Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Abbott appoints a bunch of judges

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Justice Jimmy Blacklock, a conservative ally of Gov. Greg Abbott, has been named the new chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. He replaces Nathan Hecht, the court’s longest serving justice, who stepped down at the end of December due to the mandatory judicial retirement age.

Abbott appointed his general counsel, James P. Sullivan, to take the seat vacated by Blacklock’s promotion.

“The Supreme Court of Texas plays a crucial role to shape the future of our great state, and Jimmy Blacklock and James Sullivan will be unwavering guardians of the Texas Constitution serving on our state’s highest judicial court,” Abbott said in a statement.

As chief justice, Blacklock will take on a larger role in the administration of the court. During his tenure, Hecht helped reform the rules of civil procedure and was a fierce advocate for legal aid and other programs to help low-income Texans access the justice system. But, as he told The Texas Tribune in December, when it comes to rulings, “the chief is just one voice of nine.”

Adding Sullivan to the court will further secure the court’s conservative stronghold. While Hecht came up in an era when state courts were less politically relevant, Blacklock and Sullivan are both young proteges of an increasingly active conservative legal movement.

Blacklock attended Yale Law School and clerked on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and after a stint in private practice, he joined the Texas Office of the Attorney General under Abbott. He helped lead Texas’ aggressive litigation strategy against the Obama administration, defending the state’s restrictive abortion and voter identification laws, gay marriage restrictions and crusade against the Affordable Care Act.

When Abbott became governor, Blacklock became his general counsel. Abbott appointed him to the bench in December 2017, when he was just 38 years old.

The Texas Supreme Court has transformed over the last few decades from a plaintiff-friendly venue dominated by Democrats to the exclusive domain of increasingly conservative Republicans. Abbott, a former justice himself, has played a huge role in this shift, appointing six of the nine current justices, including Sullivan.

Sullivan graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He spent four years as Texas assistant solicitor general during Abbott’s tenure as attorney general, and in 2018, became Abbott’s deputy general counsel. In 2021, he became the governor’s general counsel.

Justice Hecht had his merits and I wish him well, but boy is it a sign of the times to be feeling even a little nostalgic about his time on SCOTx. But the right-wing legal movement keeps 3-D printing newer and more efficient drones to replace guys like him, so here we are.

But wait, there’s more.

Gov. Greg Abbott made nine December appointments to district court seats to fill posts opened due to incumbents’ moves, resignations, new court seats or election losses.

On Tuesday, Abbott appointed Lance Long to the Harris County 183rd District Court, effective Jan. 1. Long’s predecessor, Kristin M. Guiney, a Republican, won election to the First Court of Appeals.

Long leaves his post as assistant criminal district attorney for the Smith County District Attorney’s Office. His prior experience includes serving as a Harris County prosecutor, managing his own law firm, and as a staff attorney for the Harris County Office of Court Management.

Maggie Jaramillo was appointed Dec. 20 to the Fort Bend County 458th District Court, a seat left vacant by Judge Chad Bridges’ election win to the Fourteenth Court of Appeals.

Jaramillo was an associate judge for the 268th District Court in Fort Bend County. Previously, she served as judge of the 400th District Court, was a prosecutor in the same county, an attorney in private practice, and she started her career as an assistant county attorney in Starr County.

Caroline Dozier was appointed Dec. 20 to the Harris County 228th District Court, which was abruptly left vacant by the death of Judge Frank Aguilar, a Democrat who was killed in a car crash accident.

Dozier was chief of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office misdemeanor trial bureau. She served with the district attorney’s office for over 30 years.

[…]

Lori Ann DeAngelo was appointed Dec. 19 to the Harris County 495th District Court, a court that was created by the legislature, effective Oct. 1, 2024.

DeAngelo was previously appointed to the 487th District Court in Houston but lost the seat in the general election to Democratic Party opponent Stacy Allen Barrow.

All of them, Blacklock and Sullivan included, will be on the 2026 ballot. Let’s make sure we channel some energy into those races next year. Oh, and for those of you who complain about our partisan judicial elections, this is a reminder about how many of our judges got their start by being appointed. Most of them by Greg Abbott.

UPDATE: One more:

Failed district attorney candidate Dan Simons was tapped by Gov. Greg Abbott to preside as a state district court judge for the next two years, officials said.

Simons, who narrowly lost to newly elected District Attorney Sean Teare on the Republican ticket, was appointed Tuesday to the 496th District Court, one of Harris County’s three new courts. His term will expire either Dec. 31, 2026, unless he runs for that seat and wins.

Simons applied for the judicial position after the November election. He plans to start hearing cases in late January after closing his criminal defense practice, he said.

[…]

Simons, like Teare, worked for Harris County District Attorney’s Office, rising to chief prosecutor for a misdemeanor court before his 2017 departure, when Ogg started her first term, according to county records.

His final months at the office were marked by mixed performance reviews and allegations of questionable ethics. One supervisor lamented that Simons was unprepared and sought to win cases, rather than seek justice. Some presentation of cases were misleading, according to the review. Simons disputed the review.

Another prosecutor accused Simons of instructing her to lie during plea negotiations. A disciplinary committee considered the allegation but said it lacked sufficient evidence. No disciplinary action was taken but Simons was ordered to watch a video on prosecutorial ethics instead, records show.

Must be nice to have Greg Abbott there to help you fail upward.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Dan Simons, Election 2024, Election 2026, Fort Bend County, Greg Abbott, Harris County, James Sullivan, Jimmy Blacklock, judicial races, Nathan Hecht, Texas | Comments Off

Arlington wants in on flying taxis

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Every time I come across a story about flying taxis, I learn something new.

[Arlington] Mayor Jim Ross announced with dramatic flair during his State of the City address in October that the city will take commercial transit to the skies by 2026. Experts told KERA News that might be a stretch, but it’s not implausible.

The air taxis would be based out of Arlington’s airport, according to the city.

The most likely scenario is that Arlington has the equipment and infrastructure for special demonstrations during the World Cup, according to Ernest Huffman, aviation planning and education program manager at North Central Texas Council of Governments.

Huffman said getting flying taxis to Arlington won’t depend as much on determination or hard work by city leaders as regulations and technology.

“There’s a few things that we’re going to need in place,” Huffman said. “We’re not looking to have flying taxis as a viable transportation mode for the World Cup games. All we’re looking to do is demonstrate the technology for the World Cup games.”

[…]

The Federal Aviation Administration told KERA News in an emailed statement that it’s been working to get regulations ready for flying taxis. The agency has already made progress, finalizing rules for flying taxi pilot and instructor qualifications. Most of them are expected to be electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL.

The administration has also been working with three companies to approve designs for eVTOL taxis. Archer Aviation and Joby are the furthest along, with certification expected soon.

[…]

Huffman said the biggest hurdles to clear will be regulations.

Flying taxis won’t require too much special infrastructure. Much of what they would need is easy to build.

Takeoff and landing happen at one of two places: vertipods and vertiports.

Vertipods would be most commonly seen and would look similar to a helicopter pad. In Arlington, they might be in places like a parking lot at one of the stadiums, downtown or somewhere at UT Arlington’s campus. They don’t need to be flashy as long as they provide a safe designated place to land.

Vertiports will require a bit more. Huffman said they’ll be two or three stories tall and offer places to park and charge eVTOL aircraft. They’re more likely to be seen at major airports but could also be found in downtown areas with taller buildings where the elevation would be a benefit.

Huffman said neither of those will create too many issues when implementing flying taxis.

Those regulations will be the toughest hurdle for cities like Arlington.

Each company producing eVTOL aircraft will have to get certification from the FAA, and that can take years.

Price will be an obstacle when eVTOL does become available.

Jinzhu Yu, an assistant professor of civil engineering at UT Arlington, said early adopters should expect to pay high prices for trips through the skies of North Texas. He’s been working with the Council of Governments in research to predict the price of flying taxis.

“What we’re looking at in terms of passenger per mile, the range is pretty wide,” Yu said.

Right now, that range looks to be about $4 per mile to $11 per mile for passengers. Uber is expected to charge around $5.70 per mile.

“If we use that number in our model, there will be very few flying taxi trips,” Yu said. “Flying taxis are similar to other technologies where in the very beginning it’s very expensive but as technology improves or infrastructure develops, those costs are going to go down.”

In the end, he expects Uber will try to make it below $3 per mile. In the long run, eVTOL is expected to relieve traffic congestion, reduce emissions and draw tourists who might come to Arlington just to try out flying taxis.

Earlier this month I learned what a “vertiport” is, and now I see that I didn’t have its complete definition. I suspect some of that places that I had thought were vertiports are actually vertipods instead. The more you know!

Aviation guy Huffman says in this story that he doesn’t think flying taxis will have regulatory approval for public use until 2027, which would be too late for the FIFA World Cup. But his wording makes me think that private use could be in play. Given the discussion in this story about the price point for this service, all my questions about who the market is for this remain.

That said, depending on the range of these aircraft and the future adoption of other types of aircraft, I could see the market for longer trips being potentially pretty robust. A lot of that I think will depend on how convenient and affordable it is to get to and from the vertiports/vertipods, since the main competition at least at first is just driving yourself from, say, Houston to Galveston or one far-flung part of the Metroplex to another. The flying part of it may well be fun and relaxing, but the first and last miles count, too.

Another point mentioned in this story is the noise factor. The comp for an individual eVTOL is a refrigerator, which we can all agree is pretty quiet overall, but in the aggregate that could be quite noisy. That said, in comparison to any main road, or especially a highway, it’s likely a lot less bothersome. But it could mean bringing that noise to places that are much quieter now, and it will be an add-on rather than a replacement. We’ll just have to see what it’s like.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged air taxis, Archer Aviation, Arlington, eVTOL, Federal Aviation Administration, flying cars, Joby Aviation, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Texas, Uber, vertipod, vertiport, World Cup | 1 Comment

Water cremation

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is fascinating, and also something I knew nothing about.

An illegal cremation method got a medical center in North Texas a cease-and-desist letter from the Texas Funeral Service Commission and its body donation program under internal review in November. But water cremation — or alkaline hydrolysis — is legal in 28 other states, and its ecological benefits have piqued the interest of a growing number of Texans.

So much so that a few years ago, a cremation service in Austin started offering to fly the body of a person’s loved-one on a Southwest flight to St. Louis, Missouri, to liquefy them using alkaline hydrolysis.

Water cremation has faced the Texas Legislature multiple times in the past few years with no success. The most recent attempt came through a senate bill that died on the table last legislative session.

To some, the back and forth speaks to an issue of separation of church and state. To others, the process is too new to cut the red tape on. And to complicate a debate about what Texans get to do with their bodies when they die, and who decides, there’s a statutory conflict about the process that has led to confusion over what exactly is allowed.

So what is alkaline hydrolysis, and why is it so contested?

Alkaline hydrolysis — also known as water cremation, green cremation and flameless cremation — uses water, heat and alkaline chemicals along with pressure to speed up the process of natural decomposition. It leaves a small amount of bone fragments and a neutral liquid called effluent, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

The body goes in an air- and water-tight chamber with approximately 100 gallons of liquid. The process typically uses 95% water and 5% alkaline, or basic chemicals, which include potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide or a mix of the two. Pressure or heat are often added, and the process takes anywhere from 3 to 16 hours depending on the equipment and body mass.

Essentially, the process accelerates the decomposition a body goes through after its burial by using chemicals.

It’s generally considered more gentle than traditional cremation and releases less fossil fuels. But to Barabara Kemmis, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America, the carbon-footprint point depends on how you look at it.

“If you’re looking at fossil fuels, there’s almost no usage, but hundreds of gallons of water — there’s some usage,” Kemmis said.

[…]

A good number of folks have a bone to pick with the process — enough so, that bills to authorize alkaline hydrolysis in Texas have all failed in the legislature.

The opposition can be geographically dependent, Kemmis said. But in the Lone Star State, the loudest voice against it is religious.

“For people in desert areas, it’s a big objection. It’s ‘how can we justify doing this in the desert?’ But in Texas, it’s been primarily the Catholic church,” Kemis said.

When a house bill was introduced in 2019 to authorize alkaline hydrolysis as a method of cremation, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops published a statement against the bill, calling it “disrespectful.”

“For this committee to approve of this method of disposition would be a direct contradiction to the state’s profound respect for human life and human remains as expressed by other laws,” the statement reads.

Texas proponents of legalizing alkaline hydrolysis argue the religious opposition bars on blurring the lines between church and state. Beyond that, they consider the legislature’s power to decide what happens to a person’s remains unfair — whether lawmakers agree with liquid cremation or not.

“It’s important for all people to have the option to choose the method of disposition, and the state government combined with religious groups keep these important options out of the hands of many Texas families,” [Eric Neuhaus, founder of Green Cremation Texas] said. “I think a healthier separation of church and state could change that.”

“Having the overreach of the Texas government is an embarrassment as a life-long Texan.”

Another natural alternative to burial and cremation that has also attracted religious opposition is human composting, which is legal in a handful of states that are not Texas and is also exactly what you think it is. I’m not sure any of these are right for me, but I do think people should have the option. As the Chron story notes, Sen. Nathan Johnson has filed bills in the past to allow for water cremation, and will likely do so again. Perhaps someday he’ll find a more receptive audience. This Smithsonian article from 2022 has more if you’re interested.

