February, 2023:

Lege targets Harris County election administrator

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House and Senate bills filed by Republican lawmakers in response to Harris County’s mismanagement of its recent elections could give the Texas secretary of state the authority to step in, suspend county election administrators when a complaint is filed and appoint a replacement administrator.

Election administration experts told Votebeat the legislation was an overreaction to the desire to hold Harris County accountable for years of election mismanagement, and would disrupt the state’s ability to help county election offices improve and address systemic problems.

If passed, the secretary of state’s office would change from being a guide and resource for election workers to being an auditor that can investigate and fire them. Some election officials are concerned this change could prevent local election workers from asking questions or seeking help from the office for fear of being reprimanded.

“Currently we work hand-in-hand. [The secretary of state’s staff] are our No. 1 resource, and that benefits all voters,” said Jennifer Doinoff, Hays County elections administrator. “Putting them in the position of oversight would definitely change the dynamic.”

Authored by state Rep. Tom Oliverson and state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, both Harris County Republicans, the bills are among several already filed this legislative session in reaction to the long lines, late openings and reports of shortages of ballot paper on Election Day in Harris County. More than 20 lawsuits from losing Republican candidates have also been filed against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. Harris County Elections Administrator Cliff Tatum did not respond to Votebeat’s request for his comment about the legislation.

House Bill 2020 and Senate Bill 823 would allow the secretary of state’s office to take action in a county if a complaint is filed by one of several officials and organizations involved in elections, and if there’s “good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration exists.”

The bills list five causes for suspension of an elections administrator:

malfunction of voting equipment,

unfair distribution of election supplies,

errors in tabulation of results,

delays in reporting election returns,

discovery of voted ballots after the polls close.

Currently, any problems that arise in an election or with an elections administrator are handled by the county’s election commission. Those commissions are made up of the county judge, the tax assessor-collector, the county clerk and the chairs of local political parties. The commission’s oversight powers allow it to appoint, terminate or accept the resignation of the county’s election administrator.

Some Texas voting rights groups worry the Legislature will use the problems in Harris and those lawsuits as “an excuse” to advance bills such as these. The League of Women Voters of Texas in a statement last week said such legislation, if passed, “is fraught for potential abuse, infringes on the rights of county governments to select their own elections administrator, and demeans the meaning of local governance.”

Slightly more than half of Texas counties appoint nonpartisan election administrators to run their elections. This legislation would apply only in those counties and not in the 122 that elect county clerks or tax assessors tasked with running elections and handling voter registration.

“We are subject to the authorities of those that appointed us,” said Remi Garza, Cameron County elections administrator and the Texas Association of Elections Administrators legislative committee co-chair. “It does cause concern that somebody from outside that jurisdiction would be able to usurp the authority of the elections commission in dealing with their elections administrator.”

There’s more, but I don’t have the mental energy to continue, so go read the rest for yourself. This story came out the same day that a Senate committee approved a bill making “illegal” voting a felony with even harsher punishments and lower standards for “illegality” than before. So, you know, a banner Monday.

My first thought is that I’m not really clear what these guys are aiming at. I mean, Harris County could in effect call their bluff, restore election administration to the County Clerk, have Cliff Tatum move over and be the chief of elections under Teneshia Hudspeth, and this bill would no longer apply to us. Democrats would still be running the elections. Maybe they actually think Stan Stanart can win that ridiculous election contest, I don’t know. At this level, this is just weird.

Second, these bills – I assume they’re identical in each chamber – are just a mess. The story goes into detail about how absurdly vague the provisions are, which could put a whole lot of election administrators in solidly red counties in danger if something goes wrong, as things sometimes do. I obviously wouldn’t expect the Secretary of State to crack down on, say, Bell County as they’re slavering to do to Harris, but it could be that the first example to be made is in a red place. This is what happens when you let your rage control you.

(Of course, if we had managed to pass a federal voting rights law over the past two years, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this now. But hey, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema preserved the filibuster, so.)

Third, I kind of suspect that in the same way that the TEA probably doesn’t actually want to take over HISD, the SOS probably wants no part of administering Harris County elections. It’s big, it’s hard to do, and most importantly now everything that goes wrong is your fault. Who wants that? But the Republicans in the Lege don’t care about that. Slapping around Harris County is the point. If there’s collateral damage, so be it.

And finally, with a less-predatory state government, we could have a reasoned discussion and admit there are problems that could be fixed with some help from that state government and Lege find ways to do elections better that aren’t predicated on punishment and the exercise of raw power. And if I flap my arms and think happy thoughts, I could fly.

I’ve made the decision to pay less attention to the Lege than I have in the past because I don’t need the mental torment. The Republicans are gonna do what they’re gonna do, and we can’t stop them. One fine day we’ll win enough elections to make it stop, but until then this is what we’re gonna get. I don’t know what else to say.

Actually, we could have saved Fairfield State Park

Feb 28th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

Well, well, well.

State officials passed up an offer to save Fairfield Lake State Park this month, just days before the Texas parks department celebrated its centennial, according to newly uncovered text messages.

The 1,821-acre park sits on land the state leases at no cost from the energy company Vistra Corp., part of a larger tract that also includes the 2,400-acre lake and 3,204 acres along the northern shores. It will close permanently Tuesday. Vistra has agreed to sell it to Todd Interests, a Dallas developer.

Screenshots we obtained of a text conversation between Texas Parks and Wildlife Commissioner Arch “Beaver” Aplin, Todd Interests founder Shawn Todd and Vistra CEO Jim Burke show that, even as state officials publicly treated the park’s sale as a triumph of developer interests over the common good, they inexplicably failed to take serious steps to buy most of the parkland. Todd, Aplin and a Vistra spokesperson all verified the authenticity of the messages.

In the texts, Todd offers to complete the purchase of the entire property and then sell the parkland to the state, minus what Todd called a “tiny” carve-out in the northern peninsula of the park, for $60 million. Todd would have retained water rights and restricted some boating activities.

The carve-out would have closed hiking trails but would not have disrupted campsites, picnic areas or boat ramps, Todd said. The precise size of the carve-out was never agreed upon. But apparently, it was still a deal-breaker for the state. In response to Todd’s offer, Aplin texted, “I just spoke with the Lt Gov and he reminded me I asked him and the leadership for the ok to buy it all, not the park minus.”

When Todd pressed for compromise, Aplin responded by emphasizing the importance of the northern peninsula because of its hiking trails. The deal fell through.

The texts also reveal that the state has never made a competitive offer to buy the land. The agreement under contract is for approximately $110 million, the texts say. The state’s best offer, which Aplin texted Feb. 2, was $60 million plus a tax incentive in the form of a conservation easement to Vistra. The offer to Todd was simply for him to walk away, expenses paid, out of “altruism.” Aplin said he later offered Todd a fee in the amount of 3% to 6% of the value of the deal.

The $60 million was for the entire property, not just parkland. Aplin told us he wanted to buy the lake and expand the park.

“TPWD can commit to a 60 MM deal with commission approval,” Aplin texted. “My concept was an altruistic approach for Todd’s and Vistra. I know you have a deal at 100+ MM. We can’t get there, hence my altruistic suggestion.”

Aplin offered other perks to sweeten the deal.

“Feb 8th Centennial celebration, 100 yrs of parks with Governor Abbott presenting. It’s a big deal,” Aplin texted. “We announce this gift, both of you present, with me and the Gov, on 8th at our biggest celebration ever.” He even offered naming rights.

It’s hard to estimate the size of the donation Aplin was soliciting here. From Vistra, it was $50 million minus the value of the tax incentive. From Todd, it was opportunity cost. Todd told us he expects to make hundreds of millions developing the site. The water rights alone are worth that much, he said. When we asked Aplin, founder of the Buc-ee’s convenience store chain, if he would walk away from that much money, he wouldn’t answer.

[…]

There’s another conundrum with the state’s handling of this deal. In 2018, Aplin said TPWD asked Vistra to sell only the park portion of the property. Vistra declined, a spokesperson confirmed. But this month, when Todd offered the park portion, state officials wanted to buy the whole thing, at half price.

When the whole property was for sale, the state only wanted part. When part was for sale, the state wanted the whole thing.

At one point, the parties discussed yet another option. Todd offered to walk away in exchange for $50 million and 250 acres, and let TPWD negotiate its own deal with Vistra. Aplin declined.

None of this answers the more frustrating question of why this issue was allowed to get out of hand. In 2019, the department’s then-Executive Director Carter Smith suggested the state’s plan was wishing and hoping.

“It would be our hope that we could continue to see that lease extended with the new buyer of that property so that the state park did not go away, but ultimately we’re going to be at the mercy of the new owner,” Smith said in a hearing.

See here and here for the background. This is on the DMN editorial page for some reason, but it doesn’t matter, the story is clear enough. I can’t tell if Aplin and the TPWD are being so erratic because they sincerely believe they are constrained by what the rest of state government will let them do, or if they just don’t have the processes and organization to figure out this admittedly complex but utterly solvable problem. All I can do at this point is shake my head.

As for what could be done now, leave it to Greg Abbott to do the barest minimum possible.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has offered support for preserving Fairfield Lake State Park, which is scheduled to close within days as a private developer moves forward with purchasing the land.

[…]

Abbott, in a Thursday interview with the Star-Telegram, didn’t specifically address the possibility of eminent domain. But he said he wants to see the park remain public.

“We’re working with Texas Parks and Wildlife on doing everything we can to preserve that park,” Abbott said.

I have no idea what that means. That story was from before the DMN’s editorial, so “doing everything we can” would have sounded different when he said it. I still think the odds of the Lege taking the park land back are very small, but maybe not zero. We’ll know in a few weeks if that or any other bill related to this is likely to go anywhere.

Houston suspends “sister city” ties with Tyumen

Feb 28th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Of interest.

Houston Mayor Turner Sylvester on Friday suspended the city’s partnership agreement with Moscow and its sister city relationship with Tyumen, Russia, on the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.

Turner said that while he believes in the value of city diplomacy in times of crisis, Russia’s decision to censor the media and crack down on anti-war protesters has made it impossible to maintain city-to-city relationships.

“In challenging times, city to city, and people to people, diplomacy can sometimes be the only opportunities for exchange,” the mayor said. “This is the purpose of Houston’s more than 90 foreign consulates, including those from Ukraine and Russia and of our 19 sister cities – to create and maintain opportunities for global dialogue.”

Since Russian launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, at least 8,000 civilians have been confirmed killed, including 487 children, with the actual numbers likely to be substantially higher, according to estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. More than 14 million people have also been displaced from their homes as the humanitarian crisis widens, further straining diplomatic ties with Russia.

“Russia has blocked the people’s access to social media and global news outlets, cracked down on protests and any form of discontent, and criminalized public opposition to the war,” the mayor said. “It is clear that we have lost the ability to have an open dialogue.”

Meanwhile, HTX4UKRAINE, a local nonprofit that raises money and that advocates for Ukraine’s cause, organized a rally Friday afternoon in front of the Russian Consulate in Houston to commemorate the war’s one-year anniversary.

My first reaction on reading this headline was “wait, we’re just doing this now?” Having read the story I get the rationale, and I understand wanting to maintain a diplomatic relationship even in times of war, but it’s still a little weird. I also had no idea this relationship existed. I knew we had a few “sister city” partnerships, though I couldn’t have said much about what that means beyond some fumbling about exchanging culture and stuff like that. I knew we had a few such relationships, with the one with Chiba, Japan, being the one that stuck most prominently in my mind, but again couldn’t have told you much beyond that. The list of Houston’s sister cities, which includes a brief overview of what that means, is here, though now that will need to be amended. I wonder if we will keep them there but consider them to be in a timeout, or if we will fully cut ties and go looking for a new sister to replace them. Maybe that will be a question for the Mayor’s race. Anyway, now you know.

We’re fixing to have some boring May elections

Feb 27th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

At least as far as Mayoral races go.

The mayors of some of Texas’ largest cities are cruising toward reelection.

The incumbents in San Antonio and Fort Worth face little opposition after the deadline to run for mayor in the May 6 election passed Friday. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson faces no challengers.

It’s a political boon for the mayors. But for nearly 3.7 million residents, there won’t be a real choice on the May mayoral ballot or high-profile debates about their cities’ future as their regions see massive growth and deal with the resulting challenges of housing, transportation and policing. Texas municipal elections often see low voter turnout — a trend that will likely worsen this year without competition at the top of the ticket.

A similar story will play out in Arlington, Texas’ seventh-most-populous city, where Mayor Jim Ross has just one challenger in May.

The blockbuster Texas mayoral race of the year will come in November, when Houston voters will elect a new leader for the state’s most populous city. The incumbent, Sylvester Turner, is term-limited, and several credible candidates have announced plans to run for the open seat, with Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire viewed as the frontrunner.

Municipal offices in Texas are nonpartisan, and mayors often try to govern that way but they can bring political backgrounds to the job that color their job performances. Johnson is a former Democratic member of the Texas House, while Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker has identified as a Republican, though she has expressed disillusionment with the current state of the GOP.

Johnson, Parker and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg have been navigating strong political crosscurrents in their backyards in recent years. Last year, Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, elected a new leader who promised to take the county in a more conservative direction than the Republican he replaced. And in San Antonio, Nirenberg has governed amid a progressive resurgence in the city, with two members of the Democratic Socialists of America winning City Council seats in 2021.

