously attack otherwise staunch allies for this difference of opinion. All due respect, but where have you been?

    Anyway, I’m sure we’ll get more of these stories, as there are several runoffs of great interest. What we need before then is some coverage of the SD15 special election and especially the HCAD races, since all of Harris County will have the opportunity to vote for those three positions, if only they know that the need to. My expectation for turnout for this right now is abysmal, because we do not have any history of voting in May other than in primary runoffs. And this ain’t that. C’mon Chron, get on the story already.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Fertitta still interested in an NHL team

    Posted on April 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Also possibly a WNBA team.

    For the second time in more than a month, Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has stated his interest in bringing an NHL team to Houston.

    Fertitta, in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” was asked about his pursuit of a hockey team as well as a WNBA franchise for Toyota Center.

    “We would like to work to get an NHL team in Houston — I’m working on it,” Fertitta said.

    Fertitta was asked about the WNBA, which has not had a team in Houston since the Comets’ run from 1997 to 2008, in relation to the surge of interest in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, whose championship game on ABC for the first time drew a bigger TV audience than the men’s final that aired on TBS.

    “I would consider, definitely, I think it’s a great topic with women’s sports to talk about a WNBA team in Houston also,” Fertitta said.

    As noted in the article, Fertitta was talking about an NHL team in February. It’s the first time I’m aware of that he’s mentioned the WNBA, but that seems to be a matter of timing. If his goal is to make the Toyota Center more active, that would be in line with the vision. Of course, until either the NHL or the WNBA announce a plan to expand (or in the WNBA’s case, a plan that includes Houston as a candidate), this is all just talk. Relocation of an NHL franchise is less likely now, as the main target for such the Arizona Coyotes have now been acquired by a guy who will move them to Salt Lake City. As such, in the absolute best case scenario, we’re at least a few years away. I’ll be waiting to see what happens.

    Posted in Other sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Ted Cruz is still trying to make people believe he has “bipartisan accomplishments”

    Posted on April 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    We return to the Department of Obvious Reactions to Dumb Things.

    I hear Cancun is nice

    Heading into the heat of his reelection race against Dallas Congressman Colin Allred, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is testing the waters with a rebrand.

    Cruz, who has made a name for himself as an uncompromising conservative stalwart, is casting himself as a bipartisan lawmaker with a penchant for reaching across the aisle.

    “I actually have very good relationships with many of my colleagues across the aisle,” Cruz told The Texas Tribune, citing his work with Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar. “I’ve worked with all three of them and all three are friends.”

    The interview was part of Cruz’s recent media blitz highlighting his work with Democrats, off the heels of his “Democrats for Cruz” announcement which aims to attract left-leaning voters this November. He debuted that messaging during a Laredo meeting with the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, where he stressed the value of bipartisanship legislating and enumerated several bills he’s written with Democratic senators. Meanwhile, Cruz is blasting Allred as not as bipartisan as he claims, citing the Democrat’s voting record with his party’s leadership.

    “It is easy and probably more fun to cover the battles that I have waged against the Obama administration or the Biden administration, or [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer,” Cruz said. “Those may make for easy headlines, but often overlooked are now 99 different pieces of legislation that I’ve authored and passed into law in my time in the Senate.”

    The rhetorical shift comes as polls show another tight race for Cruz. A February poll by the University of Texas at Tyler showed the two candidates equally polling at 41%. Another poll conducted in March by Marist College found Cruz ahead by six percentage points.

    His critics say he’s trying to rewrite history, noting that Cruz has built a persona that demonizes Democrats. In his podcast, countless radio and television appearances, and his books, Cruz routinely blasts the other party as actively working to destroy the country.

    Cruz consistently votes against some of the biggest bipartisan bills in Congress and is routinely ranked as one of the most conservative members in the Senate. He was ranked 91 out of 98 senators in 2021 in the Lugar Center’s bipartisan index by Georgetown University (Two senators weren’t included in the ranking because they hadn’t served for at least six months). Texas’ senior Sen. John Cornyn was ranked 8th.

    “I don’t think Ted Cruz is fooling anybody,” Allred said. “He spent 12 years being the most divisive — and proudly so — partisan warrior in the United States. And I think it’s kind of laughable actually that at this point, when he’s in a close race, that he wants to now stress, ‘Oh, actually I have been working in a bipartisan way.’”

