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March, 2023:

What was even the point of those TEA “engagements” with the public?

Mar 31st, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
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The public certainly doesn’t think it got anything out of them.

Teacher Monica Zepeda wrapped up an after-school tutoring session on Wednesday night and headed to a community forum at Delmar Stadium sporting her Pilgrim Academy lanyard. She stepped up to the microphone.

“I’m a highly effective teacher here at HISD,” she said, launching into several questions about prior state takeovers in Texas school districts. “Public education is the foundation, the bedrock of America. Do not take our education away.”

Zepeda, a public school educator of nearly two decades, was among several hundred teachers, parents and other members of the Houston Independent School District community who showed up at a third community forum hosted by the Texas Education Agency to demand answers from state officials about the takeover.

After this school year ends, the state agency plans to oust Houston’s elected school board and replace it with a nine-member board of managers appointed by Education Commissioner Mike Morath. The agency is now seeking applicants for the board of managers. The move has drawn ire from many.

“I have students from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico – and I’m making gains and growing them,” Zepeda said. “My school is an amazing little jewel in the southwest and there’s so many of us like that. There’s great teachers and I can’t believe that they want to do this.”

Morath did not attend the meeting. People in the audience immediately booed and questioned his notable absence.

“He could not be here tonight,” said TEA deputy commissioner Alejandro Delgado, who fielded questions from the podium during a meeting that ran for an hour and 20 minutes.

Morath told the Chronicle editorial board that he could not attend last week’s community forums because he was “under the weather.” Delgado provided no explanation for his absence this week. A final forum is scheduled for Thursday night at Kashmere High School.

“If he doesn’t have the respect for the people of this district – the teachers, the families, the children – to stand up and answer our questions, what kind of accountability is he really offering?” said Louisa Meacham, a teacher at Northside High School. “What kind of leadership is he really offering? None.”

I’m sorry, but if you can show up for an hour-plus interview with the Chron editorial board, you can damn well show up to the community engagement session. Not doing so is cowardly and disrespectful. Sure, the crowd has been rowdy at these meetings, but what did you expect? People have strong feelings about this, especially considering the overall health of HISD and the recent improvement at Wheatley, and they felt their voices weren’t being heard. Hell, the upshot here is to replace the elected Board with a Mike Morath-appointed Board, so of course people feel like they’re powerless. You either don’t care or you’re exceedingly dense to not realize or acknowledge that.

So again, these engagement sessions have been patronizing and useless in terms of actually addressing the concerns of the HISD stakeholders. If there was any chance of providing some assurance to students and parents and teachers that things would be all right, the TEA botched it completely. None of this should make anyone feel better about what is coming. Campos has more.

Jared Woodfill and Paul Pressler

Mar 31st, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Sleazebags of a feather sleaze together.

In 2016, former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill received an urgent warning about Paul Pressler, his longtime law partner and a Southern Baptist leader. In an email, a 25-year-old attorney from Woodfill’s Houston firm said he’d recently gone to lunch with Pressler, who told him “lewd stories about being naked on beaches with young men” and then invited him to skinny-dip at his ranch.

Woodfill — an outspoken anti-gay politician and prominent conservative activist who’d just played a key role defeating an equal rights ordinance for LGBTQ Houstonians — responded to the young man’s request for help with shock and indignation. “This 85-year-old man has never made any inappropriate comments or actions toward me or any one I know of,” he wrote of Pressler at the time.

But new court records show that wasn’t true.

In recent sworn testimony, Woodfill said he’d known since 2004 of an allegation that Pressler had sexually abused a child. Woodfill learned of those claims, he said, during mediation of an assault lawsuit filed against Pressler that he helped quietly settle for nearly a half-million dollars at the time. Despite his knowledge of the accusation, Woodfill continued to work with Pressler for nearly a decade — leaning on Pressler’s name and reputation to bolster their firm, Woodfill & Pressler LLP.

Rather than pay him a salary, Woodfill testified, the firm provided Pressler a string of employees to serve as personal assistants, most of them young men who typically worked out of his River Oaks mansion. Two have accused Pressler of sexual assault or misconduct.

Woodfill led the Harris County Republican Party from 2002 to 2014 and has for years been at the helm of anti-LGBTQ and other hardline conservative movements in Houston and Texas. In 2015, amid tense debate over a Houston equal rights ordinance that would have made LGBTQ workplace discrimination illegal, he and well-known GOP power broker Steven Hotze co-led a campaign that, among other things, said the measure would allow children to be sexually groomed and abused in bathrooms, paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars in opposition advertisements and compared the gay rights movement to Nazis.

Since then, Woodfill has remained a fixture in Texas GOP politics: During the height of the pandemic, he and Hotze filed numerous lawsuits challenging COVID-19 mandates, and he’s currently representing conservative political candidates challenging the 2022 election results in Harris County. Woodfill is also representing Hotze in a criminal investigation stemming from a 2020 incident in which a private investigator, allegedly acting at Hotze’s behest, held at gunpoint an A/C repairman who he believed was transporting fake ballots.

Woodfill’s deposition came as part of an ongoing, six-year-old lawsuit in which a former member of Pressler’s church youth group accuses him of decades of rape beginning when he was 14. The suit also accuses Woodfill and others, including leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, of concealing and enabling Pressler’s behavior — claims that prompted a 2019 Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News investigation into widespread sexual abuse in the SBC, the nation’s second-largest faith group.

Released over the last few weeks, the thousands of pages of new court records show how Woodfill leaned on his Pressler connections to bolster his political and legal career — despite warnings about his law partner’s behavior. And they shed new light on how Pressler, a former Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nominee under George H.W. Bush, allegedly used his prestige and influence to evade responsibility amid repeated accusations of sexual misconduct and assault dating back to at least 1978, when he was forced out of a Houston church for allegedly molesting a teenager in a sauna.

Pressler is best known for his work in the Southern Baptist Convention, where he was instrumental in pushing its 16 million members and 47,000 churches to adopt literal interpretations of the Bible, strongly denounce homosexuality and align more closely with the Republican Party. And for decades, he was a high-ranking member of the Council for National Policy, an uber-secretive network of conservative judges, mega donors, media figures and religious elites led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council.

The new records show that in 2004, leaders of First Baptist Church of Houston, a massive Southern Baptist congregation, investigated claims that Pressler, then a deacon, had groped and undressed a college student at his Houston mansion. The church leaders deemed the behavior “morally and spiritually” inappropriate and warned Pressler but took no further action, citing differing accounts of the incident and Pressler’s stature in their church and the Southern Baptist Convention. In recent depositions, plaintiffs attorneys also briefly mention new complaints from two others about Pressler, though those documents remain sealed ahead of the looming civil trial in the case.

At least six men have now accused Pressler of sexual assault or misconduct, including two who say they were molested while minors and two who say they were solicited for sex in incidents after 2004, when Woodfill and First Baptist leaders were separately made aware of complaints about Pressler.

Pressler has not been criminally charged in any of the incidents. Neither Woodfill nor his attorney responded to a list of questions about Woodfill’s handling of the allegations against Pressler. In a Wednesday email, Woodfill’s lawyer David Oubre said they are “confident Mr. Woodfill will be successful in defeating these claims.”

See here for previous mentions of Paul Pressler. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you already know that I consider pond scum to be a higher form of life than Jared Woodfill. If you didn’t already know that, now you know why. My homework assignment for legislative Democrats is to make sure you mention the names Jared Woodfill and Paul Pressler every time someone disparages LBGTQ folks in a hearing. It won’t change anything, but it will make them mad and it will help spread the word. Go read the rest of the article.

Some turmoil at Rep. Jones’ office

Mar 31st, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Hoo boy.

Rep. Jolanda Jones

Three staff members of state Rep. Jolanda Jones have resigned, alleging the Houston Democrat created an “abusive and hostile” work environment.

Chief of staff Kory Haywood, legislative director Catherine Mouer and district director Yesenia Wences alleged in a letter to Jones obtained by The Texas Tribune that Jones tasked staff with tasks unrelated to state business, required them to regularly perform work outside of business hours and regularly threatened to fire employees.

“We, as a collective of senior staff, have repeatedly attempted to curb your behavior and address the type of work environment you have bred over the last month,” the letter states. “But, to no avail; we haven’t seen any success.”

The former employees also alleged that Jones had failed to intervene in what they characterized as an inappropriate relationship between the lawmaker’s son, Jio, and an intern in the office. They also said the lawmaker directed staff to assist in arranging health care for a relative.

Jones said in a statement Thursday that working in the Legislature stressful and demanding, describing a “daily fight” on behalf of constituents.

“Some on my staff have decided this job is not for them,” Jones said. “I wish them good luck and success in their next endeavors.”

Cassi Pollock, spokesperson for House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, said the speaker’s office learned of the complaints against Jones on Wednesday, which would be reviewed to evaluate whether the lawmaker broke any House rules.

“The Speaker’s office takes all allegations seriously and expects that this matter will be addressed and resolved as soon as possible,” Pollock said.

You can read the full letter at the link. This is all I know at this time, so I’m not going to get ahead of whatever this turns out to be. I’m sure we’ll hear more soon enough.

UPDATE: The Chron has more.

Dispatches from Dallas, March 31 edition

Mar 31st, 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 news: Carroll ISD (Southlake) bails out of TASB in a new phase in the reactionary war on Texas public schools; more on TFG and the symbolism of his Waco visit; Dallas-area cops should not be left alone with computers; get ready for a Taylor Swift exhibit; the menu at Globe Life Field for the upcoming baseball season; and a baby giraffe at the Dallas Zoo.

The big news this week is that Carroll ISD (Southlake) has voted to end its membership in the Texas Association of School Boards. The news video accompanying this article is worth the two minutes of your time; it makes clear what’s going on. State Representative Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, sent out letters to 1000 school districts to start an exodus from TASB. Similarly, and perhaps surprisingly, the local Fox outlet has a good story on the decision to withdraw (4 minute video). The Fox coverage also talks about the general state of Carroll ISD, one of the first districts targeted by reactionaries for bringing in DEI policies, “CRT”, and other “woke” policies. DEI initiative started after a 2018 incident in which students were caught in video using the N word; in 2021 and 2022 reactionaries captured the board, and the rejection of TASB is one outcome.

You may recall that TASB is also related to the case of Marvin Lowe, the Frisco ISD trustee. He was accused of harassing a trans student at a TASB conference in San Antonio last October. It won’t surprise me if Frisco decides to follow Carroll’s example in the near future.

As noted by Charles here, the The Book-Loving Texan’s Guide to the May 2023 School Board Elections is a resource for finding out about the candidates your local school board election. The document is mostly focused on north Texas districts (Frisco is on the list and Richardson, which is the district my home is zoned into, is in progress), but Houston area districts like Katy and Humble are also included. And they’re also working on central Texas districts like Dripping Springs. While this resource is focused on book banning, that’s a good proxy for anti-DEI, anti-“CRT”, and anti-“woke” sentiment in general.

If this topic interests you, I strongly recommend Clarity & Anger, the substack of Frank Strong, an Austin teacher who put together the Book-Loving Texan’s Guide. His newsletter will keep you up to date on what the bibliophobes and “woke”-haters are up to, and there’s a free tier. I found him on Mastodon, which is where I hang out now that Twitter is toxic. While I can’t say I exactly enjoy reading about haters, I do feel better informed.

In other news:

  • A few notes about TFG’s Waco speech.
    • First, in corrections, I initially read that TFG was speaking on the anniversary of the end of the siege; instead he spoke last weekend at the anniversary of the beginning.
    • These two articles that quote Senator Cornyn’s reaction may interest you: GOP Senators Break With Trump Over ‘Offensive’ Jan. 6 Tribute At Texas Rally and Top Republicans balk at Trump highlighting Jan. 6 rioters, calling it politically unwise. Obviously it’s a long time until Cornyn faces the GOP primary field again, but I’m putting a pin in it for 2026.
    • Talking Points Memo again points to the choice of Waco as a venue and the commemoration of the Branch Davidian standoff in this post. There are a couple of follow-up reader notes on the same topic that are also worthwhile. Those of us who are old enough to remember Waco as it happened recall how awful it was, not least because it embodied the fever dream of angry white men holding out against federal force. We have too many angry people with guns in Texas to encourage fighting the federal government in 2023.
  • Department of “Dallas cops can’t use computers”, part one for this week: What’s known about the 21 cases reviewed for missing, deleted Dallas police evidence [Archive link] and Is missing Dallas police evidence impacting murder cases? Defense lawyers want answers [Archive link]. The city of Dallas is going to be sorting this out for a long time; the screwups involve both current cases and cases already decided. It’s also going to cost the city and the court system to retry cases and to compensate any defendants who receive a not guilty verdict in retrials. It implicates the credibility of the police and their evidence in future cases. All of this is bad for the judicial system, which has plenty of problems without the police losing or destroying evidence, but DPD brought these further problems on themselves by sloppy evidence handling.
  • Department of “Dallas cops can’t use computers”, part two for this week: Dallas County says sold computers may have contained the public’s personal info. [Archive link]. Short version: the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department failed to properly wipe computers that were taken out of service and sold at auction, so they may still contain confidential information from the county’s internal court databases. Oops.
  • Shared Air DFW is a visualization resource for air pollution in the Metroplex. It takes data from air quality monitors (currently 100 are being distributed throughout the region) to show real-time air quality online. It’s good that we can now see this information but the information is depressing. It’s a UT Dallas project, so thanks to UT Dallas and the funders. Related, from the Texas Tribune: The EPA wants to limit how much soot you breathe. Here’s what it means for Texas and one of its historic Black towns. Joppa, the freedman’s town in question, is less than 10 miles from downtown Dallas. The Shared Air project is concentrating early efforts there precisely because their air quality is so poor.
  • On a sad note for me personally, my advisor at Rice passed away earlier this month. Dr. Katherine Fischer Drew was a fantastic teacher, historian, and leader in her discipline, as you can see in her obituary at the Houston Chronicle. She touched a lot of lives, including mine, and I’m grateful for the advice I got from her and the lessons I learned in and out of her classes.
  • Carnivorous Plant Gallery Known as the Texas Triffid Ranch Is Closed for Good. I’m also sad about this; I have friends who had visited the ranch and I’d seen some of the plants at events at the Perot (Dallas’ science museum) before the pandemic. I never managed to get out to the ranch myself, unfortunately. I wish Mr. Riddell the best in his future endeavors and hope to see the plants he sent to the Arboretum this spring.
  • A 24-Inch Burger is Among Six New Food Items for the 2023 Season at Globe Life Field. Posting this in the hopes it will lure Charles up here this summer for a game and to try the food. I personally am going to have some of the Hurtado barbecue the next time we go with a baseball-oriented friend.
  • From my inbox: Taylor Swift isn’t just coming to Arlington to perform. She’s also the subject of the Arlington Museum’s summer exhibit: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Collection will be here from June through September for all your Swift needs. Tickets go on sale April 13 for members, and April 17 for the rest of us.
  • Hipster ’80s-style roller skating rink to wheel into Dallas Design District. I’m already asking around for my friends to join me when this opens for both events: the visit to the roller rink and the visit to the ER that will inevitably follow when I break something falling on my butt.
  • Last but not least, in baby animal news: It’s a girl: Dallas Zoo welcomes 131-pound giraffe calf [Archive link.] No name yet for the baby girl. I’m really excited about this one; giraffes are my favorite animal.