The rest of the article is a closer look at the careers of the three featured Mayors, which I encourage you to read since as I have said before I consider people like these three to be potentially strong future statewide candidates. I would quibble with the story’s assertion that the Arlington Mayor’s race is similar to these other three as its incumbent just has one opponent. Plenty of two-candidate races are high in drama and competitiveness – see, for example the 2022 Harris County Judge race. It’s about the quality of the candidate and the strength of their campaign. I don’t doubt that Arlington Mayor Ross has an easy path to re-election, just that the number of challengers he faces isn’t the right measure for that. Be that as it may, read it and see what you think. And leave a comment about your Mayor if you’re in one of those cities.

Let’s spend less money on court-appointed lawyers

Feb 27th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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That’s my main takeaway from this.

Harris County paid one private attorney just over $1 million last year to represent hundreds of low-income people accused of crimes, helping proliferate a system that critics say wastes taxpayer dollars and robs indigent defendants of a fair shake in court.

Jeanie Ortiz, a former Harris County prosecutor, reported to the state that she earned the $1 million while working on about 400 felonies and 200 misdemeanors. A study funded by the Texas Indigent Defense Commission in 2015 concluded that attorneys could only reasonably handle at most 128 felonies or 226 misdemeanors a year.

“That’s too many cases for one lawyer to handle,” Harris County chief public defender Alex Bunin said of Ortiz’s caseload.

[…]

Sixty years after the U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright enshrined a person’s right to a lawyer in criminal proceedings, data shows that few indigent clients in the country actually get a good one.

A lack of funding is one big factor, but money isn’t the only reason. Texas’ constitution gives judges the ultimate authority to assign indigent defendants an attorney, and to decide how much that attorney gets paid. That system has led to persistent allegations of favoritism at the expense of defendants.

In Harris County, judges for decades doled out the vast majority of court appointments to a select few. Since attorneys earned a flat fee per case, the only way to make a living representing indigent clients was to take massive numbers of appointments. To get those appointments, attorneys gained favor with the judges by doing everything from contributing to their campaigns to bringing tacos for courtroom staff.

“It was the good ol’ boys system, 100 percent,” [Jed Silverman, president of the Harris County Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association,] said.

The county eventually began paying court-appointed attorneys hourly. It also opened a public defender’s office in 2010, though many judges refused to use it, instead continuing to appoint overloaded private attorneys. The office has since expanded dramatically, but it still takes the minority of criminal cases in Harris County.

“The issue is, I need money to grow,” Bunin said. And more money will be hard to come by after the county adopted a lower-than-planned tax rate last year following a bitter political fight.

I’ll get to the money issue in a minute. The question about caseloads is one where there’s room for disagreement – Silverman, the HCCDLA President mentioned above, mounted a defense of the attorneys named in this story – though those at the extreme end always look dodgy. Harris County has a new system called “managed assigned counsel” (MAC) that helps a little with keeping anyone from having too many cases, but outside of the occasional news coverage and the State Bar, a process that’s completely opaque to most of us, there’s little oversight of the system as a whole. And that matters because whenever there’s large amounts of money at stake, the potential for ethical issues arises. Look at these three posts from the archives on this topic, and note that even though they span a decade, the same names kept coming up, with certain attorneys being closely connected to certain judges and – not at all coincidentally – their campaign coffers.

This is exactly the sort of thing that a public defender can mitigate. It’s also why there was such fierce opposition to the creation of such an office in Harris County even though most other large counties in Texas had them. Given the extremely cozy relationship between sleazeballs like Gary Polland and his machine for endorsing and financially supporting Republican judges, that was no surprise. But we have a public defender now, and yet we still have judges who make a whole lot of appointments to the same handful of attorneys. The names have changed but the practices have not, or at least not enough. I’m sure lots of new judges think they can do a better job of managing that, but history is against them. It would be better if they didn’t feel the need to try, as there’s a perfectly good alternative already in place.

Which comes back to the budget question. The past obstruction on Commissioners Court to implementing reforms like this has been eliminated thanks to the 2022 election. I am optimistic that the Commissioners will have the desire and the space to add to the public defender budget. Given how much cheaper one public defender is than these court-appointed attorneys, it just makes sense. The PDO doesn’t have to handle every indigent case – I’m sure there will the need for specialized services going forward. But we can and should spend less on those individual appointments, and get more for those dollars via the PDO. Let’s make this happen.

Metro’s first electric bus has arrived

Feb 27th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Good.

Metro’s next fleet of buses quietly is coming together, in more ways than one.

The first of 20 electric 40-foot buses bought by Metropolitan Transit Authority has arrived in Houston, though it will be some time before it is branded, tested and brought into service.

For now, it is going through the paces at the transit agency’s Kashmere bus depot, and will only go into service once Metro accepts it.

The bus is the first Metro will deploy along Route 28 along Old Spanish Trail and Wayside and Route 402 Bellaire Quickline. The others will follow on those two routes over time, because both operate in the Texas Medical Center where they can charge in a pinch.

The $22 million purchase mostly was covered by a $21.6 million grant Metro won from the Federal Transit Administration. The grant freed Metro to save more of its own money for future bus purchases. Each electric bus costs about $1.1 million, which is more than a diesel bus; the cost is expected to even out over the bus’ lifetime.

Once the buses begin ferrying passengers, riders should hardly notice, except for the lack of engine noise. The buses, built by NOVA, are identical to the buses Metro bought in 2019, with the same seats, handrails and other features.

See here for the last update. The rest of the buses will arrive over the next few months, with some of them still awaiting parts prior to their delivery. I look forward to hearing the next chapter of this story.

Weekend link dump for February 26

Feb 26th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

“No one has a playbook in politics for shooting down UFOs that are not aliens.”

“Bill Watterson, the creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, is releasing a dark and adult graphic novel later this year.”

“After years of Marvel and Star Wars movies and shows inundating screens big and small, Disney is putting the brakes on the output of some of its biggest franchises and brands”.

RIP, Richard Belzer, comedian and actor best known for Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

“NASA isn’t announcing the existence of extraterrestrial life. But if the last two weeks show anything, it’s if the agency ever breaks such news, the world may have trouble understanding.”

RIP, Barbara Bosson, actor best known for Hill Street Blues, Murder One, and the immortal Cop Rock.

“Kevin McCarthy makes sensitive security footage available to the insurrectionists’ propagandist”.

RIP, Hugh Harris, known as “The Voice of NASA” for his time as public affairs officer there.

RIP, B.J. “Red” McCombs, San Antonio businessman and former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, who brought that franchise to town before they joined the NBA.

Yes indeed, let them fight.

“It is against free speech to stop us from fixating on the genitals.”

“Let’s just get this out of the way: the Hays Code was awful. It was sexist, racist, homophobic nonsense that set film back decades and reinforced a lot of cruel moralizing that weakened the gaps between art and faith, thus ensuring decades of culture war bullshit. It baffles me that I even have to say this in 2023. Anyone who knows anything about the history of Hollywood is well aware of how the code caused so much damage to the art form of cinema. Yet a tedious strain of online scorn and politically tangled discourse has seen way too many people acting as though what pop culture needs in the 21st century is a return to mandated puritanism.”

“As privilege discourse has attempted to trundle on over the past few years, it has really stagnated. We circle back over the same ground constantly, but don’t spend much time discussing what a good life truly means, who is getting what they want out of the world, and which of us is really enjoying ourselves. Who are life’s winners, in other words, and who are the losers.”

“Isn’t it comforting to have your worst suspicions confirmed?”

Assholes of a feather flock together.

“I have studied the Soviet and the Russian economy for over four decades. I believe there are four reasons the sky has yet not fallen in on the Russian economy.”

RIP, Duangphet Phromthep, one of the 12 boys rescued from a flooded Thai cave after a weekslong operation that drew global attention in 2018.

“Ten Dazzling Celestial Events to See in 2023″.

This will be the final season of Succession, so enjoy it while you still can.

Abortion funds remain protected from prosecution

Feb 26th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Good news, in the kind of world where this is needed at all, for now.

A federal judge issued a favorable ruling for Texas abortion funds, indicating they likely cannot be criminally charged for helping people travel out of state to terminate their pregnancies.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked prosecutors in eight counties from pursuing charges against anyone who helps someone get an abortion outside of Texas. But his ruling indicated he believes the laws he has enjoined them from enforcing may not actually be in effect at all.

This lawsuit, filed two months after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, was brought by abortion funds, nonprofit groups that help pay for abortions and related expenses, including out-of-state travel, hotels and child care.

After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the funds stopped paying for Texans to leave the state, citing their fear of being prosecuted under the state’s intersecting abortion bans. In the lawsuit, they cited examples of Attorney General Ken Paxton and state lawmakers expressing an intent to bring charges against abortion funds.

But Pitman ruled Friday that Paxton could not enforce Texas’ abortion bans against anyone who helped pay for an abortion out of state and dismissed him from the suit.

Pitman analyzed Texas’ three abortions laws: the ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, commonly known as Senate Bill 8; the so-called trigger law, which went into effect in July; and the pre-Roe statutes, which were in effect before the U.S. Supreme Court deemed them unconstitutional in 1973.

Since SB 8 is enforced through private civil lawsuits, neither Paxton nor local prosecutors play any role in enforcing that statute, Pitman noted.

Paxton and the district attorneys do have the power to enforce the trigger law, which comes with a sentence of up to life in prison and a minimum $100,000 penalty. The law criminalizes anyone who performs an abortion, except to save the life of the pregnant person.

But it cannot be enforced beyond state lines, Pitman found.

The law “does not express any intent, much less a clear one, to apply extraterritorially,” he wrote. “Accordingly, there is no plausible construction of the statute that allows the Attorney General or local prosecutor to penalize out-of-state abortions.”

That leaves only the pre-Roe statutes, which come with sentences of two to 10 years in prison for anyone who performs or “furnishes the means for” an abortion. Pitman found that the laws could potentially be interpreted to criminalize someone in Texas who helped someone pay for an abortion out of state.

“In other words, if an abortion takes place outside of Texas, a plausible (albeit unlikely) construction of the statute authorizes prosecution for ‘furnishing the means’ of that abortion if that ‘furnishing’ takes place in Texas,” Pitman wrote. “The pre-Roe laws prohibit ‘furnishing the means’ within the state, and do not necessarily limit that prohibition to abortions which occur in Texas.”

Pitman enjoined the named district attorneys — who represent Travis, Washington, Blanco, Burnell, Llano, San Saba and Caldwell counties — and a county attorney, representing Burleson County, from enforcing the pre-Roe statutes against the abortion funds while the case proceeds.

There is no civil penalty associated with the pre-Roe statutes, so Pitman dismissed Paxton from this line of inquiry — and thus the entire suit.

But in the ruling, Pitman also argued that the pre-Roe statutes have been repealed and therefore cannot be used to prosecute anyone.

See here for the background. I assume the Travis County DA, which was never going to willingly prosecute anything abortion-related, is there for technical reasons having to do with where state government and by extension the AG reside. This Reuters story has a couple of paragraphs that add a bit of clarity:

Pitman’s order, which is preliminary, will remain in place while abortion funding groups, including Fund Texas Choice, The North Texas Equal Access Fund and The Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity, move forward with a lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of the laws.

The order applies only to five individual local prosecutors who are named as defendants in the case, though the groups have said they will seek to expand their case to include a class of all local prosecutors in the state. Pitman said that he could issue an order applying to a broader group of prosecutors in the future, after they have had a chance to appear in court.

In other words, this is a first step and there will be more cases like these to get injunctions against other prosecutors while the case gets argued on its merits for a final ruling. And then there will be appeals – there was no indication in the news as of Saturday that an appeal was planned, but by now we all know how this goes. I expect there to be more news about this, in the medium term if not the short term. Isn’t everything so much simpler now that the question of abortion access has been left up to the states? Reason has more.

Harris County libraries to eliminate fines

Feb 26th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Good.

Harris County residents no longer will have to pay late fees on overdue library books, formalizing a policy the 26 branches of the county library started during the pandemic.

Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a measure making the elimination of late fees permanent, following Houston City Council’s decision last month to do the same at the Houston Public Library.

“The county will join the city of Houston, New York, San Diego, Nashville, Baltimore, San Francisco, and League City,” Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis said.

More than 1.8 million people have library cards with the Harris County Public Library system. The library’s roughly 2 million items were checked out more than 9.5 million times last year.

Late fees make up less than 1 percent of the library’s annual budget, according to Edward Melton, executive director of the Harris County Public Library system.

“During the pandemic, we stopped taking fines,” Melton said. “It’s really a very minor impact that we have on our budget, but we do see that with not having fines, people are more prone to bring back materials and also use the library, because that’s one of the barriers in terms of people not coming back.”

See here for the background; sadly, the link to my favorite (and relevant to this issue) Bloom County comic has expired, because Facebook be like that. I don’t think I had considered before how little of their budgets library fines must be. Not surprising, since they’re ten cents a day and are capped at three bucks total, but still. Some cultural axioms just get very deeply internalized. Anyway, good for HCPL, and good for the Houston library system for leading the way.

A bigger House

Feb 26th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Proposals like this come along every few years.

The size of the House of Representatives hasn’t kept up with population growth for a very long time—in fact, it hasn’t even tried to—but one congressman has a solution.

Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon just introduced a bill that would increase the House to 585 members from its present 435 following the next census in 2030, reducing the number of constituents each representative would have and, hopefully, making government more responsive and more reflective. While the proposed change wouldn’t take effect for another 10 years, we’ve envisioned how it would have affected congressional reapportionment following the 2020 census in the map at the top of this story (click here to enlarge).

