Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Planning to plan

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Not really sure what to make of this.

“We’ve had a lot of planning in this city and most of us continue to do a great deal of it,” said Central Houston president Bob Eury. “What we haven’t had is the coordination and the ongoing framework for coordination. That’s what is so incredibly important coming out of this process.”

The effort is in its early stages, with Denver-based urban planner, professor and consultant Peter Park having conducted a “plan to plan” in recent months, holding discussions with numerous civic leaders to get a sense of what makes Houston tick and decide what the plan should look like.

City officials presented results of that effort and next steps to a City Council committee last week, to general enthusiasm from council members and civic leaders.

Planning and Development Department director Patrick Walsh said the plan should prevent inefficient decisions, such as paving a street and then tearing it up a few years later to install new drainage pipes, or redundant plans being pursued by the city and local development boards.

It would identify the public’s preferences in specific areas and help guide investment choices, Walsh said. For instance, a park could be a place to relax, or it could be a catalyst for economic development, such as Discovery Green. Or, he said, if it included a trail, it could be part of the city’s mobility system; or it could provide drainage for a nearby public project.

“We are attempting to recognize that there’s been an awful lot of very good work that’s gone on before us,” Walsh said. “It’s time to take advantage of that work and utilize it … There is no need to re-create the wheel here.”

[…]

[Mayor Annise] Parker said neither comprehensive planning advocates’ highest hopes, nor opponents’ worst fears, will be realized in the final product.

That sort of rhetoric hasn’t calmed David Crossley or Peter Brown’s excitement. The two smart-growth gadflies launched BluePrint Houston 12 years ago and, despite the time invested, never quite saw the idea take root. The same could be said for a 1994 effort dubbed Imagine Houston.

“I’ve had outside developers who are interested in investing in Houston ask me, ‘Show me your adopted plan so I get a feel for where I might do a project,’ ” Brown said. “I met with deputy administrator of the EPA in Washington … (who) said, ‘Show me your adopted comprehensive plan.’ There wasn’t one. This is going to help us in many, many ways.”

Even those typically inclined to frown at such proposals see promise.

Josh Sanders, of developer-led Houstonians for Responsible Growth, said there was “some initial trepidation” among his members when whispers emerged of a “general plan.” Those fears proved unfounded, he said, as the planning strategy took shape.

“We think the city does need more of a strategic outlook and does need more coordination between its existing plans,” Sanders said. “What we can do a better job of doing is figuring out how to plan and accommodate growth.”

We’ll see what this turns into. No question, there’s a need for the left hand to know a little more about what the right hand is doing. How that will translate into a set of action items, I have no idea. I’m glad everyone seems to be on board with this, I just have no idea what to expect at this time.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Annise Parker, BluePrint Houston, David Crossley, Houston, Houstonians for Responsible Growth, Joshua Sanders, Peter Brown, urbanism | Comments Off

The feral hogs of Montgomery County

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Because three blog posts about feral hogs are better than two.

Feral hogs – which some find more pesky than mosquitoes and more invasive than fire ants – are alive and well in Montgomery County.

Officials in The Woodlands say that there have been no recent sightings of wild pigs in neighborhoods – but in a growing problem has been reported throughout the county.

“We have not been hearing anything about feral hogs for the better part of several years,” Chris Nunes, director of parks and recreation for the Township, said.

He said that the boars generally reside in larger spaces – closer to water sources like creeks.

“We know of them in natural preserves,” Nunes added. “When it’s dry, they come into neighborhoods looking for food.”

Recent rains have resulted in no sightings, he said.

Keith Crenshaw, with the Houston branch of Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Urban Wildlife Program, said swine in the city stay near drainage ditches and flood control corridors.

Crenshaw said Kingwood had an increase in sightings in October, after land was cleared and the way was opened for hogs to move into neighborhoods.

“The wildlife will disperse,” he said. “And hogs don’t have a major predator other than people.”

Still, Crenshaw maintains that wild pigs may live in suburban areas without humans knowing.

“It’s totally likely that people aren’t even aware they’re here,” he said.

[…]

As the county’s human population continues to grow and more land is developed, [Montgomery County extension agent for agriculture Michael] Heimer expects more hogs will move into neighborhoods.

For example, he said several homes will be constructed in what was formerly Camp Strake, a 2,000-acre property north of The Woodlands.

“When they start developing that, we’ll see a lot of wildlife displaced,” Heimer said.

In the meantime, he said it would help the extension office if county residents would report any hog sightings.

“A lot of this goes unrecorded,” he said. “Anything we can do to get information will help. It gives us a way to document what’s going on.”

We’re familiar with the feral hogs of Kingwood. Am I a bad person for admitting that the thought of feral hogs roaming the master-planned streets of Kingwood and The Woodlands makes me giggle? As for what the good people of The Woodlands can do about this menace, I recommend they start by downloading the Texas A&M feral hog app for helpful advice. Keeping the little buggers in line is everyone’s job.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged feral hogs, Kingwood, Montgomery County, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, The Woodlands | Comments Off

GHP endorses proposed NDO

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good for them.

The Greater Houston Partnership came out in support of Mayor Annise Parker’s proposed equal rights ordinance, giving the measure a boost as it heads to a City Council committee hearing on Wednesday.

Parker plans to put the measure before the full City Council for a vote next week.

The Partnership initially had reservations about the sweeping anti-discrimination proposal, aimed at private businesses as well as city employment and contracting, but President Bob Harvey said most of the group’s concerns had been addressed by the time the mayor’s office released a draft of the ordinance last week. The Partnership’s executive committee voted unanimously on Friday to support the proposal.

“The business community and the community in general views our city as remarkably diverse and welcoming,” Harvey said. “I think this ordinance is consistent with what this city stands for.”

That’s exactly right. Many large companies have had their own version of this for years, so it’s something they’re comfortable with. Via Houston Legal, the Houston Business Journal makes this message even more explicit.

If Houston businesses are concerned about the potential unintended consequences of Mayor Annise Parker’s Equal Rights ordinance, they should look to the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Stephen J. Roppolo, a regional managing partner and employment law attorney at Fisher and Phillips.

“All of us were concerned that 40 million people were going to be declared disabled,” Roppolo said. “There were some jokes at legal seminars that were only half jokes that claimed, ‘If you’re follicly challenged, you’re disabled.'”

The net result of ADA, Roppolo said, “was not nearly as bad — as expansive — as everyone thought.”

[…]

Gender identity can be confusing to some people, Roppolo said, but he’s confident human resources departments at most Houston businesses are already prepared for this. In fact, businesses have been dealing with gender identity issues for some time.

“Everyone likes black-and-white, easy-to-decide issues. Gender identity is not black and white; it’s shades of gray,” Roppolo said. “What I tell employers is that if you’re focused on whether that person, whomever they are, is doing the work in a way that helps the business, that’s all that matters.”

Furthermore, Roppolo said employers are increasingly sensitive to workplace harassment.

“It’s not productive,” he said. “When people are doing that kind of stuff to one another, they’re not doing work.”

But the biggest message that Roppolo and other lawyers have for Houston employers is: Relax.

“Sit tight,” he said. “This is going to be fine. At the same time, I am telling employers that this is going to take some work to get your front-line supervisors to understand what the new parameters are.”

Yes, it’s going to be fine. It’s good to have the GHP officially on board, since that ought to shut up anyone that wants to claim this fairly benign ordinance would somehow be harmful to business. If anything, it’s the opposite, as the kind of innovative employees that companies like to recruit want to live in a city that reflects their own values. There’s nothing controversial about this ordinance, which as CM Ellen Cohen, the chair of the Quality of Life Committee, noted has been revised multiple times after much feedback from stakeholders.

That doesn’t mean the usual suspects won’t piss and moan about it, of course. Back to the Chron:

Major Republican donor Steven Hotze sent an email from his Conservative Republicans of Texas PAC that dubbed the proposal “Parker’s Sexual Predator Protection Act,” suggesting the measure will create a loophole to allow people to lie about their gender to enter bathrooms where they could attack women and children. He also wrote against protections based on sexual orientation.

“This would make those who engage in deviant sexual acts a new minority class equal to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and other legitimate minorities. This is a slap in the face of true minorities,” the email read.

Dave Welch, of the Houston Area Pastor Council, echoed Hotze in saying the ordinance is a solution to a problem that does not exist and that the true reason for Parker’s proposal is to force the Houston community to accept her same-sex marriage.

Texas Leftist has a copy of Hotze’s hate mail. I’m loathe to give these d-bags the attention they so desperately crave, but a reminder of who they are and what they stand for is always useful. They represent a small and shrinking group, and they deserve to be ignored. When Council finally takes up the NDO – in two weeks, since I assume someone will tag it – I hope Council passes it unanimously, or at least overwhelmingly. Don’t be with the losers here, Council members. Campos has more.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Annise Parker, Dave Welch, Ellen Cohen, gay rights, Greater Houston Partnership, Houston, Houston City Council, Steven Hotze | Comments Off

Davis vs the DGA

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Show some respect, y’all.

Sen. Wendy Davis

The chairman of the Democratic Governors Association gave a less-than-rosy assessment of Sen. Wendy Davis’ chances Tuesday and got a slam in return from her campaign.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, association chairman, failed to cite the Texas Democrat’s race for governor against Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott as a top target in talking to reporters, The Wall Street Journal reported. Instead, Shumlin pointed to races in Maine, Florida, Pennsylvania and, secondarily, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.

“We’re hopeful in Texas but we all understand that Democrats haven’t won Texas in a long time,” he said. “I wish that we could spend money for Democrats in all 50 states. My job is not to promote governors’ races in states where we can’t win.”

His comments came after the DGA earlier set up a political action committee that raised $50,000 for Davis’ bid, and after a Public Policy Polling survey that showed Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott still has a double-digit lead on the Fort Worth Democrat.

Davis’ camp has questioned the poll and slapped back at Shumlin’s remarks in a statement by campaign manager Karin Johanson.

“The uninformed opinions of a Washington, D.C., desk jockey who’s never stepped foot in Texas couldn’t be less relevant to what’s actually happening on the ground,” Johanson said.

“The Davis campaign is constructing an operation never before seen in Texas that’s built on the hard work of 15,000 volunteers who knocked on more than 55,000 doors in one weekend, more than 120,000 individual donors and a candidate who is exciting voters in a way not seen since Ann Richards’ come from behind victory,” Johanson said.

To be fair to the DGA, the six states cited were all carried by President Obama twice, they all feature Republican incumbents who are trailing or leading by modest amounts in the polls, and in the case of Wisconsin it’s the opportunity to cut the legs out of a potential Presidential candidate. I can’t blame them for prioritizing those races; it’s what any rational organization would do. That said, Governor Shumlin could have been a lot more artful in talking about Texas and Wendy Davis. At the very least, the words “can’t win” should never have escaped his lips. How hard is it to say something like “We’re keeping an eye on Texas. It’s a tough state for Democrats, but Wendy Davis is doing a great job. She’s inspired thousands of people all over the state to volunteer and organize for her, and they’re doing tons of work to turn Texas blue.” Pretty boilerplate stuff – it says all the right things without committing the DGA to any action. It’s especially annoying for the DGA to be saying such things while continuing to solicit funds in Texas with emails that say “Wendy Needs You”. In contrast to Democracy For American, which is calling on its members to support Leticia Van de Putte, it looks even worse. (Howard Dean and DFA already support Wendy, in case you were wondering.) I don’t don’t think it’s asking too much for the DGA to avoid being a buzzkill about Wendy Davis. Texas Leftist has more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democracy for America, Democratic Governors Association, Election 2014, Governor, Leticia Van De Putte, Lite Gov, Texas, Wendy Davis | 2 Comments

Two wins against voter ID

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good news from Wisconsin.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Trying to crack down on in-person voter fraud isn’t a strong enough justification for Wisconsin’s voter ID law, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, because voter impersonation virtually never occurs now and is unlikely to become a real problem in the future.