Of course there’s already a Mayoral poll

Mar 30th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

From the Daily Kos Morning Digest:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Veteran Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee upended Houston’s race for mayor on Sunday when she announced her entry into the crowded field looking to succeed term-limited incumbent Sylvester Turner this fall.

Jackson Lee has represented the Houston area in Congress since 1995, after she won a landslide 63-37 primary victory over then-Rep. Craig Washington, who had opposed projects important to the region such as the International Space Station. During the ensuing three decades, Jackson Lee burnished her reputation as an outspoken progressive and became one of the most prominent Democrats in the city, giving her instant name recognition. She also won’t necessarily have to give up her safely blue House seat (which includes 20% of Houston’s population) in order to seek the mayoralty, since voters will decide this November, with a runoff the following month if no candidate takes a majority.

That seems likely, given the large number of hopefuls already vying to run Texas’ largest city. The most notable of these is state Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat who’s been running since 2021 and has a $10 million war chest. He also has the support of a number of major Republican donors as well as Democratic Rep. Sylvia Garcia, who represents a district that neighbors Jackson Lee’s.

A pair of conservative organizations, the Houston Region Business Coalition and Protect and Serve Texas PAC, responded to Jackson Lee’s announcement by releasing a month-old survey from Republican pollster Ragnar Research showing Whitmire with a slender 20-19 lead over the congresswoman, with three other candidates in the low single digits and a large 46% plurality undecided. The two groups, however, emphasized a head-to-head matchup between the two that had Whitmire in front 45-33. Both say they have not endorsed in the race, though HRBC has backed Whitmire in the past despite typically backing Republicans.

While the race is officially nonpartisan, almost all of the credible candidates are Democrats. No Republican has been elected mayor of Houston, which voted for Joe Biden by a 64-32 margin, since Jim McConn won a second two-year term in 1981. (Mayors only began serving four-year terms in 2015.) Houston is also a very diverse city, with an eligible voter population that’s 34% white, 31% Hispanic, and 28% Black. Like Jackson Lee, two of the contenders named in the Ragnar poll, former City Councilor Amanda Edwards and former Harris County interim Clerk Chris Hollins, are Black, while Whitmire is white and City Councilor Robert Gallegos is Latino.

See here for the background, and see also my admonition about polling in Houston elections. This same poll was also cited in the updated Chron story about Rep. Jackson Lee’s announcement. Note that the poll in question predated Gilbert Garcia’s entry into the race, which is likely why his name wasn’t mentioned.

I feel like we’re going to have more polling data that usual for this race, and I just want to remind everyone that each poll is a data point and nothing more. It’s possible we’ll see some trends, and in those trends we may see clear signs of how the race may play out. It’s also possible we’ll get a bunch of seemingly random and contradictory numbers that tell us nothing. Remember that we’re still a long way out, the campaigns have barely begun, and that a lot of factors can and will affect the outcome. Don’t read too much into any single poll result and you’ll probably be fine.

Chron editorial board interviews Mike Morath

Mar 30th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

There’s video and a transcript here. After explaining that he missed the initial TEA community engagement sessions because he was “under the weather”, he gets asked the key question:

Lisa Falkenberg 1:55
Mhmm. Okay, and then, so, we’re trying to figure out what resources will be used – as much as you can say – what resources would be used for the D and F schools that they don’t have access to now?

Mike Morath 2:10
Sure. I mean, this is the grand question: How does a school system – and certainly one as large as Houston ISD – organize itself as a system of 250-plus campuses so that the way that the district works does not allow an individual campus to lack the structures of supports for you know, a decade or more? You can’t have a situation where kids are going half a decade, or a decade, not learn how to read, write and do math at high levels. So you know, what people keep asking us is, ‘how is that going to change?’ And there’s sort of two answers to that question: The core answer of what TEA is doing is actually indirect. What we’re focused on is leadership. So we’re replacing the school board superintendent. My task is to find nine Houstonians of a character and integrity – that are student-focused – to be members of that governing body that will work together as a team and then find a superintendent that also works with that team that can then execute. Ultimately, that’s the sole focus of the agency, the way the law is set up, the way that our oversight structure is set up. It is that group of people that then have to make all of these changes. But that fundamentally doesn’t answer your question ‘what are the changes that you need to make?’ and so this gets you into all the key questions of how do you make schools work for students? Just think of the discipline of reading. So at an elementary school. There’s an elementary school in Houston, whose last acceptable performance was in 2011. So this is two entire generations worth of kids: Kindergarten through fifth grade. They have, never as a group, been exposed to a school that equipped them to rewrite or do math and do it well. So what needs to happen?

Lisa Falkenberg 4:08
What school was that?

Mike Morath 4:09
I’ll let you guys research that. So you think about elementary literacy instruction. So what we know – what evidence tells us – the evidence is compellingly clear on how the human mind acquires the gift of reading. You’ve got to make sure kids learn how to decode. That has to be taught. There’s a very specific way to do that. You do the ‘mmm’ sound before you do the ‘ph’ sound and you do that for a reason. There’s an explicit exposure, in order, to these concepts. You’ve got a bunch of random control trial-based instructional materials out there, and training, that shows this is the most effective way to do it. So you need to make sure that in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, that that kind of instruction is happening and with materials that have that kind of evidence base. That’s only part of the equation that helps kids learn how to read. Reading is also a function of background knowledge. All the words that you know and accumulate. And this is one of the reasons why you see such disparities by class in reading proficiency. Because if your parents are very well educated and have resources to take you on trips, and then you will learn things – a lot of things – outside of school, and much of that is going to affect your vocabulary and background knowledge. And that is a driver in literacy. So the question is, ‘are schools functioning as the great equalizer for literacy?’ Do they have a curriculum that is well-designed and intentional at building knowledge, about building vocabulary and is even designed to do so? So you think, well, what’s the evidence base? I’ll tell you that you need to have an instructional material and in a curricular environment the way classroom works in order for vocabulary to work. We know that if you have a set of lessons that are focused on say, ‘inferencing’ as a skill. You do something on ‘giraffes,’ and then you do something on ‘going to the ice cream store’ and then you do something on ‘World War II’ and then you do something on ‘your thoughts about balloons,’ that will not lead to any vocabulary growth. Instead, the evidence is quite clear. You have to read the same kind of texts over and over and over again. Same subject. So you read about ‘giraffes’ and you read about ‘zoos’ and then you read about the ‘African savanna.’ Then you read about the biology of necks. That sort of thing. That causes vocabulary growth. So the question is: “in the schools that have seen low levels of literacy for a decade, how well-designed is the instructional program in the curricular experience for kids so that that is actually happening?’ And this is not a new phenomenon. This knowledge isn’t even new to Houston. I think about the great Thaddeus Lott. He may be a principal y’all are familiar with. This epically famous principal that served, I want to say, at Wesley Elementary for decades. People came to his school, studied what he was doing, and he had a systematic, direct instruction on phonics. He had a strong, rigorous approach to background knowledge. Curriculum that was well-designed. Then, his approach to recruiting teachers focused on, of course, folks that had extremely high expectations; that if you come to school with a with a broken right arm and you can’t turn in a writing assignment because of it, you know, the teacher says, ‘well, your left arm is not broken.’ The high expectations that says, ‘No, we’re going to learn this. I’m here to support you, but we’re going to learn this’ and he creates a learning environment. He did this for 20 years at that school that got extraordinary results.

Gotta say, that’s an awful lot of words that sound suspiciously like the Underpants Gnome meme to me. To wit:

Step 1: Appoint Board of Managers
Step 2: ???????
Step 3: All schools are now passing!

I had to back away for a few minutes after that. I eventually went back and read some more, and he does get into specifics in a few places, so go read and listen for yourself. One thing he does say is that the Board of Managers is accountable to him, so to answer this question, if there’s a Board member that we the public think is dead weight, we need to convince Mike Morath of that. So, yeah.

The Texas Observer lives again

Mar 30th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Now here’s some good news.

The board of the Texas Democracy Foundation, the nonprofit parent organization of the Texas Observer,  on Wednesday voted unanimously to rescind its earlier plan to lay off the 68-year-old magazine’s entire staff and cease publication.

“This is wonderful news,” said Editor-in-Chief Gabriel Arana. “The Observer is indispensable to Texas and to democracy.”

The board issued a statement saying they have secured short-term pledges to bridge an immediate budget shortfall, “thanks to the extraordinary success of the staff’s fundraising this week.” A GoFundMe effort begun on Monday had raised more than $275,000 on Wednesday from more than 3,000 supporters.

The board had formally announced the layoffs and shutdown to the staff on Monday, at a contentious meeting at which they sought to answer no questions. However, most staffers had found out about the decision the previous evening, via a story in another publication.

The statement, addressed to the “Texas Observer Community” included an apology to the staff “for the abruptness of the layoff vote” and said the board “deeply regret[s]” the way the staff found out. The board also apologized to major donors Lynne Dobson and Greg Wooldridge of the Tejemos Foundation and to “our community of contributors, readers and supporters.” The foundation had made a major donation to the Observer last year, but the board said the nature of that gift was misunderstood by the Observer organization.

The change of plan came in the wake of an outpouring of public support for the Observer. In addition to the GoFundMe effort, readers, former staffers and former board members, and prominent journalists from around the country reached out to Observer journalists and allies to express their solidarity with the campaign to keep the magazine afloat.

“I just got chills,” said Gayle Reaves, the Observer’s editor-at-large, when news reached staffers. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of our incredible supporters and my colleagues and the board members who helped us.”

See here for the background, and here for the statement. That statement includes a call that “we work collectively to get through the immediate future—and find a sustainable model to ensure the longevity of our beloved magazine”, so there’s clearly still work to be done. You can click the embedded image to visit the GoFundMe page if you want to contribute to that, I’m sure the more they get for the immediate issue the easier the longer-term one will be to figure out. Whatever the case, at least now they’re trying to figure it out, and for that we can be thankful. The Trib, which goes into detail about those challenges that still need to be dealt with, has more.

Texas blog roundup for the week of March 27

Mar 30th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The Texas Progressive Alliance has left its busted bracket behind and turned its gaze towards Opening Day as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

So what happens with CD18 now?

Mar 29th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

This story is a very basic explainer about Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s just-announced Mayoral campaign. There’s only so much it can tell us as she has not yet talked about what her top campaign priorities are, and most of the rest we already know, but this bit at the end is worth discussing.

Do people line up for Jackson Lee’s seat in Congress?

The congresswoman does not need to resign to run for mayor, and if she does not win, she can keep her post in Congress. Still, will people line up to succeed her in the storied 18th District if she wins?

One such candidate, former At-Large City Councilmember Carroll Robinson, wasted no time Monday in announcing he was considering a run for Jackson Lee’s seat. Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is term-limited, also lives in the 18th District, although residency is not a requirement for congressional elections.

I discussed this in my previous post, so I will briefly reiterate that Rep. Jackson Lee does not have to resign to run as noted in this story, but logistically it may be sensible for her to do so. She doesn’t have a limited legislative calendar like Whitmire does (and Mayor Turner did before them) and she has longer and more arduous travel to endure if she wants to multitask while campaigning. I don’t know what she will do, and I certainly won’t be surprised if she remains in office through the election, but there is a clear argument that she would be better off stepping down.

Let’s assume that she remains in office. If she wins outright in November, or if she fails to make a runoff, it’s easy enough for her, because the filing period for the 2024 primaries is November 11 (after the election) through December 11. Where it gets tricky is if she makes the runoff, which per usual is the second Saturday of December. That would be December 9 this year, meaning she would just have enough time to re-file for CD18 if she falls short. That sure wouldn’t leave much time to recover and rebound from what would surely be a tough loss, and it could be very awkward if in the meantime a flood of credible contenders have filed for CD18, but she could attempt to go back to Congress if she fails to become Mayor.

