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August 15th, 2012:

Petitions to overturn homeless feeding ordinance submitted

Aug 15th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

There’s plenty of signatures, but no guarantee that this will make it onto the ballot.

Activists seeking to repeal a new law requiring City Hall’s permission to serve charitable meals on city-owned land turned in 34,000 petition signatures on Monday asking that the issue be put to voters in November.

Despite the passion surrounding the issue from feeding groups, clergy and others who decried the ordinance as the criminalization of charity, City Attorney David Feldman said it was too late to get the issue on the ballot.

He said the deadline was July 1, the day the law went into effect.

Wrong, said Paul Kubosh, one of the petition drive’s organizers.

“This ordinance is dead. It’s just a matter of how hard and how much political capital will City Council spend to fight the people,” Kubosh said at a news conference in the City Hall rotunda.

The standoff sets the stage for a replay of the legal battle set off by the petition that called for the November 2010 election that outlawed the use of red-light cameras in Houston. Kubosh was also a key player in that battle.

In that case, the election went forward but a federal judge later invalidated it because the petition was turned in too late. However, the ruling is no longer in effect, with both sides claiming victory. Feldman says the legal principles embodied in the court ruling still apply, while attorney Randall Kallinen, who sides with Kubosh, says they don’t.

As noted before, if this becomes law it will leave in place the requirement that organizations get permission from private property owners before setting up a place to distribute food to homeless folks. Again, for all of the fuss over this, I don’t think that part of the ordinance was ever truly controversial. The question is whether permission is needed for doing so on city-owned property. I have no intention of re-litigating any of this, I’ll simply repeat my assertion that if this does get on the ballot, I believe it wins easily. The proponents have many times the energy, desire, and strength of opinion on this.

The question is whether or not it belongs on the ballot. The distinction Kubosh and Kallinen make that this is a charter amendment that happens to overturn – in this case, modify – a city ordinance and not a referendum to repeal it is one that Judge Hughes specifically rejected in his red light camera ruling. I’m not a lawyer, I can’t give you an opinion as to why this time it’s different. I’ll wait for a judge’s ruling like everybody else.

Again, assuming it gets that far. There are at least two more obstacles that I can see, one of which is mentioned in the story and one of which is not.

Council faces a deadline under state law of Aug. 20 for placing items on the Nov. 6 ballot.

City Secretary Anna Russell said Monday that it generally takes her office two weeks or more to count and validate so many petition signatures before they can go to council. Because the Texas Open Meetings Act requires a 72-hour advance notice of a government meeting, her office would have to finish the job in four days to provide for proper notice.

“Even under the best of circumstances I don’t see how in the world that could be done,” Feldman said.

There were complaints about how late the petitions were turned in back in 2010, too. The City Secretary managed to get the job done on time then. Based on this, it would seem impossible. Having said that, remember that episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where the Enterprise discovers Scotty suspended in a transporter beam where he’d been for however many decades? Anyway, he and Geordi get into an argument about the proper way to inform the Captain about how much time is really needed to accomplish a task:

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I’d love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours.

[La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly]

Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Yeah, well, I told the Captain I’d have this analysis done in an hour.

Scotty: How long will it really take?

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: An hour!

Scotty: Oh, you didn’t tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya?

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did.

Scotty: Oh, laddie. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

So the question to ask is whether Anna Russell is more like La Forge or more like Scotty. I’ll leave that for you to debate. As for the other obstacle, given the August 20 statutory deadline for putting a referendum on the ballot, it seems to me that a tag by any Council member would settle the issue regardless of what a judge might say. I have no idea if any member would be inclined to do that, I’m just saying that one of them could. Houston Politics and Campos have more.

Guinn seeks recount

Aug 15th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Can’t say I blame him.

Zerick Guinn

Democratic Precinct 2 constable candidate Zerick Guinn has requested a recount in his primary runoff against Chris Diaz, who won by 16 votes after incorrect election results posted online showed Guinn with a commanding lead late on election night.

[…]

“This is not an example of a candidate with sour grapes. This is a candidate who was involved in an election where the individual in charge of counting the ballots made numerous mistakes,” said [HCDP Chair Lane] Lewis, referring to County Clerk Stan Stanart. “This is an example of a candidate who wants to make sure everything was done correctly.”

Lewis said he was not sure what Guinn’s campaign would need to pay for the recount, but estimated it at about $2,000.

I’d have done the same in Guinn’s shoes. I doubt a recount will make a difference because they very seldom do, but I’d still want to go through the motions after what happened on the night of the 31st. We’ll see how it goes.

FTA writes another check for light rail construction

Aug 15th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Keep ’em coming.

I still hope we get to have all this some day

The expansion of Houston Metro got another boost from the federal government with the allocation of $188 million in additional construction funding for the North and Southeast light rail lines.

Congressman Gene Green, the Houston Democrat who is dean of the metropolitan area’s House delegation, said the money is part of Houston Metro’s full funding grant agreement with the Federal Transit Administration.

“I’ve been a long time supporter of light rail in these areas because it will greatly increase people’s transportation options and incentivize economic development along the routes,” said Green, a career legislator who served in the Texas legislature before election to Congress.

“I am glad to see these projects moving forward.”

Metro had signed the full funding grant agreement with the FTA last November, and had received some funds for the North and Southeast lines last June. I don’t recall if that was an advance on the FFGA or if was separate; I suspect the former but the details are fuzzy to me at this point. Either way, there’s still a lot more of those funds to come. Rep. Green has definitely been a strong advocate for Metro and these lines, which run through parts of his district. I’ve begun work on my candidates interviews for the fall, and he happened to be first in line, so you can hear him talk a bit about this when I run his interview on Monday. Those of you who live in CD07 and would like to see your rail lines built while you’re still young enough to use them, I hope someday you’ll have a member of Congress like Gene Green who’ll work with you to get it. KUHF has more.

What does it mean to be a beer?

Aug 15th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Boy, is that a deep question or what?

Until recently, beer drinkers who took their time to read the labels on their bottles or cans may have encountered some head-scratching fine print concerning Texas.

Underneath the name of Brooklyn Brewery’s Brooklyn Lager, for instance, was the note “In Texas, malt liquor.” Even closer inspection would reveal that the word “beer” did not appear on the label.

The labeling quirks were the result of a law that required all malt beverages (read: beer) containing more than 4 percent alcohol by weight to be labeled as either “ale” or “malt liquor” to be sold in Texas. The same law also prevented any drink with an alcohol content of more than 4 percent from being advertised in Texas as a “beer.”

“It made for a very awkward label,” said Eric Ottaway, the general manager of Brooklyn Brewery. “Try writing a description without using the word ‘beer.’”

That rule was overturned in December following a lawsuit, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officially changed its labeling rules on July 24. Now, brewers can essentially label their products by whatever name they’d like, as long as the label includes the alcohol content. The judgment against TABC said its rules for labeling violated the First Amendment rights of beer makers by dictating what language they could and could not use to describe their products.

That would be the Jester King lawsuit, and it was a good thing for the industry and for us consumers. But you can’t talk about beermaking in Texas without bringing up the elephant in the room:

Small breweries have tried and failed to lobby the Legislature for changes to the code for a number of years, according to Leslie Sprague of Open the Taps, a craft brewing advocacy association. Sprague said the label law change could pressure the state into more changes in the future. Sprague said the laws Open the Taps is most interested in changing include rules that prevent breweries from selling beers on their premises and brewpubs from distributing their products to stores.

Earlier this year, the state Senate commissioned a working group of interested parties — including craft brewers, wine makers, distilleries, distributors and wholesalers — to consider other parts of the code that could be updated. The reason behind the group is at least in part to help avoid more future lawsuits, according to state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who helped organize it.

“Our alcohol beverage code has a lot of inconsistencies,” Van de Putte said.

“The alcoholic beverage code did not keep up with the market and technology,” she added, although she pointed out that law changes in the 1990s benefited the Texas wine industry. “It’s all over the place. I think there are things that we need to clean up,” she said.

Indeed. You can read more about Open The Taps and their efforts here and here. I do believe we will eventually fix what’s wrong with our anachronistic beer laws, as there is no good justification for them, but it won’t happen without a lot of people pitching in to make it happen.