Posted in Technology, science, and math, The great state of Texas | Tagged alkaline hydrolysis, cremation, Cremation Association of North America, Green Cremation Texas, Nathan Johnson, Texas, Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, Texas Funeral Directors Association, The Lege | 3 Comments

Precinct analysis 2024: Railroad Commissioner

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY:

President
Senate


Dist  Craddick  Culbert      Lib      Grn
=========================================
CD02    99,112   65,117    3,921    3,996
CD07    66,167   95,853    3,751    5,025
CD08    71,653   66,412    3,176    5,058
CD09    31,772   90,778    2,260    4,700
CD18    61,743  139,540    5,594    8,483
CD22    16,983   10,714      706      758
CD29    53,055   84,694    2,793    8,434
CD36    93,185   54,483    3,636    4,175
CD38   209,116  115,654    7,421    7,149
      		
SBOE4  144,116  303,971    9,583   20,025
SBOE6  324,158  250,499   14,084   16,055
SBOE7    1,743    4,598      106      188
SBOE8  232,769  164,177    9,485   11,510
      		
SD04    75,213   47,859    3,051    3,078
SD06    69,664  105,281    3,781   10,180
SD07   212,146  131,261    8,010    9,277
SD11    78,346   42,310    3,019    3,127
SD13    37,147  125,543    3,283    6,336
SD15   122,253  184,683    7,852   10,515
SD17    78,670   60,200    3,043    3,419
SD18    29,347   26,108    1,219    1,846
      		
HD126   46,572   28,491    1,795   2,012
HD127   52,454   34,911    2,101    1,922
HD128   45,069   18,387    1,508    1,485
HD129   50,334   31,533    2,135    2,186
HD130   61,876   26,437    2,156    1,759
HD131   10,161   31,625      713    1,824
HD132   52,402   35,183    2,021    2,351
HD133   43,010   30,091    1,565    1,546
HD134   40,812   54,725    2,086    2,206
HD135   27,597   31,849    1,380    2,572
HD137   11,385   15,880      663    1,162
HD138   40,880   29,366    1,574    1,858
HD139   17,462   38,232    1,406    2,137
HD140   10,497   16,130      540    1,893
HD141    8,196   27,561      753    1,588
HD142   14,911   34,106    1,030    1,943
HD143   14,314   19,773      618    2,148
HD144   19,018   18,188      752    2,121
HD145   19,684   35,133    1,729    2,810
HD146   12,316   40,331    1,058    1,593
HD147   14,989   45,537    1,549    2,519
HD148   22,682   25,448    1,356    2,270
HD149   19,664   24,722      889    1,855
HD150   46,501   29,606    1,881    2,018
      		
CC1    102,345  247,214    8,216   12,470
CC2    142,792  131,392    6,215   12,565
CC3    294,960  182,839   11,217   11,783
CC4    162,689  161,800    7,610   10,960
      		
JP1     89,208  142,105    6,183    8,511
JP2     34,916   37,739    1,476    3,597
JP3     53,273   56,668    2,373    3,670
JP4    230,183  165,212    9,428   10,984
JP5    202,470  182,146    8,592   12,278
JP6      8,410   20,662      730    2,239
JP7     18,768   83,172    1,981    3,670
JP8     65,558   35,541    2,495    2,829
      		
HISD   148,086  283,328   10,295   15,830
Else   554,700  439,917   22,963   31,948

Dist  Craddick  Culbert      Lib      Grn
=========================================
CD02    57.57%   37.83%    2.28%    2.32%
CD07    38.74%   56.12%    2.20%    2.94%
CD08    48.98%   45.39%    2.17%    3.46%
CD09    24.53%   70.09%    1.75%    3.63%
CD18    28.67%   64.79%    2.60%    3.94%
CD22    58.24%   36.74%    2.42%    2.60%
CD29    35.61%   56.85%    1.87%    5.66%
CD36    59.93%   35.04%    2.34%    2.69%
CD38    61.62%   34.08%    2.19%    2.11%
				
SBOE4   30.17%   63.63%    2.01%    4.19%
SBOE6   53.60%   41.42%    2.33%    2.65%
SBOE7   26.27%   69.30%    1.60%    2.83%
SBOE8   55.69%   39.28%    2.27%    2.75%
				
SD04    58.21%   37.04%    2.36%    2.38%
SD06    36.88%   55.73%    2.00%    5.39%
SD07    58.82%   36.39%    2.22%    2.57%
SD11    61.79%   33.37%    2.38%    2.47%
SD13    21.56%   72.86%    1.91%    3.68%
SD15    37.58%   56.77%    2.41%    3.23%
SD17    54.13%   41.42%    2.09%    2.35%
SD18    50.15%   44.61%    2.08%    3.15%
				
HD126   59.05%   36.12%    2.28%    2.55%
HD127   57.40%   38.20%    2.30%    2.10%
HD128   67.82%   27.67%    2.27%    2.23%
HD129   58.40%   36.59%    2.48%    2.54%
HD130   67.09%   28.66%    2.34%    1.91%
HD131   22.92%   71.35%    1.61%    4.12%
HD132   56.99%   38.26%    2.20%    2.56%
HD133   56.43%   39.48%    2.05%    2.03%
HD134   40.88%   54.82%    2.09%    2.21%
HD135   43.53%   50.24%    2.18%    4.06%
HD137   39.14%   54.59%    2.28%    3.99%
HD138   55.48%   39.86%    2.14%    2.52%
HD139   29.48%   64.54%    2.37%    3.61%
HD140   36.12%   55.51%    1.86%    6.51%
HD141   21.51%   72.34%    1.98%    4.17%
HD142   28.68%   65.60%    1.98%    3.74%
HD143   38.84%   53.65%    1.68%    5.83%
HD144   47.45%   45.38%    1.88%    5.29%
HD145   33.16%   59.19%    2.91%    4.73%
HD146   22.27%   72.93%    1.91%    2.88%
HD147   23.20%   70.50%    2.40%    3.90%
HD148   43.82%   49.17%    2.62%    4.39%
HD149   41.72%   52.45%    1.89%    3.94%
HD150   58.12%   37.00%    2.35%    2.52%
				
CC1     27.64%   66.77%    2.22%    3.37%
CC2     48.74%   44.85%    2.12%    4.29%
CC3     58.90%   36.51%    2.24%    2.35%
CC4     47.42%   47.16%    2.22%    3.19%
				
JP1     36.26%   57.76%    2.51%    3.46%
JP2     44.92%   48.55%    1.90%    4.63%
JP3     45.93%   48.86%    2.05%    3.16%
JP4     55.36%   39.73%    2.27%    2.64%
JP5     49.93%   44.92%    2.12%    3.03%
JP6     26.25%   64.49%    2.28%    6.99%
JP7     17.44%   77.30%    1.84%    3.41%
JP8     61.60%   33.40%    2.34%    2.66%
				
HISD    32.37%   61.92%    2.25%    3.46%
Else    52.85%   41.92%    2.19%    3.04%

Whatever the year is, you can generally count on the Democratic candidate for Railroad Commissioner to bring up the rear in the statewide vote count. That’s not a candidate recruitment issue – since 2018, we’ve had a string of well-qualified people run for this office. Our Grady Yarbrough days seem to be behind us, thank goodness. It hasn’t made any difference in the final score.

This is partly because no one knows what the Railroad Commission does and no one knows who’s running for it – there’s just no money raised, at least on the Dem side, for these races. It’s also because of the disproportionate number of third party votes cast in these races. This was a down year for third party candidates overall/ For statewide offices this year, there were only two Green Party candidates, one for President and one for Railroad Commissioner. The Libertarians were slack as well, just those two races plus US Senate and one judicial race. In 2016, by way of comparison, there was a Libertarian and a Green for President, RRC, and five of six judicial races; the sixth had just a Libertarian. In 2020, there were both Libs and Greens for President, Senate, and RRC, with a Libertarian for two of seven judicial races. No idea where they all were this year, but you can see where they weren’t.

Be that as it may, in the Presidential race there were 150K votes cast for an L or a G. In the Railroad Commissioner race, it was 587K votes, nearly four times as many, and that’s with about 400K fewer votes cast in the RRC race. Both Christi Craddick (293K fewer votes than Trump) and Katherine Culbert (560K fewer votes than Kamala Harris) suffered for it, with Culbert getting more of the damage. The Green candidate in this race was a Latino, which as I’ve noted before tends to make things a little worse for the Democratic candidate.

Not that it would have made that much difference had it been Craddick versus Culbert straight up, with Culbert having a few million dollars at her disposal. Dems lost statewide by roughly year-2012 margins for reasons that were mostly about national conditions. But my point, as I made in that post I linked above is that both parties, but Dems more than Republicans, seem to lose votes in the lower-profile races for no particularly good reason to third party candidates. Eight years after I pondered that question, nothing has changed.

I continue to see this as a brand issue, one that Dems don’t take seriously at all, and it’s one that in a better overall year – which, who knows, might be 2026 if we’re about to enter a real shitshow biennium – could be costly at the margins. Given that at least as far as the RRC goes the candidates are not the problem, then to me it’s mostly a matter of money. With a few exceptions, our non-incumbent candidates don’t have the resources to get a message of any kind out to voters. That’s not good for them, and it’s not good for the larger project of giving voters reasons to maybe consider voting for a Democrat.

I wish I had a better answer than “we need more money for more Democratic candidates in more races”, because it’s not prescriptive and no one likes to talk about money in campaigns except to say there’s too much of it. In the aggregate that’s true, but it’s also true that many people like to hear from candidates on their ballot before they’ll consider voting for them, and that doesn’t happen for free. I don’t know what to tell you.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Christi Craddick, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Green Party, Katherine Culbert, Libertarian Party, precinct analysis, Railroad Commission, Texas | 1 Comment

Bald eagles

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before, but there are numerous bald eagles in the greater Houston area, if you are of a mind to try to spot one in the wild.

The bald eagle has been synonymous with the U.S. since the dawn of the country more than 240 years ago.

But it wasn’t until President Joe Biden signed a bill into law on Christmas Eve that the bald eagle officially became the national bird of the U.S. Formerly on the endangered species list, the bald eagle has made a tremendous comeback in recent years with more than 300,000 birds flying across the United States.

That includes birds in the Houston area.

“This is a great place to see bald eagles because we’re the Bayou City, and there’s a lot of waterways. We have green spaces, plenty in the region, along the Brazos or along some of the other rivers,” said Richard Gibbons, the director of conservation for the Audubon Texas. “If you’re along a river and you’re looking up or by a lake, there’s a good chance you’re going to be near an eagle.”

[…]

The most recent bald eagle population report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was released to the public in March 2021 on population numbers in 2018 and 2019, estimates 316,700 individual bald eagles in the contiguous U.S. The department said that’s four times more than its estimates from the previous decade.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says bald eagles can be found year-round in the state, especially with breeding bald eagles found along the coastal communities from Rockport to Houston.

Gibbons said he sees bald eagles all the time in Sienna and suggests people going out to look for bald eagles also look at what juveniles look like. It takes a few years for the iconic white head and tail to fully develop in bald eagles so an amateur bird watcher might see a black bird in the sky and not realize it’s a young bald eagle.

He also recommends asking people in wildlife areas for advice and guidance on where they might be able to spot bald eagles because they might be able to direct you to a good place to watch.

Binoculars also help.

“It’s possible if you live along a water body that you could just get out in the backyard and stare up into the sky but that’s not very good advice,” Gibbons said. ‘I would say, go to a nearby wild area near water. But more importantly, ask the park rangers or ask anybody that’s there.”

Specifically, the TPWD says:

Bald Eagles are present year-round throughout Texas as spring and fall migrants, breeders, or winter residents. The Bald Eagle population in Texas is divided into two populations; breeding birds and nonbreeding or wintering birds. Breeding populations occur primarily in the eastern half of the state and along coastal counties from Rockport to Houston. Nonbreeding or wintering populations are located primarily in the Panhandle, Central, and East Texas, and in other areas of suitable habitat throughout the state.

This Chron story from April, which is a sidebar link from the one above, contains a map of where the known eagles’ nests are, mostly in south-southwest Montgomery County and north Harris County, more or less northwest of IAH. There’s a well-known nesting pair in a particular development of The Woodlands that would be easy enough to find; beyond that I’d probably do some Googling or looking on Reddit for more detailed directions. I suppose I had always thought of bald eagles as more northern birds, so I’m happy to have that misperception corrected. Have you ever seen one of these creatures? Leave a comment and let us know.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged bald eagles, endangered species, Harris County, Houston, Joe Biden, Montgomery County, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 3 Comments

Weekend link dump for January 5

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“Election Day Went (Relatively) Smoothly Because States Prepped For Violence Like 2020″.

“I mean, no, I don’t know what to do about 20 million aggrieved and anti-social young men. But what to do about just one such young man? I’d cast him in a community-theater production of Oklahoma.”

“Faith organizations have a complex relationship to disaster relief”.

“It’s one of the reasons former campers are saddened by the news that One Heartland in Willow River, Minn., about 40 minutes southwest of Duluth, is for sale. The 80-acre site is home to a camp that has served kids living with or affected by HIV/AIDS for more than 30 years. But the number of babies contracting the virus through their mothers has declined to the point where such a camp no longer needs to exist.”

“Costco is battling an anti-DEI wave with a stern rebuke to activist shareholders looking to end the warehouse retailer’s diversity ambitions.”

RIP, Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the US, world class human being.

RIP, Linda Lavin, Tony-winning actor with a long career on Broadway and TV, where she was best known as the titular character in Alice.

Here are your 2024 Golden Duke Award winners.

“This idea would solve one thorny question: Why does the Moon orbit Earth closer to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and not over our equator?”

How to update your DNS settings to improve home Internet security.

RIP, Lenny Randle, former MLB player for multiple teams who is probably best known for trying to blow a ground ball on the third base line foul; the umpires awarded the batter first base.

“The rift reveals the larger paradox beating at the heart of MAGA: They venerate masculinity, but cannot tell you what it is. Look closely at their manhood discourse and the contradictions are immediately apparent.”

“Let us begin by making one thing clear: Our players are the lifeblood of our leagues. We celebrate their ever-increasing skill, which thrills us and our fans on a game-to-game basis. However, we believe that in some respects, our talented athletes’ exploits have fundamentally distorted the ways our sports have historically been played.”

“As of today, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina join the list of 17 states that can’t access some of the most popular porn sites on the internet, because of regressive laws that claim to protect children but restrict adults’ use of the internet, instead.” The lawsuit over Texas’ law that resulted in this block will be heard this month.

RIP, Aaron Brown, journalist and anchorman whose first day on the air for CNN was 9/11.

“Alcoholic drinks should carry a warning about cancer risks on their label, the U.S. Surgeon General said on Friday in a move that could signal a shift towards more aggressive tobacco-style regulation for the sector.”

Lock him up.

RIP, Jocelyn Wildenstein, Swiss socialite known for her extensive plastic surgery.

RIP, Marilyn Oshman, leading art advocate who helped to found the Orange Show Foundation and Art Car Parade.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 2 Comments

A brief look ahead to when the HISD Board will contain elected members again

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This Q&A with elected HISD Trustee Plácido Gómez has some good insights, but I want to note these questions towards the end.

Plácido Gómez

Fast-forwarding, if you, in an imaginary world, became a voting member of the board tomorrow, how would you describe your approach to working with the appointed board members?

We’ve got to get out in the community more. I can actually make this even easier, like right now, at this moment, as somebody who’s not on the appointed board. Myself and other elected board members need to get out in the community with the appointed board to repair trust between HISD and the community. So that means going out, meeting people where they are, not making people go all the way to (central office), which is about 45 minutes to an hour drive from some parts of my district in traffic, which is where the school board meetings are, in order to be heard. So that is the first thing I would do before addressing anything policy-related, is going out to folks and giving an honest attempt to to listen.

I thought it … showed an impressive amount of self-awareness, it was actually your story, where they rated themselves 1 out of 10 in community engagement. Self-awareness is a good place to start going forward, but self-awareness doesn’t actually mean anything unless we have some action that follows from that. So that would be the first thing I do is get out in the community with the appointed board to ask questions and hear what people have to say.

From a policy approach, what are some of the key components of the intervention that you would seek to maintain versus change?

I would seek to maintain the science of reading. That’s arguably the most important change that’s been made. I would seek to maintain the rise in teacher pay and find a way to incentivize the best teachers to teach in schools that are struggling the most.

The second part of the question was about things I would do away with. … It seems to be a mindset amongst the administration that when the community disagrees, the community must be putting adult interest over students, which is just not the case. And so changing that mindset first, before going into any policy things.

And then going into the policy things, I mentioned the philosophy course. … The one-size-fits-all-ness of the program I don’t like. I’m all for student discipline, but there are places where it goes too far, like students taking massive traffic cones in order to go to the bathroom. That is something I definitely would want to do away with. The midyear firing of principals. I would want a clear policy that outlines what would cause a principal to be fired midyear.

Then finally, something absolutely has been done about teacher turnover. I know from my experience as a teacher, my first year teaching I was not very good, which is something I have in common with just about every first-year teacher who’s ever lived. So with an extremely high rate of teacher turnover, the people who replace these folks, … every teacher has to be a first-year teacher at some point by definition. But having disproportional amounts of first-year folks cannot be good for student outcomes.

One last question here, and I’m gonna put you on the spot a little bit. There are a number of members of the community that have said the district should fire Miles, and of course, only the board can do that. So if you were a voting member, where would you stand on that issue?

I don’t mean to compare him to a pirate, but have you seen the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”? There’s a scene where Elizabeth Swann is on the pirate ship, and she’s not quite aware that everybody’s a skeleton ghost on the crew, and she’s having dinner with Hector Barbossa, and at one point she strikes a knife through Barbossa’s heart in an attempt to kill him, and Barbossa takes the knife out of his heart, and just gives a perfect line to say, “I’m curious, after killing me, what is it you had planned on doing next?” And then Elizabeth goes out and sees the horror show of the pirate ship.