If she does win, either in November or the runoff, then there would need to be two elections to succeed her: A special election to serve out the remainder of her term, and a Democratic primary to determine a nominee for the November 2024 election. Both would likely draw large crowds, with some but not full overlap. It is certainly possible to have a situation where the special election winner is not the Democratic nominee for November. If the same person manages to win both, they may have to win four races – the special, the primary, and a runoff for each – to get there. (They would have to win in November as well, but CD18 is strongly Democratic – SJL got 71% last year – so it would be the least competitive race by far of them all.) It would be exhausting and a little confusing since the special election runoff would likely occur after the primary but before the primary runoff. We had a four-race situation to replace Garnet Coleman in HD147 after he stepped down; in 2016 we managed to replace Mayor Turner in HD139 in only three races, as now-Rep. Jarvis Johnson won the primary in the runoff but took the special election on the first try. (Again, not counting the November election; both districts are strongly Dem and both Rep. Johnson and Rep. Jolanda Jones were unopposed in their Novembers.)

Note that everything I wrote about above would also apply to SD15 and Sen. John Whitmire. I wrote about this in January, when Whitmire drew a two-year term for this cycle, meaning that there will be a general election for SD15 next year. If he had drawn a four-year term then there would still be a special election to replace him in 2024 if needed, but the primary election for that seat would have been in 2026. Them’s the breaks. If we get a Whitmire-Jackson Lee runoff, we might have a situation in which both candidates would be thinking about what their Plan B is, assuming they hadn’t already made any definitive statements about that. Isn’t this fun?

As for the potential candidates to run in CD18, all I’ll say for now is that the list will include a lot more people than the opportunistic Carroll Robinson. Mayor Tuner has been cited as a possible candidate for US Senate in 2024, which I don’t believe, and I’ve heard his name mentioned as a possible candidate for SD15, a prospect I find marginally more credible. I feel roughly the same about him as a CD18 candidate. The likely suspects here, for either of these offices, will include current State Reps and Senators and HISD/HCC Trustees and City Council members, various other former officeholders and candidates, and quite possibly a current Mayoral candidate or two. It’s difficult to see, always in motion is the future. Ask me again in six months.

HISD decides against appealing TEA takeover to the TEA

Mar 29th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The decision makes sense, whether or not the headline to this post also makes sense.

In a close vote, Houston ISD board members decided late Monday to bypass its final appeal of Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s decision to takeover the district.

Earlier this month, the board overwhelmingly voted to end the lawsuit against the TEA. They still had the option to file an appeal to the state agency,  considered a last-ditch effort at preventing state intervention. These appeals hearings are not held in court but rather by a committee the commissioner selects and often do not go in the district’s favor. The board ultimately voted 5-4 against the measure.

“When it was time to give up the legal fight because we didn’t have a legal basis to continue, I was on board with that,” Trustee Myrna Guidry said. “This is an appeal that is given by the commissioner himself, giving us one more opportunity … The outcome is on the commissioner, but I believe we should take the appeal so we as a board have done everything we possibly can.”

Last week, the TEA hosted a series of informational meetings about the state intervention, which was met with outcry from the community. Shortly after the TEA’s takeover plans were announced on March 15, the community rallied in opposition to the intervention. This type of response is worth listening to, said Trustee Patricia Allen.

“I’ve heard the voice of the people. I’ve been to the community meetings. My opinion as a trustee is to listen to the voice of the people,” Allen said. “This is not a ‘must’ on the part of the commissioner. We can appeal and the commissioner can decide.”

[…]

Trustee Judith Cruz agreed the district should not spend any more money on legal counsel regarding takeover issues.

Others said they felt their chances of success with an appeal were too slim to pursue.

“Whether we file an appeal or not, there is no changing in the outcome,” Board President Dani Hernandez said. “It’s time to make a smooth transition.”

I lean in the “not worth it” direction, mostly because asking the TEA to reconsider its own decision seems highly unlikely to work. I get where Trustees Guidry and Allen are coming from, though. There might be some symbolic value in making the TEA defend itself on the record. Basically, I agree with Campos, I don’t have a quarrel with anyone’s vote on this.

Another “future doctor shortage” article

Mar 29th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Third in the series. This one covers our future nurse shortage, too.

More than a year and a half after Texas implemented its six-week abortion ban, and months after Dobbs, medical providers say they are facing impossible situations that pit their ethical obligation to patients who are dealing with traumatic and dangerous pregnancy complications against the fear of lawsuits, loss of their medical licenses, and incarceration. The problem is encapsulated by a lawsuit filed this month in Texas, in which five women and two OB-GYNs sued the state over the abortion bans that they say have created so much confusion and fear among providers that it has affected women’s health and even threatened their lives. Unsure of how to comply with the new rules, hospitals have interpreted them differently, with some requiring approval from attorneys or ethics boards for physicians to provide abortion care in medical emergencies, and others leaving it up to individual doctors, with little guidance or support. This has meant that some physicians wait until patients are near death to intervene in medical emergencies, according to recent research, court filings, news reports, and interviews. “I’ll get consults from another doctor asking me what to do in a particular case—a mother bleeding, or a pregnancy where there’s an infection in the womb before the baby can survive outside the womb. I have doctors calling me, hesitating, not quite knowing what to do because the baby has a heartbeat, when clearly the mother’s life is at risk,” John Visintine, a maternal fetal medicine specialist in McAllen, Texas, told me. “These are things that I haven’t seen in, you know, 20 years of practicing OB, 14 years of practicing high-risk OB—I’ve never run into these situations where people are wondering what to do.”

The inability to provide what they say is the standard of care to pregnant patients is taking a toll, personally and professionally, according to interviews with more than a dozen doctors and nurses across Texas. And it’s causing many, like Wilson, to reconsider the future of their career in the state. Almost every provider I spoke with for this story has thought about leaving their practice or leaving Texas in the wake of S.B. 8 and Dobbs. Several have already moved or stopped seeing patients here, at least in large part because of the abortion bans. “If I was ever touch a patient again, it won’t be in the state of Texas,” said Charles Brown, chair of ​​the Texas district of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), who stopped seeing patients last year after decades working as a maternal fetal medicine specialist. Many asked that their hospital affiliation not be included in this story, in some cases because they feared consequences from their employer or the public for speaking out about these laws, even though they’re not breaking them. Some worry about what will happen to their own kids if they are targeted. Several cried through the interviews. Many of those I spoke with who haven’t left yet are still thinking about it regularly—people who have family and homes and lives in Texas and would not otherwise have considered moving.

Brown put the stakes bluntly: “Are people quitting? … The answer is yes,” he said. “I hope I’m 100 percent wrong about this, but I think it’s a much bigger trend that’s going to become obvious pretty quickly.”

[…]

This is all happening as Texans can’t afford to lose more access to medical care. In 2022, 15 percent of the state’s 254 counties had no doctor, according to data from the state health department, and about two-thirds had no OB-GYN. Texas has one of the most significant physician shortages in the country, with a shortfall that is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next decade, according to the state’s projections. The shortage of registered nurses, around 30,000, is expected to nearly double over the same period. Already, Texans in large swaths of the state must drive hours for medical care, including to give birth. According to recent research from the nonprofit March of Dimes, it is among the worst states for maternity care access, which has decreased in a dozen Texas counties in the past two years, mostly due to a loss of obstetrics providers.

This doesn’t yet take into account the effects of increased criminalization of abortion care, which is further compounded by dramatic pandemic-induced burnout among clinicians. As physicians retire, hospitals are struggling to replace them; as nurses burn out or leave for more lucrative travel nursing roles, their positions are sitting open. There have been a string of policies and factors that have stretched providers in Texas for many years, from having the highest uninsured rate in the country to low Medicaid reimbursement rates to the demonization of science to attacks on transgender health care, and now the abortion bans, according to Tom Banning, the CEO of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. “The first rule of holes, when you’re trying to get out of the hole, is to stop digging,” he said. “We just continue to dig the hole that we’re in deeper.”

This is an issue for both urban and rural areas, but it’s felt most acutely outside major metros, where one retirement or move can be the difference between having access to medical care near home or having to drive an extra several hours. The state has experienced the most rural hospital closures in the country in recent years. Less than half of rural hospitals nationwide still have labor and delivery services, according to recent research from the Chartis Center for Rural Health; in Texas, that number is just 40 percent. John Henderson, the president and CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, said he gave a presentation this fall for a group of representatives from about 100 rural Texas hospitals where he asked them to raise their hand if they don’t currently have openings for registered nurses. “There were three out of 100 that were fully staffed, and I was actually surprised that there were three,” he said. “It’s crisis-level staffing for the majority of rural Texas hospitals.” Maternity wards have long been the sacrificial lamb for cash-strapped rural hospitals trying to save money and keep their doors open, but more recently, it’s short staffing that has forced closures and cuts to services in Texas and across the country.

See here and here for the previous entries. The problems with rural hospitals and the general unavailability of maternity care are separate but related phenomena. I realize that the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “data”, but there sure are a lot of anecdotes, and some of them do come with data, so.

It is of course possible that none of this gets beyond the anecdote stage. Some of the people quoted in the story admit that it’s tough to leave even as they get pushed past what they thought their point of tolerance was. Maybe the effect will only be truly felt in rural areas where they keep on voting for the Republicans that create and exacerbate these problems for them. Maybe it’s dumb to expect Republicans to feel the consequences for any of their actions, given that they haven’t felt them for the freeze or for the continued epidemic of mass shootings. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But as long as these stories keep getting written, I’ll keep pointing them out.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is in for Mayor

Mar 28th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
24 comments

Okay then. The Quorum Report was first on the scene.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Sources: In a closed-door event over the weekend, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told pastors she is running for mayor of Houston
The chatter is getting louder out of H-Town, where sources this morning indicate that Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee on Saturday told attendees at a closed-door event that she is indeed running for mayor.

Some of those who went to the Ministers United for Houston’s Future event on Saturday have said that when she was speaking onstage, Rep. Jackson Lee confirmed her plans to enter the crowded field to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who of course is term-limited.

As you know that field already includes Sen. John Whitmire, Chris Hollins, Amanda Edwards, Gilbert Garcia, Robert Gallegos, Lee Caplan, and others.

Developing…

It has developed.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a mainstay in Houston politics for more than three decades, is running for mayor.

Speaking to the City Cathedral Church on Sunday, the congresswoman told parishioners she intends to run in the November election to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is term-limited.

“Sheila Jackson Lee wants to come home to be your mayor, for the city of Houston,” the congresswoman said in the video, streamed online and first shared on social media by Urban Reform, an online advocacy group. “I will not be able to do it without each and everyone of you.”

Jackson Lee has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Rumors have swirled for years that Jackson Lee may be interested in City Hall’s top job. The political chatter had reached a fever pitch in recent weeks and months, as polls tested her viability.

Jackson Lee immediately becomes a front-runner in the race, and her entry likely scrambles the calculus for other mayoral contenders. The field now includes seven Democrats. While municipal elections are nonpartisan, each of those candidates is working to assemble winning coalitions from overlapping voter bases.

They include state Sen. John Whitmire; former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins; former City Councilmember Amanda Edwards; attorney Lee Kaplan; Councilmember Robert Gallegos, and former Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia.

Whitmire enjoys a $10 million war chest and decades in the Texas Legislature, qualities that made him an early front-runner. Jackson Lee’s long tenure in the House, a more visible role, put her at a similar advantage, according to political analysts. She is a prolific presence at political events, community gatherings and news conferences, and she has a well-documented knack for getting to the front of the crowd to greet the president after a State of the Union address.

“I think that’s her stock and trade, in terms of being able to work the community and speak out on issues,” said Michael Adams, a professor of political science at Texas Southern University. “If you were to rank the order of Black elected officials in terms of visibility or electability, Sheila Jackson Lee is probably the most visible and recognizable member of Congress out of all of the congressional delegation in Harris County… She’s well recognized.”

Familiarity in a partisan role, though, cuts both ways: Just as Jackson Lee has proven popular in her district, Houstonians outside its boundaries, especially those who do not share her political leanings, may know her only in a negative light.

“She’s been out there for a long time,” Adams said. “Since she’s been an elected official for a lengthy time, she will have scar tissue; that comes with the territory.”

[…]

The question is whether Jackson Lee will be able to expand on her voter base to win a runoff, according to Jeronimo Cortina, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.

“You core base is always going to support you, but you have to start making inroads with other voters,” he said.

Whitmire has assembled the most institutional support to date, collecting endorsements from influential labor groups and elected officials, including Rep. Sylvia Garcia, Jackson Lee’s colleague in the House. A recent poll testing Jackson Lee’s prospects asked several direct questions about how she would compare to Whitmire, according to recipients of the poll.

That last link is to my February 1o post about CM Robert Gallegos entering the race, in which I noted that I had been the recipient of a poll call about the Mayor’s race, and I asked who paid for the poll. It would be more accurate to say “according to one person who asked about the source of the poll” or words to that effect, but whatever. At least they included the link.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, so let’s get to it.

– In general, I tend to agree with the consensus that Rep. Jackson Lee becomes a top tier candidate, on the strength of her name ID and years of serving a large portion of the city of Houston in Congress. I think things get complicated when the field is this big, and there will be a lot of overlap in each candidate’s base of support. Clearly, though, it’s easy to see what her path to a runoff looks like.

– It should be noted that Rep. Jackson Lee has never been a huge fundraiser, mostly because she hasn’t had to be. Indeed, as of December 31, 2022, her federal campaign account had $300K in it, which is quite a bit less than those of the four earliest entrants – Whitmire, Hollins, Edwards, and Kaplan. I don’t think she’ll have any trouble raising money – she has connections out the wazoo, and plenty of colleagues who I’m sure will write her a check. Her name ID means she needs a pile of money less than other candidates, because most of them have to introduce themselves to the electorate, which she won’t have to do. But if she wants to run TV ads and employ a field team, she’s gonna need at least a million bucks, probably two or three million. Best get started soon.

– Many times in 2015, I said that there’s only so much room for qualified and well-funded candidates in a Mayoral race. I said that at the time in the ultimately mistaken belief that someone would look at the field and their own prospects and drop out before the filing date. I’ll say it again this year, because the field is now even bigger and there’s an obvious need for a good Democrat to move over to the Controller’s race. The first current Mayoral candidate to make that move becomes in my opinion the favorite in that race, and if they’re young enough to run for Mayor again in (gulp) 2031 – or maybe 2027 – then they could be the frontrunner at that time. We’ll see how wrong I am in this belief this time.

– This is where I say again that in general polling for city races is dicey and should be taken with skepticism. This is mostly because it is hard to identify the likely electorate, as turnout can vary wildly and 30% turnout is quite high, so polls of “registered voters” will include responses from a lot of people who won’t actually vote.

– As noted before, I expect we will have a new high in city election turnout this fall thanks to the increase in registered voters since 2015. That would be an incremental increase, but would still represent maybe 40-50K more voters than the last open Mayoral race, and quite possibly a lot more “new” city election voters. There is a scenario in which interest in the city elections is higher than usual, and the overall increase in local election participation since 2016 combines to make it a more significant step increase, say to the 350-400K level. I don’t know how likely that is, but it is the range of possible outcomes. If that does happen, who knows what the effect might be on the races themselves. See my point above about how hard it will be to poll this election.

– The Trib accurately notes that Jackson Lee, like Whitmire, does not need to resign to run for this office. Mayor Turner remained in the State House in 2015 when he got elected. That’s true, but Turner then and Whitmire now could reasonably expect to be done with their legislative gigs as of Memorial Day, giving them the entire summer and fall to campaign fulltime. Congress doesn’t work that way, and it’s also a much longer trip from DC to Houston than it is from Austin to Houston. Jackson Lee will have to face a choice they didn’t, which is to largely abandon her current gig, which will open her up to attacks about missed votes and the like, or step down in the near future and give herself the time to fully commit to the campaign. This could go either way, but it’s not clear to me that she will remain in office while she runs.

– If she does step down, or if she wins and then resigns from Congress next January, the field to succeed her in CD18 will be at least as big as the Mayoral field is now. This is my Congressional district, and the thought of having to do interviews with all those candidates, both for a special election and a 2024 primary, is giving me palpitations. I’m going to go lie down now.

That’s what I think for now. I’m sure there will be plenty more to say. What do you think? Does this change anything for you? Leave a comment and let me know. The Texas Signal has more.

RIP, Texas Observer (maybe?)

Mar 28th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

A real shame, and a real loss.

The Texas Observer, the storied progressive publication known for its feisty, combative and often humorous investigative journalism, is shutting down and will lay off its 17-person staff, including 13 journalists, several members of its board said Sunday.

The decision marks an end to 68 years of publication, starting with its founding in 1954 by Ronnie Dugger and including a six-year period under the helm of the legendary Molly Ivins from 1970 to 1976. The magazine, in its first few decades, represented the liberal wing of the once-conservative Democratic Party. It was a thorn in the side of Lyndon B. Johnson when he was Senate majority leader (before he became president), Govs. Allen Shivers and John B. Connally, and other conservative Democrats. And it chronicled the era in which Texas was remade into a Republican stronghold that sent a governor, George W. Bush, to the White House.

The closing of the Observer raises questions about whether small progressive publications can survive the digital and demographic transformation of journalism and the information ecosystem during a time of rapid social and technological change.

While nonprofit newsrooms have been proliferating around the country, many are dependent on philanthropic grants and don’t have a clear pathway to economic sustainability. The Observer had been supported for years by a small number of major donors, and wasn’t able to build a broad base of subscribers and members.

The Observer’s budget was $2.1 million last year, and in recent weeks, the board considered moving to online-only publication, which would have taken the budget down to $1.8 million, and doing that plus laying off three staff members, which would have taken the budget to $1.5 million. The Observer has about 4,000 print subscribers (its content is free online) and 64,000 subscribers to its free email newsletter.

The board of the nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation, which owns the Observer, voted on Wednesday to approve the layoffs, according to the board members, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss its internal deliberations.

Robert R. Frump, who stepped down from the board in June to run the magazine’s business operations as a special adviser, resigned in protest on Thursday after he was informed of the decision. Following a last-ditch effort to slow the process and give employees more severance, the Observer’s board confirmed its decision on Sunday and plans to tell the staff on Monday morning that their last day will be this Friday, March 31, the board members said.

Frump told The Texas Tribune that the board chair, Laura Hernandez Holmes, and other board members instructed him on Thursday morning to shut down operations immediately and shut off access to email. “I handed in my resignation after they told me what they were doing,” he said in a phone interview.

Hernandez Holmes, an El Paso native and Austin-based campaign consultant and political fundraiser who worked on Beto O’Rourke’s failed presidential bid in 2019, said in a text message Sunday night: “I feel strongly about talking with the staff before I talk with any reporters outside the organization. I owe them that.”

“The editorial quality of the Texas Observer is excellent, and it deserves to live on in some format,” Frump said. “It has a unique voice that’s progressive but hews to the truth. I‘m hoping some version of it can still survive.”

Frump said the Observer was ultimately unable to adapt to the demands of a 24/7 news cycle and the proliferation of other sources of information about Texas, including Texas Monthly, a features magazine that just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization co-founded in 2009 by Evan Smith, a former editor of the Monthly.

“Our reader base and our donor base is aging out,” Frump said. “There’s a nostalgia for Molly Ivins and [former Democratic Gov.] Ann Richards and their era, and that’s a lot of what still drives the Observer. We weren’t able to build a bridge to the younger, progressive generation. I think the legacy is worth fighting for, but I do understand why the board feels the way it does.”

Reached Sunday night, Gabriel Arana, who was hired as the magazine’s editor in chief in April 2022 after two consecutive top editors left abruptly, said: “This is the first I’m hearing of it, the board hasn’t communicated with me or the staff about this.”

He added: “I’m really proud of the work the staff is doing. The level of talent and the quality of journalism are really impressive. I feel the board has abdicated its responsibility for fundraising and ensuring the financial health of the publication. I think it’s shameful that they haven’t involved the staff in this decision-making in any way.”

The story goes into the Observer’s celebrated history as well as its recent problems with funding and editorial leadership. The top story on the website right now is a deep dive into the effect of Texas’ abortion ban on doctors. The Observer Twitter feed is full of reactions to this news, including from current writers who were just learning about the news via the Trib story. I’m very sad to see this happen, but I can’t say I’m surprised. You don’t need me to tell you how tough the landscape is for publishing these days, and niche publications have it even harder. It’s a testament to the Observer that they made it this far, but that doesn’t make its end any less lamentable. I wish the entire staff all the best and hope they are able to land on their feet elsewhere.

UPDATE: Maybe it’s not quite the end of the story:

I wish them all the luck with this. Hit that GoFundMe link in the replies if you want to help out.

UPDATE: From Monday afternoon:

Journalists at the Texas Observer on Monday urged their nonprofit board to reconsider its decision to close the crusading liberal magazine, proposing an emergency $200,000 fundraising appeal to keep the 68-year-old publication open.

The 17-member staff also expressed shock and anger after learning via a Texas Tribune article on Sunday that most or all of them would be laid off on Friday and that the publication would be put on “hiatus.”

“We believe that your decision to proceed with layoffs on Friday can still be avoided and is premature,” the editors wrote in a letter to the board of the Texas Democracy Foundation. The signers were editor-in-chief Gabriel Arana, digital editor Kit O’Connell, senior editor Lise Olsen and editor-at-large Gayle Reaves.

The editors asked that board members who voted to close the magazine resign, that a staff member be added to the board and that the board bring on “nationally known journalists with experience in assisting other journalism nonprofits in times of crisis.” They said the emergency appeal to raise $200,000 could be led by former board members and supporters.

The Observer’s Twitter account posted a link to a GoFundMe fundraiser Monday morning. As of Monday afternoon, its website made no mention of the board’s decision.

It’s not clear how the board will respond to those demands. All but two members of the board voted on Sunday to proceed with the layoffs, confirming a previous vote taken Wednesday.

The two dissenters were Peter A. Ravella, the board treasurer, and Eileen Smith, a writer and editor. Ravella had already announced that he was stepping down from the board this week, as he is selling his Austin home and moving with his wife to Olympia, Washington. In a statement, Smith said that her only disagreement on the vote to shut down was with “a small portion of the language” and that she agreed that “barring a last-minute infusion of cash, laying off the newsroom staff was the only way forward, which, of course, none of us wanted.”

Like I said, I hope there’s a way forward. We’ll see.

A more nuanced look at the finances of hosting the Final Four

Mar 28th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I’ve made fun of articles in the past that breathlessly and credulously repeated claims that various big sporting events like a Super Bowl or a Final Four would yield untold millions in sales and hotel tax revenue for the state and the host city, despite the lack of objective evidence. With that in mind, I want to give credit to this Chron story about the upcoming Final Four in Houston, which takes a much more critical view of things.

Tens of thousands of fans are expected to swamp Houston later this week for the Final Four championship and unload their wallets in the city’s hotels, restaurants and bars.

Final Four organizers and researchers say Houston has a lot to gain from hosting the four-day college basketball championship, but a stubborn question emerges in every host that lands the event: Does it bring a financial windfall for the city?

A review of sales and hotel occupancy tax data from previous years Houston hosted the Final Four does not show a notable bump compared to years the city did not stage the event. When you add in extra costs the city takes on, like additional policing, infrastructure improvements and cleanup costs, the economic benefits get more muddy, researcher said.

“Sometimes we just list this really large number of economic impact, but we don’t talk about the investment that’s required,” said Jeremy Jordan, Temple University vice provost and former dean of the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management. “Planning and executing a large event for millions to watch requires large costs.”

Event organizers, boosters and city officials insist the broader benefits of the tournament extend far beyond the numbers. College basketball’s marquee event showcases the city to thousands of visitors and millions of fans tuning into the games across the country.

“Any time that we can put Houston in the spotlight is a great opportunity for us to be able to tell our story,” said Michael Heckman, CEO of Houston First, which operates several of the city’s convention, arts and entertainment venues.

The story then goes through a lot of different numbers to show that it’s hard to find an effect. My eyes glazed over after a few paragraphs, but it’s the process more than the specifics that really matter. My point in my earlier postings, which go all the way back to Super Bowl XXXVIII, is that it’s easy to make claims and difficult to produce evidence in support of those claims. Which the claimers usually avoided by not bothering, and which the stories often left unquestioned. That wasn’t the case here.

In the end, I do think there’s benefit to hosting large sporting events, even if the dollars and cents are hard to parse out. The benefits may be more intangible – and thus even more difficult to measure – and they accrue almost entirely to the limited set of people who care about the event in question. Having big attractions – in sports, music, culture, food, the arts, and so on – are benefits of living in a city, and the people that live there expect that over time there will be a number of such events that interest them. I don’t think it has to be more complicated than that.

Precinct analysis: Looking back at the 2012 landscape

Mar 27th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

PREVIOUSLY: State House 2022

We’ve had our first look at the way the new State House districts performed, and while we can expect the 2024 election to be a little different, it’s clear at this time that there aren’t many swing seats out there, even with a fairly expansive definition of “swing”. That’s by design, of course, and it’s clear Republicans have gotten pretty good at doing what they do. But I think we all recall feeling similar emotions following the 2012 election, and while it took awhile, we did see some massive changes in how districts were perceived over time. So let’s wind the clock back a decade and see what the landscape looked like at first. We’ll start with the Republican seats as of this time in 2013, using the same “under 55%” and “55-60%” standards as before.


Dist  Romney   Rom%    Obama Obama%
===================================
023   31,282  54.6%   25,365  44.2%
043   25,017  52.0%   22,554  46.9%
052   30,763  54.7%   23,849  42.4%
054   25,343  52.9%   21,909  45.7%
102   29,198  53.0%   24,958  45.3%
105   23,228  52.1%   20,710  46.5%
107   27,185  51.8%   24,593  46.9%
113   27,095  52.5%   23,891  46.3%

Dist  Romney   Rom%    Obama Obama%
===================================
032   28,992  56.9%   21,104  41.4%
045   35,298  55.2%   26,757  41.8%
047   50,843  58.0%   34,440  39.3%
065   31,456  57.5%   22,334  40.8%
096   36,190  58.6%   24,838  40.2%
097   39,614  59.6%   25,881  38.9%
108   40,564  59.0%   27,031  39.3%
112   28,221  55.0%   22,308  43.5%
114   35,795  55.2%   28,182  43.5%
115   30,275  55.4%   23,556  43.1%
132   31,432  58.9%   21,214  39.8%
134   46,926  56.4%   34,731  41.7%
135   32,078  58.8%   21,732  39.8%
136   35,296  55.1%   26,423  41.2%
138   27,489  59.2%   18,256  39.3%

Ironically, the first two districts listed here are ones that quickly disappeared from the “competitive” rankings. Both HDs 23 and 43 trended red over the decade, and neither has had a serious Democratic challenge since 2014. (HD23 was won, for the last time, by Democrat Craig Eiland in 2012; HD43 became Republican after the 2010 election when its incumbent switched parties.) Most of the other districts in both tables above are now Democratic, with HD132 being Dem for one cycle after being flipped in 2018 and flipped back in 2020. HD107 was the first Dem takeover, in 2016, while HD134 turned blue in 2020. All the rest came over in 2018.