Up until the 1910s, the House had increased in size nearly every decade as the population grew, but with only a two-year exception—when Alaska and Hawaii first became states—it’s been stuck at 435 members since 1913. At the time, America’s population was just one-quarter of what it currently is, yet the number of seats in the House has been frozen in place by law since 1929. Consequently, the number of constituents in the average House district has grown from 210,000 after the 1910 census to 761,000 today, and that number could pass 1 million in the coming decades if the law does not change.

[…]

The House’s large ratio of constituents to representatives is also a major outlier among advanced democracies, and scholars have long noted that the size of the lower chamber in most country’s parliaments tends to correspond to the cube root of their population. If the U.S. adhered to that formula, the House would now have about 690 seats, making it more than one-half larger than it is today.

Blumenauer’s bill doesn’t expand the House quite that much; rather, he explains his 585 figure by noting that 149 total seats have shifted between states during reapportionment since the current cap of 435 was reached and adds one more to keep an odd number of members. Nonetheless, his proposed one-third increase could still go a long way toward making the chamber itself more representative of America’s diverse population.

It’s been a few years, but I’ve seen proposals like this before. They’re philosophically sensible but there are practical obstacles, such as creating the office space for all those extra people, and that’s before you get to the resistance any number of folks would have to a very literal expansion of government. I noted this mostly to point out that here in Texas, the problem is even more exacerbated at the state level, mostly in the Senate. Twenty years ago, there were 31 State Senators and 32 members of Congress, which meant that they each represented about the same number of people. But as Texas has gotten six more members of Congress after the last two Census counts, the gap between the size of a Senate district and a Congressional district is growing. Given the continued growth of Texas, it makes just as much sense to expand the size of the Legislature – yes, both chambers, for the same reasons as cited above. And also for the same reasons, it ain’t gonna happen. Look for me to write another post like this in another decade or so, and we can acknowledge the same outcome for the same reasons once again. Daily Kos has more.

Sidney Powell beats State Bar charges

Feb 25th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I’m upset about this on two levels.

A state district judge dismissed a Texas state bar disciplinary case against Dallas attorney Sidney Powell for her role in disputing the 2020 election results as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.

The State Bar of Texas filed a petition last March accusing Powell of professional misconduct by filing “frivolous” voter fraud lawsuits in four states, making false statements to a court and knowingly presenting false evidence. Powell filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona accusing election companies of vote manipulation.

The petition asked the court to decide the appropriate sanction, which could have ranged from reprimand to disbarment.

In the decision signed Wednesday, Andrea Bouressa, a Collin County district judge who heard the case filed in Dallas County, found “defects” with filings from Powell’s accuser, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline.

The commission, she ruled, mislabeled exhibits of evidence and failed to correct the errors when pointed out. That left two exhibits and those failed to meet the burden of the case, the judge said in granting Powell’s motion to dismiss the complaint.

[…]

Although the Texas court handed Powell a victory, her reputation continues to take a beating as evidence emerges in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News from Dominion Voting Systems.

Last week, the company revealed that Powell’s “evidence” for allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election stemmed from a bizarre email by an unidentified author who attributed her insight to an ability to “time travel in a semi-conscious state.”

Dominion said Fox executives harmed its business by knowingly allowing hosts and guests to voice baseless and false assertions linking it to nonexistent vote fraud.

In depositions, Fox host Maria Bartiromo called the email that Powell had provided “nonsense,” according to Dominion’s filing.

And David Clark, then Fox’s senior executive over weekend shows, said that — had he known that Powell’s “crazy” theories were based on that email — he “would not have allowed that claim to be aired.”

See here for the background, and be sure to read the judge’s decision, it’s short and to the point. I’m upset that Powell won’t be sanctioned for all the obvious reasons – it really seems impossible to hold terrible people to account for their terrible actions these days – but if the weight of the evidence did not support a finding of guilt, then so be it. What really chaps me is that the State Bar appears to have completely bungled this, by not including all the evidence they said they had, mislabeling the evidence they did include, and not taking the opportunity to fix their clearly flawed exhibits when given the chance. I’m trying to think of a reason for this that isn’t rank incompetence on their part, and I’m having a hard time doing so. Whatever the reason was, we the people deserved a hell of a lot better than this. Any remaining optimism I may have had for their case against Ken Paxton took a beating with this outcome. Reuters and Forbes have more.

Here come the new floodplain maps

Feb 25th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Coming soon to tell you if you are now in the floodplain.

When Harris County debuts a massive overhaul of its floodplain maps later this year, the Houston area will be the first in the country to rely on a more accurate assessment of homes and businesses at risk. The update is a direct response to Hurricane Harvey, a storm so ferocious it forced the region to change its understanding of how much rainfall to plan for and which neighborhoods could flood.

Harvey — the third 500-year storm in three years — overwhelmed Harris County with up to 47 inches of rain, exposing serious flaws in communicating flood risk. A county analysis found half of the 204,000 homes and apartments that flooded were outside the boundaries of the official flood risk zones mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

More than half of the damaged homes in the Tax Day storm in 2016 were outside the mapped floodplains, as were more than one-third of those during the Memorial Day flood in 2015.

On the new maps, most of Harris County’s floodplains will expand, reflecting a major effort to capture a more comprehensive understanding of flood risk.

FEMA’s existing floodplain maps show communities their risk of fluvial, or river flooding, when a bayou, creek or lake overflows its banks and floods nearby structures. What they do not show is the risk of urban flooding, when intense rainfall overwhelms stormwater systems regardless of proximity to a bayou or other channel.

The new floodplain maps for Harris County — originally set to be released in late 2022, but now expected in late this summer at the earliest — will be FEMA’s first maps to depict urban flooding. They also will reflect updated rainfall estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that better reflect the reality that storms have intensified in recent decades, data that had not been updated since the 1960s.

“This update is really a transformational way of thinking about floodplains,” said Tina Petersen, executive director at the Harris County Flood Control District. “This is the first program that FEMA has done with a partner like Harris County Flood Control District that’s really looking at innovative mapping tools trying to develop what is a much more comprehensive understanding of flood risk, beyond what has been done in the past.”

Communities across the United States are going through the process of updating their floodplain maps to align with NOAA’s higher rainfall estimates.

Harris County’s effort to map urban flood risk is its own innovation in response to Harvey, which demonstrated the limitations of the existing models, said Ataul Hannan, planning division director at the Harris County Flood Control District.

“That is a new approach,” Hannan said. “They have never done it anywhere in the United States.”

There’s a lot more to the story so go read the rest, or read the companion story that summarizes the main points. Lots of things change – the amount of rainfall needed to be called a 100-year or 500-year flood, changes to individual watersheds, future updates to include new flood mitigation projects – with a big one being that inclusion of urban flooding risk. Some number of people who are not now in a defined floodplain will be in the new maps, and some of them will not be happy about it. There will be a lot of discussion to be had afterwards.

On a related note.

Harris County Commissioners Court is expected next week to consider a plan for spending $750 million in flood mitigation funds, all or part of which could be earmarked for closing a funding gap in the county’s flood bond program.

A year after a calamitous 2017 storm inundated more than 200,000 homes and businesses, voters approved a $2.5 billion bond proposal to tackle more than 180 flood control projects across the county.

County officials expected to receive additional billions of dollars from state and federal governments to undertake those projects, but the money failed to materialize. The county two years ago said that had resulted in a $1.4 billion shortfall in the flood bond program.

The Harris County Flood Control District said it has been able to keep the flood bond projects on schedule thanks to the Flood Resilience Trust the county created in June 2021 to address the funding gap. The county budget office estimated that if no other federal or state aid comes through, the trust would be able to make up bond project shortfalls until about 2026.

The trust is funded by Harris County Toll Road Authority revenues.

Now, county officials could spend part of the $750 million allotment to close what remains of that funding gap.

That’s from last week, I was waiting to see what the post-approval story looked like but then decided to add this in to this post. You know the background here, if I start thinking about it too much my head will explode, so I’ll just leave this here. The county is allowed to do this as long as the projects in question are HUD-compliant since this is HUD money, and there seems to be unanimous support for it.

The Houston coyotes

Feb 25th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

No, not another sports team. A bit of wildlife that has found a home in the big city.

As the Houston region continues to develop over the next few years, wildlife removal experts say that interactions between coyotes and humans will steadily increase until their encounters are a more common occurrence.

Coyote sightings in Houston used to be rare and could be the subject of viral moments, like the video last year of a coyote scaling a fence and roof in a Richmond backyard.

Mark Browning from Houston’s Elite Wildlife Services said that years ago coyotes would normally only be seen on the outskirts of undeveloped properties. But as more areas get developed, there has been an uptick in calls for coyote removal services in more urbanized zones.

For instance, a few weeks ago Browning said that his company received a call about a coyote on the top floor of a downtown parking garage, calling the ordeal a “spectacle” with people afraid the coyote was going to bite someone. There were also recent reports of coyote sightings near Memorial Park in Houston.

“They are absolutely increasing, and they’ve become very urbanized,” Browning said. “They learn our habits, like when we take our trash out. And they really don’t have any natural enemies so there’s really nothing to control the population.”

Brad Gurrerra from Quality Pest & Wildlife also says he’s been hearing a lot more concerns from residents living in the Heights and the Woodlands about coyote sightings.

“Even myself, I’ve had two outdoor cats that have been killed by a coyote,” Gurrerra said. “And we live in a suburban neighborhood. They’re pretty much everywhere.”

[…]

The Humane Society recommends hazing to attempt to change coyote behavior, such as yelling and waving your arms while approaching coyotes and using noisemakers, projectiles and other repellents to attempt to keep coyotes afraid of humans. TPW also urges people to not feed coyotes, keep pet food and water inside, secure garbage and compost piles, keep fruit trees fenced or pick up fallen fruit and not feed feral cats that coyotes can prey upon.

You can click on the embedded image to go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife page on coyotes. While your odds of encountering one of these critters has increased as the urban landscape has overtaken their original habitat, they’re not likely to be much bother. As a smug urban elitist I would of course prefer to not have to think about wildlife at all, but this is the world we live in now. Learn to cohabitate, our space is going to get more crowded as we go forward.

The Denton experience with marijuana decriminalization

Feb 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s been a challenge.

Four months after a majority of voters approved Proposition B, Denton’s misdemeanor marijuana decriminalization ordinance continues to be a difficult issue for city staff to implement completely, according to City Manager Sara Hensley on Tuesday.

Hensley, who gave a presentation to the Denton City Council, said that since Nov. 1 — about a week before Denton voters passed Prop B — 52 citations and/or arrests were made by Denton police for misdemeanor marijuana possession or paraphernalia related to marijuana.

Of those 52 cases, Hensley pointed out that 23 arrests were for primary violations other than marijuana possession. Those violations include issues such as warrants, criminal trespass or public intoxication.

Hensley said that certain parts of the ordinance simply couldn’t be implemented because it violates state and federal law.

“I recognize the voters have spoken,” Hensley told council members Tuesday afternoon. “I understand that, but we don’t have the authority.”

Nick Stevens, a board member of the advocacy group Decriminalize Denton, said later Tuesday evening at the City Council meeting that what some council members and city staff are saying publicly is different than what they claimed privately.

Stevens also said the ordinance has become a political issue instead of a nonpartisan one, as indicated by the overwhelming majority of voters who approved the measure in November. He wondered why the city didn’t provide the demographic breakdown of those citations during Hensley’s presentation because historically, minorities have been unfairly targeted by law enforcement.

“The disappointing part — outside of the breaking local law — is not giving the demographics,” Stevens told the Denton Record-Chronicle.

The Record-Chronicle requested demographic information on the citations from the Denton police Tuesday afternoon.

“All of the information the City has to provide will be included in the City Manager’s presentation today to City Council,” the Denton Police Department media relations team said in an email Tuesday. “We do not have any additional information prior to them receiving that work session report.”

[…]

At Tuesday’s Denton City Council work session, Police Chief Doug Shoemaker was also on hand during Hensley’s presentation to answer questions and reassured council members that misdemeanor amounts of marijuana would continue to be a low priority for police. He also reaffirmed that the odor of marijuana wasn’t initiating probable cause and search and seizure issues, though it was part of the process in some cases.

Denton Municipal Judge Tyler Atkinson discussed the deferred adjudication process that is available to people who receive misdemeanor marijuana charges and how the municipal court does its best to work with offenders by lowering fines, offering community service and other opportunities.

Atkinson also mentioned that the court sends text messages to people to let them know about the process and how to expunge their records. The videos are also posted on YouTube.

“We’re the only city in the whole state that sends them out and [posts them] online,” Atkinson said.

After Hensley’s presentation, council member Jesse Davis mentioned that it has been an all-or-nothing-type situation with the decriminalization issue and suggested finding a “middle ground” by implementing parts of the ordinance that doesn’t violate state law.

In Hensley’s presentation, she pointed out that the City Council does have the discretion to amend the budget in regards to how city funds are spent.

For example, the Proposition B ordinance states no city funds will be used for THC testing of misdemeanor amounts of marijuana. But, it requires a council approval and not a voter one under the city charter, as Mayor Pro Tem Brian Beck pointed out in early December when he tried to get his fellow council members to pass a duplicate ordinance of Proposition B to give it the budgetary teeth it needed.

“I’m willing to talk about what we have in our authority to do,” Davis said regarding the budget and which part of the ordinance can be implemented. “It is fair. It is not fair for the voters to tell us to break the law. That is nonsense and not our job.”

Beck and fellow council members Vicki Byrd and Brandon Chase McGee encouraged city staff and other council members to follow the will of the voters and allow the courts to decide what can and can’t be implemented.