In striking down the 2011 law signed by Gov. Scott Walker (R), U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman held that although the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 2008 that states had an interest in preventing voter fraud, Wisconsin’s voter ID law wasn’t justified because voter fraud in person doesn’t really exist.

“The evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin,” Adelman ruled in Frank v. Walker. “The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past.”

The judge also held that re-enforcing public confidence in the electoral process wasn’t a sufficient justification for the voter ID law. He noted that there was no evidence that law enforcement authorities were simply failing to catch instances of voter impersonation because they were hard to detect.

If voter impersonation is occurring “often enough to threaten the integrity of the electoral process, then we should be able to find more evidence that it is occurring than we do,” Adelman wrote. “If, for example, voter impersonation is a frequent occurrence, then we should find more than two unexplained cases per major election in which a voter arrives at the polls only to discover that someone has already cast a ballot in his or her name.”

[…]

“This is a warning to other states that are trying to make it harder for citizens to vote,” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. “This decision put them on notice that they can’t tamper with citizens’ fundamental right to cast a ballot. The people, and our democracy, deserve and demand better.”

This ruling follows on the heels of a state judge in Arkansas finding that state’s voter ID law unconstitutional. That ruling has been temporarily stayed pending appeal, and the Wisconsin ruling will also be appealed, so it’s still early days.

Rick Hasen analyzes the Wisconsin ruling.

This is about the best possible opinion that opponents of voter identification laws could have hoped for. It is heavy on both facts and on law. It is thoughtful and well written. It finds that a voter id law serves neither an anti-fraud purposes (because “virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future”) nor voter confidence purposes. It finds that it burdens lots of voters (up to 300,000) voters. It finds these burdens fall especially on Black and Latino voters and that the reason is does is poverty, which is itself the result of prior legal discrimination.It enjoins enforcement of the law for everyone, and expresses considerable doubt that the Wisconsin legislature could amend the law to make it constitutional. It is about as strong a statement as one might imagine as to the problems the voter id law.

[…]

On the VRA issue, this is the first full ruling on how to adjudicate voter id vote denial cases under section 2. The key test appears on page 52 of the pdf: “Based on the text, then, I conclude that Section 2 protects against a voting practice that creates a barrier to voting that is more likely to appear in the path of a voter if that voter is a member of a minority group than if he or she is not. The presence of a barrier that has this kind of disproportionate impact prevents the political process from being ‘equally open’ to all and results in members of the minority group having ‘less opportunity’ to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” The judge also approaches the causation/results question in a straightforward way. It is not clear whether the appellate courts will agree or not agree with this approach, which would seem to put a number of electoral processes which burden poor and minority voters up for possible VRA liability.

In sum, this is a huge victory for voter id opponents. But time will tell if this ruling survives.

So reasons for hope, but it’s way too early to celebrate. What the trial courts have done, the appeals courts and the Supreme Court can still undo. On the bright side, Kevin Drum explains why this case was different than Crawford v. Marion County, the 2008 Supreme Court decision that allowed for voter ID:

In a word, better arguments from one side. In Crawford, the state presented virtually no evidence that in-person voter fraud was a problem in Indiana—but neither did the plaintiffs provide much evidence that a voter ID law presented a serious obstacle to voting. Given this, the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud—even if that interest was more speculative than real—carried the day.

This time, the state once again produced virtually no evidence that in-person voter fraud was even a potential problem. But the judge was presented with loads of evidence that the burden of obtaining a photo ID was, in fact, quite high for low-income voters in particular. Since Crawford mandated the use of a balancing test to assess whether a photo ID law was justified, that made the difference and Wisconsin’s law was struck down.

He goes on to highlight parts of the decision that show the burden on some 300,000 voters in Wisconsin to get an accepted form of voter ID. The parallels to Texas should be obvious to anyone that has followed the issue in our state.

Speaking of Texas, there’s a hearing scheduled for today on motions made by AG Abbott to quash subpoenas to current and former members of the Legislature on their role in crafting the voter ID law – see here for the background, and here for the plaintiffs’ responses. How the judge rules on this motion will determine how much these legislators will have to testify in this case, and how much is protected by legislative privilege.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Arkansas, Election 2014, Greg Abbott, Justice Department, lawsuit, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege, voter ID, Voting Rights Act, Wisconsin | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of April 28

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance strongly favors net neutrality as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Comments Off

Costello comes out for Uber and Lyft

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

An email sent out by CM Stephen Costello:

CM Stephen Costello

Over the past few months, City Council has been discussing proposed changes to Chapter 46, the city ordinance dealing with vehicles for hire. I’ve listened during committee meetings and public sessions. I’ve studied the presentations and analyzed the data.

Most importantly, I’ve spoken to and read emails from my constituents from across the city – countless Houstonians from all walks of life who want and need more ways to get around our growing city.

I write today to speak out in favor of revising Chapter 46 so that new entrants to Houston’s transportation market may operate. Citizens overwhelmingly want more options, and I think it’s our duty to not stand in the way of competition and better technology and service. In the process, we can bring new jobs to our great city.

While I believe that government is not in place to create jobs, I do believe it should help foster an environment where the private sector can flourish and grow. By modernizing Chapter 46 we will be doing just that. Expanded free market competition will force current companies in existence to improve their product, while requiring new companies to find their own place in the market.

As a business owner myself, I know that we cannot underestimate the value of competition. In fact, on April 21st, the Federal Trade Commission released a relevant statement: “Competition is at the heart of America’s economy. Vigorous competition among sellers in an open marketplace can provide consumers the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, and greater innovation. This is just as true for app-based transportation and other kinds of P2P services as well.”

I’ve heard a lot of talk about a level playing field. The status quo is not synonymous with a level playing field. The city will continue to ensure businesses that operate in our jurisdiction operate within our regulatory framework. While we must always protect the public good, it is not the role of the government to protect companies from competition, quite the opposite. We opened Hobby Airport to international flights to compete with Bush Intercontinental, and I will continue to advocate for business-friendly ordinances that will increase competition citywide.

Giving more options to the senior who needs a ride to the doctor’s office, the student who has to get to class, the person who’s had too much to drink and doesn’t want to get behind the wheel, the businessperson needing a quick ride to catch a flight is a good thing.

City government should not be picking winners and losers. I don’t want to dictate who gets the fare. That is up to the consumer, but that can’t happen unless we first update the outdated way we think and operate as a city. Houston shouldn’t lag behind. We should be ahead of the curve; we are a global leader.

I’m ready to move forward. I’m ready to work with my colleagues and the administration to update Chapter 46 to allow Houstonians, not city government, decide which private company they choose to rely on for their personal transportation needs.

Sincerely,

Stephen C. Costello

As far as I know, CM Costello is the first Council member to publicly announce a position on revising Chapter 46 to allow Uber and Lyft and similar services to operate in Houston. The draft ordinance has been released, but as the Ordinance Feedback page says, there is no date for it to be brought before Council just yet. I suspect this is one part wanting to get the non-discrimination ordinance passed, and one part lining up support for the Chapter 46 revisions. I figure we’ll start hearing from more Council members on this shortly.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Houston, Houston City Council, Lyft, Stephen Costello, taxis, Uber | 6 Comments

Medical Center mobility

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The problems they face today pale in comparison to the problems they will face in the future.

Already the world’s largest medical complex, the Texas Medical Center is poised to get much bigger, prompting a raft of ideas ranging from routine to grandiose for expanding traffic and parking capacity.

Medical Center officials predict another 28 million square feet of offices and health care facilities will be developed on the campus over the next two decades. More development means more visitors and workers, which planners estimate will require an additional 50,400 parking spaces, along with wider roads and more transit capacity.

City officials, Medical Center administrators and consultants developed a long list of options to unclog roads and add transit and bike choices in the Medical Center area as part of a months-long study prepared by a team of consultants.

[…]

The problem is that freeway-like traffic volumes come into the Medical Center daily. Planners expect the deluge of vehicles will only grow as more doctors’ offices and hospital rooms are built.

Even if just more than half of the projected Medical Center development occurs, and the number of parking spaces per square foot remains constant, about 26,000 new spots – roughly the same number now available at Reliant Park – would be needed.

Getting people to those spots will require bigger roads to handle greater demand.

Based on traffic predictions, OST between Kirby and Fannin will carry 56,000 cars daily in 2035, more than double its 2013 volume. Though traffic on other roads will not grow nearly as much, all major thoroughfares in and out of the area will carry more traffic.

The cure, according to the study, is a combination of bigger roads and more transit choices, though the list tilts toward road-building for long-term needs. OST and Holcombe Boulevard would each expand from six lanes to 10 in some scenarios, including express lanes that funnel traffic out of the area toward Texas 288, where the Texas Department of Transportation has plans for toll lanes.

The alternative to some road widening is parking garages and improved transit within the Medical Center, said Ramesh Gunda, president of Gunda Corp., the engineering firm that conducted some of the traffic modeling.

“If you take the traffic coming into the Texas Medical Center, and hold it at what I call the gateways, and there are lots at (Texas) 288 and Loop 610, look at how we improve these intersections by reducing cars,” Gunda noted.

You can see the presentation, from which I got that embedded image, here. As someone who worked near the Medical Center for almost 20 years and saw traffic in the area get steadily worse, I’m sure there are things they can do, mostly at intersections, to help a little. I don’t think bypasses and extra lanes can do much. This isn’t like adding capacity to I-10, where much of the traffic is passing through the trouble zone on its way to other destinations. Nobody drives through the Medical Center on their way to somewhere else if they can possibly help it. If you’re driving in the Medical Center, you’re going to or coming from somewhere in the Medical Center. As such, you can increase the size of the hose, but the bucket can only hold so much water at a time. You can improve the flow on OST or Holcombe or wherever, but things will still back up at stoplights, at turns, and at parking lot entrances. There’s very little you can do about that.

What you can do is try to limit the growth of vehicles coming into the Med Center over time. That means giving people more non-car options for getting there, and improving the existing options. That was touched on in the presentation, but I wouldn’t say it was emphasized, and I don’t think they’re really considering all possible options. Here are three things I’d aim for if it were my job to think about how to manage future demand.

1. Empower bicycles. There is a slide on bikes and pedestrians in the presentation, but I can’t tell what exactly they’re proposing. I know there’s a bike trail along Braes Bayou, and it does run along the southern border of the Medical Center. It’s not the best trail in the world, but it does mostly keep you off the street, which is important. I don’t know what bike access inside the Med Center is like, and I don’t know what bike parking – in particular, covered bike parking – is available. Addressing this is probably the simplest and cheapest thing they can do, and the quickest to implement.

2. Push for the US90 rail extension. This is a single bullet item on the Transit slide, but it needs to be much more than that. An awful lot of people commute from Fort Bend into the Medical Center, and that number is also set to grow a lot in the next 20 years. There’s already an Environmental Impact Study in progress for this. There’s political support for the rail extension. They need Fort Bend to get its act together to allow Metro to operate there – this extension will be much more useful if it goes to Sugar Land – and that may take an act of the Legislature. After that it’s a matter of running the FTA gamut and getting funding, which is always dicey but should be doable. This could be ready to begin construction in six to eight years, but it will need a push to get anywhere.

3. How about some more places for people to live that don’t require driving to work in the Medical Center. Let’s really think outside the box here, because the biggest driver of change here (no pun intended) will be changing where people live in relation to where they work. There’s been a lot of development near the Main Street line, but there’s still a lot of empty spaces. There’s been an empty lot at Greenbriar and Braeswood, across the street from apartments and the Smithlands Med Center extension parking lot, for as long as I can remember, and the former Stables location remains undeveloped. Both of those could provide a lot of housing for Med Center employees who wouldn’t need to drive in. But why stop there? There’s going to be a whole bunch of inner city lots coming to the market in the next few years, some of which will be near transit that goes to the Medical Center. Maybe the Medical Center interests should look at them and see if any of them might be a wise investment. But why stop there? Here’s a Google map link for Hiram Clark at US90. If you switch to Google Earth mode, you can see just how empty the land on the west side of Hiram Clark is. This is a major thoroughfare, and there’s nothing there. Why not build a bunch of apartments and have them connect to the Medical Center via dedicated shuttles? I’ll bet a bunch of future Med Center employees might find that enticing.