It should be noted that as of the 2012 election, there were only 55 Democrat-held districts. Three went red in the 2014 debacle, with two of those (HDs 117 and 144) plus HD107 flipping back in 2016. Dems have 64 seats now, and could with a bit of optimism get to the 67 that they had after the 2018 wave. After that, you’re relying on either a steady march of favorable demographic progress, or another shakeup in the national landscape that makes formerly unfriendly turf more amenable. Which is indeed what happened last decade – in the previous decade, it was more the march of demography – but past performance does not guarantee future results. The Republicans have made some gains in formerly dark blue turf, too, as they had in 2010 when they managed to finally win in historically Democratic rural areas. You can’t say from here which way or how far the wheel will spin.

In the end, there were 22 “competitive” seats by our metric as of 2013. Fourteen of them were won after then at least once by a Democrat, with thirteen of them net for Team Blue. I have 34 such seats in 2023. I’d say that’s a combination of Texas being modestly bluer overall – remember that Mitt Romney took 57% in 2012 while Donald Trump took 52% in 2020; Greg Abbott got 59% in 2014 and 54% in 2022 – with Republicans having to spread themselves a little thinner in order to hold as many of these seats as a result. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all ends up.

On the other side of the ledger, the “swing” Dem-held seats of a decade’s hence:


Dist  Romney   Rom%    Obama Obama%
===================================
034   19,974  44.2%   24,668  54.6%
078   19,013  44.0%   23,432  54.3%
117   20,036  46.7%   22,234  51.8%
144   11,606  47.9%   12,308  50.8% 

Dist  Romney   Rom%    Obama Obama%
===================================
041   14,906  42.3%   19,935  56.5%
048   32,025  39.5%   46,031  56.8%
050   22,906  38.8%   34,110  57.8%
074   16,738  41.5%   22,955  56.9%
118   17,824  43.3%   22,719  55.2%
125   19,004  39.5%   28,374  59.0%
148   16,296  41.1%   22,449  56.6% 
149   18,183  41.8%   24,839  57.1%

Not nearly as many as there are now, and basically none of them became more competitive over the course of the 2010s. HDs 117 and 144 did flip in 2014 but returned to the fold the following election. A couple of these districts, specifically HDs 34 and 74, are legitimately competitive now, at least by the statewide numbers, and of course HD118 was drawn to be considerably redder and is now Republican-held but tenuously so. While it’s on the Dem target list now, I expect it will be on the Republicans’ target list in two years.

I have a total of 19 competitive-by-this-metric seats as of now, but as noted I only expect a couple of them to truly behave that way. Dems will have more “real” targets, up until such time as they begin winning them. But maybe some of those South Texas seats will begin to drift away and we’ll be having a very different conversation in, say, 2026. Again, we’ll just have to see how it plays out. For now, it’s clear that there are more “competitive” seats in 2023 than there were in 2013. We’ll check back later to see how or if that changes.

Abortion funds go back to work

Mar 27th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Glad to see it, but I’m waiting for another shoe to drop.

Some abortion advocacy nonprofit groups have resumed paying for Texans to get abortions out of state after a court ruling last month.

These groups, called abortion funds, stopped paying for abortion procedures and travel to out-of-state clinics after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, citing confusion and fear of violating Texas’ intersecting abortion bans.

Virtually overnight, all of Texas’ abortion clinics closed — and the infrastructure that helped Texans access out-of-state care evaporated alongside them. Many of the people these funds work with likely could not afford to leave the state without their financial support, said Denise Rodriguez, communications director with the Texas Equal Access Fund.

“When we found out we had to pause funding, that was something that was really heartbreaking for everybody on our team,” Rodriguez said. “Now that we’re able to start funding abortions again, that’s what this organization was started for, so everybody is just excited.”

The Dallas-based TEA Fund provides Texans vouchers that lessen the costs of abortions at out- of-state clinics. Rodriguez said they have enough funding to assist anyone who calls in between Monday, when their hotline reopens, and June 24, the one-year anniversary of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Fund Texas Choice, a statewide group that assists with travel expenses, said on Twitter that they have reopened their hotline and are resuming limited practical support.

The Austin-based Lilith Fund has also reopened its hotline and is funding out-of-state abortions again, a spokesperson said.

Other groups are preparing to relaunch their funding mechanisms as well. This flurry of activity comes after a federal judge granted a temporary injunction in February, blocking a handful of county prosecutors from pursuing charges against anyone who helps a Texan access abortion out of state.

The ruling is not binding statewide, but it has reassured some groups enough to resume operations.

“All of it is so uncertain, but we’re going to fund abortions until we’re forced to stop,” Rodriguez said.

See here for the background. I fear this is what an economics professor of mine would have called an unstable equilibrium. Something will happen, either a ruling in an existing lawsuit, the filing of a new lawsuit, the passage of a new law in the Lege, some Presidential executive action, or something else like that, that will disrupt this. All things considered, I’d expect it to be something bad. What it is and when it might happen, I have no idea. I just don’t think what’s happening now will still be the case in, say, another six months or a year. I’ll refer to this post later when we find out.

“More Space: Main Street” permanently extended

Mar 27th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

A good outcome for a good idea.

Houston will close down traffic on seven blocks of Main Street permanently to allow businesses to maintain outdoor seating spaces initially established during the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to expand the concept to other commercial strips in the city.

City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to permanently extend the “More Space: Main Street” program. First approved as a pilot in November 2020, the initiative converted portions of Main’s vehicle lanes between Commerce and Rusk into seating areas for bars and restaurants struggling amid the early days of the pandemic when residents had been urged to remain in their homes to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

So far, the program has enabled participating businesses to add a total of 45 tables and 154 seats on outdoor patios, according to Houston’s Chief Transportation Planner David Fields. Bars and restaurants also reported increases in revenue, employee retention and customer satisfaction, he said.

“We surveyed the businesses. All of them said this was exactly what they wanted. They requested the city extend it,” Field said. “And people felt safer being out on Main Street because there were more people out on Main Street.”

The goal, Fields said, is to expand the concept citywide eventually, although it will require more research and conversations with local businesses to identify specific commercial strips that could be a good fit for the program.

“We definitely want to expand this once we get the permanent version up and going,” he said. “This is not something we would ever impose. This is something that we really want a commercial strip, possibly a group of businesses near each other, to see this downtown as an example and say, ‘Yeah, we would like to do that. Can you help work with us on that?’”

While “More Space” initially was designed as a tool for businesses to cope with COVID-19 policies, it has benefits beyond the pandemic and has helped create a more vibrant downtown culture, according to Melissa Stewart, executive director of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association.

“For so long, we would come to downtown, do our work and then run for the hills. That continues to change,” Stewart said. “We’re continuing to see, much even to my surprise as a native Houstonian, more and more people willing to dine outside all year around. Houston is becoming a lot more like the big cities that we see in other parts of the country.”

[…]

Main Street’s unique conditions — limited traffic flow, few nearby residential buildings and the rail line providing convenient spots for barriers — made closing down the seven-block stretch of road a relatively smooth transition. Applying the same model to other parts of the city, on the other hand, could come with additional challenges, Stewart said.

“You might think Midtown, Montrose, the Heights, but it’s really going to require a space-by-space study because, let’s say you were to implement this on a part of Yale, the workaround might be really difficult for that community and that traffic pattern,” she said. ”So, we want these solutions to be adaptable to not only the business model but also to the neighborhood.”

See here and here for the background. I love this idea for where it is. I’m happy for the same thing to be considered elsewhere in town, though I will say I’m not sure where else it could work. (Yale Street, I will say with confidence, would not work.) Downtown in general and Main Street in downtown in particular are a special set of circumstances. But by all means, be open to possibilities.

Weekend link dump for March 26

Mar 26th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

“Sending new moms to prison has devastating consequences. Some states are starting to rethink the practice.”

“Fox may be forced to read an apology on air or something, but the audience still loves the product. It’s basically the W.W.E. for this kind of world.”

“Now you may wonder if there can be any number at all that is not interesting. That question quickly leads to a paradox: if there really is a value n that has no exciting properties, then this very fact makes it special. But there is indeed a way to determine the interesting properties of a number in a fairly objective way—and to mathematicians’ great surprise, research in 2009 suggested that natural numbers (positive integers) divide into two sharply defined camps: exciting and boring values.”

“Ohio State To Supreme Court: Please Stop People From Suing Us Over Athletics Doctor’s Sexual Abuse“. By the way, if The Ohio State’s argument sounds familiar, it’s because SCOTUS has ruled in favor of a similar defendant on that argument before. If and when they take this case and OSU wins, it will be history repeating itself in a bad way.

“Hunter Biden is apparently sick and tired of being a silent Republican punching bag. He’s going on offense, suing the computer repair shop owner who gave his private information to the Republican operatives who then spread it as far and wide as they were able.”

“As the age for collecting full Social Security benefits increases, persons who retire at age 62 will see a greater reduction in their Social Security benefits.”

“These unflattering photos do what kids do best: they wholeheartedly engage with the present moment.”

Leave Flaco the Central Park Owl alone!

What makes March Madness special is things like pep band solidarity and singing your way around NCAA rules. If you know, you know.

“Why You Should Opt Out of Sharing Data With Your Mobile Provider”.

“Is the Western drought finally ending? That depends on where you look”.

“But has the United States fully internalized the lessons of the Iraq War? Two decades later it is clear that Washington still has crucial lessons to absorb.”

“Fox News Sues Fox News Producer Who Is Suing Fox News Which Is Being Sued by Dominion”.

While I greatly appreciate what Nebraska State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh is doing with her filibuster against anti-trans legislation, I must reluctantly point out that Wendy Davis’ famous filibuster (she cites Davis as an inspiration) ultimately failed, and things have gotten far worse since then. A filibuster can be a great tactic, but in the end nothing is going to stop a determined majority except voting enough of them out so they’re no longer the majority.

RIP, Willis Reed, basketball Hall of Famer and two-time NBA champion with the Knicks.

There are more investigations into Donald Trump’s criminality than you might realize.

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, two radiated tortoises at the Houston Zoo, on the hatching of their three children.

RIP, Ada Edwards, Houston civil rights activist and former City Council member.

RIP, Joe Giella, comic book and comic strip artist. Here’s a great sample of his work on Mary Worth.

RIP, Jim Harithas, Houston art legend who co-founded two Houston art institutions, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Car Museum.

The upcoming week in legislative gay-bashing

Mar 26th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

From the inbox, from Equality Texas:


Monday, 3/27
Action Alerts & Upcoming Hearings

HB 1686, the companion bill to SB 14, would ban trans youth from access to health care. We cannot let this pass. The hearing for HB 1686 begins at 8:00am, but we’ll be there bright and early to register to testify. Hearing details & RSVP.

Community Action: Drop a card (opposing), submit written testimony, call committee members.

Tuesday, 3/28

HB 2055 would repeal an antiquated law that bans same-sex relationships. Despite being overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas) that law remains on the books in Texas.

Community Action: Drop a card (supporting), submit written testimony.

HB 1507 would ban pride celebrations in schools. Pride celebrations are important because they show LGBTQ+ kids that their identities are valid and worth celebrating. Hearing details and sign-up.

Community Action: Drop a card (opposing), submit written testimony, call committee members.

Wednesday, 3/29

HB 1952 would ban updates to gender markers on birth certificates. Hearing notice and details.

Community Action: Drop a card (opposing), submit written testimony, call committee members.

HB 888 would modify medical malpractice law to increase liability for doctors providing care to trans youth. Hearing notice and details.

Community Action: Drop a card (opposing), submit written testimony, call committee members.

This Week’s Hearing Highlight Reel:

SB 14 (Trans youth healthcare ban)

While we were rallying outside the Capitol on Monday afternoon, SB 14 moved out of committee. It is scheduled to be debated on the Senate Floor on Tuesday, March 28th. A committee hearing for SB 14’s companion bill, HB 1686, is also scheduled for Monday. We’re planning something big, and we need everyone there. Details about our plan for 3/27 and community actions are listed below under the Upcoming Events section.

HB 900 (Book Burning Act)

Tuesday’s hearing for HB 900 ended just after midnight and was left pending. Shoutout to Gordy, one of our Field Organizers, whose testimony summed up our feelings in this one line “The representation of my identity in literature is not obscene nor patently offensive.”

SB8 (Don’t Say Gay/Trans)

On Wednesday, the day of the hearing, legislators issued a committee substitute (a new version) of SB 8. The committee substitute is even more stringent than the original bill, and would now ban all instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, regardless of any age-appropriate designation. Not even 18-year-olds in high school would have access to LGBTQ+ related materials. On top of that, while the public hearing was still happening, the committee cut off access to testimony registration and card drops. That’s where we drew the line.

This was clearly a direct attempt to silence us, but it only made us louder. We called an emergency rally for 6:30 pm, and raced to send out the information. With only an hour and a half’s notice, 100 people showed up to Draw the Line. The power of our community is unbelievable, and we are so grateful for your support, resilience, and love.

SB 12 (Drag Tax) & SB 1601 (Drag Storytime ban)

Texas drag has a long, vibrant history with many unique scenes throughout the state. Did you know San Antonio was home to a thriving drag scene 100 years ago? Drag is part of Texas history, and community support for Texas drag artists was off the charts at Thursday’s hearing. More than 900 of you shantayed over to the Capitol and dropped cards in opposition to these bills. The 19 people who dropped cards in support of the bills should really just take the L and sashay away.

FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES Rally

When the lives of our trans siblings are literally up for debate, we need everyone’s help. We need all the community power we can get to show up to the Capitol on Monday, March 27th, make some noise, and raise hell. Lives are on the line. Banning our care is unconscionable. They have blood on their hands. The rally will be midday (exact time and location TBA).

I have not been paying close attention to the Lege this session. It’s all bad, and I just don’t have it in me to wallow in it. A lot of people don’t have that choice, because this is existential for them. Here’s what can be done right now to help. In the end, we’ve got to win at the ballot box.

Preferred path decision for University BRT line delayed

Mar 26th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Still working out some issues with the community.

A decision on the preferred path for Houston’s longest bus rapid transit line will wait a couple weeks longer following community outcry regarding a planned railroad overpass.

Metropolitan Transit Authority’s board of directors delayed approval of a preferred route for the University Corridor BRT project, the longest bus rapid transit project planned in the region as part of the agency’s long-range plan.

An approval of the preferred line will come “in the next week or two weeks,” Metro Chairman Sanjay Ramabhadran said, as the agency tries to line up federal funding and approvals.

“There is a lot of ways to go before we start building things,” Ramabhadran said.

[…]

Approval of the preferred route is significant because it is the specific location Metro will plan to build, and any adjustments would deviate from that plan if issues arise.

Though the project stretches 25 miles, it is a dozen or so blocks in the East End that are dividing Metro and residents in the area of the proposed overpass.

“The neighborhood fabric is being sacrificed for this overpass,” Laura Vargas told a Metro committee on Tuesday.

Transit officials said approving the route will not keep them from working to make the project more appealing to riders and residents alike

“It is certainly not the end of the process,” said Yuhayna Mahmud, project manager for the University Corridor.

Design of the line is 30 percent complete, she said.

Eastwood residents, however, have seen enough to organize their concerns over a planned overpass on Lockwood from Rusk to Sherman, spanning Harrisburg Boulevard, the parallel Union Pacific Railroad tracks and the Green Line light rail. Dozens have shown up at various Metro public meetings over the past month to discuss the project, including a meeting specifically to discuss the overpass Tuesday night. The concern for many is that the overpass would undermine the community by separating the buses from traffic while physically dividing the neighborhood.

“It should be for the people and not over the people,” overpass critic Tina Brady told Metro officials Tuesday.

The delay was welcomed by elected officials, who said it allows for transit planners and neighborhood groups to talk more and, perhaps, settle on a plan palatable to all.

“I believe Metro does owe it to the residents of the East End to build consensus,” Precinct Two Commissioner Adrian Garcia said.

Citing the ongoing debate over the impacts of the Interstate 45 rebuild, Garcia said Metro also must consider what its design will do to communities.

“Overpasses tend to be divisive and tend to divide communities even further,” Garcia said.

[…]

Facing freight train delays, pocked streets and the potential for a dividing overpass, what the community wants are proposals that can address many of the issues in an agreeable way, even if that means leveraging funds from Metro and others, such as Houston to rebuild streets or federal funds aimed at removing at-grade train crossings.

“We have to think beyond just this project,” said Veronica Chapa Gorczynski, president of the East End Management District. “We are a community, and our infrastructure is as integrated as our community is, and we can do better.”

If that comes with some hard-to-swallow changes, some residents said they will feel more part of the process, even if that means an overpass.

“If we can come to the same conclusion that this is the best thing for the community, then we can live with that,” said resident Reese Campbell.

See here for the previous update. The story references the Harrisburg overpass controversy from almost a decade ago, in which Metro ultimately went against the prevailing preference of an underpass, which they originally said they’d build and then backed away from when they decided it would be far more expensive than they first thought. It sounds like people remember that but are still willing to engage, which is a good sign. I hope Metro is as transparent as possible here and that the residents feel as though their concerns have been heard and reasonably addressed.

The vinyl renaissance

Mar 26th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

I’m not surprised by this and definitely pleased by it, though I have a little secret to confess.

After Dave Ritz came back to Houston from serving in the U.S. Army — working in a Saigon, Vietnam, radio station — he assembled a collection of more than 3,000 vinyl records. He organized the first Houston Record Convention in 1978 in the Galleria area and has been hosting such conventions six times a year ever since.

Don’t look for those events to stop anytime soon. According to the Recording Industry Association of America’s annual revenue report, vinyl albums outsold CDs last year for the first time since 1987. Additionally, physical music formats continue to grow with $1.7 billion in sales in 2022, a 4 percent growth from the previous year.

Ritz, who has sold vinyl all over the country, says that interest in vinyl in Houston has always been steady. And he even noticed a Bayou City uptick in record sales shortly before the pandemic drove people to get their music fix inside their homes.

“It’s driven by younger people, there’s no doubt about that,” Ritz said. “The thing about a record is that when you hold it, you feel like you have something. You’ve got artwork on the front. Sometimes inserts with personal information or photos inside. And then you’ve got this disc you can play.”

Michael Morales, who goes by DJ Mikey Mike, runs a Facebook network of DJs across Houston that continue to spin vinyl. Morales said the vinyl resurgence is due in large part to parents wanting to introduce their children to the music they listen to.

Both Ritz and Morales said the hottest vinyl records right now are 1980s albums.

“If you can get your hand on a Journey, Van Halen, or Boston, or anything like that, it gets pretty competitive and pricey,” Morales said. “80s rock bands I would say are pretty hot right now.”

Cactus Music has been a popular spot for vinyl records in Houston for 47 years. Co-owner Quinn Bishop said there has been a steady uptick of interest in vinyl records for the past 15 years coinciding with a decline in CD sales.

Most big box retailers, like Best Buy and Target, have largely abandoned selling CDs.

“There’s a greater proliferation of vinyl stores and shrinking storefronts for CDs, and that has sort of accelerated the trend,” Bishop said.

Cactus Music still offers CDs, which are often cheaper than vinyl records.

[…]

Bishop said younger people have a “bookshelf mentality” and want to support their favorite artists by buying something physical. In fact, according to research by the entertainment data website Luminate, only half of U.S. vinyl buyers even own a record player.

Bishop said when an artist like Taylor Swift releases their albums on vinyl, it brings people into Cactus Music for the first time.

“Not everyone has a great record store near them,” Bishop said. “I will say that if you live in Houston, Texas, you’re very fortunate because there are quite a few terrific record stores here. That is not true everywhere.”

I would agree with that. Cactus Music is a great store, which often features live performances. If you’re a music head, put them on your destination list when you come to town to visit.

Both my daughters are big music fans, though Olivia is more the collector type. She has a turntable and a decent-sized cache of vinyl, some of which she inherited from me and my wife, some of which she has bought for herself, and some of which has been given to her as Christmas or birthday presents. What Ritz says about the feel and the artwork and the pride of ownership absolutely applies to her. (And to a lesser extent to Audrey, who just bought the latest Taylor Swift releases on CD, even though she listens almost exclusively to Apple Music.) She did play her records in her room before she went off to college, and I’m sure she will again when she’s back for spring break and the summer, but it’s not so much about that – Olivia is also mostly an Apple Music and Spotify girl – it is, for lack of a better word, about the coolness of it. There’s just something about studying the album art, reading and memorizing the lyrics, looking to see who has the songwriting credits and who sat in this session and on and on. I was at best a middlebrow collector back in the 80s, but I have a lot of happy memories of this kind.

As for that confession: I really preferred collecting CDs. With record albums, I mostly played them to record them to tape, because you could get the whole album on tape, you could skip a song you didn’t like that way, and you could play a tape in your car. CDs enabled the whole-album playing, the song-skipping, and the portability, while being more durable than tape and keeping the artwork (though in a smaller size) and the lyric sheets and other inserts. I basically stopped buying vinyl once I got a CD player. Later on, once I was firmly in the clutches of my iPod, I got myself a USB turntable and ripped a bunch of my old vinyl to MP3s. I’m delighted that The Kids Today are into vinyl – it’s a boon for the artists, it’s a great generation-spanning conversation topic, a good record store is a blessing – but in my heart of hearts I’m a CD guy.

There will still be HISD Trustee elections this fall

Mar 25th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Just a reminder, in case you needed it.

Although the state is preparing to appoint a board of managers this summer, local elections for Houston ISD trustees will still be held as scheduled in November.

The Texas Education Agency announced plans to replace the district’s top leadership following chronic low academic achievement at a Fifth Ward high school and prior school board mismanagement.

It’s unclear what the elected-trustees’ roles will look like once the board of managers is appointed, but they will likely serve in an advisory position, although they will have not voting power.

After about two years of the board of managers running the district, a transition timeline may be announced if HISD reaches certain goals, and elected-trustees will be phased back into the board over the course of at least two years.

Four of the nine Houston ISD school board trustees are up for re-election in November and confirmed the plan to run again.

Trustees must file their candidate application by Aug. 21.

The rest of the story is about those four incumbents – Kathy Blueford-Daniels in II, Dani Hernandez in III, Patricia Allen in IV, and Judith Cruz in VIII – and their reasons for running again in spite of it all, which mostly amount to “someone needs to represent our district” and “I know what’s going on”. I will remind everyone that Hernandez and Cruz ousted two of the former Trustees who had been involved in that Open Meetings Act issue.

What I wonder about at this point is whether anyone will file to run against any of them. Anyone can make a case for themselves as being the better alternative, but who would want the job? It’s just going to be a placeholder for some number of years, and there’s an excellent chance that future voters will hold you responsible for anything unpopular that the Board of Managers does. It’s easy enough to see why the incumbents want to stay. It’s not at all clear to me why someone else would want in right now. We’ll see.

New frontiers in propaganda

Mar 25th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

We are at the forefront, because of course we are.

Readers of the daily email newsletter of one of the country’s leading right-wing, fossil fuel-funded think tanks were treated to a bizarre sight [last] week: an AI-generated image of a dead whale washed ashore on a beach in front of wind turbines, above a fearmongering story about offshore wind. Unfortunately, what is isolated to one newsletter today could spread around the right-wing ecosystem tomorrow.

I cover climate and read breaking news about renewable energy every day; if there were a real photo of a dead whale in front of a wind farm like this, chances are I would have seen it. Still, the image gave me a jump when I opened the email from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. For a moment, I wondered if I’d somehow missed a huge story about a dead humpback that had washed ashore in front of a wind farm.

The story under the image is old hat for this particular newsletter. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, or TPPF, is one of the leaders in the national right-wing push against renewable energy—specifically against offshore wind. Despite its location in Texas, the group has lent its sizable financial muscle to anti-offshore wind efforts on the East Coast, joining a lawsuit against a project filed by local fishermen and creating an entire movie about the evils of wind energy.

The image is at least recognizably an AI generation: there’s the tell-tale uncanny valley nature of the pattern of the debris of the beach, and the blades of the wind turbines are, well, bendy, in a way that you certainly don’t see in real life. The biggest giveaway is the DALL-E generator watermark at the lower right hand corner of the image. When I plugged in various search terms, like “beached dead humpback whale in front of offshore wind turbines” into the DALL-E generator, I got images that looked a lot like what was at the top of my newsletter. (Some of mine were much better, not gonna lie.)

Still, the image is, at first glance, realistic enough to make me do a double-take, and there’s no label on the image marking it as not a real photograph. Readers of the newsletter who aren’t familiar with how AI images look or who are just skimming could certainly be forgiven for thinking that this is real evidence of dead wildlife near a wind farm.

The story shows the original image, and especially with the foreknowledge that it’s sketchy it’s easy to see the fakery in the photo. There’s also a much less janky image of the same scene, created by the story author, which shows how much better and more insidious this sort of thing can and surely will be in the hands of liars and lowlifes. For now, if someone has passed along this bit of bullshit to you, you can show them this story and hope to at least spark a bit of skepticism in them. The next time, when it’s much more convincing? I have no idea. God help us all.

Whole Woman’s Health opens its New Mexico clinic

Mar 25th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

A little bittersweet, I have to say.

One of the largest independent abortion providers in the nation opened a new clinic in New Mexico on Thursday, nearly nine months after it shuttered its clinics in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Whole Woman’s Health of New Mexico opened its Albuquerque clinic on Thursday. The clinic is expected to see 19 patients over the next few days, with 18 of them coming from Texas.

The clinic currently offers first- and second-trimester abortion procedures to people who are up to 18 weeks pregnant, with plans to expand to up to 24 weeks in the near future.

Whole Woman’s Health opened its first Texas clinic in Austin in 2003 and later expanded throughout the state. The organization had four clinics in Austin, McAllen, Forth Worth and McKinney before it announced plans to leave the state and reopen in New Mexico.

“As we open our doors to both local communities and those forced to migrate from other states for care, we remain unbelievably grateful for the thousands of supporters from around the world that came together to make this clinic a reality,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, the president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said in a news release.

The New Mexico clinic is located minutes from the Albuquerque International Sunport Airport and all of its staff members are bilingual, the news release says.

[…]

Whole Woman’s Health said New Mexico has become a “refuge” for patients seeking abortion care, including from Texas and Oklahoma, which is also among the 13 states that banned nearly all abortions after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“Today marks the next chapter of our organization,” Marva Sadler, senior director of clinical services for Whole Woman’s Health, said in the news release. “In these times when abortion rights, health, and justice are under attack, our Albuquerque clinic will serve as a safe haven for abortion care,”

In June 2022, Whole Woman’s Health launched a GoFundMe campaign to relocate its Texas clinics to New Mexico, with more than 3,500 donors giving more than $300,000 toward the effort.

