That “poll” of the HISD bond referendum

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t tell us anything.

Houston ISD voters are overwhelmingly willing to support a school bond package to upgrade campuses throughout the district, according to polling released Thursday, though questions remain about whether residents will back a $4.4 billion proposal on the ballot in November.

New polling by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research revealed three-quarters of 1,900 HISD residents surveyed in recent weeks said that they would back a school bond package that didn’t raise their property tax rates.

The finding bodes well for the district’s multibillion-dollar bond proposal this year, which doesn’t include a tax rate increase, but the temperature check leaves some uncertainty about whether voters will support the package.

The survey did not ask about HISD’s $4.4 billion proposal, which was not finalized at the time researchers conducted the polling, but rather a theoretical bond that did not raise taxes. HISD’s proposal would fund rebuilding campuses, fixing faulty air systems, upgrading school security and providing other improvements.

The results show little change in community support for an HISD bond since Rice researchers conducted similar polling six months ago. During that span, HISD’s leadership has made drastic budget cuts, ousted dozens of principals and posted major gains in student test scores.

“That’s really why we redid the survey in August, because a lot has happened between January and August in the district … so we really were curious to see if that was going to move the needle,” said Kori Stroub, associate director of research for the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Research Consortium. “And it really didn’t at all.”

I mentioned the earlier poll in July, when the outlines of the bond issuance were coming into focus. There are several reasons why one should not take this seriously as a measure of support for the referendum.

1. It never actually asks the question whether one would vote for the specific bond package that will be on the ballot. I get that this survey was done before it was finalized, but that doesn’t change anything. It’s asking a general question about a theoretical bond, which to me is like a question pitting “generic Democrat” against a named Republican. It tells you something, but not what you want to know.

2. Along those lines, the first question the poll asks is about whether the respondent thinks Houston-area schools need more money to provide a quality education. I don’t have the exact wording of the question they asked (they never provide the questions used) but this is not only not the same thing – the question of how schools are funded is a legislative matter, and not what is on the ballot – it kind of primes the pump for the later ask about the bond.

3. The respondents are adults, in and out of HISD’s boundaries. Not voters, but adults. I expect this to be a high turnout election, but lots of adults in Harris County are not registered voters, and if we have 70% turnout of registered voters this fall, that will be an all-time record, by quite a bit. Also, too, not everyone who lives in HISD and shows up to vote will participate in that contest. In 2012, the last time we have an HISD bond referendum, which also happened to be in a Presidential election year, there was a 19% undervote rate (see page 49) in the referendum. Point being, their sample may be representative of HISD, but that’s far from the same thing as being representative of who will vote on the bond.

4. As discussed before in the previous post, HISD bond referenda are usually pretty popular, and usually pass with ease. As I said before, under normal circumstances I’d expect this referendum to do the same. But these are not normal circumstances, and the last time there was any kind of organized opposition to a bond, it barely passed. It is just not credible to me, given the recent history, that this one would pass with flying colors.

I don’t know what will happen with this bond. It may pass – the need is there, people want to support school bonds – but that absolutely cannot be taken for granted. I hope we get a real poll or two on this issue, because this wasn’t it. The Chron has more.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Paxton’s “election fraud” raids

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

All sorts of warning bells here.

Still a crook any way you look

The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to request a federal investigation into raids Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted this week as part of what he called an “ongoing election integrity investigation.”

Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”

Agents raided the home of Cecilia Castellano — the Democrat running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde — and confiscated her phone as part of the search, according to Rosales. Republicans see that seat, which Gov. Greg Abbott carried by nearly 6 percentage points, as their best potential state House flip in November.

Law enforcement also searched the homes of at least five other Latino individuals, all of whom were working on Castellano’s campaign and three of whom are members of Texas LULAC, Rosales added. LULAC is a non-partisan, volunteer-based Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Washington.

The group is in the dark about the details of any accusations, Rosales said, “but there’s none that we’ve been privy to that merits an investigation like this that wastes taxpayers’ money.”

“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” Rosales said in a statement.

Paxton announced on Wednesday that his office executed “multiple” search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties the day prior as part of an investigation into allegations of “election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” A two-year investigation, Paxton said, provided “sufficient evidence” to obtain the search warrants.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

Paxton’s office did not reply to a request for additional information. His announcement did not detail the targets of the raids, the number of raids, or the reason specific homes were searched.

“It’s still very vague,” Rosales said in an interview. “That’s what’s really unnerving about the whole situation.”

There’s some details about the warrants and what happened at the raids in this later story. Is it possible that there’s some genuinely illegal activity happening? Sure, politics has its share of shady characters, and as these stories make clear there’s a lot we don’t yet know. All one can do is speculate, which doesn’t add anything of value to the conversation. But you’d have to be Tooth Fairy-level naive to take this on face value. I mean, Ken Paxton, in an extremely heated election year, in a rare Republican pickup opportunity district, with vouchers on the line, and bullshit claims of “non-citizens” registering to vote on top of it all? There’s not enough salt in the world to take this with. The Chron has more.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Miles whines about criticism

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Oh good Lord.

State-appointed Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles responded to recent criticism from several Democratic state lawmakers by sending a letter telling them to “lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

The letter calls for lawmakers to “put aside the politics of grievance and divisiveness” and join him in celebrating the district’s “miraculous” results on the Texas Education Agency’s unofficial 2024 accountability results, where 55 schools jumped from a D or F rating in unofficial 2023 ratings to an A or B this year.

“Let’s end the distracting public fighting and work together,” Miles wrote in the letter published by the Quorum Report. “HISD will not stop fighting for our students. We will not stop working to change the parts of a broken system that hold too many students back. We will not stop putting our students first.”

HISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the undated letter.

The letter was addressed to the same nine legislators who publicly shared a letter Monday asking Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate Third Future Schools, the Colorado-based charter school network Miles founded. Spectrum News reported in May that the network moved money from Texas public schools to Colorado campuses while Miles led the organization as CEO.

Lawmakers wrote that they had “deep concern regarding the financial mismanagement and lack of transparency” associated with Miles. Their letter called for an audit of Third Future Schools Texas, an investigation into potential conflicts of interest and a closer monitoring of the organization’s governance practices to ensure the highest standards of accountability and transparency.

[…]

Miles told lawmakers he hoped they could work together to give HISD students “an example of what real leadership looks like.” He said that while they may have disagreements about some of the changes he has made in HISD, the district was changing students’ lives and futures and bringing hope back.

“I am not a politician, and I am not running for election, but I know about leadership,” Miles said. “I suspect we all strive to be leaders who bring people to their best hopes rather than play on their worst fears. We want to be leaders that get things done. I know as leaders we must fight the fights that need fighting, not just those we know we can win.”

See here for the background. I could write on and on about how thin-skinned this guy is and all, but I’ll spare us both the grief. Suffice it to say that he’s the guy in charge, he can damn well take the heat. The day may come when we’ll all owe Mike Miles an apology for his wisdom and leadership and whatever else, but today is not that day and tomorrow isn’t looking good, either. Whatever eventually happens with the test scores and accountability ratings, I will never stop having things to say about how Miles went about doing what he did and what he could and should have done better. And neither should you or anyone else.

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Weekend link dump for August 25

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

What would John Scalzi do? He would tell you not to idolize anyone.

“All of this shows that Trump hasn’t paid attention to what the anti-abortion movement says or demands. That’s because he doesn’t have to. He assumes—correctly, it seems—that voters opposed to abortion will pull the lever for him no matter what. And he understands that if he has a second term, he will not need to understand the ins and outs of abortion policy because he can just give that job to those who do.”

“This disparity between preelection intent and actual voting behavior illuminates the challenge that polls have struggled with in recent elections: Black nonvoters may be answering surveys in ways that suggest they’re open to abandoning the Democratic nominee. The fact that these individuals ultimately do not vote – or ultimately do support the Democratic candidate – can produce misleading preelection vote share estimates.”

RIP, Phil Donohue, iconic talk show host.

“The majority of people who are arrested for misdemeanors should be offered means-tested, pretrial diversion programs that do not compel defendants to plead guilty, so that they can exit the criminal justice system without a criminal conviction and without debt. Once the charges are dropped, evidence of these arrests should be automatically sealed from public view, at no cost to the defendant.”

I’m not sure this is a good idea.

“George Santos Pleads Guilty To Federal Charges”.

RIP, Tatcho Mindiola, veteran of the 1970s Chicano Movement who went on to create the very successful Mexican American Studies college programs at the University of Houston.

“While laws on using generative artificial intelligence in political campaigns remain somewhat piecemeal, Swift could take action against her likeness being used by Trump. Tennessee, where Taylor Swift is headquartered, recently passed a bill protecting the property rights of artists’ name, likeness and voice, as reported by 404 Media. Swift could also pursue action under defamation laws.”

Fine by me if MLB is blackballing Trevor Bauer. He deserves it.

“The 2024 Olympics were a big win for TV of all kinds”.

Love is dead.

“The Democratic Wife Guys don’t just think their wives are beautiful or great mothers; they admire their intelligence, and they support their ambition. And perhaps most importantly, they are willing to make personal sacrifices for their wives’ aspirations, something particularly true of Emhoff.”

Really wishing Kate Cox and her family all the best.

RIP, Al Attles, basketball Hall of Famer who coached the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA title in 1975.

“Chick-Fil-A Hatches Plans For Streaming Service As Reality TV Comes Home To Roost”.

“If pro-family only means that you oppose abortion, then that’s a single issue. We vote on so many pro-family issues. It’s not just one issue.”

The Pommel Horse Guy will be dancing with the stars next month.

Remember the story of the Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association, which I mentioned in February? Well, a dozen players from Bhutan, six young men and six young women, got to take a trip to New York where they visited the Hudson Valley Renegades, High-A affiliate of the New York Yankees. The next day, they got a trip to Yankee Stadium. Pretty damn cool.

“If Trump and his toadies are now complaining that Harris is treating him like the incumbent it is because in ways vast and small he has acted like one and demanded to be treated like one for almost four years. She’s taken his most perverse and vainglorious conceit and turned it into a massive liability.”

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 4 Comments

CD18 special election lineup set

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s Erica Lee Carter and two people you’ve never heard of.

Erica Lee Carter

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s daughter, Erica Lee Carter, will be the only Democrat on the ballot seeking to finish the late congresswoman’s term, priming Carter for a few weeks in Congress as a bridge to a candidate who will fill a full term.

At the special election filing deadline at 6 p.m. Thursday evening, Carter was one of three candidates — the other two are Republicans — running to succeed her mother in the Houston-based district. If elected on Nov. 5, Carter would serve until the next Congress is sworn in on Jan. 5.

As of now, Carter will face Republicans Maria Dunn and Kevin Dural in the heavily Democratic district.

[…]

For the special election, a candidate must avoid a runoff by winning a majority of the vote to be sworn in at all, given that a special election wouldn’t take place until after the general election victor is sworn in.

In a statement when Carter announced her candidacy, she said Democrats should unite to “regain their vote.” Democratic officials in Houston, including those who sought to be the replacement nominee, endorsed Carter for the special election.

After officials selected Turner as the new Democratic general election nominee by 41 votes to 37, beating out former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, he told the Tribune he supported Carter on the special election ballot.

“It would be a fitting tribute to the legacy of the congresswoman for her daughter to serve out the remainder of her term,” Turner said.

Edwards said she would support the Democratic ticket.

See here for the background. I fully expect Carter to win on November 5, which is the best possible outcome. I couldn’t find any information about candidate Maria Dunn online, though I did find a voter registration for someone with that name at the same address as the one on the SOS candidate listing for the special election. As for As for Kevin Dural, he has an address listed in The Woodlands and no Harris County voter registration that I could find. Which is fine, per the Constitution all he needs to be is a resident of Texas. He has a website with no biographical information, and a quote from a news story about the precinct chair election that makes it sound like he thinks he’s running against Sylvester Turner. Hey, I get it, this has been confusing for us all.

What is now confusing me is this:

A second special election will take place in McLennan County, where Republican Waco businessman Pat Curry and Democratic attorney Erin Shank will fight in both the special and general election contests on Nov. 5.

The special election is to fill out the term of Rep. Doc Anderson in HD56, who recently resigned after previously announcing his retirement. How is it that they can be on both the special election and general election ballots, and not Sylvester Turner (and Lana Centonze, if anyone cares about her)? I have no idea. Someone previously cited Sec. 141.033 of the Elections Code in answer to the CD18 question. I don’t see how it applies to one and not the other. Anyone know what the deal is? I got nothing.

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SCOTx declares 15th Court of Appeals to be legal

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Just in time for its grand opening.

The Texas Supreme Court defended the state legislature’s creation of a statewide district court of appeals, holding the new court is constitutional.

Dallas County and Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown challenged the constitutionality of the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, which opens for business Sept. 1.

Dallas County sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and its officers in Travis County over a dispute about the state’s alleged failure to take custody of criminal defendants who have been adjudicated incompetent to stand trial.

The county also HHSC’s failure imposes unjustified costs on the county, which must retain custody and pay for the inmates’ treatment.

The trial court denied the state’s plea to jurisdiction, leading to an appeal in the Third District Court of Appeals.

Justice Evan Young, responding for the court on a petition for writ of mandamus, said it was too late for procedural reasons to resolve the appeal before its mandatory transfer to the Fifteenth District.

[…]

The county’s main argument was that the state constitution requires every court of appeals district is limited to a subdivision of the state’s territory.

Disagreeing with the county, Young’s response established the high courts jurisdiction and reached the merits of whether the new court is constitutionally structured. Young concluded the constitution includes grants of legislative discretion over the structure and jurisdiction of the courts of appeals.

The Fifteenth District is the legislature’s first attempt in almost 60 years to create a new intermediate appellate court, Young noted.

While the county argues it can’t be constitutional because it’s composed of all counties in the state, Young said their argument hinges on the words “divide” and “district.”

Taking these definitions, nothing in the phrase ‘the state shall be divided into courts of appeals districts’ threatens the Fifteenth Court’s constitutionality, Young said.

“‘The state’ has been ‘divided.’ The legislature immediately fulfilled its duty to ‘separate’ the intermediate court system ‘into parts,’ which for over 130 years has meant geographic regions with various levels of overlap,” Young wrote.

Referring to “district,” Young said the word can be used for statewide, state-run bodies, too. At-large districts, Young said, are hardly unknown, either—a city or other polity might have multiple districts that carve up the city alongside at-large districts that cover the entirety of the jurisdiction.

See here for some background. Justice Young’s reasoning seems like a bit of sophistry to me, but it’s not so egregious that I’m in danger of my hair catching fire. I was expecting a challenge to the legality of this court and its sibling the business court, but I thought it would be on the grounds that they needed to be created via constitutional amendment, and not a regular law. That wasn’t the argument Dallas County went with, for better or worse. I kind of suspect that SCOTx would have found a reason to uphold it regardless, but you never know. As this court becomes official on September 1, I am not sure there’s enough time for further challenges. I think we’re stuck with it, which means that we’re going to need to put some effort into winning elections for its benches. At least there will now be more things for the ambitious lawyers (and sitting judges not up for election that year) to run for.

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Here’s our World Baseball Classic schedule

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

In case you want to start filling in your 2026 calendar now.

When the World Baseball Classic hits Houston’s Minute Maid Park in March 2026, the ballpark will host games featuring the United States, Mexico, Italy and Great Britain.

In May, Houston was named along with Miami, Tokyo and San Juan, Puerto Rico as one of four host cities for the tournament. On Wednesday, the schedule was released with Houston hosting all games in Pool B, which includes the four aforementioned teams plus one yet-to-be-determined qualifier.

Pool play is March 6-11, and Minute Maid Park also will host two quarterfinal games March 13-14. Houston’s quarterfinal games will pit the top two teams from Pool B against the top two teams from Pool A, which includes Cuba, Puerto Rico, Canada and Panama.

Pool play at Minute Maid Park will include 10 games in six days with the United States facing Mexico on Monday, March 9.

The tournament semifinals and finals will be at Miami’s LoanDepot Park.

Tickets aren’t yet available, but fans can register on the Astros website to receive notifications when tickets go on sale.

See here and here for the background. I need to get a group together and register for that notification. I’m all in for this. If I can see a World Cup game later in the year as well, so much the better.

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RFK Jr pulls out

Posted on August 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

What a loser.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Friday that he is suspending his independent campaign for president and endorsed former president Donald Trump.

While announcing his suspension of his campaign, Kennedy said that he is choosing to stay on the ballot in most states but will remove his name in swing states. He didn’t name which states, but according to The Texas Secretary of State website Kennedy has withdrawn from being on the Texas ballot. Kennedy did withdraw from the Arizona ballot on Thursday.

Recent polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris within striking distance of winning Texas, a stronger showing than when President Joe Biden was a candidate for reelection and was polling behind Trump in Texas by nearly double digits. In the same poll, Kennedy had roughly 2% of support from likely Texans voters. He had reached a high of 8% in earlier polling.

Two weeks ago, the Texas Secretary of State’s office accepted Kennedy’s petition to appear on the state ballot. According to the state election code, a candidate has until the 74th day before election day to withdraw from the general election.

Yes, it was barely two weeks ago that he got on the ballot. Someone sure wasted a bunch of money on that effort. According to the Associated Press, Kennedy said he “would work to remove his name from ballots in 10 swing states where he believes he does not have a chance of winning”. (Pause for deep breaths as I struggle to keep a straight face.) Congratulations to us for making it as a swing state, I guess. If RFK Jr (snicker) believes it, it must be true.

As noted before, I doubt his exit really affects anything here – probably not anywhere else either, as the weirdness factor may outweigh any positive-for-Trump effects – but it does give the pundit class a day or two’s worth of material. I’m just impressed his campaign had sufficient levels of executive function to do the withdrawal paperwork in a timely fashion. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, dude.

Posted in Election 2024, The making of the President | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Lawsuit against FIEL tossed

Posted on August 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A crook any way you look

A Harris County judge has denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to shut down local immigration nonprofit FIEL Houston.

Paxton originally petitioned to shut down FIEL in July for allegedly violating rules that govern the organization’s nonprofit status.

Judge R.K. Sandill, of Harris County’s 127th District Court, denied Paxton’s Aug. 15 request for a temporary injunction and petition to shut down the nonprofit. The judge’s two-sentence ruling, issued Friday, included no explanation for the denial.

Neither FIEL nor the attorney general’s office immediately responded to requests for comment.

Paxton argued that by referring to former President Donald Trump as a “son of the devil,” in Spanish, FIEL had violated government rules that limit a nonprofit’s ability to engage in political activities and the endorsements of candidates.

FIEL has yet to issue an official statement on the ruling, but the organization’s director Cesar Espinosa previously told the Landing that while it was the first time the organization had been targeted by the attorney general, he had seen Paxton attempt to silence other organizations geared toward helping immigrants.

“This is something that’s new to us as an organization, but unfortunately, we’ve seen it happen already a few times,” Espinosa said.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee submitted a court brief earlier this week expressing support for FIEL.

Menefee asked the court to preserve FIEL’s ability to help Harris County residents, and said the county does not believe Paxton has the authority to shut down a nonprofit in that manner.

“It’s clear that the Attorney General is overstepping his role by singling out organizations like FIEL that advocate for immigrants and their families,” Menefee said in a release. “Lawsuits like this not only undermine the hard work of organizations that provide critical resources to immigrants but also perpetuate a climate of fear and division.”

See here for the background. Paxton’s usual move in these situations is to appeal and I assume he will do so here. I don’t really think he has any chance of winning, but he can harass FIEL and make them spend a bunch of money fending him off while also sending a message to others like them. That’s probably good enough for him. You know the rest, so we’ll leave it at that. The Chron and the Trib have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Mayor’s committee’s report on the HPD suspended cases scandal

Posted on August 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Have at it.

Several “critical issues” in the Houston Police Department, including mismanagement by agency leaders and understaffing in key divisions, contributed to a scandal involving suspended investigations into criminal cases, an independent committee wrote in a report released Wednesday.

In the report, the five-member committee urged various improvements to the department, such as adopting a more standardized approach to case management across divisions, updating records management systems and hiring more civilian staffers.

“Addressing these problems is vital for boosting crime response and managing efficiency,” said Christina Nowak, a member of the committee who serves as the city’s deputy inspector general at the Office of Policing Reform and Accountability

The report, commissioned by Houston Mayor John Whitmire earlier this year, marks the end of the latest probe into city police classifying about 268,000 cases as suspended due to a lack of personnel. Then-Houston Police Chief Troy Finner resigned in May amid pressure stemming from the investigations.

[…]

Among the committee’s key findings:

  • “Inconsistency in case management” practices and understaffing led to uneven usage of the code across divisions, affecting some more than others.
  • The current records management system in operation at HPD is “inadequate” to meet demand.
  • A shortage of civilian staff, who are often responsible for managing information and keeping in touch with crime victims, has contributed to operational inefficiencies.
  • A “communication breakdown” between divisions and department leadership also drove the misuse of the code.

Whitmire pledged that the 88-page report would be a blueprint for change, saying several of the recommendations are already being implemented.

“This one will not collect dust,” said Whitmire, who took office in January. “It will sit on my desk and councilmembers’ desks.”

In a presentation to Houston City Council on Wednesday, Nowak said HPD’s data is scattered across multiple case management systems and often poorly kept. As a result, information is difficult to share, records contain incomplete or inaccurate information, and agency staff struggle to compare data because it’s not standardized.

Nowak added that investigative divisions operate with “near-total autonomy,” resulting in different ways of classifying cases.

The committee also found that officers haven’t received adequate training when it comes to when and how to classify cases, which led to the misclassification of thousands. About 8,800 cases were classified as non-criminal when they met the elements of a crime, the committee reported.

See here and here for some background. The report is here.

I don’t think there’s anything terribly new here. This reinforces my belief that this was a management problem first and foremost. It will cost some money to fix – better case management software, a lot of training to use it, redesigned processes, probably more civilian staff, etc – which is very much in line with what Mayor Whitmire wants to do anyway. What I want to go with that is some clear goals and metrics, to show us what that extra money is for and how effectively it’s being used, and consistent communication of how HPD is doing against those goals and metrics. This is Management 101 stuff. The moment is right for substantive changes to be made. We’ll see what we get. The Chron has more.

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The first Harris/Trump poll of Texas

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s talk about this for a minute.

Vice President Kamala Harris trails former President Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in Texas, shaving off nearly half the Republican nominee’s one-time advantage over President Joe Biden from earlier this year, according to a new poll released Thursday.

The survey, conducted earlier this month by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, is among the first to measure where things stand in Texas since Biden dropped his reelection bid last month. In June, the same pollster found that Trump led Biden by nearly 9 percentage points.

The latest survey also recorded a 2-point lead for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred — virtually unchanged from the June poll. In the new survey, 46.6% of likely voters said they intend to vote for the Republican senator, compared to 44.5% for Allred.

[…]

At the presidential level, independent voters appeared to drive much of the shift toward Harris: Trump now leads among that voting bloc by just 2 percentage points, down from a 24-point edge in June. Harris also gained ground among women, who now favor her by a 6-point margin after narrowly backing Trump in the Hobby School’s earlier poll.

Trump’s 4.9-point lead in the Hobby School’s latest poll is similar to the 5.6-point margin by which he carried the state over Biden in 2020.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon suggested earlier this week that the campaign does not intend to make much of a play for Texas. She noted the high cost of advertising in the state and suggested it would divert resources from other more closely contested states.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility as a presidential campaign is to ensure we get to 270 [electoral votes],” O’Malley Dillon said, fielding audience questions for an event at the Democratic National Convention. “I would love to get to a bigger number than that, but that is all we care about.”

You can see the poll memo here. The Presidential numbers were 49.5 to 44.6 for Trump over Harris, with RFK Jr getting 2.7% (guffaw). It had been 48.9 to 40.3 for Trump over Biden in June.

I don’t care to get into the crosstabs or obsess over any of this. I’m trying to wean myself of that habit. For what it’s worth, this poll is more or less in line with what we’ve seen nationally, in that Harris has greatly improved on Biden’s numbers while Trump’s have stayed fairly steady. Allred and Cruz were about the same in June, which among other things means that Allred had been running considerably ahead of Biden. Biden was far and away the top Dem performer in 2020, so having Harris pull even with Allred moves things closer to that previous dynamic.

At a macro level, I believe Harris has room to grow. To me the big question is whether she can cut into the Trump-Biden gap from 2020, even a little. Assuming she is elected and comes within, say, four points here, it will be hard for me to imagine a re-election strategy in 2028 that doesn’t include seriously contesting Texas. On the flip side, if RFK Jr (giggle) does indeed drop out and endorse Trump, as the rumors have it, there will be no novel third party outlet for Republicans who don’t like Trump but don’t want to vote for a Democrat. That could help boost his total, as this will be the first real two-party race Trump has been in, and that may keep Harris from getting closer.

(This is assuming RFK Jr (snort) is actually removed from the ballot, which assumes his campaign has its shit together enough to properly withdraw before the statutory deadline. If he’s on the ballot, running or not, he’ll draw two points or so, more at Trump’s expense. We’ll know soon enough what this situation is.)

The main thing I’m looking for going forward is further evidence of real Democratic engagement and enthusiasm (so far, so very good), which I am hoping will put a couple of legislative seats and maybe CD15 in play, and help Dems hold those appellate court benches we won in 2018. I don’t expect to post much about the polls, but if something weird or unexpected comes up, I’ll be on it.

Posted in Election 2024, The making of the President | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

CCA to take up Crystal Mason appeal

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I guess we’re doing this.

Texas’ highest criminal court will hear the case of Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County woman whose voter fraud conviction was previously overturned.

Mason, 49, has been a focal point in Texas’ tough-on-voter-fraud election laws. She was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 for submitting a provisional ballot while she was still under sentence for a federal fraud conviction.

A Fort Worth appeals court overturned her conviction in March, citing a change in state law that requires prosecutors to prove someone intended to commit voter fraud in cases similar to Mason’s. Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells appealed the ruling in April.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did not indicate why the all-Republican court granted Sorrells’ petition for discretionary review Wednesday. Oral arguments will not be held, the order said.

“Crystal’s acquittal was the correct result under the law,” Mason defense attorney Alison Grinter Allen said. “I have faith that the Court of Criminal Appeals will do the right thing and put this matter to bed at long last.”

A spokeswoman for the Tarrant County district attorney’s office said the court granted review on whether the appeals court applied the correct legal standard when it overturned Mason’s conviction.

“The next step will be for the parties to file briefs with the Court of Criminal Appeals addressing the appropriate standard of review and whether Mason’s conviction is supported by sufficient evidence,” office spokeswoman Anna Tinsley Williams said in an emailed statement.

See here and here for the previous updates, and here for the CCA’s notice. The prosecutors have 30 days to file their briefs, and Mason will have 30 days after that to respond. The CCA will then render its decision when it damn well feels like it. I am in full support of Crystal Mason and very much hope that the CCA upholds the lower court’s ruling. Spectrum News, the Trib, Houston Public Media, and the ACLU have more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

We have a statewide flood plan

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good. Now let’s see what we do with it.

Texas officials adopted their first-ever statewide flood plan Thursday, recommending $54.5 billion worth of strategies and studies to protect the 1 in 6 Texans who live or work in flood hazard areas.

The delayed “Ike Dike,” a series of gates, floodwalls and dunes proposed to protect the Houston-Galveston region from storm surge, ranked first on the state’s final list of flood mitigation projects. It also accounted for nearly half of the plan’s budget.

The full sum dwarfed typical flood prevention investments made by state lawmakers, which totaled about $1 billion in the last legislative session.

More than 3,000 of the plan’s 4,609 recommendations were to fund research that will evaluate new solutions, suggesting the strategies’ ultimate costs will be much higher.

“The intent is that it will be funded by any and all possible sources, not just by the state,” said Reem Zoun, who leads the Texas Water Development Board’s Flood Planning Division and oversaw the planning process.

[…]

The Texas Water Development Board will submit the flood plan to the Legislature on Sept. 1. Lawmakers are expected to consider the agency’s recommendations when making funding decisions for flood mitigation strategies.

The plan also made five direct legislative recommendations, distilled from hundreds proposed in the 15 regional strategies. It recommended the state set up ongoing flood mitigation funding, establish targeted assistance for remote or disadvantaged communities, expand funding to mitigate low water crossings, set up regional early warning systems and develop a levee safety program.

The board was mandated by law to create a plan as a “guide to state and local flood control policy,” but its advice is not binding: Elected officials at the state level retain control of which suggestions they will put into practice.

The agency’s own flood work did not end with the finalized plan. From now on, it will assemble an update every five years.

So the Water Development Board has a plan, which the Lege will then have to fund and put into action. I don’t have a lot of good things to say about our Legislature, but this is within their capabilities, if they don’t get too distracted by other bullshit. We’ll see how it goes. At least with all this money involved there will be plenty of groups pushing for things to happen.

The Ike Dike is high on the priority list, which is nice. Climate change is…not explicitly mentioned anywhere, giving rise to fears that the plans are inherently skewed, and that’s not so nice. As noted above, this is intended to be a living document, so things can be fixed and revised as we go. It’s a start, there’s a lot of potential benefit, and there’s room for improvement. All things considered, this is about as good as it gets around here.

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DPS will no longer update gender on drivers licenses

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

What the hell?

Transgender Texans will not be able to change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses, according to a policy change rolled out this week.

Under the new policy, Texans will not be able to change the sex on their licenses unless it is to fix a clerical error. Sheri Gipson, the chief of the Driver License Division at the Texas Department of Public Safety, confirmed the change when reached by phone on Wednesday.

The change comes as conservative states across the country move to make it more difficult for transgender Texans to update their documents with the sex that matches their gender identity. Similar steps have recently been taken in Florida, Kansas and Montana.

Civil rights advocates in Florida argue the move violated federal laws meant to keeping license rules consistent across states, according to The 19th*.

Transgender Texans could previously change the sex listed on their driver’s license by bringing an original certified court order or an amended birth certificate verifying the change, according to an archived version of the Department of Public Safety license website.

As of Wednesday, this information was no longer on the website.

[…]

According to this email, the policy went into effect Tuesday.

“Effective immediately, August 20, 2024, the Department will not accept court orders or amended birth certificates issued that change the sex when it differs from documentation already on file,” Gipson wrote, according to a screenshot of the email sent to The Texas Newsroom.

The email noted that the Office of the Director was reviewing the “validity” of “such documents … to ensure that all state and federal guidelines are being met.”

“For current DL/ID holders, the sex established at the time of original application and listed in the driver record will not be changed unless there was a clerical error. The sex will reflect the sex listed on the primary document presented upon original application that is already on file,” the email read.

“If a first-time applicant presents conflicting documents, such as a birth certificate with a court order requiring a sex change, the sex listed on the original birth certificate will take precedence to record the sex.”

The idea that a state agency could on its own just decide to ignore a class of court orders absolutely blows my mind. I mean, there’s so much about this that’s screwed up it’s hard to know where to begin, but that’s what stood out to me.

I have to assume there’s a lot more to come. This directive came from someone, it didn’t come from a vacuum. I assume there will be litigation, though it’s hard for me to feel any optimism about it, whether it goes via state or federal court. One also has to wonder what effect this could have on people’s ability to cast a ballot, if their drivers license doesn’t accurately reflect their gender. That may not turn out to be relevant, but I’m going to worry about it until I am reassured otherwise. There are also concerns about DPS collecting data to be weaponized against transgender individuals. You may recall Ken Paxton’s unsuccessful fishing operation from two years ago for how that might play out. The Trib gets into that.

Transgender Texans are now effectively barred from obtaining an accurate foundational government document and could become especially vulnerable to discrimination and harassment, said Ian Pittman, an Austin attorney who works with transgender Texans. The change has also raised privacy concerns from advocates of transgender people who worry their personal information will be used with malicious intent.

The internal email directs driver license employees to send the names and identification numbers of people seeking to change their sex on their license to a particular email address with the subject line “Sex Change Court Order.”

Employees are also instructed to “scan into the record” court orders or other documentation relating to the sex change request.

[…]

Pittman, the attorney who represents transgender people, is advising his clients to hold off on submitting court orders to the state because he worries they could be targeted.

“It will put people on a list that could interfere with their health care,” Pittman said. The state has already passed a gender-affirming care ban for minors, and Pittman worries that could be expanded to adults in Texas.

This is scary stuff. I’m stunned and outraged that over 90K adult Texans are essentially being told that they don’t exist. If the DPS feels empowered to do this, who might they go after next? The Chron and the Current have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Asking the fox to audit the henhouse

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m not sure if that’s the best metaphor, but it’s what I came up with when I read this.

Houston Democrats asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Monday to investigate a charter school network founded by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles, after Spectrum News reported in May that Third Future Schools moved money from its Texas public charters to Colorado campuses while Miles was CEO.

Spectrum News reported that Third Future Schools charged its Texas schools fees that fed into a general fund, which, in part, subsidized one of its schools in Colorado before it closed. A 2022 audit also reported that Third Future Schools Texas ran a deficit due to debts to “other TFS network schools and to TFS corporate.”

Miles denied in May allegations of illegal financial practices at his former charter network. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath had said he referred the issue to the Texas Education Agency’s complaint team, but that initial reports did not show evidence of wrongdoing.

[…]

Nine area lawmakers asked Paxton to conduct a financial audit, review Texas Third Future schools’ compliance with state laws, and investigate potential conflicts of interest. They also asked the Attorney General to ensure Third Future Schools keeps an administrative office in Texas as required by law rather than a mailbox.

The letter also called for the office to scrutinize Houston ISD’s $4.4 billion bond, which the district’s Board of Managers voted to place on the November ballot, and that such scrutiny should include explanations of the district’s budget deficit.

See here and here for some background on that news report, and here for a copy of the letters. For a variety of obvious reasons, I don’t expect anything to come of this. I get why this was sent – you pull the levers that are available to you and hope for the best. Maybe someday when we get a real Attorney General, it may be possible to have an investigation, if one is warranted. Until then, you keep moving forward.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

From the “Definition of insanity” department

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re just gonna keep doing this, aren’t we?

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

Undaunted by legislative defeat more than a year ago, Las Vegas Sands, one of the world’s biggest casino operators, is gearing up for another push to legalize casino gambling in Texas and is reaching out to local leaders across the state to build support in advance of the next legislative session in January.

Sands lobbyists are making their case at a statewide series of roundtable forums arranged by the Texas Association of Business to build momentum for another run at gambling legislation in 2025. Nearly 50 municipal officials and business representatives from Fort Worth, Arlington, Dallas and other North Texas cities participated in one of the sessions recently in Tarrant County.

Sands leaders have expanded their North Texas footprint significantly over the past year with the purchase of the Dallas Mavericks and more than 100 acres in Irving near the former Texas Stadium site — large enough to build a destination casino resort.

Their community outreach is just one element in a multipart strategy that also includes hefty political donations and intense lobbying by Sands and other gambling interests to overcome resistance to high-end casinos and legalized sports betting.

[…]

“(Their chances) haven’t improved at all. In fact, they’ve gotten worse from last session,” Rob Kohler, a consultant for the Texas Baptists Christian Life Commission, said of efforts to legalize gambling. Legislative opposition to gambling among Republicans increased after the March primaries, Kohler said.

Sands’ latest efforts to gear up for the next session reinforces statements made by Sands chief lobbyist Andy Abboud shortly after the 2023 outcome, when he vowed to “continue to press forward with our efforts in Texas.”

[…]

Chris Wallace, president and CEO of the North Texas Commission, said his group has formed an exploratory committee to examine the issue and helped organize the conference as part of an effort to “really get our arms around” all sides of the argument over legalized gambling before lawmakers act.

He said he’s “doubtful” that the Legislature will take final action in the next session, predicting that the push for legalized gambling may require a “multi-session strategy” possibly stretching into the biennial sessions of 2027 or 2029.

See here for some background. Why they think doing the same thing but even harder will work in the future when it has failed so many times in the past is a question I cannot answer. I will once again point out that nowhere in this story does the name “Dan Patrick” appear. Until such time that either Dan Patrick says that expanded gambling is A-OK with him, or such time as Dan Patrick is no longer Lite Guv, I will continue to bet on their failure. I will also once again note that maybe a strategy of electing more people that support their cause might be the better path forward, but that would involve ousting some number of Republican incumbents, including as noted Dan Patrick, and these guys ain’t gonna do that. So they will keep running it back, and you can insert your own “Lucy and the football” joke here.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of August 19

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is working on its hotdish recipe as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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HISD releases its accountability ratings

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Here they are.

About half of Houston ISD schools saw their state-issued accountability rating jump by one or more letter grades this year, a dramatic improvement in scores following a turbulent first year under state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles.

HISD released its projected campus accountability ratings Monday, though the grades remain preliminary because a Travis County judge issued a temporary restraining order last week blocking the release of the Texas Education Agency’s official 2024 ratings.

Out of HISD’s roughly 265 schools with ratings, 149 improved their A-through-F scores by one or more letter grade, while 87 saw no change and 29 saw their score slip, according to data released by the district.

“We are incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to achieve in one year,” Miles said in a press release. “Across the district, schools delivered significant improvements in student achievement on state assessments. … We will continue to provide high-quality instruction that builds on this growth.”

[…]

HISD said it used the state’s methodology to calculate its scores, and chose to release them despite the wider legal challenges. In early August, HISD released its preliminary scores in aggregate form, but did not publish individual campus scores until Monday.

See here and here for some background. HISD did the same thing last year, and you can see those grades as well in the searchable database in this story and in the Chron story. As I said before, I’m glad to see these improvements (though as the story notes, some schools including NES schools got worse grades this year) – we need to get these improvements, for the students and for our goal of getting rid of this guy – but the price we are paying is far too steep. I don’t have anything else to add to that. The Press has more.

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Parents of Santa Fe school shooter found not negligent

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

The parents of the accused gunman in the 2018 Santa Fe school shooting were found not liable for negligence by a Galveston County jury Monday.

The civil case was filed shortly after the shooting by parents of the victims and several wounded survivors. They accused Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos of failing to recognize their son’s deteriorating mental health condition and inadequately securing the family’s firearms, ultimately leading to the shooting that left eight students and two teachers dead.

“If someone commits a crime, we hold that person responsible for the crime they committed, not the parents,” said Lori Laird, an attorney for the defense. “What we should be looking at is what’s reasonable in a case like this.”

Speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, attorney Clint McGuire said that, while the verdict was disappointing, it still helped to raise awareness about the shooting and firearm safety.

“This is one of the largest verdicts in Galveston County history,” McGuire said. “We didn’t get the ultimate outcome we wanted, but we made progress.”

McGuire said there are currently no plans to appeal the jury’s verdict.

[…]

While the family escaped unscathed, Dimitrios and Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based ammunition company, were found liable for the shooting. Lucky Gunner previously settled with families out of court, but the jury nonetheless found the company partially responsible for the shooting.

Since Lucky Gunner previously settled the claim, the jury’s findings were purely a matter of legal procedure and did not grant the plaintiffs anything extra in compensation. The company sold the then 17-year-old more than 100 rounds of ammunition used in the shooting. At no point did they request identification from Dimitrios.

It remains unclear how plaintiffs intend to collect the millions owed to them by Dimitrios, who is currently in a state mental health facility.

See here for a bit of background; as noted in that post, I had not followed this particular shooting closely. I’m okay with this verdict – while there are times when the parents of a mass shooter can and should be held responsible, this didn’t look like a clear case of that to me. I’m glad that the ammunition supplier will have to pay out – I very much favor lawsuits against the profit-seeking enablers of these massacres.

All of this is against a backdrop of the extreme need for legislative mitigations, beginning with the corrupt Supreme Court and going from there. Lawsuits like this have become the only means for finding any kind of accountability, and that’s among the many, many things that are wrong with this picture. We have a long way to go, but we can get there. The Trib and Texas Public Radio have more.

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Everything you wanted to know about trees in Houston but were afraid to ask

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

A good overview.

In the weeks following the storm, Houstonians had to dodge fallen trees, branches, debris and more across the region. In fact, Hurricane Beryl potentially impacted about 50 percent of urbanized-area trees, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.

“Hurricanes don’t discriminate,” said Aaron Stottlemyer, head of the forest analytics department at Texas A&M Forest Service.

Despite what many think, strong winds aren’t the sole reason many of Houston’s trees were damaged. Lack of maintenance, wind levels, and the biology of trees all have an impact on the strength and health of Houston’s trees.

Here’s what we know about what causes damage to trees and how public entities provide maintenance:

[…]

City departments cannot enter private properties for trimming, pruning or removing trees. Property owners are responsible for the maintenance of their trees.

“Regarding how trees could be impacted by the next event, it really depends on a lot of factors including wind speed and duration, amount of rain, soil conditions at that time, and how well trees were maintained leading up to the event,” Stottlemyer said.

Eric North, a certified urban forester with Arbor Day Foundation, said owners need to remember trees are a long-term investment and are living organisms – they must be planted, pruned, maintained and inspected.

Healthy trees can better withstand storms and recover from damage.

He recommends residents hire certified arborists to inspect a tree before and after a storm.

Trees at risk of causing dangerous situations include those that might have been standing straight one day and then leaning over the next day, those whose soil seems to be off, or those with large branches hanging off.

If a property owner plants a new tree, they need to consider its position in 10-20 years, North said.

Most trees can’t handle floods for a long time and can go into drought-like situations. To help the trees, owners can manage water resources beforehand by not overwatering or underwatering a tree, he said.

If a tree is flooded, there isn’t much an owner can do but watch the tree over time and then have a professional make an assessment.

“We don’t want to save trees that can be dangerous,” he said.

Trees for Houston, a nonprofit committed to planting, protecting and promoting trees, provides a list of resources for tree maintenance before and after storms. Click here to check them out.

The main point to understand about the storms from this year is that the drought of 2011 really did a lot of damage, both to individual trees and to the canopy as a whole. Trees that might have been healthy enough to withstand these two storms had there been no drought were sufficiently weakened as to be vulnerable. The story also covers how the city and utilities like CenterPoint do tree maintenance, and as this section notes, the rest is on us. If you’ve got a big tree on your property, it’s a good idea to call an arborist out once a year or so for inspection and maintenance as needed, so you can get rid of the branches that might become falling objects before that can happen. Read the rest for more.

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The Miles exodus continues

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Brutal.

Sarah Malik used to think Houston ISD’s Lantrip Elementary School was a great fit for her daughter.

But after the state takeover of the district in June 2023, Malik said the environmental science magnet school in Eastwood, which they loved for the tenured teachers and welcoming community, began to change. Her child’s art teacher was reassigned, and students were discouraged from reading books after finishing their work, she said.

After the school’s principal and several teachers departed in the spring, Malik knew they had to go. Her daughter is now enrolled in The Kipling School, a private campus.

“We were blindsided all year with the changes that were happening,” Malik said.

Malik is one of thousands of parents who pulled their child from HISD this year. Several told the Chronicle they were leaving the district due to the stringent reforms, plummeting morale, principal and teacher departures or cookie-cutter lessons that they said did not account for a child’s individual learning needs during the previous academic year.

“I don’t want to risk another year of her being frustrated with learning,” Malik said.

HISD’s reported “membership,” or the number of students enrolled in the district on a specific day, was about 170,800 on Thursday, down by about 9,000 students, or 5%, compared to the fourth day of school last year, according to district data. The early data, however, does not reflect the official enrollment count of the state’s largest school district.

The district’s official enrollment will not be finalized until Oct. 25, but it appears to be on track to drop below 180,000 students this year. It reported an enrollment of about 184,000 students last year, and budget documents project enrollment to drop to about 179,600 this year, which would be its lowest enrollment in at least a decade.

State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said “people have different circumstances” so HISD enrollment will fluctuate for the first few weeks of the school year, which started two weeks earlier than last year. He said during a news conference last week that he is going to see where the dust settles before analyzing enrollment or retention strategies.

“Just like every year, students enroll over the next two or three weeks,” Miles said. “We will have kids coming to school all the way until Labor Day. I wish every kid would come on Aug. 12 or the very first day of school, but that doesn’t happen. The numbers are changing every day … but we feel confident that we’re going to keep growing in our enrollment until September.”

[…]

Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, an associate professor in the University of Houston’s College of Education, said although HISD saw improved performance on the reading and math State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, the culture changes in the district’s schools have driven some students out — and it will be tough to convince them to come back.

“Culture is probably an important reason to consider why families might leave, and I hope that the district can figure out how to ensure a basic level of quality, while also making sure schools continue to be a good place to learn and a good place for teachers and principals to work,” Snodgrass Rangel said.

Similarly to last year, the district’s data shows membership declines are largest within schools in the New Education System program that was implemented last year, although the number of students at non-NES schools has declined as well. The NES model includes standardized curriculum that teachers must follow, extended campus hours, timed lessons and the conversion of libraries to Team Centers.

NES campuses reported an 8% decline in the number of students enrolled on the fourth day, while membership at non-NES campuses decreased by less than 3%. The starkest divide was among middle schools, where NES programs lost about 11% of students compared to less than a 1% decline at non-NES campuses.

The district’s declining enrollment, however, is not new this year, but a yearslong trend faced by several large urban school districts, and it predates the appointment of the board and superintendent to the 274-campus district. Measured every October, enrollment in the last decade peaked in the 2016-17 school year at 216,106.

“I don’t know that HISD is unique overall (in its enrollment decline,) but when you disaggregate these numbers, the numbers are clearly driven by the NES schools, and that suggests that there’s something unique that’s happening in HISD that likely is connected to the reform,” Snodgrass Rangel said.

A precipitous enrollment decline, led by the parents who have the means to take their kids elsewhere, has long been one of my main fears about the effects of the Miles takeover. Turns out that the more you make a place unpleasant to be, the more that people don’t want to be there.

Miles is right about one thing, that the Day One numbers are always lower than the final tally will be. Some number of students do indeed not show up right away, for a variety of reasons. We’ll get a more accurate count in a few weeks. But the fact remains that HISD projected a mild decline in the population, with Miles even speculating that the recent STAAR results might lure some people back. At this point, it would take a miracle to get close to that optimistic assessment.

We may have another year of improved performance on the metrics that Miles was brought in to improve. That would be good, and also bring us a step closer to kicking his ass to the curb. Whatever does happen there, it’s nearly impossible at this point for me to call this experience “successful”, even if it does succeed by its own standard. It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage. I will forever be furious about that.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A free word of advice for Fort Bend County

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Start building out a real mass transit network, like, now.

In just one year, Fort Bend County gained 27,000 residents – cementing its position as one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, according to the most recent U.S. census data.

This trend of rapid growth will continue into the coming decades as projections show Fort Bend doubling in size, reaching nearly 2 million residents by 2050.

[…]

The goal is to try and stay ahead of the population that’s coming, but [Fort Bend County’s economic development director Carlos] Guzman says that’s proven to be a difficult task.

“The challenge is always keeping up with the infrastructure, because you cannot build roads fast enough to accommodate all this growth,” he said.

One of the major developments is plans to expand the Fort Bend County Toll Road over the Brazos River at Sienna. The goal is to help the flow of traffic throughout the county and open up more opportunities for development on the west side of Brazos River.

“If it takes you 30 minutes to get anywhere then it takes away from the charm.” Guzman said.

While [County Commissioner Dexter] McCoy applauds efforts to increase mobility, he wants to ensure that the county is taking an intentional approach that will increase transportation options for all residents.

“It can’t just be about expanding concrete, it also has to be about what are the other modes of transportation that we’re going to employ to get people around?” he said.

Angie Wierzbicki, a Missouri City resident, said she’d like to see more multi-modal transportation models.

“Obviously, we have a huge growth in numbers. We do need roads, but I wish there was also emphasis on other transportation,” she said.

The demand for alternative transportation is clear. According to data from Fort Bend Transit – the county’s park and ride service – the organization made more than 11,700 trips in the month of May with an average of 536 trips per day.

McCoy said his office wants to move Fort Bend Transit from a demand response system to a fixed route system. But as the county continues to grow, it will take intentional planning to ensure the transit systems buses can easily navigate through new neighborhoods and reach residents.

Start. Planning. For. That. Now. Take it from your older cousin over in Harris County, the best time to build a transit network is before you get to be too big and crowded and built on all-car-all-the-time assumptions. It is not possible to build enough car lanes. Even if you could for your highways – and again, and speaking from decades of painful, expensive experience, you absolutely cannot – all that traffic eventually dumps out onto your surface roads and into your parking lots, which will not be able to handle all that extra throughput.

Start doing it now, while there’s still time to plan for that growth and room to accommodate bus lanes or even (heaven forfend) rail lines. I guarantee, if you wake up some day in the 2040s without having done any of this and realize just how screwed you now are, it still won’t be too late to start, but it will be much harder and more expensive and disruptive, and there will be larger and more powerful entrenched interests to fight you over it. The best time to build out transit is always “twenty years ago”. Well, congratulations, that’s where and when you are now. Don’t screw it up.

Whether you decide to scale up Fort Bend Transit or work to expand Metro into Fort Bend – I know, Metro cannot be trusted right now, but that won’t be the case forever – is your call. You’ll obviously want to factor in connectivity with Metro, and that can be messy, but deal with it anyway. Do what we didn’t do when we were in your position and think long term. I wish you the best.

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Not that Bill White

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The curse of a common name.

Bill White

Former Houston Mayor Bill White said he has never been to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, after a New York Times report erroneously included his photo in a list of visitors to the ex-president’s Florida resort, calling the mix-up “embarrassing” for himself and his wife.

A Democrat who served three terms as Houston’s mayor, from 2004 to 2010, White said he and his wife, Andrea White, have received at least a dozen calls since his image was used in a story last month examining the Trump resort’s ties to conspiracy theory promoters, election deniers and ultra-right-wing personalities. He was incorrectly identified as a frequent Mar-a-Lago visitor since Trump left office in 2021, instead of the correct Bill White, a prominent conservative figure in Atlanta.

The former Houston mayor didn’t realize the error until it ran in the Times’ print edition Friday.

“It was embarrassing,” White said Sunday. “I do not have much respect for Mr. Trump because he disrespected the office of the presidency. … I was worried that many people in both parties who share my views on Mr. Trump would think that somehow I had gone to the dark side.”

I would have used stronger language than that if it had been me, but that’s how Bill White is. He made his point, as did Andrea White:

The NYT has since issued the correction. Glad we got that cleared up. This is of course not the first time there’s been a “not that Bill White” situation. That one was funny, this one is indeed embarrassing. Hopefully that will be the end of it.

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We’re stuck with CenterPoint’s useless generators

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

So what can we do about them?

No longer seen at I-10 and Sawyer

CenterPoint Energy executives said Thursday the company cannot terminate its lease for barely used generators that have already cost the utility $800 million, shocking regulators who are now turning on the investment after approving it last year.

Jason Ryan, CenterPoint’s executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs, told the Public Utility Commission of Texas that the contract can’t be terminated unless the vendor, Life Cycle Power, fails to meet its contractual obligations. The lease ends in 2029, he said.

A provision that could’ve allowed CenterPoint to terminate the contract if regulators found the investment to be not prudent expired at the end of 2023, Ryan said at a regularly scheduled PUC meeting.

“You entered into a contract you can’t terminate unless there’s vendor non-performance. And of course, these large units seem like (they) largely haven’t been run, may not ever be run, so we don’t even know they’ll not perform,” Commissioner Lori Cobos said in response. “It just seems like we’re in this circular place where y’all are coming across like your hands are tied to this contract.”

Ryan said CenterPoint could try to negotiate with Life Cycle Power to switch out the types of generators it leases “if we believe we don’t have the right assets.” CenterPoint is also willing to discuss extending the time it takes to recover its costs for the generators through rate increases. Customers are also expected to cover the company’s costs restoring power following the May derecho and July’s Hurricane Beryl, he said.

CenterPoint is allowed by law to lease generators to mitigate the risk of widespread power outages, but Ryan said the company is open to discussing whether that policy should change.

“We think we have the right tools in the toolbox for the various risks that we uniquely face in Houston, but we’re open to having that dialogue on whether or not we should continue to mitigate those risks with these tools,” he said.

[…]

Consumer advocacy groups and municipalities immediately protested when CenterPoint tried to pass on $200 million of its generator lease costs to customers in 2022. The issue ended up in front of the State Office of Administrative Hearings, and subsequent hearings revealed that the large generators had never been used and couldn’t power facilities such as hospitals if distribution systems went down in severe weather events such as hurricanes.

A pair of administrative judges found that CenterPoint’s process for assessing bids from vendors to provide the generators on a short-term basis was not competitive, citing emails between Wells and representatives from Life Cycle Power before CenterPoint issued a request for bids. Thus, the judges ruled in early 2023 that CenterPoint shouldn’t be allowed to pass on its generator costs to customers.

State Sens. Phil King and Carol Alvarado wrote letters to the PUC urging them to approve the deal anyway. In a 4-1 vote in 2023, commissioners, including current commission members Cobos and Kathleen Jackson, did just that. Only current Commissioner Jimmy Glotfelty dissented.

The generators CenterPoint leased have already added $2.39 to the average residential customer’s monthly electric bill. CenterPoint still has a few hundred million in generator costs it could seek to recover from customers in future rate increases.

If we’re going to ask the question, a couple of ideas come to mind in answer.

1. Absolutely, do not let CenterPoint recover the costs of this boondoggle. Let their investors take a haircut. Whether that’s best accomplished via legislation or just having the PUC overturn its earlier decision (more on that in a minute) or some other mechanism, I don’t care. If there are no consequences for bad decisions, there’s no incentive to avoid them.

2. Let’s also review what got us here in the first place. Why did CenterPoint think these generators were a good idea? What changes should they make to their processes to avoid that mistake in the future? Why did Sens. King and Alvarado think it was a good idea to intervene with the PUC on CenterPoint’s behalf? They owe us an explanation. Why did the PUC fold under that pressure? Are there safeguards in place to allow them to stand behind an objectively correct but potentially unpopular (if only with certain stakeholders) ruling? If not, what can we do about that?

3. What other reform ideas should we be looking at? Other states have vastly outperformed Texas in responding to utility-related disasters. Why do we keep finding ourselves in this same position? What should we have learned by now that we haven’t?

I’m open to other ideas, but this should be plenty to get us started.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Paxton special prosecutors get bad pay ruling

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Bummer for them.

Still a crook any way you look

A pair of lawyers who prosecuted Attorney General Ken Paxton on securities fraud charges won’t be paid more than a couple thousand dollars for their work on the case since 2016, a Houston-based appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision is a major blow to the special prosecutors, who have been fighting for years to be paid a higher rate.

They cut a deal with Paxton in March just weeks before the case was set to go to trial. In exchange for having his charges dismissed, Paxton agreed to do 100 hours of community service, complete 15 hours of legal ethics classes and pay about $300,000 in restitution to the alleged victims.

The fight over pay is the only unfinished argument in the nine-year-long case, one of the longest-running in Texas history.

Harris County District Court Judge Andrea Beall in October ruled that the special prosecutors should be paid $300 an hour. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 1st Court of Appeals overruled the decision.

It’s unclear if the prosecutors, Houston attorneys Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer, will appeal. Neither immediately responded to a request for comment. In October, Schaffer estimated that he alone is owed about $150,000 for about 500 hours of work.

[…]

The county says the prosecutors must be paid according to a fee schedule that sets a cap of $2,000 for pretrial work in noncapital cases.

The Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, in 2018 had ruled that the $300-an-hour rate was outside the legal limit. That might have been the end of the issue, but when the case was assigned to Beall last year, she ruled the county fee was “not reasonable” for a case of this complexity.

Collin County appealed. The Houston appeals court on Thursday said that judges do not get to decide what is a reasonable fee and must abide by fee schedules set by local judges.

Chris Kratovil, an attorney for Collin County, said he was pleased with the ruling.

“This is a win for the taxpayers of Collin County, Texas, and I’m happy to have and honored to have been part of the team to deliver that win,” Kratovil said.

Kratovil said this case should serve as an example of why private sector attorneys should not be appointed as special prosecutors when local district attorneys recuse themselves.

“If the state district judge in question had done that rather than appointing private sector lawyers from 250 miles away, none of this litigation would have been necessary,” he said. “A couple assistant district attorneys in Dallas County or Tarrant County or Denton County or Kaufman County could have handled this at no additional expense to the taxpayers.”

See here and here for the previous updates. I’ve lost any interest in this cursed case, but I’ll offer a few thoughts.

– Whatever the law says, this is ridiculous. The fee schedule in Collin County is unreasonable, and was weaponized by its County Judge and other Paxton cronies in an ugly attempt to derail the prosecution. That should not be rewarded, and lawyers should be paid fair value for their time.

– That said, if we had to do this all over again, I would agree that asking another District Attorney’s office to take the case would have made sense and almost certainly would have led to a faster resolution. (Though one should not underestimate the ratfucking capabilities of Paxton and his enablers.) Handing it off to another DA would invite allegations of unfair politics, regardless of how that was handled. I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that, but maybe there’s a better way to minimize it. I fear that requires a broader level of trust in the system as a whole, and in the age of Trump we’re not doing well or getting better on that score. I’m open to ideas here.

– We also could have avoided the lengthy pay battle if we still had and used the Public Integrity Unit in the Travis County DA’s office, for the purpose of handling criminal charges against elected officials. The reason that’s no longer a thing is because of the huge political hissy fit thrown over the Tom DeLay campaign finance saga of the Aughts; you can search my archives for the relevant links if you want. I’ll stipulate that this would be at least as controversial if the Lege hadn’t kneecapped the PIU after the DeLay situation. Again, I’m open to other ideas here.

We’ll see if they keep pursuing this despite their differences. (UPDATE: According to the Press, they will appeal.) In the meantime, there’s the matter of Paxton serving his sentence.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will work at a food bank as part of a deal he struck with prosecutors earlier this year in his recently closed fraud case, his attorney Dan Cogdell said Thursday.

Cogdell declined to provide more information about where or when it’s taking place, citing privacy and security concerns.

“I’m not going to get into the weeds of it because I don’t think it’s anybody’s business,” Cogdell said. “I don’t want protestors showing up.”

Paxton reached a deal in March just weeks before his criminal case on securities fraud charges was set to go to trial. In exchange for having his charges dismissed, Paxton agreed to do 100 hours of community service, complete 15 hours of legal ethics classes and pay about $300,000 in restitution to the victims. He did not admit any wrongdoing.

That’s fine, I’m sure the food bank that gets saddled with him won’t want to deal with that either, but if someone tweets it out while he’s there, well, what are you going to do? I hope that someone has to sign off on Paxton actually doing real work while he’s there and that this part of his sentence is not completed until he does all 100 of those hours in a satisfactory fashion. I also hope someone is checking up on the other parts of the agreement. If this is all we’re going to get out of this madness, let’s make sure we actually get it.

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Rep. Nehls sued for allegedly having a homophobic workplace

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It sure has been a year for Rep. Troy Nehls, hasn’t it?

Rep. Troy Nehls

A gay former staffer for U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, sued the congressman’s office Friday, saying he was effectively forced from his job after a history of homophobic behavior by the lawmaker and his chief of staff.

Alex Chadwell, who served as a legislative correspondent and field representative for Nehls from 2021 to 2023, alleged he was subjected to homophobic comments and lost responsibilities after Nehls confirmed Chadwell was gay.

“The Representative, his Chief of Staff and his Special Advisor all regularly made offensive comments about gay people, directed toward Plaintiff,” Chadwell’s lawsuit said. “Considered as a whole, the hostile environment was sufficiently severe and/or pervasive to change the terms and conditions of Plaintiff’s employment and it resulted in a constructive termination.”

Nehls’ office denied the allegations.

[…]

Chadwell’s family was friends with Nehls and Chadwell worked in Nehls’ Washington office, according to the lawsuit. During that time, he said Nehls’ chief of staff, Robert Schroeder, often made derisive comments about gay people, including “gays go to hell” and that men who were not “manly” or “masculine” were more likely to be gay. Schroeder also told Chadwell not to engage with gay constituents, according to the lawsuit.

Schroeder once said of gay men having sexual relations: “I don’t mess with that at all— I don’t like that lifestyle,” according to the lawsuit. He also said that the office would not support pro-LGBTQ legislation and also made disparaging remarks about Muslims and Indian Americans.

Nehls also made homophobic remarks, according to the lawsuit, which was first reported by Politico, including that the Office did not support gay people.

Chadwell transferred to Nehls’ district office, citing the environment in the Washington office. Chadwell said he would have otherwise remained in the Washington office. The lawsuit said Schroeder encouraged Chadwell to leave the office because he was gay.

“Mr. Schroeder soon began telling Plaintiff he had no future or growth potential with the Office and should explore other opportunities,” the lawsuit said. “Schroeder did this because Plaintiff is gay, and Schroeder did not want him working for Rep. Nehls.”

Schroeder told Chadwell on his last day of employment that his “lifestyle” made him incompatible with the office, according to the lawsuit.

“Mr. Chadwell was deeply offended and disturbed that, up until his last day in the Office, the Office continued to isolate, ostracize and harass him because of his sexual orientation,” the lawsuit said.

So just checking the scoreboard, that’s one ethics investigation, one allegation of stolen valor, and now one hostile workplace lawsuit. Quite the trilogy, and it’s all happened since March. I’m sure it must be exhausting.

This is where I would like to say that this has “heated up” the race in CD22, or whatever other trope we like to use in horse-race politics. That possibility hasn’t come up in any of these stories, and I doubt it will outside of my own mention. On the one hand, while CD22 was redistricted to be redder than it had become by 2020, it’s still not ridiculously red. It really shouldn’t be competitive, but given a combination of a strong Democratic candidate, a national environment that favors Democrats, and a scandal-tainted Republican incumbent, it’s surely not too hard to imagine a race with the potential to be a lot closer than one might have expected. Elections always have the capacity to surprise, though as often as not one can at least see the possibility from a little ways out. I’m saying that could be the case here.

Now to be sure, we don’t know what the environment will be. The vibes and the momentum are on the Dem side, and we still have the convention to build on it, but the Dems started in a hole that they’re still climbing out of, and if we’ve learned one thing from this cycle, it’s that things can change dramatically in a hurry. So let’s light a candle for the vibes but not count on them just yet. Marquette Greene-Scott is a perfectly fine candidate, but she’s not raised any money, which is the surest way to be overlooked that there is. I find that very frustrating, in the sense that it should be possible for coordinated campaigns or other campaign super-structures to notice these possibilities and invest a little venture capital into them – why not throw $50K or $100K at Greene-Scott, to build some infrastructure that might also benefit Colin Allred, or the 2026 challenger to Nehls? – but that’s just not how it works. It is what it is.

Anyway. Whatever else happens, I’ll be very interested in seeing what the precinct data looks like in CD22. It’s a district I expected to make its way into the conversation over the course of the decade. Maybe we should start talking about it now.

Posted in Election 2024, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for August 18

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“Vice President Kamala Harris’ announcement of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate has introduced an unexpected issue into our high-stakes political discourse: casual wear.”

“How Paul Wellstone Helped Give Us Tim Walz”.

“It may be that the effort to actually apply this test that the court has handed down will only further illustrate just how fundamentally lawless this opinion is. It’s not only, in my view, wrong as a matter of constitutional theory; I don’t think it sets forth anything like an administrable test, and I think that this next phase will only underscore that set of failings.”

“What is it about Orbán that right-wingers are supporting when they say that they like what he’s done in Hungary?”

“However, a growing body of evidence shows school vouchers have the potential to wreak deep monetary and academic havoc on the children those programs claim to serve.”

“The underlying idea of the internet of animals is to tune into the planet’s hidden phenomena — the flight paths followed by sharp-shinned hawks, the precise fates befalling Arctic terns that die young, the exact landscape requirements of critically endangered saiga antelope — by attaching tiny, solar-powered tracking devices, some weighing less than a paperclip, to all kinds of organisms and even some inanimate objects (glaciers, ocean plastic debris). The inexpensive, globe-spanning system of animal tagging is meant to help scientists understand the precise drivers of global change, and much more, by tracking thousands of tagged animals from space and tying their experiences to the broader impacts facing whole populations or even species.”

“The family of Isaac Hayes is suing Donald Trump and his campaign for continued unauthorized use of the Sam & Dave hit song “Hold on, I’m Coming,” which was co-written by the late soul icon.”

RIP, Maurice Williams, lead singer of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, whose #1 hit “Stay” was featured in the movie Dirty Dancing.

“I’m not sure what there is to analyze about how the Kamala Harris campaign is different. What’s different is right there in front of us. I don’t think we can remove from the mix that winning, or at least having an energy that makes it seem like you’re in the hunt is transformative.”

I’d watch a CSI variant on public health officials tracking down the source of a foodborne illness.

“J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newly crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif.”

Lock her up.

RIP Frank Selvy, former college and NBA basketball star who in 1954 scored 100 points in a game, still the NCAA men’s record.

“The biggest voting gap is not between never-married men and women, much less married couples. It’s between divorced men and women. Divorced men are 14 points more likely to vote for Trump than their female counterparts. In contrast, single men prefer Trump by 9 points over single women, and married men are only 5 points Trumpier than married women.”

RIP, Wally Amos, better known as Famous Amos, talent agent turned cookie mogul who created those well-known chocolate chip cookies. Mark Evanier shares a memory of him.

RIP, Gena Rowlands, two-time Oscar nominated and three-time Emmy winning actor, wife of the late director John Cassavetes.

RIP, Floyd Newsum, visionary artist and cofounder of the Houston nonprofit Project Row Houses.

RIP, Greg Kihn, singer and guitarist best known for “The Breakup Song” and “Jeopardy”, later famously parodied by Weird Al as “I Lost On Jeopardy”. That’s Kihn himself as the driver of the car at the end of the video.

RIP, John Lansing, former CEO of NPR.

RIP, Peter Marshall, Emmy award winning host of the great game show Hollywood Squares.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

Beware the voter registration attacks

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

County election departments across Texas are trying to reassure voters amid a flood of formal challenges questioning whether their registrations are valid.

The challenges, filed by conservative groups and individual activists, seek to remove tens of thousands of voters from the rolls on the grounds that they don’t live in the county, are not citizens or have died.

Election officials say the challenges are complicating the work they’re already doing to keep their voter rolls updated. They want voters to know that they’re following state and federal laws that protect voters from being improperly removed from the rolls if someone questions their eligibility.

Multiple election officials told Votebeat that the majority of the challenges they’ve received are against voters whose status their offices had already flagged through their daily voter list maintenance. In a few cases, the challenges start a process that could lead to careful removal of voters after the November election.

“Even though a challenge is filed, doesn’t mean that you will be automatically dropped,” said Trudy Hancock, the Brazos County elections administrator. “There is a process in place to protect the voter who’s been challenged.”

At this point in the election cycle, voters aren’t at risk of being dropped from the rolls because of a challenge. Under federal law, election officials can’t cancel a voter’s registration in the period 90 days ahead of Election Day, except for voters who voluntarily cancel their registration or who are convicted of a felony.

Still, election officials are required to process the voter eligibility challenges they receive, and act on valid ones. Election administrators in Collin, Travis, Hays, Brazos, Tarrant, and Denton counties and others have been sifting through large volumes of these, which they began receiving in June, targeting thousands of voters.

The large-scale challenge effort is being led by Houston-based right-wing group True the Vote, which has been working for years to purge the rolls of voters it perceives as ineligible ahead of the November presidential election. It’s part of a wave of challenges aimed at voters in several states, including such battlegrounds as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The group is using an online tool called IV3 that matches voter data with change-of-address records from the U.S. Postal Service. Activists relying on that tool have been delivering stacks of challenges to election offices, or emailing election administrators with spreadsheets listing voters’ names. True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

The effort has drawn criticism from election officials, courts and voting-rights advocates. For one thing, they say, the postal database that True the Vote relies on is outdated and not a reliable source for determining voter eligibility. For another, they say, the effort gives credence to false claims that large numbers of people are voting illegally by exploiting deficiencies in registration records.

A federal judge in Georgia found this year that True the Vote’s 2020 list of voters to challenge “utterly lacked reliability” and “verges on recklessness.”

“The Court has heard no testimony and seen no evidence of any significant quality control efforts, or any expertise guiding the data process,” he wrote.

Such efforts to challenge voters’ eligibility en masse are “inadequate to address voter eligibility by themselves and also redundant to the work already done by election officials,” according to research on the rise of mass voter challenges by Protect Democracy, a national nonpartisan group promoting fair elections and anti-authoritarian policies.

The report added: “These efforts are based on unsubstantiated and false claims that the rolls are replete with dead voters, voters registered in other locations, and, most recently, noncitizens. Furthermore, they falsely imply that any inaccuracy in the voter rolls equates to or otherwise enables voter fraud. In reality, voter registration rolls are being continuously updated by election officials.”

1. True The Vote sucks. They are horrible people, doing horrible things, lying all the time. I hope they spend their lives being attacked by mosquitoes.

2. It’s never a bad time to check your voter registration status. Look yourself up on your county website or call your county elections office if you have any questions. If you haven’t changed addresses, even temporarily, you’ve probably not got anything to worry about. The main problem with TTV’s approach is that they mix up people with the same name and/or birth date, so if your name is remotely common you could be caught up in their deceit. These are the challenges that county officials are best at detecting, but again, it’s never a bad time to double check.

3. If you have moved, even temporarily, make sure you or someone at the address where you are registered can respond to any mail from the elections office that may be sent to verify your location. That’s the situation that can legitimately trip you up, though again it’s usually only an issue for people who are not regular voters. Check with the people like that in your life and it should be fine.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Paxton to investigate CenterPoint

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Whatever.

We need a “PaxtonPointLess” graffiti

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Monday his office will investigate CenterPoint’s conduct during Hurricane Beryl, which wiped out power to millions of the utility’s Houston-area customers last month.

“My office is aware of concerning allegations regarding CenterPoint and how its conduct affected readiness during Hurricane Beryl, a storm that left millions of Texans without power,” Paxton said in a statement. He did not detail what laws CenterPoint might have violated, but said his office would investigate “allegations of fraud” and improper use of public money.

CenterPoint spokesperson John Sousa said the company would cooperate fully with the attorney general’s investigation.

[…]

After the winter freeze in February 2021 that knocked out electricity to millions statewide and left more than 240 people dead, Paxton announced investigations into a dozen power and utility companies, including CenterPoint, for potential price gouging or other deceptive trade practices. His office filed a lawsuit against Griddy soon after the storm, but he has not provided public updates on the other inquiries, including whether they are ongoing or have been closed.

I would keep my expectations very low here. That’s partly because of his track record following Uri, partly because I think the bulk of the fixes for this need to be legislative and regulatory, and partly because Paxton is an opportunistic grifter who’s chasing headlines above all else. Will anyone be surprised if down the line he claims that “DEI” is the reason for CenterPoint’s failures? He got his name in the papers making it look like he’s Doing Something. He can now move on back to the things he actually wants to do.

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More on the cryptomining noise problem

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It does sound like hell.

Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage. And one local doctor—ears, nose, and throat specialist Salim Bhaloo—says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine’s noise on an almost weekly basis.

“I’m sure it increases their cortisol and sugar levels, so you’re getting headaches, vertigo, and it snowballs from there,” Bhaloo says. “This thing is definitely causing a tremendous amount of stress. Everyone is just miserable about it.”

Not all data centers make noise. And industry insiders say they have a technical fix for the ones that do, which involves replacing their facilities’ loud air fans with much quieter liquid-based cooling solutions. But some of their touted methods, including “immersion cooling” in oil, are expensive and untested on a large scale.

A representative for Marathon Digital Holdings, the company that owns the mine, did not answer questions about health impacts, but told TIME that it is working to remove the noisy fans from the site. “By the end of 2024, we intend to have replaced the majority of air-cooled containers with immersion cooling, with no expansion required. Initial sound readings on immersion containers indicate favorable results in sound reduction and compliance with all relevant state noise ordinances,” they wrote in an email.

The number of commercial-scale Bitcoin mining operations in the U.S. has increased sharply over the last few years; there are now at least 137. Similar medical complaints have been registered near facilities in Arkansas and North Dakota. And the Bitcoin mining industry is urgently trying to push bills through state legislatures, including in Indiana and Missouri, which would exempt Bitcoin mines from local zoning or noise ordinances. In May, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a “Bitcoin Rights” bill to protect miners and prevent any future attempts to ban the industry.

While some Granbury residents are fiercely protesting the mine, many others feel powerless to alter the will of a company with legal, political, and financial might. And the data center industry at large is only growing more dominant, thanks to the twin forces of Bitcoin mining and AI, the latter which spends a vast amount of energy training generative models to find patterns in data sets. According to a recent report, data centers will use 8% of total U.S. power by 2030, up from 3% in 2022. And if operators continue to locate the centers near existing communities and prioritize profits above all else, then the story of Granbury could become the story of countless small towns across America.

[…]

Dr. Bhaloo, the ENT doctor in Granbury, says he’s seen an uptick since the new year in patients whose ailments—including ringing in their ears, vertigo, and headaches—could be related to the mine. “These people here, they’re good country folks, and Bitcoin, to them, is almost a foreign alien thing,” he says. “They don’t understand it. And [the noise] is detrimental to their health and anxiety.” Dr. Stephen Krzeminski, another Granbury ENT, agrees. “Sonic damage is real, there’s no disputing that,” he says. Krzeminski says he believes the mine is causing “mental and physical” health issues. “Imagine if I had vuvuzela in your ear all the time,” he says.

The level of noise is appalling to Dr. Thomas Münzel, a German cardiologist who is a leader in the growing field of scientific researchers measuring the impact of urban and industrial noise on humans. For the last 15 years, Münzel has studied how transportation and urban noise, especially at night, can be debilitating stressors on the heart, brain, and cardiovascular systems. In one study, he exposed young, healthy students to noise events up to 63 decibels, and found that their vascular function diminished after just a single night. In other studies, he’s found that nighttime noise pollution directly leads to heart failure and molecular changes in the brain, which may lead to impaired cognitive development of children and make some people more prone to developing dementia.

“The European Environmental Agency tells us that everything above 55 decibels is making us sick,” he says. The fact that the Granbury Bitcoin mine is emitting 70 or even 90 decibels on a nightly basis is “like torture,” he says. “The most spectacular cardiovascular diseases will develop. They have to stop the machines.”

There’s a lot more, so read the rest. The noise issue was touched on in that earlier post about the sudden concern about how much electricity all these cryptominers that Greg Abbott has welcomed into the state are gobbling up. While the science here is still emerging, we do know that loud noise has deleterious effects on people, and these mines generate a ton of noise. This should be a concern to all of us, which adds on to the energy-usage case against these monstrosities. It’s also a political opportunity, as there is common ground to be found with these folks who are very much not being served by their state government. (The municipal and county folks are taking action, but we all know how limited that’s going to be.) I mean, Hood County went 81% for Trump in 2020. The best we can hope for is not going to be much. But you’ve got to start somewhere. Hood County is a growing place, and this is an issue where Dems can be the candidates who are actually listening to the voters. It’s the right thing to do, and what do we have to lose?

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on More on the cryptomining noise problem

Paxton finds a new target to bully

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Vile, disgusting, authoritarian – one quickly runs out of adjectives.

Still a crook any way you look

Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down an immigrants rights group in Houston, alleging it is “systematically” flouting nonprofit rules by advocating too aggressively against state laws and political candidates.

It is the latest attempt by the Republican attorney general to shutter groups aiding immigrants in Texas. Paxton has sought, unsuccessfully so far, to close a handful of Catholic-affiliated migrant shelters along the border, alleging they are engaged in human trafficking.

But the drive against FIEL Houston, a longtime nonprofit advocating for immigrants, takes a new tact, arguing the group has run afoul of federal rules governing how far nonprofits can go in seeking to influence legislation, and barring certain nonprofits from backing political candidates.

“FIEL openly flouts these rules,” Paxton’s office said in a lawsuit filed this summer.

The suit, which was not reported, points to a series of social media posts in which the group deemed former President Donald Trump “El Hijo Del Diablo,” or “son of the Devil,” called Gov. Greg Abbott “a violent racist Fascist man,” and advocated repeatedly against SB4, the state’s migrant deportation law that has been blocked by the courts.

Paxton is asking Harris County District Judge Ravi K. Sandill to revoke FIEL’s corporation and “dissolve its existence.” Sandill heard arguments in the case on Thursday.

FIEL argued in court filings that Paxton is retaliating after the group challenged state election laws in court, including in one lawsuit that specifically names Paxton as a defendant. They argue it is the latest example of what a judge in July deemed “outrageous and intolerable” behavior by Paxton to “selectively interpret” laws to advance his own political agenda.

“Paxton has filed a series of unsuccessful lawsuits targeting non-profit organizations with whose content or mission he disagrees,” the group said in court filings. “These are not ‘content neutral’ state actions across the political spectrum or based on conduct.”

[…]

“When it is an election year, if an organization makes public statements that are overwhelmingly negative toward one candidate and does not do the same with respect to other candidates, that is a factor strongly indicating participation in, or intervention in, a political campaign,” said Johnny Buckles, a law professor at the University of Houston.

While the Internal Revenue Service polices nonprofits’ tax statuses, Buckles said state attorneys general do have jurisdiction over them because they are incorporated in the states. However, he said state attorneys general typically go after nonprofits for misusing money, rather than engaging in politics.

“This is not a common type of proceeding,” he said of the Paxton suit.

Indeed. And it’s impossible to imagine Paxton taking similar action against a rightist 503(c). His only aim is political, and he always acts in the same interest.

Obviously, we need to vote his ass out. Easier said than done. We could get a temporary boost from the FBI and a grand jury, but while that could take Paxton himself off the board, Greg Abbott would get to appoint a replacement until that next election. All roads lead to the ballot box. Maybe there is some federal intervention that could help, I don’t know. I cordially invite every Democratic member of Texas’ Congressional delegation to ponder that question. And be as ruthless about it as Paxton has been. The Trib and the Houston Landing have more.

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Heat mapping

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Pretty cool. Or hot. Kinda both. Your choice.

Chris and Rachel Powers were ready for their second drive of the day when they parked outside a bakery in Houston’s East End. They cracked the passenger-side window of their Audi and fastened a thermal sensor to it.

“It’s science in motion,” Chris said as the couple began driving their route at 3 p.m. sharp.

The Powers participated in a community-led project by the Houston Harris Heat Action Team, or H3AT, which deployed more than 100 volunteers to find Houston and Harris County areas most susceptible to the urban heat island effect. The volunteers drove on predetermined routes throughout the city and county at three different times of day: from 6-7 a.m., 3-4 p.m., and 7-8 p.m.

According to the H3AT, volunteers covered 1,261 miles across Houston and Harris County, making it the largest heat-mapping campaign in Texas and the United States.

The campaign’s organizers were looking deeper into how Houston is affected by the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon in which areas of the city become hotter because natural landscapes, such as trees, vegetation and soil, are being replaced with artificial materials that absorb heat, such as concrete and paved surfaces.

Hotter temperatures can worsen air quality, cause higher electricity bills, and increase the risk of deadly heat-related illnesses. Houston was ranked as the fourth-worst urban heat island in the country by Climate Central, a nonprofit climate watchdog group.

H3AT previously completed a heat-mapping campaign in 2020. Saturday’s campaign was intended to be more comprehensive and focus on lower-income communities, which research shows are more susceptible to the urban heat island effect than wealthier neighborhoods.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” said Meredith Jennings, the senior program manager of the Houston Advanced Research Center. “We learned a lot from that first campaign, it helped us identify several places where we wanted to do tree-planting events. We were only able to go so many places in 2020, so this is an opportunity for us to replicate that effort and expand it so that we can use this data in more places.”

The Houston Advanced Research Center, and its partner organizations, was awarded $15 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service last year to increase tree canopy — the layer of tree leaves and branches that provide shade — across Houston and Harris County. The grant is part of a five-year program to assess and monitor urban tree canopy, conduct another heat island mapping campaign, provide youth employment, water and maintain tree plantings, and create jobs for urban and community forestry.

Although tree canopy is typically considered a remedy for the urban heat island effect, Harris County’s overall tree canopy shrank by almost 10% between 2011 and 2021, according to federal satellite data analyzed by Rice University’s Kinder Institute. Recent severe weather events, like the May 16 derecho and Hurricane Beryl last month, also uprooted many trees across the region.

[…]

The results of H3AT’s 2020 campaign measured a 17-degree difference from the map’s coolest to the hottest areas in the afternoon. It also found that areas closer to the coast receive more of a coastal breeze than areas closer to downtown or with a high concentration of buildings.

“That’s where the urban heat island effect really takes place,” Jennings said. “By expanding this campaign, we can have even more of that effect. We’re going more north and west than we did the first time.”

This is also cool for me because Chris and Rachel Powers are friends of ours and it’s always nice to see your friends in the news like this. You can go to the H3AT homepage to learn more, including other recent coverage of this effort. Learning about where the hot spots are in more detail will inform how to mitigate them – planting trees is an obvious means to that end but not the only one. Looks like this event was a one-timer, but I suspect there will be future opportunities. The Houston Advanced Research Center has more.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston, Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Heat mapping

How Houston-area students are taking on conservative school boards

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good stuff.

Rather than giving in to the common case of “senioritis,” recent Spring Woods High School graduate Cristopher Melendez spent his senior year determined to make his fellow classmates’ voices heard by Spring Branch ISD leaders.

Melendez created a student organization called the American Latino Advocacy Society — abbreviated to ALAS, or “wings” in Spanish — where students worked together to resist controversial changes in the district, often by contacting trustees and attending board meetings. The club soared to roughly 60 members when district leaders eliminated all librarians and unveiled budget cuts that closed programs and schools on the district’s majority-Latino northside.

“I think it was at the perfect time because of everything that was happening just this past year,” Melendez said. “As news came out about the (budget) deficit, it kind of fueled the fire and motivated people to join. … It was crazy motivation.”

Many teenagers probably couldn’t fathom willingly spending an evening at a school board meeting. But for Melendez and an increasing number of students across the Greater Houston area, it’s becoming a routine — and a guaranteed way to make their voices heard.

As conservative school board trustees in several districts — including Conroe, Cy-Fair and Katy ISDs — have introduced policies that rankle the region’s more liberal youth, it has sparked a growing movement of students finding their voice by organizing to push back against their district’s leadership.

Generally, student opposition hasn’t done much to influence trustees’ decision-making. But students take pride in other wins, such as getting more young people involved in local governance and encouraging broader scrutiny of their districts.

Here’s what students across the Houston region told us about finding their voices this year, in their own words. Their responses were lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Read on to see what these kids (seven in all) had to say about their experiences. There are many others like them around the country, sadly forced into this kind of activism by the extremist bulldozing of civil rights and free speech in too many school districts. I salute them all, and I encourage everyone reading this to find a way to help them. The one missing piece in this story, which may have just been the way these conversations went, is that at some point the way forward will necessitate beating enough of these fanatics now serving on those school boards in elections. It may be possible to persuade some of them, on some matters, some of the time. But for the most part, the best (and likely only) solution is to replace them with better board members. That’s very much something that the rest of us can help with, and it’s something I want to see the HCDP and its associated groups put some effort into, once we get past this election.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I got those “Same old HGAC” blues

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t see this resolving any time soon.

Nearly seven months after Houston missed a deadline to increase its role in regional planning, negotiations with the Houston-Galveston Area Council have stalled indefinitely, despite a mandate by Houston voters in last November’s elections to renegotiate the body’s structure or withdraw from the organization entirely.

Spanning 13 counties and representing over 100 local governments, H-GAC is responsible for distributing federal funds for infrastructure, climate mitigation and workforce development projects, among other things. Houston voters approved a ballot measure last year that required the city’s membership in H-GAC to hinge on a “population proportional” voting structure based on the population of members’ jurisdictions.

Proposition B, as the ballot measure was known, was meant to rectify what advocates said was Houston and Harris County’s underrepresentation on the board and the organization’s Transportation Policy Council, which oversees regional transportation projects. If negotiations failed after 60 days, the measure dictated that the city must withdraw from H-GAC and the TPC altogether.

Since an H-GAC committee’s proposal for a new, two-layered voting structure was shot down in January, however, discussions on a compromise have been non-existent. The city has also not moved to leave either group, opening itself up to legal challenges.

“There has not been progress,” said Houston City Councilmember Sallie Alcorn, who serves as chair of the H-GAC board and supported the proposal. “It was very clear from the majority of both boards that they would not entertain more discussion on board composition.”

[…]

Organizers with Fair for Houston, the grassroots advocacy group that developed Proposition B and gathered over 20,000 signatures to get it on the ballot, said city officials had worked hard to find a compromise with skeptical board members and were disappointed that a solution was never reached.

“It’s disappointing that it died because we still believe that this is the right thing to do for all parties,” said Fair for Houston organizer Michael Moritz. “We were excited about the negotiations that occurred and thankful to most of the people on the board … who were playing ball until the very end, when they rejected it.”

Chuck Wemple, executive director of H-GAC, said that the board members did “a lot of good faith work” negotiating the rejected proposal. He said that the organization prioritizes regional cooperation, and that the nature of the board’s composition — spanning urban, suburban and rural jurisdictions — meant that there would always be instances in which some members may be dissatisfied with a decision, especially on major funding.

“Each time we’ve done this, it’s always a challenge, it’s always difficult, and there will always be entities who feel they didn’t get what they deserve,” Wemple said. “The path this stuff takes, we just do our best to be transparent about it and go forward, learn from the past and move into a better space next time.”

Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough, who sits on both the H-GAC board and transportation council, said he voted against the proposal because it would have given Houston and Harris County representatives outsized influence by giving their votes added weight, rather than holding all votes equal and adding more seats to the boards based on population.

Keough noted that while Houston and Harris County are the densest population centers in the region, growth in the suburbs far outpaces that of the city. Montgomery County’s population grew by about 14% between 2020 and 2023, according to U.S. Census population estimates, compared to 2% growth in Harris County and growth of less than 1% in Houston.

The Montgomery County judge said Proposition B was “unfair” and that he believed it to be driven by “special interests.” When asked to elaborate, he named the transportation equity nonprofit LINK Houston.

“You’d have 7 million people in the region who now have to capitulate to a very small group of people in Houston who would be determining funding for roads and bridges when there is an ideological difference between many of the outer counties and the city of Houston,” Keough said.

Gabe Cazares, executive director of LINK Houston, said Houstonians “have a vested – not special – interest in decisions made at H-GAC that affect their daily lives” and called Keough’s remarks a “distraction.”

“We encourage everyone to come back to the table, negotiate in good faith, and deliver a solution to the voters who demanded one,” Cazares said.

Moritz said the idea that Houston was trying to stifle suburban and rural input was a misconception, and noted that Fort Bend and Montgomery counties would have also received at least one additional vote each under the proposal.

“Some people had an expectation that Houston would seek to strong-arm the region if it had passed, and that was not the intent. The intent was to modernize the voting structure in a way that accounted for population,” Moritz said.

See here for the previous update. The way this has played out is exactly why so many of us felt that this reform was needed. HGAC is not representative of the people it serves, and it doesn’t care about that. Those who have the power like having that power. The likes of Mark Keough and the rural counties claim to fear being steamrolled by Houston and Harris County, when they have been doing exactly that to us.

As I said, I think we’re stuck with this for the foreseeable future. I do not expect Mayor Whitmire to rock the boat, and while litigation by the Fair for Houston backers is an option, it would be time-consuming, expensive, and not guaranteed to win. I’m not sure there’s a better way forward than continuing to point out the inequities, pledge to be a better and fairer steward of the funds than the current majority, and look for other ways to get out from under this if no progress continues to be made. It sucks, but it’s where we are.

Posted in Election 2023, Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment