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September 2nd, 2016:

Friday random ten: Ladies’ night, part 11

Sep 2nd, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
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Some lesser known names this week, plus a song with “Thou” in the title

1. Be Thou My Vision – David Arkenstone & Kathleen Fisher
2. Sleep – Debi Smith
3. Faded Red Car – Deborah Holland
4. Mashed Potato Time – Dee Dee Sharp
5. It’s Christmas Time (and I’m still alive) – Deep Sea Diver (Jessica Dobson)
6. Comin’ Home – Delaney & Bonnie (Bonnie Bramlett)
7. Confident – Demi Lovato
8. How It Ends – DeVotchKa (Jeanie Schroder)
9. Come On Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners (Helen O’Hara)
10. Someday We’ll Be Together – Diana Ross & The Supremes

I can’t say the name “Diana Ross” without hearing it in the nasally Jersey Shore-esque accent of my sister’s school friends. Fortunately, that’s an endless source of amusement for me, because I’m that easily amused. “Confident” by Demi Lovato is one of those songs my girls made me get that I find I rather like. I figure that buys me a modicum of deceleration on the road to total fogeydom.

Paxton’s day in SEC court

Sep 2nd, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
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That’s a slightly misleading headline, but you get the point.

Best mugshot ever

Best mugshot ever

Lawyers for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will argue Friday morning in a Sherman courtroom that the federal civil fraud case against him should be dismissed, their latest effort to unwind the legal troubles that have dogged Paxton for more than a year.

[…]

In the SEC case, Paxton’s lawyers have argued the allegations represent a “dramatic overreach and lack any basis in law.” The SEC lawsuit, they also say, does not claim he made any false or misleading statements to potential investors in Servergy, a technology startup at the center of both cases.

“Mr. Paxton should not be left to labor under a cloud of suspicion while enduring years of costly discovery to refute claims that are meritless on their face,” Paxton’s lawyers wrote in their June motion to dismiss the SEC lawsuit.

They will get the chance to press that argument at 9 a.m. Friday in federal district court in Sherman before U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant III. Paxton’s team is being led by Matthew Martens, a former top lawyer for the SEC.

James Spindler, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said he would not be surprised if the court dismisses at least some of the charges before trial. He said SEC lawyers “have their work cut out for them” in specifically proving the charges of fraud, which he called “factually dense inquiries” in the context of a case like this one.

“Overall, it seems a little questionable,” said Spindler, an expert in securities regulation. “It depends really on what the facts are, and they haven’t disclosed a lot of the facts of the case yet.”

See here for the background. Let’s wait and see what the government’s case is before we make any guesses about his odds of success.

In the meantime, this also happened.

The state’s highest criminal court Wednesday morning dismissed all three appeals filed on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s behalf, saying his lawyers neglected to include everything needed on the petitions.

The Court of Criminal Appeals gave Paxton 10 days to add what was missing — a copy of the concurring opinion from the Dallas-based 5th Court of Appeals, which in June rejected Paxton’s request to dismiss criminal charges related to private business deals from 2011 and 2012.

Defense lawyers corrected the mistake a little more than two hours after the court issued the unsigned order, which was opposed by Judges Barbara Hervey and Michael Keasler.

“We inadvertently left off attaching to our petition a copy of the concurring opinion from the court of appeals. We have cured the oversight and have refiled,” Paxton lawyer Philip Hilder said.

The error isn’t expected to significantly delay the handling of Paxton’s appeal.

[…]

A trial on the SEC’s accusations has been tentatively set for Sept. 11, 2017, and is expected to last about two weeks.

Lawyers have said a trial on Paxton’s criminal charges, if upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeals, could take place in the spring of 2017.

An oops, but not a big deal. The schedule information at the end of the story is more interesting. If Paxton isn’t successful in getting charges against him dropped, next year is going to be very busy for him. Judge Mazzant is not expected to rule today, so it will be awhile before we know this part of Paxton’s fate.

The recapture blues

Sep 2nd, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
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What are you gonna do?

BagOfMoney

At least once a year, an official from a property-wealthy Texas school calls Christy Rome and tells her they’re just not going to do it. They don’t want to send a big chunk of their tax dollars to the state, even though they’re required to do so under a state law meant to buoy poorer districts.

“I can’t recommend that,” the Texas School Coalition chief always tells them, citing a host of potentially worse financial consequences.

The resistance dates back to the mid-1990s, when Texas lawmakers — under the gun of a court order — enacted a plan known as Robin Hood that was meant to ease vast funding inequities among school districts fueled by a property tax-based funding system.

For years, getting rid of the scheme altogether was the primary legislative goal of Rome’s 140-member coalition of school districts, which has unsuccessfully fought Robin Hood in the courts. Now, she says, the goal is simply to rein it in.

With major pushback from property-poor schools and decades of case law reinforcing the take-from-the-rich, give-to-the-poor concept, whether that will happen is a big question.

But Rome says the group is hopeful for reform during the 2017 legislative session. Resistance from property-wealthy schools has exploded, along with the number of districts — including very big ones — required to pay up under the Robin Hood plan.

[…]

The coalition will face fierce resistance from property-poor schools, represented by the Equity Center, which agree with wealthier districts that the state has grown too reliant on local tax revenue to fund public education and underfunds schools in general. But they also believe Robin Hood is crucial to easing funding inequities. The system is far kinder to property-wealthy districts even if they have to make recapture payments, said Equity Center Executive Director Wayne Pierce.

Contrary to popular belief, he said, that money isn’t funneled directly to poor districts but instead into a big pot of money distributed to all of the state’s more than 1,200 public and charter schools. And he said schools like Houston and Austin still get hundreds more dollars per student than the average school district.

“Recapture is a salvation to public education,” Pierce said. “Those that pay it are still funded at higher levels and have lower tax rates, so it’s not hurting those schools but it is helping the state.”

The only way the Equity Center would support eliminating Robin Hood, Pierce said, is if the state totally changed the way it funds public schools, replacing local property taxes with a statewide property tax or other statewide tax — a concept that has had little to no political traction.

The genesis of this story is HISD having to make a recapture payment, which comes at an especially bad time for them. I wish the story had explored the HISD board’s handing the issue off to voters, as that subject needs to get more attention, but I’ll have to wait till another day for it. The bottom line is that Pierce is right, a statewide tax is the fairest way to do this, and it ain’t gonna happen any time soon. The Republican leadership wants to spend less on education, and it wants to point a finger at the school districts when they are left holding the bag. At the risk of repeating myself, nothing will change until the leadership of this state changes.

How do other states regulate ridesharing?

Sep 2nd, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
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The Texas Legislature would like to know.

Uber

As Texas lawmakers consider filing legislation next year related to ride-hailing companies, they learned Tuesday that more than 30 states have passed laws calling for some level of regulation of companies like Uber and Lyft.

A report presented by Texas A&M University’s Transportation Institute analyzed state and municipal regulations since 2012. It found that 24 states passed legislation requiring ride-hailing apps, sometimes referred to as transportation network companies, must apply for a state permit before operating. The report also found that 30 states require background checks on the driver before or a specific amount of time after the driver begins working.

Lyft

“Transportation network companies have expanded rapidly to cities worldwide,” Ginger Goodin, a senior research engineer and director at the institute, told House Transportation Committee members at a hearing Tuesday. “However, they do not fit neatly within our current regulatory schemes.”

[…]

According to Goodin, there is no statewide policy in the country that requires fingerprint-based background checks. The group did not look into the number of municipalities that require those checks.

“There are many questions and unknowns,” Goodin said. The institute expects to continue to research the ride-hailing companies in the future.

You can see a copy of the report here. It seems very likely we are going to get some kind of statewide Uber/Lyft bill, it’s just a matter of whether the bill is a complete sop to them or if it tries to balance their interests with those of the cities and existing cab companies. The two Transportation chairs – Sen. Robert Nichols and Rep. Joe Pickett – are decent, and the guy who introduced the statewide bill last session (Rep. Chris Paddie) took the process seriously, so if those three are among the main movers, it’ll probably be all right. Just keep the chuckleheads like Sen. Don Huffines away from it, that’s all I ask.

You are now free to visually blight Texas highways

Sep 2nd, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
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WTF?

Opponents of billboards and other signs along Texas roadways reacted on Monday with dismay to an appeals court decision striking down significant portions of the Texas Highway Beautification Act, saying the ruling could lead to a litany of signs along federally funded highways.

The Third District Court of Appeals in Austin issued the decision on the state law – cheered as the linchpin of Texas’ scenic roadway efforts – because the 42-year-old act restricts free speech.

Scenic Texas, a statewide group that has fought watering down Texas billboard laws, is urging the Texas Department of Transportation – the defendant in the current case – and state officials to appeal.

“What it appears to do is strip away TxDOT’s authority to regulate outdoor advertising as they have been doing it for the last 40 years,” said Margaret Lloyd, a Galveston resident and vice president of Scenic Texas. “We are concerned that authority has been removed completely.”

The ruling came late last week in a case regarding a 2011 sign erected to support Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. Auspro Enterprises placed the sign on its property along Texas 71.

[…]

TxDOT spokeswoman Veronica Beyer said the agency is reviewing the ruling and consulting with the Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Highway Administration.

“TxDOT does not regulate or restrict content, as TxDOT has regulations that provide protection for freedom of speech,” Beyer said in a statement. “Texas has the most beautiful roadways in the nation, and as such TxDOT only wishes to further maintain the safety to the traveling public without restricting peoples’ constitutional rights.”

Citing other restrictions on signs and previous court rulings, the appeals court struck down subchapters B and C of the beautification act, which are the centerpiece of the law. Essentially, the court ruled Texas’ law relies on exemptions that differ based on the content of the sign, which is unconstitutional.

“The Texas Act, as both (TxDOT) and the Texas Supreme Court have acknowledged, on its face draws distinctions based on the message a speaker conveys,” appeals court Chief Justice Jeff Rose wrote.

Rather than void parts related to political speech, as TxDOT sought during the case, the appeals court said it cannot sever one type of sign from another and deemed TxDOT’s total authority of signs unconstitutional.

“We strongly disagree with the interpretation the court has come up with,” said Anne Culver, president of Scenic Houston, a local version of the statewide group.

A copy of the ruling is here. It cites a recent SCOTUS case ( Reed v. Town of Gilbert), which the judges say “has arguably transformed First Amendment free-speech jurisprudence”. If that’s so, I don’t care for it, because I think this ruling, which struck down a law that had been in place with no objections for over 40 years, is too broad. Beyond the effect at the state level, this could affect local billboard ordinance as well. Surely we don’t want to go back to the ugly old days in Houston, right? Scenic Texas said in a post on Facebook that they will encourage the AG to appeal this ruling. This is one time where I agree with that advice. Swamplot and the Chron editorial board have more.