See here for the background, and here for a copy of the press release. I’m glad they are able to get back to the important business of caring for women and their reproductive needs. Lord knows, we need them. I just hope that someday they’ll be able to open back up here in Texas.

Don’t forget the teachers

Mar 24th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

I hope the Board of Managers has a plan for this.

Teachers had been shuffling in and out of Traci Latson’s classroom all day the first day back from spring break, trying to make sense of the news that broke that Houston ISD, the largest district in Texas, would be taken over by the state. 

The effects of the soon-coming state intervention won’t be felt overnight. The current elected board and superintendent will be in place until the end of the school year to avoid further disruption. Then in June, a new board and superintendent will be appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

In the meantime, Latson, a teacher at Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts Middle School, and her peers throughout HISD, have questions: How will this affect curriculum? Will schools close? What major changes will this board make?

“They’re just nervous, and they don’t know what to think,” Latson said of her peers. “We’re stuck in limbo hell.”

The Texas Education Agency started holding public hearings this week to try and quell some of these anxieties, but the first one was chaotic, interrupted by shouting and leaving many questions unanswered.  In the first days back from the takeover, attendance among both teachers and students seemed to be fairly normal, multiple teachers told the Chronicle. The attendance rate for students was about 90 percent.

Latson has spent nearly three decades as an HISD teacher. She taught some of her students’ parents, and in another classroom one of her former students is now the one teaching the lesson plans. Despite her history with HISD, she has began to peruse other job postings.

“I don’t want to leave HISD. I love working in the city, I love our children, and, for the most part, I have been pretty happy with the district,” Latson said. “So, it does sadden me to even admit to myself that it might be time for me to leave.”

[…]

Although there is much left unknown in the district, teachers can likely count on having their jobs next year, said Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. Contracts typically go out in May, which are binding for the next academic year.

Teachers actually have a great deal of job security, Anderson said, given the persistent teacher shortage compounded by the pandemic.

“I don’t care who runs the district. Somebody’s got to teach,” Anderson said. “It’s not like teachers are beating down the door. We started the school year with a teacher shortage that still exists.”

Houston ISD still has a vacancy rate of about 3.2 percent with roughly 336 openings, despite having one of the leading starting salary in the region at $61,500.

The district made an effort to persuade teachers to stay by awarding nearly $3.3 million in sign-on incentives for the 2022-2023 year to new teachers.

I don’t blame anyone for feeling adrift and insecure about what the future of HISD is. It would help greatly if the TEA held actually informative meetings rather than having PowerPoint shows that tell people things that are already publicly available, and it would help if Commissioner Morath could get his ass into town to talk to people. As long as there’s such a dearth of information, given how unprecedented this takeover is, it’s natural that fear and speculation would fill the void. The TEA owns all of this. It’s time they started acting like they understood the responsibility they have taken for themselves.

The drones of Pearland

Mar 24th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I mean, we’ll see. Certainly the Pearland Police Department will see lots of things.

Pearland’s police department has become the nation’s first law enforcement agency to win Federal Aviation Administration approval to use a system in which drones controlled from a police station can be dispatched throughout a municipality to assess incidents, which officials say can save time, resources and lives.

“We’ll be able to better assess a scene prior to getting an officer on the scene,” said Herbert Oubre, a Pearland police officer and drone pilot. “We can either increase our resources going to a call or decrease those resources.”

Instead of being controlled by operators stationed nearby or trailing in a vehicle, the police drones will rely on a technology called Casia G, developed by Iris Automation Inc., that enables remote airspace awareness during flight. The drones will use another system, called DroneSense, to relay information to the operator at the station. The suburb south of Houston seems a fitting place to deploy the technology, as police have a lot of ground to cover. With 129,000-plus residents and 49 square miles, Pearland is a mix of subdivisions, hospitals, schools, colleges, and shopping centers.

The city also might become a model for other suburban police departments, many of which lack the financial resources to use first-responder aircraft such as helicopters.

In Pearland, “this will expand our capabilities exponentially because we don’t have to have a visual observer,” city police Lt. Jeff Jernigan said.

“It’s real-time accurate information,” Jernigan also said. “When you’re talking about lives, it’s seconds, not minutes that we have to get help to a scene, and that’s what this allows us to do.”

[…]

ACLU of Texas attorney Savannah Kumar said the city of Pearland and its police department bear responsibility to formulate clear, enforceable policies on use and retention of surveillance data, particularly when technological capabilities are increased.

“These programs have the power to track outdoor movements of all people wherever they go, threatening individual rights to privacy and free association under the First Amendment to the Constitution,” Kumar said. Privacy violations could occur in scenes of residents that are captured peripherally by drone cameras, she cautioned.

She said of drones, “They can end up monitoring people’s daily movement throughout the community in ways that are sensitive — for instance if someone is going to a psychiatrist. Most people would not feel comfortable sharing some of that information, and it really does become a deep invasion of privacy when you think about both the quantity and types of information this type of aerial footage can obtain.”

Regarding privacy issues, the department bases its policies for first-responder drones on legal precedents and will follow any changes in that as the Iris program becomes functional, Jernigan said. The use of the Casia G technology, he said, will be restricted to emergency-response situations.

“We put on a training course specifically regarding case law, and because the technology is still fairly new, new case law comes out often,” Jernigan said. “There are laws, rules and department regulations that govern when and how drones are used.”

As the story notes, police departments have used drones for years, but with the “operator in sight of the drone” restriction. The first PD to get approval to use drones remotely was in 2018, and I’d love to know more about how that has gone, both from a crimefighting and efficient-use-of-police-resources perspective and from a privacy and civil rights perspective. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that somewhere – maybe not Pearland, but somewhere – there will be a massive scandal along those lines. The temptation to use that kind of power for unapproved scenarios will be large. I’d like to know more about how Pearland will safeguard people’s privacy, and I hope there is some followup reporting on that. What do you think?

Dispatches from Dallas, March 24 edition

Mar 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 DFW: A run of school violence including a fatal school shooting, in DFW area schools; a former president comes to Waco on a major Texas anniversary; ongoing fallout from the DPD evidence scandal; and cricket comes to Texas in a big way.

Monday in Arlington, two students were shot, [Archive link] one fatally, before school began. Jashawn Poirier, age 16, died in the shooting and another unnamed student was injured. The fifteen-year-old shooter is in juvenile detention in Tarrant County, charged with capital murder. No motive for the shooting has been offered so far.

Meanwhile in Dallas, there was a shooting at Thomas Jefferson High School in northwest Dallas on Tuesday. One student was shot in the arm in the parking lot a few minutes after class let out for the day. The shooter has been arrested according to the superintendent of Dallas ISD. Again, investigators haven’t ascribed a motive.

McKinney ISD also had a weapons incident on Monday, but fortunately it only involved a middle schooler using a knife one of his classmates, causing minor injuries [Archive link.] The knife-wielding student was taken into police custody and the injured student was taken to the hospital to receive medical care.

As the band director at Thomas Jefferson said to the Dallas Morning News, It’s not an ethnic thing, or a rich or poor thing, or a ZIP code thing of where you live or where you go to school. It’s happening everywhere.” Meanwhile our only governor continues to advocate against any restrictions on gun purchases or ownership, and has described legislation to raise the age for gun purchasers to 21 as unconstitutional.

In other news:

This is not how you win hearts and minds

Mar 23rd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
18 comments

I don’t know what the TEA hoped to accomplish with its public outreach meetings about the HISD takeover, but it probably wasn’t this.

Houston community members were irate Tuesday night as state education officials tried to explain the process of taking over their school district. State officials did not take questions about the effects such a move could have on Houston Independent School District, which is the largest in Texas, but did try to recruit community members to replace the existing school board.

About seven minutes into the Texas Education Agency’s PowerPoint presentation on the impending HISD takeover, parents and community members erupted in shouts directed at TEA deputy commissioner Alejandro Delgado.

“We got questions,” attendees repeatedly yelled. “Y’all tryna take our community.”

It was the first meeting that the state agency held in Houston since it announced on March 15 that it would replace the district’s current superintendent, Millard House II, and its democratically elected school board with its own “board of managers” in response to years of underperforming schools, mainly Phillis Wheatley High School.

[…]

The TEA official attempted to finish his presentation without interruption, but community members would not stand down. They were upset that they had to write their questions down on index cards and then TEA officials would choose which questions to answer.

“This meeting was rodeo-grade BS,” said Houston ISD parent Travis McGee. “The community should have been able to speak.”

McGee and other community members were also upset that the TEA commissioner himself didn’t show up to the meeting.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, took the podium once the TEA could not take control of the meeting. She said she believes Morath has the ability to not take over the district and instead continue monitoring improvement within the schools.

“The board of managers will not be responsive to teachers, parents or children. I do want the school board to be responsive to you,” she told the audience.

The community meetings were mentioned in the earlier story about the requirements that HISD must meet to get out of takeover jail. I don’t know what I would have expected if I had been there, but 1) Mike Morath really needs to be at these things and talk directly to the people, it’s flat out disrespectful not to, and 2) “Rodeo-grade BS” is an excellent expression that I plan to borrow at some point. Stace, Campos, the Chron, and the Press have more.

PS – In re: that Press piece, I take issue with this:

Asked a direct question about why TEA thought it should take over the district, Delgado made the mistake of beginning his answer with a reiteration of all the good things about the district (like a boss talking to a disappointing employee before lowering the boom with a “but”) before starting to get to the point. The crowd, exasperated, shouted him down yelling “Answer the question.” Which he then tried to do but by then it was a lost cause.

(For the record, Morath determined HISD was in need of intervention after years of some low-performing AKA failing schools that didn’t meet state academic standards and board members that were not only dysfunctional but one convicted of corruption. Others engineered an aborted administration takeover in a private meeting in apparent violation of the Open Meetings Act. And while most of the board has switched out in subsequent elections, some members of the especially troubled times remain.)

Only two current members of the Board were there for the cited dysfunction. Only one of those two was involved in the Open Meetings Act violation. The other has not been associated with any bad behavior. Four of the five trustees associated with that Open Meetings Act violation were defeated in their subsequent election. I know that Margaret Downing, a longtime reporter of HISD doings and the author of this piece, knows all of that. I don’t know if she was just presenting the TEA’s case as they would present it without any additional context or if she chose to give it this shading. I don’t care for it either way.

UPDATE: The Chron editorial board was not impressed.

More Senate 2024 talk

Mar 23rd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Make of this what you will.

Not Ted Cruz

Texas Democratic voters will head to the polls in less than a year to decide which candidate they’d like to see challenge Sen. Ted Cruz in his reelection bid, but at the moment the field remains empty because no one has jumped into the race yet.

[…]

The guessing game is already underway about who will run in the Democratic primary. According to recent reporting from The Dallas Morning News, sources said Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player, is asking donors about potentially getting into the race. He flipped a competitive Congressional seat in 2018 and defeated a Republican incumbent in his Dallas-area district. If Allred runs for Senate, he would follow the path forged by O’Rourke where a Texas Congressman sought a seat in the upper chamber.

Ed Espinoza, a Texas Democratic analyst, said Allred’s name is coming up a lot in conversations he’s having right now.

“He could be a very strong candidate,” Espinoza said, “and the fact that he is in Congress already means he has access to federal money, federal PACs and such that could buy in his race. You saw that with Beto O’Rourke in 2018 as well, so [Allred] is one candidate who could be very competitive.”

Espinoza said there are also rumblings in Democratic circles about whether Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner may have his eye on this office.

“Sylvester Turner is at the end of his term of mayor. He’s termed out in Houston later this year,” he said. “Not only has he represented the biggest city in Texas, one of the biggest cities in America, but he also is suddenly about to have time on his hands — not a bad launching pad for someone looking to run statewide in Texas.”

Questions remain, Espinoza said, about whether one of the Castro brothers might also enter the Senate race. Julián Castro served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, while his twin Joaquin Castro is a Democratic Congressman representing San Antonio.

“Either of those two would be strong candidates if they decide to run now,” Espinoza said. “The thing about the Castros, they’re very popular. They’re very well known, and they’re very accomplished in the state. They’re also mentioned every time a statewide race comes up, and it’s not always what they choose to do. So will this time be different? We shall see.”

None of these men responded when KXAN reached out inquiring about their future plans.

Sources connected to local Democratic politics also threw out a few other names who may be in the mix, including former State Sen. Wendy Davis and former 2020 Senate candidate MJ Hegar.

We are familiar with this conversation. I don’t know if this is further evidence that Rep. Allred is moving down a path towards a Senate run, or just another insider saying “hey, I’d like to see this guy run” out loud and hoping to manifest it into existence. (Believe me, I understand the impulse.) Though nobody mentioned here is in the Legislature, the post-session timeline for whatever may happen next makes some sense, as things do tend to flow with the legislative calendar.

I don’t have anything to add about the Castro Brothers or Mayor Turner that I haven’t said already. The addition of Wendy Davis (now a Senior Advisor to Planned Parenthood Texas VotesO and MJ Hegar to the discourse strikes me more as a “well, who else is out there” item than anything real. I don’t see either of them as likely to mount another campaign at this time, for a range of reasons. I suppose sooner or later we all turn into John Sharp. I will note that there are other names that have been floated in other stories, and the one actual declared candidate out there is John Love, who maybe needs to hire someone to whisper his name to more of the people who get quoted or used as sources for this type of story. Check back later and we’ll see what other names might crop up.

A few words about Lee Kaplan

Mar 23rd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I mean, I dunno.