None of these are complete solutions, of course, because there is no one Big Answer to this question. There are a bunch of little answers, each of which can contribute in a small way to managing the problem. The one thing I know to be true is that the problem won’t be solved by fixing intersections and adding lanes. One way or another – really, one way and another, and another and another – they have to try to manage demand as well as supply. As long as demand is growing the way it is now, there are no good answers. The Highwayman has more.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged bicycles, Brays Bayou, buses, commuter rail, density, Fort Bend County, Houston, light rail, Main Street line, Medical Center, parking, traffic, US90A | 1 Comment

Everybody wants to help the judge rule on the Ashby lawsuit

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I really don’t envy Judge Randy Wilson the task he has.

Sue me!

Lawyers aren’t the only ones peppering the judge in the Ashby high-rise case with last-minute paperwork. A former city councilman, a pro-developer interest group and residents who live near the planned tower have all submitted pleas in hope of influencing his decision. One arrived in an email addressing the judge in the case by his first name and closing with, “Sent from my iPad.”

In addition to formal correspondence from the lawyers who participated in the monthlong trial that resulted in a jury verdict that favored opponents, four other letters and a friend-of-the-court brief from a Houston attorney also have been entered into the official court record since state District Judge Randy Wilson heard their final arguments to a week ago.

[…]

Peter Brown, director of Better Houston, a nonprofit urban planning group, sent a letter to the court also. In the letter, Brown, who was on City Council from 2006 to 2010, also sided with the residents.

“A ruling in favor of the developers in this case would perpetuate the unplanned, hap-hazard, inefficient development patterns which negatively impact city life,” Brown wrote in part. “A ruling in favor of the developers would unnecessarily limit the authority of the City to enact reasonable rules, standards and incentives to promote important initiatives now underway.”

He recommended downsizing the tower to seven stories or 90 feet and to require a public space. He also suggested the judge mandate a basic overhaul of city development regulations to ensure more security for developers for future projects.

The Houston Real Estate Council took the side of Buckhead in its statement to the court. The group noted that an earlier friend-of-the-court brief submitted by Houstonians for Responsible Growth, a nonprofit that represents developers, which argued against a permanent injunction for a project that otherwise complied with city regulations and state law.

See here, here, and here for the background. I truly have no idea what Judge Wilson should do, or what he might do. The only thing I feel confident about is that someone will appeal his ruling, whatever it is.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Ashby highrise, Better Houston, construction, density, Houston, Houston Real Estate Council, Houstonians for Responsible Growth, lawsuit, Peter Brown | Comments Off

SCOTUS upholds CSAPR

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Some very good news for people who like to breathe.

Greg Abbott approves of this picture

The question was who should pay for air pollution that crosses state lines. The answer, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, is blowing in the wind.

States in the Midwest and South whose polluted air flows north and east must comply with a federally imposed solution, a 6-2 majority of justices ruled.

The decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was a boon for the Obama administration and its environmental regulators, who have proposed a rule requiring some 28 upwind states to slash ozone and fine particle emissions by varying amounts because of their downwind effects. Most of those states have rebelled against the one-size-fits-all solution.

The case focuses on air currents miles overhead but has down-to-earth consequences. The EPA blames exposure to ozone and fine particles in the air for one in 20 deaths in the United States, 90,000 hospital admissions, 200,000 non-fatal heart attacks and 2.5 million cases of aggravated asthma.

Attorneys for the objecting states and industries argued that the EPA was imposing a solution on the states before they could devise their own emissions control plans. As a result, Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell said during oral arguments in December, “they have to overshoot and over-control and over-regulate.”

[…]

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the rule last year, ruling that EPA didn’t give states enough time to devise their own emissions reduction plans. It also said the agency did not limit the fix to each state’s “significant contribution” to the overall problem.

But the court’s majority ruled that with air pollution blowing in the wind, it would be nearly impossible to apportion blame precisely, making a federal solution based on costs and other factors more palatable.

The justices also noted that mid-Atlantic and Northeast states cannot meet federal emissions control standards without help from their neighbors to the west and south. Maryland, which spent $2.6 billion on its own emissions control efforts between 2007-10, estimates that 70% of its air pollution floats in over its borders.

See here, here, and here for the background. I confess, I wasn’t too optimistic about this at the time of the appeal, but I’m glad to have been proven wrong. Also proven wrong: Greg Abbott, who was of course one of the 14 AGs to pursue this litigation. Just another bad day at the office for you, Greg. Well, this latest loss by Greg Abbott is a big gain for a lot of people.

The Trib notes that SCOTUS isn’t done with this issue.

The Supreme Court is also expected to issue a ruling in the coming months in a case on federal greenhouse gas permitting rules. Justices had heard arguments in February from Texas and other states against the rules.

I believe that’s this case, and if they uphold the EPA’s actions again it’ll be quite the clean sweep for the Obama Administration. As always, however, you never know what SCOTUS might do, so let’s keep the anticipation in check for now. A copy of the SCOTUS decision is here, a statement from EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is here, and a statement from the Texas League of Conservation Voters is here. Texas Clean Air Matters, the Texas Green Report, and Daily Kos have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Clean Air Act, Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gases, Greg Abbott, lawsuit, SCOTUS, Texas | 2 Comments

Yik Yak

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

News flash: A new app that enables the posting of anonymous unfiltered thoughts can cause headaches for school administrators. Film at 11.

Not that Yik Yak

A recent bomb threat alerted many Memorial High School parents and administrators to something that many Houston-area students already knew about: Yik Yak, a smartphone app that functions as a kind of cyber-bathroom wall, allowing users to post anything at all anonymously.

The posts – “yaks” – are visible to other users within 1.5-mile radius. On Friday morning, a sampling of yaks from the Houston area included a parent-appalling mix of bullying, racism, sexism, profanity and drug references – not to mention blatant disregard for grammar and capitalization. Some were funny. Some were plain mean.

Late Wednesday night, a yakker threatened to bomb Memorial High School. A student reported the post to Memorial’s swim coach, who alerted the principal, who called in the Spring Branch ISD’s police department.

“We went straight into protocol,” said Jennifer Blaine, the district’s associate superintendent for administration and operations. The police department, including its drug and bomb dogs, swept the building twice, determining it to be safe at 4 a.m. School opened Thursday, with nothing unusual on the campus but a heavy presence of police and dogs.

Yik Yak threats of violence have spread as quickly as the app: High schools in Massachusetts and California have investigated threats, and just Tuesday morning, the University of Alabama investigated a yak that claimed someone was coming to “shoot up campus.”

Such threats appall the app’s creators, says Tyler Droll, one of the company’s young co-founders. He and Brooks Buffington, another 2013 graduate of Furman University in South Carolina, designed Yik Yak as a way for college students to reach each other in large numbers – “to say things like, ‘Free donuts at the library.'”

Yik Yak is also being blamed for the defeat of a ballot initiative at SMU to create an LGBT Senate seat. As someone who is old enough to have participated in Usenet discussion groups, color me unsurprised by any of this. Enabling people to say what’s on their mind has a lot of value, but it also means enabling those who don’t have anything worthwhile to say. The sooner you learn how to deal with it, the better. The HuffPo has more.

Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged cellphones, Houston, Internet, schools, SMU, Yik Yak | Comments Off

More on the Bush Foundation literacy effort

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

We had the preview story, now we have the rollout story about the efforts by the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation to tackle the problem of illiteracy.

The nascent campaign to improve Houstonians’ reading skills got a $300,000 kick-start Thursday from the federal agency that oversees community service.

The three-year grant will fund 15 workers to assist the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, which is spearheading a local reading improvement effort.

Wendy Spencer, who leads the Corporation for National and Community Service in Washington, D.C., held up a brown cowboy boot as she announced the grant.

“We are going to stamp out illiteracy and we’re gonna put boots on the ground,” Spencer said.

[…]

The year-old foundation so far has raised about $2 million and has distributed several grants, paying for training for volunteers and books for children.

The foundation has not detailed the cost of its plan or explained how it would be funded, though officials are hoping for some donations from businesses as well as to reallocate money agencies may be spending now on literacy efforts.

Despite numerous city and school district reading programs, roughly one in five Houston adults lacks basic literacy skills, as do tens of thousands of local schoolchildren.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said she expects the campaign will unite and improve efforts to combat illiteracy.

“We have a very robust after-school program. We have a robust summer reading program,” Parker said. “But we can do a lot of great work and still fail.”

Across the country, more than 140 communities, including Houston, have signed onto a national effort called Campaign for Grade Level Reading, a push to ensure students read proficiently by the end of third grade.

See here for the background. My brief thoughts on this are as follows: One, illiteracy and a large number of schoolkids reading below grade level are major problems, and the Bush Foundation is doing the Lord’s work in trying to ameliorate them. Two, I still haven’t seen their report. Three, I’ve asked around but I still don’t know what if any interaction they will have with HISD or other school districts on this. And four, anything that can get Barbara Bush to wear eye-black and shoulder pads has to be good for something. That’s all I’ve got.

Posted in School days | Tagged Annise Parker, Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, HISD, Houston, reading, schools | Comments Off

The city and the downtown post office

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure what all the fuss about this is about.

Photo by Houston In Pics

Developers eager to purchase the high-profile U.S. Postal Service site downtown – envisioned in recent years as a park, outdoor amphitheater or a development with housing and entertainment venues – are competing for the property with the city of Houston, which is considering putting its new justice complex there.

Some private interests have sought to dissuade city officials from seeking the 16-acre property, at Bagby and Franklin just east of Interstate 45, which went on the market last fall.

Councilwoman Brenda Stardig said she learned the city had bid on the site from developers, and has spoken with Brad Freels of Midway Development about his concerns with the city’s involvement. Freels could not be reached for comment.

Stardig said she is sympathetic, noting the redeveloped site could be a “jewel” for the city, not to mention a boon for city coffers.

“Unless there’s a real need, I’m not very supportive of having the city competing with private developers on prime real estate in the city, from a cost factor and for many other reasons,” she said.

[…]

The city’s interest, said some City Council members and city officials, is driven by a desire to start fresh on the post office site rather than rebuilding at the current cops-and-courts complex at 61 Riesner, where construction crews would have to work around existing facilities. Other officials said the site could have uses other than for the justice complex.

Councilman Jerry Davis said he was told the city could recoup the purchase price of the 16-acre post office site by selling the 18-acre tract on Riesner, which is just west of the post office site.

Any developers stirring dissent about the city’s involvement likely are doing so out of self-interest, Davis said.

“We’re certainly not going to pay more than what it’s worth,” he said. “I do have full faith in our development department – even though I don’t like some things they do – as far as getting an estimated value from outside appraisers.”

The Riesner site is home to five aging facilities, including Houston’s central jail and the main municipal courthouse. A study concluded the buildings need $55 million in repairs.

Police headquarters at 1200 Travis also needs work and is too small, officials have said; it would be sold and consolidated into the new complex. The new facility would not house a jail, thanks to voters’ approval last fall of a joint city-county inmate processing center.