    Please see here for my previous entry in this series. I will not be taking questions at this time. Also, if you happen to be close to someone in the “Democrats for Cruz” group, please ensure they stay indoors during rainstorms, to minimize the risk that they might drown like a turkey. Thank you.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

    So what is HISD going to do with this bond proposal?

    Posted on April 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    I have no idea. I’m not sure they have any idea, either.

    Houston ISD officials are considering asking taxpayers to approve a multibillion-dollar bond in November, but Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration has yet to go through a widely used process to involve the community — and may be running short on time to do so.

    With seven months to go before a potential record bond election, HISD leaders haven’t convened a community committee to offer feedback and make recommendations about what should be included in a package.

    In recent years, all of the Houston area’s largest districts have assembled a similar committee, which helps get community buy-in for spending billions of dollars on school construction projects and other expensive upgrades. HISD could face a particularly tall task in garnering support for a bond this year, given widespread community opposition to the state-appointed superintendent and school board running the district.

    An HISD spokesperson told the Houston Landing that district leaders are “considering” creating a group of community members to assist in the planning process. If HISD does form a committee, it likely will be later in the process relative to other districts, which generally set up the groups roughly six to nine months before the election date.

    Miles has not confirmed that the district will go out for a bond in November, but has repeatedly said his administration is looking into the possibility.

    “HISD students deserve better than the buildings they have inherited after more than a decade of neglect,” an HISD spokesperson wrote in an email to the Landing. “If and when the district moves forward with a bond election, the bond plan will address the most urgent student needs and will not raise taxes.”

    […]

    Most Texas districts pass a bond roughly every five years. But HISD’s most recent bond passed in 2012, a $1.9 billion package backed by roughly two-thirds of voters. The district aimed to hold a bond election in the late 2010s, but many voters lost faith in the district due to infighting among board members and the prospect of an imminent state takeover.

    As a result, many of HISD’s buildings are breaking down, with repeated heating and cooling issues.

    While HISD families and leaders generally agree that the district needs to pass a bond, a potential November election still could prove contentious.

    Voting on a bond represents one of the only remaining ways that Houston taxpayers can directly influence the district’s operations following Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s appointment of Miles and an unelected school board last June.

    Some HISD families and community advocates have criticized Miles’ dramatic overhaul of the district, arguing that he has ignored community voices in his decision-making process. Miles has said he’s made a few recent changes in response to community feedback — most notably, delaying the rollout of a new principal evaluation system — though he’s generally pushed forward with his preferred methods for changing district operations.

    At a March school board meeting, several parents said they would shoot down any upcoming bond as a protest vote against Miles.

    “We, the electorate, have the responsibility to not throw good money after bad. So, we might have to touch a sacred cow, meaning the bond,” HISD parent Stacy Anderson said at the meeting. “In my 22 years of living and being a voter in the city of Houston, I have never, ever voted against a bond. But I can tell you now, with the way that it is going, I will have to.”

    HISD has not said how large any upcoming bond proposal might be, but a credit opinion issued by Moody’s investor service in late March said that the district expects a bond package between $3.5 billion and $5 billion. HISD said the estimate was based on facilities planning work from 2022 and will be updated.

    See here for a bit of background. This is the dilemma in a nutshell. HISD desperately needs a bond, to refurbish and update facilities and equipment that fall short of what the students require and deserve. HISD, and in particular Mike Miles, also needs the support of a community that it has treated with disdain and indifference in order to get that bond. All of us in the community, many of whom have utter distrust of Miles and his agenda, are thus left with a lousy choice. I am exactly where Stacy Anderson is, and I hate it. Thanks a hell of a lot, Mike.

    As to how HISD proceeds if it does put forward a bond, I don’t know and I almost don’t care. I don’t see how they can get the trust they’ll need no matter what they do at this point. I need to go mutter some obscenities under my breath. We’ll talk more later.

    UPDATE: So on brand.

    Without any public discussion, Houston ISD’s appointed Board of Managers voted Thursday to formally authorize the administration to explore a 2024 bond election.

    “Too many HISD students are learning in facilities that, quite simply, are not acceptable,” appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said in a prepared statement after the board meeting. “Our kids need and deserve better, and we look forward to talking to the broader HISD community about the investments we can make to provide all our students with safe, healthy, and effective learning environments.”

    Miles can now explore putting together a multi-billion dollar bond package after the vote to allow the district to use proceeds from a future bond election to reimburse the district’s general fund for money they use to put the bond together. Bond proceeds would otherwise be spent to pay for upgrades to school facilities and infrastructure.