“I think we need to fully implement it and if the state slaps our hands back, we know where we are,” McGee said. “We’re answerable to the people. None of us got 70% of the votes. None of us. How often do we see that 70% pass anywhere? There is no reason not to do it, so let’s do it.”

A video of how to expunge one’s record in Denton is embedded in the story. I found this to be fascinating, and quite different from the experiences in Bell County and Hays County, not to mention the pre-vote conflicts in San Antonio. All of that was discussed in the story as well, so go read the rest. There is a legitimate question about what a City Council is supposed to do with a voter-passed ordinance that one can reasonably read to be in violation of state law, at least in part. The bigger issue here remains the fact that state and federal law are much stricter about marijuana than the public wants them to be. Cities can only nibble around the edges of that, and at their own peril in a state like Texas. The problem needs to be resolved at a higher level, and that’s a much more difficult thing to do.

ShotSpotter

Feb 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I’m more skeptical than not, but there is a way to make me less so.

Two years in, Houston’s ShotSpotter program has resulted in 5,450 alerts, 99 arrests and the seizure of 107 guns, but no real consensus on its value as a crime-fighting tool or even how to measure its success.

Critics say the numbers — just 19 percent of the gunfire alerts in the last 25 months even led to an offense report — do not justify the $3.5 million cost of the controversial tool. In the remaining cases, officers were dispatched based on the alerts but did not find any evidence, such as shell casings.

Authorities filed 126 charges related to ShotSpotter alerts, including one capital murder charge, according to Houston Police Department Assistant Chief Milton Martin, who presented an update to a City Council committee last week. Half of those charges involved misdemeanor offenses, most commonly the illegal discharge of a firearm in the city.

Not directly reflected in those statistics, Martin said, is the intelligence that HPD was able to gather from ShotSpotter data. Because residents do not always call 911 to report every gunshot they hear, the tool has allowed officers to map out areas where gunfire problems are the most severe and deploy its resources accordingly, he said.

“Just in the first year of operation, over 200 shell casings that we collected were linked to firearms that were used in other crimes in other parts of the city,” Martin said. “While that’s not an automatic ‘Oh, now we know who to arrest,’ it’s information that investigators did not have before.”

Some advocates, however, say the numbers do not justify the cost of the program: $3.5 million for a five-year contract from 2022 to 2027 at an annual price of approximately $74,000 per square mile.

“Only 20 percent of alerts result in an offense support, meaning that 80 percent of responses are a waste of public resources,” Christopher Rivera, outreach coordinator at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said. “I believe that we can use the $3.5 million…and put it into programs that actually reduce gun violence, like housing and health care and debt relief.”

[…]

Meanwhile, critics and studies of the system in other cities raise questions about the accuracy and efficacy of the gunfire detection tool.

Little consensus exists even among officials who have adopted the technology. In Texas, San Antonio canceled its contract in 2017, after just one year of operation, saying that ShotSpotter simply was not worth the money. Harris County officials, however, have called ShotSpotter a “godsend” for the Aldine area.

Chicago’s former Inspector General Joe Ferguson said Houston’s statistics so far are “in the same universe” as those in other parts of the country that have been subjected to criticism by experts.

The author of a 2021 report by Chicago’s Office of Inspector General, Ferguson found that ShotSpotter alerts rarely led to evidence of a gun-related crime and could result in biased policing behaviors. He cautioned Houston officials against making premature conclusions based on ShotSpotter data during an interview with the Chronicle.

“What was found in Chicago and has been found in other places is the false positive rate is over 50 percent,” Ferguson said. “And people don’t understand that. People assume things are worse than they are. That spawns fear, and fear spawns overreaction, both as a political matter and in terms of response in the field and on the street.”

At the same time, Ferguson applauded Houston’s incremental approach to implementing the program.

“The way that Houston is going about it is the way that these things should be approached. It started with a pilot program, it is focused, it generates the data, and the data is subjected to analysis and made publicly available,” he said. “But the results that they’ve gotten so far aren’t significantly better than what has been reported nationally.”

I thought I had written about ShotSpotter before, but my archives say otherwise. This article does a pretty good job of telling you what you need to know, and there was a CityCast Houston podcast episode from last January that also discussed it, if you want to know more. My sense about this is similar to how I feel about security cameras, which is that it sounds like it could be beneficial, and may have value in certain specific circumstances, but we need to be very rigorous about the data that we have for it and make decisions based on that data. Basically, does the data say this thing works as its proponents claim it does, which is to say that it reduces or helps solve crime at a certain level, or does it not? What even is a reasonable expectation given our investment, the context in which we are using it (e.g, in a high-crime area or just someplace where the locals are loudly clamoring for it regardless of need), and the experiences of other cities? We need to know that going in, and we need to be willing to turn it off if it’s not working as hoped. If we have all that in place, then I’m willing to give it a try. If not, then surely there are better uses of the money.

Dispatches from Dallas, February 24 edition

Feb 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

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

This week in Dallas area news, we now know the candidates for various races in the May elections in the Metroplex; staffing and evidence issues in the Dallas Police Department; and news from Dallas Museums. Also, from the border by way of the BBC, a fascinating short film about a Texas town that is now part of Mexico.

Know Your Book Banners: Families Engaged for Effective Education. This is from a new substack newsletter called Anger & Clarity that focuses on Texas educational issues. I’ve found it worthwhile, but this edition on the book banners, many of whom are in North Texas, was particularly interesting.
North Texas municipal elections are coming on May 6 and the filing date for candidates has passed. The big news in Dallas is that Mayor Johnson will be running unopposed for his next term. Local coverage: Filing deadline: Here’s who’s running for Dallas mayor, City Council in 2023 [Archive link]: Meet Your Official Candidates in the May Municipal and School Board Elections from D Magazine and Who’s running for two Dallas ISD school board seats [Archive link]; Here are the 30 candidates running for Fort Worth City Council and Who’s running for Fort Worth-area school boards and TCC? from Fort Worth Report. Some of the ISD board names in the Fort Worth area may be familiar to folks who follow school-related news topics.
Dallas police look to recruit, retain officers in new ways as ‘hiring crisis’ endures [Archive link]. The usual suspects are an issue: low pay and perceived lack of safety compared to the suburbs; unfunded pension liabilities; national issues with police careers; and of course the state mandates for police funding. There’s an interesting graph about attrition vs. intake along with the article. In addition to local recruitment, apparently DPD is recruiting in Puerto Rico to attract officers: Dallas Police Return to Puerto Rico for Recruitment (from July 2022).
5 things to know about Dallas police’s 52,000 untagged files and how it could impact cases [Archive link]. While we’re on the subject of DPD: here’s a big screwup where they’ve violated state law on evidence storage. If prosecutors don’t turn over evidence in cases to the defense because it’s been improperly stored, that means defendants can’t get a fair trial. And in some cases, it looks like evidence has been deleted; that evidence could not only prove a case for prosecutors, it could exonerate defendants. Plus it turns out that DPD hadn’t told the DA or the council: Dallas DA wasn’t aware of 52,000 improperly stored police files before The News’ report [Archive link].
City Of Dallas Working On Plan To Legalize Card Rooms. The zoning issues are interesting to me, and reminiscent of some of the issues around keeping the Heights dry that I experienced living there 20 years ago. The rest of it sounds like standard “make it legal & regulate it vs criminalizing it with all the trouble crime brings” discussion that goes with sexually oriented businesses, alcohol in dry areas, and other “moral” issues in Texas.
The border town that ‘forgot’ it was part of the US. A 10-minute subtitled video from the BBC about the town of Rio Rico, which was in the US until a change to the Rio Grande put it in Mexico. Featuring corporate malfeasance in the form of changing the flow of the river (hence, the border), immigration law, and Al Capone.
Texas’ “anti-woke” policies cost taxpayers millions. Axios follows up on the state’s decision to force a boycott “woke” financial institutions that won’t invest in the energy business. Unsurprisingly, it’s costing Texans a lot of money to subsidize the political stances of Republican state officials instead of letting the free market do its thing.
How the UNT Health Science Center Helps Artists and Performers Get Back on Stage. Much needed free medical care for musicians in Fort Worth. This is a proof of concept and they expect to fundraise to make it permanent.
First woman appointed director of SMU’s Meadows Museum. The Meadows is a gem. If you visit Dallas and find yourself in the SMU area with a couple of hours to spare, you could do a lot worse than spending your time exploring its collection of Spanish art.
Also in museum news: The Reimagining the Dallas Museum of Art International Design Competition. “The DMA’s 1984 building by Edward Larrabee Barnes was designed for a different Dallas, a different time, and a different society. Conceived among warehouses and undeveloped city lots, the austere Modernist design in Indiana limestone forefronted elegance and quiet dignity. But in a different cultural context, with changing visitor expectations, with access to art now an issue of equity, diversity and inclusion, and with ambitious new skyscrapers and parks emerging around the Museum, Barnes’ capacious two-block campus can be read as unwelcoming, off-putting, and defensive. Visitors find the complex difficult to navigate, while inflexible and dated galleries have resulted in iconic artworks languishing in storage.” So apparently they’re going to replace it and this is the first stage of a contest to find an architect to plan the work.
From the arts in the greater Houston area, featuring a particular interest of mine: Viols Blooming in Texas. There’s an early music consort for teens in Humble! For those of you in the Houston area, if you’re interested in listening to this kind of thing, check out Houston Early Music, which is mentioned in the article.

Harris County settles Juul lawsuit

Feb 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From the inbox:

Christian Menefee

Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee announced a settlement of the county’s lawsuit against e-cigarette company JUUL Labs, Inc. over claims that JUUL deceptively marketed its products to children. The county received the second largest settlement for a local government in the nation.

“I’m proud of this outcome settling our lawsuit against JUUL. We’re bringing real money to the county to ensure we’re protecting our youth from e-cigarette use,” said Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee. “This case was always about reducing youth nicotine addiction in our communities. I want kids across Harris County to go on to live long, healthy lives. That’s one of many reasons why I plan to do everything I can to protect public health.”

In 2021, Harris County became the first governmental entity in Texas to file suit against JUUL. Harris County’s settlement is part of a global settlement with JUUL Labs, Inc resolving numerous cases brought by government entity plaintiffs, including school districts, cities, and counties. The distribution of Harris County’s settlement funds will be decided by Commissioners Court.

See here for the background. Googling around, I saw a news item from September about Juul settling with the state of Texas, which was part of a larger class action settlement, and a news item from December about a $1.7 billion settlement of over 5000 lawsuits nationwide. This was separate from all of those, which I confirmed with the County Attorney Office. I was also told that the settlement amount was $20 million, which was discussed at this week’s Commissioners Court meeting. And now you know what I know.

In support of Crystal Mason

Feb 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Hoping for the best.

The same month Tarrant County officials announced the creation of an election integrity task force, a group of 14 bipartisan prosecutors threw their weight behind an effort to acquit the woman at the center of a high-profile voting fraud conviction in the county.

Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County resident, was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election. Mason, who was on supervised release for a federal felony, was ineligible to vote, and while her ballot was never counted, Tarrant County prosecutors charged her with illegal voting. Mason has maintained that she did not know she was ineligible and her case has gained national attention among the media and civil liberty advocates.

Now, Mason is appealing her conviction for a second time in front of the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, after the state’s highest appeals court told those judges to reconsider their previous decision.

Their decision did not take into account whether Mason knew she was ineligible.

A bipartisan group of former state and federal prosecutors, organized by the States United Democracy Center, filed an amicus brief Feb. 14 in support of Mason’s appeal. Among the signees is Sarah Saldaña, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas and former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I had this visceral reaction to the injustice manifested in the decision, No. 1, to prosecute, but also the ultimate conviction,” Saldaña said. “It’s obvious that this whole issue of intent was not charged in the jury charge. … That to me was very offensive, particularly as a former prosecutor, and particularly as the principal decision maker in North Texas, at the time when I was U.S. attorney.”

Mason’s intent is a key aspect of the amicus brief’s argument. The signees call her prosecution “outside the bounds of any reasonable exercise of prosecutorial power,” and point to wording in Texas’ illegal voting statute that requires voters have “actual knowledge” that they were committing a crime by voting.

Without enforcing the actual knowledge requirement, the signees argue Texas voters will be afraid to vote at all for fear of accidentally running afoul of voting laws.

“Ms. Mason’s prosecution sends the troubling message that casting a provisional ballot carries a serious risk, with a consequent chilling effect on the use of provisional ballots,” the prosecutors wrote. “This chill would likely disproportionately impact minority voters, who tend to cast more provisional ballots.”

See here and here for some background. There’s hope after that CCA ruling, but even if her conviction is overturned, Tarrant County could choose to try her again. And then there’s this:

Statewide, efforts by Republican lawmakers to make illegal voting a felony again are gaining steam. It’s currently a misdemeanor, after lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 in 2021; the bill, among other things, lowered the penalty for illegal voting conduct.

Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, filed House Bill 397 to reverse that change. Sen. Bryan Hughes, who represents East Texas, filed a companion bill in the Senate, which was referred to the state affairs committee for review Feb. 15.

One of the Republican legislative goals for this session is to ensure there is a steady stream of Crystal Masons in the future. Overturning this conviction can’t do anything about that. Oh, and this is what actual voter suppression looks like. There are other ways to do it as well, but when it happens it’s very clear what it is.

Tell me you have no evidence of voter suppression without telling me you have no evidence of voter suppression

Feb 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

Hilarious.

Houston furniture magnate Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale has launched a website in hopes of gathering evidence of voter disenfranchisement in Harris County’s November 2022 election.

The initiative follows the Gallery Furniture owner’s lawsuit filed last week accusing the Harris County Elections Administrator’s Office of refusing to turn over public records related to the election.