I have no problem with the city bidding a fair market price for this property. They have a purpose in mind for it, and they can recoup much if not all of the purchase price by selling off the properties that would be vacated if they bought and renovated this site. Sure, it would be nice to have some kind of mixed-use development there, and if Metro ever does build an Inner Katy light rail line, this location would be just about perfect to tie it into the existing Harrisburg and Southeast lines, but there’s no guarantee of either of these things happening. If the city’s perfectly legitimate interest in this parcel – and let’s be clear, it may never get past the “interest” stage – forces developers to make more competitive bids, then that’s fine by me. If a private investor winds up buying this property, I feel pretty confident they’ll be able to get a nice return on it.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Annise Parker, Brenda Stardig, downtown, Houston, Houston City Council, Jerry Davis, light rail, urbanism, US Postal Service | 1 Comment

Metro to make real time bus info available

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good news from Metro:

METRO’s partnership with Google is getting real – as in offering real-time bus info.

To sweeten the ‘real’ deal, METRO will also be providing Google with detour alerts as well.

“We are focused on improving the customer experience,” said METRO Board Chairman Gilbert Garcia. “Not only will our customers know when their bus will arrive, but if there’s a detour in place on their route, that information will pop up and they can factor this in their plans, too.”

If for any reason a bus loses connectivity – as the GPS information is transmitted via cellular communications – trips posted will revert to the bus’ scheduled times.

About 77 percent of METRO’s bus fleet is currently equipped with the hardware to provide real-time bus information. The agency is working to bring the remainder of the fleet online.
METRO TRIP app logo

As a reminder – the agency offers other rider tools such as the METRO T.R.I.P. app which helps customers on-the-go plan their trip using scheduled and real-time information, among other features.

“METRO is the first major transit agency, that we’re aware of, to develop its own stand-alone transit app,” said METRO President & CEO Tom Lambert. “We are trying to make it easier for our customers to navigate our system by bringing these types of tools to their fingertips.”

METRO first teamed up with Google in 2008 by sharing its schedules which were loaded into Google Maps for quick, easy trip planning. Of the two trip planners METRO offers on its website, about 50 percent use Google Maps.

The agency’s trip planner will continue to be available to customers but will be phased out in the future.

METRO’s real-time data on Google Maps rolls out Friday, April 25.

Very cool. To me, the most stressful part of taking the bus, which I do at least once a week these days, is not knowing how long it will be before the next bus arrives. I always have the feeling as I approach a bus stop from a direction where I can’t see the traffic coming that there’s a bus just about to arrive and I’m going to miss it. Now at least I’ll be able to either reassure myself that I’ve got plenty of time to get to the stop, or make myself walk faster. Either way it’s a win.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged buses, cellphones, Gilbert Garcia, Google, Metro | Comments Off

Uber’s “safe rides fee”

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

From Wonkblog on Friday:

Uber is rolling out a $1 surcharge today on all rides offered through its less expensive car-for-hire service UberX. This isn’t the company’s black town car operation, but the down-market version that enables anyone with a spare back seat to give rides to strangers (with smart phones) for money.

The surcharge has an explicit label: It’s a “safe rides fee.” And it mimics a similar $1 line item that competitor Lyft calls a “trust & safety fee.”

So why are your e-hailing receipts growing more complicated? The economics of peer-to-peer transportation services are, too, as companies like Uber and Lyft increasingly fall under the same expectations that govern the heavily regulated taxi industry.

A large part of what’s going on here is that most personal auto insurance policies don’t cover commercial uses of a car (whether you’re using your car to deliver pizzas or people). That means that if you get in a crash while giving someone a ride in your Camry for pay, your regular insurance company probably won’t cover it. So, then, who will?

[…]

Now, as more cities and states look to regulate peer-to-peer transportation providers, these companies will inevitably need to close the liability and safety gaps created when non-professional drivers use their personal cars to make money. They will need to clarify, as Uber has, that commercial insurance covers drivers even in between trips, on the way from one fare to another and when there’s no passenger in the back seat.

I presume this now applies in Houston as well. Has anyone had a ride on Uber since they went rogue and started charging fares?

Meanwhile, some high profile folks in San Antonio are starting a petition drive to get their Council to approve Uber and Lyft.

The 80/20 Foundation, the private foundation of Rackspace Co-founder and Chairman and interim CEO Graham Weston, has launched a petition on Change.org calling for Mayor Julián Castro’s support of rideshare in San Antonio.

“The City of San Antonio should embrace policies in support of entrepreneurship, ridesharing and welcome these apps to San Antonio to combat drunk driving, reduce road congestion, make a positive impact on the environment and improve public safety and transportation options for our community,” states the petition, 775 people have digitally signed it as of 4:23 p.m. Wednesday.

[…]

San Antonio’s City Council Public Safety Committee is set to meet on May 7 to hear the results of McManus’ and his team’s research and inquiry into how to deal with Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Lyft and Uber.

It’s possible that accommodating ordinances/regulation could be created as the California Public Utilities Commission did in September 2013 – but it’s also possible that they’ll recommend to limit or outlaw rideshare operations.

They have a copy of the lawsuit that was filed previously. Perhaps this persuasion effort will be somewhat more laid back than the one in Houston was. When is this going to be on Council’s agenda again?

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Houston, insurance, lawsuit, Lyft, petitions, San Antonio, taxis, Uber | Comments Off

FEC ponders Bitcoin donations

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

For those of you that might want to make political contributions via Bitcoin.

The Federal Election Commission appears poised to rule on whether and how campaigns and PACs can accept bitcoins as political contributions. The news comes as Attorney General Greg Abbott’s campaign for governor announced Wednesday that he will accept contributions made in bitcoin.

Two draft advisory opinions have been posted to the FEC website for public comment ahead of the commission’s April 23 meeting.

The first draft, posted Tuesday, would broadly authorize the use of bitcoins not as cash donations, but as in-kind donations, much as stocks and bonds and similar instruments are accepted today. They also could be used to pay campaign bills, provided vendors would accept the novel currency. They could also be deposited into the PAC’s bitcoin digital wallet and kept their to be spent or sold later. The PAC could also use cash to buy additional bitcoins itself, but those coins could only be treated as investments and not as means to pay bills or otherwise transferred. It would also require that the identity of the donor would have to be known and recorded before the donation could be accepted.

But a second draft posted Wednesday contains language that would greatly restrict the use of bitcoins. The bitcoins could be accepted but would have to be converted to cash before they could be exchanged for anything of value, and the cash would have to be deposited in the PACs contribution account. The second draft would also impose a $100 maximum value on how much the bitcoins any one donor gives to a campaign during any one election cycle.

The advisory opinion was requested by Make Your Laws PAC. For the full record of the case, see here.

You can see the two draft opinions here. As we know, Congressman and performance artist Steve Stockman had asked the FEC for an opinion about Bitcoin donations; I wonder how much, if anything, he wound up collecting in Bitcoin. As I’ve said before, I don’t have any problem with this. I doubt it will amount to much, but as long as disclosure requirements are met I don’t see any good reason to treat Bitcoin as anything unusual.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Bitcoin, Congress, FEC, Steve Stockman | 1 Comment

Stockman being investigated for ethics issues

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Raise your hand if you’re the least bit surprised by this.

Steve Stockman doing his best Joe Cocker impersonation

The House ethics committee is inquiring into the campaign finances of Rep. Steve Stockman, the Clear Lake Republican who has been questioned repeatedly over the last year about misreported campaign contributions and deficient disclosures.

A spokesman for Stockman acknowledged the inquiry Friday, and the committee itself is expected to announce it Monday.

The Houston Chronicle reported last year that two of Stockman’s staffers were fired in October for making prohibited contributions to the campaign. Stockman spokesman Donny Ferguson told the newspaper then that Jason Posey and Thomas Dodd had been fired from Stockman’s House office.

The scope of the ethics review is not public information, and the statement Ferguson released on Friday did not clearly describe it.

[…]

Brett Kappel, a Washington, D.C. attorney who specializes in campaign-finance law, said the allegations against Stockman, which include reporting contributions under incorrect names, appear “pretty egregious. He’ll be in office until January, and they could proceed with it.”

But Kappel said the committee also could defer to the Federal Election Commission or to the Department of Justice.

I just want to point out that while Stockman will be leaving office in January, he could come back again someday. His, um, unique qualifications for office would make him a contender in any race in a deep-red district.

“Congressman Stockman continues to kind of amaze me … He doesn’t admit any responsibility for what happened in his campaign. Instead I see obfuscation,” said Kathleen Clark, a Washington, D.C.-based professor of law with Washington University who specializes in government ethics.

In addition to the prohibited contributions, the Chronicle has reported on other questions about Stockman’s campaign finances and his personal financial disclosures.

The Chronicle reported:

The Clear Lake Republican’s House campaign has been notified by the FEC of dozens of potential problems with its filings in 2012 and 2013, including the misreported donations.

Stockman’s personal financial disclosure to the House Ethics Committee was filed nearly a year late and failed to disclose some assets and business affiliations as required by federal law. The disclosure also failed to fully identify the source of $350,000 in income that Stockman claimed in 2011 and 2012.

The FEC filed two complaints against Stockman campaigns in the 1990s, one of which resulted in a $40,000 civil penalty, and one in the last two years, which was dismissed.

I’ll say this much for the man: You know exactly what you’re getting with Steve Stockman. The 12-year gap between his tenures in Congress clearly did not cause any erosion in his skills.

Posted in Scandalized! | Tagged CD36, Congress, ethics, FEC, Steve Stockman, Texas | 2 Comments

Appeals court revives MBIA lawsuit against Sports Authority

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Here we go again.

A lawsuit against the agency that pays the debt on Houston’s sports stadiums is back on following an appeals court ruling.

Last April, a state district court judge ruled that a bond insurer could not sue the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority or the Harris County Sports & Convention Corp., saying they were immune from such legal action as government agencies.

MBIA Insurance Corp., with the National Public Finance Guarantee Corp., sued the Sports Authority in January 2013, asking that the cash-strapped agency be forced to collect more money to cover its obligations, including additional parking and admissions taxes at Reliant – now NRG – Stadium, and seeking damages for other alleged breaches of contract. The sports corporation, the county agency that manages NRG Park, also was listed as a party in the suit.

In an opinion issued last week, a three-judge panel from the First Court of Appeals ruled that the Sports Authority had waived its immunity when it entered into an agreement with MBIA – now National – that provided that the company, which insures $1 billion in bonds, would guarantee regularly scheduled principal and interest payments on them.

Upholding part of state District Court Judge Elaine Palmer’s decision, it also ruled that the sports corporation was not liable because the company had not accused it of breach of contract.

Sports Authority Chairman J. Kent Friedman said it has not yet decided whether to ask the First Court for a re-hearing, to appeal to the Texas Supreme Court or to “go ahead and try the case.” Deadlines to request a re-hearing or appeal are next month.

“I continue to be very confident in our position in the litigation,” he said. “All it really did is allow them the right to proceed with their lawsuit.”

See here, here, and here for the background. The Court’s opinion is here, and if like me your eyes glazed over after about five seconds, you can skip to the end and confirm that the bottom line is that the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority does not have immunity and thus can be sued, but the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation does have immunity as Judge Palmer ruled and thus cannot be sued. The matter is now back in the 215th Court, pending a decision by either party to appeal the part of the ruling they didn’t like. Also, I’m glad to see that we seem to be done with that “Kenny Friedman” business, and J. Kent Friedman is once again being called “J. Kent Friedman” as well he should be. So there you have it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bonds, First Court of Appeals, Harris County, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, J. Kent Friedman, lawsuit, MBIA, Reliant Stadium | Comments Off

Early voting for SD04 special election begins today

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Go make the best of the bad choices being offered.

Early voting begins Monday in a special election to fill the seat vacated last year by former state Sen. Tommy Williams.

The Woodlands Republican left the upper chamber last October after a decade in office to serve as vice chancellor of federal and state relations for the Texas A&M University System.

The following month, Gov. Rick Perry issued a proclamation scheduling a special election for May 10 to determine the next state senator for District 4, a Republican stronghold that spans Jefferson and Chambers counties and portions of Harris, Montgomery and Galveston counties. Early voting begins Monday and ends May 6.