So I would give the same answer about firing a principal or as firing a teacher. There has to be a plan. What’s going to happen after that? It’s going to depend on what the plan is. So let’s say, for example, the board fired Mike Miles, what happens after that is actually unclear to me when it comes to policy. Because does the board get to pick a new superintendent, or is it the commissioner who gets to pick a new superintendent. When you make a decision as drastic as firing somebody, you have to have a good understanding of what the alternative is, and I don’t have a clear understanding right now of what the next step would be.

I’m pretty sure that Mike Morath would pick the successor, but the real answer to that question is that someone with a fuller understanding of the law that foisted Miles on us in the first place would have to try to tell us. There would almost certainly be litigation, either at the point of Miles being fired or someone – Morath, the Board, Elon Musk, who knows – picking the successor, in which case the courts would decide. Isn’t that something to look forward to?

My interview with Plácido Gómez from his election campaign in 2023 is here, and the interview I did with him and fellow Trustee Dani Hernandez in support of the bond referendum is here if you want some more insight into his thinking. I’m ready for him and as many of his colleagues as possible to be given back their power.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, Election 2023, Election 2025, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, Texas Education Agency | 1 Comment

Yolanda Saldivar seeks parole

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure how I feel about this, other than it’s another reminder of how old we all are.

Yolanda Saldívar, the woman found guilty of killing the late Tejano icon Selena Quintanilla-Perez, has applied for parole for 2025. The New York Post reports that inmates have indicated there is a “bounty on her head,” prompting the move to file for parole.

Saldívar, 64, was found guilty of the shooting death of Selena in 1995. Saldívar is eligible for parole after 30 years due to her clean record with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Quintanilla-Perez’s family is anticipated to be informed of her possible release in January.

According to reports, Saldívar is still targeted by other prisoners who still want “justice for Selena” despite having spent 30 years in prison at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas.

[…]

Before her death on March 31, 1995, two weeks before her 24th birthday, Selena was dubbed the “Queen of Tejano” and was a dominating force in Spanish music set to expand her audience into the mainstream.

Selena had secretly met with Saldívar at a motel in Corpus Christi to obtain tax paperwork after Salazar was dismissed as president of Selena’s fan club for embezzling more than $30,000 in fan club dues. That same day, Selena was killed.

Following the murder, Saldívar withdrew to her pickup truck and engaged in a nearly 10-hour police standoff. Afterward, she claimed that she intended to turn herself over to authorities and that the shooting was an accident. However, Saldívar, a former nurse, did not contact 911 and did not attempt to save Selena’s life.

“I was convicted by public opinion even before my trial started,” Saldívar said in a prison interview for last year’s documentary Selena and Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them.

A jury convicted Saldívar of first-degree murder in October 1995 and she was given a life sentence with the possibility of release.

According to a relative of Saldívar, who spoke to the Post recently, the convicted murderer feels that she has paid her obligation to society and is a “political prisoner” in prison.

“Keeping her in prison isn’t going to do any good,” the relative said. “It’s time for her to get out.”

Thirty years, man. It’s hard not to wonder how big a cultural and musical force Selena could have been. I mean, the fact that someone like me, a white boy from New York who spoke no Spanish and only listened to rock music at the time, knew who she was in the pre-Internet of 1995 and was shocked by her death gives some idea of how big she was already. I’ve been perfectly happy for Saldivar to spend her days in obscurity in prison, not having to think about her. I’m not impressed by her claims of being a target – she’s still here, after all – or that she didn’t mean to kill Selena and was going to turn herself in. She’s gotten what she deserved.

But is it enough at this point, and is there any value to society in letting her out? She’s clearly not a danger to anyone, and we vastly over-punish people convicted of crimes in general. Most likely, she’d continue to be a little nobody outside of jail, though there’s a real chance she’d take up a bunch of offers to make money off of her notoriety, which I at least would find annoying. I think maybe where I land is that she should get parole, but not on her first try. Give it another year or two, to get past the 30-year retrospectives of her crime, and then process her out. What do you think?

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged jail, parole, Selena Quintanilla, Texas, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Yolanda Saldivar | 3 Comments

Teare recuses his office from the Hidalgo aides’ cases

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

As he said he would.

Sean Teare

Recently-elected Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare filed a motion on Thursday to recuse the Harris County Attorney’s Office from three cases related to the prosecution of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s former staffers.

In April 2024, former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg brought in the Texas Office of the Attorney General to assist in the state’s prosecution of three former aides’ cases. However, Ogg did not formally recuse the district attorney’s office from them at that time.

Thursday’s motion, which Teare’s office announced in a press release, formally requests such recusal and the appointment of the Attorney General as attorney pro tem.

“For years, the worst kind of politics has marred the investigation and orderly administration of justice of these cases,” Teare said in the release. “Despite never having been involved in the prosecution or defense of any of these staffers, our community deserves a DA who not only removes politics from the prosecution of any criminal case, but who will also bend over backwards to avoid even the appearance of any conflict of interest. My hope is that moving forward, these cases will be adjudicated quickly, fairly, and with integrity.”

See here for the background. Teare had said he would recuse the office from this case back in March. A motion by the defense to do exactly this has been pending since June of 2022, not that long after the indictments were first handed down. I thought that was the right move for Teare when he first announced it, and I still think that way. One way or the other, this case needs to be brought to a resolution, and it’s best for someone not directly involved in the politics of it to take it from here. The next public hearing for this case is scheduled for May, we’ll see where we are at that time. Thanks to Campos for the heads up.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Aaron Dunn, Alex Triantaphyllis, Attorney General, Democratic primary, District Attorney, Election 2024, Harris County, Kim Ogg, Lina Hidalgo, Sean Teare, Wallis Nader | Comments Off

Bird flu update

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just something to keep an eye on.

Federal health officials say that not only has a Louisiana resident contracted the first severe case of bird flu in the U.S., but that the virus likely mutated in the patient. The findings raise concern regarding the adaptability of the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday announced that it had sequenced the bird flu, or avian influenza, viruses collected from a Louisiana patient who “was severely ill from an A(H5N1) virus infection.” The person has not been identified, but according to reports, they are older than 65 and have underlying medical conditions.

The New York Times reported the individual, who was hospitalized with respiratory symptoms, is from southwestern Louisiana. They came in contact with sick and dead birds; the CDC found that the viruses collected were closely related to those found in wild birds and poultry in Louisiana late in 2024. The CDC confirmed the case on Dec. 13.

The CDC said that to its knowledge, the individual has not passed the virus on to anyone else. The Louisiana Department of Public Health is working with the CDC to continue virologic analysis. As of mid-December, 61 human cases of bird flu have been reported in the U.S. Bird flu has also been detected in chickens in Mississippi.

[…]

“Is this an indication that we may be closer to seeing a readily transmitted virus between people? No,” University of Minnesota infectuous disease researcher Michael Osterholm told the Associated Press. “Right now, this is a key that sits in the lock, but it doesn’t open the door.”

According to the CDC, bird flu remains a low risk to the general public.

We don’t know where exactly this goes from here, but it could be a bigger issue in the near-to-medium term future. The numbers for now are pretty low, but we know that can change. I will say with confidence that if it does become something bigger soon, we will not handle it well. Stay up to date on your vaccines, and be ready to take further precautions when conditions warrant. Slate has more.

Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged Centers for Disease Control, flu, Louisiana, vaccinations | Comments Off

Whitmire’s first year

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron has a story about how Mayor Whitmire’s first year has gone, and I’ll get to that shortly, but first I want to look at this story, about his efforts to get help from the state government for the city. You may recall that was a key component of his platform, and it turns out that even his fifty years of relationship building has its limits with the leadership we have now.

Mayor John Whitmire

Throughout his first year in office, Mayor John Whitmire has consistently mentioned one solution for addressing the city’s financial struggles – turning to his connections in Austin.

But those connections might not come to fruition the way the former state senator has long promised.

In a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle, Whitmire admitted that where he thought he’d find congeniality among his former peers at the legislature, he’s instead found resistance when it comes to boosting the city’s revenue.

The city’s critics say Houston “doesn’t need that kind of money,” Whitmire said.

“Nobody works as hard as we do,” Whitmire said. “The people saying that, they don’t even stop to consider we got a tougher revenue cap than any big city. We’re growing rapidly. We are the life growth of the state of Texas. How Houston goes is how the state goes.”

The opposition may come as a surprise to some, especially given Whitmire’s 52 years as a state lawmaker. But experts say the phenomenon isn’t necessarily unique to Whitmire.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said it’s a difficult time to ask state leaders for money, despite Texas’ healthy surplus. The state doesn’t often view more progressive cities like Houston as being able to govern themselves, he added.

“That’s a conundrum that the mayor is going to face, no matter who the mayor is,” Rottinghaus said.

Nancy Sims, who also lectures on politics at the University of Houston, said the resistance comes down to the conservative views in the legislature.

“They don’t like the urban areas because they do tend to be more Democratic, and it’s true of every major city in the state,” Sims said.

As concerns about Houston’s financial future grow, Rottinghaus warns Whitmire will have to start painting a clearer picture sooner rather than later.

“The vagueness about the relationships and money has to come to fruition before too long,” Rottinghaus said. “The city’s financial woes will become more pressing and the voters become more impatient.”

The look-back story is here, and I’ll agree he’s gotten some stuff done while also being dealt a challenging hand. He’s made some of those challenges more complicated for himself, with the massive firefighter deal for which there’s no articulated plan to pay being #1 on that list, but what he must face would legitimately bedevil anyone.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about Whitmire’s promises and plans to use his half-century in state government to help fix some of the city’s problems, which as noted above has turned out to be not as easy as perhaps he thought it might be. In fact, I’ve already talked about it, over a year ago when the Chron endorsed him for Mayor. I’m going to take the liberty of quoting myself here:

Senator John Whitmire, with his fifty years in the Capitol and personal relationships with anyone who ever was anyone in Austin, is confident that that experience and those personal relationships with the various power brokers and other People Of Influence will be to Houston’s benefit as Mayor. And again, if we had a non-malevolent state government, I would not only agree with that, I’d tout it as a unique strength that Whitmire has. It should be a strength. As recently as when Mayor Turner took office, I for one would have seen it as a strength. Mayor Turner, with a similar level of experience and personal relationships, was the right person at the right time to push pension reform through, and it was a huge win for the city. I’d like to think we could have something like that for our next set of challenges going forward.

The problem is that many of those challenges are the result of the state putting its boot on our neck. Even before the “Death Star” bill, there’s been an inexorable march towards taking away the ability of cities to govern themselves. Republicans in the Legislature and their seething primary voters, including those who live in these cities, see us as a decadent force that needs to be dominated. They’re not interested in nice bipartisan solutions to thorny problems; quite the reverse. I don’t doubt that John Whitmire could get Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and Dade Phelan and whoever else on the phone and tell them what Houston’s needs are (and aren’t) and ask them to help us out. What I do doubt is that they will see any reason or incentive to do their part.

The larger concern there is that a Mayor Whitmire would see his experience and connections and overvalue them, on the understandable but (in my view) mistaken idea that they mean something to the people on the other end of those connections. I fear that he could get strung along by his colleagues, in the way that President Obama got strung along in the first debt ceiling fight by the “moderate” Republicans in Congress, and in doing so foreclose other avenues to address issues. I fear that given the chance to improve the city’s political standing by working to vote out particular members of state government, Whitmire will value his connections above that possibility and thus contribute to leaving us in a position of subservience that much longer. Yes, of course there’s a risk in campaigning against someone who has a good chance of winning. You can’t avoid risk in politics. I’m just saying that the risk of not going for it tends to be downplayed in ways that it shouldn’t be.

There’s an analog here to the value of then-State Rep. Sarah Davis, the mostly moderate (certainly by modern GOP standards) Republican from HD134, whose presence in the Lege and on various committees was supposed to be a tempering factor against the majority’s baser and more troglodytic instincts. If you thought she was effective in that role, it made sense to support her re-elections even against strong Democratic opponents. If you didn’t – if you thought the real way to moderate our government was to have at least one part of it be under Democratic control – then it made sense to support her Democratic opponents, as hers was a rare swing seat. You know where I stood on that, and I maintain that I was correct.

I stand by everything I wrote then. One thing I didn’t mention then was that every two years, the number of people in Austin who have a personal connection to former Senator Whitmire declines – there was quite a bit of turnover this past cycle, you may recall – so whatever influence he had at the start of his Mayoral administration, it will only go down from there.

I don’t want to underestimate the Mayor. I’m sure he and his team have a list of things they want to ask the Legislature for, and they may get a lot of it. We’ll know in six months how that went. If it’s a big success, great! That will be excellent for Houston and he should keep at it. If not, I would like to gently suggest that this was as good as it will get, and it’s time to change horses and start pushing in chips on electing more legislators – and maybe some statewide officials – who don’t actively hate us. Call me crazy, but I think you can get more done working with people who already value you than you can with people that you have to convince of your value. I freely admit that’s a risky strategy, but a longshot is still better than a no-win bet. Sometimes the path of least resistance is also the path of least reward. Just something to think about.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged budget, Dan Patrick, Election 2023, Greg Abbott, Houston, John Whitmire, Mayor, Sylvester Turner, Texas, The Lege | 5 Comments

Dispatches from Dallas, January 3 edition

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have the tail end of 2024 and looks forward into 2025. In addition to the big Kay Granger story that wasn’t at all what you initially heard, there are: updates on bills filed in the Legislature; the Texas convicts whose sentences were commuted by President Biden; the Dallas City Manager search (sigh); yet another death at the Tarrant County Jail; the Dallas County Juvenile Board picks a a new leader in secret; churches and the politics of building new facilities in Fort Worth and Fairview; and local star St. Vincent played my neighborhood taqueria and I missed it! And more.

This week’s post was brought to you by more of NPR Music’s 124 Best Songs of 2024. I realize at my age, I’m not hip to what the kids like, but there’s sure a lot of music I’ve never heard. And it’s not just the move from guitar rock to hip-hop and rap; it’s also the move to foreign-language music, particularly, but not just, Spanish. I have a lot to investigate in 2025.

Let’s start with the biggest story of the last two weeks: the kerfuffle about Kay Granger, who ended her term as a Congresswoman with the end of the year. Our host hit the high points, but of course it’s gotten a lot more coverage in the Metroplex. The gist is Granger, who now suffers from early-stage dementia, stopped voting in late July (note that Congress has been in recess most of the fall to campaign for the November election) and has moved into a ritzy senior residence in Fort Worth, which the Express incorrectly alleged was a dementia care unit. Granger had already withdrawn from the primary before it took place in March–you may remember the last-minute entry and the reshuffle of several local primaries as folks dropped one to move to a new one that was suddenly open–and resigned from the Appropriations Committee, but she was still able to make it to DC as late as November, when she was honored for her work in Congress. See the Star-Telegram; the Dallas Morning News; Axios; the Fort Worth Report; and the Texas Tribune. Some of these were linked in our host’s post; I add them here for completeness.