GOP lawmakers including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have called for Harris County to redo its November election based on claims of ballot paper shortages, though they have not provided any evidence or estimate of disenfranchised voters. McIngvale, who was a major donor supporting Republican candidates, including County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s opponent Alexandra del Moral Mealer, now appears to be searching for just that.

The website, called Hard to Vote, leads with a recorded message from McIngvale: “Do you believe you were denied the opportunity to vote in the November 2022 election? I’ve heard reports of machines that didn’t work, ballot shortages, voting locations suddenly closing. If you experienced difficulties or felt unjustly treated, we want to hear your story.”

Voters can fill out a form to share their voting experiences, upload evidence and agree to be filmed for “upcoming social media or commercial purposes.”

McIngvale said Tuesday he believes Harris County voters were disenfranchised based on reports of paper shortages, machine malfunctions and polling locations that did not open or close on time. He has spoken with plenty of those disenfranchised voters himself, he said.

“Customers come in and tell me that all the time,” McIngvale said. “They were turned away at one polling place and they gave up. A lot of them just went to another polling place. But a lot of them were disenfranchised by not having the first place open and ready to go like it should have been. It’s not that hard.”

I’m sure they all have tears in their eyes and call him “sir”, too. Not to be needlessly pedantic here – believe me, this is extremely needed pedanticism – but if they went to another location then by definition their vote wasn’t suppressed because they did in fact vote. This is why we have so many voting locations on Election Day, precisely because stuff sometimes happens. I’m sure all the lawyers for those whiny crybaby loser candidates will be thrilled to hear all this, as well as whatever other fanciful stories people contribute to your new fanfic site. You can see here for some background and here for Judge Hidalgo’s latest response to “the mattress guy” if you want. But really, a good horse laugh is all you need.

(Is it possible there are a few people who actually didn’t vote because of the paper-outage delays? Sure, maybe a couple. Anything is possible. It would be a shame if that happened, though I’d still want to know how long they waited before they gave up and why they didn’t or couldn’t go to one of the 750 other locations to vote, but it could have happened and it would be unfortunate and we would need to do better next time. It would also be nowhere close to “voter suppression”, especially on a scale that could have affected even the closest race. And the fact that the furniture dealer is openly looking for any such example, especially those that include people who did actually vote, shows just how desperate and ridiculous and baseless these Republican charges have been all along.)

Texas blog roundup for the week of February 20

Feb 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Texas Progressive Alliance is recovering from the Presidents Day sales madness as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

It’s definitely Colin Allred Speculation Season

Feb 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Keep the articles coming.

Rep. Colin Allred

In 2018, Colin Allred beat Republican Pete Sessions to flip a Dallas congressional district from red to blue.

Now the former NFL player and Hillcrest High School standout is considering challenging incumbent Ted Cruz for Senate in 2024, according to 11 Democrats and activists contacted by The Dallas Morning News. The move would put him in line to make history, or become the next candidate in a long string of Democratic Party disappointments.

Allred has been talking to strategists, donors and supporters across the state to determine if running against Cruz makes sense. At the same time, his media office has been in overdrive, distributing updates about his congressional work and stressing his bipartisan approach to problem-solving.

[…]

Other potential Democratic contenders include former San Antonio Mayor and former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and former state Rep. and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Allred worked under Castro at the Housing Department.

Already campaigning is businessman and former Midland City Council member John Love.

On the GOP side, Cruz told The Dallas Morning News last week that he would focus on running for reelection instead of another campaign for president.

See here and here for some background. I generally assume that these candidate speculation stories don’t happen without the potential candidate’s knowledge and blessing, if not actual participation. I don’t mean the “other potential candidates include” stuff, for which I’ll get to in a minute, but the “Person X is considering a run for Y office” stories, where there’s a main character and everyone but that main character talks about their political standing and potential future. Rep. Allred declined to comment for the story, as per the accepted norms and practices for this kind of thing (boilerplate statements about focusing on their job at hand, not thinking about next year, keeping all options open, etc etc etc, are within the bounds of allowed responses), but I feel confident saying he knew about it before he was contacted. He or someone employed by him is likely to have been the original source for the story. Doesn’t mean he will eventually run, just that this is what laying the groundwork for such a run often looks like.

As for the “other potential candidates” section, we know about Julian Castro, who among other things serves as the clear “just because you’re the one spotlighted in this kind of story doesn’t mean you’ll actually run” counterexample. I’ll need to see at least two more of those stories about Julian Castro before I’ll take them seriously. John Love announced his candidacy for Senate in 2020 but dropped out without filing. He has a campaign website this time, so if nothing else he should be mentioned in these stories going forward. I’ll need to check the Q1 campaign finance reports to see if he’s begun to raise money. As for Mayor Turner, that’s the first time I’ve seen his name mentioned in this context. I have heard that he was considering a run for SD15 in the event John Whitmire is elected Mayor, so maybe this is some confusion over that? I can’t see him doing this – he won’t have any time to campaign or fundraise before the end of the year, and especially if an Allred or a Castro is running that would be a huge disadvantage. I’ll be surprised if I continue to see his name connected to this race. But maybe I’m wrong, so leave a comment or send me an email if you know better.

One more thing:

Former Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Jonathan Neerman said Cruz would beat Allred. He said that Allred is largely unknown to most Texans and that Democrats aren’t in a position to boost his candidacy.

More Republicans vote in Texas statewide elections than Democrats, and the GOP is said by many consultants to have an advantage of over a million votes.

“If Colin were to call me and ask for my advice, I would say, ‘You’re in a safe seat. Build up seniority, and if the Democrats take back control, try to become a chairman,’” Neerman said. “I don’t think he has the ability to beat Ted Cruz on a statewide basis.”

I doubt Mr. Neerman reads this blog, and I would not take the word of a professional adversary in these matters, but that advice he’d give to Rep. Allred is basically identical to the case against his candidacy that I laid out in that Castro post above. If he were to ask me for my advice, I would never tell him not to run, but I would spell it out that way as the choice he has to make. We’ll see what he chooses.

Paxton makes his plea to the Lege

Feb 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s more accurate to say that one of his assistants pleaded for him while he mostly sat silent, but whatever.

The only criminal involved

Days after the Texas house speaker openly opposed using taxpayer dollars to settle a whistleblower suit against Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, a top agency lawyer said avoiding the payout would only end up costing the state more.

“It’s ultimately in the interest of the state from a financial perspective” to pay the settlement now, Assistant Attorney General Chris Hilton told a panel of House budget writers. “Financially speaking, there is no upside for the state to this case; even total vindication at trial results in a significant expenditure.”

Hilton said the agency has already racked up $600,000 in legal fees fighting the lawsuit. The agency is required to use outside lawyers in the case because of the conflict of interest, which has driven up the cost, Hilton said.

[…]

Paxton, a Republican, was present Tuesday but deferred to his team for most answers.

State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, D-Houston, asked Paxton directly whether he would use his own campaign dollars. Hilton interjected, noting that the lawsuit is against the agency, not Paxton personally.

“There is no whistleblower case where any individual has paid anything because the individual is not liable under the terms of the statute,” Hilton said. He added, “Under the terms of the settlement, there is no admission of fault or liability or wrongdoing by any party.”

Under the state’s election code, Paxton is allowed to use campaign funds to cover his legal defense. Since he was sued in his official capacity, those costs are not considered a “personal use.”

It’s a different scenario than in 2016 when Paxton wanted to use out-of-state gifts to cover his legal defense in the ongoing securities fraud case against him. The Texas Ethics Commission at the time warned Paxton he would violate the law if he used those funds because the accusations in that case did not stem from his officeholder duties.

On Thursday, state prosecutors said the Department of Justice had transferred the most recent corruption case out of the hands of federal attorneys in Texas and into the Washington-based Public Integrity Section. The reason for the shift was unclear, though Paxton’s attorneys had requested it.

Tuesday’s budget hearing was the first time Paxton has faced lawmakers since the settlement was announced. Some House members seemed resigned about their options.

Texas Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, and Rep. Steve Allison, R-San Antonio, said the state seems to lose no matter if they pay now or after a hypothetical trial concludes.

“Even if you win, there is no ‘win,’” Spiller said, referring to how the state would still owe outside lawyers.

“We’re kind of in the proverbial rock and a hard place,” Allison said.”Either we pay $3.3 million now or pay far more than that either in additional legal expenses or (because of) an unfortunate result.”

State Rep. Mary González, an El Paso Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, questioned whether Paxton is acting in the public’s interest.

She noted Paxton has declined to represent some state agencies, a key duty of his office, leaving them to pay for outside legal counsel out of their own budgets and at an additional cost for taxpayers. An ongoing case by a conservative activist against the Texas Ethics Commission, for instance, has cost the state more than $1 million.

Hilton said that occurs only in a “tiny percentage” of cases, about 60 in the last year, most of which he said were because the agencies had asked for their own counsel. Others were because the statute did not allow the office to represent an agency, Hilton said, and a smaller amount were because a case conflicted with the state’s obligation to “uphold the Constitution.”

A lot of similarity to what the whistleblowrs’s attorneys were saying, though without any reference to their quest for justice against a crook, as that would have been super awkward. I’m beginning to wonder if any member of the Legislature is going to arrive at my proposal to pay off the settlement and then cut Paxton’s budget by a commensurate amount or if I’m going to need to hire a lobbyist to explain it to them. It’s not that hard, y’all! You can do it.

The Statesman adds a few extra bits.

Hilton argued the cost to taxpayers could exceed $3.3 million if the lawsuit were to continue, in part because the case is procedurally in the early stages, although “it has been pending for a while.” He said the discovery process has yet to begin and that undertaking is lengthy, intensive and costly.

“It strikes me that we’re kind of between the proverbial rock and a hard place in that we either pay the $3.3 million now, or pay far more than that, either in additional legal expenses or an unfortunate result,” said subcommittee member Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro.

[…]

When asked by lawmakers Tuesday what would happen if the Legislature does not approve the settlement payment, Hilton said it’s “difficult to predict” exactly what the next steps would be.

“Because it’s pending litigation, I don’t want to get into too many details,” Hilton said. “Under the terms of the settlement, it is contingent upon all necessary approvals.”

[…]

On Tuesday, Paxton also asked House lawmakers for additional money in the next biennium to hire more staff and to offer competitive pay.

Paxton said in recent years the agency has faced increasing turnover due to staff leaving for other state jobs that in some cases can nearly double their salaries at the attorney general’s office.

Maybe part of the problem is that Paxton is a terrible manager in addition to being the kind of corrupt boss that eight of his trusted lieutenants felt the need to sue, I dunno. My advice to the Lege for how to handle this stands. At the very least please don’t give him any more money. Surely by now we have all the evidence we need that he can’t be trusted with it.

The fentanyl vaccine

Feb 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This is not actually new, but this story just came out and I hadn’t noticed the coverage before, so I’m catching up.

To combat the fentanyl epidemic in the United States, researchers at the University of Houston have created a fentanyl vaccine that could help prevent overdoses. They aim to test the vaccine in a human trial within the next year.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid drug that kills hundreds of Texans every year, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The vaccine will need FDA approval before people can use it. According to Johns Hopkins University, that process can take five to 15 years, and sometimes longer. The process can be sped up during a public health emergency where no alternate treatments exist. The first COVID-19 vaccines were created, tested and given emergency use authorization by the FDA in under a year.

In a study published last year in the journal Pharmaceutics, the Houston researchers reported that their vaccine triggered production of antibodies against fentanyl in rats and decreased the amount of fentanyl in rats’ brains. The researchers’ vaccine received praise from Governor Greg Abbott, who visited the University of Houston last year to congratulate the team.

[…]

Doctors can prescribe maintenance medications like methadone and buprenorphine for those recovering from opioid addiction. These drugs are opioids, but they can reduce opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

The effectiveness of these medications depends on how they’re made, the opioid being misused and access to the medications. Recovering patients can relapse after they leave treatment and are especially vulnerable to overdose deaths, said Colin Haile, a research associate professor at the University of Houston.

“Clearly, the medications that we have to address opioid use disorder and overdose are not working,” said Haile, who led the team that created the vaccine.

Haile’s team created a vaccine that could tell the human body to produce antibodies against fentanyl. If a vaccinated person consumes fentanyl, the antibodies could attach to the drug, preventing it from getting to the brain and inducing a “high” or potential overdose. The fentanyl would remain in the blood, eventually passing through the kidneys and out the body.

In the published study, Haile’s team said the vaccine successfully produced antibodies against fentanyl in rats. The vaccine also blocked one of the effects of fentanyl: pain relief. Compared to unvaccinated rats, vaccinated rats also had decreased fentanyl levels in their brains when fentanyl was administered 20 weeks after their first vaccination.

“The effect was pretty incredible,” Haile said. “I’ve never seen anything like this, ever.”

The vaccine produced antibodies that attached to fentanyl but not to methadone or buprenorphine, meaning that vaccinated people could potentially still take those medications to treat opioid addiction. The antibodies also did not bind to morphine or oxycodone, two other opioids.

Like I said, this isn’t new – UH put out a press release last November to tout the accomplishment. There are other vaccines in the research pipeline – this one wasn’t the first to be discovered, but it has some differences from the others out there. Researchers are going to put it into phase 1 human trials soon, with the goal of making the vaccine available to the public in the hopefully not-too-distant future. It sure has the potential to do a lot of good when it’s ready. Kudos to all for the work.

What will it take to keep those ten appellate court benches we won in 2018?