[…]

The four candidates on the ballot, all Republican, are: former District 4 Sen. Michael Galloway, a businessman who served one term from 1994 to 1998; two Montgomery County state representatives – freshman tea party favorite Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, and Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, chairman of the House Republican caucus; and businessman Gordy Bunch, who serves as treasurer on The Woodlands Township board and as chairman of The Woodlands Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Bunch is the Chron-endorsed candidate, if that matters to you. From the County Clerk’s office, here’s more about the election and the early voting locations:

“Over 84,000 registered voters in Harris County are eligible to participate in the May 10, 2014 Special Election in State Senate District 4,” informed Stan Stanart, Harris County Clerk. Stanart, the chief election officer of the county, urges these voters to take advantage of the Early Voting Period which begins on April 28 for the Special Election. The Special Election is being held to fill a vacancy that was created at the end of last year.

“Harris County registered voters constitute about 18% of the almost half a million registered voters in State Senate District 4,” added Stanart. “Eligible voters may vote at any of the five early voting locations until May 6, the last day to vote early.”

Early voting locations for the May 10, 2014 Special Election to fill a vacancy in State Senate District 4 for voters in Harris County include:
1.  Main Office:      Harris County Administration Bldg., 
                      1001 Preston, 1st Floor, 77002

2.  Far North:        Champion Life Centre, 3031 FM 2920 Road, 
                      Spring, TX 77388

3.  Humble:           Octavia Fields Branch Library, 1503 South 
                      Houston Ave., Humble, TX 77338

4.  Kingwood:         Kingwood Branch Library, 4400 Bens View  
                      Lane, Kingwood, TX 77345

5.  Crosby:           Crosby ISD Administration Building, 706 
                      Runneburg Road, Crosby, TX 77532
State Senate District 4 comprises part of North and Northeast Harris County, including 37% of Atascocita, 2% of Baytown, 100% of Crosby, 3% of Houston, 2% of Humble, 3% of The Woodlands and 1% of the unincorporated county. The District’s lines run through Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jefferson and Montgomery counties.

“Registered voters in Harris County have constituted 20% of the total vote in recent State Senate District 4 elections, playing a significant role in determining the outcome,” asserted Stanart. Overall, 32 of the district’s 232 voting precincts are within Harris County.

Aside from the State Senate District 4 Special Election, there are a number of elections being conducted on May 10 by School Districts, Emergency Service Districts, Municipal Utility Districts, and other political entities across Harris County. “We have populated our May 10 Election Day location lookup on www.HarrisVotes.com with as much voting information as we could find regarding these elections,” concluded Stanart. “Even though these elections are not being administered by Harris County, it is important that we make an effort to assist voters in these political entities.”

For more election information, including the list of acceptable forms of Photo ID that can be presented to vote at the poll, voters may visit www.HarrisVotes.com or call 713.755.6965.

Interestingly, three of the five EV locations for SD06 aren’t actually in SD04, though two of them are just outside the boundaries. I assume turnout for this election will be low, and turnout for the inevitable runoff will be lower.

Today is also the last day to register for the primary runoffs if you haven’t done so already. From Tax Assessor Mike Sullivan’s press release:

Tax Assessor-Collector Mike Sullivan reminds residents that April 28, 2014 is the last day to register to vote in the May 27, 2014 Primary Run-Off Election.

“The Primary Run-Off Election is a month away, which means the deadline to register to vote is approaching,” said Tax Assessor-Collector Mike Sullivan. “I strongly encourage everyone who is not registered to vote to do so by the April 28, 2014 deadline.”

State law requires citizens to be registered to vote 30 days prior to the election date. Residents can visit the Tax Assessor-Collector’s (TAC) Office website at www.hcvoter.net to learn how to register to vote, update their address and make name changes.

Qualifications to Register to Vote:

–

You are a United States citizen and a resident of Harris County; and,

You are at least 17 years and 10 months old to register (to vote, you must be 18); and,

You are not a convicted felon (you may be eligible to vote if you have completed your sentence, probation, and parole); and,

You have not been declared by a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be either totally or partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.

Voter registration applications can be submitted to any TAC office branch location before 4:30 p.m. on Monday, April 28th or mailed with a U.S. Postal Service postmark date of no later than April 28, 2014. For more information, please call 713-368-VOTE (8683) or email tax_voters@hctx.net.

Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Mike Sullivan also serves as the Harris County Voter Registrar, which conducts voter registration activities and maintains a certified list of registered voters. Learn more by visiting www.hcvoter.net.

As of when I wrote this, information about early voting for the May 27 primary runoff was not available on the Clerk’s website. I’m not sure if it’ll be seven days of early voting or five days, but I guess we’ll find out, probably after May 10. In any event, I presume everyone reading this is already registered, but if you know someone who isn’t, tell them to get cracking on it.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Brandon Creighton, early voting, Election 2014, Gordy Bunch, Harris County, Michael Galloway, primaries, runoff, SD04, Senate, special election, Steve Toth, Texas, Tommy Williams, voter registration | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for April 27

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The four levels of discrimination. Not quite the 16 Levels of Losing (see followup as well), but it’ll do.

“The cities with the largest share of cyclists have the fewest cycling fatalities. And the same is true of pedestrians.”

“In my research, successful professional women—lawyers, academics, executives, scientists—repeatedly said they’ve been expected to bring cupcakes for a colleague’s birthday, order sandwiches for office lunches and answer phones in the conference room, even if their job description is far up the ladder from such administrative tasks.”

“The essence of the circle of scam is that everybody gets rich at some stage of the game, with the exception of the rank-and-file conservatives who fuel it all with their votes, their eyeballs, and their money.”

Apparently, parrots name their children. As far as we know, however, no parrot child has ever been named “Khaleesi”.

“And I don’t recall reading many headlines asking, “WILL MITT’S NEARLY TWO DOZEN GRANDCHILDREN KILL HIS PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS?” during the 2012 election cycle.”

I got all 15 questions right on this Pew quiz on religion, though I admit I guessed on the last one.

RIP, John C. Houbolt, NASA engineer who was vital to the moon landing in 1969.

“But a funny thing happened on the way to the videophone future AT&T executives and engineers imagined: It didn’t happen, at least not the way they thought it would.”

I’m sorry, but the unwritten rules of baseball are a bunch of baloney. Play to win, act like a grownup, and take what the other team gives you. That’s all you need to know.

“Be less stupid” is good advice in general.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Texas is a great state for producing solar energy, and there are many business opportunities here for solar. Texas is also a hotbed of wingnut legislation, influenced by the usual big money suspects. Which force will be more powerful in 2015?

“Having a representative of the highest judicial body in the land on a whistlestop tour telling people that revolt is the answer to constitutional provisions they don’t like isn’t just a violation of the oath of office, it undermines the judicial system as a whole. What faith is there in the rule of law if one of the nation’s top judges is telling you not to get elected and change the law, but to rise up in revolt?”

For those of you that have been missing Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski since the Winter Olympics, this is relevant to your interests.

Wind turbines really aren’t a threat to birds.

Better be prepared to install anti-virus software for that Internet-connected TV of yours.

“The federal lands grazing program is like supercharged food stamps for bovines. And it is massively subsidized.”

Stone Cold Steve Austin supports same-sex marriage. Austin 3:16, indeed.

It’s hard out here on a female Republican Congressional candidate.

Bundyfest is a thing that maybe ought to happen.

“Patterson was an expert in analyzing trace elements; Kehoe was a doctor who was in the pocket of the petroleum industry. Patterson saw rising levels of lead in the environment as a consequence of its use as a fuel additive; Kehoe was getting paid to sow doubt. Patterson focused on the effects of environmental lead on human health; Kehoe was more concerned with the profit margins of industry. The campaigns for lead additives in fuel resemble the abuses of science used to promote cigarette smoking and to fight actions to curb greenhouse gases.”

“How quickly you have forgotten Herman Cain“. And deservedly so.

“Yep, that’s about as classless as you can get, attacking the president and the senator with a picture taken when they were visiting victims of a mass shooting in the hospital.” Money cannot buy classiness, that’s for sure.

Do you need a reason to read something about Yogi Berra? Well, there you go.

Meet the finalists of the 2014 Flame Challenge, which is “Explaining color to 11-year-olds”.

“The corporate race to the bottom on wages and working conditions is coming for you, too.”

RIP, Emmett Solomon, former Texas prison chaplain and founder of the Restorative Justice Ministries Network.

“Specifically, I don’t understand why, after a decade’s worth of hand-wringing over the moral depravity of rule-breakers, people are accepting of a situation where breaking the rules is totally fine as long as no one is being obvious about it and no one is doing things to cause it to make big, controversial news.”

The world is a better place with another zonkey in it.

Ted Cruz can cross being mocked by a supermodel off his bucket list.

What LeBron says about Donald Sterling.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Comments Off

AG opinion sought for Perry’s use of taxpayer funds for defense

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

These corndogs don’t come cheap ya know

A Democratic House leader has asked for a legal opinion on how and if Gov. Rick Perry can bill taxpayers for his $450-an-hour criminal lawyer defending him in a grand jury probe.

Perry is under a grand jury investigation on potential bribery and coercion charges after trying to force Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to resign last year after she pled guilty to drunk driving.

He hired Austin criminal attorney David Botsford in a contract that runs through October.

Perry has acknowledged that he threatened to veto $7.5 million in state funding for the Public Integrity Unit, administered by Lehmberg’s office, if she did not step down. She did not resign and he vetoed the money.

If Lehmberg, a Democrat, had quit, Perry would have named her replacement. The Public Integrity Unit at the time was investigating the operation of one of Perry’s signature achievements — the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

One of CPRIT’s top officers was indicted in December for steering an $11 million award to a company without subjecting it to the standard review process.

Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Port Arthur, requested that Attorney General Greg Abbott study the issue to see if there are limits on a governor hiring outside counsel at taxpayers expense.

In a 4-page letter, the House Land and Resource Management Committee chairman asks if the governor has taken criminal actions beyond the scope of his official capacity, should the state be obligated to pay for his defense.

It also asks if the governor can be forced to accept a state lawyer on staff at the Attorney General’s Office as opposed to paying for outside counsel.

The Lone Star Project has a copy of the letter, with more here. My original assumption was that this was similar to Perry paying for his travel security with public funds, but perhaps I thought too soon. I’ll be very interested to see how Abbott opines on this. The Trib and BOR have more.

Meanwhile, more details about Perry’s efforts to oust Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg keep dribbling out.

Officials and sources said Perry, through intermediaries, offered several options to Lehmberg to entice her resignation, culminating in promises to restore funding to the unit, another position in the District Attorney’s office, and the selection of her top lieutenant to serve as the new district attorney.

The offer was “clear,” said a public official who was involved the talks, but who asked not to be identified.

Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daughtery, a Republican, said he reached out to Perry’s office following the veto to see if there was some way to restore state funding for the anti-corruption Public Integrity Unit. He said that negotiations eventually included allowing Democrats, who dominate Travis County politics, to pick Lehmberg’s replacement.

“There was this massive amount of fear that if Rosemary steps down, it’s the governor who gets to appoint someone,” Daughtery said. A Lehmberg aide was floated as a potential replacement to make it palatable to Democrats.

Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe confirmed that Perry’s office had said that Lehmberg would be replaced with another Democrat currently working in the district attorney’s office.

“Then the offer was made, I was told, that the governor would appoint a Democrat, and preferably one already working in the DA’s office,” he said.

Biscoe added that he never directly communicated with Perry or his staff during the talks.

In late July, the offer was sweetened again, the two sources said, when the Governor’s office communicated that Lehmberg would be allowed to remain at the district attorney’s office in another capacity if she resigned her elected position.