Lee Kaplan

During the early stages of a mayoral race, polls carry little significance and every candidate says they are organizing a diverse coalition of supporters. There often is only one indicator to differentiate contenders from also-rans: money.

Fundraising enables candidates to reach out to voters and introduce themselves in campaign mail, digital ads and, perhaps, on television. That is important in city elections, which typically feature candidates less familiar to residents, and which inspire lower voter turnout and engagement.

As of their January campaign finance reports, no candidate aside from state Sen. John Whitmire — who carries a $10.1 million war chest from his decades in the Texas Legislature — has more money on hand for his or her mayoral campaign than Lee Kaplan, an attorney and political newcomer.

Kaplan had about $1.2 million in his campaign account as of January. He has raised about $1.3 million, and lent $200,000 of his own money. That fundraising haul is just shy of two other contenders, former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins and former City Councilmember Amanda Edwards. City Councilmember Robert Gallegos and former Metro Chairman Gilbert Garcia entered the race after the January campaign finance report deadline.

Kaplan says he has more money that he is “legally allowed to spend” than any other candidate, an allusion to questions about how much of Whitmire’s stockpile is available for use in a city election. The rest of the field has held office or been involved in municipal politics. Kaplan has not, but his fundraising numbers have kept him apace as a contender.

“I’ve frequently thought, well, you’re just writing checks,” Kaplan said of his past contributions to candidates. “You can’t complain if you’re not willing to run.”

[…]

His campaign so far offers a focus on the basics of city government, emphasizing public safety, streets and transportation, and trash collection among his priorities. He candidly admits he does not have solutions to those challenges yet, nor will he be able to fix them overnight. The pitch is in his approach: He plans to “beaver” away at them until he makes progress.

Kaplan said he and his son often have discussed the value of shoveling away at the proverbial mountain.

“No matter how big it is, if you start shoveling away at the problem, it gets smaller,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan has proposed adding more police cadet classes, as Mayor Sylvester Turner did for several consecutive budgets, and focusing on efficiency in the department. That may include turning some officer desk jobs into civilian roles, he said. A city consultant in 2017 said that could result in “considerable cost savings” for the city.

He rails against what he calls poor planning in streets repairs and recycling collection. He points to the city’s decision to switch to one recycling plant on the northeast part of the city, which has worsened collection times in the city’s southern sectors.

Kaplan’s appeal to voters, he said, also will stem from his singular focus on the mayor’s job. He is not aiming to use the position as a launching pad to something else, he said, and he does not think he is entitled to the job, comments that appear to be not-so-veiled jabs at his opponents.

“I’m at least as capable as those people, I’m not beholden to anybody, and I’m not worried about offending people so I can get some future position,” Kaplan said. “People do want someone who they believe isn’t beholden to others and isn’t looking for the next job.”

I’ve snarked to a few people that Kaplan gives me Marty McVey energy. Which is a bit unfair to Kaplan, since McVey’s campaign was more self-funded. But I can totally imagine a scenario in which Kaplan ends up with about two percent of the vote.

To be more respectful to Kaplan, he’s a former law partner of Larry Veselka, who’s one of the genuine good guys. I don’t have any specific quibbles with what he’s pitching, I just don’t think the electorate will be there for him, not without a widespread and compelling bit of campaign outreach, along the lines of Bill White’s omnipresent advertising in 2003. He’s entered a race that’s full of people who can make a good case for themselves, and in order to get traction with the voters you have to do more than say why you’d be good for the job. You have to say why you’d be better than all those other choices. And then the voters have to believe you. I don’t mean for this to sound dismissive, but good luck with that. It’s a tough task.

Texas blog roundup for the week of March 20

Mar 23rd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The Texas Progressive Alliance can’t believe that two top seeds were knocked out before the Sweet 16 as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

On being on the Board of Managers

Mar 22nd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

When the TEA takeover of HISD was officially announced, I noted that the coverage included a link back to a list of people who had applied for the Board of Managers in 2019. I noted that there were some familiar names on that list, including three current Trustees, all prior to their eventual elections, as well as some other recognizable names.

I reached out to one of those people from the list, who I know in real life. I was curious if they had ever heard back from the TEA the first time around and if the TEA had gotten back in touch now that they were in the Board of Managers business again. They said they never went through the interview process back then because the injunction came down before that could happen, and that the TEA did reach out again via email last week about submitting another application; the deadline to do that is April 6, in case anyone reading this is interested.

I asked what motivated them to apply back then and whether they’d do it again now, and got this response:

My initial interest was really just fascination with the process and wanting to see how the interviews were going to be conducted. I never really thought I would be a serious candidate for the position. But, as you know, often times with these type of things people who are actually qualified just don’t apply because they don’t want to deal with all the BS and you end up getting a list of candidates who have extreme views one way or the other. I suspect given all that has happened that is what will be the case this time. It’s hard for me to see any real qualified candidates, wanting to deal with all the current discord between the superintendent, board, TEA, Union, community, etc.

I share that concern, though I’m perhaps a bit less pessimistic about it. It’s the TEA’s problem now, but it will very much be our problem if they make bad choices, or if they only have bad options from which to choose. We can certainly disagree about whether good people should apply to be on the Board of Managers or if good people can only get tainted by the things they would have to do on the BoM, but however it shakes out this Board is going to have power over HISD for two years or more. Whatever the risks are, I hope people who care about HISD will review the job description and qualifications and consider applying to be on the Board of Managers. I don’t think there’s any way around that.

Oklahoma Supreme Court upholds abortion rights

Mar 22nd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Of interest, for obvious reasons.

A divided Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a portion of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, ruling women have a right to abortion when pregnancy risks their health, not just in a medical emergency.

It was a narrow win for abortion rights advocates since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

The court ruled that a woman has the right under the state Constitution to receive an abortion to preserve her life if her doctor determines that continuing the pregnancy would endanger it due to a condition she has or is likely to develop during the pregnancy. Previously, the right to an abortion could only take place in the case of a medical emergency.

“Requiring one to wait until there is a medical emergency would further endanger the life of the pregnant woman and does not serve a compelling state interest,” the ruling states.

In the 5-4 ruling, the court said the state law uses both the words “preserve” and “save” the mother’s life as an exception to the abortion ban.

“The language ‘except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency’ is much different from ‘preserve her life,'” according to the ruling.

“Absolute certainty,” by the physician that the mother’s life could be endangered, “is not required, however, mere possibility or speculation is insufficient” to determine that an abortion is needed to preserve the woman’s life, according to the ruling.

The court, however, declined to rule on whether the state Constitution grants the right to an abortion for other reasons.

The court ruled in the lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, Tulsa Women’s Reproductive Clinic and others challenging the state laws passed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

I trust the parallel to the Texas lawsuit is clear. Slate adds some details.

Oklahoma outlaws abortion through multiple statutes, both civil and criminal, and these bans became enforceable after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. One of the statutes contains an ostensible exception for the “life of a pregnant woman.” But as the court explained on Tuesday, this exception is extraordinarily narrow: It permits termination only when the patient is “in actual and present danger” of death. According to the statute, it is not enough for a doctor to determine that the pregnancy will kill her at some point in the future; that peril must be imminent. If a doctor provides an abortion before the patient is at sufficient risk of death, they face a $100,000 fine and 10 years’ imprisonment.

Reproductive rights advocates challenged this ban under the Oklahoma Constitution. Their lawsuit was risky: Five justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court were appointed by Republicans while four were appointed by Democrats. But GOP appointee James R. Winchester crossed over to create a 5–4 majority in support of “a limited right to an abortion.” The majority found that this right was supported by two provisions of the state constitution that grant “all persons” the right to “life” and “liberty.” Reviewing Oklahoma’s history, the majority explained that the state’s abortion regime had always “recognized a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in order to preserve her life,” from before statehood through admission to the union and right on up until 2021, when the present law was enacted.

Because the right to abortion to preserve the patient’s life is “deeply rooted” in Oklahoma history, the majority held, any restriction on that right is subject to strict scrutiny, bolstered by a compelling state interest. “Requiring one to wait until there is a medical emergency,” however, “does not serve a compelling state interest” because it “would further endanger the life of the pregnant woman.” The majority therefore declared that portion of the law “void and unenforceable” and announced a new standard: Abortion is permitted whenever a doctor has “determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty or probability that the continuation of the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life.” That danger may arise from “the pregnancy itself” or “a medical condition that the woman is either currently suffering from or likely to suffer from during the pregnancy.”

The scope of this standard is not entirely clear, but it suggests that a patient can undergo an abortion if the doctor determines there will be a threat to her life at some future point “during the pregnancy.” This standard is different from that in Texas, where doctors are waiting until pregnant patients are on death’s door rather than terminating when conditions emerge that could be fatal later in the pregnancy. As the majority noted, “absolute certainty” that the condition would kill a patient if untreated “is not required,” though “mere possibility or speculation is insufficient.” In a long concurrence, Justice Yvonne Kauger, joined by Justices James Edmondson and Doug Combs, tried to clarify the new rule. A physician, she wrote, need not “wait until their patient has a seizure, a stroke, experiences multiple organ failure, goes septic, or goes into a coma” before terminating a dangerous pregnancy. The reasonable likelihood of life-threatening conditions justifies an immediate abortion.

Kauger pointed to a new Texas lawsuit to illustrate what this standard does not require. The plaintiffs in that case were forced to wait until they suffered sepsis, hemorrhage, and other horrific ailments before doctors would terminate. Such a narrow exception, Kauger wrote, affords women “fewer rights than a convicted murderer on death row,” imposing “a death sentence” without “due process or any provision for clemency or pardon.” (Kauger also included a long overview of women’s near-absolute denial of rights through most of American history, noting that Oklahoma’s historical abortion laws were passed at a time when men could legally beat their wives and women could not vote or serve in office.)

As that story notes, the Supreme Court of North Dakota allowed a block on its state’s abortion ban to remain in place while a lawsuit over it plays out. It too concluded that the state constitution provided for “a fundamental right to an abortion in the limited instances of life-saving and health-preserving circumstances”. Note that these are narrow exceptions to those states’ bans, but they do represent a step forward for abortion access post-Dobbs. Just having doctors not feel like their own lives are at risk when making this decision should make a difference.

There’s an irony here in that Oklahoma was one of five states to pass an anti–Obamacare “health care freedom” amendment to their state constitution, which has now been used to argue against state abortion bans in Ohio and Wyoming as well. (Wyoming just passed a law to ban abortion pills; we’ll have to see what happens when that inevitably gets challenged.) A lot of this litigation is still ongoing so it’s hard to say exactly where we’ll end up, and these states could always try to amend those amendments to craft an abortion exception. But for now at least, there’s a path forward in some red states to at least allow for minimal access.

None of this bears directly on Texas, of course. Each state has their own laws, Texas did not amend its constitution as those five other states did, and as we well know Supreme Court justices of all stripes can be and are political animals. I make no prediction about what will happen with the litigation here. What we do know is that similar lawsuits have found success elsewhere. I’ll take my hope where I can get it.

Watch out for your electric bill

Mar 22nd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Noting this for the record.

As Texans continue paying off the costs of the deadly 2021 winter storm, state lawmakers are considering a Republican-backed proposal that would allow for more frequent rate hikes and prevent cities from challenging the increases.

Supporters of Senate Bill 1015 say it would help bolster the power grid, making it easier for utilities to recover the costs of building poles and wires to transmit electricity across growing cities.

For years, cities have negotiated settlements with electric utilities over these proposed rate hikes, securing lower costs for residents and businesses if they can show the increase is excessive.

While electric utilities have to go before the Public Utility Commission every four years to justify what they charge overall, they have also been allowed since 2011 to periodically hike rates to cover new distribution lines and any related costs. As of now, companies can do a distribution-related increase  only once a year, and only if an existing rate isn’t under review by the PUC.

SB1015 would let utilities seek two distribution rate hikes a year, including when they have a rate case pending. And it would make the PUC, not cities, responsible for reviewing and challenging the hikes.

Critics say the bill would cost ratepayers millions. It would amount to “utility self-regulation,” with “the potential of multiple, sizable increases to ratepayers over a very short period,” argued Tina Paez, director of Houston’s Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department.

“The current law strikes a good balance between the utility that makes the capital investment and the ratepayers that fund it,” Paez told a panel of Senate lawmakers this week. “But the proposed bill would eliminate that balance, tipping the scales entirely in the utilities’ favor.”

The bill’s author, state Sen. Phil King, said the measure “is about trying to bring consistency and efficiency” to the process of recouping costs.

Aside from distribution costs, utilities are allowed to seek rate hikes up to twice a year for work on transmission lines, which carry electricity from power stations to substations (as opposed to from substations to homes and businesses). King said his bill would apply the same standard to both transmission and distribution lines.

The Weatherford Republican also said he wants to reduce the legal fees that utilities pay when cities challenge their interim rate hikes. Utilities are entitled to pass those litigation costs on to ratepayers.

“At the end of the day, whatever we do to streamline the administrative process, the review process, theoretically reduces attorneys fees, reduces other costs involved, and that ultimately saves the person paying the bill a lot of money,” King said.

The proposal comes as CenterPoint Energy, the regulated utility that distributes most of the electricity in the Houston area, prepares to recoup $200 million it spent to lease mobile power generators during emergencies.

I don’t know enough about this to say with any confidence what the effect of SB1015 would be. But I do know that I don’t trust Phil King, I fear the Republican attacks on cities’ authority, and any bill involving regulation of utilities that doesn’t come with the support of stakeholders like cities and consumer groups is automatically suspicious to me. Your mileage may vary, but that’s my perception of this one.

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