Feb 21st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As you may recall, Democrats won a ton of Appellate Court races in 2018. Ten of them, in fact, five each on the First and Fourteenth Courts of Appeals, the first such victories since winning a lone bench in 2008. These victories gave Dems a 5-4 majority on each court, and it seemed there would be more to come. We did (barely) win two of the four races in 2020, with one exceedingly close loss and one less close loss, but we went 0 for 4 this year. In 2024, all ten of those benches we won will be on the ballot again. As the title says, what do we need to do to hold onto them?

The appellate courts cover multiple counties. For the First and Fourteenth, those counties are Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galveston, Grimes, Harris, Waller, and Washington. I’m sure you can guess which of those favor Democrats and are needed for Team Blue to win. I’m going to look back at the four most recent elections to see if we can put some numbers on that.

I put all the county numbers for these races into a spreadsheet, which is my default starting move for a post like this, especially when I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with it. After a minute, I decided to go with the obvious, which was to separate the counties into those that are good for the Dems and those that are not, and see what that told me. We start with 2016. I think the methodology will be clear.

2016 bad counties – 105K to 112K
2016 Harris + FB – 22K to 67K

The “bad counties” are the eight red ones. What I did was add up the Republican and Democratic votes for each candidate in those races – there were four that year, as there were this year – and then took the difference. What you see above is the range for each, so the vote deficit for these counties goes from 105K to 112K. I’m just eyeballing everything and not being too particular about it, this is close enough for these purposes. I then did the same thing for Harris and Fort Bend counties, to see how big the Democratic surplus was in each race. Again, you can see the result.

Obviously, the Democratic candidates lost the four races. The closest they got was trailing by about 39K votes, and the farthest apart was about 89K votes. No big mystery here. The same is true for 2018, except with the exact opposite result:

2018 bad counties – 83K to 90K
2018 Harris + FB – 121K to 174K

Two things are different in 2018. One is that every Democratic candidate won Fort Bend County in 2018, by over 12K votes in each case. While Hillary Clinton carried Fort Bend County by 17K votes, downballot candidates didn’t do as well, and all four Dems trailed there by a little bit. The other difference is that the surplus in Harris and Fort Bend far exceeded the deficit from the eight “bad” counties, and all ten candidates won.

You might notice at this point that the range of outcomes in Harris plus Fort Bend is quite wide in both years, much wider than the range for the red counties. You may also recall the vast hand-wringing campaign about the scurrilous effects of straight-ticket voting in those years, in which Democrats swept Harris County. How awful it was for democracy that these swarms of Democratic voters were mindlessly hitting one button and putting all these non-judges onto our benches. If you don’t know or don’t remember all of the things I had to say about this line of thinking back then, you can probably surmise it from what I’ve just said here. The numbers tell the tale. ‘Nuff said.

2020 bad counties – 122K to 127K
2020 Harris + FB – 108K to 156K

You might have thought in looking at the numbers for 2016 and 2018 that a split result could occur, given the wide ranges. That’s exactly what happened in 2020, as noted above. I spent a lot of time obsessing over these four super-close races two years ago, and don’t have anything new to say. Go read those posts if you haven’t or if you don’t remember them.

2022 bad counties – 100K to 102K
2022 Harris + FB – 9K to 38K

And here we are for this year. You may note that now two elections into the no-straight-ticket-voting era, the range of outcomes in both sets of these counties is the smallest. Indeed, three of the four races were actually in the Dem +34K to +38K range, with one outlier. For whatever the reason fewer people split their tickets, even though they had no choice but to vote (or not) in every single race. Please take a moment to imagine me with a very smug look on my face.

Okay, we can move on now. The lesson we can learn from all this is that we need to maximize the Democratic vote in Harris County if we want to win these races. Not exactly rocket science, but the data is as clear as it could be. The cumulative deficit from the “bad” counties has been edging upward, but the Democratic potential in Harris County – even all by itself, though Fort Bend should be an asset as well – is more than enough to overcome it. Look, Biden won Harris County by 218K in 2020. MJ Hegar, who didn’t do nearly as well, still won Harris by 136K. Even in 2020, the two losing candidates would have won with Hegar’s margin.

Which brings me to the second point of interest, which is really hammering the message home about voting all the way down the ballot. I will show in another post that the undervote rate doesn’t correlate with partisan performance, at least in county judicial races, but with the appellate courts including all those Republican counties, it’s imperative to maximize those margins.

Again, that’s the case now as well. Beto won Harris County by 105K in 2022. With that margin, three of the four Dem candidates would have won by a couple thousand votes. It would have been a tossup for William Demond, I didn’t do the math more rigorously than what you see here, but he might have won. The potential was there.

Now, given the vast sum of money spent by wingnut richies to smear Democratic judges, it may be that was at least as big a challenge as undervoting was. I don’t have the data to make a judgment about that, but the possibility certainly exists. All we can do about that is fight fire with fire. I don’t think we’ll face that kind of concentrated spending in 2024, but it will be a Presidential year, so anything goes.

Two other things can make a difference as well. One is Fort Bend, which was positive for Dems in 2018 and 2020, but not in other years. Dems were down 2K to 7K in 2016, and down 2K to plus less than 1K in 2022. In the two good years, Dems carried Fort Bend by over 10K votes in each race. That helps, and I have hope it can be better than that in 2024.

Of the bright red counties, six of them are small, and while they have steadily become redder over the years, the net effect is fairly small. The two big red counties are Brazoria and Galveston, and they have acted distinctly differently over the last few elections:

Brazoria:

32K to 36K in 2012
33K to 35K in 2016
33K to 35K in 2020

23K to 26K in 2018
25K to 26K in 2022

I went back to 2012 to add in another Presidential year data point. We have held our ground in Brazoria, which is educated and suburban enough to show a few tiny signs of moving a bit blue recently, at least at the top. I would suggest that it’s worth the effort to put some money into the Dem-friendly areas of Brazoria in 2024, for the purpose of squeezing out as many Dem votes as possible. If we can at least keep the deficit here from growing – or better yet, if we can shrink it be a couple thousand votes – we can take a bit of pressure off of Harris and Fort Bend.

At the other end of the scale is the problem known as Galveston:

23K to 27K in 2012
33K to 36K in 2016
41K to 42K in 2020

25K to 28K in 2018
32K to 34K in 2022

Galveston keeps on getting redder, and it’s big enough and growing enough for that to have an effect. I don’t have any great insight here, nor do I have much confidence that Dems could take action to mitigate against this. Maybe I’m wrong about that, I don’t know. I just want to point out the problem, so we know what we’re up against.

So there you have it. The path to retaining these judges is there. We know what to do, and we know where the opportunities and dangers are. It’s a matter of execution from here.

Why should Ken Paxton’s whistleblowers suffer for his sins?

Feb 21st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

That’s the question their lawyers ask in a DMN op-ed.

The only criminal involved

The whistleblower suit is currently pending at the Texas Supreme Court on appeal of an esoteric argument made by the attorney general. Recently, the Office of the Attorney General and the whistleblowers reached a settlement where the whistleblowers would receive $3.3 million to compensate them for lost wages, compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees incurred in the 2-year-old court battle.

The Texas Legislature must now decide whether to approve payment of the settlement. If the Legislature does not approve payment, the case will return to court, taxpayers will pay millions more in attorneys’ fees and even more for damages and plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees if, as expected, the whistleblowers win a jury verdict. The attorney general’s office has already paid its private lawyers approximately $500,000 in attorneys’ fees and the parties have yet to even conduct discovery because of the appeal.

Some have criticized the settlement as “hush money” or argued that it would prevent the public from learning the details related to the accusations. This is incorrect. The whistleblowers have already provided tremendous detail in their 129-page lawsuit, which is a public document. Also, the settlement does not prohibit the whistleblowers from discussing the case or cooperating with law enforcement.

The suggestion that the whistleblowers should be forced to continue their lawsuit so discovery in the suit can be used to investigate the attorney general’s conduct is also unfair. The whistleblowers did their part. They reported illegal conduct to law enforcement and, in return, lost their careers. It is law enforcement’s job to investigate these allegations, which it appears they continue to do. Likewise, the Legislature has tremendous authority to demand documents and testimony from Paxton and those in his office, but it has not.

Why should the whistleblowers, who have already sacrificed their employment and already spent more than two years in court, be asked to spend even more resources and time to investigate the alleged conduct, when the FBI and the Texas Legislature have a mandate and countless resources available to do so?

See here and here for some background. The assertion about the Lege holding Paxton accountable aside – you probably heard my guffaw from the comfort of your home – they do made a decent point. That said, it is well within the Lege’s purview to approve the settlement and then cut the AG’s budget by an equal amount, which is what I would argue. We’ve heard some tough talk from some legislators and from Speaker Phelan. It’s all talk for now, and their track record isn’t too encouraging. But there is a clear path that does honor what the whistleblowers did – and by the way, y’all should keep on talking about it, in lots of detail and in front of crowds, as often as you can – while still exerting a modicum official disapproval on the waste of space known as Ken Paxton. It’s on the Republicans in the Lege to take it.

Some rocky times for Texas’ cryptocurrency miners

Feb 21st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Their boundless optimism never wavers, however.

Cryptocurrency miners began flocking to Texas in the past five years, drawn by the state’s low energy costs and relaxed regulations. As they began setting up shop, lawmakers and local officials were touting the boom as an economic lifeline for the state’s struggling rural communities where many landed.

Nearly 30 crypto mines set up shop in Texas, big data centers that consume tremendous amounts of energy to run banks of computers humming away to mine new bitcoins.

But now, many — if not most — are struggling to stay afloat amid the plummeting value of the commodity they create and soaring electricity costs.

“Bitcoin miners are operating under the very slimmest of margins right now,” said Lee Bratcher — president of the nonprofit Texas Blockchain Council. “There are not many bitcoin miners that are making profits similar to what we would have seen. The bitcoin mining industry, as a whole, is tightening the belt.”

That’s a big turnaround from 2021, when bitcoin’s value peaked at $68,000 and miners collectively earned more than $60 million a day, according to data from Blockchain.com. By the end of 2022, the value had plummeted to less than $17,000 — and miners’ take was $10 million a day. As a result, mining companies that borrowed millions to set up during the bull run now are facing uncertain futures. Several have gone bankrupt. Others are trying to sell off assets. Some have started returning equipment to bankers who financed it.

Shares in Riot Platforms Inc., which operates the state’s largest bitcoin mine northeast of Austin, are down about 60 percent from this time last year. They closed Thursday at $6.13.

Still, many in the crypto mining industry and those who support it remain optimistic it can weather the downturn, saying that it provides a side benefit for Texas as a means of managing the state’s electrical grid, which can also be an occasional source of substantial revenue for the mining companies.

[…]

[Bratcher] estimated that bitcoin mining created about 2,000 direct and 20,000 indirect jobs statewide.

“It’s still contributing to the Texas economy at a pretty significant clip,” he said. “The miners are still following through on their aspirations to be good citizens and good corporate citizens.”

Opponents, though, have decried crypto miners as profiteering on the state’s electrical grid while generating a dubious product.

Ed Hirs, an energy fellow and economics lecturer at the University of Houston, said crypto enables bad actors to avoid local and state taxes and hide activities when engaging in criminal activities. And bitcoin miners, he said, have been striking moneymaking deals with the state’s struggling power grid to buy energy at low rates to make bitcoins.

“They remind me of used car salesmen,” he said during a recent interview.

[…]

Murtuza Jadliwala, an associate professor who taught an undergraduate class on cryptocurrency at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said he supports research into the “groundbreaking” blockchain technology — a digital ledger that enables bitcoin by recording the history of transactions. But he’s not a fan of bitcoin itself.

“Do we need cryptocurrencies in our life? I don’t think so,” he said. “There are already good forms of currencies that humans have gotten used to.”

As part of his academic research, Jadiwala has interviewed state comptrollers around the nation to assess economic arguments for bitcoin mining.

“From the states’ perspective, I presume bitcoin mining can be profitable as a business,” he said. “In Texas, we already have pollution and a climate crisis, and on top of it you’re creating this additional pressure on a delicate energy ecosystem. Is it worth it? It might have been worth it if it’s basically doing something good for humanity. I personally don’t see that.”

The Texas cryptominers’ problems mirror those elsewhere, which I hope isn’t too much of a surprise to anyone. But the fall of FTX a few months ago, which is one cause of the current woes but by no means all of them, didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm, so there’s no reason to believe that the “we just have to ride this out” mentality is going anywhere. Much of the growth of cryptomining in Texas has been in rural areas, and I continue to wonder what will happen if the gravy train derails. Maybe if things slow down that will answer some of the questions about electricity use that have been raised. Until then, I’m just going to keep an eye on this. I remain highly skeptical but oddly fascinated by the whole thing.

Fifth Circuit again takes Paxton off the hook for testifying in abortion funds’ lawsuit

Feb 20th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s like deja vu all over again.

The only criminal involved

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will not have to testify in court as part of a lawsuit over whether abortion funds can help people access the procedure in states where it’s still legal.

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday overruled an order from U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman for Paxton to appear, finding that he should have first ruled on Paxton’s motion to dismiss and that plaintiffs had not proven “exceptional circumstances” existed that would require his testimony. Paxton has argued the court should toss the suit because he has sovereign immunity, a legal principle that protects state officers and agencies from lawsuits.

[…]

Attorneys general rarely testify, as their office’s lawyers are typically able to explain the high-ranking official’s viewpoint and legal argument.

In its ruling Tuesday, the panel of Republican-appointed judges sided with Paxton, who had argued that it would be unduly burdensome for him to testify and that he did not have any unique knowledge of his office’s enforcement policies.

“The fact that a high-ranking official talks to his constituents does not ipso facto mean he also has ample free time for depositions,” the panel wrote in its ruling Tuesday, referencing Paxton’s public statements. “It is entirely unexceptional for a public official to comment publicly about a matter of public concern. If doing so imparts unique knowledge, high-level officials will routinely have to testify.”

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the Fifth Circuit made a basically identical ruling in September. I was puzzled about the reason why this was litigated again, but a link in this story tells me that the district court judge had ordered Paxton to testify a second time, a couple of weeks after the Fifth Circuit ruled initially. I had just missed that story.

My reaction this time is the same as last time, which is that this doesn’t sound unreasonable, but as there’s every reason to be deeply suspicious of the Fifth Circuit I’d like to see an actual lawyer tell me that it’s reasonable, so that I don’t feel like a chump. Anyway, I guess the bottom line is that nothing much new has happened with this lawsuit.

HISD facing budget cuts

Feb 20th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Gonna be a rough couple of years.

Amid declining enrollment and a looming $215 million deficit, the Houston ISD is eyeing budget cuts that would slash funding to the central administration and cut campus budgets, especially at high schools.

The initial cuts would cover about $60 million of the deficit in the proposed $2.28 billion budget. School closures may also be on the table in the long term — not in the upcoming school year — to make ends meet, according to discussion at a budget workshop this week and district documents. Thursday’s meeting was the first in a series to be held before the budget is adopted in June.

For years, the district has relied on its savings, which currently stand at $660 million, to cover deficits. But that won’t work going forward, officials say.

School districts’ funding is allotted from the state based on enrollment and attendance rates, both of which have been drastically dropping in HISD amid the pandemic. The district started this year with roughly 186,000 students, an 11 percent decrease from its pre-pandemic 209,309, according to Texas Education Agency data.

The district can’t continue with the status quo and needs to move with a sense of urgency, Superintendent Millard House II told the board.

“We’ve heard it before: There was a loss of 13,000 students in one year, the first year since COVID,” House said. “That’s a major piece of why this deficit has continued to grow. We’re here to address it.”

Improving attendance is one way HISD can increase revenue, but that wouldn’t have a major impact on the budget until fiscal year 2025, House said.

The HISD board also has the option to ask voters to approve a 3-cent property tax rate increase, which would generate about $65 million in additional revenue. However, it’s unlikely they would be able to hold an election in time for budget approval, House said. The district has also had pause in asking for a bond, out of fear a possible state takeover would erode support.

One option that has been top of mind for many parents during budget talks is whether there were be school closures, something the superintendent has hinted at in the past. There are no school closures or consolidations planned for the next academic year, but it is a tool that could be used in the future, HISD officials said.

Let’s be clear about two things. One is that nobody is going to like this, for the excellent reason that it sucks. None of the solutions, no matter how sensible and reasoned, will be well-received. Trustees may lose election over it, and Superintendent House may have a hard time holding onto his job, assuming he’ll want to stick it out till the end of his contract. I can’t stress enough how much this is going to suck.

And two, if HISD is now permanently at a lower level of enrollment, then the truth is that we almost certainly need to close and consolidate some campuses. We don’t have to rush into that – by all means, do everything possible to get students back and market to new students – but if the district really now has ten percent fewer students, then we have too much capacity and we need to scale back. Again, this sucks and everyone will hate it. No one wants their school to go away. I sure wouldn’t. Whatever we can do to minimize this reality, we should. But numbers don’t lie. And these numbers are telling us things we don’t want to hear. Let’s say it one more time: This sucks.

City donates to Winter Street relief

Feb 20th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good to see.

Nearly two months after dozens of artists saw their work and gallery spaces burnt away, the city of Houston offered a step toward recovery.

Mayor Sylvester Turner on Thursday announced that the city would donate $250,000 toward recovery efforts at the Winter Street Studios, which in December was destroyed, allegedly by an arsonist targeting one of the artists who worked there.

“I am so, so sorry for what happened.” Turner said. “To lose a lifetime’s worth of your artistry, hard work and livelihood is a hard pill to swallow, and the community and I will continue to rally around you as you move forward.”

The money was donated to the Houston Arts Alliance’s disaster recovery fund. While giving the check, Turner challenged other Houstonians to donate to recovery efforts and match the city’s donation.

“When we have faced tragedies in all different walks in our lives, this city has always responded,” Turner said. “These artists are Houstonians, and they are valued members of our city and our community. We want their work to be demonstrated and shown and showcased.”

See here and here for the background. Good for the Mayor and good for the city. I too would encourage you to make a contribution to the Houston Arts Alliance relief fund if you can. Every little bit helps.

Weekend link dump for February 19

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

“A new study examines the huge amount of misinformation being disseminated by a small but popular group of political podcasts. In particular, researchers found that claims of election fraud rose by over 600% in the days leading up to the Capitol insurrection, with the increase concentrated, unsurprisingly, among conservative media.”

“A document the NSF released in late August [detailed] a decades-long history of pervasive sexual harassment and assault at Antarctic research stations.”

“I just bought a house just past Girard in Brewerytown, and I took a walk around the street and I ran smack into Taney Street. I was just like, ‘There’s no way that this is named after who I think it’s named after.’”

“The designs for the 2024 American Women Quarters will be released in mid-2023.”

“Where did Superb Owl come from?”

“The Twilight of the Deficit Hawks”. Good riddance.”

“Taken aback by Florida’s attacks against its new AP African American studies course, the College Board late Saturday denounced the state Department of Education, saying it used the course to advance a politically motivated agenda.”

RIP, David Jolicoeur, a.k.a. Trugoy The Dove, member of De La Soul.

“And the weekend shootdowns coming so soon after The Balloon risks giving rise to assumptions about the new objects—that they are foreign; that they are a threat—that news coverage can easily amplify (even implicitly) if we’re not careful. The shootdowns are clearly a news story because, well, the things got shot down. And we’re right to request more certainty from officials. Until we get it, though, the story can’t be bigger than one of uncertainty.”

“A [judge’s] ruling citing [Oklahoma’s] parentage act could have substantial implications for marriage equality and LGBTQ+ parental rights nationwide, legal experts warn.”

RIP, Jesus Campos “Jesse” Treviño, renowned San Antonio painter and muralist.

RIP, Ann Hodges, journalist who established the Houston Chronicle’s TV beat and a founding member and two-time President of the Television Critics Association.

“There was a time when shame was a powerful force in American politics. That time is not now.”

“Although the shadow of a major cyberattack with international consequences has loomed over Europe since [Russia invaded Ukraine], a week before the first anniversary of the Kremlin’s assault, cyberwarfare still has not played a significant role in the conflict.”

“A group of more than 170 trans, nonbinary, and cisgender contributors to the New York Times published an open letter on Wednesday, condemning the paper’s coverage of trans issues — particularly its reporting around trans youth and gender-affirming healthcare.”

RIP, Raquel Welch, movie star and iconic sex symbol. These celebrity tributes to her are lovely.

Lock them up.

“Tesla recalls 362,758 vehicles, says Full Self-Driving Beta software may cause crashes”.

RIP, Tim McCarver, longtime MLB catcher and Hall of Fame broadcaster.

“Huge day in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News defamation case, with both sides filing summary-judgment motions. Dominion’s version is a nearly 200-page document bursting with text messages from network talent in the tense days following the 2020 presidential election.” You should read the Introduction section of their filing, it’s 14 pages, easy to read, and incredibly damning.

RIP, Stella Stevens, actor best known for Girls! Girls! Girls! and The Nutty Professor. A rough week for classic Hollywood glamour, this was. Mark Evanier adds a few words about Ms. Stevens.

So will the Lege pay off Paxton’s whistleblowers or not?

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

It’s maybe a bit more complicated than I thought at first.

Always a crook

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan says he is against using taxpayer money to pay Attorney General Ken Paxton’s $3.3 million settlement agreement in a whistleblower lawsuit filed by four former employees.

In an interview with CBS DFW on Wednesday, Phelan said it would not be “a proper use of taxpayer dollars” and that he does not anticipate that the $3.3 million cost will be included in the House budget.

“Mr. Paxton is going to have to come to the Texas House,” Phelan said. “He’s going to have to appear before the appropriations committee and make a case to that committee as to why that is a proper use of taxpayer dollars, and then he’s going to have to sell it to 76 members of the Texas House. That is his job, not mine.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Texas Senate, has so far remained silent on the issue. Patrick’s office did not respond to an American-Statesman request for comment Thursday.

[…]

In a statement released Friday, Paxton said he agreed to the settlement to limit the cost of continuing the litigation.

“After over two years of litigating with four ex-staffers who accused me in October 2020 of ‘potential’ wrongdoing, I have reached a settlement agreement to put this issue to rest,” Paxton wrote. “I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions. This settlement achieves these goals. I look forward to serving the people of Texas for the next four years free from this unfortunate sideshow.”

The whistleblowers filed the lawsuit against the Office of the Attorney General, not Paxton personally, so the Legislature will have to decide whether or not to appropriate public money to pay the bill.

See here for the background and my well-earned skepticism that the Republican legislature would ever hold Ken Paxton accountable for anything, and here for the original story. Before we get into the details, there’s this to consider.

Attorneys for four former employees who accused Attorney General Ken Paxton of corruption urged lawmakers on Friday not to oppose their $3.3 million settlement — which must be approved by the Legislature because it’s being paid out with taxpayer money.

The attorneys for Blake Brickman, David Maxwell, Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar — all former top deputies to Paxton in the attorney general’s office — said their clients “courageously reported what they believed to be corruption and put the investigation in the hands of law enforcement where it belongs” and were now asking lawmakers to back their efforts to report wrongdoing.

Rejecting the settlement could discourage others from coming forth to report wrongdoing in state agencies in the future, they said.

“No Texas legislator should oppose these whistleblowers’ hard-fought claim for compensation to which they are entitled under the Texas Whistleblower Act,” the attorneys wrote. “State employees cannot be expected to report government corruption in the future if they know the Legislature won’t back their rights under the statute it passed for the very purpose of protecting them.”

[…]

The settlement agreement was announced last Friday and would include the $3.3 million payments to the four employees who were fired and lost wages after reporting what they believed to be Paxton’s crimes. It would also include an apology from Paxton, the retraction of a news release that called the former deputies “rogue employees” and a statement that neither side admits fault in the case.

But the proposed settlement has garnered some opposition from the public and lawmakers because it would be paid out of state funds. Budget writers in the Senate, like Dallas Democrat Royce West, have also expressed skepticism about the agreement.

Under the Texas Whistleblower Act, plaintiffs are allowed to sue the employing agency where the retaliation happened, but not a specific employee in their personal capacity. That is why the payment would be paid out of state funds and not Paxton’s personal funds.

In their statement, the attorneys told lawmakers that the former employees had unfairly lost their jobs and been smeared by Paxton in news stories for reporting what they believed to be serious crimes.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Texas, which had been considering a Paxton appeal to the whistleblower suit, put the case on hold to give the parties time to finalize the agreement. The parties have until April 3 to figure out whether lawmakers will agree to the settlement and must notify the court about any changes in the proceedings.

While I could be persuaded that some number of Republican legislators might be a bit low on patience with Paxton, the four whistleblowers will be much more compelling to them. They were all conservative Republicans in good standing themselves, and agreeing to a settlement does sweep this contentious and embarrassing matter under the rug. If they have to take it to court and eventually win, the price tag will be much higher, and as before the state would be on the hook for it. As far as that goes, from a risk management perspective, approving the settlement makes sense.

That said, I don’t see why the Lege has to appropriate an extra $3.3 million to the AG’s office to pay it off. I do think they are well within bounds to appropriate whatever they would have without this, and tell Paxton to figure out his budget on his own. If that means he has to make some uncomfortable choices, that’s his problem and the consequences of his own actions. I think Speaker Phelan has the right idea here, but it wouldn’t hurt to spell it out to the members who might think that they have to explicitly cover this cost. The budget for the AG’s office will have more than enough funds to cover this check. Ken Paxton can do the work to make it happen. That’s the best way forwawrd.

Three stories on Uvalde and gun control

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

First, a story about locks and why an obsession with locking school doors is not really going to improve safety.

In the aftermath of school shootings like the one in Uvalde, what can get overlooked is basic: Schools need doors that work and don’t require special knowledge or keys to secure; they need locks that can be accessed from inside classrooms; and a system for accessing master keys swiftly when minutes matter.

The day of the Robb Elementary School shooting, a teacher had propped open the west exterior door of the school’s west building—added to the school campus 23 years ago—to get food from a colleague, when she saw the shooter heading toward the building. She slammed the door shut, according to the teacher’s attorney, Don Flanary. The door should have kept the shooter out—or at least delayed his entry. It didn’t. Contrary to school policy, all three of the west building’s exterior doors were unlocked that day.

The west building’s exterior doors weren’t the only problem on May 24. Several of the classroom doors had problems latching, including room 111—the classroom through which the shooter “most likely” entered, per the Texas House of Representatives investigation report. KENS5 further reported that the door’s bolt didn’t fit its frame. In addition, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said that the strike plate that allows the door to latch was damaged.

Whatever the cause, securing the door required extra effort to ensure the latch engaged. Room 111 was not the only classroom whose door had problems. The fourth-grade teacher in room 109 testified in the Texas House report that she also “slammed [her] door shut because otherwise the lock would not [otherwise] latch.”