I’m amazed by all this, and I must say a little puzzled. The presumed reasons why Perry would want to force Lehmberg out the door are to derail the CPRIT investigation, and generally cripple the Public Integrity Unit. Both of which could be accomplished by installing a Republican as DA, which Perry would have gotten to do if Lehmberg had stepped down. I get that Perry might need and be willing to sweeten the pot to achieve his (again, presumed) goals, but if all this is true you have to wonder what he thought he was accomplishing. I just don’t understand the motivation. If it was just about believing that Lehmberg was unfit to serve, then why would Perry offer to let her stay at another job in the office? Makes no sense to me. Jason Stanford has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged District Attorney, grand jury, Greg Abbott, Joe Deshotel, Rick Perry, Rosemary Lehmberg, Texas, Travis County | Comments Off

More demolitions coming

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Houston next week will launch an effort to scoop up dangerous properties left to rot in so many aging neighborhoods, raze them and resell the land.

Officials say the program, approved unanimously Wednesday by the City Council, could more than double the number of buildings demolished each year, help the city recover more of the money it spends fighting blight and get the lots back on the tax rolls more quickly.

“Many of these properties have sat vacant and tax-delinquent for many years, some of them for 20 years,” said Katye Tipton, director of the city’s Department of Neighborhoods. “They’ve got a really rotten building on them, nobody is interested in buying this thing; I wouldn’t. So, the city goes in, we clean up the property. Within 60 to 90 days we’ll take it back to sale. Now, it’s a much more appealing property.”

[…]

Of Houston’s 4,317 blighted houses, strip centers and apartment complexes, most of which are clustered in poor and minority neighborhoods like Settegast, the city is on track to raze only 153 this fiscal year.

Hurdles have included a lack of resources, state laws that limit the city’s ability to interfere with private properties, and often muddled ownership that makes it hard to hold someone responsible for a property’s poor state.

The program approved Wednesday would apply only to the roughly 40 percent of dangerous buildings that are tax delinquent.

Those that do not sell at auction for at least the delinquent taxes, penalties and interest, can be acquired by the city and cleaned up for resale. The city would be responsible for maintenance, but would be first in line to recover its cleanup costs before other local governments get the taxes owed them.

Typically, Houston gets back less than 1 percent of its cleanup costs when it condemns and demolishes a property without taking ownership, because the city is last in line to recoup its costs under state law. When it has taken lots into inventory in the past, however, the city has recovered about 40 percent of its costs.

“Really, anything over the 1 percent is gravy right now,” said Kelly Dowe, the city’s chief business officer, adding the dollars recovered will be set aside for more demolition work. “The real benefit to the city is to get them back on the tax rolls and get them redeveloped.”

I grabbed a screenshot of the Google map from the story and embedded it above. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the properties in question are east of the I-45/US59 dividing line inside the Loop. Tearing them down will be a boon for their neighborhoods, since properties like that tend to attract crime and stand in the way of other development. Given the proximity of many of these properties to downtown, and the high demand for such real estate, I’d like to see the city require that at least some of these places get developed as moderately priced housing. It’s the cost of the land itself that tends to dictate what gets built and how much it costs, so since these are going to sport low prices for whoever buys them, then what gets built on them should ideally reflect that. I don’t know what the best way to do that is, but it would be nice if what ultimately gets built doesn’t price the existing residents out of their homes.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged demolition, Department of Neighborhoods, downtown, Houston, Houston City Council, Settegast | Comments Off

Falkenberg on Abbott’s education plan

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Lisa Falkenberg has a balanced take on Greg Abbott’s education plan.

Progress has been tragically slow for the students of North Forest. And their saga makes great fodder for those beating the drum to create something called an “achievement school district” in Texas. It would have the power to take over low-performing schools with the intent of turning them around, or turn them over to a charter operator.

Julie Linn, executive director of the well-financed Texans for Education Reform, was quoted in The Dallas Morning News telling lawmakers that an entire generation of students had been lost at the North Forest district during the chronic underachievement. True.

“If an achievement school district had existed,” Linn told lawmakers, “it would not have allowed 20 years of failure at North Forest ISD.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Many of the failures were the result of the state’s own missteps. Conservators hired unqualified principals and poor-performing superintendents who squandered funds and donations. A parade of monitors and boards of managers had little effect.

But when I called North Forest’s new principal, Pamela Farinas, she supported the concept of achievement districts.

“I think it would have made a big difference,” Farinas said, explaining that every time the state took over North Forest it was the whole state, a “massive entity with a whole bunch of compliance paperwork.”

A small, specialized district knowledgeable about struggling schools would have more power and agility, she said. But she made clear she’s “150 percent” against turning to charters, which are often unwilling or unable to serve the neediest students.

“They’re exiting kids as quickly as they accept them and everybody seems to be brushing that under the carpet,” said Farinas, who worked briefly at a charter school.

[…]

On its face, the idea of a takeover district is attractive, especially with education horrors like the former North Forest still fresh on our minds.

We have to do something. But we can’t just do anything. I think I’m inclined to agree with David Anthony, the former Cypress-Fairbanks superintendent who now leads an influential education advocacy group called Raise Your Hand Texas.

He says the group has traveled the country looking at turnaround strategies. Anthony is not yet sold on the idea of achievement districts. The data just isn’t there.

Even in Tennessee, where homegrown superstar YES Prep Public Schools founder Chris Barbic went in 2011 to lead the effort to boost the bottom 5 percent of schools to the top 25 percent, students the first year made modest gains in science and math but fell behind in reading.

The answer, Anthony says, “has to be a long-term, sustainable transformation. It can’t just be the new fad du jour.”

Anthony’s chief concern about Abbott’s proposal is the same as mine: “Why are we investing in a strategy we’re not quite sure about yet?”

See here for more. I consider myself neither an advocate nor opponent of charter schools. The good ones are very good, but there are a lot of not so good ones, and overall the numbers suggest that charters as a whole don’t do any better than traditional public schools. It’s also never been clear to me that the charter model, which depends in large part on a high degree of commitment from students, parents, and (generally less-paid) teachers is scalable to the magnitude needed for this kind of problem. How will charter schools do when they have no choice at all about who they get to educate? That’s a pretty big question.

There’s another reason to be wary of this, and that reason is money. Part of that is about school funding, which is still well below 2009 levels thanks to the massive and as it turns out needless budget cuts of 2011. If we really want to try something that’s never been done before in our schools, why don’t we try funding them at truly adequate and equitable levels first? As Attorney General, Greg Abbott is in a unique position to do something about that by settling the ongoing school finance litigation. His continued refusal to do that, and his constant avoidance of any talk about school finance is quite revealing. But beyond that, there’s also the presence of yet another well-financed interest group on the scene that’s pushing for this change, Texans for Education Reform. Like black holes do with space-time, groups like that warp the discussion and suck in all the light in their vicinity. Who will benefit from Abbott’s plan? It’s a sure bet that the funders behind Texans for Education Reform are at the top of that list. That’s as good a reason as any to be deeply skeptical of this.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged budget, charter schools, Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, lawsuit, North Forest, Raise Your Hand Texas, school finance, schools, Texans for Education Reform, Texas, Texas Achievement School District, The Lege | 2 Comments

EquuSearch sues over drones

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This ought to be interesting.

Texas EquuSearch filed suit Monday against the federal government to overturn the grounding of its fleet of aerial drones used to search for missing people.

Tim Miller, founder and director of EquuSearch, said the Feb. 21 Federal Aviation Administration order prohibiting the operation of four drones has meant the nonprofit organization has not used them in three active searches for missing people in Katy, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Miller said the 4-foot-long drones have led to the discovery of 11 missing individuals and allow searchers to view large stretches of wooded areas, fenced property and bodies of water.

“I was hoping we’d get a response from them that was more positive and we didn’t have to go to this extreme,” Miller said of the FAA. “It’s time-consuming for us, and God only knows what the outcome is going to be.”

Brendan Schulman, a New York attorney representing Texas EquuSearch, said the lawsuit seeks to confirm the rights of nonprofits to use civilian drone technology for the nation’s benefit.

“There is no legal basis for the FAA to order Texas EquuSearch to halt its humanitarian activities,” Schulman said in a statement. “It is also incomprehensible, as a matter of policy and common sense, that the FAA would deem ‘illegal’ the use of a technology that can reunite missing people with their families, after decades of allowing the same technology to be used in the same way for recreational purposes.”

Here’s a bit of background on this. I couldn’t find a story from February 21 or a copy of the order on the FAA webpage, so this will have to do. The Texas Legislature passed a bill last year that largely forbade private organizations from using drones but left them available for law enforcement agencies; I presume Texas EquuSearch falls under that, or perhaps they built in another exemption for them. In any event, I see no good reason why Texas Equusearch should not be able to use drones for their tasks. Sure, the FAA should regulate their usage so that there’s no interference with other flying objects, but a ban makes no sense to me. I hope they can work this out, and if not I hope Texas EquuSearch prevails in court. Grits has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged drones, Federal Aviation Administration, lawsuit, Texas, Texas EquuSearch, The Lege | 1 Comment

Saturday video break: Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The good thing about drafting a couple of these in advance is I don’t get caught late in the week needing to put a post together for Saturday. The downside is that I might forget where I am alphabetically. Oopsie.

So, this song. Let’s start with a classic version, from when it was composed, featuring Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting:

In recent year, since its appearance in the movie Elf, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has become a Christmas standard, and with it has come controversy. Going back at least five years, various writers have decried the song, particularly its “Say, what’s in this drink?” lyric, as a date rape anthem. The song does have its defenders, and one way that some artists have adapted to the criticism – if indeed that’s what they’re doing – is to swap genders. Here’s a recent example by Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, from Lady GaGa’s holiday special with the Muppets:

Whether that addresses the concern or just avoids it probably depends on your opinion of the song. Me, I’ve always liked it. I’m a sucker for a good duet. I get why people have these issues with the song, but to me it’s in the ear of the listener and not endemic to the song itself. Listen to Colbie Caillat and Gavin McGraw’s playful and flirtatious version, or The Priestess and The Fool’s ethereal alternative version, or the Asylum Street Spankers’ version in which Wammo plays up the creepy cad factor for all it’s worth – it’s the mark of a good song to me that it can be interpreted in so many different ways. In the end, it’s a piece of art like any other, and you see in it what you want.

Posted in Music | Tagged Christmas, cover songs, videos | Comments Off

DMN overview of Senate primary runoff

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Let me sum it up in four words: Don’t vote for Kesha. Any questions?

David Alameel

Some primary candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from the pack. Kesha Rogers does not have that problem.

The Democratic Senate hopeful’s platform calls for the impeachment of President Barack Obama and compares the Affordable Care Act to Nazism. She campaigns around the state with a poster of Obama sporting a Hitler mustache. Plus, she’s a supporter of extremist Lyndon LaRouche.

“There is this certain unique quality to what I do,” she said in an interview. “I go out and inspire people, especially people who have been discouraged by the party and discouraged by the political situation.”

That has drawn the ire of mainstream Texas Democrats, who know that a Rogers win would disrupt the party’s unified front. The party is touting what it hopes will be its most competitive statewide slate in years, but if Rogers were to win the nomination in the May 27 runoff, she would stick out.

“They want candidates that are traditional and effective, and that’s something I think that they are at a risk of losing here if … Kesha Rogers wins the runoff,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “It makes the party look like they are in disarray. It makes it look like they haven’t adequately vetted their candidates.

Democratic organizations across the state are lining up to discredit the Rogers campaign while David Alameel, the Dallas dentist who led the March primary but didn’t get a high enough share of the vote to win outright, keeps his distance. Even though many Democrats believe Alameel will win, they don’t want to take chances.

“It’s important that Dr. Alameel be the nominee and we do demonstrate that gadfly candidates like Kesha Rogers won’t get nominated in important races,” said Matt Angle, an adviser to Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis who runs the Washington-based Lone Star Project. The group recently put out a video opposing Rogers.

State parties usually stay out of primaries, but the Texas Democratic Party has been vocal in its support of Alameel. Rogers’ campaign remains cut off from all party resources, including access to its voter data.