    “Without any public discussion”, because of course. Yes, I know, this doesn’t mean there will be a bond, just that HISD has decided to move forward on maybe having one, and there can be discussion of it then. I’m sure any discussion at this time would have been an opportunity for many more “fire Mike Miles” comments. But still, this is so on brand it’s almost a self-parody.

    Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

    Lawsuit filed to stop the Boca Chica land swap

    Posted on April 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Okay.

    A coalition of Rio Grande Valley organizations have filed a lawsuit against the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, seeking to block the state agency from pursuing a land swap with Elon Musk’s SpaceX spacecraft company.

    Last month, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission voted unanimously to pursue an exchange that would give 43 acres of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX in exchange for 477 acres adjacent to Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. Rio Grande Valley residents opposed the exchange, arguing that Boca Chica is sacred to the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and that the public park has long been a favorite recreational outpost for the majority Hispanic community in the Rio Grande Valley.

    In the lawsuit filed last week in the district court of Travis County, environmental groups argue that the exchange is unlawful because the state failed to consider alternatives to giving away public land and failed to ensure the minimization of harm to public land. The groups also argue that the state did not consider the best interests of the local community. The suit states that SpaceX does not own the land the state would receive in the swap. The Texas Standard reported in January that Musk was still negotiating the purchase of the private land.

    “This is just the latest example of our state officials failing to fulfill their obligations to Texans, whenever SpaceX is involved,” Marisa Perales, an attorney representing the three Rio Grande Valley organizations who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. “Protecting public park land and the public’s interest means saying ‘no’ to the demands of SpaceX, whose space flight activities have caused harm to public lands and wildlife habitats.”

    […]

    The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department declined to comment on the lawsuit but said the agency has, for many years, been interested in the 477 acres they will acquire through the land swap.

    “The 477 acres offered to TPWD near Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge encompass one of the most biologically diverse regions in North America, sheltering endangered species, winter fowl and other migratory birds,” said Cory Chandler, an agency spokesperson. “The land has been of interest to us and the conservation community for many years and an exchange would create a tenfold return while allowing TPWD to work with partners in the region to plan for a new state park for public enjoyment with access for fishing, kayaking, wildlife viewing, hiking, biking and family gatherings in a rapidly developing region of Texas.”

    See here for the previous update. I had missed that story about SpaceX not actually owning the land in question but trying to buy it presumably so that it could be swapped. All of my previous statements about this deal seeming to be reasonable on its face are hereby suspended until further notice.

    Posted in Legal matters, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Parking meter extension proposal sent to Prop A committee

    Posted on April 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    We sure do live in a different world now.

    City Council voted on Wednesday to send a proposal extending parking meter enforcement times to committee following a clash between council members who introduced the agenda item and those who expressed concerns about the potential consequences in their districts.

    Council Members Edward Pollard and Tiffany Thomas, who brought the item forward under Proposition A – which allows any three council members to put an item on the agenda – were among the four who voted against sending it to committee in a 13-4 vote. Council Member Fred Flickinger, the third member who sponsored the agenda item, voted to send it to committee.

    The current city ordinance requires people to pay for city parking meters between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday, with free parking on Sunday. The proposed change would extend the payment enforcement period from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., Monday through Saturday.

    The agenda item was tagged by Pollard last week after his other proposal about adding speeding bumps was sent to committee. Council Members Joaquin Martinez and Mario Castillo, who represent parts of the city with the highest concentration of parking meters, championed the motion Wednesday to send the proposal to the Proposition A Committee, which Mayor John Whitmire created to help members vet and refine their proposals.

    The freshmen council members explained that they were given little notice of the original proposal before it was added to the agenda last week, and they needed time to contact key stakeholders in their districts to better understand the potential impacts of the proposal.

    “You’re impacting the whole business district, and you’re not even talking to them about what you want to do,” Martinez said Friday.

    […]

    Pollard told council Wednesday that sending the proposal to committee would violate the process approved by voters under Proposition A, which does not mandate council proposals go through committee before being added to council agendas.

    “Now (if) the items that are brought forward are not supported by council, then you can vote it down,” Pollard said. “You can delay it. You can tag it. That’s your prerogative, like every other agenda item that may come to us. But to send them to a committee … I think is going against the will of the voters.”

    Castillo argued that all proposals – even if brought under the new charter amendment – may be tagged, delayed or referred to committees.