All of the early stories spring from the Dallas Express, which, as our host notes, has been covered by the Texas Observer here. More recently, we’ve looked at this article about the Express and its owner, Monty Bennett, who’s behind Props S, T, U, the three really terrible charter amendments on the city ballot here in Dallas. (S and U passed; T failed.) My initial speculations on why the Express was going after Granger were all wrong, but I did find out while chasing the tail of this issue that Chris Putnam, the editor of the Dallas Express (mentioned in this D Magazine post about the HERO campaign because I won’t link to the Dallas Express on principle) ran against Granger in the 2020 Republican primary as documented on Ballotpedia (scroll down). Given the tendency of the Express to gin up trouble for its perceived enemies, I’m not surprised to see a potential grudge in the mix.

There’s been local pushback in Fort Worth on the story. One of Fort Worth’s city council members wrote a valedictory farewell for Granger. There’s also a piece on her impact on the city over her decades in Congress. And her successor, who is being sworn in on January 3, so probably as you read this post, also, unsurprisingly, had hugely complimentary things to say. And, as this recent CBS story notes, because she was still officially in Congress, her office could continue to help constituents. But the real story here is, as the Dallas Observer notes, a lot of our Texas representatives are OLD, and the same is true nationwide. And this is on both sides of the aisle: Lloyd Doggett, who was my representative my last few years in Austin, is only a few months younger than Donald Trump and I’ve wondered whether he was going to leave Congress by retiring or by being carried out. Obviously it’s too late to consider this for 2024, but it’s something people ought to consider for the next election cycle. Doggett and Trump are at the upper end of the Boomers and Granger is either at the tippy top of the Boomers or the very bottom of the Silent Generation; folks in that age group need to retire. I personally think they’re going to be pushed out by millennials and not my generation (X) for demographic reasons. I also think it’s going to take a while to happen if the kids do it at all, but I look forward to them coming in and hopefully bringing some fresh perspectives.

In other news:

The DMN’s political reporter Gromer Jeffers makes his predictions about the political dramas of 2025.
They’re still arresting people for January 6 crimes, including this man in Colleyville; it’s probably unfortunately moot because Trump is probably going to pardon a lot of the insurrectionists.
President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicts who were on federal Death Row. The DMN and the Star-Telegram have the details on the Texas and the local criminals whose sentences were reduced. In tangentially related news, I learned that Texas is one of four states that carry out three-quarters of executions and that there were fewer than thirty executions in 2024. As someone who remembers the 90s, when we saw a lot more executions annually, I thought this was good news.
Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas), one of those millennials who replaced a Congressional elder and is doing good work there, is pushing the state of Texas to report on maternal deaths for 2022 and 2023. The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee is skipping reviewing those years and it has nothing to do with the fact that abortion restrictions came into effect in 2021 and a near-total ban hit in 2022, honest, officer. Good for her and the other representatives who signed on to this letter.
The DMN selected their Texan of the Year and this year there are two: Texas House Reps Jeff Leach and Joe Moody for their bipartisan work on criminal justice, which goes beyond the Roberson case that we know so much about. This is a good call because Leach and Moody have been doing great work, but I notice that it’s bipartisanship, as always, that gets kudos from the Dallas establishment. Also, in case you’re wondering, here’s the latest on the Roberson case: it’s all up to the courts.
Let’s look at some quick headlines about the upcoming Lege session:
- KERA: DART wants cities to reconsider funding cuts in the Texas Legislature. Either the burbs get some of their money back from Dallas Area Rapid Transit or they’re going to get the Lege to make DART give it back.
- Fort Worth Report: North Texas leaders seek funds to expand, improve transportation infrastructure. This is about the Regional Transportation Council, which serves 16 counties, so a lot bigger than DART and also about the rail options.
- WFAA: Fort Worth mayor says city must prepare for reality of school vouchers. Also has some details about the city’s priorities.
- Fort Worth Report: Here’s what Arlington ISD wants the Texas Legislature to prioritize in 2025. Too long; didn’t read? More money and no vouchers.
- Dallas Observer: 3 Texas Legislature Bills for 2025 That Make Austin (Really) Weird. Local connection: Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake) wants a strategic bitcoin reserve.
- Fort Worth Report: Taylor Sheridan asked Texas legislators to support film incentives. Here’s what could happen.
- North Texas lawmakers lead push to require display of Ten Commandments in public schools. The culprits are Rep. Mike Olcott (HD-60) and Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford). This is also a Dan Patrick priority.
Moving on to the City of Dallas, let’s talk about the most recent developments in the disastrous City Manager search. Before Christmas, one semifinalist dropped out and another re-upped his contract where he was, and the DMN reported a third candidate had dropped out out as well. We now have a new three-person list: interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert; Mario Lara, assistant city manager of Sacramento, California; and William Johnson, Fort Worth Assistant City Manager. At least the two candidates from the Metroplex have an idea of what trying to cooperate with the mayor and city council with the constraints of the HERO propositions will be like. The DMN also has some editorial opinions about the whole thing: Dallas City Council meltdown over city manager search an embarrassment. Hard agree.
The Star-Telegram has an analysis piece on how Mercy Culture Church got its anti-trafficking shelter despite opposition by its neighbors on the second try. The gist of it was bringing Rep. Nate Schatzline, who’s a pastor at Mercy Culture, into the fight more directly and threatening to sue the city if they blocked the shelter. The DMN also has a story on what comes next now that the shelter has been approved. A couple of things to note: Mercy Culture, as the DMN mentions, is politically active, openly endorses political candidates, and the pastor has called Democratic policies demonic. Also, while I know QAnon is no longer as big as it used to be, human trafficking is a QAnon touchstone. That tells you what you need to know about Mercy Culture and its shelter.
Meanwhile, in Fairview, local residents aren’t having any of the compromise the city made with the LDS church over its proposed temple. They did a Christmas Carol fundraiser in hopes of financing the city in case the LDS church decides to sue over a future denial.
Frisco ISD lost on all four of the bond issues in the November election. They have a survey out so residents can tell them why. It closes on January 5. If you’re a Frisco voter, check it out here.
The scandal-plagued, under-investigation Dallas County Juvenile Board picked a new leader after its former director resigned in July. There was no public vote and a public records request for the names and resumes of the candidates was initially denied by the board. The board is expected to confirm the offer at the end of January. The winner, if you will, is H. Lynn Hadnot, director of Juvenile Services for Collin County. I wish him well; he’s got a mess to clean up and this is not an auspicious start to his work.
There has been one more death in the Tarrant County Jail, making 70 since Sherriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017. This time it was a 31-year-old who was apparently detoxing in the jail. The Star-Telegram and the DMN have the details.
You may remember that several members of the Tarrant County Appraisal Board were elected by the public in the November election. The county’s taxing entities have now voted for the appointed members of the board and the Star-Telegram has the results. Of the four appointed members, two, including the chair, lost, and two were reelected. A fifth member, Wendy Burgess, who serves in her capacity as county tax assessor-collector, will also return next year.
Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks retired this year after twenty years in public service. The Star-Telegram has this tribute to his work by one of his mentees.
The DMN an op-ed by the former District Attorney of Cameron County on the Daystar Network case which involve the son of the founder of the Christian TV network and his now-remarried mother squabbling over his job and his daughter’s allegation that she was sexually abused by a family member. As the opinion writer suggests, we need to get both the child’s parents and the unnamed suspect under oath.
Dallas PD spent more than $25,000 on personnel, vehicle, and helicopter costs to police a viral Christmas light display at a home in Preston Hollow, a wealthy Dallas neighborhood. This is in on top of the cost of off-duty police the neighbors hired to direct traffic. City Council is going to figure out how to balance people’s enjoyment of lights with the rights of neighbors and, of course, police expenditures.
The Container Store has filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I got the news when they emailed customers to tell us we could continue to order with confidence.
In good news, Dallas nonprofit Bonton Farms broke ground on an affordable housing development and a resource center and cut the ribbon on a wellness center in South Dallas. Rep. Jasmine Crockett was also there to present a $600,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
D Magazine has a lovely remembrance of Jimmy Carter’s work in Oak Cliff for Habitat for Humanity. In 2014, a team including the Carters built 30 houses and renovated another 20.
The Dallas Observer has four local Bum Steer moments in addition to Texas Monthly’s Bum Steer for Jerry Jones: the Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight; the embarrassing City Manager search; Charlotte (Jerry’s daughter) Jones’ performance in the Netflix documentary about the Cowboy cheerleaders; and our north Texas public universities, specifically UT Dallas’ crackdown on pro-Palestinian protestors and the corpse-selling debacle at the University of Texas Health Science Center, to which Dallas County was giving its unclaimed corpses.
Viral social media food critic Keith Lee is moving to Dallas. I don’t follow him but I’ll be interested to see which places he spotlights.
The Dallas International Film Festival is officially an Oscar-qualifying festival for short films. This is a big deal. It recognizes the importance of the DFW market and boosts the potential of Texas filmmakers, since winners for the short-form Oscars can use it to jump into feature films.
Last, but not least, Dallas’ own St. Vincent played Resident Taqueria on the Saturday before Christmas. I was hanging out at home doing nothing and Resident is in walking distance! And her show at the Factory this spring is standing room only. Also, St. Vincent was one of the DMN’s finalists for Texan of the Year.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged Dallas, guest post, linkdump, Texas | 1 Comment

The Kansas experience with requiring proof of citizenship to vote

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Also not good.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there’s one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas.

That’s because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory.

The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018.

Kansas provides a cautionary tale about how pursuing an election concern that in fact is extremely rare risks disenfranchising a far greater number of people who are legally entitled to vote. The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, championed the idea as a legislator and now says states and the federal government shouldn’t touch it.

“Kansas did that 10 years ago,” said Schwab, a Republican. “It didn’t work out so well.”

Steven Fish, a 45-year-old warehouse worker in eastern Kansas, said he understands the motivation behind the law. In his thinking, the state was like a store owner who fears getting robbed and installs locks. But in 2014, after the birth of his now 11-year-old son inspired him to be “a little more responsible” and follow politics, he didn’t have an acceptable copy of his birth certificate to get registered to vote in Kansas.

“The locks didn’t work,” said Fish, one of nine Kansas residents who sued the state over the law. “You caught a bunch of people who didn’t do anything wrong.”

[…]

Initially, the Kansas requirement’s impacts seemed to fall most heavily on politically unaffiliated and young voters. As of fall 2013, 57% of the voters blocked from registering were unaffiliated and 40% were under 30.

But Fish was in his mid-30s, and six of the nine residents who sued over the Kansas law were 35 or older. Three even produced citizenship documents and still didn’t get registered, according to court documents.

“There wasn’t a single one of us that was actually an illegal or had misinterpreted or misrepresented any information or had done anything wrong,” Fish said.

He was supposed to produce his birth certificate when he sought to register in 2014 while renewing his Kansas driver’s license at an office in a strip mall in Lawrence. A clerk wouldn’t accept the copy Fish had of his birth certificate. He still doesn’t know where to find the original, having been born on an Air Force base in Illinois that closed in the 1990s.

Several of the people joining Fish in the lawsuit were veterans, all born in the U.S., and Fish said he was stunned that they could be prevented from registering.

Liz Azore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said millions of Americans haven’t traveled outside the U.S. and don’t have passports that might act as proof of citizenship, or don’t have ready access to their birth certificates.

She and other voting rights advocates are skeptical that there are administrative fixes that will make a proof-of-citizenship law run more smoothly today than it did in Kansas a decade ago.

“It’s going to cover a lot of people from all walks of life,” Avore said. “It’s going to be disenfranchising large swaths of the country.”

See here for the experience of a similar law in Arizona, which is still in operation but had many problems and expenses with its implementation. I doubt either of these situations will dissuade or even give pause to the Texas Legislature as it advances bills to do the same thing in the coming session, but it’s good to know what has happened elsewhere so we can prepare for it. I think it’s likely that Republicans will try to structure the law in such a way that it minimizes harm to their target demographics, but there’s a chance that a combination of paranoia and confidence about their current position of dominance that they won’t worry about it too much. Again, my point here is to help us understand the history so we can be better informed for the fight ahead of us.

Posted in National news | Tagged Arizona, birth certificate, Donald Trump, Kansas, Kris Kobach, passports, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege, voter registration, voter suppression, Voting Rights Lab | Comments Off

Reps. Hunt and Jackson cleared in ethics probe

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Welp.

Rep. Wesley Hunt

The House Ethics Committee on Monday cleared two Texas Republican congressmen — Wesley Hunt of Houston and Ronny Jackson of Amarillo — for violating campaign finance law by allegedly spending campaign money for personal use.

In a statement, the committee said it unanimously decided to close the investigations, including ones against two other representatives for the same accusations. The committee said in several investigations it resolved Monday, there was evidence that the member’s campaigns did not fully comply with campaign finance standards, as well as reporting or recordkeeping requirements for campaign spending.

“However, there was no evidence that any member intentionally misused campaign funds for their personal benefit,” the committee said in a statement.

The investigation began in March when the Office of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan group of professional staffers, sent campaign finance reports from the two representatives to the committee for investigation. They were accused of using campaign funds for private club memberships. Jackson spent nearly $12,000 since 2020 on membership at the Amarillo Club, and Hunt spent over $74,000 between April 2022 and January 2024 at the Post Oak Hotel, including membership fees at its exclusive Oak Room club.

[…]

The ethics committee also said the existing law and guidance from the Federal Election Commission is “often ambiguous” and provides gray areas of spending. The committee updated guidance on personal use of campaign funds and related recordkeeping requirements. In the statement, the committee said it provided relevant members with a copy of the updated guidance, as well as specific findings and recommendations for their campaign activity.

See here for the background. I did not expect much to come of this, and so as such I am not disappointed. I do think there are some gray areas of campaign finance law and regulation, and thus places where one could plausibly and in good faith interpret the rules to mean different things, and I can believe that’s what happened here. There’s nothing stopping Congress from clarifying those laws, or compelling the FEC to better define its rules, so perhaps Reps. Hunt and Jackson can use this experience to do something positive. Yeah, I know, and I’d like a pony, too. Whatever. Point is, this sort of thing doesn’t have to happen, we – and by “we” I mean “Congress”, mostly the Republicans in Congress who like that the rules are chaotic and ambiguous – allow it to be this way. If the members who have been on the business end of this don’t feel the need to do something about it, maybe the voters can be persuaded to elect someone who does. The Chron has more.

Posted in National news | Tagged CD13, CD38, Congress, ethics, Office of Congressional Ethics, Ronny Jackson, Texas, Tilman Fertitta, Wesley Hunt | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 30

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance says good riddance to 2024 and casts a wary eye at the year ahead as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

Welcome to 2025, like it or not

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s leave 2024 behind on a proper note:

25 years ago tonight…never forget

[image or embed]

— Jay Lee (@jaylee.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 1:37 PM

I remember 12/31/99 quite well. While I never feared Y2K, I do recall thinking at some point in the day that it was already the year 2000 in Australia, and there was no evidence of computer chaos, so let’s just relax and enjoy the New Year celebration.

My sense of trepidation is much higher for this year, and I would never tell anyone they should relax, but I will gently suggest that we do make a point of finding joy and happiness and fulfillment this year, as we normally would do. Life is short. I’m still a year away from turning 60 and yet I’ve lost count of the number of people in my graduating classes who have left us. One member of my core college friend group died in February of 2020. We gathered in San Antonio to mourn and celebrate her life, and very shortly thereafter realized how lucky we were to have been able to do that. My wife and I will be empty nesters by the end of this summer – you better believe I’m going to enjoy the time I still have with Daughter #2. I still have my parents. I refuse to lose sight of these things.

I have no idea what is coming this year. Lots of bad things are queued up, but reality has a way of surprising and confounding us sometimes. The future isn’t known until it happens, and until then there’s often ways to affect it, even just a little. This list of predictions contains a few that I’d love to see happen, a few I’d absolutely prefer to avoid, and a few I’m not sure how to evaluate. Let’s try to approach this year prepared for some of the worst to happen, but also for some of the good. We can do this. Happy New Year, and thank you as always for hanging out here.