And that’s how it should be. The story goes on to quote a Kesha supporter who says something about being willing to criticize the President. Well, there’s a difference between being critical and calling for impeachment, or comparing the signature health care law to Nazism. Some things really are out of bounds, and really do disqualify you from being worth supporting. We’re a big tent, not an infinite tent. My hope is that this campaign will serve as an education to Democratic voters about Kesha Rogers, so that going forward she won’t be able to sneak into any more runoffs on the basis of a vaguely familiar name and voter ignorance. People eventually figured out not to vote for Gene Kelly – and Lloyd Oliver, here in Harris County – hopefully now they’ll have figured it out about Kesha Rogers, too. See the Chron’s re-endorsement of Alameel for more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged David Alameel, Democratic primary, Election 2014, Gene Kelly, Kesha Rogers, Lloyd Oliver, runoff, Senate, Texas | Comments Off

Abbott’s education plan

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Some actual policy from Greg Abbott.

Still not Greg Abbott

In the 27-page, footnoted report that accompanied the press conference, he proposed to “create a swift, automatic process under which the very worst schools would be removed from the control of their local school districts each year” and instead run through the Texas Achievement School District. That district’s superintendent, appointed by the head of the Texas Education Agency, would have power to make radical changes to the schools, including the ability to fire personnel or turn the school over to a charter-school operator.

In New Orleans’ similar Recovery School District, the campaign noted, 60 percent of the schools are no longer rated academically unacceptable, and graduation rates and college readiness are climbing.

Under Abbott’s proposal, Texas would limit its recovery school district to elementary schools – an unusual step that would allow the district “to focus on students during the early phase of education when a child’s foundation for learning is first laid.”

Mike Feinberg, one of the founders of the KIPP charter-school chain, praised the Achievement School District concept.

“We’ve got to do something with schools that fail year after year,” he said. “It’s insanity for the state to keep wagging its finger, saying, ‘I mean it! One more year!’ That’s the worst way thing that a parent can do with a child. So why would we have that as state policy with schools?”

Abbott also argued that schools that are not failing need more autonomy.

“The state should set high standards, provide tools for success, then get out of the way,” he said at the press conference. “Our public education system is too centralized, with too many one-size-fits-all solutions being pushed down from the top.”

You have to admire a policy that calls for more autonomy on one hand and state takeovers of school districts on the other. Most people would pop the clutch shifting that abruptly, but Greg Abbott, he’s a pro. There may be some merit to the Texas Achievement School District idea, and the politics of it are complicated, but suffice it to say I’m skeptical. Of course, the 5.4 billion pound elephant in the room is Abbott’s lack of any mention of funding for schools. I can’t blame him for not wanting to talk about it, since he continues to defend the massive cuts from the 2011 session, especially in a time when the state coffers are overflowing. Must have been tough for him to pick a location to make his announcement, since so many districts are suing the state, as they did just a few years ago. Not surprising that he stuck close to themes that are comfortable to him.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged budget, charter schools, Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, lawsuit, school finance, schools, Texas, Texas Achievement School District, Texas Education Agency | 1 Comment

Even if the Sriracha factory moves, that doesn’t mean it will move to Texas

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

There’s a lot of competition for them.

After months of heated negotiations with the city of Irwindale over the smell of Sriracha hot sauce, Huy Fong Foods Chief Executive David Tran is appealing to a higher power: a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) visited the hot sauce factory Tuesday and spoke with Tran about potentially relocating to the San Fernando Valley. Cardenas is one of dozens of politicians nationwide who have publicly invited Sriracha to locate within their jurisdiction. Offers have poured in from Alabama, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, Arizona, New Mexico and West Virginia.

Last week, Tran signaled his intent to consider relocating his factory and invited potential suitors to pay a visit. Cardenas was one of the first. His own experience of the odor was pleasant, Cardenas said.

“Full disclosure, they weren’t in chile grinding mode…but it was a mild smell in my opinion,” Cardenas said.

[…]

Cardenas and Tran also discussed some federal tax incentives for companies that export a certain proportion of their product overseas – which Huy Fong Foods does – but they did not identify any sites for relocation or discuss any specifics of a deal.

“There’s lots of places in Socal, and Tran provides more than 200 jobs making a nationally and internationally recognized product,” Cardenas said.

See here for the background. Rep. Jason Villalba can talk all he wants about what a great climate for bidness we have in Texas – he can even pay a visit out there and say those things in person – but that only gets you so far. There are a lot of logistical reasons for Huy Fong to stay put, or at least stay nearby, and it’s not like California doesn’t have a card or two it can play. Also, and I know this will be hard to believe, some people prefer to live in states that aren’t Texas. I know, I don’t get it either, but there it is. Bottom line, if I were a Vegas oddsmaker, I’d have “Huy Fong does not relocate anywhere” as the favorite, with “Huy Fong moves to some other location in California” as the runnerup. Sorry, Denton.

Posted in Food, glorious food | Tagged California, Denton, Huy Fong Foods, Jason Villalba, sriracha sauce, Texas, Tony Cardenas | Comments Off

Friedman for feral hogs

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

As the man once said, Why the hell not?

As meat prices rise, a candidate for agriculture commissioner is proposing beefing up the state’s program to harvest and market wild hog meat in a way he says will create jobs and revenue for Texas.

Kinky Friedman, a Democrat running for the statewide office, said feral hogs are a largely untapped industry that could be a lucrative endeavor for the state rather than a waste of life.

“If you are going to kill a bunch of feral hogs, let’s at least do it for a profit and business for the state,” he said. “To kill all these hogs and let them rot doesn’t make sense.”

Wild pigs are one of the biggest problems for many ranch and landowners in Texas, said Billy Higginbotham, professor and extension wildlife fishery specialist for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

The population in Texas has increased by about 20 percent each year because hogs have the “highest reproductive rate of any large mammal in the world,” he said. Some food banks and small grocers in the state and country sell the meat, which is described by the state’s Parks and Wildlife service as “tasty” and lean.

Land owners and hunters can trap and sell the live animals to about 100 buying stations in the state, which are licensed and regulated by the Texas Animal Health Commission, where they are inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture before the hogs are slaughtered and sold.

The stations sell the meat to processing plants, which sell the pork for human consumption across the country and in Europe and Asia, Higginbotham said.

“Texas is literally able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” he said, adding that 460,000 hogs in Texas were federally inspected, slaughtered and sold between 2004-2009.

The state, however, does not pull any taxes or revenue from the transactions of the buyback program, which is the only of its kind in the country.

Friedman, a songwriter and entertainer, said the program is a good start, but the state should become more involved and broaden the program and rake some of the profits.

I confess that I don’t know much about this program, so I can’t really evaluate Friedman’s idea. That said, the feral hog problem is statewide and well-known, and the steps we have undertaken so far to deal with it, even the more extreme ones, have had little effect. I don’t see how it could hurt to try to encourage more participation in hog control by making it financially more attractive for the state and for interested parties. Even if the effect on the hog population is minimal, as it will likely be, the need for food is real and the potential to do good is there. A little outside the box thinking here is welcome. Kudos to the Kinkster for bringing it up.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Democratic primary, Election 2014, feral hogs, Kinky Friedman, runoff, Texas, Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Texas Animal Health Commission, USAD | Comments Off

Friday random ten – Baby, You Can Drive My Car Part 2

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Last week was about specific types of cars. This week is about cars in the generic sense.

1. Baby’s Got The Car Keys – Trout Fishing In America
2. The Car Hank Died In – Austin Lounge Lizards
3. Car Wash – Rose Royce
4. Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol
5. Electric Car – They Might Be Giants
6. Fancy Car – The Honeycutters
7. Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
8. In The Car – Barenaked Ladies
9. Race Car Ya-Yas – CAKE
10. Refrigerator Car – Spin Doctors

Again, I eschewed tunes from the Car Talk CDs, this time completely. You could come up with a full list of songs just from those disks. To conclude this series next week, we’ll have other modes of transportation.

Posted in Music | Tagged Friday random ten, theme lists | 3 Comments

State court rules gay marriage ban is unconstitutional

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

That’s two rulings in Texas, with this one referencing the federal ruling from February.

In a move that follows suit with a federal ruling issued in February, a state district judge has deemed Texas’ restrictions on same-sex marriage unconstitutional – paving the way for a San Antonio couple’s divorce proceedings and subsequent child custody battle to continue.

Judge Barbara Nellermoe, in a five-page ruling released Tuesday, pinpointed three portions of the Texas Family Code as unconstitutional, as well as Section 32 of the Texas Constitution.

Nellermoe wrote that “in a well-reasoned opinion by Judge Orlando Garcia, the federal district court found that a state cannot do what the federal government cannot – that is, it cannot discriminate against same-sex couples.”

The latest ruling comes in response to a same-sex divorce lawsuit that was filed in Bexar County in February by Allison Leona Flood Lesh and Kristi Lyn Lesh, who were married in Washington, D.C., in August 2010.

[…]

What is remarkable about the ruling is its finding that failing to “afford the same presumption of parenthood to the wife of a child’s birth mother as it does to a husband of the birth mother” is unconstitutional, said lawyer Emily Hecht-McGowan, director of public policy at the Family Equality Council.

The organization, based in Washington, D.C., advocates for LGBT families throughout the nation.

A child born in a straight marriage or a legal same-sex marriage is considered a child to both parents, which is known as parental presumption, Hecht-McGowan said. But in cases such as this involving a couple in a state that does not recognize same-sex marriage, the child was only considered legally the child of the birth mother.

But in Nellermoe’s ruling, the judge wrote that such a practice violated the Equal Protection Clause.

“By denying their parents the right to marry, Texas has created a suspect classification of children who are denied equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment,” Nellermoe wrote.

See here for the background on this case, which was filed shortly before Judge Garcia’s ruling that declared Texas’ Double Secret Illegal Anti-Gay Marriage constitutional amendment to be unconstitutional. As we know, the State Supreme Court heard appeals in two other same sex divorce cases last November, but no one knows when they’ll get around to ruling on it. Judge Nellermoe’s ruling seems pretty straightforward to me, but I’m sure it will be appealed. Sure enough, just as Greg Abbott inserted himself into the other cases, so has he done in this one.

Late Wednesday the State Attorney General’s Office filed what’s called a Plea in intervention with this case. It says, “The state of Texas seeks the opportunity to defend its laws and statutes before this court.”

Via Lone Star Q, which notes there’s a lot of other legal activity out there as well. And late yesterday, the Fourth Court of Appeals halted the divorce proceedings for now.

Attorney General Greg Abbott responding by asking the appeals court to grant an emergency stay delaying Nellermoe’s ruling, arguing that speedy action was needed “to avoid the legal chaos that would follow if the trial court’s broadly worded ruling is mistakenly interpreted as authorization for the creation or recognition of same-sex marriages in Bexar County or throughout the state.”

The San Antonio appeals court agreed Thursday afternoon, staying Nellermoe’s ruling while it considers Abbott’s request to vacate the decision as a violation of the district judge’s authority.

The appeals court also set a May 5 deadline to receive briefs in the case.

Nothing ever comes easy, does it? Be that as it may, I have seen basically no reaction to this, at least so far. Equality Texas posted a link to the story on Facebook, which has been widely shared, as well as the link to that Statesman story, but as of publication I have not seen a statement or press release from anyone. I have no idea if the usual nattering nabobs of negativism have reacted to this ruling, either – I didn’t want to get slime all over my nice clothes, so I didn’t go looking – but I’m sure we’ll hear from them as well as from the good guys.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Bexar County, divorce, Equality Texas, gay marriage, gay rights, Greg Abbott, lawsuit, Supreme Court, Texas | Comments Off

On improving literacy

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this story.

In Houston, a city known for its brilliant doctors and energy executives, adults are waiting in line for classes that teach basic literacy skills – reading, writing and speaking clearly. They can’t land jobs or promotions, can’t help their kids with homework.

At the same time, tens of thousands of students in local public school districts are failing to meet the state’s minimum academic standards, fighting to comprehend texts and straining to write essays.

Houston, educators and civic leaders say, has far too many citizens who can’t read well, the subject of a report scheduled for release Thursday by the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, “Houston’s Literacy Crisis: A Blueprint for Community Action.”

The plan calls for educating parents of infants, making pre-kindergarten classes available to all youngsters, deploying reading specialists to low-performing schools and expanding adult education programs.

The foundation has not put a price on its ideas, but executive director Julie Baker Finck said she hopes the report serves as a rallying cry to turn more attention, volunteer support and funding toward literacy work.

“If we don’t in part solve low literacy levels for adults, then they will never be able to support their own child’s development and prepare them to enter kindergarten ready to learn how to read,” she said.

[…]

The Bush Foundation’s work dovetails with HISD’s latest campaign to improve literacy instruction. In a draft plan presented to the school board this month, Superintendent Terry Grier and his academic chief, Dan Gohl, set a goal that 100 percent of third-graders would meet the state’s reading standards by 2019.

Last year, 37 percent of HISD third-graders hit the recommended level, slightly lower than the Texas average.

“This is our profound crisis,” Gohl told the school board, “and we must do something dramatically different.”

The district’s plan calls for placing a trained “literacy leader” on campuses, increasing scrutiny of individual school programs, and trying to outfit classrooms with books for different reading levels.

Gohl said he plans to ask the board to approve $4 million next school year, largely to fund training. That doesn’t include the classroom libraries for kindergarten through second grade, which could cost another $9 million.

Let me preface this by saying that there’s no question that HISD needs to do a better job on reading and literacy. By every measure, HISD students perform poorly overall in reading, and this does have profound consequences for graduation rates, college achievement, and ultimately earning potential. Improving reading performance, at HISD and in many other school districts in Texas, would go a long way towards making a brighter future for many, many people.

Having said that, here are my concerns with this story.

1. More than half of this story is spent on the personal struggles of two people who dealt with dyslexia as children. One might conclude from this that dyslexia is a big part of the problem, but the story doesn’t actually make that connection. Dyslexia is something we’ve known about for a long time, and according to Wikipedia, it affects about five percent of children. The article uses dyslexia for narrative purposes, so I am unclear whether it is trying to say that dyslexia is a significant part of the problem and/or if local school districts do an inadequate job in dealing with dyslexic children. My guess is that this was for informational purposes only, as they say, and not really something that needs to be better addressed via policy.

2. More broadly, there’s nothing in the story about how these recommendations fit (or don’t fit) with what area school districts are already doing or planning to do, and there’s no reaction from any local school officials or other stakeholders like Gayle Fallon. Perhaps that’s because this story was in advance of the Foundation actually releasing their report – as of this publication, I still don’t see anything on their website about it – so I guess there isn’t anything for them to react to. Maybe this was just supposed to be a puff piece, but someone funded this study and someone took the time to write it, and from what little we see in this story they have some decent ideas – I particularly like the bit about educating parents of infants – so let’s take it seriously and see if it’s worthwhile. Otherwise, what’s the point?

3. That said, and bearing in mind that I haven’t seen the report myself, I’m disappointed that they didn’t put a price tag on anything. We’re in the middle of a policy debate in the Governor’s race about education and pre-k, mostly about funding but also about how to do it right. I understand it’s not their role to get in the middle of a partisan dispute, but nothing happens in this state without at least some understanding of the cost involved, and how to pay for it. In the absence of adequate state funding for pre-k, thanks to the 2011 budget cuts, some localities have tried to provide pre-k programs on their own; the one in San Antonio was successful, the one in Harris County was not. What approach would the Bush Foundation recommend? I for one would like to know.

Posted in School days | Tagged Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, Election 2014, Governor, HISD, Houston, pre-kindergarten, reading, school finance, schools, Texas | Comments Off

Radack finally gets to implement his feral hog plan

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I can’t wait to see how well this works out.

Locally sourced pork finally may be on the menu for needy Houston-area families as Harris County Precinct 3 launches its most ambitious effort yet to eradicate feral hogs damaging parkland and neighborhoods around the Barker and Addicks reservoirs.

Within a month, precinct employees hope to begin trapping and transporting the wild pigs to a meat processing facility in Brookshire, where they will be butchered, frozen and distributed to area food banks.

Commissioners Court on Tuesday approved a one-year, $217,600 contract with J&J Packing Co. that begins May 1. The court also OK’d the purchase of metal panels to complete four traps to be erected near the reservoirs in west Harris County.

The approvals were the final steps needed in Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack’s long-standing plan to eliminate, or at least sharply reduce, a prolific hog population in George Bush and Congressman Bill Archer parks, home to the two reservoirs.

“This is the beginning of (the) Harris County hog program in earnest,” Radack declared. “As meat prices go up, we’ll be giving it away.”

Commissioner Radack first floated this idea in 2009, and proposed allowing bow hunters in the parks to deal with the problem. The Army Corps of Engineers put the kibosh on the plan, however, on the grounds of public safety. I presume using traps instead of hunters addresses that issue.

For nearly a decade, off-duty county workers and hired contractors have trapped several hundred hogs a year in the area.

The current plan began to come together early last year when the precinct won a $630,000 federal Coastal Impact Assistance Program grant to bankroll a study assessing whether hog removal improves water quality, as well as pay for four metal traps and the slaughter and processing of 2,500 pigs.

“It’ll be an ongoing and continuing exercise until we get every pig in that area,” said Mike McMahan, Radack’s special activities coordinator.

The plan is to trap the varmints in four, 4-acre fenced structures – two in each park – where they can survive for up to several weeks, having grass, water and room to move around.

The larger traps will be more effective than smaller ones employees have been using, McMahan said, because the pigs do not realize they are in a trap and are less likely to panic and warn others.

“Pigs become very aware of those situations very quickly,” McMahan said. “Pigs are very smart animals.”

[…]

Brian Mesenbrink, a wildlife disease biologist with the Texas offices of Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture branch designated to address human-wildlife conflicts, said the agency is “not against any legal method when it comes to controlling feral hogs,” but said that the trap-and-process concept – “tried in small little operations here and there” – has proved short-lived in other places, mainly because of the cost.

“It’s actually very expensive,” he said, noting that “you don’t get to pick which ones go to market.”

He also warned of the “disease aspect” of such an operation, noting that feral hogs “carry quite a few” and even federal inspectors do not examine every piece of meat.

“It’s like Russian roulette,” he said. “It’s great publicity while it works, but the minute something goes wrong, the minute somebody gets sick, there’s going to be all hell to pay. No one thinks about that going into it. They just see the fuzzy and warm side of it.”

Radack dismissed the disease concern, noting that hunting and eating feral hog is far from uncommon. As for the financial viability of the program, he believes the precinct will be able to secure additional grant money to continue it.

Here’s the Texas Parks and Wildlife information page on feral hogs, which addresses the disease question among others. It’s a concern, but it’s not like there are no concerns about traditional mass-produced meat. I would warn against being optimistic that this plan will actually make a dent in the feral hog population. If it were this easy to keep them in check, there would be no such thing as porkchopping. Beyond that, I see no problems with this. As the story notes, it does connect a problem with a need – there’s already an agreement in place with the Houston Food Bank to receive the hog meat, for which they are grateful. I hope that costs can be managed and that either grant money or philanthropy can cover it as needed. Kudos to Commissioner Radack for having the vision to conceive of this, and for having the persistence to see it through. Texpatriate and Hair Balls have more.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Army Corps of Engineers, Commissioners Court, feral hogs, Harris County, Houston Food Bank, Steve Radack, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department | Comments Off

Dallas and Seattle redoing vehicle for hire ordinances

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve said before that the review of Houston’s vehicle for hire codes will be a process and not a one-time deal, and that we ought to be prepared to review what we do now in another six or twelve months since we don’t really know what the effect of whatever we do here will be. Case in point, Dallas:

A proposed transportation-for-hire ordinance is intended to “create a level playing field,” says the draft outline sent to Mayor Mike Rawlings, the Dallas City Council, city manager A.C. Gonzalez and members of Sandy Greyson’s work group late Wednesday.

The ordinance, which comes eight months after the debate over Uber and other app-ordered car services pulled into Dallas City Council chambers, would, among other things, do away with “caps on the number of transportation-for-hire vehicles” and “regulations of fares.” Right now, for instance Yellow Cab owns most of the 2,022 stickers needed to get a cab on the road. The proposed ordinance would essentially end Yellow Cab’s position as a “regulated monopoly,” as council member Scott Griggs called it in January.

The proposed ordinance also requires that every company with a car on the road provides insurance — “regardless of whether the driver has a separate policy.”

[…]

Greyson and other council members and city officials won’t comment on the proposal until after tomorrow’s meeting of the work group, which begins at 11 a.m. Several messages have also been left for Uber and Lyft representatives.

Says the proposed ordinance, every company must have an operating authority permit, which lists every car in the fleet, expires annually and can be suspended and isn’t transferable. Yellow Cab would need the permit; so too Uber’s black-car service or Lyft’s ride-sharing service or, for that matter, horse carriages or pedicabs — or any company that charges for ridesharing (as opposed to, say, carpooling).

Drivers will need separate permits, which they can only get after extensive background checks, a drug test and a training class that’s “sponsored by the city and run by a contractor on city regulations, familiarity with the city, and customer service.” That permit would be good only for two years, and must be displayed in the vehicle at all times.

Companies and their drivers aren’t the only thing needing permits. Vehicles will need them too — and, for starters, they can’t be older than 10 years or have more than 250,000 miles on them. But the draft ordinance says there’s no minimum cost for a vehicle — a far cry from the $45,000 minimum Yellow Cab tried to set last August in its efforts to ride Uber out of town.

That operating authority permit would cost $1,000 per year. There’s also a fee for the driver’s permit: $50 a year. On top of that, there’s also a fee for the vehicle permit: $100 a year.

The draft ordinance does allow for hailing by app — which Yellow Cab also tried to stop last year — and demands “city-wide service,” in an attempt to address Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee chair Vonciel Jones Hill’s unsubstantiated claims that Uber is engaged in red-lining south of the Trinity River.

Via Unfair Park, and you can see a copy of the draft ordinance at either link. There’s a committee meeting scheduled for today to go over the proposals. I note that there’s a fair bit of overlap with the proposed Houston ordinance, so perhaps we are groping our way towards a consensus of some kind.

Meanwhile, Christopher Newport, the former Chief of Staff of the Administration & Regulatory Affairs Department and current Chief of Staff to Mayor Parker, left this link in a comment on the draft ordinance post:

A coalition group has collected enough signatures to suspend a newly-passed ordinance regulating companies like UberX and Lyft, and now Mayor Ed Murray wants to work with all stakeholders to reach a new agreement.

The group, which received more than $400,000 in donations from Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, submitted more than 36,000 signatures today to the City Clerk’s office, more than double what was required (16,510).

The City of Seattle has a referendum process in place for situations like this, and if citizens can gather enough signatures — eight percent of the total number of votes cast for mayor in the last mayoral election (206,377) — newly-approved ordinances will be put on hold and then voted on by Seattle residents.

The ordinance, which passed in March and attempted to thread the needle by simply capping the number of vehicle for hire permits while taking some time to review how things were going, has been suspended and all parties are back at the table to try to negotiate a comprehensive solution. Maybe they should take a peek at what Houston and Dallas are doing and see what they think about that.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Annise Parker, Christopher Newport, City Council, Dallas, Houston, Houston City Council, Lyft, Seattle, taxis, Uber | Comments Off

Calendar

Categories

Archives

My linkage

Polling Texas 2020

Polling Texas 2018

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities

Categories

Archives

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

My Linkage

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities