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June, 2015:

More counties issuing same sex marriage licenses

Montgomery County:

RedEquality

Montgomery County Clerk Mark Turnbull said he turned one same-sex couple away on Friday who requested a marriage license, but wound up issuing the license after regular hours on Saturday.

He initially refused because he was waiting for clarification from the state on what form to use, but after the courthouse closed Friday evening, Texas Department of Health Services sent a revised form that removed all gender references and referred to those applying for the license only as “applicant one” and “applicant two,” Turnbull said.

With a new form in hand, he telephoned Pam Kunkle, 55, an insurance manager in Houston and her partner, Connie Moberley, 67, and asked them to return to the Montgomery County courthouse so he could issue the license Saturday.

“We needed some time to make adjustments with the language and make sure it worked on our computer program. We were glad they volunteered to come back and be our first guinea pig to make sure the system worked,” he said, adding none of the clerks in his office had raised any religious objections to issuing licenses to same-sex couples. “We are officers with ministerial duties. We have no discretion. We follow rules listed in our handbook.”

However, he recalled a former employee who objected to issuing liquor licenses on moral grounds and said she later switched to another county job where that did not pose a problem.

That’s Montgomery County, one of the reddest in Texas. The theme of “we do what the law says we are to do” is one you will see again.

Tarrant County:

Tracey Knight didn’t know if the day would ever come when she would be legally married in the state of Texas.

At long last it did come Friday, after a landmark Supreme Court ruling swept away the state’s longtime ban against same-sex marriage.

“We dreamed of this day,” said Knight, a corporal with the Fort Worth Police Department who serves as the LGBT community liaison. “We weren’t sure if it would ever happen. Now we have started planning our wedding.”

Knight and her wife, Shannon, who wed two years ago in California but wanted to exchange vows again in Texas, shared smiles and tears Friday as they were the first same-sex couple in Tarrant County to receive a marriage license.

Several other counties in North Texas were awaiting “guidance” from AG Ken Paxton. Denton County, which had originally refused to issue same sex marriage licenses, has now become compliant with the law of the land.

The Denton County clerk’s office is now issuing same-sex marriage licenses, following Friday operations that turned at least three couples away.

Whitney Hennen and Sara Bollinger was the first same-sex couple in the county this morning to be given a marriage license.

On Sunday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared religious objections a legitimate excuse for county clerks and their staffs as a means of denying licenses to same-sex couples.

Denton County Clerk Juli Luke said she is opposed to gay and lesbian couples getting married for religious reasons, but maintained her personal beliefs cannot prevent her from issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

“Moreover, my faith in Christ ensures I have compassion and respect for those who feel differently,” she wrote in a statement.

See, Ken Paxton? It’s not hard to do at all. Collin County has joined in as well, though several other counties in the area are not there yet.

Williamson County has fallen in line, too.

Williamson County is now issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as of 8 a.m. Monday. That comes after getting advice from County Attorney Dee Hobbs.

“I would like to acknowledge the gravity of the Supreme Court decision and the passion citizens have on both sides of this issue,” reads a statement by Hobbs, posted outside the Williamson County Clerk’s Office. “I would like to thank those that contacted this office for being respectful int heir questions and also understanding regarding time to review.”

That’s two outlaw counties that have come back to their senses. Smith County makes three, with Gregg thrown in as a bonus.

An East Texas same-sex couple became the first in Smith County to be issued a marriage license on Monday morning.

About 8:30 a.m., a couple showed up seeking a marriage license at the Smith County courthouse. Karen Wilkerson and her fiance Jolie Smith began the process to obtain their marriage license shortly after 8:30 a.m. and were issued the document about 9:20 a.m. The couple was the first to show up at the courthouse office.

The license was issued following a Friday Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Earlier in the day, the Smith County Vital Statistics Department was temporarily closed for a staff meeting. A sign posted in the courthouse said the department was also testing the system to accommodate new forms.

Smith County Clerk Karen Phillips said the state changed the vital statistic form needed to issue the licenses.

Midland County was a Friday adherent, but neighboring Ector was a holdout. Not any more.

Ector County Clerk Linda Haney will issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, opting not to take an out offered by Attorney General Ken Paxton for clerks who wish to deny such licenses due to religious beliefs.

“I took an oath to uphold the law and I intend to follow the law,” Haney said, although the marriage licenses could not be issued early Monday morning because the new application was not yet available on the computer system.

Her decision comes after the Friday ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that marriage is a Constitutional right for same-sex couples.
Sunday, Paxton issued an opinion that clerks could deny licenses based on religious beliefs, just as justices of the peace could decline to perform the weddings based on religious beliefs.

Haney, however, said she will follow the Supreme Court’s ruling and what she believes is the correct thing according to the law.

“An act of civil disobedience on my part would not honor my God and I don’t want to put my county at liability either,” Haney said. “I do have strong religious convictions and anybody that knows me knows what those convictions are. But I did take an oath and I will follow the law.”

Amazing how clear and simple that is, isn’t it? I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see all these counties, from different parts of the state, ignore Ken Paxton’s advice and do the job they’re supposed to do. And congratulations to Karen Wilkerson and Jolie Smith!

Not all counties needed prodding. Fort Bend County had it right from the beginning.

While the topic has produced a variety of opinions among the American public, the Fort Bend County Clerk’s office has issued a direct statement – current marriage forms won’t be modified, but when new forms arrive for same-sex marriage, they will be honored in accordance with the new law.

Same-sex couples will be allowed to marry, using the current forms, until the updated ones arrive.

Again – easy peasy. So simple even Ken Paxton should be able to understand it. Let’s let Brazoria County explain it to him anyway, just in case.

After an opinion from the District Attorney’s office this afternoon, County Clerk Joyce Hudman said Brazoria County is officially issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

Hudman said her offices have been issuing licenses since 1:30 p.m. and will throughout the day.

District Attorney Jeri Yenne gave the county clerk’s office a one-sentence opinion that issuing same-sex marriage licenses is mandatory based on the Supreme Court’s decision today.

“As a follow-up to your inquiry regarding marriage licenses, please be advised that on today’s date, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion indicating the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex,” Yenne’s memo reads.

After getting that memo, Hudman said her offices were instructed to grant the licenses.

One couple already has obtained a marriage license from the Pearland clerk’s office, she said.

A “one-sentence opinion” that explained the facts. Are we going to fast for you, Kenny?

Unfortunately, every state has its slow learners.

“I’m standing up for my religious liberty,” said Hood County Clerk Katie Lang, who said her office would not give out same-sex marriage licenses on religious grounds. “I do believe that marriage is for one man and one woman because it did derive from the Bible.”

After the decision Friday, some county officials said they would wait to hear from state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who issued a written opinion Sunday saying clerks with religious objections to same-sex marriages can refuse to issue those licenses. But if they do so, he wrote, they might face fine or lawsuits.

Paxton said pro bono lawyers would be ready to defend those who refuse, noting “the reach of the Court’s opinion stops at the door of the First Amendment and our laws protecting religious liberty.” Lang said after reading Paxton’s opinion, she chose to face possible legal action.

“I could get fined and I could get sued,” she said, “but you could get sued for anything.”

You can also be held in contempt of court if it comes down to it. And remember, for this you could be sued personally, not just named as a defendant in an action against the county or your office. But hey, every cause needs a martyr, and I’m sure that future Fox News gig will be sweet.

That’s about all the counties I have the energy to look up today. Other resources: The DMN has an interactive map that’s at least somewhat inaccurate since they have no report on Fort Bend’s status. The Current has contacted a bunch of Hill Country counties and reports that all except possibly Kerr are now in compliance. Glen Maxey has been keeping tabs on Facebook – see here for his running count, and be sure to see the comments for updates. If you don’t see your favorite county listed somewhere, you may just have to call the Clerk’s office there yourself. Overall, though, the picture is pretty good and it appears to be improving. All the national headlines have been about Paxton and his get-out-of-following-the-law opinion for County Clerks, but at this point very few clerks, almost none in larger counties, have heeded him. Unlike Greg Abbott, they understand how the law works and they respect it. Paxton’s words – and Dan Patrick’s, and Greg Abbott’s, and Ted Cruz’s – will make Texas look bad to the rest of the country, but at least we still have enough sensible local officials to maybe mitigate that a bit.

In closing, here’s a non-legal opinion regarding a better way for county clerks with religious objections to handle this:

Religious freedom is so central to our nation that no public official should be required to do anything that violates the religious principles that direct his or her life.

And there is clear and proper recourse here for any public official who, as a result of this landmark change in the law, finds himself or herself uncomfortable with or unable to perform the revised duties of office.

They should quit.

Amen. Thankfully, very few of them have decided that they cannot do their jobs. Let’s hope the remainders follow their lead and not Paxton’s. Trail Blazers and BOR have more.

SCOTUS puts HB2 back on hold

Good. For now, anyway.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with Texas abortion providers and temporarily put on hold a ruling that would have closed about half of the state’s abortion facilities.

There were 19 abortion providers performing the procedure in Texas as of earlier this month.

Abortion restrictions passed by the Texas Legislature in 2013 — and set to go into effect Wednesday — would have required Texas’ abortion facilities to meet hospital-like standards, including minimum sizes for rooms and doorways, pipelines for anesthesia and other infrastructure. Only a handful of Texas abortion clinics — all in major metropolitan areas — meet those standards.

[…]

“The justices have preserved Texas women’s few remaining options for safe and legal abortion care for the moment,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of Texas abortion providers. “Now it’s time to put a stop to these clinic shutdown laws once and for all.”

The Texas attorney general’s office, which is representing the state in court, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The high court voted 5-4 to put the ruling on hold, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito voting against the delay.

See here and here for the background. It sure has been a consequential few days for SCOTUS, hasn’t it? The good news is that this awful law is still not being enforced. The bad news, as dKos points out, is that it means SCOTUS will hear the case in the fall, thus opening a big ol’ can of worms that may or may not ever get re-canned. But it’s where we are, and it’s the only hope we’ve got. Let’s pray that Justice Kennedy is having a good day when the arguments are held. Trail Blazers, Hair Balls, RH Reality Check, the Observer, the Current, BOR, and Newsdesk have more.

Bail reform for Harris County?

This would be a big deal.

go_to_jail

In jails across the country, including Harris County, a majority of the people behind bars have not been convicted of a crime. In the jail complex on the north side of downtown Houston, more than 6,600 people, about three-quarters of the prisoners there, are waiting to go to trial. Each one costs taxpayers about $45 a day.

Those prisoners are there because they can’t afford to pay bail, the debt a judge imposes to make sure defendants return to court.

Advocates for bail reform have said the system can be burdensome for low-income defendants, saying it inhibits their ability to go back to work, support their families and aid in their own defense.

Leaders at both the local at state level are now looking at ways to change that, possibly allowing defendants charged with lower level crimes to remain free without bail, but with a pledge to return to court. They will use a screening process that can predict whether defendants will return to court or if they might commit more crimes if released.

Earlier this month, Nathan Hecht, the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, announced the creation of a committee to study the issue for the Texas Judicial Council, the policy-making body for the state judiciary. Depending on the results, they may throw their support behind changes in the next legislative session.

Hecht said a recent report by the National Conference of Chief Justices showed that bail for suspects of non-violent crime, like drug offenses, is an unnecessary expense.

“It doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help the criminal justice system and it doesn’t help society,” he said. “It just creates additional burdens. If it’s easy to avoid and you end up at the same place, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Hecht said he wants to be able to prove that point before advocating for a change.

“The District of Columbia is pretty far along in revamping their system so that bail is not required,” Hecht said. “We’ll have Texas look at this and see if we can’t make some improvements.”

[…]

Some of those who oppose changing the system are the bail bondsmen who stand to lose business.

“Who’s going to chase these people when they miss court?” said Michael Kubosh, a bail bondsman and a city councilman. “You’re going to have to hire more government people to do it.”

When defendants use a bondsman to secure bail, they pay a fee-10 percent or more of the bail amount-and pledge collateral, usually property or automobiles, for the remaining amount.

If a defendant does not show up for court, the bondsman either has to pay the entire bail or go on a manhunt.

“If someone has a financial interest, then we can get ‘Billy Bob’ to show back up because someone will produce them,” Kubosh said. “Their mom will produce them before she’ll lose her house.”

He noted the cost of current system is paid by the people accused of crimes, not spread among taxpayers.

“If they miss court, a bondsman is financially obligated to the state to get these people back in custody,” he said. “We monitor every one of them every day, at no cost to the taxpayer.”

All due respect to CM Kubosh, but Harris County doesn’t owe bail bondsmen a living. The issue here isn’t with the people who make bail, it’s with the many people who can’t, and who as a result sit in jail – for which the taxpayers do foot the cost – even though they haven’t been convicted of anything and may never be convicted of anything, or – even worse – plead guilty to something they didn’t do in order to get out of jail. Basically, some number of people – more than is the case now – need to be released on their own recognizance, and more people need to be assessed a lower and more affordable bail amount. The goal here is to have fewer people in jail at any time, which is both more just and less expensive. If that means leaner times for the bail bonding business, well, that’s okay by me. The tradeoff is more than worth it.

Sales tax revenues take a dip

Don’t freak out just yet, but do be a little worried.

Houston’s 53-month consecutive span of year-over-year sales tax revenue gains has come to an end, five months into an energy slump analysts said could dent the city’s economic numbers for the rest of the year.

The city’s $50.1 million sales tax revenues for April, received this month as its allocation from the state, represented a 2.3 percent decline from a year ago, according to the Texas Comptroller’s Office.

One month’s spending activity doesn’t represent a trend, and revenues from various sectors of Houston’s economy were all over the map. Among the top-grossing sub-sectors providing tax revenue in Houston, reported collections were down roughly 2 percent at discount department stores and family clothing stores that month compared with 2014, and off 2.6 percent at supermarkets and grocery stores. Full- and limited-service restaurant collections, on the other hand, rose 4.7 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively, figures show.

But as Houston’s sales tax revenues declined 2.3 percent, the state’s $2.6 billion in sales tax revenue represented a 5.2 percent increased over April 2014, suggesting that a sharp downturn in the oil and gas industry so crucial to Texas has affected Houston more significantly than the rest of the state.

[…]

In Houston, sales taxes account for 30 percent of the city budget’s general fund revenue. As the city prepares its next budget, whether the monthly dip is a blip or a more sustained rattle is being monitored, city Controller Ronald Green said.

“I think now’s the time not to panic but for us to kind of determine if there’s going to be a trend in this,” Green said, adding he needs two more months of data to determine whether’s April’s revenues were a trend or an anomaly.

Compared to the doom-and-gloom predictions of late last year, steadying crude prices for the last several weeks are a sign industry is making adjustments, said Ed Wulfe, chairman and CEO of Wulfe and Co., a commercial retail real estate brokerage firm. “I think it has corrected itself already,” he said of the energy downturn. “By and large, we’re starting to get back on the normal speed and level already.”

Crude oil prices began dipping last summer after reaching a peak above $100 per barrel and have hovered around $60 since April.

The effects of that sharp price decline began arriving at the beginning of April, said Jesse Thompson, business economist with the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“At this point, the only thing that’s hitting us is what’s happening in the energy market,” Thompson said.

I basically agree with Ronald Green. A one month dip like this can be brushed off as an aberration. Three months of it is a serious problem. If it’s about what’s happening in the energy industry, there’s not much to be done about it except adjust behavior and expectations accordingly. Check back in August and we’ll see where we are.

Where same sex marriage is still functionally illegal in Texas

Smith County:

RedEquality

After a historic Supreme Court ruling, making same sex marriage legal in all fifty states, couples across the country flocked to courthouses to be legally married.

Despite the ruling, an East Texas County Court will not be issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Smith County Clerk Karen Phillips said they first need new paperwork that is not gender specific. The current application is a state form that cannot be altered in any way, said Phillips.

The current state application has fields for male and female, an issue Karen Wilkerson and her fiancé Jolie Smith say is merely administrative.

In the Smith County vital statistics office, the couple completed the marriage application and attempted to turn it in to the clerk.

“[Male] is not something I can white out because that’s a legal form,” said Phillips to the couple. “This is a state form and I can’t do anything without a state form.”

“Is the purpose of Smith County to obstruct the law of the land for administrative purpose?” Wilkerson asked.

She then offered that other counties in Dallas and Austin were issuing licenses in Texas.

PHILLIPS: “Well, they may be doing that but I don’t want to have to call up a bunch of people saying we have to redo this.”

WILKERSON: “I’m willing to redo it.”

PHILLIPS: “Well, I’m not.”

WILKERSON: “I want you to act in your capacity as county clerk and follow the law of the United States government””

Phillips went on to explain that an incorrect form could jeopardize the legality of the marriage. In addition, marriage licenses are entered into a software system that also does not recognize non-gender specific information.

The headline to the story says that a lawsuit was filed over this, but there’s no mention of it in the body of the story. The justification that County Clerk Phillips gives is, to put it politely, bullshit, as County Clerks in Harris, Dallas, Travis, Bexar, McLennan, and elsewhere have demonstrated. I’m Facebook friends with Karen Wilkerson, and from what I can tell we will know more about this situation today. I will be keeping an eye on it.

Then there’s Denton County.

The Denton County Clerk Juli Luke refused two same-sex couples an application for a license Friday, saying first that she needed to receive legal guidance from the district attorney’s office.

Later, she announced that the office would not be issuing licenses because they needed to update their computer software.

Another same-sex couple in The Colony said they started calling other county satellite offices looking for one that would issue a license. They, too, were refused.

Denton County Judge Mary Horn said that, at this point, if a same-sex couple came to her requesting to be wed, she would refuse them.

She said that the difference between the actions of elected officials in Dallas County and Denton County on Friday reflected “a difference in core philosophies.”

Every county level elected office in Denton County is held by a Republican.

[…]

District Attorney Paul Johnson said the decision whether to issue licenses belonged to the clerk’s office.

A sign on the clerk’s door said that the office would not be issuing same-sex licenses today because of “changes that must be made for our vendor.”

No explanation was provided.

Again, pure bullshit. Why the County Clerk would need to consult with the District Attorney in a strictly civil matter is a question I can’t answer, but the real question is why she needs to consult with anyone at all on this crystal clear matter of following the law of the land. As yet I have not seen word of a possible lawsuit, but I am confident one will be in the offing if Denton County doesn’t get its act together quickly. If you have any reports from your county about similar behavior, please drop me a note (kuff – at – offthekuff – dot – com) or leave a comment. Thanks.

And if these clerks or any others are waiting to be advised by AG Ken Paxton, they should know he’s giving them very bad advice.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican social conservative, offered at least moral support Sunday for county clerks and their employees who feel their religious beliefs dictate that they decline to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

In a nonbinding legal opinion, Paxton said religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment “may allow accommodation of their religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses.”

The clerks who balk at licensing gay marriage “may well face litigation and/or a fine,” Paxton warned.

“Importantly, the strength of any particular religious accommodation claim depends on the particular facts of each case,” he concluded.

“But,” he added in a press release, “numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs, in many cases on a pro-bono basis, and I will do everything I can from this office to be a public voice for those standing in defense of their rights.”

Paxton’s opinion also said justices of the peace and judges similarly may rebuff requests that they officiate at same-sex weddings, especially if their colleagues in their areas are receptive to doing so.

[…]

Neel Lane, a San Antonio lawyer for the same-sex couples who challenged Texas’ gay marriage ban in federal court, said Friday that state and local officials who refuse to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling set themselves up for costly lawsuits. Lane said private citizens could file federal civil rights lawsuits, which are called “Section 1983″ claims, against recalcitrant state and local officials. Other lawyers supportive of gay rights have said gay and lesbian couples who are refused marriage licenses could ask U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio to hold the particular county clerk in contempt of court. Garcia has issued an injunction against enforcement of Texas laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

In his advisory opinion to Patrick, Paxton noted that county clerks could delegate their duty to issue marriage licenses to subordinates. He implied that might solve the conundrum for a clerk who feels issuing a same-sex marriage license would violate a sincerely held religious belief. But what if the employees feel similarly?

Paxton noted that under Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) that both the Texas Legislature and Congress passed in the 1990s, “deputy clerks and other employees may have a claim that forcing the employee to issue same-sex marriage licenses over their religious objections is not the government’s least restrictive means of ensuring a marriage license is issued, particularly when available alternatives would not impose an undue burden on the individuals seeking a license.” Paxton wrote that if everyone in a clerk’s office has a religious objection, and if the office is still issuing licenses to opposite-sex couples, “it is conceivable that an applicant for a same-sex marriage license may claim a violation of the constitution.” Completely refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone also would be problematic, he wrote. The two RFRAs, the state and federal constitutions, state employment laws, state laws on clerks’ duties all may come into play, depending on the facts of a scenario, he said.

Essentially, Paxton invited clerks and their employees to defy the Supreme Court, but didn’t promise they’ll win.

There’s a map of what counties are doing at the post, so go check it out. Paxton issued his opinion in response to a request from Dan Patrick. This is probably the fastest opinion ever issued by an AG, and surely the least researched. The Trib quotes the ACLU of Texas reminding everyone that Paxton is basically full of it, but that is unlikely to be persuasive to anyone determined to fall on his or her sword. Again, I am not aware of any planned litigation at this time, but you can be sure it will happen if it needs to. Stay tuned, because this is far from over. The Current, which has a copy of Paxton’s opinion, has more.

UPDATE: Missed this earlier, but Williamson County is on the naughty list, too.

A setback for transparency

I don’t care for this.

BagOfMoney

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday limited the public’s right to know about private groups that get government funds.

In a 6-3 opinion, the court sided with the Greater Houston Partnership, agreeing that GHP doesn’t have to open its check registers even though it received funds from the city of Houston and other local governments worth about $1 million per year.

Open government advocates slammed the decision to curtail the reach of the Texas Public Information Act.

“Now GHP and groups like it that tap the spigot of public funding may draw the curtain against citizens examining how those funds are spent,” attorney Paul Watler wrote in a statement for the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

GHP hailed the decision as a protection against unwarranted intrusions on private business.

“With this ruling, economic development and chamber of commerce organizations like the Partnership can continue to work on behalf of their communities without being mischaracterized as governmental bodies,” President Bob Harvey wrote in a statement, saying those protections are now also extended to other private organizations that contract with the government.

[…]

The case stemmed from a 2007 request by Jim Jenkins of Montgomery County, who wanted to see how GHP spends the city’s money. GHP, the region’s major economic development group, argued it wasn’t a governmental body for the purposes of the act, and eventually sued to block disclosure of its finances.

The Texas Attorney General, a trial court and an appellate court each previously ruled that GHP must open its books because, although it runs primarily on membership dues, it performs work for the city that makes it, in essence, an extension of the government. GHP plays a significant role in Houston’s economic development programs, courts new business for the city and plans mayoral business recruiting trips. It also analyzes business prospects to help City Council determine whether to offer incentives.

Jenkins, a small business owner, complained that there is too much money and politics at play in the way businesses get taxpayer-funded incentives, creating a field of “haves” and “have nots” based on political access. He argued that GHP’s expenditures would shed light on that process.

If the city “can just give money to a private entity like that with no accounting, we’re all in trouble,” Jenkins said.

[…]

Joe Larsen, another Freedom of Information Foundation attorney, said the court’s new test could have the effect of allowing government to easily outsource its functions. For example, a corporation with $200 million in total revenue could run the city’s water department for $10 million. As long as most of its income comes from other ventures, the corporation wouldn’t be subject to public information requests about the utility.

“That’s pretty hard to swallow,” said Larsen, who believes the all-conservative court is giving undue deference to private enterprise in this case.

Lynne Liberato, who argued for GHP, said governments outsource to the private sector all the time – like the foreign companies that build and operate toll roads. She said even in those situations, much information is still available through the government, such as contracts, reports and expenditures.

Gotta say, that explanation from the GHP’s attorney makes this ruling sound even worse. I just don’t get the justification. Rulings like this are a good argument for having more diversity of opinion on the court. Maybe having at least one person analyzing this from something other than a conservative perspective wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it’s hard to see how it would have hurt.

Ambulances and ERs

Very interesting story about the overuse of ambulances in Houston and how the city is trying to deal with it.

But in truth little works in a system that has been broken for years. Over the past generation, patients began to see emergency rooms as doctor’s offices, taking ambulances to get there.

It’s the most expensive ride to the most expensive kind of medical care in the world.

An ambulance trip costs at least $1,000. Just walking through the ER doors adds another grand and a half.

More troubling is a recent study by the University of Texas’ School of Public Health that showed 40 percent of patients streaming into Harris County’s overburdened ERs don’t need to be there; either their condition is not urgent or they are using the ER for something that can be or should have already been handled by a primary-care doctor or clinic.

The reasons behind this shift are not fully understood, buried somewhere in a tangle of public misperceptions, lack of access to primary care and habit.

[…]

Last year in Houston, 318,630 calls to 911 got routed to the fire department, with medical calls outstripping fires by nearly seven times. About 80 percent resulted in trips to the hospital. It is not known how many were true emergencies, but one indicator is how often lights and sirens were used en route to the hospital. The best guess is more than half are not urgent, fire officials say.

The result has created a crisis, especially for public hospitals. At Harris Health System, there were 144,891 ER cases between March 2014 and February. Of those, 61.5 percent of patients were indigent or uninsured.

“It’s unsustainable,” says Dr. David Persse.

He has seen all sides. In the 1980s, he worked as an EMT and paramedic in Buffalo, N.Y. He then went to Georgetown University to study emergency medicine. He came to Houston in 1996 and is now physician director of Emergency Medical Services for the Houston Fire Department and head of Houston’s Public Health Authority.

Six months ago, he helped launch a first-of-its kind project that had been percolating for years. It is called ETHAN, for Emergency Tele-Health and Navigation, a common-sense concept that mashes EMT tradition with emergency-room triage and wraps it in modern technology.

When a fire truck or ambulance arrives on a 911 call, a quick assessment is done. If the patient appears critical, he or she is transported. But if the complaint does not seem to rise to an emergency, a doctor trained in emergency medicine is called to talk to the patient by video chat on a specialized tablet.

The doctor searches troubled voices, inconsistent stories and the grainy images for clues. If the condition could be handled by a primary care physician or at a clinic, the doctor makes the appointment on the spot and arranges city-paid transportation by cab – a sliver of the cost of an ambulance. If the patient still wants to go to the ER, the ETHAN doctor has the power to insist they go by cab or find another ride.

Not only does this cut costs, it gets ambulance crews back into service faster.

Since the December launch, there have been about 1,000 ETHAN calls. By some estimates, it has already saved the city $1 million.

Once patients are in the ETHAN system, they are contacted by a public health nurse or counselor for a follow-up home visit to make sure they have a doctor and keep their appointments. Living conditions are assessed to see if other types of assistance are needed. The goal is to keep people from returning to the ER.

There’s more, so read the whole thing. I suspect a big portion of this is lack of access to primary care, which is undoubtedly related to lack of insurance for many people. Cities and counties are left picking up the tab for that, which can be laid at the feet of our Governor and Legislature. Still, even in a context where we had Medicaid expansion and broader insurance coverage, there would be a need for this. It’s a smart idea, and I hope it continues to pay off.

Harris County road bond

Harris County voters may be asked to vote on a bond issue this fall.

HarrisCounty

Rapid population expansion and development in unincorporated areas of Harris County have strained roads, facilities and infrastructure so much that for the first time in eight years the county is considering a major bond referendum for the November ballot.

Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday asked their engineering and budget management directors to review departmental needs and bring back a proposal by July or August. The end result could be separate bond measures: one for roads and bridges and another for flood control, parks, libraries and the county’s animal shelter, said Bill Jackson, the budget manager.

The last county bond package – approved by voters in 2007 – called for $880 million for buildings, roads and parks. Though there’s no dollar estimate on the current proposal it could exceed the previous one, especially considering this projection from Jackson’s department: The unincorporated areas of Harris County will surpass Houston’s population by 2019.

“We just can’t keep up with 80,000 people moving to our region every year right now, and doing it out of current cash flow,” Jackson said.

“We are going to have to take a look at what our priorities are – whether it’s the roads or it’s the buildings – and see what we need to do.”

The growth, primarily residential development, has increased the county’s lane miles by 40 percent from 2000 to 2014. More than 85 percent of the new homes built between 2005 and 2014 in Harris County were constructed in the unincorporated area, according to the county’s appraisal district.

County engineer John Blount issued a memo, dated May 29, recommending county commissioners place a bond referendum on the November ballot.

“The dramatic growth has overwhelmed the county road network causing an increase in congestion and travel time,” Blount said in his memo.

But it’s just not roads that need attention. Some buildings housing the county’s justices of the peace were built to serve the population 50 years ago. New libraries may need to be revamped to provide books in tablet format. The county’s animal shelter – built in 1986 – was designed to take in 12,000 pets but now sees about 25,000 every year.

Jackson said the county is doing well financially – it began the year projecting a fund balance of $515 million – which means it can issue more debt without having to increase property taxes. County Judge Ed Emmett noted the county’s triple-A bond rating.

The county maintains the courts, jail, roads, bridges and bayous, but it does not levy a sales tax like Houston to help cover its expenses.

“My primary goal is to not make this a tax rate increase,” Jackson said. The county would issue debt over seven years that would be picked up by investors who buy Harris County bonds.

I’m sure that the intent is to do this without a tax increase, and I feel reasonably confident that the county is in good enough financial shape to make good on that. Doesn’t mean it won’t be called a tax hike by whoever decides to oppose it. I would remind Commissioners Court that even issues that have no formal opposition and carry no tax hike and would do a lot of good for the community, such as the 2013 jail referendum, can come perilously close to failing in the absence of a visible campaign advocating in its favor. Go big on a campaign for this if you decide to do it, or risk going home, is what I’m saying. I would also note the recent Montgomery County experience, in which the main lesson seems to be that what makes all kind of sense to some people may well be – or at least be seen as – an existential threat to others. I don’t have any specific advice for that, I’m just throwing it out there. The Highwayman has more.

Weekend link dump for June 28

“The real test is whether Francis can convince conservative politicians of the reality, and urgency, of climate change. The reaction so far, at least in the United States, suggests he can’t. John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio—all Catholic—have all dismissed Francis at some point.”

Now this is a casting call.

“Mainly, though, the historical roots of white evangelical antipathy to environmentalism and of white evangelical climate denialism comes down to two things: Shirley MacLaine and Al Gore. That’s it.”

“Artist Julia Wytrazek has perfectly imagined what Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Fred would have worn from 1910 through to the ’90s.”

Playing the stadium game with the NFL is for suckers. Your best bet is to not get involved.

The so-called “dark web” is a lot smaller than you think.

Some charter school teachers are starting to unionize. That sound you hear is Dan Patrick’s head exploding.

Three words: Donald Trump pinata. You’re welcome.

RIP, Gunther Schuller, jazz and classical musician and composer.

Our Nutella problem, which is something neither my wife nor my daughters will want to hear.

A photographer’s response to Taylor Swift in re: paying artists for their work.

“At noon on Sunday afternoon, a 16-year-old French girl made Major League Baseball history. Melissa Mayeux, a shortstop on the French U-18 junior national team, became the first known female baseball player to be added to MLB’s international registration list, which means she will be eligible to be signed by a Major League club on July 2.”

Here’s a roundtable discussion by several female sportswriters on the topic of Melissa Mayeux.

“It seems to me, if you are comfortably insulated from risk, you ought to be very, very careful about supporting policies that put other, more vulnerable people at greater risk. You ought to be damn sure you have good reasons, that you haven’t just fallen for a self-justifying fairy tale.”

Doing without Adobe Flash Player and its myriad security problems.

RIP, Daniel Villanueva, co-founder of Univision.

RIP, Dick Van Patten, ubiquitous actor.

“The Informed Consent materials explicitly communicate items of religious opinion that directly contradict the deeply-held beliefs of women within The Satanic Temple. […] As we reject the informed consent materials entirely, the waiting period justification is moot, acting as nothing more than an obstacle against acting upon a decision made with deference to deeply-held religious beliefs. In this way, abortion waiting-periods, too, violate our rights to free exercise.”

We’re not monsters because we say or do the wrong thing. We’re monsters when, later, we refuse to learn.”

“The VA is still paying benefits to 16 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War.”

“Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims”.

Jiggery-pokery is the new argle-bargle.

RIP, Froggy Williams, All-American football player from Rice University.

“The creature was so strange that it took fourteen years for scientists to work out which way up it stood. And now, nearly four decades after its original discovery, we finally know—clearly and conclusively—which end is the head.”

“In the aggregate, there’s a case to be made that the Roberts Court, in general, is coming to liberal decisions more often than was expected. See the New York Times for the full details. But in this case, even if liberals are happy with the Obamacare decision and conservatives are upset about it, deferring to Congress’s clear intent is supposed to be the way conservative judges rule.”

“In practice, extending full citizenship and human rights to all regardless of sexual orientation and identity is actually not all that controversial — at least not after the fact.”

“So now Obamacare is finally safe, right? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But Republicans are obsessed with Obamacare like no other law that’s been passed in decades. It’s kind of scary, the same way it was scary watching the unhinged Captain Ahab stumping around the Pequod. So no, Obamacare is still not safe. Not unless Democrats win at least the White House, and maybe both the White House and the Senate, in 2016.”

HISD Board President backs changing Confederate school names

Fine by me.

Rhonda Skillern-Jones

Rhonda Skillern-Jones

Amid a growing move to shed symbols of the old, slave-owning South, the Houston school board president said Thursday that she supports renaming six campuses named after Confederate loyalists.

Rhonda Skillern-Jones said she plans to discuss the issue with her fellow trustees at an upcoming meeting. Superintendent Terry Grier added that he is “strongly considering” recommending that the board change the names.

The nation’s seventh-largest school district would join a mounting list of agencies and businesses taking steps to shun reminders of the Confederacy following the June 17 shooting deaths of nine black church worshippers by an alleged white supremacist in Charleston, S.C.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, sent a letter to the Houston Independent School District Wednesday urging the renaming of six campuses named after Confederate army officers or others tied to the Confederacy: Dowling, Jackson and Johnston middle schools and Davis, Lee and Reagan high schools.

“Remembering our past is important, especially if you want to avoid making the same mistakes,” Ellis wrote. “But we can teach our students about the evils of the past without endorsing the actions of those who fought to uphold them. When we honor hate at our schools, we teach hate to our children.”

Ellis previously urged HISD to eradicate certain mascots. In 2013, the school board, at Grier’s recommendation, agreed to abandon the Rebels mascot, a symbol tied to the Confederacy, and three others considered offensive to Native Americans.

“Just as we engaged in the important work around changing the inappropriate mascots,” Skillern-Jones said, “we should also engage in that equally important work around making sure that our schools are named after individuals that wholeheartedly represent what our district stands for and the diversity in the district.”

Here are the op-ed and letter that Sen. Ellis wrote. This conversation isn’t just happening in Houston, as cities like Austin and San Antonio have Robert E. Lee schools as well. Lee is a legitimately important historical figure with ties to Texas that predate the Civil War, but that doesn’t mean he – or any other figure – deserves to have schools named after him. As with the school mascots that got renamed last year, I see no reason not to take this seriously. And as with the mascots, I expect there will be some heated dissent, from current and former students of these schools as well as other folks with various motives, and if the decision is made to make a change then a year or two from now hardly anyone will remember any of it.

You may ask, why now? These schools have been around with these names for a long time. As with the mascots and with the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage, the time is right. The horrible mass shooting in South Carolina and the stated reasons for it by the shooter have opened the door for this conversation, and many people who would not have been amenable to it for whatever the reason a month or a year or a decade ago now are. Why not now?

And if we start this conversation about Confederate generals, what then?

I wonder if they are going to include slave owners from the past. How about those that supported segregation or opposed civil rights and voting rights. How about some of the folks that help found the state of Texas and nearly succeeded in making Native-Americans an extinct people. These same folks also made Texas a slave-owning state. How does one define hate? I wonder where they will draw the line. I am glad Board President Skillern-Jones and Sen. Ellis are the deciders and not me. Go for it!

I’m sure plenty of people will be making “slippery slope” arguments now that this can of worms has been opened. I get that, but you know what? I do not and will not accept such arguments as a reason to end the conversation. Nothing in the Constitution says that once a school – or park, or bridge, or street, or courthouse, or whatever – has been named for someone, it must remain named for that person forevermore. Let’s have this conversation, in full and in public. I welcome it, and I welcome the awkwardness that a lot of people, including myself, will feel about it. You want to move past the symbolism of a handful of governors lowering the Confederate flag in their states? This would be a fine place to start. Let’s get it all out there. What are we afraid of?

What now for road projects?

What do we do with road projects that were going to use ReBuild Houston funds now that the Supreme Court has ruled the 2010 referendum to have been illegal?

A necklace of neighborhood streets encircling Hudnell’s home is among the ReBuild projects, deemed beyond “economical repair” and originally scheduled for work late next fiscal year, which starts July 1, but recently pushed back several months.

Now, that delay could last much longer, and residents who have waited for their crumbling roads or poor drainage to be improved could simply be out of luck; a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago found the ReBuild ballot measure voters narrowly approved in 2010 obscured the nature and cost of the drainage fee. The case is headed back to trial court where legal experts say a judge is likely to honor the unanimous Supreme Court decision.

If the city no longer can collect the drainage fee, ReBuild projects slated for mid- to late next year, like the one near South Acres, could be shelved. Next year alone, the city has budgeted more than $100 million in drainage fee spending, and the fee is projected to bring in $500 million over five years.

At a budget meeting last week, Mayor Annise Parker acknowledged the city’s Capital Improvement Plan could take a hit. Council members have pushed the administration for more clarity on the impact of the lawsuit as they consider the five-year plan, up for a vote Wednesday.

“The Supreme Court ruling, first of all, it’s ongoing litigation, it has no operational impact today,” Parker said. “But it would be the CIP. Probably a third to a half of the CIP would go away if we didn’t use the drainage fee. But there’s still other money in there.”

[…]

City Attorney Donna Edmundson disputed the notion that the city could not collect the drainage fee if the trial court finds the ballot language was misleading, pointing out that the lawsuit targets the charter amendment, not the ordinance City Council later passed to begin collecting the fee.

“The ruling by the Texas Supreme Court regarding the language for the Proposition 1 charter amendment has no bearing on whether the drainage ordinance continues,” Edmundson said. “The enabling ordinance adopted by City Council created the drainage utility and accompanying monthly fee that finances the streets and drainage program. For this reason, the ongoing legal dispute has no impact on the city budget for the coming fiscal year or the five-year Capital Improvement Program City Council will consider on Wednesday.”

South Texas College of Law professor Matthew Festa said that the charter amendment is struck down and the city continues to collect the drainage fee, it begs the question why they sent it to voters in the first place.

“It might be a technically correct legal argument,” Festa said. “But it might not be prudent to continue implementing a law where the basis on which the law is enacted is in grave doubt.”

See here and here for the background. As I said with the calls for doing over the election, I’d like to hear what the district court has to say before we do anything rash. Proceeding as if nothing has changed strikes me as unwise. I hate the idea of putting off needed maintenance, and I still think the Supreme Court ruling was politically motivated, but we are in uncharted waters here, and any further activity involving ReBuild funds risks putting the city in legal jeopardy. If there are projects that can be done without tapping into that funding source for now, then go ahead with it. Anything else, let’s get some clarity about what the Supreme Court ruling means in practical terms.

Rep. Scott Turner not running for re-election

Another one heads for the exit.

Rep. Scott Turner

State Rep. Scott Turner, the Frisco Republican who unsuccessfully ran for speaker this year, has decided not to seek re-election.

Turner announced his decision in an email to constituents Thursday, hinting that he is not done with politics.

“One chapter is closing for now, and I am beginning new chapters that I believe hold great promise and potential,” Turner wrote. “Though my service as a state representative comes to an end, you can count on me to use my voice to remain involved and champion our shared conservative values.”

Turner also told constituents he is looking forward to spending more time with his nephew Solomon, who has lived for years with Turner and his wife. In a January interview, Turner said that he and his wife were Solomon’s “full-time parents.”

Along with the announced departure of Rep. Sylvester Turner, this may make the Lege a Turner-free zone may leave the Lege with just one Turner (Rep. Chris Turner) in 2017. It will also likely make the Lege, and the GOP caucus, whiter, as Scott Turner was one of two African-American Republicans. Turner was mostly known for challenging Joe Straus for the Speakership this session; he didn’t come close, and if he had any major legislative achievements in his two sessions, I’m unaware of them. HD33 is in Collin County and it’s heavily Republican – 72.1% for Mitt Romney in 2012 – so it’s all about the Republican primary and hoping for a bit of sanity to win out. Best of luck to Rep. Scott Turner and his family in the next chapter of their lives. Trail Blazers has more.

UPDATE: Corrected my miscount of the Turners. Thanks to General Grant in the comments for the catch.

Cruz keeps on trolling along

For a guy who’s supposed to be so freaking brilliant, Ted Cruz sure says a lot of stupid things.

Not Ted Cruz

Not Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday said county clerks in Texas should “absolutely” be able to opt out of issuing same-sex marriage licenses if they have religious objections.

“Ours is a country that was built by men and women fleeing religious oppression,” Cruz said in an interview with The Texas Tribune, “and you look at the foundation of this country — it was to seek out a new land where anyone of us could worship the Lord God Almighty with all of our hearts, minds and souls, without government getting in the way.”

The interview followed a major speech here in which he eviscerated the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision Friday to legalize gay marriage in all 50 states.

“We should respect diversity and tolerance,” Cruz added. “There is this liberal intolerance and fascism that seeks to force Bible-believing Christians to violate their faith, and I think it makes no sense.”

Cruz’s comments came a day after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Attorney General Ken Paxton for an opinion on whether county clerks and justices of the peace can refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses or perform same-sex weddings. Texas already has a law in effect that protects clergy members who refuse to perform gay weddings due to their religious beliefs.

“There’s no right in society to force a Jewish rabbi to perform a Christian wedding ceremony,” Cruz said Saturday. “There’s no right in society to force a Muslim imam to perform a Jewish wedding ceremony.”

Surely a Harvard-trained constitutional lawyer like Ted Cruz knows the difference between public officials and members of the clergy. Everyone who isn’t an idiot knows this. I know he’s just pandering to the base and all, but geez. It’s just that every time he does something like this, I hear Colonel Flagg from M*A*SH saying “Don’t play dumb with me. I’m better at it than you are.” I guess I don’t really have a point to make, I just wanted to say that for the record. Carry on.

Saturday video break: The Rainbow Connection

Going out of order, inspired by a Facebook post by my friend Andy, here’s a classic song with a particular resonance for this week:

From the original “Muppet Movie” of 1979, which I need to find on DVD and make my kids watch. I do have this song in my library, though I don’t have any covers of it. Searching around YouTube, here’s one I might like by the Dixie Chicks:

And because I’m a sucker for a capella, here are the Yale Whiffenpoofs:

No, I don’t know what’s up with the guy dressed as Mr. Incredible. Just roll with it. It seems appropriate for this weekend, don’t you think?

Moving on to the benefits issue

And as we move on to other fights, the terrain changes.

RedEquality

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott opened the door for state agencies to withhold benefits from same-sex couples Friday, hours after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

In a letter released Friday afternoon, Abbott ordered heads of state agencies to prioritize religious freedom, writing that no adverse action should be taken against a state official “on account of the person’s act or refusal to act that is substantially motivated by sincere religious belief.”

“This order applies to any agency decision, including but not limited to granting or denying benefits, managing agency employees, entering or enforcing agency contracts, licensing and permitting decisions, or enforcing state laws and regulations,” Abbott wrote.

In anticipation of this response, a lawsuit has already been filed for force the state to recognize the same-sex unions of its employees and grant them the same benefits. I have no idea what legal justification Abbott thinks he has for this, but we already knew he was a crappy lawyer.

The Trib makes it clear that this is little more than saber-rattling on Abbott’s part.

Public employers including Texas agencies, universities and schools may now be required to extend benefits to spouses of married gay employees in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that marriages between same-sex couples are constitutional.

But when those benefits will be extended is unclear as state officials examine the high court’s ruling and consider new policies.

“At this point, all I can say is we’re aware of the ruling and we’re examining it,” said Catherine Terrell, director of governmental affairs for the state Employee Retirement System, which oversees retirement and health benefits for state employees and those of most public universities and community colleges.

A spokeswoman for the Teachers Retirement System of Texas, which serves public education employees, echoed that sentiment, saying it was also “analyzing” the ruling’s impact on the programs it administers.

The ruling is likely to have little impact on state employees’ retirement benefits, because employees can already assign any person as a beneficiary, Terrell said. But “the major benefit issue” could be with employees’ health insurance plans.

[…]

Legal experts agreed that when it comes to extending benefits for same-sex couples, the state is now bound by the Supreme Court ruling to recognize all marriages.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor and Texas Constitution expert at the University of Houston, said the state has no legal basis to exclude same-sex couples from the benefits it offers married couples.

“If you’re legally married by the law, no agency or government can restrict you,” Rottinghaus said. “Exactly how this is applied in Texas is going to be a bit shaky.”

But he added that extending benefits to same-sex couples is inevitable. “It’s not a question of when, but how,” Rottinghaus said.

That’s true of county clerks, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s a straight line to get there. There’s already been a lawsuit filed to push the issue, in anticipation of this reaction from Abbott. It would be nice to think that we could avoid doing this the hard way, but of course we won’t. We will get where we need to be, We’re just gonna be mulish about it.

And we begin the next fight

It’s always going to be something.

RedEquality

In a somber and defiant statement, Attorney General Ken Paxton proclaimed his next battlefront would be in defense of religious liberty.

“The truth is that the debate over the issue of marriage has increasingly devolved into personal and economic aggression against people of faith who have sought to live their lives consistent with their sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage,” he said. “It is not acceptable that people of faith be exposed to such abuse.”

Hours later, Gov. Greg Abbott sent a memo to the heads of state agencies directing them to “preserve, protect, and defend the religious liberty of every Texan.” That order “applies to any agency decision,” including granting or denying benefits, the memo says.

Abbott’s office directed questions about who would enforce such a policy to the attorney general. A spokeswoman for the attorney general did not immediately return to a request for comment.

Those celebrating the gay marriage ruling, including civil liberties groups and gay rights advocates, said Texas’ Republican leadership seemed to be picking a fight.

“I think a lot of us anticipated that this would be the next front, that there are going to be some public officials around the country who are going to try to use religious liberty as a way to avoid complying with the ruling,” said Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “But we don’t agree that government offices that are open to the public should be able to pick and choose, on the basis of personal religious beliefs, which citizens to help and which citizens to turn away.”

Added Robertson: “We may end up having to litigate some of these issues.”

Daniel Williams, legislative director for the gay rights group Equality Texas, said that if a state agency employee denied spousal benefits to another employee in a same-sex marriage, it would be “setting itself up for a very short-lived legal challenge.”

“The ruling today was pretty explicit that the state may not impose upon same-sex couples a definition of marriage that excludes them,” he said.

Yes, there’s Paxton demanding to have his authoriteh respected, and Dan Patrick egging him on by asking if county clerks with “religious objections” can refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses. I’ve gotten whiplash following the saga in Harris County, but in the end Stan Stanart caved, after a bit of a push.

Delays in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Harris County led to a showdown between two elected officials Friday, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states must recognize such unions.

County Attorney Vince Ryan will seek a court order compelling County Clerk Stan Stanart to issue licenses to same-sex couples, said Sue Davis, a spokeswoman for Ryan. Although couples in Dallas County, Bexar County (San Antonio) and Travis County (Austin) began obtaining licenses within hours of the Supreme Court ruling, Harris County couples still languished in the clerk’s office in the early afternoon.

Ryan, in a memo to Stanart, said, “Our opinion is that the law requires that you immediately begin to issue marriage licenses to all qualified applicants without regard to gender.”

Stanart’s office said it intended to issue the licenses, but said it was waiting for a form from the state attorney general with slots that did not indicate gender.

“We were told if we use the wrong form it will be null and void,” said George Hammerlein, a deputy clerk.

You can see a copy of Vince Ryan’s letter to Stanart here. The Harris County Clerk’s office began issuing same-sex marriage licenses at 3 PM, a few hours after several other counties had done so. (Clearly I was wrong to advise waiting, and that’s just fine by me.) Some other counties, not to mention other states, have not joined in. The Observer’s liveblog is the best resource for following the timeline. The Press had reported that one couple who had been turned away earlier in the day by the Harris County Clerk filed a lawsuit, but there were no details, and all that happened before Ryan’s intervention was reported. For sure, there will be some litigation, both in Texas and nationally. One fight ends, another begins.

SCOTUS rules for marriage equality

Boom.

RedEquality

Handing gay rights advocates a monumental victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that marriages between couples of the same sex are constitutional, a decision that overrides Texas’ long-standing ban on gay marriage.

In a 5-4 ruling, the high court found that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry and that states must license a marriage between two people of the same sex.

“Today’s victory will bring joy to tens of thousands of Texans and their families who have the same dreams for marriage as any others,” Chuck Smith, executive director for the gay rights group Equality Texas, said in a statement. “We hope state officials move swiftly to implement the Constitution’s command in the remaining 13 states with marriage discrimination.”

Though the Supreme Court ruled specifically on four gay marriage cases out of a Cincinnati-based federal appeals court, its decision legalized gay marriage nationwide, dismaying Texas’ Republican leaders.

The ruling is here. I for one am thoroughly enjoying the bitter, bitter tears of those dismayed Republican leaders; you can see those and some other reactions here. Seriously, every time Ted Cruz says something hilariously apocalyptic, an angel gets its wings.

Texas’ ban, which had been on the books for a decade, defined marriage in the state Constitution as “solely the union of one man and one woman.” A legal challenge to Texas’ constitutional ban was making its way through the courts.

Two same-sex couples had sued Texas over its gay marriage ban, arguing that it did not grant them equal protection as intended by the 14th Amendment. Attorneys for the state of Texas defended the ban, saying it met equal protection laws and that the courts should not undermine a state’s sovereignty to impose such restrictions.

The Texas case was among dozens of challenges to state same-sex marriage bans that cropped up and barreled through the judicial system after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.

The Texas case was among the last to be heard at the appellate level, and it was left pending before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals at the time the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

I wonder again, will the Fifth Circuit ever issue a ruling on that appeal, or will they simply point to SCOTUS and say “never mind”? What is the legal precedent for this? The good news is that Judge Orlando Garcia, who issued the original ruling knocking down Texas’ anti-gay marriage law, has officially lifted the stay on his ruling. There’s no legal force holding anyone back, just the obnoxiousness of some small-minded officials here.

June 26 was already a historic day for gay rights activists. On that same day in 2003, the Supreme Court struck down Texas’ sodomy ban, invalidating it and similar laws across the country. A decade later on the same day, the high court struck down key portions of the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits if they lived in states that allow same-sex marriage.

On Friday, Mark Phariss, a plaintiff in the Texas case, expressed joy at the Supreme Court ruling. “After almost 18 years together, we can soon exchange vows, place rings on each other’s finger, look each other in the eye and say, ‘I do,'” Phariss said in a statement, “all at a wedding surrounded by family and friends.”

Yes, I had thought this would wait till Monday, since there are several other decisions yet to be released, and I fell for the argument that this decision would be released last. Apparently, June 26 really is a magical day. I couldn’t be happier about it.

Look, we know that the legal wrangling is far from over, and the reactions from those bitterly crying Republican officials confirms that they are not about to give up just yet. I nearly got whiplash following the story of whether or not Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart would issue same-sex marriage licenses, and he was far from the only one dragging his feet. I’ll write up what I can for the next post. This one is all about the big accomplishment. It’s a huge step forward, one many people can’t believe they lived to see. I can hardly believe it was less than ten years ago when Texas voted to add that hateful anti-gay-marriage amendment to its constitution. I sure didn’t believe this day would happen so quickly, if a decade can be considered “quick”. But here we are, and while there will be more obstacles going forward, there’s no going back. So celebrate, rejoice, get married if that’s been on your do list, and forget the haters for a day or two. They’ll be with us always, but this weekend will only happen once. Mazel tov and God bless, y’all.

Lawsuit against county by former crime lab supervisor partially reinstated

It’s a bit of a convoluted story.

A federal appeals court has reinstated portions of a lawsuit filed by two former Houston Police Department crime lab supervisors who contended that Harris County prosecutors retaliated against them after they exposed problems with the city’s breath-alcohol testing vans, or “BAT vans.”

In a 36-page opinion issued on Monday, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals remanded some claims asserted in the 2012 lawsuit filed by Amanda Culbertson and Jorge Wong back to a Houston federal trial court.

Most of the original lawsuit, which was largely dismissed on the pleadings before any substantial discovery such as depositions, now returns to U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes for further consideration and a possible trial.

[…]

The original lawsuit alleged that the lab supervisors lost their jobs after raising concerns about the reliability of tests conducted by HPD’s breath-alcohol testing vehicles because of a retaliatory campaign by then-Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos and Assistant District Attorney Rachel Palmer.

Houston began using the mobile instruments in 2008. By mid-2009, Culbertson began to notice temperature and electrical irregularities with vans that could influence the integrity of tests, the lawsuit said. Culbertson and Wong expressed concerns about problems that could have led to test inaccuracies into early 2011.

In May 2011, Culbertson testified in a trial that she could not verify that an instrument had been working during a test. She testified in a July 2011 case that she could not trust the accuracy of a van analysis.

That same month, Palmer wrote a memo to a supervisor in which she concluded that Culbertson “could not be trusted to testify in any breath test” and that she was “gravely concerned” about Culbertson’s ability to “testify fairly” in the future.

See here for the background. Culbertson and Wong then resigned from HPD and went to work for Lone Star College, which at the time had a contract with Harris County to supervise breath-alcohol testing for the Sheriff’s office. That contract then got terminated, Culbertson and Wong got fired, and the lawsuit was filed. The Fifth Circuit determined that Judge Hughes erred in dismissing the suit against the county (former DA Lykos settled in 2013 and is no longer a party to the litigation), so back to district court it goes. I don’t have anything clever to say about it, it’s just that this was a nasty little piece of business when it happened, and it serves as a reminder that not all of the problems with the HPD crime lab were the city’s responsibility. I’d guess that a settlement of the lawsuit is the most likely outcome at this point, but we’ll see. Hair Balls has a lot more details, as well as a copy of the Fifth Circuit’s decision, so go read that story if you’re still confused.

Friday random ten: Revisiting the Rolling Stone 500 Best Songs list, part 1

Awhile back, I did a series of Friday Random Ten posts based on this Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. I had thought it was from 2008, but upon closer inspection it’s actually from 2004, it was just archived at that link in 2008. Recently, I came across this apparently updated list from 2011 and figured hey, there’s new songs on that list and new songs in my collection since I did the original series (which ran from November 2010 to March 2011. Why not take another crack at it? And this time, just to be different, I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up.

1. Shop Around – Smokey Robinson and The Miracles (#500)
2. The Rising – Bruce Springsteen (#497)
3. Running On Empty – The MOB (#496, orig. Jackson Browne)
4. I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor (#492)
5. I Love Rock and Roll – Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (#491)
6. Under The Boardwalk – The Drifters (#489)
7. I’m Eighteen – Alice Cooper (#487)
8. White Rabbit – Austin Lounge Lizards & Karen Abrahams (#483, orig. Jefferson Airplane)
9. Super Freak – Big Daddy (#481, orig. Rick James)
10. I Want To Know What Love Is – Big Daddy (#479, orig. Foreigner)

As before, if I have the original I’ll cite it regardless of what cover versions I have (and as we know, I love the CAKE cover of “I Will Survive”), but if I on;y have covers I’ll cite them all. One reason why I went looking for this list again was as inspiration for tunes to add to my library – I add plenty of music for the girls, so I wanted to make sure I got some new songs as well. I’ll add in a bit of commentary about the ones I don’t have as well, to wit:

Song I don’t have but should: “Young Americans”, David Bowie, #486. Always liked it when I heard it on the radio.
Song I don’t have and have no intention of having: “Ignition”, R Kelly, #494. Because screw R Kelly.
Songs the girls might like if I played them for them: “Lady Marmalade”, LaBelle (#485) and “Since U Been Gone”, Kelly Clarkson. They like modern pop and generally danceable stuff, so why not?

Settle in, this is going to take awhile. Feel free to chime in with tunes from this range that you have, especially if I don’t have it.

That other big SCOTUS case from yesterday

Another nice surprise from the mercurial Supreme Court.

eqhouseop

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Thursday preserved a key tool used for more than four decades to fight housing discrimination, handing a surprising victory to the Obama administration and civil rights activists.

The justices ruled 5-4 that federal housing law allows people to challenge lending rules, zoning laws and other housing practices that have a harmful impact on minority groups, even if there is no proof that companies or government agencies intended to discriminate.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a rare vote on the side of civil rights groups on matters of race, joined the court’s four liberal members in upholding the use of so-called “disparate impact” cases.

The ruling is a victory for housing advocates who argued that the 1968 Fair Housing Act allows challenges to race-neutral policies that have negative effects on minorities. The Justice Department has used disparate impact lawsuits to win more than $500 million in legal settlements from companies accused of bias against black and Hispanic customers.

[…]

In upholding the tactic, the high court preserved a legal strategy that has been used for more than 40 years to attack discrimination in zoning laws, occupancy rules, mortgage lending practices and insurance underwriting. Every federal appeals court to consider it has upheld the practice, though the Supreme Court had never previously ruled.

Civil rights groups and the Obama administration had tried for years to keep the issue out of the Supreme Court, fearing that conservatives wanted to end the strategy. Two previous cases that reached the court were settled or strategically withdrawn just weeks before oral argument.

The latest case involved an appeal from Texas officials accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by awarding federal tax credits in a way that kept low-income housing out of white neighborhoods.

A federal appeals court said a Dallas-based fair housing group, The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., could use statistics to show that the effect of policies used by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs had a negative impact on black residents.

The fair housing group said that even if there were no motive to discriminate, the government’s policies still harmed black residents. The effect, the group claimed, was perpetuating segregated neighborhoods and denying blacks a chance to move into areas with better schools and lower crime.

Texas officials argued that it was unfair to have to justify or change policies that don’t facially discriminate. While disparate impact has been used routinely in employment discrimination cases, they said such claims were not expressly written into the housing law. They argued that allowing them would essentially force them to make race-conscious decisions to avoid liability.

I trust you’re aware of the other big case whose decision was announced yesterday. My mailbox immediately overflowed with statements and responses to the Obamacare subsidies ruling, but I don’t believe I received anything on this, even though it originated in Texas. Given the track record of this Supreme Court, not just in matters involving race but also in matters involving access to the courthouse, I’m more than a little surprised at the outcome. Not complaining, mind you, just pleasantly surprised. As far as the same sex marriage ruling goes, all signs point to Monday being the day for it, and yes I know the significance of today’s date in recent Court history. For this ruling, here’s the SCOTUSBlog In Plain English explanation, and a more detailed analysis. The actual decision is here, and Daily Kos and Wonkblog have more.

Remember, don’t rush to get married in Harris County just yet

The Harris County Clerk isn’t ready for you and won’t be for at least a little while.

Should the U.S. Supreme court decide to strike down same-sex marriage bans nationwide, a decision that could come as soon as Thursday, county clerks in all but one of Texas’ biggest counties are ready to begin issuing marriage licenses to applicants.

The one is Harris County, where County Clerk Stan Stanart said he would await for state guidance before approving license applications.

“I shouldn’t be making up law or processes that are controlled by the state,” Stanart said ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling, adding that he would not offer extended business hours to handle a potential influx of applicants and would not move to modify the state’s license application form to accommodate applicants of the same gender.

[…]

Now, many Harris County judges are quick to say they would officiate same-sex weddings.

“As long as they have a valid Texas marriage license, then I don’t believe that it’s my job to make any kind of value decision as to whether these two people should be married,” said Don Coffey, a Harris County Justice of the Peace in precinct 3, which covers Baytown. “I would think, and I would hope, that my colleagues would view it in the same way.”

Fellow Justice of the Peace in the East End’s precinct 6 Armando Rodriguez agreed.

“We’re elected to apply the law, not interpret it,” he said.

Although private citizens may decline to perform marriages that would cause them to “violate a sincerely held religious belief,” in accordance with the “Pastor Protection Act” signed into law earlier this month, that exception does not extend to state officials.

“If the U.S. Supreme Court would announce that there is a constitutionally-based, federally constitutionally-based right for gay couples to marry, that would mean that state officials could not frustrate that right,” University of Houston Law School Professor Thomas Oldham said in anticipation of the Court’s decision.

Judges are not required to perform marriages, but to the extent that they do, Oldham said, they would not be allowed to have a different policy for gay couples than for heterosexual couples.

Four things:

1. We knew this already. Given the almost certain response from AG Ken Paxton and the rest of the state’s Republican leadership, it is understandable that a guy like Stan Stanart would choose to wait and let the initial storm pass by before sticking his neck out. Cowardly, to be sure, but understandable. Other counties are options if you just can’t wait. Here are instructions for getting a marriage license in Bexar County, for instance.

2. Having said that, there’s this:

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the coming days that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants county clerks to hold off on issuing marriage licenses to such couples until his office has given them direction.

“I remain prayerful that the Court will heed millennia of family tradition, Judeo-Christian instruction and common sense and will respect the role of states,” Paxton said in a statement Thursday. “But whatever the ruling, I would recommend that all County Clerks and Justices of the Peace wait for direction and clarity from this office about the meaning of the Court’s opinion and the rights of Texans under the law.”

[…]

Neel Lane, the attorney representing the two same-sex couples challenging Texas’ ban, said the attorney general will have no standing to delay the issuance of marriage licenses if the Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage is the law of the land.

“Attorney generals aren’t supposed to be in the business of praying but in the business of interpreting the law, and in this case the Supreme Court is going to be quite clear when it rules,” Lane said. “Clerks should not delay any further.”

Ken Paxton doesn’t care about any of that. It’s going to take courts and judges in Texas that do care about the law to swat him down and make the Clerks do their duty. How long that takes, and hoe many fellow travelers of Paxton’s abet in gumming things up, those are the questions.

3. I’m glad to see that all of the Harris County judges quoted in this story are happy, or at least compliant, about performing same-sex weddings, once all the hissy fits and pointless legal maneuvering by our AG have run their course. I will be more than a little shocked if there isn’t at least one judge in Harris County, and quite a few more around the state, who won’t be so accommodating. Judges and JPs don’t fall under the umbrella of the pointless pastor protection law since they are public officials, but they are not required to perform weddings and thus could avoid officiating same sex ceremonies by simply not doing any weddings or maybe just doing them for family and friends. They can’t simply choose to exclude only same sex participants. I feel certain that someone will be accused of doing this, sooner rather than later; in fact, I’ll bet that some judge somewhere gets boastful about it. I rather expect that one’s willingness to do the honors at a same sex wedding will be an issue in some GOP primaries around the state. I won’t be at all surprised if a puffed-up pecksniff like Steven Hotze makes being truculent about it a requirement for his endorsement this March.

4. As always, if you are unhappy with the state of affairs, from our AG to our County Clerk to whichever judge or judges gets ornery about the new reality, the one means of retribution you have for it is at the ballot box. This will all eventually cease to be an issue someday, but if you want that someday to be closer to today than it would on its own, it’s on you to do something about it via the electoral process.

A whiter shade of male

Sheriffing is a man’s job, ladies. I’m sure you understand that.

Ron Hickman

One month into his job as Harris County sheriff, Ron Hickman has filled his roster of top commanders, a new hierarchy marked by one omission: There are no women.

Hickman picked 19 men and also scrapped the role of a liaison for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inmates and residents, part of a broad-reaching civil rights initiative established by his Democratic predecessor.

When Hickman, a Republican, assumed the helm, he said, “Diversity for diversity’s sake is not always effective.” In a recent statement, Hickman defended his final team for its vast education, experience and devotion to police work.

The lack of women in leadership roles is worth noting because representation in the top ranks promotes a message about equity, provides role models and boosts morale, said Danielle Flanagan, an instructor of criminal justice at West Texas A&M University who studied women in policing in the Texas panhandle.

[…]

At that point, J.M. “Smokie” Phillips Jr., the president of the Afro-American Sheriff’s Deputy League, said his members were concerned about returning to a previous period of racism and disparity in treatment. Johnny Mata, the presiding officer for the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice, said diversity in law enforcement command in an area as diverse as Harris County demonstrates the sensitivity of the officeholder to serve the community as a whole.

The complete command lineup Hickman unveiled Friday comprises three black men, two Hispanic men and 14 white men – two of whom were brought back from retirement.

The Houston Police Department command, by comparison, has two black females, two black males, two Asian-American males, one Hispanic female, two Hispanic males, one white female and eight white males, said department spokesman Victor Senties.

The sheriff emphasized that his administration collectively possesses 620 years of law enforcement experience, 13 post-graduate degrees, six diplomas from the FBI National Academy, 87 professional certifications, 46 memberships to professional law enforcement and community associations. He noted in a press statement that expertise, qualifications, passion and experience were his top priorities in selecting commanders.

See here and here for some background. Another way of looking at 620 years of experience among 19 people is to note that their average age must therefore be in the mid-fifties. Clearly, diversity in age range isn’t much of a priority, either. Be all that as it may, I’d like to thank Sheriff Hickman for so effectively clarifying what the 2016 election will be about. Do you want the same old thing being done by the same old people as it always has been done, or do you want to live in the 21st century? The choice will be yours. Campos has more.

Wilson thwarted again

Dave Wilson’s latest troll job: applying for a spot in the annual Pride parade. It did not go well.

Dave Wilson

Dave Wilson

Wilson told me he received preliminary approval to appear in the parade, and paid $805 in fees. He said he crossed out portions of the contract that said he supports LGBT equality. He planned to drive a 1956 Cadillac convertible, dressed as a groom with a woman dressed as a bride, dragging tin cans behind. On the side of the car would be signs advocating “traditional marriage” between a man and a woman.

“I thought the homosexual community was inclusive, nondiscriminatory, tolerant, all of those things they say,” Wilson told me. “It sounds like to me I fit right in … and I think if they do anything other than that, they’ll prove that they’re not.

“I don’t care if the Supreme Court and everybody else in the whole world thinks the other way, I’m never gonna change what I think,” he added. “You can’t reproduce with two of the same sex. It’s suicide to a culture if everybody is homosexual, so just from that standpoint, it’s not the right behavior for a culture to adopt and to praise and to propagate. It’s a suicidal lifestyle.”

After I contacted Pride Houston about Wilson’s entry, they informed me that he’d been rejected.

“This was actually an issue that was being addressed late last night by the Board,” Pride Houston’s David Ly said Friday. “Houstonians for Family Values did register and pay in full, however they were not fully approved. The contract they submitted had many lines struck out which go against Pride Houston’s mission. Therefore they will get a full refund and will not participate in the parade. They are being contacted.”

Note carefully Wilson’s inability or unwillingness to follow simple instructions, something that is a common occurrence with him. Again, though, actually getting to be part of the parade wasn’t his goal here. His goal, as always, is to get attention for himself and to paint himself as a poor persecuted victim of official oppression. It’s what he does and what he has done for a long time, with the same obsessive zeal as any stereotyped RPGer or fantasy sports fanatic. One might be tempted to feel some pity for him if he weren’t such a loathsome slug.

Turner and Garcia lead early Mayoral poll

We have our first polling numbers for the 2015 Mayoral election.

Rep. Sylvester Turner

Rep. Sylvester Turner

Sylvester Turner and Adrian Garcia have emerged as the clear front-runners in the first independent poll before the election that will determine Houston’s next mayor.

The KHOU – Houston Public Media Poll indicates a clear divide between two tiers of candidates, with Turner and Garcia well ahead of all other contenders to take charge at Houston City Hall after the term-limited Mayor Annise Parker leaves office at the end of this year.

Turner, the longtime state representative making his third run for mayor, leads the pack with 16-percent of surveyed likely voters. Garcia, the former Harris County sheriff, comes in second at 12-percent.

Adrian Garcia

Adrian Garcia

The rest of the candidates in the poll drop into single digits. Chris Bell, the former congressman making his second run for mayor, won the support of 8-percent of surveyed voters.

Both Ben Hall, the former city attorney making his second mayoral run, and former Kemah mayor Bill King, stand at 3-percent. City Councilman Stephen Costello stands at 2-percent.

“There’s two tiers of candidates,” said Bob Stein, the KHOU political analyst and Rice University political scientist who designed the poll. “If you had to pick a runoff match-up, it would have to be Turner and Garcia. And I don’t think that comes as any surprise.”

And here’s the KUHF version of the story, with audio.

News 88.7 Managing News Editor Jose Luis Jimenez sat down with pollster and Rice University Political Science Professor Bob Stein for a closer look at the results of our exclusive News 88.7/KHOU 11 News Houston Mayoral Election Poll.

Click on the audio link above to listen to the conversation.

To view the full poll results – including what Houston voters think are the major issues in the race – visit the 2015 Houston Mayoral Race special page.

OK then, let’s click the link.

Mayor Annise Parker cannot run again for Mayor because of term limits. There are seven major candidates for mayor. For whom would you be likely to vote for if the election were held today?


Choices            All   RVs   LVs
==================================
Stephen Costello    4%    4%    2%
Bill King           2%    2%    3%
Sylvester Turner   14%   13%   16%
Adrian Garcia      15%   15%   12%
Chris Bell          5%    4%    8%
Marty McVey         1%    1%    0%
Ben Hall            3%    3%    3%
Don't know         53%   54%   50%
Refused             3%    4%    6%

And finally, the methodology:

Methodology: Polling was conducted from May 20 to June 21, 2015 using two simultaneous samples of 500 eligible voters each. The first sample included registered voters (i.e. “Likely Voters”) who voted in two of the last three municipal elections in 2009, 2011 and 2013. The second sample included all other registered voters (i.e. “Registered Voters) who voted in at least one of the last three municipal elections. Results are reported for both samples separately and combined. The combined sample is weighted to reflect the actual representation of likely voters in the 2015 municipal election. The margin of error for each sample is +/- 4.5% and margin of error for the combined weighted sample is +/- 3.2%.

What do I think?

1. I think this mostly recapitulates name ID, which is about what you’d expect at this point.

2. I’ve complained about “likely voter” screens for this kind of poll in the past, but I have no major complaints here. Screening for those who have voted in two out of the last three city elections is the way I’d do it. The Likely Voter sample is whiter, richer, and older (average age = 69) than the sample as a whole and much more so than the city as a whole, which is – for better and worse – the kind of electorate we tend to get in our odd-numbered-year elections. The candidates and campaigns have the capability of altering the size and shape of the electorate, though barring anything strange it’s unlikely to change much. Bottom line is there’s nothing here that screams “unrepresentative sample” to me.

3. Don’t be mesmerized by the high “Don’t know” level. A late September 2013 poll, six weeks out from an election that featured a two-time incumbent, had a 48% “Don’t know” response. Here, each candidate has some base level of support, and the rest are people that I think very likely really don’t know yet. I’d have given the same answer myself if I had been polled, and I’m not exactly a low-information voter. Sometimes “Don’t know” means “I haven’t paid enough attention to it yet to have any idea”, sometimes it means “I do know who I’m voting for but I like to think I’m keeping my options open”, and sometimes it means “There’s more than one candidate that I like and I don’t know yet which one I’ll pick”.

4. Similarly, don’t let the low numbers for the nominal Republican candidates (King and Costello) fool you. Roy Morales polled at five and six percent in those 2009 polls, but wound up with 20% and actually did better than Peter Brown on Election Day itself, thanks in part to Republican voters figuring out and being told that he was “their guy” in the latter stages of the campaign. King and Costello will get their share of the vote, though it remains to be seen if it will be enough for a runoff for either of them. Their main danger is having some of those votes poached, by either a late entry from the wingnut population (think Eric Dick) or from Ben Hall, who has gone full-on anti-HERO. I don’t think there’s a lot of these votes to be siphoned off, but in a tight multi-candidate race like this it doesn’t take much to put the runoff out of reach.

5. When people ask me who I think will make the runoff, my answer is a firm shrug of the shoulders. I can make a case for at least five candidates to have a shot at it – Hall and McVey are the ones that I think are highly unlikely to make it into the top two. It’s entirely possible to me that only a few thousand votes will separate second place from fourth or fifth, and any number of things including dumb luck can affect who winds up a contender and who finishes as a palooka.

So that’s how it looks for now. There will be more polls, and things will surely look different as we go forward. PDiddie has more.

Abbott would like to restore the uninsured rate

It’s what he does.

It's constitutional - deal with it

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Greg Abbott on Monday urged his fellow Republicans not to “rescue” President Barack Obama’s signature health care law if it is torpedoed by the U.S. Supreme Court, an unusually public stance that could make the first-term Texas governor a leading voice on a national issue dividing the GOP.

Abbott’s position, announced in an opinion article published on the conservative National Review magazine’s website ahead of an expected high court decision, puts him in a group, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, that hopes a ruling against the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies to help poor residents buy health insurance ultimately would undo the entire law. Others, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say the government should patch the problem by replacing the subsidies for the nearly 1 million Texans and 5 million other Americans now receiving them, at least temporarily and with some changes to the law.

Abbott’s piece also suggested what he intends to do if the justices throw out the subsidies and Congress fails to replace them: nothing.

“Now is not the time to throw Obamacare a lifeline,” Abbott wrote, “it is time to sound its death knell.”

Now is apparently the time to make sure that everyone who didn’t have insurance before the passage of the Affordable Care Act goes back to not having insurance if the Supreme Court strikes down the subsidies. Because that’s how we keep score in this state. Abbott’s article was typically full of the usual lies and distortions about Obamacare, which the Chron story to its credit points out. It also includes the same warmed-over Republican proposals for increasing health care access that Abbott would totally push for if only his party had any control in Texas. Oh, wait.

This is usually the place where liberal/Democratic types like me bemoan low turnout and lost opportunities and the like. I am instead going to point out that groups like the Texas Association of Business and the Texas Medical Association, both of which support the full implementation of Obamacare via Medicaid expansion and also supported Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign, have a role in this as well. Yes, yes, I know – Wendy Davis was a lousy candidate, the Democratic Party in this state is feckless and impotent, there’s no point for these groups in supporting someone who can’t win, blah blah blah. These things may be true, but they’re also self-fulfilling. TAB and TMA supported Abbott for their own reasons – tax cuts and tort “reform”, to be specific – but there are plenty of other things they support that they aren’t ever going to get from him or his partymates. At some point they need to decide when doing the same thing and hoping for a different result starts to become more crazy than it’s worth to them.

UPDATE: Sorry (not sorry), Greg.

No response necessary

Unless it’s “We will respect and fully comply with the court’s ruling”.

RedEquality

The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as early as this week whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. For supporters of same-sex marriage, it’s an emotional waiting game.

“People are literally on pins and needles,” said Chuck Smith, executive director of Equality Texas. Smith feels the Supreme Court is on the brink of ruling same-sex couples everywhere have the right to marry. “Such a ruling would certainly be received by joy by thousands of people in Texas who have waited — some for all their lives — to marry the person that they love.”

[…]

The Texas Constitution bans same-sex marriage, and many lawmakers have vowed to fight any ruling to the contrary by the nation’s high court.

The state’s legal response will fall to new Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. Reached by KVUE following a speech to a conservative think tank Monday in Austin, Paxton said it’s too early to say what his response may be.

“It’s very difficult for us to say what’s going to happen given the fact that we don’t know what the result is and we don’t know how that opinion is going to be written,” Paxton said.

When asked whether he intends to fight the ruling, Paxton reiterated that such a decision would depend upon the ruling. “Obviously we have a constitution that protects the definition of marriage, and we’ll do everything we can.”

“If the Supreme Court issues a ruling saying that the freedom to marry is the law of the land, I would expect and hope that marriages begin to happen that day,” Smith said.

I’ve already hypothesized what the state’s likely response will be. It’s really just a question of how long it takes before the hammer comes down, and how obnoxious the resisters are. Stupid pastor tricks are a bit harder to predict, and while there is some legitimate concern that they could cause a bit of real trouble, my best guess is that once everyone else realizes that no one is forcing them in any way to participate in a same-sex wedding, this will all be seen as the circus sideshow that it is. Basically, expect some extreme craziness for the short term, then a return to more-or-less normality, with a shift in focus and tactics still to come.

Texas blog roundup for the week of June 22

The thoughts and prayers of the Texas Progressive Alliance are with the families and friends of the victims of the horrible shooting in Charleston as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

The next steps for equality advocates

Marriage equality will be a huge step, but there are many more steps to be taken.

RedEquality

The newly launched Texas Wins campaign—a multiyear, multimillion-dollar effort—aims to increase the number of LGBT Texans protected by local nondiscrimination ordinances.

“We want to take the momentum for LGBT equality coming out of the session, build on it, and one way to do so is through these local ordinances, to where in a session down the road we look at a statewide bill,” Texas Wins spokesman Kevin Nix said. “We’ve really turned a page here in the state, and the playing field is sort of wide open now to make some real progress. … I think sometimes politicians can overplay their hands, and they probably did.”

Nix said one of the campaign’s biggest challenges will be educating people that anti-LGBT discrimination is perfectly legal in Texas outside cities that have banned it—Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, Plano and San Antonio—which account for less than a third of the state’s population.

“So many people don’t even realize it’s legal to fire or evict gay and transgender people,” he said. “A lot of folks think it’s protected in law, and it’s not. That problem would persist no matter what the marriage decision is from the Supreme Court.”

[…]

One of the keys to passing nondiscrimination ordinances will be convincing elected officials they provide a competitive advantage for cities economically. Texas Competes, a sister organization of Texas Wins, has gathered signatures from more than 200 employers, including 16 from the Fortune 500, in support of LGBT inclusion. Texas Wins is funded by a combination of individual and institutional donors—including the ACLU of Texas, Equality Texas, the Texas Freedom Network and the Human Rights Campaign—while Texas Competes is funded solely by Equality Texas.

Jessica Shortall, managing director of Texas Competes, said Texas was the first state in which the business community proactively spoke out en masse against anti-LGBT legislation before it reached the governor’s desk—protecting the state’s brand rather than having to repair it.

However, Shortall said she fears a loss of momentum in coming months due to a collective sigh of relief after the session, combined with a likely win on same-sex marriage at the high court.

“There could be kind of a drop the mic, spike the football thing,” Shortall said. “As we see in movement after movement, when you get a really big win, sometimes the wind goes out of the sails.”

Shortall is also looking ahead to the 2017 session, when she expects more anti-LGBT, religious freedom legislation similar to a bill that passed in Indiana in March.

Bringing non-discrimination ordinances to places that don’t currently have them, litigating when needed, and beating back the latest version of anti-equality measures and tactics – there will still be plenty to do. And even a sweeping ruling in favor of marriage equality from SCOTUS isn’t going to make that debate go away. Equality opponents may begin to reject the idea of civil marriage, and may push to give special status to religious marriage in response. Republican candidates, from the Presidential level on down, are likely at least in the short term to come under extra pressure to do something stupid in defiance of SCOTUS. And as anti-gay animus finally begins to fade a little into the background, at least in polite society, anti-transgender animus appears to be on the rise. We can’t let the wind go out of the sails. If we’re not moving forward, we’re moving backward.

The latest Pete Rose revelations

He bet on Reds games while he was still a player, despite his loud assertions to the contrary.

For 26 years, Pete Rose has kept to one story: He never bet on baseball while he was a player.

Yes, he admitted in 2004, after almost 15 years of denials, he had placed bets on baseball, but he insisted it was only as a manager.

But new documents obtained by Outside the Lines indicate Rose bet extensively on baseball — and on the Cincinnati Reds — as he racked up the last hits of a record-smashing career in 1986. The documents go beyond the evidence presented in the 1989 Dowd report that led to Rose’s banishment and provide the first written record that Rose bet while he was still on the field.

“This does it. This closes the door,” said John Dowd, the former federal prosecutor who led MLB’s investigation.

The documents are copies of pages from a notebook seized from the home of former Rose associate Michael Bertolini during a raid by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in October 1989, nearly two months after Rose was declared permanently ineligible by Major League Baseball. Their authenticity has been verified by two people who took part in the raid, which was part of a mail fraud investigation and unrelated to gambling. For 26 years, the notebook has remained under court-ordered seal and is currently stored in the National Archives’ New York office, where officials have declined requests to release it publicly.

[…]

Dowd, who reviewed the documents at Outside the Lines’ request, said his investigators had tried but failed to obtain Bertolini’s records, believing they would be the final piece in their case that Rose was betting with mob-connected bookmakers in New York. Dowd and his team had sworn testimony from bookie Ron Peters that Rose bet on the Reds from 1984 through 1986, but not written documentation. Dowd also had testimony and a recorded phone conversation between Bertolini and another Rose associate, Paul Janszen, that established that Bertolini had placed bets for Rose. But Dowd never had the kind of documents that could cement that part of his case, especially in the eyes of fans who wanted to see Rose returned to Major League Baseball.

“We knew that [Bertolini] recorded the bets, and that he bet himself, but we never had his records. We tried to get them. He refused to give them to us,” Dowd said. “This is the final piece of the puzzle on a New York betting operation with organized crime. And, of course, [Rose] betting while he was a player.”

See here for the documents in question, and be sure to read the whole story. The main moral here is that one should never believe a word Pete Rose says.

I recommend you read Craig Calcaterra’s Q&A about what this all means. Remember that Rose has asked Commissioner Rob Manfred to review his case and reconsider the lifetime ban against him. I’ll qute from the last bit of Calcaterra’s discussion:

Q: Does this affect his Hall of Fame case? Should it?

A: He has no Hall of Fame case now, because people who are banned are not allowed to be on the ballot. If and when he is reinstated, he will be subject to the same sort of scrutiny any player is when considered for the Hall. Part of that scrutiny is the so-called character clause. As it was, some voters were probably going to hold Rose’s gambling history against him and make his Hall case, if he ever gets one, tougher than it should be. With new evidence that Rose’s lying didn’t end years ago when he finally copped to betting on baseball, it may turn a few more minds against him.

Personally speaking, I think the character clause is dumb and I’d put Rose in the Hall immediately. There are a lot of liars and cheats in there. None of them is the all-time hits leader.

Q: Got anything else, smart guy?

A: Just one observation: Pete Rose politics are dumb. There is no reason why people who think he should be back in the game or in the Hall of Fame have to believe he’s a great guy or that he’s a truth-teller. Those are not mutually-exclusive categories. Yet for years, including the past ten minutes, I have heard people believe that it is. That if you think Rose is a liar, you MUST be against him for all purposes, or that if you think Rose should be reinstated and enshrined in Cooperstown that you MUST believe everyone is out to get him and that he’s a choir boy.

That’s silly, of course. Rose is a liar. That’s pretty clear. He got a punishment he richly deserved and, because of the nature of that punishment (i.e. it’s permanent) — Major League Baseball is doing him a gigantic favor by even reviewing his case again. If they told him to pound sand, there wouldn’t be a great argument for him or any of his partisans to lodge in his favor. But you can also, like I do, think that Rose is a liar who should be in the Hall of Fame. And one that, at this point in his life, could be reinstated without much harm happening. It would make a lot of people happy to boot.

This new news — or this new corroboration of old news and the bad P.R. that attends it — could be bad for that reinstatement case. There’s no getting around that unless and until MLB says it doesn’t care.

As you know, I’ve long been in the anti-Rose camp, mostly because 1) baseball’s rules about gambling are simple and clear; 2) Rose agreed to the punishment he now serves; and 3) he’s been lying about it for a quarter of a century. I mean, if he’d ever shown any sign that he at least understood what he did was wrong and why, I’d have been less of a hardass about it. Be that as it may, I can see where Calcaterra is coming from, and I’d be willing to go along with it on two conditions. One, that any consideration for Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame happens posthumously, and two, that every self-appointed moralist with Hall of Fame voting privileges agrees to get over the whole ridiculous PED thing already. Put in everyone whose as-is numbers say they deserve it, and tell the unvarnished truth about them on their plaques. Then we can move on to less controversial things, like the DH and improving the pace of the game. Who’s with me on this?

Bell wants Meyerland flooding investigated

It’s a story about flooding and the Mayor’s race, but not the story about flooding and the Mayor’s race you might have been expecting.

Chris Bell

Chris Bell

Mayoral candidate Chris Bell on Sunday called for an independent investigation into why so many Meyerland homes flooded during the heavy Memorial Day weekend rains.

Surrounded by about two dozen residents at a press conference by Brays Bayou, Bell said it was important to figure out why infrastructure projects in the area didn’t prevent major flooding and why others were not completed on schedule. Bell challenged the assertion, backed by experts, that flooding was inevitable considering some areas were hit with more than 10 inches overnight.

“The least we are owed is an explanation of what happened,” said Bell, a former congressman and city councilman who lives in Meyerland.

Bell called for an outside investigation, saying that a report by the Harris County Flood Control District would be “biased” because the agency helped design projects in the area as part of the city’s drainage and streets program, ReBuild Houston. A spokesperson for the agency could not be reached Sunday.

Bell is not the first of the seven mayoral candidates to criticize the city’s ReBuild Houston initiative, the pay-as-you-go program that voters approved in 2010, in the wake of the Memorial Day flooding. Many of the candidates vying to replace term-limited Mayor Annise Parker have seized on the flooding to criticize the city’s infrastructure or talk about speeding up flood mitigation efforts.

Well, except that Bell never mentions ReBuild Houston in this story, and that the next three paragraphs have to do with Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 and the effect it had on Brays Bayou and the massive project that the Harris County Flood Control District undertook to mitigate those effects, which some people including Bell are now saying have taken too long and not done enough. None of this, you may note, has anything to do with ReBuild Houston. I’m sure Bell has been critical of ReBuild Houston, but as far as I can tell what he has not done – along with Adrian Garcia and Marty McVey – is publicly express an opinion on the Supreme Court ruling or the subsequent new litigation or the call for a revote. Any or all of those things would have been nice to know, but none of them are a part of this story. I don’t know if Chron reporter Tina Nazerian didn’t think to ask about any of these things or just didn’t report the answers she got when she did. Either way, we got nothing. For a bit of writing that does have something to do with ReBuild Houston, see PDiddie.

On judicial elections and campaign finance

Ross Ramsey raises an interesting point.

BagOfMoney

It might seem silly to elect people who promise they won’t represent you, their political party or their donors, but that’s what we expect judges to do. They’re supposed to apply the law, and if they do any of those other things, they’re probably out of line.

Florida elects judges but bars them from raising their own campaign money. Lots of Texas judges — and Texas lawyers —would love to see similar restraints here.

“If you are an incumbent judge and you call a lawyer and ask for money, what is that lawyer going to say? No?” asks Wallace Jefferson, a former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court who now practices law in Austin. “That incumbent judge is going to raise more money. But no one should feel pressured to contribute.”

Better, he says, to take the judges out of the fundraising business and leave the transactional part of politics to campaign committees and others.

It could happen: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Florida’s law [in April] after challengers said it violated their First Amendment rights. That court was also concerned with whether asking for money sullied the impartiality of the elected judges. The court decided that was a serious enough public interest to justify the fundraising restriction.

“Simply put, the public may lack confidence in a judge’s ability to administer justice without fear or favor if he comes to office by asking for favors,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

[…]

This legislative session, state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, filed a bill that would start public financing of campaigns for appellate judges in Texas. It was sent to the House Elections Committee on March 9 and never heard from again.

Sen. and former state District Judge Joan Huffman, R-Houston, has a bill that would eliminate straight-ticket voting in judicial races — the idea is to free judges from the slings and arrows of party politics. That one is stalled, as is its identical twin in the House, filed by Rep. Kenneth Sheets, R-Dallas.

Jefferson and Tom Phillips, who preceded him as the Texas high court’s chief justice, wrote an amicus brief in the federal case, along with a couple of former chiefs of Alabama’s Supreme Court. “As former Chief Justices who have observed countless elections in our own States, and run as candidates for judicial office, we are well-acquainted with the genuine dangers — and sometimes actual abuse — present when judicial candidates personally solicit campaign contributions from parties and lawyers,” they wrote.

Now that the Florida law has been upheld, Jefferson thinks “it would be a step in the right direction” for Texas to take judges out of the campaign fundraising business.

“To me, money is not in the center except to the extent that the public believes, if a judge is accepting money from a lawyer or litigant, that they’ll be more likely to favor that lawyer or litigant,” Jefferson says. “I don’t believe that is generally true, but the public believes it. And I understand that belief. It undermines the ideal of impartial justice.”

I have been critical of Wallace Jefferson in the past for promoting the non=solution of making judicial elections non-partisan while ignoring the real problem of how judicial races are financed, so let me compliment him here for his advocacy for doing something about that problem. Pigs will fly before the Lege passes a bill allowing any kind of public financing of elections, but it’s still worth pursuing (kudos to Rep. Anchia for filing a bill this session to do that). If Jefferson, Tom Phillips, and Nathan Hecht can all support this, a bill like Rep. Anchia’s could get bipartisan support. The money people will fight it to the death, but that’s a fight we should all be willing to engage. Let’s get a nice long list of coauthors for this bill next time.

It always was about animus towards gays

TPM reviews the history of anti-gay marriage laws and constitutional amendments now that they’re on the verge of being thrown out. Opponents of marriage equality have been claiming that these laws were not enacted with any animus intended towards same-sex couples, but the arguments made at the time these laws were being debated clearly says otherwise.

RedEquality

The leading opponents of same-sex marriage have been attempting to re-write recent American history, where decades of sneering public attacks on gays and lesbians, condemnations of their “lifestyle,” and blaming them for a decline of America’s moral virtue are quietly forgotten.

Their argument, made in front of the Supreme Court, no less, is that gay marriage bans are not motivated by prejudice toward gays and lesbians, but by a more noble if newfound purpose. In the days to come, the justices will reveal whether they subscribe to this new version of history in a decision that could decide whether gay couples have the right to marry nationwide.

Sweeping cultural change coupled with past decisions by the Supreme Court have limited the options the states who continue to ban same-sex marriage have to defend those prohibitions. If gay couples are kept from marrying because of state-sanctioned “animus” — an intent to deny certain people their rights — there is little escaping a constitutional violation. As a result, the defenders of gay marriage bans had to come up with a new argument to justify the bans.

“[T]he State’s whole point is that we’re not drawing distinctions based on the identity, the orientation, or the choices of anyone,” John J. Bursch, the solicitor general of Michigan, said during the oral arguments in the case, Obergefell v. Hodges. “The State has drawn lines, the way the government has always done, to solve a specific problem. It’s not meant to exclude.”

The “problem” that bans on same-sex marriage were solving, in Bursh’s view, was keeping biological parents attached to their children. How allowing gay couples to marry threatened that attachment puzzled even some of the justices — Justice Elena Kagan called the reasoning “inexplicable.” But even more bewildering, to longtime observers of the issue, is how divorced such logic was from the original motivation for the bans.

“The states’ arguments don’t pass the straight face test, no pun intended,” Judith Schaeffer, vice president of Constitutional Accountability Center, a D.C.-based legal organization, said in an interview with TPM. “These are ridiculous arguments that are being made to cover up the fact that these discriminatory laws are motivated by a desire to keep gay people out of this important legal relationship.”

To say same-sex marriage bans were never meant to “exclude” anyone is to ignore years of anti-gay sentiments — vitriolic posters and inflammatory commentary — not to mention the comments made by elected officials when defending their opposition to same-sex marriage and enacting gay marriage bans.

Texas passed its constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage ten years ago, two years and one legislative session after passing a state Defense of Marriage Act. That meant that same-sex marriage was already illegal in the state of Texas, but the Lege wanted to make it even more illegal, and virtually impossible to overturn legislatively since a one-third minority in either chamber would be able to block it going forward. First it needed to be ratified via referendum, though, and that’s where some of the more colorful arguments in favor of the amendment took place. Looking through my archives from 2005, I spent most of my time following the folks who were working against this awful amendment, but I did link to a pair of op-eds in the Chronicle on the subject. The op-ed in favor of passing the anti-gay marriage amendment is worth your time to read. I have a hard time imagining anything like it, with its condescending and frankly insulting attitude towards same gay people in general and same sex couples in particular, would be deemed acceptable for print in a mainstream publication. I’m not going to quote any of it here because I want to encourage you to click the link and see it for yourself. We’ve come a long way in a short time, but we shouldn’t forget where we once were, and we surely shouldn’t let the people who continue to stand in our way rewrite history.

Abbott vetos Huffman loophole bill

Good.

Sen. Joan Huffman

Gov. Greg Abbott has vetoed legislation that would have allowed married elected officials to hide their personal financial business from the prying eyes of Texas voters, according to the author of the legislation.

The so-called spousal loophole provision had been tacked as amendments to two bills that were otherwise aimed at increasing disclosure and eliminating conflicts of interest. State Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, said she never should have accepted the 11th-hour spousal loophole amendment from state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston.

As Abbott’s decision neared and Davis was asked for input, she wound up adding her voice to those calling for a veto.

“I haven’t seen a veto statement, but I have been advised by the governor’s office that both [bills] have been vetoed due to concerns about the so-called ‘spousal loophole’ added by the Senate in the last days of session,” Davis said. “I’m disappointed this Senate amendment put the governor in the position of having to veto two ethics bills that were originally written to make government more transparent and accountable.”

Davis said she would re-double efforts to pass “clean” ethics legislation in the next session of the Legislature.

[…]

The death of the two bills, HB 3511 and HB 3736, represented the final blow to Abbott’s calls for sweeping ethics reform in the notoriously loose Texas Legislature. After a series of far-reaching reform proposals went down in flames at the end of the session, those bills contained several compromise measures that Abbott wanted.

During his State of the State speech in February, Abbott urged lawmakers to “dedicate this session to ethics reform.”

Collectively, Davis’ two bills would have tightened requirements on personal financial disclosures, curbed conflicts of interest on state government boards and commissions, and required state elected officials to disclose government contracts and bond counsel work.

But the bills were marred by the inclusion of Huffman’s spousal loophole amendment. Huffman now faces a sworn ethics complaint, from a Democrat, related to her own spouse’s financial activity. Carol Wheeler, a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, has alleged that the senator filed “false” information by failing to list more than 35 businesses in which her husband has a stake.

See here and here for the background. I never had much faith in Abbott’s embrace of ethics reform anyway, but even if the Davis bills had passed in their pre-Huffman form, Abbott’s continued embrace of dark money makes it all largely moot anyway. There’s no fixing the system as long as a handful of avaricious billionaires and their well-paid henchmen and henchwomen run amok over it.

Meet your Constitutional amendments

A pretty uninspiring bunch, if you ask me.

vote-button

Now that the dust has settled on the 84th Texas Legislature, voters are getting the first official look at which constitutional amendments they will be voting on come November.

Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos on Wednesday took the last step to place seven propositions on this fall’s general election ballot, all of which were approved by two-thirds of all state lawmakers during the just-ended session. Per state law, they are chosen randomly in a drawing to assign the order in which each proposition will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot.

All told, they run the gamut of state issues, from the serious to the mundane, and they create a narrative of the session that is not at all inconsistent with what really happened under the Pink Dome.

Here are the amendments, in the order they will appear on your ballot.

Proposition 1 (SJR 1)

“The constitutional amendment increasing the amount of the residence homestead exemption from ad valorem taxation for public school purposes from $15,000 to $25,000, providing for a reduction of the limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for those purposes on the homestead of an elderly or disabled person to reflect the increased exemption amount, authorizing the legislature to prohibit a political subdivision that has adopted an optional residence homestead exemption from ad valorem taxation from reducing the amount of or repealing the exemption, and prohibiting the enactment of a law that imposes a transfer tax on a transaction that conveys fee simple title to real property.”

Proposition 2 (HJR 75)

“The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for an exemption from ad valorem taxation of all or part of the market value of the residence homestead of the surviving spouse of a 100 percent or totally disabled veteran who died before the law authorizing a residence homestead exemption for such a veteran took effect.”

Proposition 3 (SJR 52)

“The constitutional amendment repealing the requirement that state officers elected by voters statewide reside in the state capital.”

Proposition 4 (HJR 73)

“The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to permit professional sports team charitable foundations to conduct charitable raffles.”

Proposition 5 (SJR 17)

“The constitutional amendment to authorize counties with a population of 7,500 or less to perform private road construction and maintenance.”

Proposition 6 (SJR 22)

“The constitutional amendment recognizing the right of the people to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife subject to laws that promote wildlife conservation.”

Proposition 7 (SJR 5)

“The constitutional amendment dedicating certain sales and use tax revenue and motor vehicle sales, use, and rental tax revenue to the state highway fund to provide funding for nontolled roads and the reduction of certain transportation-related debt.”

I will be voting No on #s 3 and 7 and probably on 1, Yes on #2, and I have no idea yet on the others. What about you?