Posted in See, I do have a life! | Tagged Internet, Y2K | 1 Comment

SCOTx lets Brent Webster off the hook

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Gotta love a pre-holiday news dump.

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday ended a professional misconduct case against a top aide to Attorney General Ken Paxton for his role in challenging the 2020 election results, previewing a likely outcome for a similar case against Paxton.

In a 7-2 decision, the court dismissed a complaint against First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster that was filed nearly four years ago by a committee of the State Bar of Texas. The committee initiated separate complaints against Webster and Paxton over their legal efforts to challenge the election results in four key battleground states won by Joe Biden.

Paxton’s election lawsuit, which was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court for a lack of standing, made false claims and raised doubts about the election, the bar committee alleged.

The state bar, of which Paxton and Webster are members, prohibits lawyers from “engag[ing] in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” in its professional conduct guidelines. Justices on the state supreme court, however, questioned during oral arguments whether the committee was basing its complaint on politics, not misconduct.

The all-Republican court’s ruling on Tuesday, authored by Justice Evan Young, describes the commission’s complaint as a “collateral attack” and reverses lower court rulings that had sided with the bar. The U.S. Supreme Court, not the state bar, had ultimate authority to address concerns with private or public attorneys in Texas, the justices argued.

See here for the previous update, here for the majority’s decision, and here for the dissent. KUT has a few words about the latter.

Justices Jeff Boyd and Debra Lehrmann dissented, saying the majority opinion reflected a “disdain and distrust” for the State Bar’s commission and its ability to discipline lawyers. Luckily, they added, the decision applies just to this case.

“Unfortunately, it does not reduce the damage it causes to the separation-of-powers doctrine,” Boyd wrote.

I’ll have a few more words to add in a minute, but first let me take a moment to salute Justice Lehrmann, who has been on quite a roll with high-profile dissents lately (she did miss one enormous opportunity, to her discredit, but we have to take what we can get). On the subject of that dissent, written by Justice Boyd, I’ll just give you the first paragraph, which tells you what you need to know.

This disciplinary proceeding against Texas attorney Brent Webster could easily fail for many reasons. But the constitutional separation of powers is not one of them. This doctrine prohibits the legislative, executive, and judicial “departments” from exercising “any power properly attached to either of the others.” TEX. CONST. art. II § 1.2 It does not separate powers that exist within a single department or restrict the means by which a department may exercise a power it properly possesses.3 Perhaps some other legal doctrine could prohibit the judicial branch from doing “collaterally” that which it can indisputably do “directly” (to use the Court’s new-found terminology), but the separation of powers between the branches does not. If (as the Court concedes) the judicial branch has inherent power to discipline an executive-branch attorney for engaging in professional misconduct, it may—consistent with the separation-of-powers doctrine—discipline that attorney through any lawful exercise of that power. The Court’s freshly minted direct/collateral distinction is unheard of in separation-of-powers jurisprudence. It lacks both legal support and logical sense. I must respectfully dissent.

My gut reaction on reading the Chron story and its quote from the majority opinion was that this was a bunch of baloney, made up by a Court in search of a reason to support its predetermined outcome. I see nothing in the dissent to suggest I’m off base on that. The Ken Paxton disciplinary case is still out there, and for obvious reasons I’m even more pessimistic about its future. Some people are just above accountability, that’s all there is to it. Happy effing New Year. The Trib has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Brent Webster, Brynne VanHettinga, Donald Trump, Election 2020, Jim Harrington, Ken Paxton, Kyle Hawkins, lawsuit, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, President, SCOTUS, Solicitor General, State Bar of Texas, Texas, Texas Bar Foundation, Texas Civil Rights Project | 4 Comments

Precinct analysis: Senate 2024

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY:

President

The US Senate race between Colin Allred and Ted Cruz was easily the best Democratic result, the race most like 2020, with Allred winning by over 11 points and 175K votes. The precinct numbers reflect this margin of victory.


Dist      Cruz   Allred      Lib
================================
CD02    95,297   76,547    4,302
CD07    60,642  111,240    4,184
CD08    67,688   77,264    4,500
CD09    30,612  100,204    3,309
CD18    57,733  158,630    6,010
CD22    16,180   12,878      809
CD29    50,652   97,814    4,851
CD36    89,929   65,039    4,342
CD38   197,294  142,168    8,500
							
SBOE4  135,984  343,561   13,206
SBOE6  304,295  300,535   16,008
SBOE7    1,684    5,008      159
SBOE8  224,064  192,680   11,434
							
SD04    72,809   56,096    3,339
SD06    66,684  121,768    6,095
SD07   201,517  158,019    9,861
SD11    75,542   50,924    3,461
SD13    35,866  137,819    4,519
SD15   112,446  214,583    8,210
SD17    73,548   72,071    3,578
SD18    27,615   30,504    1,744
							
HD126   44,604   34,116    2,140
HD127   50,398   40,809    2,242
HD128   43,805   22,386    1,729
HD129   48,514   37,488    2,377
HD130   59,084   32,757    2,403
HD131    9,941   34,639    1,215
HD132   49,462   41,997    2,493
HD133   39,664   36,955    1,765
HD134   36,260   64,967    1,982
HD135   26,189   36,543    2,067
HD137   10,970   18,233      852
HD138   38,205   35,522    1,960
HD139   16,401   43,009    1,586
HD140   10,071   18,872    1,062
HD141    7,930   30,191    1,135
HD142   14,174   37,790    1,371
HD143   13,787   22,981    1,198
HD144   18,328   21,547    1,332
HD145   17,646   41,896    1,833
HD146   11,668   44,215    1,291
HD147   13,771   51,296    1,649
HD148   21,596   30,292    1,507
HD149   19,089   27,879    1,492
HD150   44,470   35,404    2,126
				
CC1     94,091  278,886    9,200
CC2    137,490  154,671    8,948
CC3    280,901  219,016   12,927
CC4    153,545  189,211    9,732
				
JP1     80,651  167,084    6,385
JP2     33,631   44,047    2,357
JP3     51,675   64,133    3,056
JP4    220,469  194,564   10,989
JP5    190,700  214,396   11,279
JP6      7,925   24,025    1,139
JP7     17,783   90,705    2,610
JP8     63,193   42,830    2,992
				
HISD   135,874  325,086   11,680
Else   530,153  516,698   29,127

Dist	Cruz%	Allred%	    Lib%
================================
CD02    54.10%   43.45%    2.44%
CD07    34.44%   63.17%    2.38%
CD08    45.28%   51.69%    3.01%
CD09    22.82%   74.70%    2.47%
CD18    25.96%   71.33%    2.70%
CD22    54.17%   43.11%    2.71%
CD29    33.03%   63.79%    3.16%
CD36    56.44%   40.82%    2.73%
CD38    56.69%   40.85%    2.44%
			
SBOE4   27.59%   69.71%    2.68%
SBOE6   49.01%   48.40%    2.58%
SBOE7   24.58%   73.09%    2.32%
SBOE8   52.32%   44.99%    2.67%
			
SD04    55.05%   42.41%    2.52%
SD06    34.27%   62.58%    3.13%
SD07    54.54%   42.77%    2.67%
SD11    58.13%   39.19%    2.66%
SD13    20.12%   77.33%    2.54%
SD15    33.54%   64.00%    2.45%
SD17    49.29%   48.30%    2.40%
SD18    46.12%   50.95%    2.91%
			
HD126   55.16%   42.19%    2.65%
HD127   53.93%   43.67%    2.40%
HD128   64.49%   32.96%    2.55%
HD129   54.88%   42.41%    2.69%
HD130   62.68%   34.75%    2.55%
HD131   21.71%   75.64%    2.65%
HD132   52.64%   44.70%    2.65%
HD133   50.59%   47.14%    2.25%
HD134   35.13%   62.94%    1.92%
HD135   40.41%   56.38%    3.19%
HD137   36.49%   60.65%    2.83%
HD138   50.47%   46.93%    2.59%
HD139   26.88%   70.50%    2.60%
HD140   33.56%   62.89%    3.54%
HD141   20.20%   76.90%    2.89%
HD142   26.57%   70.84%    2.57%
HD143   36.31%   60.52%    3.16%
HD144	44.48%   52.29%    3.23%
HD145   28.75%   68.26%    2.99%
HD146   20.40%   77.32%    2.26%
HD147   20.64%   76.88%    2.47%
HD148   40.44%   56.72%    2.82%
HD149   39.38%   57.52%    3.08%
HD150   54.22%   43.17%    2.59%
			
CC1     24.62%   72.96%    2.41%
CC2     45.65%   51.36%    2.97%
CC3     54.77%   42.70%    2.52%
CC4     43.55%   53.67%    2.76%
			
JP1     31.73%   65.74%    2.51%
JP2     42.01%   55.02%    2.94%
JP3     43.47%   53.95%    2.57%
JP4     51.74%   45.66%    2.58%
JP5     45.79%   51.48%    2.71%
JP6     23.95%   72.60%    3.44%
JP7     16.00%   81.63%    2.35%
JP8     57.95%   39.28%    2.74%
			
HISD    28.74%   68.77%    2.47%
Else    49.26%   48.01%    2.71%

As noted before, there were two write-in candidates, who combined for 296 total votes, for less than 0.02% of the vote. This is why the percentages don’t quite add up to 100.

Those percentages look a lot better here, with comfortable if not dominant wins in HD144 and CC2. Indeed, if this were the norm across the board, we’d be talking about pickup opportunities in HDs 132, 133, and 138, and dreaming about a couple of other possibilities down the road.

But this wasn’t the norm. No other countywide or statewide candidate won by as many as 100K votes this time around – indeed, multiple judicial candidates didn’t win or carry Harris County this year – while only three candidates in 2020 failed to top the 100K margin of victory. We’ve covered that, I’m not going to get into it again here (though I will talk more about it going forward), but it is worth asking why Allred so outperformed everyone else. What was his secret?

There are two obvious possibilities. One is that people liked Colin Allred and responded well to his campaign. The other is that people disliked Ted Cruz and responded negatively to his campaign. It’s really not any more complicated than that.

Just because it’s a simple question doesn’t mean there’s an easy answer. If the main factor is Ted Cruz’s loathesomeness – let’s face it, plenty of the people who vote for Ted Cruz don’t like him – that doesn’t help us much going forward. He’s not scheduled to be on the ballot again until 2030, unless he runs for President in 2028 (I really don’t want to think about that), and he’s just one guy in one race. While there were plenty of Republicans who didn’t vote for Ted Cruz, they still mostly if not entirely voted Republican otherwise. How does that help us?

Well, Cruz is not the only Republican for whom some number of Republicans won’t vote. That was very true for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 – indeed, as I have said on multiple occasions, you can’t explain the Democratic flips of CDs 07 and 32 and House districts like HD134 without there being a whole lot of Republicans who stopped voting Republican at all because of Donald Trump. There was still a little of that this year, though not nearly as much and what was there was offset by some Democrats flipping as well. Ken Paxton, Dan Patrick, and Sid Miller in both 2018 and 2022, and Greg Abbott in 2022, all ran behind other Republicans. Some of that gets overlooked, especially in 2022, because of the overall Republican margins, but the fact that there were crossovers remains. If and when we get into a better environment, one more like 2018 or 2020, that may be much more consequential.

And maybe this is obvious, but the difference between a Ken Paxton and a Glenn Hegar or a Christi Craddick is one of style and tone more than substance. On pretty much all of the big issues, there’s no difference between any of their positions. It’s just that Paxton and Patrick et al are louder and prouder and more up front and obnoxious about it. My point here is that there’s nothing stopping us from trying to tie the more normie Republicans to their more out there and less liked brethren. It’s a basic campaign tactic, but one that tends to get put aside in favor of more positive and issue-oriented ads. Nothing wrong with that in the abstract, but it feels to me like we’re out of balance in the mix of positive ads versus negative and attack ads, which do work despite voter protestation that they don’t like them. I don’t think we do nearly enough of this.

We should also not lose sight of the ways in which Colin Allred might have been successful in moving voters to his side. I’m sure his campaign has plenty of data about what of their tactics and strategies worked and what did not. The TDP has done “autopsies” of past elections before, but it’s not clear to me that we’ve ever really talked to losing-but-overperforming candidates like Allred to ask them what they did that distinguished themselves. Surely there something to be learned from that.

In particular, it would be nice to zoom in a bit on those closer-than-expected State House districts and see what made some number of Republicans there vote for at least one Democrat. I agree, it’s more likely than not that it was about Ted Cruz. But maybe not in total or for all voters. And for crying out loud, how can it hurt to try? We’ve got a lot of work to do here. Let’s not dismiss any potentially viable avenues prematurely.

Anyway, that’s what I have to say about this race. I’ve got more in the works. Let me know what you think.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged CD07, CD32, Colin Allred, Commissioners Court, Dan Patrick, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Election 2018, Election 2020, Election 2022, Election 2024, Glenn Hegar, Greg Abbott, Harris County, HD132, HD133, HD134, HD138, HD144, Ken Paxton, precinct analysis, Senate, Sid Miller, Ted Cruz, Texas | 4 Comments

HCC International

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have questions.

Houston may be its home, but leaders of the city’s community college have their sights set on the entire globe.

In the fall 2025 semester, Houston Community College administrators will launch their new “Global Online College,” hoping to entice more international students to take classes virtually from their home countries.

HCC Chancellor Margaret Ford Fisher and other college leaders say they mainly hope it expands HCC’s brand across the globe, attracting more students to their roughly 60 fully online programs. They’ve also touted the move as a way to boost tuition revenue and meet a growing demand for online classes post-pandemic.

“Imagine the value for our students,” Ford Fisher said in front of roughly 900 attendees during her November State of the College speech. “An associate or baccalaureate degree at a community college price. … While we focus on our community, we must think more broadly and expand our reach much further.”

Still, uncertainty surrounds the ambitious plan. In response to questions from the Landing, college leaders did not detail the demand for such programs, how HCC will measure success of the initiative or whether the college will increase staffing ahead of the launch. HCC Online College President Jerome Drain said “there are no goals that I’ve set” for a number of students to enroll.

[…]

HCC drew roughly 3,500 international students in 2023, the most recent year with available data. Students came from roughly 130 countries, with the largest shares from Vietnam, Nigeria, India and China.

But attending Houston’s community colleges virtually from abroad doesn’t seem to be a popular option — at least for now.

Drain didn’t provide an exact percentage of how many students attended HCC virtually while living overseas in the fall 2024 semester. At neighboring Lone Star College, international students comprise just 1 percent of the online college’s enrollment, said Laura Bettencourt, interim president of Lone Star’s online campus. Lone Star College is the largest community college system in Texas.

This is all very blue-sky at the moment, so there’s no indication about who this is for, how many people might use it, how it will benefit HCC and its mission, and so on. Oh, and no cost estimate as yet, too. I can see a case for this – surely, having more online options would benefit current and future students who might have need of them – but beyond that it’s just not clear what this is about. On the plus side, at least now I have a clear question to ask HCC candidates and incumbents about when I do the very limited round of interviews on tap for 2025. Assuming there are contested HCC races to be had this year, of course. We’ll see if this goes anywhere, but in the meantime I’d really like for the Board of Trustees to ask a whole lot of questions about this.