    “There’s no automatic requirement that everything brought to council via Prop A will go to a committee, and I’m sure there will be examples in circumstances where we bring items to council and they get passed or they get voted down directly,” Castillo said. “But this clearly needs more work.”

    See here for more on the parking meter proposal, and Prop A committee. On the latter, I don’t remember the wording of Prop A from last year’s ballot. Looking back on the coverage in the leadup to the election, it was presented as “three Council members can put an item on the agenda for Council to vote on” – however the actual proposition was worded, I’m pretty sure it didn’t say anything about going through a committee first. But if a majority of City Council votes to send it to a committee for further consideration, I don’t see how that violates the letter or the spirit of the ordinance. It was never promised that any of these items would get passed, just that they’d be considered.

    For sure, this opens up the possibility of shenanigans – delays, roadblocks, major changes, and so on. But that’s a normal part of the process, and again there was never a guarantee that these items would succeed. They still need a majority to vote for them, and if such a majority exists I doubt they’ll be truly blocked. And since my initial concern about Prop A was its potential for rogue Council members to put divisive time-wasting items on the agenda, I’m fine with there being an outlet to corral that. So far Prop A has been used for substantial items – they may or may not get adopted, but they have been worth discussing. If we get to a point where something that would pass if it could ever get out of committee fails to come for a vote, then we’ve got a problem. Until then, we’re figuring this out and we’ll see how it goes.

    As for the parking meter extension itself, my initial reaction was to the idea that we were extending hours from 10 PM to 2 AM, based on my experience with the meters in the City Hall parking lot, which we use for shows at the Hobby Center. I’m still fine with this proposal, but I understand the concerns expressed in the story about how it might affect downtown and the office maintenance workers who are there after business hours. I’m sure there are ways to mitigate some of that and guess what? That’s the sort of thing that can be brainstormed and sussed out in a committee hearing. A win all around, maybe. Like I said, we’ll see when and if this comes up for a final vote, and in what form.

    Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    RNC scales down Hispanic outreach efforts

    Posted on April 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Fine by me.

    A Hispanic outreach center that the National Republican Committee opened on San Antonio’s Southeast Side in 2021 is among numerous minority outreach offices across the country that have been shuttered for the 2024 election cycle.

    Democrats say the closures are a signal the GOP no longer cares about courting Hispanic voters, while Republicans say the investments in traditionally blue territory didn’t make sense in this year’s challenging national political landscape.

    The now-shuttered Hispanic outreach center in the Highlands neighborhood, which served as a gathering point for congressional candidate Cassy Garcia in 2022, offers some evidence for both perspectives.

    Its closure — part of an overall scaled-back presence in South Texas this election cycle — is in stark contrast to the optimistic message national Republicans were sending here just two years ago.

    […]

    The RNC plans to maintain one South Texas Hispanic outreach center this year to support U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas’ 15th Congressional District — the only one of the 2022 targets Republicans successfully flipped last cycle.

    Redistricting in 2021 turned that seat from slightly favoring Democrats to slightly favoring Republicans, but De La Cruz faces a potentially contentious rematch with Democrat Michelle Vallejo. National Democrats are targeting that race and putting big money into Latino voter outreach nationwide.

    I suspect this is partly about prioritizing incumbent protection over seeking targets to flip, especially after neither CDs 28 nor 34 proved to be particularly reachable for them in the favorable-in-Texas environment of 2022, and one part the reality that the RNC now exists to funnel money to Donald Trump and his lawyers. Not a whole lot of money left for anything else after that. There may be some downstream effects in their efforts to hold onto State House districts like HD37 and HD118, and their effort to flip SD27, which again is all fine by me. This also doesn’t mean there won’t be money from other sources in these areas and doing this work, it just won’t be RNC money. I hope we look back on this as a bad decision by the GOP. The Current and Reform Austin have more.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    County leaders defend Uplift Harris

    Posted on April 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    I appreciate the passion and intensity in this response, but overall it does not leave me feeling optimistic about the outcome.

    Harris County leaders are defending their new guaranteed income program after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office sued to stop the initiative from going into effect, accusing the attorney general of targeting the Houston area while overlooking similar programs in San Antonio, Austin and El Paso.

    At a news conference on Wednesday, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo called the timing of the lawsuit “cruel” and “unscrupulous,” alleging Paxton’s office waited until recipients had been notified they had been selected for the program before filing the lawsuit.

    Harris County approved its pilot program last June, which aims to send $500 monthly payments for 18 months to around 1,900 low-income households. Now, with recipients notified and the first payments scheduled for later this month, Paxton’s office has asked a Harris County district court judge to stop the checks from going out and rule that the program is unconstitutional under state law.

    Commissioner Rodney Ellis said it was clear the state had become “too comfortable with using people as props,” and some of the county’s poorest residents could pay the price.

    Though the $20.5 million Uplift Harris program is funded using a portion of the county’s federal pandemic recovery dollars, Paxton’s office is arguing the program violates a state law that prohibits the gift of public funds to any individual.

    […]

    Paxton’s lawsuit is part of a broader movement to oppose the guaranteed income pilot programs that have emerged around the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. State lawmakers in Arizona, Iowa and Wisconsin have introduced legislation to prohibit programs that were implemented in Phoenix, Des Moines and Madison. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the bill last year on the grounds that he objected to the Legislature’s “continued efforts to arbitrarily restrict and preempt local government partners across our state.”

    Paxton’s office also questioned the legality of the Uplift Harris selection process, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday.

    In the first stage of the process, some 6,000 eligible applicants were randomly selected from the over 82,000 applications received. Finally, around 1,900 participants were randomly selected from that group. To be eligible, applicants had to live below 200% of the federal poverty line and live in one of 10 high-poverty zip codes or participate in the ACCESS Harris County public health program.

    The Attorney General’s office argued Uplift Harris violated state law because it used a “random lottery” to select participants, a method employed in numerous programs including the Houston Housing Authority’s public housing waitlist and the City of Austin’s rental assistance fund.

    Though Menefee, Ellis and Hidalgo vowed to defend the program all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, they said Wednesday they doubted that the state’s top justices – all of whom are elected Republicans – would deliver a ruling that rises above partisan politics.

    Menefee admitted he is “less than confident” that the county will receive fair treatment, particularly from Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine, who made headlines last week for remarks he made at a conservative event that included criticism of Harris County.

    See here for the background. Devine is a genuine problem, but if the fix is indeed in then it almost doesn’t matter. Again, I don’t know enough about the law here to make an educated guess about anything, but we know Ken Paxton rarely has a strong legal argument when he files these lawsuits. He’s banking on the refs being on his side. Sometimes that doesn’t work for him. Maybe this is one of those times. At this point, I don’t know what else to say.

    Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Some of those dropped HPD cases were connected to other cases

    Posted on April 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Shocking, I know.

    Of the suspended sex crime incident reports submitted by the Houston Police Department to the Houston Forensic Science Center, nearly 100 came back with links to other cases, Chief Troy Finner said Monday evening.

    […]

    In HPD’s initial review, 4,017 of those suspended incident reports had been identified as adult sex crimes, Finner wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    Finner wrote that the department had met with the forensic science center and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to get a second level of review and address the way the agencies communicated regarding DNA related to both sex crime cases and other offenses.

    A list of adult sex crime incident reports was provided by HPD to the forensic science center following a March 27 meeting, and of the 4,017 incident reports, 1,147 had sexual assault kits tested for DNA. Of that number, 76 of those matched with perpetrators in other offenses. Finner directed all cases regardless of offense title be sent to the forensic science center, and that resulted in another 20 matches to other cases, he wrote.

    Finner said that investigators are reviewing those incident reports to follow up on investigations.

    See here and here for some background. The review of the dropped cases is ongoing, so that number is likely to go up. This is hardly a surprise, any large number of randomly selected cases would include some number that are connected. In theory, these shouldn’t be “random” cases but ones that were deemed low probability to be solved and thus not worth the HPD resources needed to investigate them. If nothing else, this casts the decision to discard them like this in a more harsh light. We’ll see what that committee that the Mayor put together comes up with.

    Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    FEC complaint filed over Cruz’s podcasting gig

    Posted on April 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Go for it.

    I hear Cancun is nice

    U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is facing a formal campaign finance complaint over money sent from the company that syndicates his podcast to a political action committee supporting his reelection bid.

    The complaint, filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission, alleges Cruz may have improperly directed radio distribution and marketing firm iHeartMedia to send over $630,000 to the Truth and Courage PAC, a group dedicated to Cruz’ reelection effort. The amount would exceed the $5,000 limit an officeholder is permitted to solicit for a super PAC.

    End Citizens United and the Campaign Legal Center filed the complaint and are seeking a formal FEC investigation into the payments.

    The terms of iHeartMedia’s payments are unclear. The company’s agreement with Cruz for distributing his podcast is not public. But the complaint asserts that Cruz could have violated campaign finance laws if he directed iHeartMedia to give to the super PAC by exceeding the solicitation limit.

    The complaint also asserts the payments were improperly reported as “other receipts” rather than campaign contributions. “Other receipts” is generally reserved for interest or income on assets already owned by a PAC.

    “By soliciting or directing $630,850.08 of iHeartMedia’s corporate funds to or on behalf of TCP in connection with his 2024 election, Cruz appears to have brazenly violated these federal campaign finance laws,” the complaint reads.

    See here for the background. No one should get excited over the filing of an FEC complaint; the gridlocked-by-design nature of the FEC generally ensures that it can’t do much of anything, and even if it could the most likely outcome would be a modest fine. Still, this does accomplish the objective of extending the news cycle and giving the Allred campaign the chance to refer to the alleged violations in its advertising. There’s also an easy off ramp for Cruz if he wants to take it: Either tell iHeartMedia and his PAC to knock off the payments, or resign from the Senate and podcast full time, since that’s clearly something he actually cares about, unlike Senatoring. All problems should be this easy to solve. The Current has more.

    Posted in Election 2024, Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Texas blog roundup for the week of April 8

    Posted on April 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    This Texas Progressive Alliance weekly roundup is best viewed through eclipse glasses.

    Continue reading →

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , | Leave a comment

    Interview with Austin Pooley

    Posted on April 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Austin Pooley

    We continue with our interviews for the three now-elected At Large positions on the Harris Central Appraisal District (HCAD) Board. The first person I heard from after I had posted about the HCAD announcement of the race and how to apply to be a candidate is today’s interview subject, Austin Pooley. Pooley, who is a 2012 graduate of Texas A&M with a degree in finance, worked for two years at HCAD after graduation, so naturally he was interested in this election. He worked as a Residential Appraiser during his time at HCAD, learning how to appraise property and navigating residents through the protest process. He currently works in the energy industry as an Energy Efficiency Program Manager, helping to weatherize homes for low-income customers. He is running for Position 2. Here’s what we talked about:

    PREVIOUSLY:

    Pelumi Adeleke

    See here and here for what we know about these HCAD positions. I will have two more interviews next week. Early voting for this race and the SD15 special election runs from April 22-30.

    Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Paxton sues over Uplift Harris

    Posted on April 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Whatever.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Harris County over Uplift Harris, its new guaranteed income pilot program, calling the effort to administer $500 monthly payments to low-income residents the “Harris Handout.”

    Though participants have been selected and notified already, Paxton is aiming to stop what he argues is an “illegally implemented” program. He is asking the court to grant a temporary restraining order to prevent the program from being implemented and to declare that Uplift Harris is unconstitutional under state law.

    Around 1,900 participants selected to receive the payments were notified last month, with the first checks expected to be sent out as early as April 24. The Uplift Harris program, which is federally funded using the county’s American Rescue Plan Act dollars, is designed to distribute the payments for 18 months.

    But now, 10 months after the program was announced, Paxton’s office is challenging the initiative following an inquiry from Republican state Sen. Paul Bettencourt.

    […]

    In January, Bettencourt asked Paxton’s office to weigh in on whether counties have the authority to carry out a guaranteed income program and if such an initiative would violate a state law that prohibits the gift of public funds to any individual.

    [Harris County Attorney Christian] Menefee previously has argued that the program does not violate the clause because it accomplishes a legitimate public purpose and has sufficient controls in place to prove its purpose and measure its effectiveness.

    However, Paxton’s office has reached a different conclusion, making the case that the program does not accomplish a public purpose and Harris County does not retain public control over the funds since recipients are given the money with “no strings attached.”

    Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis on Tuesday called Uplift Harris a “transformational hand-up” rather than the “handout” Paxton described.

    “This lawsuit from Ken Paxton reads more like a MAGA manifesto than a legal document,” Ellis said in a statement.

    I have not written about Uplift Harris before now, so follow the links in the excerpt to learn more. I don’t have an informed opinion about the legal merits of this case, but suffice it to say that there’s never a reason to take Ken Paxton’s word for anything. All that really matters is whether there’s a court he can get to that’s wired to give him what he wants. This paragraph from the Trib story makes me think that at the least this isn’t a clear winner for him:

    Harris County is the latest Texas locality to experiment with guaranteed income programs, following efforts in Austin, San Antonio and El Paso County. Local officials across the country turned to such efforts in recent years to help needy families weather high housing and food costs and bounce back from the pandemic’s economic fallout. Beneficiaries of a guaranteed income pilot program in Austin, which ended last year, received $1,000 a month and mostly used that money to help them stay housed as the city faced exorbitant increases in home prices and rents, an Urban Institute survey found.

    While there are obviously differences in what cities can do versus what counties can do, the fact that none of these other programs – including as noted one in El Paso County, which would be equivalent to Harris’ – had drawn this level of scrutiny is worth pondering. Maybe Bettencourt didn’t care until it happened here, I don’t know, and yet it still took him the better part of a year to question it. It’s hard not to smell the political motives in this, is what I’m saying. Houston Landing has more.

    Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

    The STAAR test will be graded by AI this year

    Posted on April 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    Surely something like this was inevitable.

    Students sitting for their STAAR exams this week will be part of a new method of evaluating Texas schools: Their written answers on the state’s standardized tests will be graded automatically by computers.

    The Texas Education Agency is rolling out an “automated scoring engine” for open-ended questions on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness for reading, writing, science and social studies. The technology, which uses natural language processing technology like artificial intelligence chatbots such as GPT-4, will save the state agency about $15-20 million per year that it would otherwise have spent on hiring human scorers through a third-party contractor.

    The change comes after the STAAR test, which measures students’ understanding of state-mandated core curriculum, was redesigned in 2023. The test now includes fewer multiple choice questions and more open-ended questions — known as constructed response items. After the redesign, there are six to seven times more constructed response items.

    “We wanted to keep as many constructed open ended responses as we can, but they take an incredible amount of time to score,” said Jose Rios, director of student assessment at the Texas Education Agency.

    In 2023, Rios said TEA hired about 6,000 temporary scorers, but this year, it will need under 2,000.

    To develop the scoring system, the TEA gathered 3,000 responses that went through two rounds of human scoring. From this field sample, the automated scoring engine learns the characteristics of responses, and it is programmed to assign the same scores a human would have given.

    This spring, as students complete their tests, the computer will first grade all the constructed responses. Then, a quarter of the responses will be rescored by humans.

    When the computer has “low confidence” in the score it assigned, those responses will be automatically reassigned to a human. The same thing will happen when the computer encounters a type of response that its programming does not recognize, such as one using lots of slang or words in a language other than English.

    “We have always had very robust quality control processes with humans,” said Chris Rozunick, division director for assessment development at the Texas Education Agency. With a computer system, the quality control looks similar.

    Every day, Rozunick and other testing administrators will review a summary of results to check that they match what is expected. In addition to “low confidence” scores and responses that do not fit in the computer’s programming, a random sample of responses will also be automatically handed off to humans to check the computer’s work.

    TEA officials have been resistant to the suggestion that the scoring engine is artificial intelligence. It may use similar technology to chatbots such as GPT-4 or Google’s Gemini, but the agency has stressed that the process will have systematic oversight from humans. It won’t “learn” from one response to the next, but always defer to its original programming set up by the state.

    “We are way far away from anything that’s autonomous or can think on its own,” Rozunick said.

    But the plan has still generated worry among educators and parents in a world still weary of the influence of machine learning, automation and AI.

    You can read on for a listing of those concerns, which are about what you’d expect: This is too new and untested, it’s not fair to the kids or to the schools given the high stakes of the STAAR, it’s being sprung on us with no notice, AI isn’t good enough yet to tackle a task like this, and so on. There is a way to challenge the score you get, whether from automated grading or a human reviewer; it costs $50 to request a re-grade and the fee is later waived if the score goes up as a result, but I didn’t see anything to suggest that those who can’t afford the fee up front can get the same consideration. It’s nice that this will save a few bucks, but at a time when the state is sitting on $30 billion in surplus and no new funds were allocated to public schools because Greg Abbott kept that all hostage to his voucher dreams, any talk of savings has a bitter tinge.

    As I said, I think we could all see this sort of thing coming. Humans aren’t infallible as graders either, and surely this will take less time to perform. Maybe it will get to a point where the process is seen as more objective and thus fairer, or at least less likely to be affected by random factors. Whenever this was to be done for the first time, the same complaints were likely to be raised. I fully expect there to be problems, some of which will seem unbelievable and ridiculous, but I also expect that over time, probably less time than we think, it will improve to the point where few people will think the old way was better. I still wouldn’t want my kid to be one of the beta testers for this, and I fully sympathize with the fears expressed by teachers, administrators, and everyone else. I hope it’s done reasonably well and I hope the TEA responds quickly and compassionately to the problems that will arise. And we still need to elect a better government because everything that’s been happening with public education lately – among many other things – is just screwed up and we deserve so much better.

    Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    So what’s Mayor Whitmire’s deal with Vision Zero?

    Posted on April 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

    The Chron editorial board thinks he won’t be some destroyer of non-automotive transit. I’ll remain politely skeptical for now.

    Mayor John Whitmire

    John Whitmire insists he supports Vision Zero, the city’s action plan to make Houston streets safer. The ultimate goal is zero people losing their lives in car crashes by 2030. Zero pedestrians killed just crossing a street. Zero new ghost bikes haunting curbs across town where cyclists died nearby.

    Some are questioning Whitmire’s commitment to street safety after a few recent moves, including the removal of concrete medians recently installed along Houston Avenue and his ordering a review of bike lanes and other features of the new 11th Street redesign in the Heights.

    […]

    For his part, Whitmire sees the 11th Street project as something that started with a simple request for a safe crossing at the busy Nicholson Street intersection and morphed into an elaborate design. The result, he says, is a rush-hour bottleneck so severe that fire officials have told him they’ll have to avoid 11th Street entirely. Whitmire said similar concerns on Houston Avenue prompted him to remove the controversial medians: a Metro bus had previously gotten stuck there and a nearby fire station complained the medians made it more difficult for their trucks to turn.

    “All I’m saying is use some common sense,” Whitmire told us. “As long as there’s 2.3 million people in the city, you’re gonna have traffic. Houston Avenue is an artery to get up on the freeway.”

    He noted that Houston is unlike major American cities organized around transit such as New York. Our city is bisected by several major freeways, which ferry Houstonians to neighborhoods that sprawl endlessly in all directions.

    He’s right. Houston is also the nation’s second-fastest growing metropolitan region, with more than 7 million people, according to census data. We could add another 3 million residents by 2040. If everybody brings their cars, streets and freeways will be even more clogged. We need alternatives.

    Complacency is not an option. Neither is haste. Scrapping the careful planning of the Turner administration would be a mistake. While advocates were, at times, frustrated by the slow pace of redesign projects under Turner, he deserves credit for encouraging a data-driven approach that included mapping out every high-injury corridor all over the city. That map should be his starting point. It shows that 9% of Houston streets account for nearly 60% of traffic deaths and serious injuries.

    We came away from our interview with the mayor persuaded that he intends to keep some version of Turner’s Vision Zero Action Plan. We believe he wants to stop the deaths and injuries and we admire his vision of doing it equitably, making sure, for instance, that more neglected neighborhoods get 3-foot sidewalks before others get 10-foot sidewalks.

    Whitmire understandably wants to put his stamp on transportation policy, but we urge him to put Houstonians’ safety before any political considerations or disagreements with strident advocates. A mayor as committed to public safety as Whitmire should take an all-of-the-above approach to street safety that includes traffic enforcement and street redesigns that slow drivers down. In 2023 alone, there were 323 traffic fatalities in Houston. Most were motorists, followed by pedestrians and cyclists. That figure is actually a marginal improvement, eight fewer fatalities than in 2022.

    Whitmire told us he would release a comprehensive plan within a few months. The theme will be “options.” That includes modernizing Metro to include ride share programs and more efficient bus routes; installing and raising crosswalks all over the city; improving mobility for motorists; and beefing up traffic enforcement.

    Part of the reason why I remain skeptical is because I do drive along West 11th and it’s just not that bad. It’s also a lot easier to cross or make a left onto 11th from one of the side roads now that there are two lanes of moderate speed traffic instead of four lanes of cars going 40 or more coming at you. I’m also squinting at what he’s saying about Metro – what exactly does he see ride share services offering and at what price? We just did a massive redesign of the bus network a few years ago, it’s a hell of a lot more sensible now and the high-frequency routes carry lots of riders, what does he think is missing? Basically, as with some other things we could mention here, the problem is a lack of information about what the plans are.

    Texas Monthly has a post up now about how Whitmire is a “20th century Mayor for a 21st century Houston”, and that’s going to live in my brain for a long time. I hope it turns out to be an overbid and not a prophecy. But if it turns out to be the latter, that’s a pretty compelling starting point to a campaign for whoever might challenge the Mayor in 2027.

    Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments