A couple of thoughts about moving forward

I’ve got the canvass data for Harris County and will be working on it to bring you the usual analyses and insights. For whatever the reason, the voting precincts are presented differently than they were in the May/June elections, which has stopped me from doing my usual Excel magic on them. I’ve got an inquiry in with the Clerk’s office about that but hadn’t heard back before the holiday. When I’ve got that cleared up I’ll get on the numbers and we’ll begin to answer some questions about what happened.

In the meantime, I have a couple of high-level thoughts to tide us over.

– I’ve mentioned this before, but the first thing we need to do is figure out why so many 2020 voters didn’t show up in 2024. We basically know who these people are, so it’s a matter of asking them, listening to their answers, and compiling the data. I fully expect that a lot of what we’ll hear will be muddled, contradictory, confusing, and downright aggravating. It’s still our job to make sense of it and figure out how to get them next time.

– Doing that properly will take time and require a fair amount of resources. The money for that should come, at least in part, from Democratic incumbents (more on them in a minute) and anyone else associated with the party who has financial interests with the party. But as this is going to be a reach out and talk to people exercise, grassroots folks can and should participate as well. The first order of business is for someone to organize such an effort. Every candidate for TDP Chair and every current county party Chair should be working on something like this – it could be done statewide, at the local level, or both.

– Speaking of Democratic incumbents, we really need to demand more from them. Every incumbent needs to be asked what they did to help Democrats get out the vote this past year. Were they not on the ballot this year? Doesn’t matter. Do they serve in non-partisan offices like City Council or on school boards? Doesn’t matter. Were they unopposed or otherwise guaranteed to win thanks to their gerrymandered district? You better believe that’s no excuse.

There are Democratic incumbents who do their fair share and more, and that includes some of the judges who lost last month. We know who they are. There are others who do not, and again we have a pretty good idea of who they are. I am here to say that every one of us who votes in the Democratic primary needs to ask them that question, and to be prepared to support someone else if they don’t give a good answer. This has to matter to them at least as much as it matters to us.

This idea is not original to me – my friend and blogging colleague Neil Aquino has been on this beat for awhile. I’ve been asking a version of this question in my interviews during the primary season for the past couple of cycles. Plenty of the activists I talk to and hang out with have been on board for some time. There’s still plenty of room for the heat to be turned up.

– I’m not going to get into specific items for how to approach the next campaign, partly because we need to talk to our disengaged voters first and partly because I don’t feel very confident in my ability to see clearly right now. The one thing I will say is to avoid hot takes, do what you need to do to mourn and rest and recharge because we have a long battle ahead of ourselves, and don’t lose hope. We did this before, and as much as it sucks to have to do it again, we can do it again. Stay strong and carry on.

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The wild turkeys of East Texas

Fascinating.

Thanksgiving turkeys are abundant this time of year. But their wild brethren — the less plump variety strutting around the edge of forests — are less plentiful, especially in East Texas where researchers and state officials have spent decades trying to bolster their numbers.

Their efforts have run the gamut: they’ve traded armadillos for turkeys. They’ve planned “super stocking” events. And in recent years, they’ve even started adopting troublesome turkeys found strutting around other states’ airports.

“We get a lot of problem birds,” said Jason Hardin, the wild turkey program leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “Birds that upset other people. But once we put them on the landscape, they seem to do fine in East Texas.”

East Texas was once home to hundreds of thousands of turkeys. But unregulated hunting and logging, which removed the trees where turkeys sleep and hide from predators, dwindled the population to just 100 in the 1940s.

Various efforts have boosted that to between 3,000 and 5,000 East Texas turkeys. But there are only a few self-sustaining groups, prompting Hardin and others to analyze past efforts as they bring a couple hundred new birds to the area each year.

“We don’t want to be continually going in and putting more birds,” he said. “We want them to be a self-sustained population.”

[…]

Roughly 10,000 wild turkeys were released in East Texas over 25 years.

“It was successful in that we now, today, have a wild turkey (hunting) season in 12 counties in East Texas,” Hardin said. “But we stocked 54 counties. We released about 10,000 birds, and we don’t even think we had that many in East Texas today. So it was successful, but nowhere near as successful as we had hoped.”

The department’s current effort is building upon that restocking push. In 2007 and 2008, Stephen F. Austin State University and Texas A&M University found that many of the 10,000 turkeys had been released to landowners who promised to be good stewards but did not necessarily have the proper habitat for these wild birds.

Stephen Webb, a wildlife scientist with Texas A&M University’s Natural Resources Institute, also noted that a lack of habitat management can hurt turkey populations. Turkeys like to live on the edge of forests where they can access trees to roost in and open landscapes to forage and build nests. These open areas can become overgrown if not properly managed. And with much of the state being private land, this cost often falls on landowners.

There’s more, so read the rest. I for one did not know that there are two different species of wild turkey in Texas – the one native to East Texas is the one with a low population, while the Rio Grande Valley variety is quite plentiful, mostly in Central Texas. There’s some research going on to see how that species might fare in East Texas. The national population is less now than it had been, so importing birds to restock is not as viable, so we’ve got to figure this out for ourselves. I hope we can do it.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for December 1

“This means the United States would be kept in the dark about a lot of things going on in the world.”

“McBride’s response is a masterclass in dealing with bullies.”

“Now, reproductive rights groups are preparing for legal and legislative battles in a new, less friendly environment. They are planning to embrace a multipronged approach: challenging anti-abortion policies in court, organizing political protests, and lobbying state and national lawmakers to oppose proposed bans.”

“It would be very beneficial for Democrats to create scorecards right now charting where inflation, unemployment and GDP were at the end of Biden’s term and regularly updating it with Trump’s latest numbers. One of the smaller benefits of this is these three numbers are currently pretty hard to beat. You can only get them slightly lower or higher, depending on which statistic you’re referring to and you can get them much further into bad territory.”

“Enjoy Your Air Travel This Thanksgiving. Next Year Will Likely Be Much, Much Worse.”

“Johnny Carson was a genius in the art of being liked, which is remarkable, considering he wasn’t, on paper, especially likable: A largely absent father, philandering husband, a sometimes mean drunk, a fiercely private figure even to many close to him. He was a talk-show host who didn’t always seem to enjoy talking to people.”

RIP, Alice Brock, the inspiration for the classic song “Alice’s Restaurant”.

“Sen. Dick Durbin plans to introduce the Fair Ball Act, a bill that would further protect minor league baseball players from previous legislation that exempted them from wage and hour laws”.

“It doesn’t read as a rebuke to Khelif’s harassers so much as a denial of their significance. The sense of power she projects makes them seem powerless by comparison: They’re preoccupied with imaginary tales about a 25-year-old Algerian they’ve never met. She’s winning gold and looking like a superstar.”

“The SS United States is a mid-20th century ocean liner that set the speed record for crossing the Atlantic. Now tied up at a Philadelphia pier, its paint peeling and faded after decades of inactivity, it’s bound for an ending that is, in reality, a new phase of its life: serving as an artificial reef that attracts divers and marine life in the waters off Florida.”

“You just don’t know who the crumbs you scatter behind you will feed. You never know where things will land, and who they will land with, and for what purpose. And you don’t have to. You just keep putting what’s in your heart and mind out there. And you keep doing the inner work to ensure your heart and mind are rooted in truth, love, humility, curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom. Never assume you can coast on your goodness. Keep interrogating yourself. And keep putting yourself out there.”

“Adultery is no longer a crime in New York.”

RIP, Jim Abrahams, writer and director who worked with the Zucker Brothers on Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Police Squad“Demure” is your Dictionary.com word of the year.

“Chinese state media is reportedly troubled by the latest exodus of X users flocking to Bluesky. State outlets, which put considerable resources into amassing millions of followers on Elon Musk’s social media platform — including by buying ads, deploying bots, and hiring influencers — have recently seen their growth plateau.”

“This might all look a certain way: Ah, a right-wing billionaire trying to make the public stupider to suit his own ends! No, Musk doesn’t mind controlling an information ecosystem. But I think what he’s really after is something more specifically self-interested.”

“Give thanks to undocumented immigrants for these items on your table”.

I don’t know if this story about orcas and salmon hats is real or a joke – the news sites carrying it are sketchy, to be sure – but it made me laugh, so what the hell.

RIP, Earl Holliman, actor who was in the very first Twilight Zone episode.

RIP, Madeleine Riffaud, journalist, war correspondent, poet, hero of the French resistance in WWII.

“After more than five years of frenetic, but sometimes interrupted, reconstruction work, Notre Dame Cathedral showed itself anew to the world Friday, with rebuilt soaring ceilings and creamy good-as-new stonework erasing somber memories of its devastating fire in 2019.”

“Hal Lindsey died in the year 2024 at the age of 95. According to everything Hal Lindsey spent his long life arguing, none of that should be true. According to Hal Lindsey, he should never have lived to be 95. According to Hal Lindsey, the year 2024 should never have arrived. And according to Hal Lindsey, he should never have died.”

RIP, Lou Carnesecca, Hall of Fame basketball coach mostly at St. John’s University, New York City legend.

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Beryl’s effect on the Texas coast

It was pretty significant.

Parts of Texas’ shoreline were unrecognizable after Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast, destroyed dunes and immediately caused the shore to become largely inaccessible, new drone imagery shows.

University of Houston researchers captured images along the shoreline near Galveston and Matagorda Bay before and after the devastating storm made landfall on July 8. The images show a washed-out beachfront with damaged dunes.

Large channels immediately opened up along the shoreline in some places after the storm surge retreated.

Geologists with the university are conducting an environmental study on Beryl’s effects and working to calculate the amount of land along the Texas coast that eroded between May and July this year.

Sargent, a coastal Texas city between Matagorda and Galveston, sustained the most damage from Hurricane Beryl, Shuhab Khan, a geology professor working on the study, said in a statement, according to the university. That’s where the hurricane came ashore.

“Sargent Island experienced the most significant impact and is unrecognizable,” Khan said. “The flooding, overwash and scarping caused by Beryl wiped out nearly all the dunes and left the area virtually inaccessible.”

He said the data being collected by researchers at the university will help to quantify erosion along the coast, track the land’s recovery process, and improve predictive models for storm damage.

“Our ongoing research demonstrates that restored dunes along the Texas coast are vulnerable to major storms,” Khan said. “It emphasizes the need for adaptive, proactive dune management and regular monitoring to assess the durability of these restoration efforts.”

You should click over and see the pictures. There was a similar study done after Harvey in 2017 that found a massive amount of erosion compared to what the coast normally experiences in a year. The researchers are still determining what the total numbers are for Beryl.

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The Ashby Highrise is getting close to being finished

Wow!

Did you miss me?

Developers recently hit a key milestone in the construction of a high-rise apartment complex in Boulevard Oaks that sparked one of the fiercest land battles in Houston’s history, more than 17 years a high-rise on the site was initially proposed.

Contractors earlier this month topped out on the Langley, a 20-story tower rising in the former Ashby site at 1717 Bissonnet, meaning the tower has reached its highest point.

The Langley’s developer, Dallas-based StreetLights Residential, is interviewing real estate brokerages and management companies in preparation to launch leasing for the 134-unit apartment tower next March, said Stephen Meek, senior vice president of StreetLights Residential.

The first apartments will be available for lease in July 2025, with construction ongoing until spring 2026, Meek said. Leasing will be done by appointment only, he said.

The construction milestone marked a triumph for StreetLights and the site’s owners, El Paso-based Hunt Cos., which has fought to build a high-rise on the site since 2007. Although Hunt sat on the proposal for several years, the owner resurrected efforts to build a high-rise at the site in 2022, hiring StreetLights as the new lead developer for a revised project.

Although StreetLights still faced opposition and lawsuits, the developer eventually secured permits needed to break ground last year.

“We were just trying to come in and create something beautiful and bring life and color to a lot that had been at a place where there was just deadness. .. So we’re happy that we’re are where we are,” Meek said in an interview.

[…]

Council Member Abbie Kamin, whose district includes Boulevard Oaks, said she was aware of some incidents surrounding parking and traffic, but generally, as far as she’s heard from residents, she said, “the company was extremely responsive when issues did arise. … This was a decade-plus battle, so the developer had to come to the table and from what I can tell, they have kept their end of the bargain.”

All I can say as someone who has followed this story for over 15 years now is that I never really thought I’d see this day. Like, the Ashby Highrise – I suppose it’s really the Langley now, but in the same way that The Summit was never the Compaq Center to me, this will always be the Ashby Highrise – always seemed mythical, even after the new project got its permits. There was another lawsuit filed last year, but that appears to have gone nowhere – there was no mention of any update to it in this story. And after all this time the neighbors seem to have mostly run out of complaints. Who knew this was even possible? I’m going to need to visit and see the inside of this place for myself when it’s fully opened. Just to make sure, you know?

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Looking ahead for Rep.-elect Sylvester Turner

This article starts off with a look back at the career of former State Rep and Mayor, now US Rep-elect Sylvester Turner and his relationship with the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and then gets into what he will face and what he will try to do after he is sworn in to succeed her.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Now, as the congressman-elect, Turner knows it’s impossible to replace Jackson Lee. But he wants Houstonians to know his focus is getting things done.

“I’m looking for win-wins,” Turner said. “I’m not looking for win-losses.”

As a freshman Democratic member of Congress, Turner will not only walk into an administration that is once again led by president-elect Donald Trump after his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, but a Congress as a whole that has also flipped red.

On top of this, Turner’s party has found itself regrouping, said Renée Cross, senior executive director of the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs.

Turner also enters an entirely different political realm where he doesn’t have the same seniority he had in the legislature. He won’t be one of 150 elected officials like he was in the statehouse, or the sole guy in charge like he was as Houston mayor. Instead, he’ll be a new kid in a sea of 435, Cross said.

But Cross doesn’t think it’s all “gloom and doom,” nor that it will sway the seasoned lawmaker. She predicts Turner will be able to successfully tap into his record of working across the aisle.

“One of his strengths is his interpersonal skills, and I think that he will be able to use those to help create a bridge,” Cross said, referring to moderate Republicans and Democrats, particularly those who also represent Texas.

Turner, while he hoped the environment he’s walking into would be different, said he’s dealt with a red wave before, such as the 2003 flip in the Texas statehouse and the start of his first term as mayor when Trump first took office.

“You just have to work with the hand that you’ve been dealt and find a way to get from point A to point B to meet the needs of the people that you represent,” Turner said.

[…]

Turner’s Congressional priorities are healthcare access, affordable housing and disaster preparedness as he heads into Congress.

The incoming congressman said he’s had access to some of the best healthcare in the world as he’s dealt with his own cancer diagnosis. He realizes others, though, aren’t as lucky. One of his priorities will be making sure the Affordable Care Act isn’t terminated or pared down as the Trump administration calls for its axing. He’d also like to make it more accessible.

Turner said he wants to ensure Houstonians in the 18th have more economic opportunities, and he couldn’t ignore the communities he represents are in “a constant state of need and recovery,” especially in storms.

Where the congresswoman did a little bit of everything, Turner wants to establish areas of expertise and key issues.

“I think the difference, maybe the focus for me is not trying to do everything that’s on the screen. I do want to kind of concentrate on certain areas to really make a substantive, or a transformative difference,” he said, adding that he’ll discuss more with his team come January.

I feel reasonably confident that Rep.-elect Turner will find his footing quickly. I don’t think he’ll find many opportunities to get things done because that isn’t the Congress he’s been elected to. I think he will mostly be on the defensive, and the more he can do to oppose whatever it is this shambolic Congress with a razor-thin Republican majority tries to do, the better. As things stand right now, with three vacancies thanks to Trump appointments, Republicans start with a 217-215 edge, which will likely become 220-215 by March. That’s smaller than the majority they have in the current Congress, and we all saw what a shitshow that was. Don’t help them with anything that isn’t an unqualified good thing, let them flail and fail, and take every opportunity to say loudly and clearly that it doesn’t have to be like this, there is a better way. Do that and it will be as successful a term as it can be.

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Dispatches from Dallas, November 30 edition

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have a wide variety of topics: late election news; Lege bills; more bad financial news for the City of Dallas; a Fair Park update; a Dallas County juvenile justice update (it’s bad); public health in Fort Worth; the DMN wags its finger at Elon Musk; how the Bluebonnet Curriculum got passed on NTX votes; Dickies leaves Fort Worth; great news for a local musician. And more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Franz Ferdinand, who have a new album coming out in January.

Let’s dive into the turkey week grab bag while you enjoy your leftovers:

  • We’re still getting late election results nationwide, and here’s one from North Texas: Democrat Tina Clinton beat her Republican opponent for Place 9 on the Fifth Court of Appeals. Sometimes it takes a while to count votes!
  • If you were wondering how House Rep David Cook of Mansfield ended up as the front man for the Republicans who are ready to dump Dade Phelan as Speaker, the Texas Tribune has you covered.
  • In crazy bills our North Texas representatives filed for the next Lege session, we have two from Brian Harrison of HD-10 (R-Midlothian). First, he filed a bill to recall our Texas US Senators mid-term, which I somehow don’t think is going to come into play next time Ted Cruz is a national embarrassment. He’d also like to defund any of our public universities that offer LGTBQ studies.
  • KERA tells us how some of our Texas Democrats survived the red wave of 2024.
  • In more bad financial news for the City of Dallas, we’re on the hook to pay off the police and fire pension fund deficit in three years instead of five after the pension system won their case against the city. Now I wonder whether we can sell the money we put into the pension system as funding the police department under Prop U.
  • Mayor Johnson went on Fox News to kiss TFG’s … ring … and support deportation, which is a new stance for our MAGAfying mayor. No official word on any policy changes coming from this yet. The Dallas Morning News also has the story.
  • We have an update on the Fair Park First situation: the Dallas Foundation, a nonprofit with a long-time history of work in the city, will be taking over from the previous operator, the Oak View Group.
  • Three coyotes have been found dead in the Lochwood neighborhood, which isn’t too far from where I live. Two of them died from gunshot wounds.
  • The DMN has an editorial about the Builders of Hope gentrification report that came out recently. Unsurprisingly, they think the report has nailed the problem but they don’t like the idea that City Hall is part of the solution. I think the DMN is half-right; the current City Hall won’t be very helpful. Talk to us again in 2028 when we’ve ditched Mayor Johnson.
  • A West Dallas neighborhood would like its current infrastructure repaired before the city approves any more new developments.
  • This week I learned that in Dallas County only one third of young adults make a living wage. Combined with that gentrification report, we have bad news for young people who want to live in Dallas.
  • We all knew there was something really bad going on in the Dallas County juvenile justice system based on the investigation and the number of people who’d quit. WFAA finally got their hands on the Office of the Inspector General’s report and it’s damning. What Dallas County is doing to these kids is criminal (and there may be prosecutions over it).
  • Dallas and Tarrant Counties may be in trouble over air quality as federal regulations come into effect. TCEQ will decide next month whether we’re in non-attainment status for the new EPA standards. Or, we’ll wait until the new administration undoes those standards and go on as we are. Houston folks, don’t laugh too hard: Harris County is in the same boat.
  • The Tarrant County subcourthouse at Mansfield has a problem: it stinks. Literally, because its foundation settles an inch here and an inch there, rupturing sewage lines, even though it’s only halfway through its expected life. The courthouse is in a Democratic precint, so unsurprisingly the Commissioners’ Court doesn’t want to spend any money to replace it or move it.
  • The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that started when McKinney police raided a woman’s home to find a fugitive and tore the place apart.
  • Fort Worth PD is getting a $2.1 million federal grant to help clear their rape kit backlog.
  • Justice works slowly but it does sometimes get there: the last Dallas PD officer facing charges in the George Floyd protests in 2020 has pleaded guilty to assaulting a protestor and will have to give up his Texas peace officer license.
  • In school news, six districts in Tarrant County may be in financial trouble because their property appraisal values are too low. The state relies on accurate appraisal values when it awards funding, so these districts might lose state money because the values are too low. I know that seems crazy; the broke districts are the ones that probably need the money. But here we are nonetheless.
  • You may have heard about the Bluebonnet Curriculum, the new Bible-based curriculum that the State Board of Education just passed. It was passed with North Texas votes. Bud Kennedy of the Star-Telegram tells you how that happened. The teal deer is that despite having a Democratic SBOE rep outgoing and incoming, the outgoing rep had to resign because she was elected to the Legislature. So Greg Abbott handpicked a temporary replacement who voted for the Bluebonnet curriculum.
  • Some public health stories that I’m sure aren’t at all related: Two items from the Star-Telegram on how Tarrant County vaccination rates are down (and one explaining why they’re even writing about the topic). And here’s a third piece about how RSV is sending kids to the ER in Fort Worth.
  • The DMN has an editorial Elon Musk’s judge-shopping, where his terms of service require all cases be filed in Tarrant County or the the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas. Their take is that Musk does this because we let him.
  • If you want to know how the tariffs TFG is telling us he’s going to impose will affect your night out in Dallas, the Dallas Observer has you covered. It’s going to suck, you’re going to eat out less and in more, and you’ll pay more for all your food.
  • In a move that blindsided Fort Worth officials, Dickies, the iconic Fort Worth workwear company, is moving its headquarters to California. Some big questions from the move are whether they’ll maintain naming rights to Dickies Arena and why they moved. The Star-Telegram looks at the financials of parent company VF and how Dickies will be sharing facilities with brand-mate Vans; our rabble-rousing friends at the Barbed Wire claim it has something to do with VF’s corporate ethics and Texas’ anti-DEI climate.
  • Dallas taqueria Mami Coco gets a Texas Monthly profile.
  • This week I learned that Robin Wright is from Dallas in this profile in the Dallas Observer.
  • A new documentary about the influence of GM on the city of Arlington came out on Youtube this month. I didn’t know anything about this piece of Texas history so I’m intrigued.
  • This week I also learned about the Mansfield Philharmonic, a diverse ensemble of classical musicians in the Metroplex suburbs. I need to check them out.
  • And in our last item this week, something to be thankful for: despite a stage-four cancer diagnosis (which turned out to be wrong), local musician Joshua Ray Walker is cancer free. Fantastic.
  • Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

    The legislative attacks on mifepristone are coming

    Get ready.

    A Louisiana law that reclassified abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances has made it more difficult for doctors to treat a wide range of gynecological conditions, doctors say.

    Now, a similar proposal has been filed in Texas.

    Texas Rep. Pat Curry, a freshman Republican from Waco, said the intent of House Bill 1339 is to make it harder for people, especially teenagers, to order mifepristone and misoprostol online to terminate their pregnancies. Doctors in Louisiana say the measure has done little to strengthen the state’s near-total abortion ban, but has increased fear and confusion among doctors, pharmacists and patients.

    “There’s no sense in it,” said Dr. Nicole Freehill, an OB/GYN in New Orleans. “Even though we kept trying to tell them how often [these medications] are used for other things and how safe they are, it didn’t matter. It’s just a backdoor way of restricting abortion more.”

    These medications are often used to empty the uterus after a patient has a miscarriage, and are commonly prescribed ahead of inserting an intrauterine device. Misoprostol is also often the best treatment for obstetric hemorrhages, a potentially life-threatening condition in which women can bleed to death in minutes. Since the Louisiana law went into effect, hospitals have taken the medication off their obstetrics carts and put them in locked, password-protected central storage.

    One hospital has been running drills to practice getting the medications to patients in time, and reported, on average, a two minute delay from before the law went into effect, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.

    “In obstetrics and gynecology, minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death,” Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, said in a statement after the Louisiana law passed. “Forcing a clinician to jump through administrative hurdles in order to access a safe, effective medicine is not medically justified and is, quite simply, dangerous.”

    Curry said these restrictions won’t stop doctors from prescribing these medications when necessary, but will stop the “wide misuse” of the drugs to circumvent the state’s near-total abortion ban.

    Curry said he consulted with the author of the Louisiana law, as well as OB/GYNs in Texas to draft the bill. He said the doctors who have criticized the legislation are raising these concerns as a “smokescreen” because they don’t want more restrictions.

    “I understand that. We don’t need or want all kinds of regulations,” he said. “Especially as Republicans, regulations should not be high on our list, but in this case it’s a necessary evil given the situation.”

    I have no doubt this will pass easily – hell, it will probably be one of Greg Abbott’s emergency items, so it will pass earlier in the session. Honestly, the only surprise would be if the powers that be allow a freshman legislator to be the author of a bill that they’ll all want to take credit for. There’s some background on how this happened in Louisiana, which is both illuminating and infuriating, so read the rest. The usual “blame the doctors” playbook is already present, the rest will be a formality. There is a lawsuit against that Louisiana law, but for all the obvious reasons I’m not optimistic about it.

    Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    High speed rail II proposed in the Lege

    For obvious reasons, I don’t expect this to go anywhere.

    Rep. John Bucy

    As plans for a Dallas to Houston bullet train move forward, one state legislator is hoping to kick-start another high speed rail line from North Texas to San Antonio.

    State Rep. John Bucy, a Democrat who represents parts of Austin and Williamson County, told KERA that his legislation, if passed, would allow the Texas Department of Transportation to start planning a line along the I-35 corridor, one of the most traveled in the state.

    “Having high speed rail between connecting these major hubs of Texas, of Dallas and Austin and San Antonio, it should be a great option for Texans and for visitors and everyone alike,” Bucy said.

    House Bill 483 would require TXDoT to enter into a comprehensive development agreement with a private partner to create the new line. Another bill, HB 542, would allow for the use of state highway funds for transit-oriented projects as well as public roads.

    Bucy said there are no specific plans drawn out for the bullet train to San Antonio. Right now, it’s just a vision.

    “It’s more just telling the Texas Department of Transportation to basically enter a bid and get a contract going on,” Bucy said.

    He added that since he pre-filed the bills, there’s been an outpouring of support among constituents and advocates.

    “The calls are non-stop, from constituents, from county commissioners, from elected officials that are just excited about this idea,” he said.

    Peter LeCody, president of Texas Rail Advocates, called the bills an “early Christmas gift” for passenger rail supporters.

    “TxDOT has been kind of gun shy in the past to enter into any type of funding resolution or apply for any of these funds,” LeCody said. “It’s going to be interesting to see if we can get the legislature to move on this.”

    He said the recently formed Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee is leading the charge on passenger rail projects across the state. Members of the committee, organized by Travis County judge Andy Brown and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, include the rail division director for TxDOT as well as local elected officials and representatives from private businesses.

    Whatever you think about traffic on I-45, it’s worse on I-35, and with the continued population boom along I-35 there’s just no number of lanes that could be built that will alleviate the problem. Some kind of more scalable alternative is needed, and that’s rail. There have long been efforts to build passenger rail between Austin and San Antonio, none of which have come close to succeeding; this bill would start from there and go bigger. It all makes sense. Getting TxDOT on board would make a big difference. Local governments – the story notes the push from North Texas leaders on both the Houston to Dallas line and the Dallas to Fort Worth connector – are in support. I’m rooting for it to happen. I fully expect to be disappointed. So it goes.

    Posted in Bidness, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    Thanksgiving video break: Goodbye, Alice

    I’ll have a link in my Sunday linkdump, but Alice Brock, the woman who inspired the song “Alice’s Restaurant”, passed away a few days ago. Let us pause to remember her and give thanks for her life and the music she helped bring about.

    May she forever be at the head of a table that features a Thanksgiving dinner that can’t be beat.

    As for me, it’s especially at times like these that I am thankful for the things that I have – my family and friends, my health, the enjoyment I get out of the things that I do, which very much includes this blog and the engagement I have with you, my readers. May you and yours have a happy Thanksgiving, and may you have plenty of reasons to be thankful in your own lives.

    Posted in Music | Tagged , | 2 Comments

    Porsha Ngumezi

    Remember her name.

    Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

    Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

    Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.

    But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.

    Three hours later, her heart stopped.

    The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

    It was clear Porsha needed an emergency D&C, the medical experts said. She was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, which put her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding. “Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage.

    D&Cs — a staple of maternal health care — can be lifesaving. Doctors insert a straw-like tube into the uterus and gently suction out any remaining pregnancy tissue. Once the uterus is emptied, it can close, usually stopping the bleeding.

    But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

    Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.

    Misoprostol, the medicine given to Porsha, is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable. The drug is also part of a two-pill regimen for abortions, yet administering it may draw less scrutiny than a D&C because it requires a smaller medical team and because the drug is commonly used to induce labor and treat postpartum hemorrhage. Since 2022, some Texas women who were bleeding heavily while miscarrying have gone public about only receiving medication when they asked for D&Cs. One later passed out in a pool of her own blood.

    “Stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, an OB-GYN in Houston. “Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal.”

    Josseli Barnica, Nevaeh Crane, and now Porsha Ngumezi. There will be more. You should read the rest, but take care in doing so, it’s as sad and enraging as you think. Rest in peace, Porsha Ngumezi.

    Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    The HVAC and lighting effect

    One of the main promises of the now-failed HISD bond referendum was funding to fix many issues with HVAC and lighting and other physical plant matters. In the aftermath of the bond’s failure, the Chron takes a look at the effect of not fixing these problems.

    The optimal temperature range for learning appears to range between 68 and 74 degrees, with an ideal temperature of around 72 degrees, according to studies testing students’ performance at different temperatures.

    Studies also point to air flow and quality impacting both students’ performance and attendance and a teacher’s ability to teach well, said Sapna Cheryan, a social psychologist at the University of Washington who helped conduct a 2014 study on classroom design and student achievement. In a separate 2014 study, 9% of public schools with permanent buildings and 16% of schools with temporary buildings had unsatisfactory or very unsatisfactory air quality.

    HISD has been plagued with hundreds of work orders due to heating, ventilation and air conditioning since the start of the school year, which the district’s interim chief operating officer of business operations Alishia Jolivette attributes to aging structures.

    “When we look at the overall construction and designs of our buildings, there’s really no consistency, there’s no uniformity. We rely on temporary buildings as well, and it’s really difficult to keep them cool or warm,” Jolivette said in September.

    Duncan Klussman, a former Spring Branch ISD superintendent who helped pass what was then that district’s largest bond, said heating and cooling older schools can be difficult even with upgraded systems.

    “When air conditioning really started being installed in schools in the 60s, all of those buildings had to be retrofitted for air conditioning,” Klussman said. “Bottom line is, retrofitted air conditioning just does not work as well.”

    […]

    Excessive external noise within a classroom, including humming HVAC systems, airplane flight paths and road traffic, can also significantly impact student performance. The likelihood of having distracting external noise increases in schools with temporary buildings and can be a more serious concern for students with hearing loss or attention deficits, according to the 2014 study.

    A classroom with more natural lighting may also correlate to higher test scores, although adding too much daylight could cause discomfort and temperature increases. A school with temporary buildings is more likely to have inadequate natural lighting than those with permanent buildings, according to the 2014 study. Klussman said having too much fluorescent lighting can also factor into students’ comfort and performance.

    Schools with a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students disproportionately struggle with structural deficiencies in lighting, temperature and noise, Cheryan said.

    “These structural features that are lacking, are especially likely to be lacking in schools with high numbers of students of color or students from lower-income backgrounds,” Cheryan said. “So really, it’s the most vulnerable students who are bearing the brunt of this.”

    Not sure I learned much from this, to be honest. We’ll never know how much the students might have benefitted from the promised work of the bond, but in the short term it might not have mattered much anyway, since that work would have taken time to complete. That there are problems, that work needs to be done to fix them, and that the conditions that many students operate in as a result are sufficiently inadequate to affect their experience and performance, these things are all certain. We also know why the bond to address them failed. The question remains whether HISD and Mike Miles can adequately adjust their approach to be able to pass another bond. It might help to more fully understand the problem and how the proposal can help mollify it. That’s on them.

    Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

    Texas blog roundup for the week of November 25

    The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving as it brings you this week’s roundup.

    Off the Kuff analyzes the question of undervoting in judicial races to see if it tells us anything about what happened in this election.

    SocraticGadfly offered up some snark on the JFK assassination anniversary.

    Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted about the essential role of volunteer efforts in the narrow margins a number of Harris County Democrats won by in the recent election. Active rank & file Democrats have a lot of insight on how to win in Harris County & should be valued as an important resource.

    ===================

    And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

    Lone Star Left urges the passage of a bill to require air conditioning in Texas’ prisons.

    Steve Vladeck describes getting ambushed at a legal forum.

    Law Dork calls on President Biden to commute all of the remaining federal death sentences.

    Mean Green Cougar Red mourns the closing of a longtime Houston restaurant, which fell victim to the I-45 expansion.

    Reform Austin looks at the connection between vouchers and educational re-segregation.

    The Eyewall declares an end to the 2024 hurricane season and turns its attention to those big storms in the Pacific.

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , | Leave a comment

    Eric Dick keeps on Eric Dicking

    The man is a model of consistency, I’ll give him that much.

    Eric Dick

    Fresh off running unopposed for re-election to the Harris County Department of Education’s board of trustees, attorney Eric Dick may face disciplinary action after the rest of the board chose to consider censuring the elected official due to $40,000 in unpaid ethics fines.

    The board voted 6-0 with Dick absent to draft a resolution of censure before the next board meeting, claiming that he had violated the board’s code of ethics.

    The $40,000 in campaign ethics fines were issued by the Texas Ethics Commission after his unsuccessful bids for an at-large seat on Houston’s City Council in 2019 and for Harris County treasurer in 2022. He had served on the HCDE board until December 2022 and then was appointed to the board again in January 2023 after his campaign for treasurer.

    Harris County resident and retired NASA software engineer John Cobarruvias initially filed complaints against the official with the ethics commission after the 2019 and 2022 violations, one of more than 60 complaints Cobarruvias said he has filed in the last 15 or so years. He also filed a grievance with the HCDE against Dick in July.

    “Trustees are elected officials. Taxpayers should expect them to do some basic things, tell the truth, follow the laws of the state, honor subpoenas issued by judges, pay your fines assessed by the state,” Cobarruvias said at Wednesday’s hearing. “What happens if you and I don’t pay our parking tickets? You know, it’s pretty clear. But the worst part about all this is that he’s thumbing his nose at the law.”

    […]

    Dick did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story, but he has previously said he is challenging the fines, which he called “indicative of a systemic issue within the TEC.” More than $1.5 million in fines are due to the TEC and have been sent to the Attorney General for collection, according to state records.

    Earlier this year, the attorney was also sanctioned $250,000 for his legal practices, which he said he would fight, and he was under investigation by the Hawaii Office of Disciplinary Counsel after allegedly illegally soliciting Maui wildfire victims. Dick characterized it as a misunderstanding at the time.

    When Dick ran for City Council in 2019, the commission found that he paid for mailers from the Harris County Black Democratic News, featuring photos of prominent Black politicians on the front, including former President Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, state Sen. Borris Miles, and Mayor Sylvester Turner. The back of the mailers included endorsements of candidates, including Dick.

    Miles and Thomas denounced the mailers at the time, saying they had no affiliation with the group. The mailers also lacked a disclosure saying who paid for them, as required by state law.

    Dick was fined $30,000 for his role in the creation of the mailers, and his attorney, Phillip Bryant, was also fined $6,000 for his role in the mailer creation. Bryant was allegedly spending money on behalf of the Harris County Black Democratic News without a campaign treasurer, a violation of Texas Election Code. According to the sworn complaint, Bryant did not appear at the hearing.

    […]

    In 2022, during Dick’s run for Harris County treasurer, he failed to report two $25,000 payments to the Conservative Republicans of Texas and the Conservative Republicans of Harris County. There was also a discrepancy of over $100,000 in his pre-election filings, according to the TEC’s signed resolution from Sept. 29.

    The TEC found Dick acted “in bad faith” after not responding to its complaint letter for eight months. According to the resolution, the additional $10,000 fine took into account that Dick had not paid his $30,000 fine, so the TEC sought to “deter future violations” with the additional fine.

    See here for my most recent entry in the Eric Dick Chronicles, a story that stretches back to his first appearance as a candidate in 2011. To put this as charitably as I can, Eric Dick has been unrestrainedly himself ever since that first campaign, in which he has never let any rule or law or regulation related to campaigns knock him off course. Not just campaign finances, either – that 2011 election was marked by his effort to put a bandit sign on every utility pole in a three-county radius. He’s just being himself and doing what he does, and The Man is always out to get him, for reasons he cannot comprehend. What’s a little censure among friends? He will keep on keeping on, because that’s what Eric Dick does.

    (On a completely irrelevant side note, Dick’s current hair/beard/glasses combination makes him bear an extremely disturbing-to-me resemblance to a cousin of mine. That picture in this story, I swear it makes me want to call my cousin and verify that he hasn’t been leading a secret double life here. I can’t unsee it, and it will haunt my dreams.)

    Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    Houston hydrogen hub deal signed

    As Evan Mintz likes to say on that cursed microblogging site, good news for Houston.

    The U.S. Department of Energy signed a deal with energy developers Wednesday for the creation of a $1.2 billion clean hydrogen hub based in Houston.

    The announcement allows federal funds to start flowing and comes a year after the Biden administration announced Houston as one of seven clean hydrogen hubs that would be built around the country to try and reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

    “The Biden-Harris Administration has followed through on its promise to kickstart a new domestic hydrogen industry that can produce fuel from almost any energy resource in virtually every part of the country and that can power heavy duty vehicles, heat homes, and fertilize crops,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

    The Houston project is being developed by HyVelocity Hub, a group that includes Exxon Mobil, the University of Texas at Austin, French gas supplier Air Liquide, Texas-based oil major Chevron, the nonprofit Center for Houston’s Future and GTI Energy, a research and development company based in the Chicago area.

    See here and here for the background. I don’t know what’s going to happen with a lot of the things that the Biden administration did, especially in the clean energy sphere, but at least there will be this. All I ask for at this point is for it to be clearly stated that this was entirely a Biden accomplishment every time there’s coverage of it.

    Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    My quadrennial warning to be careful with charts and percentages

    From City of Yes:

    The sun came up Wednesday morning, but for many, no doubt, our proverbial American “shining city on a hill” had lost some of its luster. While the presidential election results have disappointed many city dwellers, the results in our actual, non-metaphorical cities show that the urban electorate also wanted something different—not a wholesale ideological shift, but leaders who actually take the problems of urban governance seriously.

    Urban voters want to bring the shine back to their cities.

    Many theories will be offered in the coming weeks to explain Kamala Harris’s decisive defeat, but the fact is that Donald Trump improved his performance over 2020 seemingly everywhere and with everyone—including in the densest, bluest cities. While Harris won most urban counties, the extent to which Trump outperformed his 2020 numbers is notable: he improved his share of the vote by 34% in New York City (nearly 70% in the Bronx!), 32% in San Francisco, 27% in Los Angeles, and 22% in Washington DC. In the chart below, you can see the red shift for the counties home to America’s 24 largest cities.

    The rest is about a connection he draws between city governance and the Presidential vote, and you should read it and come to your own conclusions. My purpose is to talk about the chart, because my first reaction was “where in the world do you get an 8.9% increase for Trump in Harris County?” We’ve already shown that there was no Republican surge in Harris County. Trump’s raw vote total went up by a much more modest 2.78%, while his percentage of the vote went from 42.70% to 46.51%, an increase of 3.81 percentage points. That’s a real increase, though as noted yesterday it was much more about the drop in Democratic votes than anything else; I’m not going to relitigate that, go read that previous post for that argument.

    Where that 8.9% figure comes from is that 46.51 is an 8.9% increase over 42.70 – as in, divide 3.81 into 42.70 and you get 0.089, which is to say 8.9%. I have a lot of problems with this type of comparison, which I went into in excruciating detail four years ago, when I encountered an even more painfully mis-informative chart. The issue here is that when you only compare percentages – or in this case, percentages of percentages – you are missing some important context, specifically the raw vote totals. This can lead to weird results at the extremes and sometimes the illusion of that you’re catching up when you’re actually falling farther behind. My earlier post gets into that, so please read it.

    The bottom line for me is that you really have to include the vote totals to fully make sense of what happened here. I’ll do that in a second, but I also want to note that since we are comparing across years, it might also help to consider voter registration numbers as well. When comparing candidates from similar races in the same election, you know you’re dealing with the same pool of voters, so if Candidate A in Race A got more votes than Candidate B in Race B, you can say with some confidence that there were people who voted for Candidate A but not for Candidate B. But the fact that Donald Trump got 20K more votes in Harris County in 2024 than he did in 2020, it doesn’t follow that some people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 must have voted for Trump in 2024. That’s because there are more voters in Harris County in 2024 than in 2020, and at least some of those 20K extra votes for Trump may have come from those new people.

    That’s a lot of words, which I didn’t get into in the previous post, so let me give you another chart:

    
    Year   County     Votes     Voters     Pct
    ==========================================
    2020    Bexar   308,618  1,189,373  25.95%
    2024    Bexar   336,260  1,295,580  25.95%
    
    2020    Dallas  307,076  1,398,469  21.96%
    2024    Dallas  319,319  1,467,410  21.76%
    
    2020   El Paso   84,331    488,470  17.26%
    2024   El Paso  104,966    521,945  20.12%
    
    2020    Harris  700,630  2,480,522  28.25%
    2024    Harris  720,046  2,693,055  26.74%
    
    2020   Tarrant  409,741  1,212,524  33.79%
    2024   Tarrant  425,650  1,309,456  32.51%
    
    2020    Travis  161,337    854,577  18.88%
    2024    Travis  170,613    921,313  18.52%
    

    These are all the Texas counties covered in the City of Yes post. I included the voter registration figures to add that extra dimension. Yes, Trump got 20K more votes in Harris County in 2024 than he did in 2020 (actually 19,416, but whatever). But there were 213K more voters in Harris in 2024. Of the total universe of people who could have voted, Trump’s share actually decreased. That was also the case in Dallas, Tarrant, and Travis Counties.

    Now for sure, my chart also shows some big problems for Democrats. There’s no sugarcoating what happened in El Paso, where the increase in Trump’s support is more than half the increase of new voters. Democrats’ hope for eventually reaching the summit in Texas rested (and still rests, let’s be clear) on their vote share steadily increasing in the big urban and suburban counties. If increases in voter registration in these places don’t translate to commensurate increases in the vote share, that’s a five-alarm fire. That Republicans held steady in Bexar County isn’t good either. Hell, the tiny decrease in Dallas is worrisome too. Honestly, the Harris and Tarrant numbers are the most reassuring from a Democratic perspective, and we already know we have big issues to confront in those places.

    Indeed, I’m only showing this from a Republican perspective, since the hook of this post was the Trump increases. I didn’t do the same calculation for the Democratic share of the vote, but we already know that it would show an often-steeper drop in all of these counties, Harris especially. I mean, 200K more total voters, but 100K fewer Democratic votes? You don’t need a spreadsheet to know that’s bad news.

    My point here, as before, is not that this isn’t a problem, it’s that it a different problem. Outside of El Paso (which, again, VERY BAD), Republicans didn’t gain vote share. Democrats lost vote share. It may be that some Biden voters from 2020 voted for Trump this time, but that’s swamped by the Biden voters who sat it out this year. The communication we need to have with the two groups are very different. I’m just trying to define the problem so that we can go forward as effectively as we can. Slate’s Henry Grabar has more.

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

    Where that lack of trust in HISD comes from

    Exhibit A.

    Harvard Elementary School’s Parent-Teacher Association welcomed its new principal, Sharon Pe Benito, and assistant principal, Molly Lashway, with cakes decorated in the school’s colors and “H” logo. The pair received gift cards to local restaurants as part of the welcome.

    Shortly after, parents learned Pe Benito abruptly resigned. Houston ISD’s Central Division Superintendent Luz Martinez emailed families Tuesday that “after extensive bullying on social media, she determined this job was no longer in her personal or professional best interest.”

    Harvard has been appointed an interim principal, Stefanie Spencer, for the rest of the year, during which the community will weigh in on a profile of ideal candidate characteristics for a permanent principal, Martinez wrote.

    While Harvard parents welcome Spencer and laud her experience as a former Goose Creek CISD and Spring Branch ISD principal, community members were bewildered by the principal shuffle that began when HISD put principal Shelby Calabrese on leave and has since been recommended for termination for reasons that have not been made public.

    Harvard’s assistant principal Alejandra Perez was also reassigned to Memorial Elementary, where Lashway was assigned away from. The school’s magnet coordinator and executive director, who oversees the principal, were also reassigned.

    Parents were disturbed that Pe Benito’s hiring process did not include community input, Harvard father Josh Brodbeck said.

    “Anyone who’s worked for any organization that has had its leadership swiftly removed without warning knows that doing that really does throw that organization into a certain amount of disarray,” Brodbeck added. “But then for the district to have handled it — or I should say mishandled it since they originally placed Dr. C on leave — for them to have mishandled it this way has only made things incrementally worse.”

    Parents are hoping for some semblance of stability so students can finish out the year, he said.

    “This has gone beyond the matter of trust, and now it’s about just basic competence,” he said of the abrupt changes. “Are these people even competent of running schools? That’s what has us really worried right now, because again, look at what’s happened at Harvard in just the course of a month.”

    Harvard parent Ryan Sothen said the changes are a continuation of the anxiety and instability that began since Mike Miles was appointed superintendent. He noted that Harvard will now have its sixth executive director with the recent reassignment of their former executive director, Wendy Craft.

    “That’s quite a bit of turnover that directly impacts the principals,” Sothen noted, adding the school also went through three principals within a month. “And the fact that the last one was in such rapid succession and seemed very disorganized — it really raises the question around the overall stability leadership strategy going into it.” He added this creates anxiety in parents and teachers, permeating to the students.

    There may well be very good reasons for removing the first principal and the other leaders at Harvard Elementary, which is a B-rated school in 2024 (it was rated A in 2022 and 2023). Given that at some level this is an employment dispute, there should be some level of confidentiality until the issue is fully resolved. But as the story noted, the now-departed successor, who was named without any input from the school’s community, had emailed Mike Miles pledging her support for NES and for moving non-NES campuses into that system, which was decidedly unpopular with parents, teachers, and students. And again, this is for a highly-rated school with an IB program. You’d think HISD and Mike Miles would have higher priorities than that.

    Exhibit B:

    Lantrip Elementary School parents protested Wednesday morning for transparency following Houston ISD’s abrupt decision to place Principal Valiza Castro on administrative leave.

    More than 50 adults with students protested at the East End campus with signs reading “Transparency 4 Parents” and “Our children are worth a good, quality education.” Parents protested with chants familiar to many other schools across the city, including “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Mike Miles has got to go” and “Mike Miles must go.” A child yelled “We love Lantrip,” leading parents to start up a chorus of “We love Lantrip.”

    Lantrip parents are calling on the district to reevaluate its decision to place Castro on leave and to provide clear, transparent communication on the reasoning behind this decision and its plan.

    Central Division Superintendent Luz Martinez acknowledged in a Monday announcement this change is abrupt and that parents will have questions and concerns.

    “Ultimately, we believe this shift will best support your child’s learning and the workplace experience for Lantrip teachers and staff,” Martinez wrote.

    But the decision ambushed many parents who came to love Castro’s leadership. Parents praised her community engagement events to keep up school grounds, the efficiency to drop-off and pick-up, and support to teachers amid massive turnover, which parents said to be a 70% turnover rate in a website calling for Castro to return and state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles to be firedFifteen teachers left the environmental science magnet school in June alone, according to a Chronicle analysis of district records.

    Timothy Suing, holding a sign with an acrostic that reads “Education requires Accountability 2 Build Community,” said the school has seen a dramatic change in culture since the takeover. His daughters both attended Lantrip, with his younger daughter in fifth grade.

    “It used to be a culture where we had a lot of certified teachers who volunteered their time for extracurricular activities,” he said. “That’s all gone. It’s been replaced by a culture of fear. Teachers are afraid to use their own judgment in creating effective lesson plans. They’re being watched. They’re all afraid to speak. And I think this takeover is really disingenuous. What we have instead is we have an entity that’s running the schools that leaves us voiceless.”

    Lantrip is an A-rated school, and this principal was new to them as of this academic year. Again, maybe there’s a valid reason for this, but again the parents and teachers and children are dealing with a lot of change and no communication from HISD about what is going on. What the hell is going on here?

    Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Weekend link dump for November 24

    I’ve actually been on BlueSky for awhile, but I don’t use it that much. Maybe that will change as I feel the need to return to a higher level of news engagement.

    “But here’s the thing: all those other platforms, the ones where I unwisely allowed myself to get locked in, where today I find myself trapped by the professional, personal and political costs of leaving them, they were all started by people who swore they’d never sell out.”

    A lot of local PBS programming is going to be available on Prime Video.

    Cold comfort is still comfort.”

    “We’ve entered the stage of Trumpist collapse in which people who seek to harm those seen as insufficiently loyal are being promoted over those with actual skills, or vision, or politics. Matt Gaetz is the open threat of violence and targeted prosecution that follows a refusal to take seriously the veiled threat of violence and targeted prosecution. They broke it; they bought it. Far too late to suggest they can choose to return what he will be selling.”

    Top ten RFK Jr. conspiracy theories, now in handy index card format”.

    “Fox News contributor Caitlyn Jenner is being sued for alleged securities fraud by people who invested in her $JENNER memecoin and lost tens of thousands of dollars”.

    “This week, we’ll travel back in time to 1986, when Voyager 2 became the first (and still only) spacecraft to visit Uranus. This flyby has profoundly affected our view of this mysterious world, but new research suggests we got off on the wrong foot with Uranus and its moons. First impressions matter, even with giant planets!”

    RIP, Bela Karolyi, former gymnastics coach. I’m just going to leave it at that.

    “Advocates said there are a number of things trans people can do immediately to protect their rights and safety before January. Here’s how the nation’s LGBTQ+ leaders feel things will go in the top policy areas impacting trans people and how trans folks can prepare ahead of January 2025.”

    “The late, beloved “Golden Girls” actor Betty White will be memorialized on a new postage stamp next year.”

    RIP, Ella Jenkins, singer/songwriter known as the “first lady of children’s music”.

    RIP, Charles Dumont, singer, musician, songwriter best known for the classic “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”.

    “But if it has anything to do with assignment rules, it’s that the existing judge picking system — put aside whether or not the judges are ACTUALLY in the tank for one side or the other — feeds the impression that the litigants do see judges as bought and paid for toys. That’s bad for the judiciary. You’d think a judge might want to make a simple change that, likely without actually changing the outcome, would stifle that impression.”

    “Now that Trump has won the presidency again, it’s worth revisiting these episodes as a guide to what might be coming. It’s often said that Trump campaigned expressly on a platform of authoritarian rule, but this also applies to corruption: He didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country—and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance.”

    “Cutting $2 trillion is impossible politically. But if Musk is serious about cutting government spending and waste there is only one place to start: the defense budget. About half of the discretionary budget — the spending that Congress approves each year — is spent on defense. For the 2024 budget, the amount allocated for the Department of Defense exceeded $840 billion.”

    “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want social media to return to a sense of kindness and frivolity. Not every waking moment on the internet needs to be a debate or troll battle. And for those seeking to use BlueSky as a political or activist-focused platform, why should that mean having to engage with the same losers who will never agree with you and just want to hurt you?”

    “[Comcast] will move forward with an effort to spin off the bulk of its cable assets, which include MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Kids, USA, E!, Oxygen and Syfy, according to a person familiar with the matter. Only Bravo, viewed as an important feeder of programming to the Peacock streaming service, will stay with the NBC TV business.”

    “A lawsuit seeking class action status accuses Meta of rolling back its now shuttered Facebook Watch streaming video service to give Netflix a clear path as part of a deal to split the spoils of the new digital landscape.”

    Everything you ever wanted to know about Pink Lady and Jeff, possibly the weirdest and least understood TV show ever. Via Mark Evanier, who was its lead writer and enjoyed the experience regardless of the outcome.

    RIP, Tony Campolo, progressive Christian leader. Read The Slacktivist for more about him.

    “There are three big reasons you are alive today.”

    “House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked an effort by a fellow Republican lawmaker that would have allowed women in Congress who just gave birth to vote by proxy—a way to let them recover from birth and bond with their child while also giving a voice to their constituents.”

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

    Miles’ record on the HISD budget

    A closer look from the Houston Landing.

    In his first year, Houston ISD’s state-appointed superintendent, Mike Miles, ushered in several changes that sparked massive media attention and community pushback — but another important set of shake-ups took place largely behind the scenes.

    Facing a roughly $500 million budget deficit, Miles made dramatic cuts and rearrangements to HISD’s central office, reducing the number of employees not assigned to campuses and classrooms from about 8,300 employees to 6,800, records obtained by the Houston Landing show.

    The shake-up has reshaped how HISD staff deliver services to students living in poverty, develop the curriculums used in classrooms and clean up campuses, among other key tasks.

    In February, Miles touted the reorganization as his fix to long-standing “dysfunction” in HISD operations, shedding dead weight and redundant spending. HISD Communications Chief Alexandra Elizondo called the transformation “one of the most important and necessary” changes made by Miles during his first year, allowing the district to invest more heavily in classrooms and teacher salaries.

    “For decades, HISD’s bloated and outdated systems prevented the district from meeting the needs of its students, limited its ability to pay teachers a competitive salary and perpetuated more than 100 failing campuses across the district,” Elizondo wrote in an emailed statement.

    But some critics of Miles argue the cuts have hindered HISD’s ability to provide needed services, including keeping campus grounds trash-free and providing assistance for families lacking basic needs like food or clothing. Even with the cuts, HISD still projects it will run a deficit of $130 million in 2024-25, dipping into its “rainy day” fund to cover the balance.

    To evaluate the extent of Miles’ central office overhaul, the Landing compared HISD payroll records from March 2023, a few months before the Texas Education Agency’s takeover of the district, and early October 2024. While Miles initially overstated his administration’s cuts to central office in the months after his arrival, the records now show major changes to some departments. Other departments, meanwhile, appear largely intact.

    HISD administrators did not directly respond to several questions sent Friday about specific aspects of the central office overhaul. Elizondo said the district would need more time to conduct a full analysis due to antiquated recordkeeping, but she did not contest any of the Landing’s findings.

    You should read the rest for the details. A couple of points:

    – The first three items listed are “Fewer custodial, maintenance staff”, “More top-dollar administrators”, and “Cuts to staff helping students in poverty”. Without knowing anything else, does that sound to you like a good way to approach how HISD spends its money? It sure doesn’t to me.

    – The story doesn’t get into how much each of the eight items they list cost or saved, so we don’t know what the overall effect was on the budget. That may have been too difficult to tease out, or maybe it’s something they’re still working on for a future story. I hope it’s the latter.

    – Also not mentioned is the cost of the expansion of NES schools, which is both a big investment in resources and a huge ongoing source of controversy and dissent. It’s not hard for me to imagine that the current $130 million shortfall would be a lot smaller if Miles had been more modest in his NES ambitions.

    – The outlook going forward is also unclear. Some of these cuts seem unsustainable to me – I mean, campuses need custodial services, and sooner or later skimping on that is going to cause a problem. There seems to be a belief that the state will come through with more funding, which at least has some possibility if Greg Abbott finally does achieve his voucher dreams and thus stops holding the extra funding that the Lege had provided hostage. That could of course be a very double-edged sword, but it’s too soon to know and is way bigger than this post to get into. What we can be sure about is that the district’s rainy day fund can only do this so often.

    – And once more, with feeling: An elected Board of Trustees would feel some pressure to deal with these issues. All we have here is The Mike Miles Show. I will not be placing bets on the fiscal situation improving in the short term.

    Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    The next phase of the effort against homelessness

    We’ll see how it goes.

    Mayor John Whitmire

    Mayor John Whitmire stood Thursday afternoon on a stage in City Hall, alongside a screen with a bold proclamation.

    “In Mayor Whitmire’s first term, Houston can be the first major city to end street homelessness,” it read. The word “can” was crossed out and replaced with the word “will,” in italics.

    He had gathered with city officials, law enforcement officers and nonprofit leaders to outline his plan for how to do so.

    The press conference was simultaneously a lofty vision statement, a fundraising pitch and a call for legislative changes that could create sustainable sources of funding and make it easier to commit people with mental illnesses who are living on the street.

    Whitmire twice characterized the plan as involving both compassion and enforcement for individuals who may resist housing, citing a recent Supreme Court decision. The nation’s highest court ruled that homeless people can be fined and arrested for sleeping in public, even if there isn’t a shelter where they could sleep instead.

    Houston has for years been viewed as a rare success story in the face of growing homeless populations across the country — since 2011, it has cut its annual count of people sleeping in shelters or on the street or in other places not meant for human habitation by more than two thirds. (The count does not include people who lack a home but are staying with friends or in hotels.)

    But even as officials from other major cities around the nation have made pilgrimages to Houston in the hopes of finding a solution to their soaring homeless populations, many Houstonians have felt frustration with the number of people they see on the streets.

    The city’s new plan tries to address those concerns by adding a new goal: Making sure everyone has a place to stay off the street.

    “I’m here to declare today, you help the homeless by getting them off the street and reclaiming our public spaces,” Whitmire said.

    The declaration marked a departure from the strategy taken by the city and its partners for over a decade, which focused limited funds on permanent housing, coupled with caseworkers. Mike Nichols, the city’s director of housing and community development, estimated that it cost $23,000 a year to provide such housing, compared with $35,000 a year for each spot provided by the city’s navigation center, a place where people stay between when their encampment is shut down and they secure housing.

    Shelters are more expensive because they require staff and meals, among other services. But without them, police officers face difficulties responding to public complaints — where are people to go?

    […]

    Houston’s homelessness strategy has long depended on influxes of federal disaster funding, such as the funds unleashed by Hurricane Harvey and the pandemic.

    Now that $150 million of COVID-related funding that had channeled into the region’s homelessness response is winding down — at the same time that a budget crunch has caused the Houston Housing Authority to temporarily stop issuing vouchers used to pay for permanent supportive housing — the pace at which people can be moved off the street into housing has slowed.

    Nichols said that the city would commit roughly $25 million “from various funding streams.” He hoped the county would contribute $20 million, and that he could get $10 million from other government sources. The Downtown District has contributed $1 million, and Whitmire said he expected other districts, such as Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones and management districts to contribute as well.

    “We put $200 million into Memorial Park,” Whitmire said. “The Med Center, we spend billions.” He said he had been meeting with foundations across the city.

    I hope this is as successful at getting people into housing as the prior efforts under Mayors Parker and Turner have been. One gets the impression from his quotes in this story that Mayor Whitmire is a little competitive about that, which is fine. Finding a reliable source of funding will be a challenge – for sure, one should not expect much if anything from the federal government for the next four years at least – as well as ensuring that there are enough places for the unhoused to go. The results will be the ultimate measure of that success. Houston Landing has more.

    Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    “Uber with guns”

    Not for me, but maybe for you.

    A TikTok-famous Black-owned ridesharing service featuring the option of armed drivers with a background in law enforcement or the military will be making its debut in Houston, Dallas, and Austin.

    BlackWolf, a small rideshare startup and self-proclaimed people-driven business, recently revealed on social media the results of a poll asking its followers which state it should launch next. The people chose Texas and the startup is now in its recruiting stage trying to find drivers that fit the background: a clean license, a spotless federal background check, and of course, a permit to carry guns, founder Kerry KingBrown told Chron.

    “The idea came from one of my clients that I was transporting; she was caught in human trafficking for about three years…she gave me the idea and said you need to create something, some type of transportation for people like me and my daughter,” KingBrown said, who worked for 19 years in the private security industry.

    BlackWolf, which launched in Atlanta in 2023, has quickly cultivated a following with over 1 million social media followers on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok and has garnered more than 100 million online views. The app already has more than 300,000 downloads with 45 to 65 drivers in its four current markets of Atlanta, GA; Orlando and Miami, FL.; and Phoenix, AZ.

    “We’ve all used rideshare and we’re not new to what I saw were the deficiencies,” KingBrown said, noting subpar driver safety standards in typical rideshare services.

    “I wanted to create something for people like myself, for people like my past clients, but I wanted to make it more about them. I want them to feel comfortable. I want them to have peace of mind,” he continued.

    The cost of a BlackWolf ride is expected to be 10 to 15 percent more than the average Uber or Lyft ride, bringing it more in line with an Uber Black ride. But KingBrown said that his company doesn’t even view these rideshares as competitors. For one, their drivers don’t carry guns.

    “Those who are armed are licensed, they are vetted, and most of them are ex-military or law enforcement,” KingBrown said. “Those people understand how to carry a weapon. They’ve been trained with it.”

    However, just because the drivers have a gun doesn’t mean they will use it. Instead, it’s more about perception. The gun acts as a deterrent from those that might want to do you harm, KingBrown told Chron. And as trained professionals, these drivers would know that the gun is “actually the last thing they’re going to use,” KingBrown said.

    “We train our drivers in de-escalation,” he added.

    Honestly, I’m a little surprised something like this didn’t already exist here. I’m not a regular rideshare user and wouldn’t seek out something like this even if I were, but I can believe there’s an adequate market for it. I wonder how long it will be before I see one of these cars on the street. Reform Austin, USA Today, and Houston Public Media have more.

    Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Paxton won’t be deposed by the whistleblowers

    Alas.

    Still a crook any way you look

    Attorney General Ken Paxton will not have to sit for a deposition in a longstanding lawsuit filed by four former senior aides who said he improperly fired them after they reported him to the FBI, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.

    It is a victory for Paxton, who has managed to avoid testifying about allegations of corruption, bribery and abuse of office despite this civil lawsuit, an impeachment trial and a federal criminal investigation.

    The whistleblowers sought to question under oath Paxton and three of his current top deputies: First Assistant Brent Webster, chief of staff Lesley French and senior adviser Michelle Smith. But the Supreme Court overturned a trial court order scheduling those depositions.

    The justices said since the attorney general’s office has agreed not to contest the lawsuit, which alleges that Paxton violated the state’s Whistleblower Act, their sworn testimony is unnecessary.

    “While we agree with the former employees that OAG’s concessions do not preclude all discovery, we agree with OAG that the trial court abused its discretion in ordering the depositions of these four witnesses without considering that the only fact issue on which those witnesses are likely to provide information — OAG’s liability under the Whistleblower Act — is now uncontested,” the opinion states.

    […]

    The whistleblowers sued Paxton in November 2020, alleging their dismissals were illegal under state law. Paxton disagreed but offered to settle the suit and pay the whistleblowers $3.3 million. To fund that settlement, however, Paxton needs an appropriation from the Legislature.

    When he asked the Texas House in 2023 for the money, lawmakers wanted him to publicly answer questions about why Texas taxpayers should foot the bill. The House’s ethics committee began investigating him.

    […]

    The whistleblower lawsuit remains, however. Paxton in January said he would no longer contest the facts of the case — despite the fact that the allegations by the whistleblowers were similar to the ones his lawyers had vigorously disputed during the impeachment trial.

    See here and here for the previous updates – you can follow the links back from there if you need to know more – and here for a copy of the Court’s opinion. For a hot minute back in January, it had appeared that Ken Paxton would finally, finally be forced (under penalty of perjury) to answer questions about the whole Nate Paul situation and why he fired multiple formerly trusted advisors who had become concerned about the way he was doing his business during that time. Paxton’s countermove was to say “fine, I will no longer argue with anything you say, now stop asking me questions”, and on that point he has succeeded. My main takeaway from this is that greased pigs should come to Ken Paxton for advice on how to be more slippery.

    I’ve read the SCOTx opinion and I don’t find anything terribly objectionable about it. It’s a bunch of legalistic argle-bargle, but there’s no obviously flawed logic or excessively strained application of existing law that I see. To that end, and to whatever extent the whistleblowers still have matters to work out in court, and then ultimately the Legislature, to get their settlement, I would suggest they lean all the way into Paxton’s insistence, now twice committed to written legal documents, that he doesn’t contest anything they say. Because, as I think it’s clear both from this opinion and from everything we know about Ken Paxton, he’s going to do everything he can to try to have it both ways. From the opinion:

    Shortly after the Court denied that petition, however, OAG amended its answer in the trial court. OAG now “affirmatively answers that it elects not to dispute the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit as to any issue and consents to the entry of judgment.” Although the amended answer contains numerous affirmative statements that refute the factual allegations in the live petition and insist that plaintiffs’ claims are “baseless and they would fail,” OAG’s answer nevertheless states that it “consent[s] to the entry of judgment in this matter to the extent of the statutory limitations of the Texas Whistleblower Act.”

    […]

    Second, plaintiffs contend that without this discovery, they will be unable to obtain “effective” relief. As they correctly note, collection of a money judgment in their favor will require an appropriation from the Legislature. See Tex. Dep’t of Hum. Servs. v. Green, 855 S.W.2d 136, 145 (Tex. App.—Austin 1993, writ denied) (noting that a successful Whistleblower Act plaintiff “must still request a legislative appropriation to collect the damages awarded him”). According to plaintiffs, the Governor and members of the Legislature have expressed a desire to hear from these witnesses before deciding whether to appropriate funds. But discovery requested as part of the litigation process is not proper simply because it might be used for legislative purposes. See Morath v. Tex. Taxpayer & Student Fairness Coal., 490 S.W.3d 826, 853 (Tex. 2016) (“Courts should not sit as a super-legislature.”). Information is discoverable if it is relevant to pending litigation, and a discovery request must be directed at information that “will aid the dispute’s resolution”—i.e., the dispute before the court. If, as plaintiffs assert, the Legislature will be unsatisfied with the trial court’s judgment and whatever evidence was presented in support of that judgment, the Legislature has at its disposal the means to obtain additional information.

    So as the first paragraph notes, Paxton has already been telling the court one thing and everyone else the exact opposite. I say hammer away at Paxton’s admission that everything the plaintiffs say in their briefs is the unvarnished truth, and the first time he says something outside of court claiming that he’s right and they’re lying, make a motion to have him testify about that in court. It’ll probably fail, but at least you can make his lawyers respond to that.

    As for the Legislature, I don’t know how much appetite there will be to fight this out. The 2023 Lege didn’t want to fund that $3.3 million settlement, but it was never clear to me if that meant Paxton would try to stiff the plaintiffs or if that money would have to come out of his office’s budget. My advice here is again to make it clear at every opportunity that Paxton has fully conceded on what the truth is, so by his own admission anything else he says is a lie. I can’t guess what the Legislature will do with that, but at least they’ll have to face it. That may be the best that can be done. The Chron has more.

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

    PUC releases its initial CenterPoint report

    Some reasonable recommendations in there.

    The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Thursday made public the results of its investigation into the performance of CenterPoint Energy and other Houston-area electric utilities during Hurricane Beryl and the May derecho, offering up about a dozen suggestions for improvement.

    Among the report’s conclusions were the need for legislative action to increase penalties for poor service and to expand performance standards.

    The assessment came at Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive after widespread outrage from Houston-area residents over CenterPoint’s handling of Beryl. The PUC has also launched a separate audit of CenterPoint at the request of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. 

    CenterPoint Chief Communications Officer Keith Stephens said in an email that the company has “heard the calls for change loud and clear.” He pointed to CenterPoint’s ongoing Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative aimed at strengthening the utility’s preparedness and responsiveness to major storms. CenterPoint commissioned an independent, third-party review of its Beryl response and has completed or is working to complete two-thirds of the review’s recommendations, Stephens said.

    “We continue to review the Public Utility Commission of Texas staff’s recommendations on further resiliency actions and remain committed to working together with our state’s lawmakers and regulatory officials to achieve our shared goal of building the most resilient coastal grid in the country,” Stephens said.

    See here for the background. As noted, there’s a separate audit now in the works, which will likely focus more on the $800 million generators. The full report is here, and while it’s longer than you want to read, the executive summary lists the recommended actions, of which the ones of the most immediate interest are:

    1. Utilities should include neighboring utilities, local governments, and emergency services in annual hurricane and major storm drills.
    2. The Commission should require pre-storm communication procedures in emergency operations plans.
    3. Utilities should incorporate outage tracker disruptions and high user demand as scenarios in annual hurricane and major storm drills.
    4. The Legislature should codify a customer’s right to information about restoration times and the right to contact an electric service provider by phone.
    5. The Legislature should consider establishing a framework and penalty structure to assess IOU service quality during major outage events.

    There are 14 total recommendations, with most of the rest being of the “utilities should consider” and “utilities should assess” variety. I think these above are all reasonable – if you read my earlier post, I was not very optimistic about this, so kudos to the PUC for exceeding my expectations – but now it’s up to the Lege and apparently the PUC and I guess the likes of CenterPoint themselves to follow through. We’ll see how that goes.

    Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    The Texas A&M bonfire collapse, 25 years later

    A somber occasion.

    A panicked Richard and Janiece West were glued to the radio as they drove to College Station on Nov. 18, 1999. The Bellaire couple hadn’t heard from their 19-year-old son since they woke up that morning to learn that the 59-foot bonfire he and his friends were building had crumpled beneath them overnight.

    The father assumed that Nathan Scott West was trapped in the pile, but he wouldn’t learn the worst possible news until he got to Texas A&M. In those hours spent in limbo on the highway, the car stereo blared the sound of helicopters chopping above the wreckage.

    “For some reason, that has always stuck in my mind,” said Richard West, who now lives northeast of Dallas. “They asked (the helicopters) to move away, because they were trying to put a listening device in the stack to see if they heard any cries for help.”

    Twelve people died and 27 others were injured in the event, which spurred a period of national mourning and introspection for a university well-known for its devotion to tradition. Twenty-five years later, the 1999 bonfire collapse remains a painful memory for so many people who lost loved ones, helped in the rescue efforts or survived the disaster. For others, the grief has softened to awe-inducing history, recalled on anniversaries and sometimes in the news.

    The Wests, along with several other families of the 12, [gathered] with past and present students at 2:42 a.m. Monday at the memorial site on campus. Bonfire was a visible example of A&M’s identity, and the collapse left a scar – one that carried on the Aggie spirit of service and that changed the university forever.

    It’s a long story and worth your time to read, whatever your connection to A&M or memory of the event is. I don’t have anything to add, I’m just glad these families were able to get together and remember their loved ones. May their memory forever be a blessing.

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

    Paxton sues Dallas over its marijuana decriminalization law

    As expected.

    Still a crook any way you look

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the city of Dallas over the newly approved Proposition R — which decriminalizes up to four ounces of marijuana in the city.

    The filing names the entire Dallas City Council, Mayor Eric Johnson, Interim Police Chief Michael Igo and Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert.

    Dallas voters approved the charter amendment on election night with almost 67% of the vote. Regardless, Paxton said in a Thursday press release that “cities cannot pick and choose which State laws they follow.”

    “The City of Dallas has no authority to override Texas drug laws or prohibit the police from enforcing them. This is a backdoor attempt to violate the Texas Constitution, and any city that tries to constrain police in this fashion will be met swiftly with a lawsuit by my office,” the press release said.

    Paxton has already sued multiple cities including Austin and Denton for passing similar ordinances.

    “I will not stand idly by as cities run by pro-crime extremists deliberately violate Texas law and promote the use of illicit drugs that harm our communities,” Paxton wrote in a press release earlier this year.

    Part of the new charter amendment directs the Dallas Police Department to “stop issuing citations or making arrests for Class A or Class B misdemeanor marijuana possession.” Another section prohibits city funds or personnel from being used to conduct testing on “any cannabis-related substance” to figure out if it meets the legal definition of marijuana under state and federal laws.

    The amendment language also says that police officers can’t consider the smell of marijuana as probable cause for search and seizure — “except in the limited circumstances of a police investigation.” And the proposal says officers can be punished if they are found to be violating the policy.

    See here for some background. The city of Dallas certified the result on Tuesday, which I presume was the catalyst for the lawsuit being filed at this time. I presume there will also be lawsuits against Bastrop and Lockhart at some point as well.

    The Trib reviews the status of the previous lawsuits that Paxton has filed over this issue. As of this writing, none of them have been successful.

    In July, Hays County District Judge Sherri Tibbe dismissed Paxton’s lawsuit against San Marcos, saying the state was not injured when San Marcos reduced arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession and that the measure allowed for resources to be used for higher priority public safety needs.

    In June, Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer also dismissed Paxton’s lawsuit against Austin ruling there was no legal justification to try the case.

    Ground Game Texas — the progressive group that first launched the proposition in Austin and worked with local organizations in other cities — expects Paxton to appeal the decisions to dismiss the lawsuits at some point.

    Paxton’s lawsuit against Elgin was resolved in June via consent decree, meaning neither side claims guilt or liability but reached an agreement in court. The decision did not impact Elgin because at no time did the Elgin Police Department implement or enforce the ordinance due to conflicting state laws.

    In the North Texas suburb of Denton, where voters approved decriminalization by more than 70%, implementation has stalled after City Manager Sara Hensley argued it couldn’t be enforced since it conflicted with state law.

    The case against Killeen filed in Bell County a year ago is still pending.

    As I’ve said before, all of this will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court and/or the Legislature – I will be surprised if there isn’t an effort to ban this kind of exception to state law in the next session. Until then, we wait and see what happens in the courts. WFAA and the Dallas Observer have more.

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

    Harris County Sports & Convention Corp to do its own Astrodome assessment

    We’re on the way to something. Destination TBD.

    Ready and waiting

    The Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. — which oversees the management, operation and development of NRG Park — has approved a study to consider the future of the Astrodome, whether it should be restored or removed.

    Kirksey Architecture, a Houston-based firm, has been hired to provide a comprehensive cost-analysis and evaluate best options for the facility.

    The goal of HCSCC’s study is to establish two sets of information: Estimate the cost of restoring the Astrodome to basic operational functionality and assess the cost of removing the structure entirely.

    The former approach would address necessary improvements such as plumbing and HVAC systems to allows safe occupancy, according to a statement released by HCSCC. It would not include full historic preservation or upgrades to meet modern venue standards.

    “The Astrodome has been a symbol of Houston’s innovation and community pride for decades, since 1965,” said Bishop James Dixon, HCSCC chairman via statement. “The data gained from the study will provide us with critical information as we work to determine the most viable path forward, ensuring NRG Park continues to meet the needs of its stakeholders and the public for now and the future.”

    […]

    “The Astrodome Conservancy is pleased that the HCSCC is finally considering the Astrodome in its plans for the future of NRG Park. For the past year, the Conservancy has advocated for the Astrodome to be included in such planning efforts,” Phoebe Tudor, Astrodome Conservancy founding chairman, told the Chronicle via email statement. “We applaud this step in the right direction toward realizing a bright future for the Astrodome and the HCSCC’s commitment to transparency and cooperation. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Harris County to reimagine the landmark Astrodome as the world-class destination it should be.”

    See here for the background. I’ve said many times, we have plenty of ideas for what we could do with the Dome, but we’ve never had consensus on which way to go or how to pay for it. This should at least answer the first question – do we repurpose in some fashion, or do we just tear it down? Once we have that, it should at least be a little easier to proceed from there. The story doesn’t indicate how long this study might take, but given that NRG is hosting several World Cup matches in 2026, I’d imagine we’ll get it sooner rather than later, so that if the answer is “demolish” there will be the time to do that and be done beforehand. Stay tuned.

    Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Dispatches from Dallas, November 22 edition

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

    This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have a grab bag: area election news; ongoing moving and shaking in Dallas’ city hall; Dallas city charter amendment news; news from and around the Lege and our local electeds; area school updates; area church updates; area infrastructure issues; some Black history; some Dallas food news; and more.

    This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Sean Shibe, the classical and modern guitarist. A friend of mine saw him live recently and reminded me of how much I enjoy his music, which includes everything from early lute compositions rearranged for guitar to Steve Reich compositions.

    Let’s jump right into the miscellanea this week:

  • D Magazine has some baseless speculation that Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson might be angling for Secretary of the Interior. I’ve been wondering for a while what he was looking for since I didn’t think he had a future in Texas politics, being a former Democrat, not to mention the whole Black thing. But a Trump administration appointment would absolutely make sense, even if it’s not this one.
  • We have our list of semifinalists for Dallas’ open City Manager position, though why anyone would want it right now is an open question. See also D Magazine, the Dallas Observer, and the Star-Telegram on the Assistant City Manager in Fort Worth who’s up for gig.
  • Meanwhile, Director of the Office of Government Affairs Carrie Rogers, another staffer of former Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax, is leaving to join him in Austin.
  • Finger in the wind around Dallas news: a Florida billionaire has bought a significant stake in the parent company of the Dallas Morning News. Blink twice in the videos if you have to post those Sinclair-style pieces, journalists.
  • The election was two and a half weeks ago, but it’s already old news. But in case you were wondering about those Election Day reports of incorrect ballots, it looks like almost 4,000 voters may have received incorrect ballots because of a system glitch. The glitch gave voters the ballot for a different precinct, which could result in voting in the wrong contests. According to this PDF from the Dallas County Elections Department, almost 839,000 voters voted in the November 5 election.
  • Collin County’s elections administrator is quitting in December. He’s held the job since 2015.
  • When I was living in far west Austin, Michael McCaul was my Congressman, in one of those weird gerrymandered districts that stretched around through north Austin and its suburbs, down 290 through Prairie View, and I think into west Houston. He was known as R-Clear Channel because that’s where his family money came from. So it gives me some feelings to report that he was arrested at Dulles Airport for public drunkenness. Couldn’t happen to a nicer.
  • Wandering on to the statehouse, let’s note this DMN op-ed on how Texans (the Lege) must support working parents. The three authors are two local state reps who were recently re-elected, Morgan Meyer (my rep) and Angie Chen Button of Richardson, who survived a good run from Averie Bishop, and, perhaps surprisingly, House Speaker Dade Phelan.
  • Another op-ed in the DMN about the upcoming session is from the Texas Rangers’ COO. He’s in favor of pro sports betting. Good luck with that.
  • The Lege is, as usual, going to be full of terrible bills this upcoming session, and north Texas is sending its share of the folks who bring them on. First up, we have freshmen reps Andy Hopper (HD-64) and his bill about fetal cell lines, which are lab-grown products, not from abortions, and used to make vaccines, and Mike Olcott (HD-60) and his bill to reject the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum in Texas. Lone Star Left has the deets. Next, the Dallas Observer has five bills from Texas lawmakers, including one from Matt Shaheen of Plano (HD-66) that would require school districts to forbid terrorist or gang items in their dress codes. No keffiyehs for Texas kids! I’m sure I’ll have more of these as filing season ramps up.
  • Southlake Carroll ISD is considering armed marshalls on campuses for the next school year but parents have concerns. Remember that the armed guard rule for public schools is an unfunded mandate from Greg Abbott and the Lege.
  • The (Democratic) representative for SBOE district 13 was elected to the Legislature and a new Democratic representative will take the seat next year after running unopposed. Meanwhile, Greg Abbott’s pick, a Fort Worth area Republican organizer, will be voting on SBOE issues, including the Bible-based Bluebonnet Learning curriculum.
  • Fort Worth ISD is looking for schools to close as enrollment declines. Meanwhile, the funds from the 2021 bond to upgrade schools are falling short due to inflation and the board declined to shift funds to meet the new price tag this week.
  • The DMN’s editorial board is complaining that Dallas County schools aren’t educating students sufficiently to get them good jobs. Since the DMN continues to be the newspaper for folks who have stocks, this problem is presumably not about educating the children and grandchildren of the readers so much as the workforces they will command when they come out of SMU or TCU.
  • UT Dallas is in the news this week, and not for good reasons. First, they removed all those yucky DEI words from course titles and descriptions and their faculty didn’t like that. Second, first amendment groups told them to lay off their student journalists who have been in trouble with the administration over their coverage of pro-Palestinian protests at the school. Third, they had an alumni speaker talk about the election: an Executive VP of the Heritage Foundation who contributed to Project 2025. Unsurprisingly there were protests, which is not inherently bad, but what the school is likely to do to the protestors will be.
  • The civil case that the family of Botham Jean, the citizen killed by former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger by mistake, filed against his killer, went to federal court this week. The jury awarded Jean’s family more than $98 million in damages. Guyger didn’t show up and had no attorney, and nobody knows how she would be able to pay the damages when she gets out of prison. Dallas PD was originally a defendant in the case but the federal judge dismissed them. The DMN had an explainer earlier this week if you want to catch up on the matter.
  • It will not surprise those of you who have been following the Gateway Church/Robert Morris scandal that church attendance is down, tithing is down 35-40%, and they are cutting staff.
  • First Baptist Dallas is defending against a million-dollar lawsuit over a sexual assault of a teen during a youth mission trip in 2022 and the alleged coverup that followed. As always with this kind of story, please read with caution and self-care.
  • The Star-Telegram’s new op-ed columnist has a fascinating piece about the Mercy Culture trafficking shelter zoning fight. The neighbors come off looking small-minded and petty, but Mercy Culture comes off looking worse. It all sounds about right to me, but what a way to jump in with both feet to annoying your newspaper’s subscribers.
  • You may remember that Princeton, a Dallas exurb in Collin County, put a moratorium on development for six months because the town’s infrastructure can’t support more growth at the moment. The Dallas Observer explores the decision, its causes, and its potential effects.
  • The DMN’s editorial board is unsurprisingly in favor of the Marvin Nichols reservoir.
  • The Star-Telegram has some thoughts on what the new administration’s immigration policy and cabinet choices may mean for Texas. The Texas Tribune has some related news about Texas congressmen Tony Gonzales and Chip Roy fighting over those mass deportations the administration is promising.
  • Let’s talk about those Dallas charter amendments, now that we’ve gone and done the thing:
    • The Dallas Observer explains what the fuss about Prop S, the one about governmental immunity, is about. I wish they’d written this before the election.
    • Dallas City Council certified Prop R, the one that legalized small amounts of weed, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the city.
    • Prop U, the one that’s supposed to add all the cops to the street and hands half of the city’s money to Dallas PD, the one that even Dallas cops didn’t want, is turning around and eating the faces of its voters. The credit rating firm Moody’s has given Dallas a negative debt outlook because the amendment will limit how the city spends its money when expenses are increasing. Among other things, the city’s pension fund is already suffering from a shortfall, and when we add more officers, we’ll have to put more money in. The city’s credit rating remains good for now but this is a very bad sign. KERA and Axios also have the story, and D Magazine has more details.
  • This week I learned that University Park, the Park City around SMU, has a 1973 “brothel law” that says more than three unrelated people can’t live together. I found this out because the neighbors are complaining about SMU students living in duplexes because off-campus houses are easier to find than on-campus housing and it’s cheaper with roommates.
  • Speaking of cheaper housing, Dallas and Collin Counties spent about $200 million on services like medical care, hospitalization, emergency shelter, and jail to unhoused persons in 2023. It would have been cheaper to just house them; the report shows it by the numbers.
  • Also this week I learned that one neighborhood in five in Dallas is in the early stages of gentrification. My neighborhood gentrified in the 1960s when developers built my house after buying out the Black community that lived here.
  • The DMN’s editorial board would like the city council to let the short-term rental ordinance go through the court system instead of preemptively reopening the arguments about the ordinance. Last December, a state district judge hearing the suit by STR operators issued an injunction blocking the city from enforcing the ordinance. The DMN, as always, is concerned with civility; the fight between STR operators and householders wanting to keep STRs out of their neighborhood was rough. I’m inclined to agree with the DMN on other grounds they cite: the value of figuring out how to reconfigure the ordinance after the city sees what the courts will accept.
  • UNT Health Science Center, the state’s laboratory for bad ideas in death practice, has been using “water cremation” (alkaline hydrolysis) to dispose of bodies used in medical research. The Texas Funeral Service Commission has now ordered them to stop on the grounds that water cremation isn’t legal in Texas. UNT says they stopped back in September when they were caught renting bodies out.
  • Black Wolf, an armed-driver rideshare service that the DMN calls “Uber with guns” is coming to Dallas, Houston, and Austin early next year. Great.
  • Speaking of too many guns out there, Dallas PD is investigating how a gunshot hit a Southwest Airlines plane near its flight deck while it was on a runway at Love Field on Monday. The plane was on its way to Indianapolis but the passengers were deplaned until the runway was declared safe and, presumable, so was the plane. Yikes.
  • This is a depressing story, but not a particularly surprising one: the first Black bookstore in Farmer’s Branch has been harassed into closing. You may remember Farmer’s Branch as the suburb of Dallas that tried to keep landlords from renting to undocumented folks some years ago.
  • Arlington is about to put changes to its city charter on the ballot in the May election. One of the proposed amendments that won’t go forward is a change to the language around the mayor and councillors. The current charter was written in the 1920s and refers to all officials as men; the amendment was set aside on the grounds that using gender-neutral language to refer to city officials could set off a culture war firestorm and cause other amendments, including one to increase the pay of Arlington’s part-time officials, to fail.
  • Salem Institutional Baptist Church, a 135-year-old Black church in South Dallas, got a Texas Historical Marker this week.
  • Mayor Mattie Parker declared November 15 to be Leon Bridges Day in Fort Worth on the occasion of his sold-out show at Dickies Arena. (Wish I’d gone!)
  • Speaking of Fort Worth, alcohol receipts show that drinking has shifted out of downtown to the Cultural District and the Stockyards. This is interesting as part of the long decline of the Sundance Square area and likely changes coming to that part of town. As an occasional visitor to Fort Worth, I go over there to the museums and to shows, usually at Dickies Arena, and rarely bother to go downtown unless the show I’m seeing is at Bass Hall.
  • I’m sure you were ready to hear the last of Dallasites griping about Michelin, but this interview with celebrity chef John Tesar, who had a Michelin star at his Orlando restaurant and lost it, might still interest you. This is a guy called the most hated chef in Dallas, and he has some spicy takes about Dallas food.
  • Texas Monthly’s review of the new Black-owned Deep Ellum restaurant Kanvas goes deep into the Black history of Deep Ellum.
  • Long-time Houstonians will remember Eatzi’s, which was basically the fancy take-home prepared food section of your grocery store without the actual grocery store. Eatzi’s still operates several stores in Dallas, and while the owner is a jerk (I’m still mad about his mask commentary during the pandemic), the food is still great and I can get a slice of Italian cream cake similar to the one we had at our wedding almost a quarter-century ago. If you want some Eatzi’s nostalgia, here are two puff pieces about them from the DMN.
  • Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Dispatches from Dallas, November 22 edition

    SBOE to support “Bible-infused curriculum”

    What could possibly go wrong?

    A majority of the Texas State Board of Education signaled their support Tuesday for a state-authored curriculum under intense scrutiny in recent months for its heavy inclusion of biblical teachings.

    Ahead of an official vote expected to happen Friday, eight of the 15 board members gave their preliminary approval to Bluebonnet Learning, the elementary school curriculum proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year.

    The state will have until late Wednesday to submit revisions in response to concerns raised by board members and the general public before the official vote takes place Friday. Board members reserve the right to change their votes.

    The curriculum was designed with a cross-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to advance or cement concepts in other disciplines, such as history and social studies. Critics, which included religious studies experts, argue the curriculum’s lessons allude to Christianity more than any other religion, which they say could lead to the bullying and isolation of non-Christian students, undermine church-state separation and grant the state far-reaching control over how children learn about religion. They also questioned the accuracy of some lessons.

    The curriculum’s defenders say that references to Christianity will provide students with a better understanding of the country’s history.

    Texas school districts have the freedom to choose their own lesson plans. If the state-authored curriculum receives approval this week, the choice to adopt the materials will remain with districts. But the state will offer an incentive of $60 per student to districts that choose to adopt the lessons, which could appeal to some as schools struggle financially after several years without a significant raise in state funding.

    Three Republicans — Evelyn Brooks, Patricia Hardy and Pam Little — joined the board’s four Democrats in opposition to the materials.

    […]

    Board members who signaled their support for the curriculum said they believed the materials would help students improve their reading and understanding of the world. Members also said politics in no way influenced their vote and that they supported the materials because they believed it would best serve Texas children.

    “In my view, these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy,” Houston Republican Will Hickman said. “And there’s religious concepts like the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule and Moses that all students should be exposed to.”

    The proposed curriculum prompts teachers to relay the story of The Good Samaritan — a parable about loving everyone, including your enemies — to kindergarteners as an example of what it means to follow the Golden Rule. The story comes from the Bible, the lesson explains, and “was told by a man named Jesus” as part of his Sermon on the Mount, which included the phrase, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Many other religions have their own version of the Golden Rule.

    Brooks, one of the Republicans who opposed the materials Tuesday, said the Texas Education Agency is not a textbook publishing company and that treating it like such has created an uneven playing field for companies in the textbook industry. Brooks also said she has yet to see evidence showing the curriculum would improve student learning.

    Hardy, a Republican who also opposed the materials, said she did so without regard for the religious references. She expressed concern about the curriculum’s age appropriateness and her belief that it does not align with state standards on reading and other subjects.

    Meanwhile, some of the Democrats who voted against the curriculum said they worried the materials would inappropriately force Christianity on public schoolchildren. Others cited concerns about Texas violating the Establishment Clause, which prohibits states from endorsing a particular religion.

    “If this is the standard for students in Texas, then it needs to be exactly that,” said Staci Childs, a Houston Democrat. “It needs to be high quality, and it needs to be the standard, free of any establishment clause issues, free of any lies, and it needs to be accurate.”

    Emphasis mine. The one good thing about this story is that this dumb curriculum is optional, so one can hope that most districts will choose to avoid it. In a better world it wouldn’t survive first contact with the federal judiciary, but in the world we inhabit it’s unfortunately very easy to see SCOTUS giving it the green light. As with many other things right now, there’s no easy way out.

    By far the most enraging part of this story is this.

    The decisive vote that could determine the fate of a state-proposed school curriculum under scrutiny for its heavy focus on Christianity will likely depend on a State Board of Education appointee who will only serve for one meeting and whom Gov. Greg Abbott favored over the Democrat voters elected to fill the seat next year.

    The seat for State Board of Education’s District 13, which covers parts of North Texas, was vacated earlier this year by Aicha Davis, a Democrat who successfully ran to serve in the Texas House. Tiffany Clark was the only candidate to run for the District 13 seat. She received more than 416,000 votes in the general election.

    Instead of appointing Clark to temporarily fill the vacant seat until her term officially starts in January, Abbott looked past her and instead appointed Leslie Recine, a Republican who will likely serve as the deciding vote on whether the controversial curriculum receives approval on Friday. Abbott appointed Recine four days before the general election when it was already clear that Clark, who ran unopposed, would win the race.

    […]

    Clark said she would have voted against the materials if she had been chosen to serve on the board for this week’s meetings.

    “I think that would have been the swing vote that was needed,” Clark told The Texas Tribune. “It would have been 8-7 in the other way.”

    Clark expressed disappointment and frustration with the governor’s decision to appoint Recine. She criticized Abbott’s choice to have Recine serve on the board for only one meeting, when the board was scheduled to vote on the curriculum, despite the governor having plenty of time to fill the position in the months prior. Davis resigned on Aug. 1.

    Clark said she believes Abbott chose Recine so she would vote in favor of the curriculum.

    “I just wish the state leaders wouldn’t play politics with our kids,” Clark said.

    Whatever else you might say about Republicans, especially in this state, they never miss an opportunity to exert power. It’s infuriating, but short of winning more elections I’m not sure what there is to be done about this. Add it to the ever-growing list of their sins and never forget that it happened.

    Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

    PUC to audit CenterPoint

    Missed this last week.

    No longer seen at I-10 and Sawyer

    The Public Utility Commission of Texas took a step toward an audit of CenterPoint Energy, fulfilling Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s directive issued in the wake of widespread criticism of the Houston-area electric utility’s handling of Hurricane Beryl.

    PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson directed the commission’s staff to begin vetting third-party organizations that could audit CenterPoint. The results of the audit should be delivered to the PUC in April, so it has time to make recommendations before the end of the legislative session in June, Gleeson said at the commission’s Thursday open meeting.

    “There are a few things we can look at, (such as) CenterPoint’s policies and procedures when procuring goods from a third party. We can look at how they evaluate customer needs for where the mobile generation needs to go, including looking at their emergency operation plan and how it deals with this,” Gleeson said.

    Gleeson cited the Public Utility Regulatory Act, which gives the PUC authority to regulate utilities, as the basis for the “management audit,” a term that is not well-defined in the law. There is no record of the PUC auditing a utility under this provision in recent years, spokesperson Ellie Breed said in an email.

    The PUC is already investigating the performance of CenterPoint and other Houston-area utilities during Beryl and the May derecho, with a report due to Gov. Greg Abbott and the legislature by Dec. 1. Breed said the audit’s sole focus would be on CenterPoint, and that further distinctions between the two inquiries would be made clear when the request for proposals from auditors was issued.

    Beth Garza, former director of the watchdog organization that oversees the Texas wholesale electricity market, said Gleeson’s comments on procurement hint that the commission is likely to focus on CenterPoint’s $800 million lease of generators in its audit.

    […]

    Patrick first called for an audit during a rare Houston meeting of the PUC in October, citing testimony from cities and consumer associations that the utility is overcharging customers.

    “I expect you to do that audit,” Patrick said to the commissioners during the Houston PUC meeting in October. “I want to know how much they have been overcharging, if they’ve been overcharging the customers at CenterPoint, and for how long.”

    Steven Aranyi, Patrick’s communications director, said Thursday that the lieutenant governor “requested the audit to see if CenterPoint spends ratepayer money smartly on issues that matter, or if they waste money maximizing profits at the expense of ratepayers.”

    CenterPoint has strongly contested that it’s overcharging. In fact, CenterPoint invested $75 million in system improvements and vegetation management that were not billed to customers in 2023, Oshodi said.

    The company has proposed a plan to forgo $110 million in future profits, which is more than half of the profit anticipated from the generators. The company announced Thursday that it has completed all 42 of its initial post-Beryl commitments to improve, including trimming trees along more than 2,000 miles of power lines, installing more than 1,110 stronger poles, launching a new outage tracker and hosting listening sessions across the region.

    I approve of the effort, but I’ll wait to see what it actually encompasses before going beyond that. I don’t have much faith in this government’s accountability efforts, but enough people are mad at CenterPoint that there might be some real follow-through. We’ll know more soon enough.

    Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    The first Harris County LGBTQIA+ Commission report

    For your perusal.

    The Harris County LGBTQIA+ Commission came out with its list of recommendations to improve the quality of life for Houston’s LGBTQIA+ community.

    The commission, created in June 2023 under the office of Precinct 4 Commissioner Lesley Briones, presented its inaugural biennial report Tuesday at Commissioner’s Court outlining key initiatives and policy recommendations for the upcoming year.

    “This commission is important not only for representation but for the commitment that Harris County is making to the LGBTQIA+ community to ensure that we are always at the table and in partnership with our local government to address our needs and issues,” said Vice Chair Brandon Mack.

    The goal is to provide actionable guidance to the Harris County Commissioners Court on policies and initiatives to better serve LGBTQIA+ residents, and to promote equality and justice in Harris County.

    “This inaugural report reflects the resilience of Harris County’s LGBTQIA+ community and the Commission members who have brought this vision to life,” Briones said in a release. “Harris County rejects hate and discrimination and is committed to building a more just, equal, inclusive community for all.”

    Some of the commission’s key initiatives include holding a large-scale town hall, a banned book fair, expanding partnerships with law enforcement to boost cultural competency, and fostering health initiatives to combat HIV. Harris County has one of the highest cases of HIV in the country, exceeding rates both for Texas and the U.S. according to the Houston Health Department.

    The report lists the following recommendations based on community input during a series of listening sessions held in the past year around the county:

    1. Collecting local data through a quality-of-life survey to learn the experiences of LGBTQIA+ residents living in Harris County and their feelings on the resources provided by the county.
    2. Becoming the named LGBTQIA+ liaison and advisory council for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and other county departments and areas in need of LGBTQIA+ inclusive policies and strategies.
    3. Introducing consistent LGBTQIA+ awareness and cultural competency training for Harris County law enforcement agencies.
    4. Developing a pipeline of qualified LGBTQIA+ residents for county boards and commissions.
    5. Investing in LGBTQIA+ educational resources at county community centers.

    […]

    The committee also emphasized the need to invest in more LGBTQIA+ educational resources at Harris County community centers, especially after public colleges and universities like the University of Houston were forced to disband their diversity, equity and inclusion offices and initiatives under Senate Bill 17.

    “It becomes very easy for us to be separated in our community, and when that happens, that’s what makes it easy to devalue one another,” Mack said. “In doing this type of work, we’re once again uplifting our community and making it easier for others to interact and learn about the LGBTQIA+ community.”

    Community centers should provide more than just educational resources about the LGBTQIA+ community, said Maria Gonzalez, who serves on the commission and is also an associate professor of English at the University of Houston.

    “One of the things with the loss of the UH LGBT Resource Center was, in fact, beyond just books and information, but gathering places,” said Gonzalez, who was among the core group of faculty, staff and students who helped establish the LGBTQ resource center. “We want to make sure that every member of the LGBTQ community in Harris County feels welcome in all our spaces of service. Those community centers are so valuable to our communities broadly.”

    You can download and read the report for yourself, and we’ll see what actions Commissioners Court takes in response. These are obviously fraught times for the community, and there’s a real threat of the Legislature doing more damage as well. I hope this helps until we can get to a better place politically.

    Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The first Harris County LGBTQIA+ Commission report

    Texas blog roundup for the week of November 18

    The Texas Progressive Alliance is getting back up off the mat to fight another day as it brings you this week’s roundup.

    Continue reading

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , | Comments Off on Texas blog roundup for the week of November 18

    Do we really need an engineer at the head of Public Works?

    The engineers think so. The Mayor, not so much.

    Mayor John Whitmire

    Mayor John Whitmire received a written rebuke from a national engineering group over plans to change city ordinance to no longer require an engineer to head Houston Public Works, according to a letter obtained by the Chronicle.

    In a Nov. 7 letter, the American Society of Civil Engineers, which calls itself the “nation’s oldest engineering society,” expressed concerns about the potential change being heard at this week’s city council meeting, writing that the administration should maintain its engineering requirement for the director position should that role “continue to oversee the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of engineered public infrastructure systems that directly affect public health, safety and welfare.”

    ASCE president Feniosky Peña-Mora, referencing the organization’s policy, wrote the organization encouraged “the selection and appointment of licensed professional engineers to government agency positions” that lead policy and practice surrounding public infrastructure.

    The engineering organization felt it was important to highlight that keeping the public works director’s engineer requirement “ensures public safety is upheld,” an ASCE spokesperson wrote in an email Tuesday morning.

    […]

    Houston City Council will hear the potential change at their Wednesday meeting.

    The change, if passed Wednesday, wouldn’t necessarily eliminate the position’s current engineer requirement but expand the purview of who could take on the role. Newport previously said the ordinance would allow someone who was either an engineer or had experience leading a large organization to be the department’s leader.

    Current city ordinance requires the Houston Public Works head to be a professional engineer registered in Texas. The administration has yet to provide a copy of the proposal to the Chronicle, nor has it posted publicly on this week’s council agenda.

    The potential ordinance change would allow the administration to appoint Randy Macchi – the department’s chief operating officer, who has been leading the department alongside city engineer Richard Smith since April – to take on the role of director. Macchi’s appointment is also on Wednesday’s council agenda.

    This earlier Chron story has some more details. I was with the ASCE up until that last paragraph above. If Randy Macchi has that kind of experience in this department, it’s hard for me to say he’s not qualified to lead it even if he isn’t an engineer. I get the ACSE’s objections and I think that they’re basically right, but perhaps they’re being too rigid in this case. I’m open to persuasion from the engineers out there, but I’m inclined to think the Mayor gets to pick their person, within reason. If it blows up in the Mayor’s face down the line, they’ll have to own that. What do you think?

    UPDATE: The path has been cleared for Randy Macchi.

    Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

    Buzbee sued by unnamed celebrity for alleged extortion

    Okay then.

    Tony Buzbee, the prominent Houston attorney representing more than 100 people in a suit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, has been sued in California for allegedly extorting “high profile” individuals, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles County Court.

    The lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. Monday by an unnamed individual identified only as “John Doe,” accused Buzbee and his firm of threatening to publicize “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault — including multiple instances of rape of a minor, both male and female.” The suit claimed Buzbee weaponized allegedly baseless accusations in a bid to extort money from the unidentified plaintiff.

    Attorneys from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP are representing the plaintiff. The firm is one of the largest in the world with more than 1,000 attorneys and 35 offices in countries across the globe.

    “Buzbee has established a pattern of leveling baseless, fabricated and malicious allegations at high profile individuals and threatening to name them publicly if they fail to pay exorbitant sums of money,” the firm stated in a Monday release. “Buzbee then uses this money to fund his lavish lifestyle. He has deployed these threats in letters, statements to the press, his website and on social media in recent months to try to shake down well known individuals.”

    The complaint filed against Buzbee alleged the Houston attorney employed a “clear playbook” for extorting celebrities. According to the unidentified plaintiff’s attorneys, Buzbee would fabricate allegations and then send a letter demanding payment. If those targeted did not pay, Buzbee would turn to various media outlets as a means to apply public pressure, according to the complaint.

    While the plaintiff’s identity remains uncertain, the lawsuit accused Buzbee of employing a scheme to obtain payment from individuals associated with Combs.

    “With Combs behind bars, and payment unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon, Defendants devised a scheme to obtain payments through the use of coercive threats from anyone with any ties to Combs — no matter how remote,” the complaint alleged. “Defendants specifically targeted high-profile individuals who would suffer immeasurable loss from being publicly accused of committing sex crimes, including drugging and raping minors, even if those allegations are false.”

    In a statement to the Houston Chronicle, Buzbee dismissed the claims, saying they were without legal merit and “laughable.”

    “We won’t allow the powerful and their high-dollar lawyers to intimidate or silence sexual assault survivors,” Buzbee said. “It is obvious that the frivolous lawsuit filed against my firm is an aggressive attempt to intimidate or silence me and ultimately my clients. That effort is a gross miscalculation. I am a U.S. Marine. I won’t be silenced or intimidated.”

    Buzbee said that, on behalf of two clients alleging sexual assault, he sent a standard demand letter to a New York lawyer who represented a potential defendant. The letter was a routine part of the legal process and included no threats or requests for compensation, Buzbee said.

    “The letters were sent seeking a confidential mediation in lieu of filing a lawsuit. No amount of money was included in the demand letters. No threats were made. The demand letters sent are no different than the ones routinely sent by lawyers across the country in all types of cases,” he said.

    See here for some background. I’m hardly a Tony Buzbee fan, but at first glance his version of this story sounds the more plausible to me. I’m going to need to hear more from the plaintiff – and yes, it would help to know who it is – to find their allegations credible. I’m not dismissing the possibility that these charges have merit, just that there’s not enough here for me to believe them. We’ll see where this goes.

    Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

    The Texas A&M Space Institute

    Cool.

    A grassy field next to NASA’s Johnson Space Center is getting an otherworldly makeover.

    Officials gathered Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Texas A&M University Space Institute, which will re-create the moon and Mars to help develop rovers, spacesuits and other new technologies. Construction is slated to begin in January and wrap up in October 2026.

    “There are grand visions of what will happen in that facility as we enter into a really unprecedented time of exploration — actually returning humans to the moon and planning to go from the moon and then on to Mars,” said Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, who led the legislation that provided funding for the building.

    The four-story facility will have the equivalent of two indoor football fields. One will represent the moon with slippery gray gravel, craterlike holes and a harsh light. The other will reflect Mars with a reddish sky and hard-packed terrain, plus the occasional sneaky sand trap.

    A “wormhole” — or two-lane road, to be more precise — will connect the moon and Mars.

    The facility is intended to be a collaborative effort. Different universities, companies and government projects will work in offices or garages that open directly to the lunar and Martian surfaces. That shared mentality has Rob Ambrose, the associate director of the institute and a professor of mechanical engineering, thinking long and hard about the color of Mars.

    “We’re being very careful,” he joked. “We’re looking for some simulant material that’s somewhere between burnt orange and maroon.”

    The linked story in the excerpt tells more about the purpose of this new facility, at which “companies will be able to develop spacesuits, test tools and robotics, and study actual rocks from the moon and (perhaps one day) Mars”. The A&M press release says that the facility “will support training for missions, including simulated landings on the moon and Mars, as well as advanced research and development in aeronautics, robotics, and other fields”, and “will be vital for partnerships, both research and commercial, that help Texas businesses as well as NASA stay at the forefront of the final frontier”. One part research, one part incubator, I suppose. You’ll still have to go elsewhere to simulate being on Mars, but NASA is big enough to handle it. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what this new facility can do.

    Posted in Technology, science, and math, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Texas A&M Space Institute