According to the Texas House report, Arnulfo Reyes, the teacher in Room 111, had alerted school administrators multiple times about the issue with the door prior to May 24. Yet a work order was never issued nor was there documentation of Reyes’ complaint in Robb Elementary maintenance records.

[…]

Part of the reason doors were propped open or left unlocked was because of a key shortage. The manufacturer had discontinued production of the door locks used at Robb; the school district had acquired a supply of key blanks, but those were gone by May 2022, Uvalde CISD Maintenance & Operations Director Rodney Harrison said in the Texas House report. Because of the key shortage, substitute teachers were told to use magnets and other methods to get around the locks in violation of school district policy.

Reading this story, and because I have a cybersecurity mindset, reminded me of two things. One is that there’s always a tradeoff between security and ease of use. Think about passwords. People use simple passwords and reuse the same password on multiple systems and fail to enable two-factor authentication because it’s easier that way, and because there’s a big price to pay for forgetting a password and getting locked out of an account or application that you really need. Finding shortcuts and conveniences and workarounds is human nature. You can spend a ton of money on fancy security systems – the story talks about how much money school districts have had to spend, usually via bond issuances that can be hard to convince voters to support, to meet new state requirements for physical security in schools. But if these systems don’t take the human factor into account, a lot of that money is wasted.

And two, no single security measure is ever sufficient on its own. This is why effective cybersecurity for an enterprise network is all about multiple layered, redundant, overlapping defense mechanisms. We expect there to be gaps and failures and weaknesses, which is why there are backups in place. You can “harden” schools all you want, but you can’t make them safe until you address the gun problem, and that’s something our Legislature just won’t do as things stand now.

It has become a mournful pattern. Following mass shootings, lawmakers in many states have taken stock of what happened and voted to approve gun control legislation to try to prevent additional bloodshed.

In Colorado, the Legislature passed universal background checks in 2013 after a shooter at an Aurora movie theater killed 12 people. After 58 people were shot dead during a 2017 concert in Las Vegas, the Nevada Legislature passed a red flag law that allows a judge to order that weapons be taken from people who are deemed a threat. And in Florida in 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that raised the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 after a teenager with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at a Parkland high school, killing 17 people.

But not in Texas.

In the past six decades, the state has experienced at least 19 mass shootings that have killed a total of nearly 200 people and wounded more than 230 others. Yet state leaders have repeatedly batted away measures that would limit access to guns, opting instead to ease restrictions on publicly carrying them while making it harder for local governments to regulate them.

As the state Legislature convenes for the first time since the Uvalde school shooting last May, lawmakers have once again filed a slate of gun control bills. If history is an indicator, and top legislative leaders predict it will be, they are unlikely to pass.

An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune of hundreds of bills filed in the Texas Legislature over nearly the past six decades found that at least two dozen measures would have prevented people from legally obtaining the weapons, including assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, used in seven of the state’s mass shootings.

At least five bills would have required that people seeking to obtain a gun undergo a background check. Such a check would have kept the man involved in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa from legally purchasing the weapon because he had been deemed to have a mental illness.

Seven bills would have banned the sale or possession of the semi-automatic rifle that a shooter used to kill dozens of people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

And at least two bills would have raised the legal age to own or purchase an assault weapon from 18 to 21 years old, which would have made it illegal for the Uvalde shooter to buy the semi-automatic assault rifles.

A state House committee that investigated the Uvalde massacre found that the shooter had tried to get at least two people to buy a gun for him before he turned 18 but was unsuccessful. Immediately after his birthday, he purchased two AR-15-style rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition, which he used to kill 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

“If that law had been 21, I guarantee you he would have continued to be frustrated and not be able to obtain that weapon,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso who served as vice chair of the House committee.

It’s funny, in a bitterly ironic and painful way, that the first line of argument advanced by the legislative gun-huggers and the paid shills they listen to is that this one specific gun control law would not have stopped that one particular mass shooter, so therefore all gun control laws are useless. Yet there they are in the Lege going back to the same “harden the schools” well, time and time again. It takes a comprehensive approach, but the Republicans just won’t allow it.

Despite that, the work continues.

As a new legislative session kicks into gear, [Rep. Tracy] King is working on a bill that would increase the age limit to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. The Uvalde gunman had tried to get at least two people to buy him firearms before he turned 18. Days after his 18th birthday, he purchased two AR-15-style rifles before invading the school and targeting students and teachers. In August, Uvalde residents and relatives of the shooting victims protested at the Capitol, calling on lawmakers to raise the age limit to buy the kind of firearms the Robb Elementary gunman used.

“In this particular case, that guy had tried to buy a gun,” said King, who previously wouldn’t support the legislation he plans to champion for his constituents. “It sure might have made a difference.”

Still, King’s legislation is a bold proposal in the state that leads the nation in gun sales and whose lawmakers have steadily loosened firearm restrictions amid eight mass shootings in 13 years. And it’s coming from a Democrat who previously voted to allow people to carry a handgun without training or a license. King hasn’t yet filed his bill, though other lawmakers have filed similar pieces of legislation this year.

Gov. Greg Abbott has dismissed the idea of raising the age limit as unconstitutional. In December, Texas dropped a fight to protect an existing state law that required people who carry handguns without licenses to be 21 or older after a federal district judge said it violates people’s Second Amendment rights. And Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan has said a proposal such as King’s lacks the votes to pass the lower chamber. But Phelan also said that “will not prevent a bill from being discussed and being debated.”

King knows he faces an uphill battle. But he’s also committed to trying, after spending nearly eight months helping folks — some of whom he knew before the tragedy — grapple with a staggering amount of loss.

“We have to go in it with our eyes open,” he said during a recent interview in his Texas Capitol office. “It’ll be a challenge. It’ll be a difficult conversation for a lot of people.”

King isn’t the only lawmaker who represents Uvalde and is pushing to limit access to semi-automatic rifles. State Sen. Roland Gutierre, a San Antonio Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, has already filed a bill in the Senate that would address the same issue.

Gutierrez has publicly criticized the law enforcement response, Texas’ loose gun laws and officials who have withheld information about the investigations into the shooting. Gutierrez has also filed legislation that would create robust mass shooting response training for all public safety entities and improve radio communication between certain agencies.

“I’m for Tracy’s bill, I’m for my bill, I’m for anybody’s bill if a Republican wants to come up and have a bill that raises the age limit on long guns right now to 21,” Gutierrez said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. We’re regulating guns for what I would argue are minors, just like we do alcohol, just like we do cigarettes in Texas.”

I greatly respect what Sen. Gutierrez has been doing, and I’m glad to have Rep. King on board. I’ve also seen this movie before and I know how it ends. You know what my prescription for this problem is. If Gutierrez and King can change a few minds along the way, that will help. We have a long way to go.

The Evergreen Negro Cemetery

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Wow.

City and METRO officials have discovered 33 burial sites, including three that appear fully intact, near a historic Black cemetery on Lockwood Drive, which the city apparently missed when it tore through the site to expand the street in the 1940s and ’60s, Mayor Sylvester Turner said Monday.

The remains were discovered in the esplanade that was installed between the lanes during the Lockwood expansion, which split the Evergreen Negro Cemetery in two and caused it to languish until a nonprofit restored it in the 1990s. The Fifth Ward cemetery includes remains of Buffalo Soldiers, the first Black police officer killed in the line of duty, and World War I veterans.

Turner said it was a “concerning and disappointing” discovery. It was one thing, he said, for the city to desecrate the cemetery in the first place by running infrastructure directly through it in the mid-20th century, but it appears Houston officials and contractors also failed to account for all of the bodies that lay there. Now, he said, it is up to the city to right that wrong.

“We owe it to those who were buried here and, quite frankly, to those who have yet to come, to remember these families and give them a final resting place with dignity and respect,” Turner said. “It is unfortunate we are having to address this in 2023.”

[…]

The city initially expanded Lockwood Drive in the 1940s, bisecting the cemetery. In the 1960s, it widened it further to include a median between the lanes at Market Street, Turner said. That work included moving hundreds of bodies and burial sites, and the city promised descendants it would move all of the bodies to the cemetery’s remaining sites.

Workers from the city and the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County found the remains as they prepared for work on the University Line, a new bus rapid transit route that will follow along much of Lockwood. The beginning stages of that work included an archaeological investigation, which led to the discovery.

Thirty of the 33 sites have what officials called “burial remnants” — coffin bottoms and other hardware, tiny fragments of bones — that indicate they were exhumed during the original work in the mid-20th century, said Mindy Bonine, a consultant from AmaTerra Environmental, who was the lead archaeological investigator on the project.

Three had “significant” remains, indicating they had been missed altogether and never exhumed or properly moved. Workers protected and reburied them until they could plan how to move them respectfully, Bonine said.

Turner said officials now will work with Project RESPECT, a nonprofit group that has worked since the 1990s to rehabilitate and maintain the historic cemetery, to do so. Metro Chairman Sanjay Ramabhadran said the transit agency would halt all work in the area, ensure the remains are respectfully moved and reinterred, and place a monument in the esplanade to recognize the significance of the site.

I’m glad that these remains were discovered before more damage could be done to them, and I’m glad they will be handled with care. May they rest in peace. Go read the rest, and read the earlier story about the origins of Project RESPECT. And maybe tell a Republican legislator that this history is worth teaching in our schools.

Paxton federal corruption probe moved to DOJ

Feb 18th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

This is a little confusing at first, but it has some good news in there.

The only criminal involved

Justice Department officials in Washington have taken over the corruption investigation into Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, removing the case from the hands of the federal prosecutors in Texas who’d long been leading the probe.

The move was disclosed in a statement by state prosecutors handling their own case against Paxton. It’s the latest development in the federal investigation into the attorney general, who came under FBI scrutiny in 2020 after his own top deputies accused him of bribery and abusing his office to help one of his campaign contributors, who also employed a woman with whom Paxton acknowledged having had an extramarital affair.

The investigation of the three-term Republican is now being led by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which prosecutes allegations of official misconduct against elected leaders at the local, state and federal level. The U.S. attorney’s office in Texas was recently recused from the complex case after working on it for years — an abrupt change that came within days of Paxton agreeing to apologize and pay $3.3 million in taxpayer money to four of the former staffers who reported him to the FBI.

State prosecutors working on a separate securities fraud case against Paxton — Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer — said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday that they were notified of the move. They referred all questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.

It’s not known whether Paxton will face charges, although federal investigators in Texas who had worked the case believed there was sufficient evidence for an indictment, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing probe.

It was not immediately clear what prompted top Justice Department officials to recuse the federal prosecutors in West Texas but the move was pushed for by Paxton’s attorneys. One of his defense lawyers, Dan Cogdell, said Thursday that he’d previously appealed to agency officials to take the case out of the hands of the local U.S. attorney’s office, which he said had “an obvious conflict” because of the overlapping allegations and investigations that led to the probe of Paxton.

Eight of Paxton’s senior staff accused him of crimes in 2020 after the attorney general hired an outside lawyer to look into an Austin real-estate developer’s claims of wrongdoing by FBI agents and federal prosecutors who were separately investigating the developer. Those agents and lawyers are part of the same federal prosecutorial district as the ones who came to investigate Paxton.

“It was the right thing to do,” said Cogdell. He said federal officials had not informed him of the move and declined to comment further.

The overlap was known to officials within the Justice Department and publicly reported on by the AP within weeks of Paxton’s staff going to the FBI. Nonetheless, the agency left the investigation to be led by a career federal prosecutor based in San Antonio, who was previously best known for winning a money laundering and fraud case against a Democratic state senator.

It’s good and more than a little interesting to get an update on this story, especially given that I was despairing about the lack of information just a few days ago. I was a bit puzzled by this at first because I have thought about the probe into Paxton’s dealings with Nate Paul – which among other things led to the whole whistleblower saga and the settlement of same that just happened – as an “FBI investigation”. For sure, the FBI is a key player, but of course there is a prosecutor associated with it as well. Someone – several someones, really – has to believe that there may be a viable prosecution at the end of this, or it would be terminated, as there are other fish to be fried. The original someone was in the San Antonio office of the US Attorney, but as noted that office is also investigating Nate Paul, and since Paxton is an elected official there could be a conflict of interest there. To be honest, I’m unclear what that might be – either there’s evidence of a crime or there’s not – but if it’s the norm for these matters to be overseen in Washington by the Justice Department instead of by the local USA, then fine.

Two points to mention here. One is that this is evidence that the investigation in question is still active, and if the unnamed sources are to be believed, there is a future in which Paxton faces federal indictment, which should be a lot harder for him to stonewall and weasel out of, at least without an ally in the White House who can put a thumb on the scale for him. When that might be, God and maybe Merrick Garland only know. But at least it’s still out there. The fear was that the investigation had come to an end, as these things sometimes do, with nothing to show for it and no reason to make a news story of it.

And two, one way of reading this story is that it’s a story in the first place because the long-stonewalled prosecutors of the state case against Paxton mentioned it to a reporter. Maybe the AP heard about this transfer of the investigation on their own and reached out to Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer for a comment even though they don’t have anything to do with the federal case. It’s a plausible interpretation, they’d surely say something if they had something to say, and everyone knows about the state case that has dragged on since approximately the second Reagan administration. I just find it curious enough to wonder. For sure, getting this out there now, right after the whistleblower case was settled and Paxton got to do a bit of a victory dance, was a way to remind everyone that he still faces a lot of potential trouble, and maybe dampens his mood a little. I am 100% speculating here, I could be completely off base. I’m just saying this is what came to mind when I read that paragraph.

Anyway, whatever came to your mind, there’s more at Daily Kos, the Trib, and the Chron. If we do hear more about this case going forward, that would be nice.

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