Posted in School days | Tagged Election 2025, Global Online College, HCC, Houston, Internet, Jerome Drain, Margaret Ford Fisher | 1 Comment

Precinct analysis: President 2024

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I know you’ve been waiting for this, and now here it is, the 2024 precinct data for Harris County. We’ll start at the top, with the Presidential race.


Dist     Trump   Harris      Lib      Grn
=========================================
CD02   101,141   73,399    1,112    1,027
CD07    64,912  107,843    1,304    2,409 
CD08    74,503   72,990      872    2,104
CD09    34,807   98,435      700    1,192
CD18    65,672  154,657    1,370    1,818
CD22    17,265   12,134      218      382
CD29    61,054   92,821      721    1,096
CD36    96,291   61,494      946    1,463
CD38   207,050  134,998    2,484    3,626
								
SBOE4  156,315  333,525    2,652    4,197
SBOE6  323,580  287,004    4,467    6,807
SBOE7    1,907    4,901       35       44
SBOE8  240,893  183,341    2,573    4,069
								
SD04    77,379   53,764      803      740
SD06    79,118  115,748      977    1,427
SD07   214,518  149,459    2,388    4,288
SD11    80,390   48,049      795    1,237
SD13    41,326  135,852      887    1,669
SD15   122,588  207,855    2,418    3,093
SD17    77,097   69,258    1,106    1,832
SD18    30,279   28,786      353      831
								
HD126   47,139   32,436      510    1,017
HD127   53,316   39,288      583      457
HD128   46,960   20,817      346      238
HD129   51,343   35,661      582    1,098
HD130   62,583   30,561      615      746
HD131   11,732   33,982      209      359
HD132   52,744   39,625      648    1,230
HD133   41,018   35,523      610      992
HD134   37,235   63,272      895    1,238
HD135   29,444   34,545      385      943
HD137   12,173   17,605      165      454
HD138   40,490   34,014      543      776
HD139   18,545   41,960      354      521
HD140   12,554   17,762      128      183
HD141    9,583   29,578      159      278
HD142   16,425   36,709      265      316
HD143   16,443   21,747      154      239
HD144   21,279   20,063      212      323
HD145   20,209   40,418      533      532
HD146   12,844   43,675      328      522
HD147   15,749   50,150      381      664
HD148   24,177   28,843      351      463
HD149   21,481   26,741      222      809
HD150   47,229   33,796      549      719
								
CC1    104,664  272,796    2,431    3,414
CC2    154,001  146,258    1,623    2,457
CC3    297,453  208,610    3,395    4,646
CC4    166,577  181,107    2,278    4,600
								
JP1     88,363  161,860    2,011    2,318
JP2     38,454   41,483      375      755
JP3     57,172   61,550      556      540
JP4    235,442  185,842    2,650    3,687
JP5    205,376  204,871    2,688    5,537
JP6      9,903   23,143      190      335
JP7     20,445   89,638      553      992
JP8     67,540   40,384      704      953
								
HISD   149,076  317,057    3,219    4,663
Else   573,619  491,714    6,508   10,454

Dist    Trump%  Harris%     Lib%     Grn%
=========================================
CD02    57.21%   41.52%    0.63%    0.58%
CD07    36.75%   61.05%    0.74%    1.36%
CD08    49.48%   48.47%    0.58%    1.40%
CD09    25.73%   72.78%    0.52%    0.88%
CD18    29.36%   69.13%    0.61%    0.81%
CD22    57.49%   40.41%    0.73%    1.27%
CD29    39.19%   59.58%    0.46%    0.70%
CD36    60.08%   38.37%    0.59%    0.91%
CD38    59.43%   38.75%    0.71%    1.04%
				
SBOE4   31.45%   67.10%    0.53%    0.84%
SBOE6   51.99%   46.12%    0.72%    1.09%
SBOE7   27.66%   71.09%    0.51%    0.64%
SBOE8   55.87%   42.52%    0.60%    0.94%
				
SD04    58.29%   40.50%    0.60%    0.56%
SD06    40.08%   58.64%    0.49%    0.72%
SD07    57.84%   40.29%    0.64%    1.16%
SD11    61.58%   36.81%    0.61%    0.95%
SD13    22.97%   75.52%    0.49%    0.93%
SD15    36.46%   61.81%    0.72%    0.92%
SD17    51.60%   46.35%    0.74%    1.23%
SD18    50.23%   47.75%    0.59%    1.38%
				
HD126   58.08%   39.97%    0.63%    1.25%
HD127   56.90%   41.93%    0.62%    0.49%
HD128   68.67%   30.44%    0.51%    0.35%
HD129   57.86%   40.18%    0.66%    1.24%
HD130   66.18%   32.32%    0.65%    0.79%
HD131   25.33%   73.37%    0.45%    0.78%
HD132   55.93%   42.01%    0.69%    1.30%
HD133   52.45%   45.42%    0.78%    1.27%
HD134   36.24%   61.58%    0.87%    1.20%
HD135   45.04%   52.84%    0.59%    1.44%
HD137   39.99%   57.84%    0.54%    1.49%
HD138   53.35%   44.81%    0.72%    1.02%
HD139   30.19%   68.31%    0.58%    0.85%
HD140   40.97%   57.97%    0.42%    0.60%
HD141   24.19%   74.65%    0.40%    0.70%
HD142   30.56%   68.30%    0.49%    0.59%
HD143   42.58%   56.32%    0.40%    0.62%
HD144   50.79%   47.89%    0.51%    0.77%
HD145   32.73%   65.45%    0.86%    0.86%
HD146   22.36%   76.05%    0.57%    0.91%
HD147   23.50%   74.82%    0.57%    0.99%
HD148   44.87%   53.53%    0.65%    0.86%
HD149   43.60%   54.27%    0.45%    1.64%
HD150   57.36%   41.04%    0.67%    0.87%
   			
CC1     27.28%   71.10%    0.63%    0.89%
CC2     50.57%   48.03%    0.53%    0.81%
CC3     57.82%   40.55%    0.66%    0.90%
CC4     46.94%   51.04%    0.64%    1.30%
				
JP1     34.68%   63.53%    0.79%    0.91%
JP2     47.41%   51.14%    0.46%    0.93%
JP3     47.69%   51.34%    0.46%    0.45%
JP4     55.03%   43.43%    0.62%    0.86%
JP5     49.04%   48.92%    0.64%    1.32%
JP6     29.46%   68.85%    0.57%    1.00%
JP7     18.30%   80.22%    0.49%    0.89%
JP8     61.60%   36.83%    0.64%    0.87%
				
HISD    31.42%   66.82%    0.68%    0.98%
Else    52.97%   45.40%    0.60%    0.97%

Yes, that’s a lot of numbers, I know. You want the full picture or not? I may boil this down to just the HDs and Commissioner Court precincts at some point or I may not, we’ll see. Just scan the numbers as you see fit and then read the analysis. I promise I will try to point out the highlights.

A couple of notes before we begin. For the Presidential and Senate races there were also write-in candidates, who collected 1,174 votes in the former and 296 votes in the latter. That works out to about 0.06% of the total Presidential vote and less than 0.02% of the Senate vote. As such, to make my life easier, I just skipped them all in the analysis. But if you noticed that the percentages here and in the next article don’t quite add up to 100, that’s the reason why.

Please note also that in general, Congressional, SBOE, and State Senate districts cover multiple counties. Indeed, only CDs 18, 29, and 38, and SDs 06 and 15 are entirely within Harris County. Prior to the last round of redistricting, that also included CDs 02 and 07, SBOE6, and SD07, but now CD07 also includes some of Fort Bend, while the rest reach into Montgomery. The numbers here just represent the Harris County portion of the district, which if you’re not careful can provide a very distorted picture of the district’s partisanship. Neither CD08 nor SD18 are remotely competitive, despite what the numbers above may appear to say. Please keep that in mind.

All right, let’s talk about the two items that should have leaped out at you: HD144 and County Commissioner Precinct 2. Obviously, it is Very Not Good that Trump carried them, and we’ll dig into that now and in future pieces. Rep. Mary Ann Perez was unopposed, as she had been in 2022. She received 26,000 votes, well more than either Presidential candidate, but that is always true of unopposed contenders. She first won HD144 in 2012, after it had been redrawn to be a little bluer, reflecting the trend it had undergone the decade before when it was Republican-held. She lost in a squeaker to a non-entity in the bloodbath that was 2014, then reclaimed it by 20 points in 2016. She won by 22 points in 2018, by 13 points in 2020, and hasn’t faced an opponent since.

That’s obviously going to change in 2026. I’m sure the results this year set off red alerts on the Republican side, and I hope for her as well. I have no idea what she’s thinking – there’s basically nothing election-related on her official Facebook page since then, and I’m not on any mailing list she uses. Far as I can tell, she acted like a typical unopposed candidate this year, which is to say she took it easy and wasn’t much of a presence on the campaign trail. She didn’t have to be, so why not? Well, for this reason – not taking care of business in your own back yard can lead to things going in ways you didn’t anticipate and wouldn’t like. Whatever her experience was these past couple of cycles, it won’t be in 2026 unless the Republicans commit political malpractice and fail to take advantage of an obvious opportunity. Which to be fair they might – complacency is always an attractive option – but I would advise Rep. Perez to not count on that.

I don’t mean to pick on Rep. Perez, because while her situation is more urgent she’s hardly the only elected official in Harris County, or anywhere Democrats still hold that office, who didn’t do much of anything to help themselves and their colleagues this past November. As I’ve said before, this is a situation we can’t tolerate any more. My mantra going forward is that the candidates and officeholders have to want this at least as much as the rest of us do. If they don’t, it’s on us to find someone who does and get them elected instead. There are lots of ways that an elected official can be an engaged presence in a campaign – field work, raising and spending money on campaign activities, social media, hiring and supporting people who will do good work on their behalf, etc. We should be looking for more of these things from our elected officials, starting right now, as we pick up the pieces and move on.

Again, it’s not just Rep. Perez – you can look at the numbers above and add in the names of other Reps who should expect a bumpier ride in two years. Some of them are already pretty active – Reps. Penny Morales Shaw, Jon Rosenthal, and Gene Wu, to name three for whom the Presidential numbers were less robust than they might have liked, can just keep doing what they’ve been doing. Others, some of whom might also face more of a challenge next time than they’re used to, should be looking in the mirror and giving serious thought to what their to-do list needs to be. Will any of that help in 2026 and beyond? Obviously, to some extent we’re captive to the national environment, but I trust no one is content with the idea of going down without a fight. Whatever we face from here, we damn well better face it with all of us fully engaged.

As for CC2, which has overlap with HD144, at least we know that Commissioner Garcia had a hard fight in both 2018 and 2022, so he’s in better shape for what is to come. He will also have plenty of opportunities to show his value directly to the voters, which helps. He’ll also have loads of money, and based on past history we would expect him to use it. So while the numbers in CC2 look worse, I’m less worried about him at this time. But the same message and concepts apply.

One last item to note, I was able to sort out the results from precincts within HISD and those that are not, and I’ll include that for future posts as well. The point was to make it clear that the results of the bond referendum, however you personally voted on it or felt about it, were driven overwhelmingly by Democratic voters. If Mike Miles and the appointed Board want to try again and get a different result, those are the voters whose concerns and issues they need to address.

There’s plenty more than can be said, and I’ll be talking about it in coming posts. If you have any questions or if there are any particulars you’d like to me to address, leave a comment and let me know. Thanks very much.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Adrian Garcia, CD02, CD07, CD18, CD29, CD38, Commissioners Court, Congress, Donald Trump, Election 2022, Election 2024, Election 2026, Fort Bend County, Harris County, HD144, Kamala Harris, Mary Ann Perez, Montgomery County, precinct analysis, President, redistricting, SBOE, SD06, SD07, SD15, Senate, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Late to the party

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m kind of fascinated by this.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

On election day last month, 29-year-old Shannah Becker from Pasadena showed up at a polling location to cast her ballot, but was turned away.

Although she had submitted her voter registration application in early October, she mailed it in late, one day past the Oct. 7 deadline.

“I definitely felt very disappointed,” Becker said. “And I asked if there was anything else I could do to be able to vote still and they just said, ‘Unfortunately not.’ I feel like a lot of people didn’t really realize the deadline until it was too close, or even past.”

Becker was among the 21,026 Harris County residents who registered after the deadline, making them ineligible to vote in the Nov. 5 presidential election. According to the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector’s office, 3,701 of those registrations were recorded on Election Day.

Had they been able to cast ballots, those newly registered voters could have affected the results of 13 countywide races in which the winning margin was under 21,000 votes.

The impact to the countywide turnout rate, however, would not have been as large: overall Harris County turnout would have increased by less than a percentage point if all of those registrants had been able to vote.

Texas is one of 10 states that has a voter registration deadline of 30 days before an election. In 23 states, including California and Wyoming, residents can register and vote on the same day. Twenty of those states allow residents to register on Election Day.

[…]

“A huge chunk of voter suppression in Texas happens before anybody ever reaches the ballot box because our voter registration systems are so out of date and terrible,” said Emily French, policy director at Common Cause Texas, a nonprofit that supports online voter registration, election day registration, automatic registration and pre-registration for 17-year-olds.

French said each year since 2018, she has had to break the news to a person that they could not vote in the upcoming election because they registered past the 30-day deadline.

“The only reason that that 30-day deadline makes any sense is to give counties time to input the data and physically type in all the voter registrations,” French said. “We did that to ourselves by having paper voter registration instead of online voter registration.”

I regularly see stories during the year about how many new voters have registered since whatever previous date. I don’t think I’d ever seen reporting on how many people registered after the 30-days-before-Election-Day deadline, so kudos to the Houston Landing for that. I feel bad for people like Shannah Becker who perhaps could have known better but definitely deserved better. We do make it needlessly hard to register, and it does dampen turnout as a result. As with so many other things, that’s not going to change as long as the current regime is in power, so we have to work with what we’ve got.

Ms. Becker’s registration will be good through the end of 2025, so she can vote in next year’s Pasadena elections and the whiny sore loser judicial election do-over (appeal pending) if she wants. If she moves, she’ll need to update her registration if she wants to vote in the 2026 gubernatorial race. I hope someone makes sure she knows this, so she won’t miss out the next time.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Election 2024, Election 2025, Election 2026, Harris County, Pasadena, Texas, The Lege, voter registration, voter suppression | 4 Comments

Weekend link dump for December 29

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Kylie Kelce > Joe Rogan. See here as well.

“Quite simply, we want to find the birthplace of the solar wind.”

“If You’re Pregnant, Here’s What You Should Know About the Medical Procedures That Could Save Your Life”.

“Reasonable people can disagree on reforms, but one improvement is obvious: The United States deserves a sports betting industry that does not get any of its funding via credit cards. The major card companies could see to that. Assuming they won’t, lawmakers should.”

“A Scandalous Reason Meat Prices Have Skyrocketed”.

“From ‘Survivor’ to ‘Love Is Blind,’ Here’s How Much You Can Make From Starring on These Reality Shows”. Spoiler alert: For some of them, the answer is not a damn penny. No wonder the networks and streamers love these things, they’re dirt cheap to make.

“Here are two powerful examples of how the media shapes misleading vibes about crime for those who rarely experience it.”

“Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who briefly stood to become President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, was found by congressional ethics investigators to have paid numerous women — including a 17-year-old girl — for sex, and to have purchased and used illegal drugs, including from his Capitol Hill office, according to a final draft of a comprehensive investigative report obtained by CBS News.” That’s the guy that Trump wanted to be Attorney General. He wouldn’t have been confirmed, but I bet he’d have gotten majority Republican support. See here for more.

“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

On enemies lists, then and now.

“[T]he first-round games’ lack of competitiveness is less a commentary on the playoff than on the sport it represents. College football is a sport of dud games, all the time, at all levels. That is why the good games are so memorable. If your barometer for a good postseason setup is how many close games it produces, you will have to give up and become a fan of another sport.”

“Here Are All of the Allegations Against Justin Baldoni From Blake Lively’s Complaint”.

RIP, Burt, the giant crocodile featured in 1986’s Crocodile Dundee. He was thought to be over 90 years old.

“Protracted GOP speaker fight could complicate Electoral College count”.

“How to protect yourself from AI scams this holiday season”.

“Rather, here’s three examples that fit the holy trinity of slur replacement in one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time.”

“If you missed Beyoncé’s halftime performance during the Christmas Day game between the Texans and the Ravens — or you just want to watch it multiple times over — well, you’re getting an extra Christmas gift this year. Netflix will release the show as its own special.”

RIP, Hudson Meek, young actor best known for Baby Driver and the MacGyver reboot.

“Dozens of rare animals including tigers, lions and cheetahs are dying as bird flu infiltrates zoos, with potentially “grave implications” for endangered species, researchers have warned.”

“Any way you slice it, it doesn’t look like H-1b workers hurt the native-born, even when they seem to be in direct competition”.

RIP, Greg Gumbel, longtime CBS Sports anchor and commentator.

RIP, Olivia Hussey, actor best known for the 1968 Romeo and Juliet film.

RIP, Osamu Suzuki, former Chair of Suzuki Motor.

RIP, Warren Upton, oldest living survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the last remaining survivor of the USS Utah.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Comments Off

Charles Johnson elected Mayor of Baytown

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

There were a handful of runoff elections following the November 5…whatever you want to call it. This was the most consequential of the local races.

Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson, who served as District 3 city councilman from 2017 until 2023, has come back to win the top seat in Baytown and will become its next mayor as well as its first-ever Black mayor.

The total combined number of votes from both Harris and Chambers Counties, including early and Election Day votes, show Johnson with 1,230 votes. The combined total shows Capetillo with 1,024 votes.

With 41 of 42 voting centers reporting in Harris County, Johnson has 1,153 votes to incumbent Mayor Brandon Capetillo’s 946, according to www.harrisvotes.org.

The mayoral election is a joint endeavor between Harris and Chambers Counties.

I was told at the recent HCDP County Executive Committee meeting that Johnson is a Democrat, which would be an extra bit of accomplishment in this Republican area. I can’t confirm that from any of the websurfing I’ve done, but that’s what I was told. I’ve been wanting to post about this since the runoff, to see if there would be something else written about the race and Mayor-elect Johnson besides this extremely limited recap, but there’s just been nothing. The most interesting result I get via news search is this NPR story from 2017 following Johnson’s first election to Baytown City Council, in which he was given some advice for being a Council member by a more experienced politician. I know Baytown is small and we’re all paying attention to a million other things, but still. Anyway, congratulations to Mayor-elect Johnson. In addition to everything else, he beat an incumbent Mayor, which those who aren’t too fond of their current Mayor might find inspiring.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Baytown, Chambers County, Charles Johnson, Election 2024, Harris County, Mayor, runoff, Texas | 7 Comments

Elon Musk has been busy making Austin dirtier

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Some good reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

Elon Musk made big promises to Wall Street about Tesla’s new Model Y SUV in 2022, and the company was ramping up its production in Austin, Texas, when environmental problems threatened to derail his plans.

The door to the plant’s giant casting furnace, which melts metal to be molded into the Model Y’s parts, wouldn’t shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production—containing paint, oil and other chemicals—was also flowing untreated into the city’s sewer, in violation of state guidelines.

Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company’s 10 million-plus square foot plant—among the largest car factories in the world—dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.

This account of the Austin plant’s environmental problems, which haven’t been reported previously, comes from emails between Texas regulators and the company obtained by The Wall Street Journal in response to public-records requests, as well as interviews with former employees and other documents, including a memo sent by a whistleblower to the Environmental Protection Agency.

A Journal investigation shows that Tesla bosses were aware of the problems but sometimes chose short-term fixes to avoid slowing production. Former employees said they feared they might lose their job if they drew attention internally to potential environmental hazards, because senior managers didn’t consider such issues to be mission critical. As head of the company, Musk set the tone, these people said, pushing employees to move fast and complaining frequently in public statements that unnecessary regulations are strangling the U.S.

The world’s richest man now has an even bigger megaphone. Musk, who aligned himself closely with President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign, was named Nov. 12 as co-head of a new Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.” Musk has said he thinks he can chop “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget, including by cutting government jobs at regulatory agencies. How that will play out for the EPA is unclear, but some people who have worked with him for years expect that Musk will attempt to curb environmental regulations—including those that affect his companies.

[…]

Complying with environmental rules isn’t usually the top priority for Tesla management, people familiar with the company’s officials said. Tesla brought to the auto industry a Silicon Valley ethos to move fast and break things, and Musk views regulations as a hindrance to innovation because they slow down the work, the people said.

At the factory in Austin, managers sometimes ignored workers who raised warnings about environmental issues, former employees say. Some employees feared they would be fired if they slowed down production.

One environmental-compliance staffer in the Austin plant claimed that “Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls,” according to a 2024 memo from the employee to the EPA that was reviewed by the Journal.

That’s from Thanksgiving week, but as we know Eldon is always in the news, so such minor concerns like “time” needn’t bother us. There’s more to this, so read the rest. The TL;dr is:

1. Across all of his companies, Elmore doesn’t give a shit about complying with environmental laws and regulations, and now he’s in a position to weaken those protections for the benefit of his companies.

2. It’s hard for me to see at this point who can hold this asshole accountable for anything. But at least given the current H1B visa kerfuffle, maybe he can be distracted by his own messes. For what that’s worth.

3. Don’t buy a Tesla. There are plenty of other EV options out there.

Hope that helps.

Posted in Bidness | Tagged Austin, California, Elon Musk, Environmental Protection Agency, pollution, TCEQ, Tesla, Texas, water | 1 Comment

HCDE declines to censure Eric Dick

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Puzzling.

Eric Dick

The Harris County Department of Education board of trustees reversed course on censuring trustee Eric Dick Wednesday, one month after voting to propose a censure in the wake of a grievance hearing about his unpaid ethics fines.

The board voted unanimously, with trustee Erica Davis absent, to avoid a censure of the prominent Houston attorney citing that the move “best protects the department and its resources, and is in the best interests of HCDE.”

Despite abandoning the censure, the resolution acknowledged that the board believes that Dick “may have violated” the board’s ethics code by racking up $40,000 in unpaid fines to the Texas Ethics Commission during unsuccessful bids for other local offices.

Board president Amy Flores Hinojosa did not immediately respond to a request for comment about why the board abandoned its censure.

[…]

Dick acknowledged during the meeting that his “actions may have led to negative publicity of HCDE, reputational harm, embarrassment for the department and its Board of Trustees and an expenditure of HCDE resources.”

Dick also said that he would make a $40,000 donation to the educational foundation of Harris County Department of Education “to be used for the CASE debates program for future lawyers.”

The program, called The Center for Afterschool, Summer and Enrichment (CASE) for kids, is part of HCDE’s services for students who may not participate in a sport or music but still want to have somewhere to go after school to engage in hobbies or clubs. The debate program is a free for “inner-city youth” which provides training and coaches for debaters, according to a news release about the after-school program.

Dick did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether he would pay the $40,000 fines, but he has previously said that he would fight the fines as they represented a systemic problem with the ethics commission. More than $1.5 million in fines are due to the ethics commission and have been sent to the Attorney General for collection, according to state records.

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

When reached for comment Wednesday, Cobarruvias said he was upset by the board’s “disturbing” decision not to censure Dick while accepting a $40,000 donation from him to the HCDE debate program.

“In lieu of a censure, the Harris County Department of Education accepted a $40,000 donation,” Cobarruvias said. “But he still owes the taxpayers and the Ethics Commission $40,000.”

See here for the background; this story was from the week before Christmas, so I’m catching up here. I do share John Cobarruvias’ (*) frustration at the HCDE’s action here, especially given their utter lack of an explanation for said action. I mean, come on, y’all at least owe us that much. On the other hand, it’s not like a censure was going to have any material effect – Dick was just re-elected to another six-year term, and the number of people who might change their vote in 2030 based on him being censured versus whatever this was can almost certainly be counted on one hand, with fingers to spare. It’s not on the HCDE to get Dick to pay his fines to the TEC – unpaid fine collection is Ken Paxton’s job, one he could not care less about – but at least that contribution to CASE would be nice, if he ever does make it. (How do you think Mattress Mack would bet on that proposition?) Really, at this point I’d just like someone to explain why the Board did what it did. Even a self-serving reason is better than no reason.

(*) Cobarruvias is a long-time Democratic activist and was for years a blogging colleague of mine. I haven’t seen him in a few years, but I know him well, so I’m noting that here.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Amy Hinojosa, Eric Dick, ethics, Harris County, HCDE, Houston, Texas Ethics Commission | 3 Comments

Be careful what Christmas music you listen to

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

There’s a lot of AI crap out there.

AI slop has consumed Facebook, is running Wikipedia editors ragged, is rapidly destroying Google search, probably put an extra finger on the scales of election influence, is confusing and annoying crafters, steals endlessly from authors, is on its way to demolish YouTube comment sections, and will probably end up in a movie theater near you sooner than you think. But if you’re streaming Christmas music today, did something seem a little off to you? If so, there’s a very good chance you’ve been listening to AI-generated carol-slop.

As spotted by video game developer Karbonic, YouTube compilation videos are sneaking AI generated songs into their mixes. The example they posted, “Best of 1950s to 1970s Christmas Carols ~ vintage christmas songs that will melt your heart 🎅🎄⛄❄️,” has more than five million views and more than 2,000 comments. A ton of the comments appear to be engagement-farming bots, saying things like “I’m looking forward to Christmas 2024, is anyone else like me?” but many seem human. “It takes me back to my childhood and I realize how wonderful life was before worries about money and so many futile things that dont matter,” one person wrote. Another commented, “Missing memories of my youth. But, grateful for the blessings in my life. Merry Christmas and God bless you.❤”

If I put this on in the background while doing something else, I might not think anything of it. But there are points in the one hour 18 minute video that give it away as AI: “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” around the 36:55 mark, is the lyrics of that song but the melody of “Silent Night.” If you compare it to an actual recording of Nat King Cole singing “O Little Town,” the difference is even more obvious. Once you start noticing the warped tunes, they’re hard to un-hear. “Oh Holy Night” is listed in the video as being by “Nei Diamond,” who as far as I can tell doesn’t exist, or is a typo of Neil Diamond, who is definitely not the singer in the song on this compilation. “The First Noel,” attributed here to Nat King Cole, is either an undiscovered recording where Nat and the choir run some really wild riffs, or is AI.

[…]

A quick search around the internet to see if anyone else has encountered other holiday-flavored AI slop turned up a recent Reddit thread where people were complaining about seemingly fabricated Spotify artists haunting retail workers during an already agonizing season. They list Dean Snowfield, North Star Notesmiths, Sleighbelle, Frosty Nights, The Humbugs, Snowdrift Sleighs, and Daniel & The Holly Jollies as artists on Spotify that have snuck into Christmas playlists but have little to no trace of a career outside of the streaming platform. Some of them, like several of Dean Snowfield’s songs, sound like midi mixes with a stilted voice singing the lyrics. These artists make it onto huge, popular playlists like “Old Christmas Music” alongside real songs. It’s honestly hard to tell whether these artists are AI-generated or just mass produced. But their Spotify artist bios often have the same exact text, or follow this pattern:

“Dean Snowfield are songwriters, artists, and musicians who have combined forces to release holiday themed cover songs on their independent record label, distributed by Warner Music’s ADA. In November and December, their ‘A Nostalgic Noel’ sampler managed to generate over 8,000,000 streams across Spotify and Apple Music. As a collective of artists, Sleighbelle have a great deal of respect for the original songwriters and producers who created these beloved holiday classics, and ask that you support them by streaming their original versions. Without songwriters like Edward Polo, George Wyle, Huge Martin, and Ralph Blane, we wouldn’t have this music to interpret and cover. Thanks for listening to our labor of love, and make sure to follow us on our socials. – Dean Snowfield”

They didn’t just appear this year: Third Bridge Creative, a music creative agency, noticed these artists dwelling in the uncanny valley last Christmas, too. “Is it a coincidence that each of their top songs match up with the respective iconic Christmas hits? Why would I ‘immerse [my]self in the enchanting world of Christmas music with Dean Snowfield’s’ low-key creepy Nostalgic Noel when I can put on The Dean Martin Christmas Album instead?,” they wrote.

You get the idea. Basically, know what your sources are, beware of the algorithms, listen closely, and maybe complain at a store or restaurant if you hear something that sounds like AI. The sad fact is that this is an upward trend, but you can at least try not to contribute to it. Make your own playlists, with real artists you can vouch for, and help real musicians get paid, however little that may be from the streamers.

Posted in Music | Tagged artificial intelligence, Christmas, Spotify, YouTube | Comments Off

The YouTube judge

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Very interesting.

Judge David Fleischer

Defendants accused of low-level crimes could soon be handed cautionary fliers warning what they say and do in Harris County Judge David Fleischer’s courtroom may live on social media.

This is because Fleischer, a two-term Democrat jurist, shares his misdemeanor proceedings live on YouTube every time he takes the bench, typically garnering an average 1,700 viewers daily. He said he began streaming during the pandemic to ensure access to the courts when Houstonians were encouraged to stay home.

The videos often highlight Fleischer’s penchant for over-the-top banter in his County Criminal Court at Law No. 5, sometimes calling out defendants for inappropriate attire or criticizing them for failing to adhere to his orders. In some clips, he emphasizes finding no probable cause on cases lacking legal basis for an arrest. Just this year, he made that finding on at least 75 cases, according to county records.

In one recent instance, Fleischer threatened to “spank” a first-time defendant with jail time for wearing shorts in the courtroom.

“If you come in here and try to play this game again I will put you over my knee like a little child and I’m going to spank you,” the judge said. “But I will do it with a ton of jail time.”

To Fleischer’s surprise and to the dismay of some defense lawyers, his account became a hit, gaining nearly 22,000 subscribers but also inspiring viral clips from others taking his footage for their own use. He considers the attention positive, however, and the reason why he’s still doing it four years later.

[…]

Despite his good intentions, some have said Fleischer’s videos — and his behavior — can be damaging for people in the criminal justice system.

Mark Bennett, another attorney, takes issue with Fleischer’s on-camera conduct, not his use of a live stream.

“I think if it were simply a recording of a judge acting like a judge in court, that it probably wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “But he’s playing to the cameras and he’s treating people without dignity and respect and it’s a problem.”

But once on YouTube, Fleischer has no control over what happens next. Bennett noted the hundreds of videos that have been created using his courtroom feed to the detriment of defendants. The videos on other accounts use Fleischer’s likeness, often cherry-picking lively moments from court and garnering hundreds of comments.

“If the judge behaved with dignity and respect, there wouldn’t be this stuff for these people to latch onto and show,” he said. “There wouldn’t be all these opportunities for people to republish videos and make money off of it.”

Fleischer doesn’t make money off the videos, he said, but he understands the criticism. He defended the video feed of court goings-on as a way to improve transparency and steer others from hurting themselves or others.

“They see the consequences of behavior and that’s the goal,” he said. “Everybody sees and understands there are consequences for criminality.”

Concerns about Flesicher’s videos pushed the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association earlier this month to sign off on printing cards for attorneys to warn their clients about the live stream.

Conceptually, I think this is fine. Cameras have been allowed in courtrooms for a long time, and while there have always been concerns about participants (especially judges) playing to them, I think there’s a lot of value in people being able to see for themselves how courtrooms operate, what everyone does, what to expect, that sort of thing. Even the higher-end crime and courtroom dramas on TV take tons of artistic license, so a bracing taste of the real thing would do us all some good.

That said, there should be some official and enforceable rules for how this is done and what the bounds of acceptable behavior are for the judges and the lawyers. I believe the rules (if they don’t already exist, or if they’re not clearly applicable from earlier rules) would come from the Supreme Court, with the enforcement power belonging to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, but I would support there being a commission to study this in more detail and recommending legislation to clarify and codify it all. The story doesn’t say whether Judge Fleischer is unique in his actions here, but even if he is I have to imagine others will eventually follow in some form.

I also approve of the HCCLA taking action to pre-emptively notify clients about this courtroom. I would say that defendants should be able to opt out of being on camera, or even request that their case be reassigned, with the idea that an updated set of rules would spell out exactly what everyone’s rights and responsibilities are. There should also be some guidance on data retention, in that someone’s courtroom video from a sufficiently long time ago should be removed from public view, so that people whose matters have been resolved can resume their lives without this following them around forever. The educational value of these videos should not come at any individual’s cost.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged David Fleischer, Harris County, HCCLA, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Supreme Court, Texas, YouTube | 3 Comments

Time for the annual Christmas tree recycling post

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s the most wonderful post-Christmas Day post of the year.

The City of Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) and Houston Parks and Recreation Department invite residents to recycle their live Christmas trees and contribute to a greener holiday season. By participating, you can help reduce landfill waste while creating valuable mulch and other landscaping materials.

From Wednesday, December 26, 2024, through Friday, January 24, 2025, SWMD will operate 22 convenient tree recycling drop-off locations throughout Houston. A detailed list of sites is attached for reference. Additionally, live trees can be recycled through the city’s curbside tree waste collection program.

To prepare a tree for recycling:
– Remove all lights, ornaments, tinsel, wire, nails, and stands.
– Ensure the tree is not flocked, painted, or artificial, as these cannot be recycled.

SAVE THE DATE: 34th Annual Treecycling Event
Celebrate sustainability with City officials, Reliant Energy, Living Earth, and the Houston Parks & Recreation Department as we give the City Tree a second life as mulch for parks and green spaces.

Date: Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Location: City Hall Reflection Pool

The press release includes a link to this Google map of those 22 locations, which include stalwarts like Westpark and North Main, two locations in Memorial Park, and a few outside the city in places like Richmond, the Woodlands, and New Caney. There’s someplace that close enough to you, so find it and haul that tree over when it’s time. And as an extra added bonus, here’s where to dispose of your tree in San Antonio. You’re welcome.

On a side note, when I searched my archives for previous “Christmas tree” posts, I found this story from 2018 about Amazon getting into the Christmas tree delivery business and how this was a potential threat to Christmas tree farms. That service still exists, but with one exception from 2019, all of the stories I found in a Google News search on the topic were from the debut year. So if it’s had some measurable effect on the previous business model, it’s not been enough for it to be newsworthy, for whatever that’s worth.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Christmas, Houston, recycling, Solid Waste Management Department, trees | Comments Off

Paxton sues NCAA over trans athletes

Posted on December 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Never not on brand.

Still a crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Sunday he sued the National Collegiate Athletic Association, accusing the organization of misleading college sports fans by allowing transgender women to participate in events marketed as women’s competitions.

Paxton said the NCAA violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by deceiving fans who want to support sporting events that only include athletes whose female sex was assigned at birth.

Paxton also accused the NCAA of misleading consumers by not identifying which athletes are transgender, and of “jeopardizing the safety and wellbeing of women” by allowing transgender athletes to participate in its sporting events.

“Radical ‘gender theory’ has no place in college sports,” Paxton said in a news release Sunday.

Paxton wants the court to limit the participation of trans athletes in NCAA competitions taking place in Texas or involving Texas teams, or to stop the organization from labeling events as women’s sports if they include transgender women.

In a statement, the NCAA did not address the lawsuit’s allegations but said they would continue to support women’s sports.

“The Association and its members will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships,” said NCAA communications director Michelle Brutlag Hosick in a statement.

For all the obvious reasons it’s hard to feel any optimism about this, but I will note two things. One is that putting this out the Sunday before Christmas is hardly the way to get attention. For an attention whore the magnitude of Ken Paxton, that’s a very curious choice. Similarly, there’s no link to a copy of the court filing, which Paxton usually provides. As I’ve noted before, a lot of his lawsuits are, legally speaking, piles of junk that would be laughed out of any non-Kacsmaryk courtroom. Not that this stops him, he is an expert at picking his venues, but this oversight is once again curious given his usual proclivities. Does that mean anything for the likelihood of this action’s success, or the message that he’s trying to send? Probably not – I’m grasping at straws and I know it. But this is my reaction to this weirdly timed and lightly supported story.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Ken Paxton, lawsuit, NCAA, Texas, transgender rights | 1 Comment

Recycle those Christmas lights

Posted on December 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Public service announcement:

Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department has asked residents to recycle their discarded holiday lights in a very particular way. Instead of leaving them in a recycling bin, they are asked to bring them to either the Westpark Recycling Center or the Environmental Service Center so that they can be properly recycled.

Another tip from the department for the holidays is to flatten all cardboard boxes and gift boxes before putting them in the recycling bin.

The Westpark Recycling Center is located at 5900 Westpark and is open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. There are two locations for the Environmental Service Center. The north location is at 5614 Neches St. and the south location is at 11500 S. Post Oak Rd.

The south location is open Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and also the second Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The north location is open the second Thursday of the month from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

As with pumpkins and Christmas trees, please do your part to handle holiday waste responsibly. For your reward, I bring you this:

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Christmas, Houston, recycling, Solid Waste Management Department, videos | 1 Comment

Say goodbye to 2024, Mel Torme

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good riddance, too, but we’ll put that aside for today only. Here again I present to you my favorite Christmas story, which Mark Evanier has taken to rerunning, with a reminder to not just flat out reprint it and claim it as your own. I would never. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (which happens to begin today), and have a good Wednesday, as appropriate. I thank you for being here, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Posted in Websurfing | Tagged Christmas, Mel Torme | Comments Off

Christmas Eve video break: Revisiting my manifesto

Posted on December 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I often have occasion to revisit something I wrote years ago on this site, and I’m happy to say that more often than not, the archived post still holds up. I say that because I just re-read my Christmas music manifesto from 2022, and I stand by all of it.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in a weird mood this holiday season. On the one hand, from Thanksgiving on, I’ve leaned heavily into all the things I love about the season, including and especially the time I’ve spent with my family and friends. The comfort, the familiarity, the sense of community, the shared experiences – I love those things every year, but this year even more so. It’s the dread of what is to come next that has both given all that more meaning, and created an uncomfortable edge to it all. We need a little Christmas more than ever this year, because we’ve got some real shit coming at us.

I played all the videos in that post – am I right about “Pat-a-Pan” or what? – and this lyric from “Good King Wenceslas” stood out:

“Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing”

I would object less to a “Christian” takeover of our government if there were anything remotely Christ-like about the “Christians” in question. These people make the Pharisees and the Philistines look like Moses and the crew that fled Egypt.

Anyway. Let’s brighten things up a bit, shall we? Tis the season and all that. Postmodern Jukebox never misses:

It’s not just their impeccable musicianship, it’s their showmanship. We were out of town when they came through Houston recently, and I am more determined than ever to see them live at some other time.

The rendition of “Fairytale of New York” that was performed at Shane MacGowan’s funeral makes me want to cry and dance at the same time.

I don’t know who the members of that band were, but God bless them, every one.

We should all hold space in our hearts for Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, with one of the greatest villain songs of all time:

Razzleberry dressing is nice and all, but how do you top that?

Coverville did its 20th annual Christmas cover story last week, and it’s a banger, with a lyrically correct version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, done by PMJ. “Oi To The World” and the Ronnie James Dio version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” are standouts as well.

All right, all right, it is Christmas Eve, and we have certain ritualistic obligations to meet. So here you go:

I love that as much now as ever. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Posted in Music | Tagged Christmas, videos | 1 Comment

San Antonio gets more funds for its first BRT line

Posted on December 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good for them. If only we had the same inclinations.

San Antonio and Bexar County landed a $268 million federal grant to fund more than half the cost of the VIA Green Line, the Alamo City’s first-ever Advanced Rapid Transit program, local leaders said Wednesday.

The 10.5-mile bus route will start at San Antonio International Airport before traveling down San Pedro Avenue. The line then will snake through downtown and Southtown before ending at VIA’s Brooks Transit Center.

[…]

The federal grant will fund 56% of the Green Line’s total $480 million price tag. Another $153.7 million will come from local bonds, while the remaining $56.8 million will be allocated from existing funds.

[…]

Despite its promise of speedier public transport, the project has sparked fears from small-business owners about a pending construction nightmare, the Current previously reported. Some business owners concerned over the line said they’re still recovering from construction delays downtown and along the St. Mary’s Strip,

Even so, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said the city and county will work with small businesses to ensure that the project doesn’t hinder foot traffic.

“I’m expecting us to incorporate all those small businesses, or any businesses, up and down that North-South line of the city to see how we can improve our community — not just for the bus riders but for the businesses that are along that route,” Sakai said.

If all goes as planned, construction on the Green Line will begin late next year and wrap up in mid-2025, according to local officials. The route is expected to be fully operational by 2027.

In addition to the rapid bus line, the project will include replacement of 151 storm drains, 13 new signalized pedestrian crossings and 7.3 miles of new and repaired sidewalks. Nearly 40 traffic lights along the route also will be upgraded and synchronized.

See here for the background. The San Antonio Report gets into the neighborhood aspects of this.

San Antonio City Council unanimously approved new zoning rules and a policy framework Thursday that are aimed at transit-oriented development (TOD). The rules are meant to encourage bus ridership, area walkability and density along mass transit corridors in the city — which are planned but not yet built.

“Ultimately, where we are going with TOD is in an effort to rein in sprawl that makes our city less desirable, more expensive and less sustainable,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said after the vote. The goal is “to tie our transportation system planning with our land use and make it so that you don’t have to have a car to get where you need to go in the city.”

Much of the policy framework, developed over the course of more than a year by a task force and committee, is aimed at removing barriers for more residential, commercial and mixed-use development surrounding mass transit routes, which VIA Metropolitan Transit calls “advanced rapid transit” or ART. (It’s more commonly known as “bus rapid transit.”)

Other sections are aimed at mitigating the impacts development may have on neighborhoods, such as increased property values and gentrification.

[…]

The now-$480 million ART Green Line will be a faster and more frequent bus route from the airport that will run through downtown to the missions. VIA also has plans to build the east-west Silver Line in 2027, which could run from North Gen. McMullen Drive on the West Side along West Commerce Street and East Houston Street to the Frost Bank Center on the East Side.

The zoning rules and map approved Thursday will apply to areas surrounding the Green Line, slated for completion in 2027. Lots that are currently zoned for single-family use within the urban core are ineligible for TOD zoning.

Another process is underway to customize the boundaries and parameters for the Silver Line, which is scheduled to break ground in 2029.

While VIA’s Green Line and the city’s TOD policy are separate, independent initiatives, the organizations have been collaborating for years to align them.

[…]

TOD and bus rapid transit are key elements of the SA Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan adopted by City Council in 2016. TOD is part of the city’s affordable housing policy adopted in 2018, as well as the implementation plan in 2021. The city’s climate action plan also prioritizes TOD.

Like the housing policy, the city will ultimately adopt an implementation plan for TOD, which will be developed by the city next year.

Sure is nice to have a plan. The aforementioned Silver Line would run through downtown, which makes a lot of sense; the Frost Bank Center is where the Spurs play. I’m not jealous about any of this, I’m just gazing wistfully in their direction.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Advanced Rapid Transit, Bexar County, BRT, construction, Houston, parking, Peter Sakai, Ron Nirenberg, San Antonio, Texas, transit-oriented development, urbanism | 1 Comment

Replacing NRG Arena

Posted on December 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Someone’s gotta pay for it.

If NRG Arena were a car, it would be totaled.

A 2019 assessment commissioned by the county found the arena, where the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo holds its horse show and auctions every March, was beyond its lifespan.

The electrical system was “failing due to the age of the equipment,” the assessment said. Many of the seating areas lacked handrails needed to meet “life safety or building codes.” And the 1970s-era facility fails to satisfy basic accessibility standards, greeting every visitor with a “set of stairs to climb to get to the seating bowl.”

It recommended $11.6 million in improvements it said were “absolutely necessary to keep the building functional (e.g. life safety),” but its final determination was clear: The arena should be replaced in no more than seven years.

“It was bad enough that, to make it semi-competitive and fix all of the obsolete systems in it, it was cheaper to build a new one,” said John Blount, who said he ordered the assessment as Harris County’s lead engineer before retiring in 2021. “We had a big discussion about whether we should just tear it down and start over again.”

Five years later, little progress has been made on building NRG Arena’s replacement, and the plan for a new facility is one central question in negotiations as officials from the Rodeo, Houston Texans and Harris County work to iron out a new lease agreement for NRG Park. The current lease expires in 2032.

“There’s no question, as we go through these lease negotiations, that it’s extremely important to the Rodeo that we get that replaced,” said Chris Boleman, the Rodeo’s president.

While the need for a new arena is undisputed, it’s less clear who will foot the bill.

The Rodeo built the current arena in 1974 and later donated it to Harris County, which owns the land. Under the county’s current lease with the Rodeo and Texans at NRG Park, it is the county’s responsibility to maintain facilities in “first-class” condition, a standard the arena currently does not meet.

That puts the county on the hook for the facilities, but some former county officials have winced at the idea of subsidizing a new arena for the Rodeo, a nonprofit organization that generated $192 million in annual revenue and had $309 million in assets, as of its last publicly available tax filing in 2022.

That’s a part of a larger issue.

NRG Park, home to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and the Houston Texans, requires nearly $2 billion in repairs and maintenance, some of which is overdue, over the next 30 years to continue operating, according to a new assessment prepared for the Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. Questions remain as to who will pay for it.

The $2 billion price tag for upkeep is more than triple what a similar report called for in 2019.

The most costly upgrades to the facility would include $105 million for security systems, video, audio, other technology.

The new report comes as lease negotiations begin between Harris County, the Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The current lease expires in 2032.

Representatives for NRG and the Houston Texans did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Many basic repairs and maintenance on the stadium have been deferred, said Chris Boleman, CEO of the Rodeo, but upgrades are needed on the horizon.

There’s more, some of which was in the earlier story, so read the rest. Note that this is $2 billion over 30 years, which is to say about $67 million per year. Still a lot, but it’s not like anyone needs to pony up the whole thing right now. Given the current lifecycle for most arenas these days, it’s not clear to me that NRG Park will still be a thing 30 years from now. We may be talking about its replacement well before then, like in 2032 when the lease expires.

For the first item, something will give eventually. I do expect the Rodeo and the Texans to kick in some amount towards a new NRG Arena. Maybe there’s a better way for all to handle this sort of thing in the future. Again, the expiration of the lease will provide a catalyst.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Harris County, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, Houston, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Houston Texans, Reliant Arena, Reliant Stadium | 10 Comments

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