Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Do we really need an engineer at the head of Public Works?

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The engineers think so. The Mayor, not so much.

Mayor John Whitmire

Mayor John Whitmire received a written rebuke from a national engineering group over plans to change city ordinance to no longer require an engineer to head Houston Public Works, according to a letter obtained by the Chronicle.

In a Nov. 7 letter, the American Society of Civil Engineers, which calls itself the “nation’s oldest engineering society,” expressed concerns about the potential change being heard at this week’s city council meeting, writing that the administration should maintain its engineering requirement for the director position should that role “continue to oversee the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of engineered public infrastructure systems that directly affect public health, safety and welfare.”

ASCE president Feniosky Peña-Mora, referencing the organization’s policy, wrote the organization encouraged “the selection and appointment of licensed professional engineers to government agency positions” that lead policy and practice surrounding public infrastructure.

The engineering organization felt it was important to highlight that keeping the public works director’s engineer requirement “ensures public safety is upheld,” an ASCE spokesperson wrote in an email Tuesday morning.

[…]

Houston City Council will hear the potential change at their Wednesday meeting.

The change, if passed Wednesday, wouldn’t necessarily eliminate the position’s current engineer requirement but expand the purview of who could take on the role. Newport previously said the ordinance would allow someone who was either an engineer or had experience leading a large organization to be the department’s leader.

Current city ordinance requires the Houston Public Works head to be a professional engineer registered in Texas. The administration has yet to provide a copy of the proposal to the Chronicle, nor has it posted publicly on this week’s council agenda.

The potential ordinance change would allow the administration to appoint Randy Macchi – the department’s chief operating officer, who has been leading the department alongside city engineer Richard Smith since April – to take on the role of director. Macchi’s appointment is also on Wednesday’s council agenda.

This earlier Chron story has some more details. I was with the ASCE up until that last paragraph above. If Randy Macchi has that kind of experience in this department, it’s hard for me to say he’s not qualified to lead it even if he isn’t an engineer. I get the ACSE’s objections and I think that they’re basically right, but perhaps they’re being too rigid in this case. I’m open to persuasion from the engineers out there, but I’m inclined to think the Mayor gets to pick their person, within reason. If it blows up in the Mayor’s face down the line, they’ll have to own that. What do you think?

UPDATE: The path has been cleared for Randy Macchi.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged American Society of Civil Engineers, Department of Public Works and Engineering, Houston, Houston City Council, John Whitmire, Randy Macchi, Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors | 5 Comments

Buzbee sued by unnamed celebrity for alleged extortion

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Okay then.

Tony Buzbee, the prominent Houston attorney representing more than 100 people in a suit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, has been sued in California for allegedly extorting “high profile” individuals, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles County Court.

The lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. Monday by an unnamed individual identified only as “John Doe,” accused Buzbee and his firm of threatening to publicize “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault — including multiple instances of rape of a minor, both male and female.” The suit claimed Buzbee weaponized allegedly baseless accusations in a bid to extort money from the unidentified plaintiff.

Attorneys from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP are representing the plaintiff. The firm is one of the largest in the world with more than 1,000 attorneys and 35 offices in countries across the globe.

“Buzbee has established a pattern of leveling baseless, fabricated and malicious allegations at high profile individuals and threatening to name them publicly if they fail to pay exorbitant sums of money,” the firm stated in a Monday release. “Buzbee then uses this money to fund his lavish lifestyle. He has deployed these threats in letters, statements to the press, his website and on social media in recent months to try to shake down well known individuals.”

The complaint filed against Buzbee alleged the Houston attorney employed a “clear playbook” for extorting celebrities. According to the unidentified plaintiff’s attorneys, Buzbee would fabricate allegations and then send a letter demanding payment. If those targeted did not pay, Buzbee would turn to various media outlets as a means to apply public pressure, according to the complaint.

While the plaintiff’s identity remains uncertain, the lawsuit accused Buzbee of employing a scheme to obtain payment from individuals associated with Combs.

“With Combs behind bars, and payment unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon, Defendants devised a scheme to obtain payments through the use of coercive threats from anyone with any ties to Combs — no matter how remote,” the complaint alleged. “Defendants specifically targeted high-profile individuals who would suffer immeasurable loss from being publicly accused of committing sex crimes, including drugging and raping minors, even if those allegations are false.”

In a statement to the Houston Chronicle, Buzbee dismissed the claims, saying they were without legal merit and “laughable.”

“We won’t allow the powerful and their high-dollar lawyers to intimidate or silence sexual assault survivors,” Buzbee said. “It is obvious that the frivolous lawsuit filed against my firm is an aggressive attempt to intimidate or silence me and ultimately my clients. That effort is a gross miscalculation. I am a U.S. Marine. I won’t be silenced or intimidated.”

Buzbee said that, on behalf of two clients alleging sexual assault, he sent a standard demand letter to a New York lawyer who represented a potential defendant. The letter was a routine part of the legal process and included no threats or requests for compensation, Buzbee said.

“The letters were sent seeking a confidential mediation in lieu of filing a lawsuit. No amount of money was included in the demand letters. No threats were made. The demand letters sent are no different than the ones routinely sent by lawyers across the country in all types of cases,” he said.

See here for some background. I’m hardly a Tony Buzbee fan, but at first glance his version of this story sounds the more plausible to me. I’m going to need to hear more from the plaintiff – and yes, it would help to know who it is – to find their allegations credible. I’m not dismissing the possibility that these charges have merit, just that there’s not enough here for me to believe them. We’ll see where this goes.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged California, lawsuit, rape, Sean Combs, sexual harassment, Texas, Tony Buzbee | 1 Comment

The Texas A&M Space Institute

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Cool.

A grassy field next to NASA’s Johnson Space Center is getting an otherworldly makeover.

Officials gathered Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Texas A&M University Space Institute, which will re-create the moon and Mars to help develop rovers, spacesuits and other new technologies. Construction is slated to begin in January and wrap up in October 2026.

“There are grand visions of what will happen in that facility as we enter into a really unprecedented time of exploration — actually returning humans to the moon and planning to go from the moon and then on to Mars,” said Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, who led the legislation that provided funding for the building.

The four-story facility will have the equivalent of two indoor football fields. One will represent the moon with slippery gray gravel, craterlike holes and a harsh light. The other will reflect Mars with a reddish sky and hard-packed terrain, plus the occasional sneaky sand trap.

A “wormhole” — or two-lane road, to be more precise — will connect the moon and Mars.

The facility is intended to be a collaborative effort. Different universities, companies and government projects will work in offices or garages that open directly to the lunar and Martian surfaces. That shared mentality has Rob Ambrose, the associate director of the institute and a professor of mechanical engineering, thinking long and hard about the color of Mars.

“We’re being very careful,” he joked. “We’re looking for some simulant material that’s somewhere between burnt orange and maroon.”

The linked story in the excerpt tells more about the purpose of this new facility, at which “companies will be able to develop spacesuits, test tools and robotics, and study actual rocks from the moon and (perhaps one day) Mars”. The A&M press release says that the facility “will support training for missions, including simulated landings on the moon and Mars, as well as advanced research and development in aeronautics, robotics, and other fields”>, and “will be vital for partnerships, both research and commercial, that help Texas businesses as well as NASA stay at the forefront of the final frontier”. One part research, one part incubator, I suppose. You’ll still have to go elsewhere to simulate being on Mars, but NASA is big enough to handle it. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what this new facility can do.

Posted in Technology, science, and math, The great state of Texas | Tagged Greg Bonnen, Johnson Space Center, NASA, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas A&M University Space Institute, The Lege | Leave a comment

Can HISD pass the next bond?

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It depends.

After Houston ISD’s historic bond failure in November, several parents, teachers and community members are wondering if or when the state’s largest school district will go back to voters to place another measure on the ballot.

[…]

Some bond opponents have said they want HISD to develop and propose a new bond at a later date — potentially as early as May 2025 — that includes more community input and transparency, a smaller price tag and a narrower focus on security upgrades and improvements to HVAC systems.

“If they come back with something that truly just meets urgent needs … in the next six to 12 months, I think there would be a lot of support behind something, as long as those numbers make some sense and there could be explanations behind those numbers,” HISD parent Heather Golden said.

After the election, Miles said he didn’t know when HISD would place another bond on the ballot, and he needed to get input from the Board of Managers before deciding. The board would need to vote to place a bond on the ballot by Feb. 14 if the district wanted to hold an election in May, according to the Texas Secretary of State.

[…]

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said that it would be risky for HISD to put a bond back on the ballot in May for several reasons, including an “air of conservatism” among Harris County voters about the economy and their personal budgets.

“Tougher economic times means fewer bonds pass,” Rottinghaus said. “People don’t want to raise their own taxes, even if it means they’re going to get something in the future as a result. Most of the time these bonds pass, but in the rare instances where they don’t, it tends to be a financial question that’s at play, so that definitely is worrisome.”

Until this year, HISD’s only bond failure in the past three decades had occurred in May, due largely to low turnout and a Republican-led campaign against a proposed tax increase. Afterward, the district proposed four consecutive school bond elections during November elections, which all succeeded.

Rottinghaus said that it’s unlikely that voters’ opinions on the economy or district leadership will change much in the next six months, but they may shift in future years. He said a bond election further down the road would be easier for the district to win, particularly if the bond is smaller and developed with more community input.

“This was a protest vote against HISD and its leadership,” Rottinghaus said. “Since it’s been exercised by voters, it may be that they feel differently when they look at a different set of bond issues, and assess where their schools are. My sense is probably it gets easier from here, if HISD handles it well and if they can shape the bond in a way that’s more appealing to people.”

However, the biggest hurdle for HISD leaders may not be partisan politics or economic concerns, but overcoming voter opposition to the state takeover and Miles if they hope to pass a bond while the intervention remains in place.

In interviews outside polling locations, dozens of voters told the Chronicle they voted against the bond because they had lost faith in Miles’ leadership, particularly after rising principal and teacher turnover.

“Given the many conversations I’ve had over the last few days and months, I feel like the sentiment is very much that the public wants an elected board to be accountable for bond funds,” said Judith Cruz, co-chair of HISD’s bond community advisory committee. “I can’t speak for voters, but given those conversations, it seems unlikely that they would support a bond until that happens.”

With all due respect to Prof. Rottinghaus, I think Judith Cruz has the right explanation here. “No trust no bond” was about Mike Miles, the takeover, and the lack of voice people rightly believe they have in their school district. Believe me when I say I know many, many people who were fervently against the bond. They were overwhelmingly Democrats and they were mad as hell about Mike Miles. I’m also a Harris County Democratic Party precinct chair, and that resolution to oppose the bond passed with zero “no” votes.

My point here is that it was Democratic opposition that doomed the bond, not some “air of conservatism” or whatever. I don’t have the full canvass for the 2024 election yet but I do have it for 2012, the last time HISD passed a bond and conveniently also a Presidential election year. I can tell you that in the 2012 election in HISD, which I remind you is a subset of Harris County, President Obama got 64.5% of the vote, fifteen points higher than the 49.4% he got countywide. I’m willing to bet that when I get the full canvass, I will find that Kamala Harris did at least as well as that. Democrats voted this bond down, and they voted it down because they do not like and do not trust Mike Miles. It’s really that simple.

Does that mean that a May 2025 bond, presumably a smaller one, is doomed? Not necessarily. Maybe Mike Miles will be visited by some ghosts over the Christmas break who will convince him to change his ways before it’s too late. Maybe the Board of Managers will grow a spine and insist on some changes that would placate the anti-Miles majority as part of a new bond package. Maybe Miles will declare victory and announce his departure at the end of the 2024-25 school year. Maybe a smaller and more focused bond, combined with stronger oversight and community involvement plus a campaign that better communicates what the bond will do, can drag itself across the finish line. I trust you can see what the common denominator of all these scenarios is. Bottom line, a bond referendum and campaign that addresses the reasons why it failed in 2024 has a chance to pass in 2025. Otherwise it will be a waste of time and effort.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Barack Obama, Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, Election 2012, Election 2024, Election 2025, Harris County, HISD, Houston, Judith Cruz, Kamala Harris, Mike Miles, precinct analysis, Texas Education Agency | 1 Comment

Welcome to Daikin Park

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Out with the old sponsor, in with the new.

Minute Maid Park’s time is up.

Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and their Houston Astros teammates will play home games at the renamed Daikin Park when next season begins.

The Astros on Monday announced a 15-year naming rights agreement for their downtown ballpark with Daikin Comfort Technologies North America, Inc., a subsidiary of Daikin Industries, Ltd., the Japan-based manufacturer of air-conditioning products.

The name change to Daikin (pronounced die-kin) will officially take effect Jan. 1, 2025, ending the stadium’s run of over two decades as Minute Maid Park, and last through the 2039 season. The Astros announced the change in a news conference at the ballpark Monday morning, unveiling a home plate-themed Daikin Park logo.

“Today we’re here for a special celebration to welcome Daikin to the Astros family,” Jim Crane, Astros owner and chairman, said at the on-field news conference. “Daikin is a global company whose North American headquarters are based right here in the Houston community, and we hope to make that name present and popular around town.”

Minute Maid Co., a formerly Houston-based division of the Coca-Cola Co., affixed its name to the Astros’ ballpark in June 2002, agreeing to pay the team an estimated $170 million over 28 years for the naming rights plus other advertising and marketing opportunities.

That agreement was to run through 2029. The Astros did not announce why it ended early, but a person with knowledge of the situation said it was a mutual decision for the team to explore finding a new naming rights partner and that the Astros did not have to buy out the rest of the Minute Maid deal.

Minute Maid will remain a marketing partner of the Astros through 2029, the team said.

[…]

The Astros’ ballpark opened in 2000 as Enron Field, its name for two seasons before the Astros bought naming rights back from Enron Corp. after the energy company’s bankruptcy filing. For several months, the stadium was known as Astros Field, prior to its becoming Minute Maid Park.

Some fans will surely retain a connection to that name. During its tenure, the Astros reached their first World Series in team history in 2005, endured a rebuild, changed leagues, won their first World Series in 2017 (later marred by their electronic sign-stealing scandal), and won a second championship in 2022.

Known best for its orange juice, Minute Maid was based in the Houston region for more than 50 years until moving its headquarters to Atlanta in 2021. Crane thanked Minute Maid and the Coca-Cola Co. “for being a great partner for a very, very long time and committed to the ballpark.”

“We look forward to continuing working with them moving forward,” Crane said.

Minute Maid has prominent signage at multiple spots around the ballpark, including the exterior facing U.S. 59 and above the huge video scoreboard beyond the right-field bleachers. A rendering displayed at Monday’s news conference showed a Daikin Park logo above the scoreboard and on the outside of the building.

Signage changes will be made throughout the first quarter of 2025 and completed by opening day, March 27, when the Astros host the Mets, a team spokesperson said.

The train above the left-field Crawford Boxes has held a “cargo” of oranges since the ballpark was christened after Minute Maid. The train is not going anywhere, but in regard to the oranges, the team is working on a replacement “surprise” that will be revealed opening day, Crane said.

I think the train should instead be full of air conditioning ducts, which honestly is more Houston than the oranges ever were. Be that as it may, I feel like “Minute Maid Park” was never all that memorable a name. Unlike when, say, the Summit became the Compaq Center, I don’t think too many people are going to refuse to update their preferences. I may go full hipster and start calling it Enron Field again, just to see who’s with me on the joke. Anyway, like it or not here comes Daikin Park. CultureMap has more.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged Astros, Baseball, Daikin Park, Enron, Houston, Minute Maid Park | 1 Comment

New Sports Authority CEO hired

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The changeover is complete.

Ryan Walsh was hired Friday as the CEO of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, tasked with overseeing the city’s largest sports facilities and events, after a unanimous vote by the agency’s board of directors.

The move follows a series of high-profile exits from the organization. Walsh works as the CEO and executive director of the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation and NRG Park. He plans to step back from his position to take on the role of sports authority CEO, he said. His first day with the authority is Nov. 21.

[…]

Former CEO Janis Burke was fired in a unanimous vote Oct. 11 after Mayor John Whitmire and the region’s sports executives called for new leadership at the agency in a City Hall news conference, citing facility maintenance and transparency issues. Chris Canetti, the city’s FIFA World Cup host committee president, was hired to replace Burke in the interim.

The agency also saw former board chair J. Kent Friedman, who led the organization for more than 20 years, step down. Houston City Council and the Harris County Commissioners Court both voted to confirm [new board chair Juan] Garcia’s appointment to replace Friedman last week.

Walsh’s hire comes a little more than a month after the leadership shakeup, and there was a reason for the speediness with bringing Walsh on board, Garcia said.

Garcia said there was work to do, not only with the FIFA World Cup, but with the Rockets, Astros and at NRG Park. Garcia specifically pointed toward its lease agreements and adapting its sports facilities to make sure they were the best so they could attract business as well as keep its sports teams in Houston.

“It’s been loud and clear, even in the short time period that I’ve been here, by the Rockets, the Astros, the Texans and the rodeo, that we have some work to do, and that’s what we’re going to get to work,” Garcia said.

Walsh said transparency would be a focus in his tenure, and that collaboration and partnership was going to be top of mind — especially as the city prepares to host seven games in the 2026 FIFA World Cup and as the authority looks toward ways to extend their sports facilities’ lifetimes.

See here and here for some background. I’m sure this is fine, I have no quibble with the hire, but it’s a little funny to me that a month after former CEO Janis Burke was suddenly fired for “lack of transparency”, I still have no idea what they mean by that. Like, lack of transparency about what and with whom? Tell me more and give me an example, that’s all I’m asking. I mean, this doesn’t make the first page of the Big List Of Things I Need To Be Worried About Right Now, but it’s still annoying. Anyway, good luck to you, Ryan Walsh. I hope to know more about why you’re here sooner or later.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Chris Canetti, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, Houston, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, J. Kent Friedman, Janis Burke, John Whitmire, Juan Garcia, Reliant Stadium, Ryan Walsh, World Baseball Classic, World Cup | 1 Comment

Judicial undervotes 2024

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

One brief comment on this Houston Landing story about undervoting, and then I will have some numbers for you.

Tens of thousands of Harris County residents stopped voting well short of the end of their Nov. 5 ballots, skipping dozens of races and passing up the opportunity to change the outcome of all but one countywide contest.

Known as undervoting, the number of people that left races blank varied by contest, ranging from .6 percent to a little more than 9 percent.

That .6 percent represents 9,822 voters who bypassed the presidential contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, the first race on the ballot.

The gap generally grew wider as voters moved down the ballot, ending with 144,571 who did not make a selection on the question of whether to raise the property tax rate for the Harris County Flood Control District. The winning margin was 39,198 votes.

[…]

Numerous contests were decided by a few thousand votes but skipped by more than 100,000 voters.

For example, in the 177th Judicial District, which flipped from Democratic to Republican control this year, Emily Munoz Detoto won by 5,864 votes. Meanwhile, 110,630 people who cast a ballot left that race blank.

In the contest for Harris County tax assessor-collector, Democrat Annette Ramirez beat Republican Steve Radack by just under 34,100 votes. More than 90,000 voters, however, skipped that race.

“It’s part of the life of a politician,” Radack said. “If you’re further down the ballot, you’ve got to know there’s a certain number of people that don’t care or don’t know.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the number of undervotes exceeded 600,000 in uncontested races, with voters presumably deciding their support was not needed.

Only the race between Democratic Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and Republican Mike Knox would have been unaffected by the undervote. Gonzalez won re-election by more than 93,000 votes. The number of people who did not vote in that race was about 82,000.

The possibility that a race could flip if everyone had voted in it is only partly a function of how many undervotes there are. For the outcome to change, the trailing candidate would have to win a greater share of a smaller number of votes than they have already received. In a race with a tiny margin, where in a vacuum one may assume that the undervoters are basically a coin flip, there can be a decent albeit still minority chance that enough of those coin flips favor the laggard. In cases where the margin is greater, those odds diminish rapidly, to the point where you’re more likely to be bitten by a shark that is then struck by lightning. The math is just brutal.

All of that assumes that the undervoters are a random sample of the electorate as a whole. That may not be true – it may be the case that more undervotes came from precincts that heavily favor one party or the other. It’s possible to do that work and assign an expected value for the undervotes in question, but we’re still assuming that the undervoters are representative of their precincts. We’re also assuming that they didn’t have a reason beyond “I didn’t feel like it” to skip that particular race. I think those are reasonable assumptions, but they’re still assumptions. At some level, it’s all a guess.

Anyway. I promised you some numbers, so here they are.


   2020     2024   2020%  2024% Winner
======================================
 83,611   98,078   5.05%  6.26%      D
 86,623  102,744   5.23%  6.55%      R
 91,780  104,785   5.54%  6.68%      R
 88,352  102,809   5.33%  6.56%      D
 91,886  108,455   5.55%  6.92%      D
 93,171  110,584   5.62%  7.05%      D
 94,804  111,935   5.72%  7.14%      R
108,196  112,997   6.53%  7.21%      R
105,880  115,383   6.39%  7.36%      R
105,259  118,450   6.35%  7.56%      D
104,103  117,669   6.28%  7.51%      R
105,551  118,909   6.37%  7.59%      R
102,111  122,356   6.18%  7.81%      D
104,456  124,838   6.31%  7.96%      R
         124,167          7.92%      D
         106,708          6.81%      R
         115,320          7.36%      D
					
 97,556  112,717   5.89%  7.19%

The first column is the undervote total for each of the contested district and county judicial races in 2020; the second is the same for 2024. Similarly, the next two columns are the undervote rate expressed as a percentage of total turnout. I didn’t list the names of the races because they don’t line up (and they really don’t matter). The numbers are in the order that the races appeared on the ballot – that Landing story has a chart for 2024, so you can figure out which number goes with which race for each. Note that they wrote this before the official canvass was released, so they will differ slightly from my figures. There were three more contested judicial races in 2024 than there were in 2020. The last column is just a note of which party won that race in 2024. The last line is the average for each column.

There were more undervotes this year than in 2020. Not a huge amount, but there was an increase and it happened in the context of fewer overall votes being cast. The undervote rate jumped by more than a point as a result. What that happened this year when there were basically as many races as in 2020 is unclear to me. Maybe the change in voting machines made a difference – maybe it took longer to vote and people were a little more likely to lose interest as a result. You can see that generally speaking, the undervote rate increases as we get farther down the ballot. There are a couple of complicating factors here, though.

One is that the rate doesn’t uniformly increase as we go down. Notice that in both 2020 and 2024, the rate dipped, then went back to increasing, with the fifth race having a higher rate than the third. In both years, that fourth race featured Democrat Michael Gomez. In 2020, there were several races that came after the high-water undervote rate of 6.53%. Those races featured, in order, Democrats Natalia Cornelio, Julia Maldonado, and Leslie Briones, and Republican Linda Garcia. It seems that the presence of a Latino candidate in the judicial races can increase participation in that race by a little bit.

Another factor is that just before the last two races, which is the end of the District Court elections, is the District Attorney race, followed by two County Court races. The undervote rate in the DA race was 5.45% in 2020 and 6.16% in 2024. Well below the average in each case, and also in each case the judicial races that followed got a bounce as well. In 2024, that first race after the DA again featured Republican Linda Garcia, so there were two causes for the bounce. I’m just saying, there are more dimensions to this than one might think.

There are other races that then come after the last of the judicial races. If fatigue were the big issue, you’d think that the undervote rate would keep increasing. But that’s not what happens.


Year        Race    Undervote    Pct
====================================
2020   County Aty     100,251  6.07%
2024   County Aty     106,526  6.80%

2020      Sheriff      79,737  4.83%
2024      Sheriff      84,256  5.37%

2020  TaxAssessor      80,107  4.85%
2024  TaxAssessor      92,263  5.89%

Those races all have lower undervote rates than the judicial races before them, and with the exception of County Attorney in 2020 they’re all under the average for the undervote rate. People are still paying attention way down at the bottom of the ballot. They presumably feel like they have more information about these races than the judicial ones, but I don’t think it’s the case that they think they have more information about the earlier judicial ones than the later ones. I don’t have a good answer for this, I’m just telling you what the numbers say.

I should note that I ran the numbers for this in 2022 as well, where again there were a few scattered Republican victories, but I never got around to finishing and publishing it. I’m going to try to do that now. Spoiler alert, the pattern is very similar.

One last thing, while the overall undervote rate was higher in 2024 and the range from top to bottom was higher in absolute numbers, the undervote share didn’t increase more proportionally in 2024 than it did in 2020. The 6.53% undervote rate in 2020, the highest one for that year, is 29% higher than the low score of 5.05%, while in 2024 the high undervote rate of 7.96% is 27% more than the low undervote rate of 6.26%. Just in case you were wondering.

Anyway, this is all a lot of words and numbers for a truly niche topic, but I figure that’s what you come here for. Let me know if you have any questions.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged District Attorney, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Harris County Sheriff, Harris County Tax Assessor, judicial races, Julia Maldonado, Lesley Briones, Linda Garcia, Michael Gomez, Natalia Cornelio, precinct analysis, straight ticket voting | 9 Comments

Nate Paul serves his contempt sentence

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Noted for the record, and for a couple of newsy bits at the end.

Austin real estate investor Nate Paul reported to Travis County jail on Thursday night for a 10-day sentence for contempt of court, avoiding a possible media frenzy by showing up earlier than his 10 a.m. Friday deadline.

If Paul had refused to show up, a Travis County judge had authorized law enforcement to apprehend him.

The developer was at the center of the 2023 impeachment case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was accused of abusing the office to help Paul fight legal battles. Paxton denied wrongdoing and the state Senate acquitted the Republican attorney general, but a federal investigation into the allegations was still underway as recently as August, according to Bloomberg.

Travis County state district Judge Jan Soifer, a Democrat, first found Paul in contempt of court in March 2023 after he made false statements in a civil case before her. Since then, Paul has so far appealed the charge unsuccessfully to every state appellate court, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. That includes a habeas corpus case that is still pending in which he argues his due process rights were violated because he did not receive a sentencing hearing, though U.S. District Judge David Ezra had already denied Paul’s motions twice within the last week.

[…]

Paxton and Paul are reportedly still facing an FBI investigation that was launched in late 2020 after eight of Paxton’s top aides accused their boss of abusing the power of his office and taking bribes from Paul, a friend and campaign donor. Bloomberg reported that a grand jury was meeting in August to hear testimony. No charges have been filed. It’s unclear what will happen to the federal probe after President-elect Donald Trump, a longtime Paxton ally, takes office.

Paxton continues to face a whistleblower case filed by his former aides. He has said he is no longer contesting the facts of the suit so it should be brought to a close. But the whistleblowers say the case should still move forward and accuse Paxton of trying to avoid deposition. On Friday, they filed a motion to expedite before the Texas Supreme Court, lamenting that it has been four years without any discovery because of Paxton’s appeals.

Paul is separately set to go to trial in February on federal charges of wire fraud and lying to mortgage lending businesses and credit unions.

See here for the previous update, which was in March and which serves as another reminder of the glacial pace in some of these cases. Delay sure can be a good strategy if you have the means for it.

I think it’s very clear what will happen to the federal probe of Ken Paxton on January 20 of next year, and we would be kidding ourselves to think otherwise. What could happen before then is either for charges to be brought if that’s a viable thing, or for a report to be issued outlining the case and the evidence if it’s not. That would normally be very unusual, but if the reason why a case isn’t brought is because of lack of time and/or interference or other exogenous obstacles, I think it’s very much in the public’s interest to hear about it. Failing all of that, I’ll settle for a good tell-all interview/article/book/podcast done by and with the people who worked on that case. The only unacceptable outcome is for this to vanish entirely into the ether.

(You might be thinking “Aren’t you assuming that there was a case to be brought against Ken Paxton?”, and my answer to that is yes, I sure am. But you know what, if a reasonable professional prosecutor would have declined to pursue a case for lack of evidence or sufficient exculpatory evidence, then let us know about that, too. I’d rather know the truth, even a truth I don’t like, than to be forever left in the dark.)

Beyond that, there’s still the State Bar case against Paxton, and that whistleblower lawsuit. I wish those guys all the best. I also hope that no matter how their case concludes, they understand the need for them to join the fight to keep Ken Paxton from being elected to anything in 2026. If they don’t, they truly are chumps.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged bribery, Election 2026, FBI, impeachment, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Mitte Foundation, Nate Paul, Texas, Texas Whistleblower Act, Travis County | Leave a comment

Evolv

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Very interesting.

In the 2022–23 school year news reports nationwide identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses that were seized before anyone fired them. That averages out to more than six guns per day, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.

On top of that, one in 47 school-age children attended a school where at least one firearm was seized and reported on by the media in that same school year. Here in North Texas, Arlington ISD found only one gun on its campuses in the 2018–19 year, but during the 2022–23 fall and spring semesters, 19 guns were found in the district, according to the Post report.

Such a drastic increase is why some school districts, including those in Forney, Mansfield and McKinney, are turning to new tech to ensure weapons aren’t turning up on campus. The problem is, it doesn’t always work and could lead some to let their guard down.

In the coming weeks, McKinney ISD students at five campuses will find themselves walking through weapons detection systems when they enter school. The district’s board of trustees paid $1.27 million to purchase the system from a company called Evolv, which doesn’t have the best track record.

The company’s tech is used in museums, theme parks, stadiums and schools. It resembles the metal detectors you might see when walking into a court building or police station, for example. But they’re different. Instead of just sounding an alarm any time metal is detected, Evolv uses artificial intelligence to specifically look for weapons like guns and knives. This way individuals don’t have to empty their pockets or remove personal belongings. People pass through sensors and are flagged if the sensors detect weapons or weapon-like materials. A flagged person is directed to a staff member who will check their belongings. Once cleared, they’re free to proceed.

McKinney ISD didn’t respond to requests for comment. But according to Community Impact, Russel May, senior director of safety and security for the district, said, “The purchase is not in response to a specific threat or weapon problem within our schools but rather a proactive measure to keep McKinney on the forefront of safety and security initiatives.”

Checks through Evolv are supposed to be quick, easy and accurate. The company claims it has the ability to scan a thousand students in 15 minutes. But at times it can be slow and difficult to manage, and can produce false alarms. The problems with Evolv are detailed in a 2023 article by the online news site The Intercept.

In Maryland’s Dorchester County Public Schools, there were 250 false alarms for every weapon accurately detected from September 2021 to June 2022, according to The Intercept report. In the Hemet Unified School District in California, there were more false alarms, slowing foot traffic on campuses. Evolv’s solution? Let the students proceed.

It also came out in 2022 that the company had doctored results of their software testing. Its systems were failing to detect knives and handguns, and it misrepresented these failures in public reports. Law firms also announced investigations into the company to search for possible violations of securities laws, according to The Intercept. This included misrepresentations of the technology and its capabilities.

I found this in the Dispatches from Dallas from August 9. This totally sounds like the sort of new technology that makes a lot of promises related to crime prevention and public safety that it can’t quite keep (*cough* *cough* ShotSpotter *cough* *cough*), and as such I wondered if it had wormed its way into the Houston area. I didn’t find any evidence of it in local school systems, though it is apparently used by the Rockets and (per this WFAA story) the Astros. We passed through it on our way into the Cyndi Lauper concert at the Toyota Center on Saturday; my wife wound up having to go through a more traditional metal detector and then got wanded, apparently because of the necklace she was wearing. Not sure that was its best showing, but whatever. Be that as it may, it’s not hard to imagine it getting its tires kicked by one or more of the area ISDs.

While this technology is not perhaps mature yet, I don’t think it’s doomed to forever fail. With enough data, its algorithms ought to improve. That’s been the trajectory in the cybersecurity space, where earlier systems to detect potential threats were extremely noisy and generated a ton of mostly false-positive alerts that ultimately weren’t really worth investigating. But with time and a metric crap-ton of more data to analyze, those systems are much more accurate and useful. I would expect systems like Evolv to get there as well, though at what pace I couldn’t say. I would not advise any ISD to pay for the privilege of helping them improve their detection capabilities. If your ISD puts this on their next board agenda, I’d suggest you show up and ask a lot of questions.

Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged artificial intelligence, Evolv, guns, Mansfield, Mansfield ISD, McKinney, McKinney ISD, schools, Texas | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for November 17

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“To obey a tyrant before you are compelled to do so teaches them what they will be able to get you to do, easily, without even needing to expend the resources and energy it takes to carry out that part of their agenda.”

“Max will kick off its password-sharing crackdown over the next few months with “very soft messaging” surrounding the change.”

“It spreads like a skin cream and grips like sandpaper.”

“Louisiana students Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson wowed their teachers in 2022 when they discovered a new way to prove the 2000-year-old Pythagorean theorem in response to a bonus question in a high school math contest. But that was only the beginning.”

I personally have no desire to go to space. Not as a pioneer, that’s for damn sure. But I can think of a lot of people who I’d be happy to see go off into space themselves.

RIP, Tony Todd, actor best known for the “Candyman” movies, and if you’re a Star Trek fan for playing Lt. Worf’s brother Kurn.

If you’re looking for some to do lists, to get ready for the atrocities to come, see here and here. Get ready.

Please meet our new friend Chonkus, which is doing its best to help us fight climate change.

RIP, John Robinson, College Hall of Fame football coach for USC and also the Los Angeles Rams.

RIP, Gerry Faust, legendary high school football coach from Ohio who later coached at Notre Dame and the University of Akron.

“Did The Terminator Rip Off an Obscure 1960s TV Show?” (Spoiler alert: A little, kinda, enough to get a settlement but not so much that it needs to be obsessed over.)

“Now that the 2024 election is over and Trump will be returning to the White House, it is even more important that President Biden do as I urged him to do last July and use his clemency power to empty the federal death row. He should make sure that none of the men now there will ever be put to death.”

Nothing sums up the Trump 2.0 experience quite like nominating bad lawyer and worse human Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.

Poor, poor Rudy.

“Conspiracy mega-site Infowars, whose founder and main host Alex Jones has become the face of monetized suspicion in America, has been acquired at a bankruptcy auction by the satirical news company The Onion. They plan to relaunch Infowars as a parody of itself, with backing from Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun law reform.” I’ve often said that I don’t know how The Onion stays ahead of the satire curve. This is truly next level on their part, indeed the funniest thing they could have done.

RIP, George Miller “Huckleberry” Fox, former child actor best known for his role in Terms of Endearment.

“The sex scandals of the incoming Trump Cabinet”.

RIP, Thomas Kurtz, mathematician, computer scientist, and co-inventor of the BASIC programming language.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Leave a comment

SCOTx lets Robert Roberson get another execution date

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

But thank God that separation of powers was preserved.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled a House committee overstepped its authority when it effectively stalled Robert Roberson’s execution by issuing an eleventh-hour subpoena.

The ruling clears the way for prosecutors to seek a new execution date for Roberson. But the court also gave the green light for the committee to call Roberson to testify before them in the meantime — as long as his appearance does not delay any future execution. Roberson would be the first person executed for a murder conviction tied to shaken baby syndrome.

It is the latest twist in an unprecedented legal and political saga surrounding the Roberson case, which drew national attention and sparked fresh rifts within the Republican party. Members of the House committee butted heads with GOP state leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said the panel was acting beyond its power and refused to allow Roberson to testify.

In a 31-page ruling, Justice Evan A. Young said the committee does have the authority to subpoena Roberson, but that doing so just hours before his execution last month violated the separation of powers provision of the Texas Constitution.

The Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued its subpoena a day before Roberson was set to be executed. Abbott, who had resisted calls from lawmakers to grant a reprieve in the case, argued the panel was usurping state clemency power left solely to him.

“The committee’s authority to compel testimony does not include the power to override the scheduled legal process leading to an execution,” Young wrote. “We do not repudiate legislative investigatory power, but any testimony relevant to a legislative task here could have been obtained long before the death.”

Still, Young wrote, “there remains a substantial period between now and any potential future rescheduling of Roberson’s execution.”

“If the committee still wishes to obtain his testimony, we assume that the department can reasonably accommodate a new subpoena,” he wrote.

[…]

State Rep. Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat who chairs the committee, cheered the ruling.

“The Supreme Court strongly reinforced our belief that our committee can indeed obtain Mr. Roberson’s testimony and made clear that it expects the executive branch of government to accommodate us in doing so,” Moody said in a statement.

Roberson’s attorney Gretchen Sween said in a statement that the ruling “hopefully gives time for those with power to address a grave wrong.”

“Robert is innocent,” Sween said. “Given the overwhelming new evidence of innocence, we ask the State of Texas to refrain from setting a new execution date.”

The Anderson County district attorney did not respond to a request for comment on whether she would seek a new death warrant in the case. The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

See here and here for previous background from me; this case was also featured twice in Dispatches from Dallas. A copy of the opinion is here. Call me old-fashioned, but I would prefer to spend more time on the fact that the case against Roberson is garbage, resting entirely on a thoroughly debunked medical claim plus some prejudice against the autistic Roberson. That’s not SCOTx’s purview, I understand, I’m just saying they’re allowed to say something. The power to do something rests with Greg Abbott, who as previously noted doesn’t give a damn, and the Court of Criminal Appeals. Normally the CCA is a place where hope goes to die, but as it happens one of the CCA judges caught up in the Ken Paxton purge this November was Sharon Keller, so maybe – just maybe – there’s a chance that a different set of them could come to a different conclusion. I wouldn’t count on it, but it’s about all Roberson has unless the local DA changes its mind. The Trib has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Court of Criminal Appeals, death penalty, Election 2024, Governor, Greg Abbott, Jeff Leach, Joe Moody, Ken Paxton, Robert Roberson, Sharon Keller, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

HPD’s worsening response times

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Putting a pin in this for later.

Mayor John Whitmire

City leaders blamed an increased lag in police response times in 2024, in part, on the fallout from a scandal in which 264,000 cases were suspended citing a lack of personnel.

Police leaders, past and present, said staffing has led to the increase in wait times, which this year has seen the average time for top-priority calls increase from an average of 6 to 6.2 minutes. While Houston Police Department had to reallocate resources to examine the dropped cases, Mayor John Whitmire and law enforcement experts said the rise in police response time is part of a trend that has continued for more than a decade.

The suspended cases scandal shows that what is an important customer service role for agencies in instilling public confidence by showing up to calls quickly is also a logistics problem in that prioritizing calls risks neglecting investigations, the experts said.

[…]

Agencies like the Houston Police Department categorize calls based on their severity, with top-priority calls, including reports of a shooting or a crime in progress, all the way down to Priority 5 calls that might not require a police response.

Through September, officers responded to priority 1 calls, considered life-threatening, in an average of 6.2 minutes, compared to 6 minutes in 2023, according to Houston Police Department data. Priority 2 response times increased from 11.3 to 11.7, priority 3 from 72.4 up to 75.5; priority 4 from 91.9 up to 95.1 and priority 5 from 106.5 up to 107.7.

“It’s a constant balance of where to allocate resources,” said Jay Coons, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University and a retired member of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. “I would be concerned if a police department were targeting, say Priority 2 calls at the expense of some of those street-level tactical units.”

The uptick is the continuation of a years-long trend of officers responding to top-priority calls at the slowest rate since the 1990s, according to a Chronicle investigation. The department tries to answer those calls within an average of 4 to 6 minutes, but officers have exceeded that range multiple times in recent years, including 2024.

If the suspended cases scandal was responsible for some of the recent increase in response times, then we should see an improvement in the coming months, as those investigations are being wrapped up. I don’t know what HPD should be doing, but I’m sure there’s tons of academic research and best practices out there for them to consult and follow. What I do know, and what I’ve been saying for some time now, is that we should be getting a lot more transparency about HPD’s overall performance than we have been getting. Not just response times, but solve rates and more clarity on where their money is being spent and what we’re getting out of it. Mayor Whitmire talks a lot about waste and fraud and efficiency, but I don’t see that being applied to the single biggest item in the city’s budget. We’re going to be spending more on HPD. We should know in a lot more detail what that spending is doing for us.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged budget, Houston, HPD, HPOU, John Whitmire, Larry Satterwaite, police | Leave a comment

Time for another warfarin update

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Not much effect on the feral hog population yet, but it’s still early days.

Nine months after the Texas Department of Agriculture approved a new toxicant to curb crop-destroying feral hogs, many farmers and ranchers are still leery or unaware of the hog poison.

Scimetrics Ltd., the company that makes the bait — known by its brand name Kaput — said 586 people have been certified for its use so far in the state, only some of whom have begun its lengthy protocol.

Kaput’s hog bait contains warfarin, a blood thinner used as medication for humans that is toxic for hogs in low doses. It requires a state pesticide applicator license for use.

“The time we launched was probably not the best time,” said Mark Jones, who leads sales of the product. “We did it in April, so a lot of the crops were in or going in. Right now its (use is) picking up.”

[…]

Much of the early pushback came from hunters concerned the blood thinning medication in the hogs would be dangerous for humans and other animals, or worried the new solution would take out too much of their stock.

The last time Scimetrics held an open Kaput training session in 2017 in Waco, it drew a crowd of 200 ranchers, farmers and hog hunters, according to Jones.

“We had to close the meeting down because things got ugly,” he said.

A Texas-based feral swine processor even sued the Texas Department of Agriculture, which included supportive legal briefs from the Texas Hog Hunters Association and the Environmental Defense Fund. The case was later dropped.

After the state’s first attempt to get Kaput on shelves, the Texas legislature commissioned a study by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service to test its safety and effectiveness.

The research team’s final report, released last August, cited findings to allay earlier concerns – including evidence first found in 2018 that a blue dye in the warfarin-laced bait showed up in the bodies of poisoned hogs within hours of its ingestion. It also found that the product worked.

“If the landowners are diligent and follow the labeling and manufacturer recommendations for the use of the product, it will kill pigs,” said Bruce Leland, the assistant state director of Texas Wildlife Services.

Still, the poisoning process is lengthy – hogs have to be trained on a feeder before farmers add live bait to the mix, and even then, they do not die immediately. Many of the researchers’ trials took several months from start to finish.

Tyler Rich, manager of West Texas’ Pro Chem Sales – one of 22 distributors of the feral hog bait in the state – said some of his customers find it well worth the trouble.

“We have one customer who buys a fair amount of the bait right now. He had one field where he had shot like 1,200 hogs in one year. They just decimate crops,” Rich said. “And they can’t shoot enough of them.”

Rich thinks Kaput does a good job of killing hogs without hurting other wildlife when its certified users follow the directions.

While baiting with Kaput is a long and expensive process — operators need to count on a hog-specific feeder and a long period of training the pigs — “it’s cheaper than losing all of your crops to the hogs,” Rich said.

See here and here for the previous updates. I don’t think anything is going to make a big difference in the feral hog population, but this may have some success over time. And maybe something more effective will come along later as a result. In the meantime there are still the traditional methods of hog control.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Ag Commissioner, feral hogs, Scimetrics, Sid Miller, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Department of Agriculture, Texas Hog Hunters Association, Texas Wildlife Services, The Lege, warfarin | 1 Comment

Dems win another judicial race after final vote canvass in Harris County

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Some good Friday news.

Nicole Perdue

The result of a hotly contested race to replace a retiring Harris County judge has flipped from a narrow Republican win to a Democratic victory after the final set of ballots was reported.

Official results published by the Harris County Clerk’s Office Friday show Democrat Nicole Perdue prevailing over Republican Michael Landrum by just 774 votes out of about 1.46 million ballots cast in the race. The Clerk’s unofficial and incomplete results from the Nov. 5 election had shown Landrum narrowly leading for a week after election day before the final ballots were reported.

Harris County Commissioners Court canvassed the vote Friday morning, making the results official.

The race is one of 15 district judge races targeted by Harris County Republicans in an effort to reverse several years of Democratic gains in local judicial races. Last week, the local Republicans celebrated Landrum as one of 10 Republican candidates for local judgeships that won their races, despite the outstanding ballots that still needed to be counted and reported.

The other nine races still show Republican candidates holding on to their leads.

[…]

County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said in a statement Friday that the counting and reporting process went as it should.

“The November 5 elections were successfully administered through the dedication and commitment of Harris County voters, election workers, and stakeholders,” Hudspeth said. “Everyone played a vital role in ensuring the integrity and accessibility of the voting process, and I’m proud of how smoothly Election Day went.”

My judicial Q&A with Nicole Perdue is here. The difference between the unofficial November 6 report, which is the last one we had received, and the official November 15 report is one part more mail ballots – the 2021 omnibus voter suppression law that added more requirements to mail ballots also allows for some time after the election to fix some of the inevitable errors and omissions in the information that voters must provide – and one part provisional ballots. Here are the two results, with the earlier unofficial one listed first:


Candidate    Mail    Early    E-Day    Prov    Total     Pct
============================================================
Landrum    18,065  570,568  138,056       0  726,689  50.04%
Perdue     31,835  543,309  150,294       0  725,438  49.96%

Candidate    Mail    Early    E-Day    Prov    Total     Pct
============================================================
Landrum    19,749  570,568  138,056     811  729,184  49.97%
Perdue     34,851  543,309  150,294   1,504  729,958  50.03%

There was a similar flip in 2022, so this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. (That result remains up in the air because of the sore loser election lawsuit; unless that gets overturned by an appellate court, there will be a rematch in May.) What isn’t mentioned in this story is that the Dems came pretty damn close to flipping two more races:

Nov 6 unofficial totals, 80th District Court

Sonya Aston (R) = 729,336 – 50.10%
Jeralynn Manor (D) = 726,499 – 49.90%

Nov 6 unofficial totals, 215th District Court

Nathan Milliron (R) = 723,801 – 50.08%
Elaine Palmer (D) = 721,459 – 49.92%

Nov 15 official totals, 80th District Court

Sonya Aston (R) = 731,731 – 50.02%
Jeralynn Manor (D) = 731,084 – 49.98%

Nov 6 unofficial totals, 215th District Court

Nathan Milliron (R) = 726,251 – 50.01%
Elaine Palmer (D) = 725,947 – 49.99%

That’s a 647-vote loss for Jeralynn Manor, and a 304-vote loss for Elaine Palmer, both of which are closer than Nicole Perdue’s 774-vote win. Needless to say, it would not have taken much more Democratic participation to flip these. Every vote matters, y’all. The Chron has more.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged absentee ballots, Elaine Palmer, Election 2022, Election 2024, Harris County, Jeralynn Manor, judicial races, Michael Landrum, Nathan Milliron, Nicole Perdue, provisional ballots, Sonya Aston, Teneshia Hudspeth, Texas | 11 Comments

A little self-reflection is good

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s best if it’s accompanied by a sincere effort to change one’s actions. But it’s a start regardless.

During much of its first year and a half of service, Houston ISD’s state-appointed school board has endured criticism for what some community members derided as a tight-lipped, opaque approach to district governance.

Now, the board has made an unusual admission: Its critics may have been right.

HISD’s board in September awarded itself just 1 out of 10 possible points on a section of its annual self-evaluation that measured “advocacy and engagement,” records published this week show. Members said the board failed to meet several benchmarks over the past year, including hosting community meetings across high school feeder patterns and having students participate in training sessions about board procedures.

The low evaluation doesn’t trigger any disciplinary processes, such as firing board members or requiring more training. It does, however, suggest an awareness from board members, who replaced HISD’s elected leaders in June 2023 amid a controversial state takeover of the district, of shortcomings with including community members in decision-making.

The grade also comes on heels of a decisive vote against a $4.4 billion HISD bond package, the clearest indicator yet that a large swath of the community is dissatisfied with the district’s leadership.

“It is an acknowledgement that we need to do better,” Board Member Cassandra Auzenne Bandy said.

Part of the improvement will come from following a “Community Engagement Action Plan” that the board approved in May, Bandy said. The plan encourages members to hold meetings with groups of 10 to 20 community stakeholders following a “shared script” that largely centers discussion around student data, rather than other aspects of district operations that have been subject to community criticism, such as high employee turnover.

The board has completed 25 such meetings since May, Bandy said.

The document asserts that the board should seek feedback from voices other than those who speak during board meetings — which have been largely critical of district leadership — because speakers “may not be a representative sample of the community.”

“The problem we’re trying to solve with our new community engagement strategy is, ‘How do we do better?’” said Bandy, who co-chairs the committee on engagement. “It’s not going to be sitting in a room and getting yelled at, or exchanging emails back and forth with someone that’s angry, just for them to post on Facebook.”

I dunno, I feel like maybe they should be listening more to the people who’ve been yelling at them. At least, they should make sure they understand why they’ve been yelled at. The more that the Board can comprehend the message that they should listen less to Mike Miles, the better.

Posted in School days | Tagged Audrey Momanaee, Board of Managers, bond referendum, Cassandra Bandy, Election 2024, HISD, Houston, Mike Miles, schools | Leave a comment

More on how the Lottery odds were stacked

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Another fascinating deep dive into how a recent Lottery was won by an outfit that had bought a ticket foe every possible combination.

In the year and a half since an anonymous player engineered a $95 million Texas lottery jackpot win by buying virtually all of the 25.8 million possible number combinations, two mysteries have persisted:

Who did it? And how did the small group of outlets conducting the operation process so many tickets in only 72 hours while still following the strict rules the Texas Lottery Commission places on its sales?

Now there are some answers — one of which raises new questions about the Texas Lottery Commission’s role in abetting the operation, which, while controversial, did not violate any state laws or game rules, according to the agency.

After seven months without a player correctly picking all six numbers, the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas jackpot had climbed to the third-highest in state history. The single winner took advantage of a state law allowing big winners to remain anonymous. In June, the one-time payout of $57.8 million was claimed by Rook TX, a limited partnership identifying only a New Jersey lawyer as its registered agent.

According to three sources, however, the Texas lottery operation was orchestrated by a gaming entrepreneur operating out of Malta, a Mediterranean island nation that is a hub for the online gaming industry. There is evidence the enterprise was funded through a large London betting company with connections to similar lottery buys.

A Florida investor said the Malta businessman told him he had orchestrated the big Texas payday.

Late last year, Philip Gurian, owner of Honey Tree Trading, lent an online lottery sales company called Lottery.com $1.3 million, according to allegations in court documents. The Austin-based Lottery.com played a central role in the April 2023 Lotto operation; it and an affiliate in Waco processed nearly 7 million of the tickets for the draw.

In an interview, Gurian said that soon after he made the investment, he attended a gathering of Lottery.com executives and others at a Boca Raton mansion being rented by the company’s board chairman. While at the party, he said he met a gaming software executive named Ade Repcenko.

“He told me he worked with a syndicate, and they pool money so that when lotteries get big enough they buy up all the tickets and get a big return,” Gurian recalled. “He said, ‘We just did it in Texas.’” Repcenko added that the buying syndicate conducted such operations several times a year, Gurian said. The Texas Lottery Commission has said such professional buying does not violate any rules.

Two other sources close to the April 2023 Lotto Texas operation confirmed Repcenko was the point person. Repcenko, founder of Malta-based Spinola Gaming, did not respond to multiple phone calls, emails and texts.

[…]

So-called professional buyers have been a lively topic among state lottery officials, Texas Lottery Director Ryan Mindell told legislators last month. He testified that investors recently had approached state lotteries in Indiana, Oklahoma and Maryland when their jackpots had climbed to levels making it mathematically attractive for gambling syndicates to score a large return with minimal risk by buying all, or most number combinations.

None of the state lottery agencies returned calls and emails for details. That could be because investor-led lottery plays are controversial, creating tension between government agencies charged with maximizing profits, and everyday players expecting a fair game when they buy a ticket or two.

For lottery agencies striving to raise money for good public causes — Texas lottery proceeds primarily fund schools — having a single customer buy millions of tickets generates a huge windfall. While most Lotto Texas games sell 1-2 million tickets, for example, the April 22, 2023, draw sold 28 million.

Yet guaranteeing the grand prize to a single customer is widely perceived as unfair to other players, who unknowingly are competing against a sure winner for only half the advertised jackpot. The specter of a state lottery draw being taken advantage of by foreign buyers would make such operations especially awkward.

“We should not mention anything about Lotto Texas wholesale operations in the US,” Lottery.com’s Potts wrote in an internal email debriefing company officers on the April 22 operation that was reviewed by the Chronicle. “This type of business is legal and compliant but is not something we publicize. It is considered cheating by lottery players and we do not want to raise attention to it.”

The practice nevertheless remains legal in many, if not all states, including Texas. Still, agencies often create procedural and logistical roadblocks that make it extremely difficult for a single buyer to acquire millions of tickets within the short timeframe between draws.

The Texas Lottery Commission, by comparison, assisted the single-buyer operation corner the $95 million April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas jackpot.

See here, here, and here for the background. As with the previous stories there’s a lot to this one, so read the rest. The short answer at this point is that the appropriate legislative committees need to hold some hearings and then as appropriate put forth one or more bills to address this issue. I don’t think it’s necessary to ban this practice, but there’s no reason it should be facilitated. Make these syndicates follow the same rules that ordinary players follow, and we’re good. It should be on the Lege to deal with it.

Posted in Jackpot! | Tagged Ade Repcenko, ALTx, Colossus Bets, Lottery, Lottery Now, Lottery.com, Rook TX, Texas, Texas Lottery Commission, The Lege | 1 Comment

The road ahead for Sean Teare

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

He definitely faces challenges. I believe he’s up to them.

Sean Teare

Sean Teare, Harris County’s district attorney-elect, is a longtime prosecutor who has tried armed robberies, visited the scenes of countless homicides and convicted a man of mass murder. But those aren’t the cases that keep him up at night.

“If you look at my early prosecutions, they were strong,” Teare told the Landing. “I was, and still am, a pretty talented trial lawyer and can utilize that for good and bad. So I have convictions and sentences that I’m not proud of now on possession of controlled substances.”

Teare, 45, said he “gravitated” toward drug cases as a young prosecutor, having spent his adolescence watching his mother struggle with a heroin addiction. Now married with four children, he says maturity taught him to take a less punitive approach to drug abuse and mental illness.

“We’re not going to prosecute our way out of this,” he said. “The mark of a good prosecutor is not waking up in the middle of the night thinking about the case you lost. It’s thinking about the case you won that you shouldn’t have.”

Naturally charismatic, with a quick grin and easygoing affect, Teare’s political skill carried him to victory in an election that was otherwise catastrophic for Democrats. When he takes office in January, he will become one of the most powerful elected officials in Harris County, the final decision-maker for criminal prosecutions in the county’s felony, misdemeanor and juvenile courts. As district attorney, he will oversee a budget of over $116 million and more than 350 prosecutors.

Yet he faces stiff headwinds. Teare has laid out ambitious plans for change, but his narrow margin of victory in the general election leaves him without a commanding mandate. He will also take office amid a political realignment, with President-elect Donald Trump promising to weaponize the Department of Justice against “radical left prosecutor’s offices” and Texas billionaire Elon Musk, who has already targeted Democratic district attorneys and judges, turning his attention to Harris County.

Teare, therefore, will have to perform a political high-wire act, balancing Democratic priorities like support for bail reform with the widespread anxiety about public safety that nearly propelled his opponent to victory.

“He’s got a very difficult path,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. “There will be a lot of distrust early on. He’ll need to find a way to use relationships he’s got and establish additional relationships to be successful.”

Friends, former colleagues and supporters say Teare is equal to the task. In interviews with the Landing, they described an experienced prosecutor whose strengths are not confined to the courtroom.

“Leadership is difficult,” said Paul Fortenberry, formerly a senior Harris County prosecutor who supervised Teare during Teare’s second stint at the office. “Some people can learn it. Some people have it or they don’t. And he’s always had it.”

Fortenberry and others pointed to Teare’s steady hand at the helm of the Vehicular Crimes Division, which he led during his later years as a Harris County prosecutor. In that role, he appeared frequently at crash sites, earning the respect of stakeholders across the justice system — even those who did not support him.

“I’ve known him for many, many years,” said Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, which endorsed Teare’s opponent. “I think he’s going to be good for the DA’s office, to be honest.”

Those relationships and Teare’s depth of experience have left his supporters hopeful that the new district attorney will be able to steer his agency through choppy waters.

“My faith is that he is going to live up to the campaign promises that he made,” said Nia Hernandez, an organizer for the progressive organization Indivisible Houston who campaigned for Teare. “It is faith and it is hope, but I don’t believe that the person I’ve seen and spoken with is going to lead us down (the wrong) road.”

You can always go back and listen to the interview I did with Teare for the primary if you want a feel for what makes him tick. I don’t know what kind of interference he’ll get from the feds and the state, but I hope he has a plan and a communications strategy in mind for it. What strikes me is that every DA we’ve had since Johnny Holmes (with the exception of the late Mike Anderson, whose term was sadly cut short by his illness and death) has had a rough time in office. Some of that was circumstantial, but a lot of it was the result of their own actions and policies. If Teare can do better on that front, he’ll be way ahead of the pack regardless of what gets thrown at him. I’m very much wishing him the best.

(Side note: Holmes had a long career in the DA’s office and has always been spoken of reverentially by those who knew him. I was just here for his later years and wasn’t paying close attention to local politics then, so all I really know about the guy was that he had a legendary mustache and he put a crap-ton of people on Death Row. I’d be very interested in seeing a modern reckoning of his time in office, just for the context. It’s actually a little wild to me that he’s kind of vanished from view, given how larger than life he was at the time.)

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged District Attorney, Election 2024, Harris County, Johnny Holmes, Kim Ogg, Mike Anderson, Sean Teare, Texas | 2 Comments

Austin’s pitch to the WNBA

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

Fran Harris has a plan.

The former Texas women’s basketball great has the financial backing, she insists. She’s got the support of the school administration and the city’s mayor and has had constructive conversations with the sports investment group that built the possible arena home. She’s got the ear of the WNBA commissioner if not exactly the outright blessing.

And she has the passion.

Oh, does she have passion.

Now she just needs a team.

That’s right. The ambitious fireball of a business entrepreneur who has founded the Athletic Club, which builds sports facilities for soccer, softball and basketball, who once made her pitch on Shark Tank and consummated a deal about the sports drink she was launching (and has relaunched), who has played on championship teams with the Longhorns and the Houston Comets and who’s been an author and behind the microphone for WNBA games has one more thing on her bucket list.

Harris wants to be the owner of a WNBA expansion team.

She’ll be part of a group — she says she can’t reveal her investors — that hopes to submit a bid for an expansion team within the next two months. The league is expected to announce a 16th franchise next spring to start by 2028, but Harris hopes the WNBA will seek to add three, not one.

“It ain’t going to be cheap,” Harris said.

[…]

Harris has had “very friendly” conversations with the Oak View Group, which built Moody Center for $375 million and might be interested in a 20-date WNBA home schedule.

“There’s got to be a big pocketbook,” Harris said. “A big practice facility that would be between $60 million and $100 million. You have to have an arena or a plan for an arena. You have to be a city that welcomes or demonstrates they love women’s basketball. Austin checks all of those.”

Austin does offer a vibrant corporate community, an area population of more than 2.5 million people, and a fan base that is probably starving for pro sports beyond soccer and something other than the Texas Longhorns. It’s got the climate. It’s got a central location in the country. It’s got traffic gridlock. (OK, overlook that.) It’s got money. It’s a destination city.

And it’s got promise.

Nevertheless, you don’t often hear Austin mentioned prominently for the next wave of WNBA expansion, while other cities are tripping all over themselves to capitalize on the sudden popularity and viability of the league, thank you very much, Caitlin Clark. But Harris is aware.

“It’s an uphill climb for getting a team in Austin only with the sheer number of competitors,” she said. “But we know the economics can work. We’ve seen the business model flourish. But I have to say some of those teams don’t check all the boxes.”

See here and here for the previous posts about Tilman Fertitta getting into the fray for the 16th franchise. The first link contains a mention of Austin being a bidder, which I think was the first I had heard them mentioned. Fran Harris was a member of the 1997 Comets, who won the first WNBA championship. I wasn’t following them that closely yet so I didn’t remember her from the team.

I like Harris’ optimism about the W going all the way to 18 – there are lots of suitors for #16, so there’s a decent case to be made for going bigger – but we’ll see. Even in that scenario, I have a hard time picturing Texas getting more than one team; there’s already a franchise in Dallas, so that would mean three for the state, the same as the NBA. I feel like the WNBA would want a bit more geographic diversity than that. But who knows? Spectrum News, KXAN, KVUE, and the Austin Business Journal, which notes that Kevin Durant may also get involved, have more.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Austin, basketball, Cathy Engelbert, Fran Harris, Houston, Houston Comets, Portland, San Francisco, Texas, Tilman Fertitta, Toronto, WNBA | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, November 15 edition

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: election follow-up; various infrastructure stories; immigration news; Mercy Culture Church and Gateway Church; museum news; the Michelin Guide opines on Dallas. And more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of the Fauré Quartett, a German piano quartet who played for the Dallas Chamber Music Society on Monday. I am particularly enjoying their 2009 album Popsongs, where they cover some tunes you might have heard of.

Let’s talk first about the HERO amendments to the Dallas city charter, specifically Prop U, which is the one where voters have screwed the city by not only demanding 900 more cops against the advice of the police union, they’ve committed half of every new dollar to Dallas PD until the city can undo this decision, and even then they won’t be able to claw back any money for other services due to state law around “defunding the police”.

First, Dallas has now repealed the recommendations that suggested the 3 officers for 1,000 residents rule that was part of the HERO debate. Monty Bennett’s HERO organizer was big mad about it. The DMN and KERA also have the story. The DMN is also reporting on the “monumental task” of hiring enough officers to meet the requirements of Prop U while under threat of lawsuits where, under Prop S, which also passed, they’ll have to waive their governmental immunity. Also, the money for that fast hiring has to come from somewhere, and unsurprisingly, council members expect parks and libraries and other city amenities to take the first and hardest hits.

The most interesting thing I read about the HERO propositions was this D Magazine piece about how it has upended Dallas politics. I agree with what the author has to say about the traditional Dallas accommodations breaking down in favor of the state- and national-style play of the HERO propositions. I also note that Pete Marocco, Monty Bennett’s hand-picked HERO stooge, is a J6er, which is unsurprising but unpleasant. Between the rise of Bennett and his MAGA style politics, the ineffective and late pushback from the old guard of Dallas, and the complete absence of our party-switching mayor from this election, we’re clearly looking at a realignment of Dallas city politics. The Trumpers are here. We need to be ready to fight them.

I’m not going to bother posting the crowing from the Star-Telegram’s right-wing regulars, but I think this op-ed from their newest columnist is right: Texas Democrats need to offer a viable alternative to Republican politics, not Republican-lite. Too much Republican-lite is as much a piece of Colin Allred’s loss as the factors cited by Texas Monthly, and it’s a problem specific to the Dallas area. We are, or after this election, were, the last holdout of the business Republicans. Strategies that work(ed) in Dallas County won’t suit statewide elections. See also: the foot-in-mouth moment about trans folks that put the final nail in the coffin for outgoing Texas Democratic Party chair Gilberto Hinojosa, who is not from Dallas but certainly holds to those old ideals that were still assumed to be prevalent here until last week.

It ain’t over until it’s over, and while the ugly November 2024 elections are over, the next general elections in Texas are in May. Our mourning, as always in Texas, needs to be accompanied by community activity and organizing for it.

Let’s jump into the small details of election news and the rest of the fortnight’s business:

The DMN has faith-based analysis of how area Jewish and Muslim voters shifted away from Democrats over Gaza policy.

Tarrant County went for Trump, but they split the ticket at the Senate level and went for Allred over Cruz.

Dallas passed Prop R, which decriminalizes small amounts of pot. We also passed Prop S, which renders the city more vulnerable to lawsuits if we don’t follow the charter. So Ken Paxton is going to sue us if we don’t go after pot smokers and pot smokers are going to sue us if we do. See also our host’s recent post about this matter.

Richardson blogger Mark Steger has thoughts about how Morgan Meyer (my rep) and Angie Chen Button will align themselves with Richardson ISD’s legislative priorities. I’m in Dallas, but I am zoned to Richardson schools, so how Meyer in particular does is relevant to my personal interests.

Speaking of schools, here’s Franklin Strong on the election results. I specifically note his comments about Granbury ISD near Fort Worth.

This Star-Telegram editorial made me laugh, bitterly: Texas Republicans won it all. Now they must show leadership, not seek revenge. Good luck with that, editorial board.

Scroll down in this Guaranteed Republics post for analysis of the Court of Appeals elections as part of the national appeals court landscape.

Scroll down in this Radley Balko post to the sub-head about the “bro-ligarchy” for some information I didn’t know about who paid for those appeals court victories: Republican hedge fund guys. Elon Musk personally put in $2 million.

Related: The Star-Telegram explains why Musk’s venue of choice for court cases is Tarrant County.

This is gossip that I can’t verify because I don’t hang out on Xitter, but Reddit reports that Mark Cuban deleted all his pro-Harris tweets. I know why he felt like he ought to, but it’s still a bad sign.

Have some numbers on early voting in Tarrant County.

The DMN is selling the idea that community is more powerful than partisanship in their piece on the outcome of the city council election in the exurb of Princeton in Collin County. Meanwhile, the Texas Observer tells us the story of Princeton’s pride groups and their struggle with Princeton ISD, which unsurprisingly has a different view of Princeton and its culture wars. The difference between these two articles is what I was talking about with Colin Allred.

In this week’s edition of terrible people from North Texas who are going to get a Trump administration job, former Dallas Congressman John Ratcliffe is Trump’s pick for CIA director. I expect we’ll see a few more of these before the nominations are done.

Did you know that State Rep. Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth), who is affliated with Mercy Culture Church, about which more later, also leads a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit called For Liberty & Justice that supports not just Schatzline but also Tarrant GOP Chair Bo French and Ted Cruz? I’m sure you’re shocked. Also, while I’m on the subject of Bo French, you should read up on his quality Xitter posts, featuring a bunch of slurs that his mama should have washed his hands with soap until they bled for typing.

Bolts has a piece on the reelection of Bill Waybourn, Tarrant County’s sherriff who can’t keep inmates in the county jail alive. What is he up to after the election? He briefed the County Commissioners on the Department of Justice report on his jail, telling them investigators told him “Sheriff, you have a Cadillac model of jail”. Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons, whom you may remember from previous spats with County Judge O’Hare disagrees and wants a civil rights investigation. Meanwhile, it looks like one 2022 death in the jail wasn’t investigated by a third party as required by law, specifically the Sandra Bland Act.

The rent is too damn high: there’s not enough housing for minimum wage workers in Dallas or Houston or Austin, for that matter.

State Senator Phil King of Weatherford (Republican) is really tight with Oncor and while Texas Monthly won’t call it corruption, you and I might.

Also in the annals of “none dare call it corruption”, a developer pleaded guilty to bribing two former Dallas city council members in a case that’s been going on since 2020. Two other developers and one of the council members have also pleaded guilty; a third developer is awaiting a retrial. The other council member pleaded guilty but died in a car wreck before sentencing. The DMN also has the story.

I said we were going to come back to Mercy Culture Church and here we are. The church is trying to build a shelter for people who have been trafficked; the neighbors don’t like it; and the zoning commission just voted against it. Next it moves to City Council, where we’ll see whether Nate Schatzline’s friendship with Tarrant County leaders, and his 501 (c)(3), can get some action there. The Star-Telegram also has the story.

Speaking of churches, there are more updates on Gateway Church. Following the Haynes & Boone report, the church has removed elders and employees who knew about the allegations against founding pastor Robert Morris, specifically about his abuse of Cindy Clemishire. The Fort Worth Report article on the removing of the elders also reports on the tithing lawsuit we’ve discussed and demands for money by Robert Morris, which brings me to this report from a site I cannot vouch for, but which seems well-sourced: Robert Morris’ Multiple, Multi-Million-Dollar Properties Raises Questions about How He Obtained Wealth. The Roys Report, source of that last link, is all about exposing the “evangelical industrial complex” and that sure seems to be what’s in play with the Gateway empire.

The latest update on the Arlington nun case is that the priest involved in the original case has retired in good standing for medical reasons. If you’re familiar with the case, you will remember that the head nun of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity was also seriously ill at the time of the allegations. This retirement will have no effect on the Arlington case, which has taken on a life of its own, but I know our host is interested, so I’m marking it here.

I learned recently that we have a shortage of IV fluids here in North Texas and nationally.

A transportation planning survey by the North Central Texas Council of Governments shows that area residents want more transit even as local governments are pulling money from DART.

As noted by our host, Texas and Oklahoma have redrawn their border to keep the Lake Texoma Raw Water Pump Station in Texas, securing water for about 2 million of us here in north Texas. The Texas Tribune also has the story.

The City of Alvord, which is about an hour northwest of Fort Worth, has issued its fourth boil water notice this year. It bothers me a little that nobody seems to have covered the first three.

The city’s water utility is sending around letters about lead in your water pipes and the DMN has an explainer. The Dallas Observer also has the story. We received one of these letters and it’s kind of scary, but after research, we understood ours to say that the city pipeline is clear of lead. They don’t know what’s in the pipe we own between the city shutoff and our house, though.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody who was here in Dallas during October, last month was the warmest October since recordkeeping began in 1898. I’ve barely broken out my long sleeves, never mind my sweaters.

Our host reported a second suit by Ken Paxton against a doctor prescribing gender-affirming care to trans kids earlier this week. I regret to report we have a third case here in Dallas, again at UTSW. KERA also has the story. I wish all the doctors in these cases and their patients the best of luck; they’re going to need it. The law is an ass in this matter.

My takeaway from this story about Arlington city leaders maybe getting their first raises since 1980 is that they make even less than members of the Lege! Mayor and council pay in Arlington is in the city charter and Arlington’s charter is up for updates in May.

Immigration is on a lot of Texans’ minds following the election. First of all, the Star-Telegram explains why a lot of undocumented folks in Tarrant County haven’t gotten their documents. The answers generally fall under “there is no way for them to get legal status” or “their options for legal status would take decades”, which is not news to anyone who knows anything about immigration. (I used to work for a lawyer who did employment immigration petitions and applications for small companies.) Unsurprisingly, area immigration attorneys feel a “sense of urgency” and are wary about the new Trump administration. The immigrants themselves live in fear. If you’re not familiar with the history of mass deportation of Mexican Americans, the Texas Observer will catch you up. According to experts the Observer quoted, up to 60% of deportees in the 1930s were actually US citizens.

KERA has a puff piece on Dallas’ Chief Medical Examiner on the occasion of his retirement. He’s been with the office for 37 years.

You may remember that awful story about Denton Animal Services euthanizing a pet dog while his human was still looking for him. The city organized an external review and is now ready to implement the report’s recommendations for best practices. The head of Animal Services at the time of the euthanasia scandal was fired earlier this year for supposedly unrelated issues.

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against Dallas Black Dance Theater. Expect to see them in court in mid-December; the deadline for negotiation is Friday, the day you’re probably reading this.

Dr. Phil doesn’t pay his bill. Or at least not the bills of his Merit Street Media group, according to the Professional Bull Riders organization, which has terminated their agreement with Merit Street due to non-payment of bills. Merit Street also laid off 58 workers in August. Y’all can see where this is going.

The red-cockaded woodpecker of East Texas is off the Endangered Species list but they’re still under some threat and will receive some protections.

There’s a mountain lion loose in the north Texas suburbs and it’s been spotted several times, most recently in Plano. Here in Dallas, I haven’t seen any mountain lions in person, but I have seen coyotes in two different locations near my house this week, and last spring we had fox kits drinking condensation runoff from our air conditioning in our back yard.

In museum news, the Director of the Dallas Museum of Art is stepping down after eight years. The deputy director will step up while the trustees search for a permanent replacement. And in White Settlement, near Fort Worth, the Texas Civil War Museum has closed. The private museum has long been accused of whitewashing Texas’ participation in the Civil War and had a close relationship with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, so, good riddance.

During the encore at the Morrissey concert at Fair Park earlier this month, a fan rushed the stage and the remainder of the show was cancelled. Apparently that’s the second time someone has invaded the stage at one of Morrissey’s Dallas shows; the first time was in 1992.

The Forest Theater in South Dallas received an $8 million grant from the city toward its renovation. This is another one of those projects we’ll have trouble affording in a post-Prop U future.

Fort Worth musician Leon Bridges has two interviews out this week ahead of his Friday night show in Fort Worth: Forbes and Rolling Stone. I’m really sad we couldn’t fit this show into our schedule, especially since Charley Crockett, whom we really want to see live, is one of the openers. Check them both out.

Today I learned that the neighborhood taqueria that everybody around here loves but I thought was kind of gringo is owned by St Vincent’s sister and brother-in-law. I’m trying to figure out whether my chance to fangirl her is worth giving the taqueria another shot.

Speaking of food, let’s talk about the Michelin situation, which has been the subject of a lot of ink. The Star-Telegram notes the Michelin folks like BBQ; multiple local outlets noted that Michelin screwed up by recommending the Charles, a restaurant in the Design District, but writing up Mister Charles, a different restaurant over on Knox Street, oops; and the best piece I’ve read about the whole Michelin business (and I’ve read a bunch): Michelin Sees Texas Through a Tourist’s Eyes, for Better and Worse. They don’t eat at restaurants like folks who live here eat at restaurants, and even apart from the stylistic differences, the produce differences, and plain old Euro snobbery, it shows.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged Dallas, guest post, linkdump, Texas | Leave a comment

Republicans performed more or less at 2020 levels in Harris County

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Obviously, the Republicans did well in Harris County this year, better than I expected for sure. They won some judicial races – they’re probably kicking themselves for not contesting more of them – and in general came a lot closer to winning the county executive offices for the first time since 2012. They obviously did better than they did in 2020 in terms of winning races. But how did they do in terms of getting votes? Let’s take a closer look.


Year    Office  Candidate    Votes
==================================
2020  President     Trump  700,630
2024  President     Trump  720,046

2020     Senate    Cornyn  718,228
2024     Senate      Cruz  663,483

2020        RRC    Wright  696,847
2024        RRC  Craddick  700,380

So up front, Donald Trump got 19,416 more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020. That’s an increase of 2.8% of his previous total. Let’s put that into some context:


Year  Candidate    Votes
========================
2004       Bush  584,723
2008     McCain  571,883
2012     Romney  586,073
2016      Trump  545,955
2020      Trump  700,630
2024      Trump  720,046

There was definitely a surge from 2016 to 2020, but that came in the context of over 300K more votes being cast in the county, and over 360K more votes being given to the two major party candidates for President. His increase from 2020 is his second-greatest, so props for that. But while Trump got 155K more votes from 2016 to 2020, Joe Biden got 210K more votes than Hillary Clinton got. His 2024 total would still have lagged well behind in a 2020 context. But this year there was a big decline in Democratic votes, and that made the difference.

To be very clear, I’m not saying this isn’t a problem. It’s a big problem! What I am saying is that it’s a different problem than it would be if Trump had garnered 800,000 votes while Harris had just matched Biden. That would be a story of turnout increasing and Republicans being the main beneficiary of it, which would be a complete reversal of what we’ve experienced since 2004. This is a story of turnout decreasing and Democrats feeling the brunt of it. That at least is something we’ve seen before. It suggests the need for different solutions than the first scenario.

It would also be a different situation it turnout had been the same with Trump gaining about as many votes as Harris lost. That would point to people switching sides as the problem, and that would require yet another solution set. There were probably some switchers – the variance in the vote across other races shows that some people voted mostly but not entirely one way – but there always are, and by the very fact that Trump’s gain was limited, there couldn’t have been that many. To the extent that it’s a problem, it’s much smaller than the “100K Dems didn’t turn out” problem. I just want to make sure we’re prioritizing the right things.

This election and this post are about more than just Trump, and we’ve got a lot of numbers to look at. And the very next race, for US Senate, is the complete opposite of the Presidential race. All those polls showing Colin Allred outrunning Kamala Harris while Ted Cruz lagged Donald Trump were indeed accurate. Cruz collected 55K fewer votes than John Cornyn. Indeed, Allred had a larger vote margin (182K to 136K) and percentage margin (11.2 to 8.5) than MJ Hegar had over Cornyn four years ago. Seems I’ll be on the lookout for some Trump/Allred voters to see what made them tick. We will see that Republicans overall did at least a little better in 2024 than they did in 2020. That modestly rising tide did not lift Ted Cruz’s boat.

The Railroad Commissioner race was basically a push from a Republican perspective, and a bigger drop in vote total on the Democratic side. A contributing factor there may have been the change from a Latino Democrat and and Anglo Green candidate in 2020 to an Anglo Dem and a Latino Green in 2024 – the Libertarian candidate got nearly identical totals across the two elections, while the Green candidate got 36K more votes in 2024. This too is a phenomenon we’ve seen before.

Let’s look at the judicial races, my preferred venue for measuring partisan levels in a given election.


Year      Type  Num     High      Low      Avg
==============================================
2020     State    4  740,194  716,761  726,405
2024     State    5  752,297  722,052  743,295

2020     State    3  711,666  702,618  708,187
2024     State    1  720,395  720,395  720,395

2020   Appeals    4  739,791  719,066  730,172
2024   Appeals   10  744,425  720,309  728,066

2020  District   14  737,544  690,050  712,975
2024  District   17  740,375  699,041  722,411

I’ve broken the statewide judicial races into two buckets, races that include a Libertarian candidate (there were no Greens in these races; indeed, the only Greens at all were for President and RRC). The presence of a Libertarian candidate always reduces the number of votes the other two get, with the Republican usually getting the worst of it. I wanted to separate these out to make a cleaner comparison. The two-candidate races are the first group, and however you look at it in either group, the increase over 2020 is less than the increase in votes that Trump got. At the Appellate and District court levels (the latter includes the one or two County courts that happened to be on the ballot as well), the increases are even smaller. I don’t see anything remarkable here.

You may look at the higher Republican vote totals in the judicial races than in the Presidential race and ask if those “stop Houston murder” PAC ads might have had an effect here. I can’t say there was no effect, but the same gap between Presidential and judicial race vote totals existed in 2020 as well. My interpretation of that is that the judicial average turnout is the best proxy for the partisan index in an election, and the variations from there are your vote splitters. In other words, the “true” Republican level in this election was somewhere between 722K and 743K (*), with some number of these people voting for Kamala Harris and Colin Allred. Just as in 2020 it was somewhere between 713K and 730K, with Joe Biden and to a much lesser extent MJ Hegar getting the excess votes. Also, that 722K votegetter was John Devine, and I have to think there was enough bad press about him to have affected a few people. That’s consistent with the numbers.

(*) Remember that by the time we get to the District Court races, a significant number of voters have tapped out. In 2020, that was about 60K at the State level and 90-110K at the District level. That obviously has an effect on those averages. Do you consider the people who participate at the top levels only to be the base, or do you limit that to those who vote the whole ballot? I leave that up to you.

Here are the county executive races:


Year    Office  Candidate    Votes
==================================
2020        DA    Huffman  720,407
2024        DA     Simons  719,161

2020  CountyAty    Nation  703,771
2024  CountyAty     Smith  719,666

2020    Sheriff     Danna  668,997
2024    Sheriff      Knox  691,226

2020       HCTA    Daniel  685,791
2024       HCTA    Radack  717,076

2020      HCDE5     Wolfe  689,198
2020      HCDE7   Sumners  703,223
2024      HCDE3      Dick  690,312

There was a Libertarian candidate in the Tax Assessor race in 2020, which had its usual effect on Chris Daniel’s vote total. I have to say, for all the caterwauling about crime, it’s hilarious to me that Dan Simons fell short of Mary Nan Huffman’s vote total. (Yes, there are still provisional ballots to be counted. I’ll keep this in regardless of that.) Against that, Mike Knox gained more votes over Joe Danna than Trump did against himself. To be sure, Knox was a more serious candidate than the perennial Danna – Sheriff Ed Gonzalez was the second-highest votgetter in 2020, surely collecting a ton of votes from Republicans, some of whom likely reverted back – and the troubles with the Harris County Jail have been widely publicized. Sheriff Gonzalez was still the third-highest votegetter this year and still won by over 93K.

Any way I look at it, Republicans performed at slightly above their 2020 benchmark, which was enough to let them win some judicial races but not enough to break through at the county executive level. As I said at the beginning, there were other scenarios that would have bothered me more. The big problem, which we need to thoroughly study and understand, is the drop in Democratic turnout. I’ve focused entirely on Republican vote totals here, as that was my thesis, but I do want to take one brief look at the Democratic side of this. These are the uncontested judicial races:


Year      Type  Num       High        Low        Avg
====================================================
2020  District   11  1,042,520  1,010,328  1,024,145
2024  District   12    936,951    877,562    897,257

I could do the same exercise for the Democratic candidates, and you’d see dips in the vote totals of roughly the same magnitude across most of the races. I’ll get to those in more detail when I have the full canvass because I’m very interested in the possible variations across different parts of the counties, but at a macro level, the story is clear: There were about 100K fewer votes cast this year compared to 2020. Basically all of those missing votes were Democratic. Wherever we go from here, figuring that out is step one. The Houston Landing, which looked at undervotes in the judicial races, has more.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Colin Allred, Dan Simons, District Attorney, Donald Trump, Ed Gonzalez, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, Harris County Sheriff, Harris County Tax Assessor, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Devine, judicial races, Kamala Harris, Mary Nan Huffman, Mike Knox, precinct analysis, President, Railroad Commission, Sean Teare, Senate, Ted Cruz, Texas, turnout | 5 Comments

Two CenterPoint updates

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll see about this.

No longer seen at I-10 and Sawyer

State Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, filed legislation Tuesday that would create a process to refund Houstonians for charges associated with CenterPoint Energy’s $800 million lease of generators that went largely unused after Hurricane Beryl.

King’s North Texas district is far from CenterPoint’s Greater Houston service territory, but he is vice chair of the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce, a powerful committee tasked with utility-related issues. King has become known for championing issues favored by transmission and distribution utilities, such as his original 2021 bill allowing CenterPoint and its peers to break from two decades of precedent and lease generators in the first place.

King’s latest bill, Senate Bill 231, would underscore “the legislative intent of the original bill” by requiring generators leased by utilities to be fully mobile and available for rapid deployment in the aftermath of a storm or other emergency, according to a Tuesday statement from his office.

The proposed legislation would also require the Public Utility Commission of Texas to review generators already leased by utilities. Any lease that did not conform to the terms of SB 231 would be disallowed and its costs unable to be passed onto consumers.

The PUC has already approved requests from CenterPoint to pass along approximately $350 million of the generator lease costs to customers. This has added $2.39 to the average residential customer’s monthly electric bill.

“CenterPoint alone ignored the legislative intent for mobile generation,” King said in the statement. He also reaffirmed his position that CenterPoint should terminate its lease of the large stationary generators – an action the company has said isn’t possible.

A Houston Chronicle investigation found that CenterPoint has never used the 15 32-megawatt generators leased in 2021. These generators take days to move, even though CenterPoint repeatedly described them as “mobile” to regulators, investors and the public.

CenterPoint’s $800 million lease also includes five 5-megawatt generators that have been deployed in storm restoration efforts, including after Beryl in July. Since then, the utility has leased more than a dozen even smaller generators for use after weather events damage its poles and wires.

[…]

King said previously that CenterPoint “deceived” him by presenting its large generators as mobile. PUC Commissioner Lori Cobos, one of four commissioners who approved CenterPoint’s generator contract, also said she was misled about the generators’ usefulness after hurricanes.

Another Chronicle investigation cast doubt on whether CenterPoint’s process of acquiring its generators was truly competitive. Lawmakers, led by King, expanded utilities’ abilities to lease generators, despite cities, industry associations and consumer groups litigating issues with CenterPoint’s contract with an obscure company in front of administrative law judges for months, the Chronicle reported.

King has authored other utility-friendly legislation. One allowed utilities to ask permission for rate hikes twice a year, instead of once a year. Another required the PUC to consider the salaries and benefits of utility employees “reasonable and necessary” if the utility produced market compensation studies. King also weighed in this year on a rate dispute on behalf of Oncor, a North Texas utility that spent $31 million on contracts with a business he co-founded, Texas Monthly reported.

King has received $65,000 in donations from CenterPoint since 2015, the third-most among Texas officials behind Gov. Greg Abbott and Patrick, according to a Chronicle database. He’s a repeat visitor to the Pond, CenterPoint’s Chambers County fishing lodge used for lobbying lawmakers, a Chronicle investigation found.

See here and here for some background. On the one hand, Sen. King has the juice to get a bill like this passed. That’s partly because, as one of the biggest toadies for corporate interests in the Lege, Sen. King would normally be one of the main opponents of a bill like this. On its surface this bill sounds good, but King’s track record makes him way too untrustworthy to just take his word for it that this is the bill we’d want to see get passed. I’d like to hear from some consumer advocates first on that score.

Speaking of which, this is good news.

CenterPoint Energy will no longer withdraw from a required review of its rates, a win for cities and consumer advocates who argued a withdrawal would deny them the opportunity to push for a rate decrease they say is justified.

The Houston-area electric utility notified the Public Utility Commission of Texas of its plans to continue settlement talks with cities and consumer representatives late Friday afternoon. Those negotiations have been paused since CenterPoint first tried to withdraw its rate case in August following scathing criticism of its Hurricane Beryl response.

CenterPoint had fought to withdraw its rate case as recently as two weeks ago. Its executives have argued for months that continuing rate case negotiations would distract the company from its ongoing efforts to improve the resiliency of its Houston-area grid and restore public trust.

But in the last few weeks, CenterPoint has had “a number of discussions with stakeholders in the process,” leading to Friday’s decision to no longer pursue a withdrawal, said Jason Ryan, the company’s executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs, in an interview.

CenterPoint now aims to resolve rate case negotiations before it files a $5 billion proposal to strengthen its grid against extreme weather, known in the industry as a resiliency plan, Ryan said. The company previously said it would file this plan, which could add more than $3.50 to the average residential customer’s monthly bill, in January.

The Friday announcement concludes a monthslong fight over the continuation of CenterPoint’s rate case after an administrative law judge denied the company’s initial motion to withdraw in August. CenterPoint appealed the judge’s decision to the PUC, which has final say. The PUC was supposed to make a final decision on the issue at its open meeting next Thursday.

Since August, city coalitions and the Texas Consumer Association have testified that CenterPoint overcharged customers by $100 million in 2023 and that there is “overwhelming evidence” supporting a rate decrease. Those groups won allies in Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Houston Mayor John Whitmire, who’ve both publicly opposed CenterPoint withdrawing its rate case so the PUC can ensure it’s not overcharging.

[…]

Sandra Haverlah, president of the Texas Consumer Association, said she welcomed the news that CenterPoint would continue with its rate case.

“The fight over rates certainly isn’t over, but this is at least for us a step in the right direction,” she said.

That filing was in March, before the derecho, which means it was before most of us were paying much attention to CenterPoint. Sandra Haverladereh mentioned it in a post-Beryl op-ed about the various shady things CenterPoint was up to. I will take her word on this, so hopefully this will lead to a bit of a break on our bills. Hopefully there will be more of this to come.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, derecho, generators, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Phil King, Public Utility Commission, Texas, Texas Consumer Association, The Lege | Leave a comment

We have another plan for repurposing the Astrodome

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure what the version number is for this, but whatever it is, increment it by one.

Ready and waiting

The Astrodome became the world’s first domed stadium upon opening its doors in 1965. Financed and developed primarily by then-mayor Roy Hofheinz, the Astrodome served as the home of the Astros, Oilers and, for a short time, the Rockets.

Its design was inspired by the Colosseum in Rome. It could seat 50,000 — though a record 68,266 fans packed in for a George Strait performance in 2002. Its inaugural use of artificial grass coined the term AstroTurf. It boasted the first-ever LED scoreboard. It was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s primary venue from 1966 to 2002. And it earned the nickname of the Eighth Wonder of the World.

On Wednesday, the Astrodome Conservancy unveiled its ambitious $1 billion plan, Vision: Astrodome, with a mission to answer the decades-long question of what to do with the landmark. Gensler Houston design firm created the redevelopment concept.

“The Astrodome has since 2009 struggled with a public relations issue,” Beth Wiedower Jackson, executive director of the Astrodome Conservancy, told the Chronicle.

The conservancy’s chairman, Phoebe Tudor, who established the non-profit organization in 2016 by issuing a $100,000 investment grant, says the building is structurally sound, has undergone remediation for asbestos and is debt-free. “It’s over-engineered, solid and strong,” she said. “It’s in really good shape and just needs some TLC.”

Gensler’s design proposes 450,000-square feet of new, revenue-generating space. It conceptualizes four state-of-the-art buildings under the Astrodome’s iconic roof. Inspired by the Highline in New York, a boulevard would cut through the Astrodome to connect existing buildings within NRG Park. There would be room for 1,500 additional parking spots and animal handling facilities could be located under a new ground floor.

Around the perimeter, Vision: Astrodome has conceptualized a retail village for year-round restaurants, hospitality, exhibitions and shopping. An idea has been put forth to lease out real estate within the Dome’s concrete walls for data storage.

The Astrodome Conservancy aims to address the needs of Harris County, which owns and operates the Astrodome as part of NRG Park, and its two primary tenants, the RodeoHouston and the Texans.

“The rodeo has not had formal conversations with the Astrodome Conservancy in more than a year. The rodeo does not support the previously presented concepts as they conflict with our organization’s strategic vision and operational needs,” said Chris Boleman, president and CEO of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in an email statement to the Chronicle Tuesday.

“We have voiced our concerns on several occasions with the conservancy,” he said. “There is no proposed or official plan that our organization has agreed to or been made aware of regarding the future of the Astrodome. However, the rodeo, Texans and Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. have been working on plans for NRG Park’s future. Our goal remains to focus on the functioning buildings, enhancing our experience, and growing our event.”

[…]

“I get a dozen or more emails a week for how to repurpose it,” Jackson said. “The primary challenge is satisfying the local operations and management of NRG Park. That is not a damning statement. Contracts written 20-plus years ago give both tenants contractual rights to the Astrodome. Any proposal must have the support of those two primary tenants, the rodeo and the Texans.”

The current 30-year lease agreements, which were likely signed in 2001 and 2002, expire in 2031 and 2032.

“The hurdle is, from their perspective, that there are higher priorities at NRG Park,” Jackson said. “The assumption is that the Astrodome’s redevelopment is not possible without significant Harris County dollars and resources. Their argument is that support should first be spent on maintaining NRG Stadium.”

With those time parameters in mind, Jackson and Tudor say they tried to anticipate the Texans and RodeoHouston’s needs for the next 30 years. Their mission in working with Gensler was to create a multipurpose solution that adds value to the existing programs at NRG Park. The biggest challenge was solving the logistical puzzle of not interrupting access during rodeo season and Texans’ game days.

What’s the alternative?

Demolition could cost $100 million and take up to a year, Tudor said.

See here and here for the most recent Astrodome updates. The Astrodome Conservancy has been around for at least a few years. In some ways it’s kind of amazing to me that 25 years after the Astros played their last game at the Dome and 22 years after the last Rodeo there, we’re still trying to figure out what to do with it. There’s never been any shortage of ideas – my archives are full of them – but none have been able to get sufficient funding as well as the buy-in from the Rodeo and the Texans to move forward. Demolition has never really been on the table either, partly because of the desire to repurpose the space and partly because demolition would be expensive and disruptive and would still leave the question of what to do next. Doing nothing remains the easiest answer.

The Astrodome Conservancy has a vision and some people with a record of getting things done behind it. They also clearly have a lot of work to do to get the Rodeo and Texans on board – we haven’t really mentioned the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation or Commissioners Court, though I suspect they’d be willing to at least hear out anyone who could get the Rodeo and the Texans behind them – and of course they would need to either raise a boatload of money or persuade Harris County to fund them. The most likely outcome is that we don’t hear anything further until the next story about someone’s idea to repurpose the Dome comes up. But we’ll see.

UPDATE: A response:

“We respect the efforts of the Astrodome Conservancy and have seen their proposed concept. Over the last few years, we have seen several concepts that, while thought-provoking, haven’t resulted in viable funding and maintenance solutions,” said Bishop James Dixon, chairman of Harris County Sports & Convention Corp., in an email statement to the Chronicle Wednesday.

“We are currently working with Harris County and a team of industry-leading experts to plan for the future of NRG Park. The solution for the Astrodome must be decided within that context. In addition, we cannot consider any future vision for NRG Park without first understanding certain baseline financial information related to the Astrodome,” Dixon said.

The Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. is working to obtain data to use in evaluating proposed plans, he said.

“This critical information will provide us with the most viable path forward, ensuring NRG Park continues to meet the needs of its stakeholders and the public for now, and for the future. We are taking this approach because we are accountable to the public. Accurate and data driven information on financial costs and maintenance will inform responsible, realistic decisions that will eventually involve taxpayer dollars.”

None of this is a “no”, but none of it suggests any real openness to what the Conservancy is proposing. The Press, which calls the Rodeo and the Texans “entitled”, says neither of them is interested in anything but demolition. I wish the Conservancy luck but it’s hard to be optimistic.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Astrodome, Astrodome Conservancy, Beth Wiedower Jackson, demolition, Harris County, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, Houston, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Houston Texans, James Dixon, Phoebe Tudor, preservation, Reliant Stadium | 1 Comment

Texas and Oklahoma peacefully settle their border dispute

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Well, at least one thing went well this past week.

Laura Buckman for The Texas Tribune

Texas just altered its border with Oklahoma. Well, a small sliver of it, anyway. And, no, Texas didn’t become any bigger.

After years of dispute over how the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma should be drawn at the Red River, the two states reached an agreement last month that shifted Texas’ northern border just slightly, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced on Thursday.

The problem began in 2009 when the North Texas Municipal Water District, which provides water to several Dallas-area cities, learned about invasive zebra mussels in Lake Texoma, where it was operating a water pump station.

That raised the question of whether the pump station was in Texas, or in Oklahoma. Federal law prohibits transporting zebra mussels across state lines. The North Texas water district paused pumping to avoid violating federal law. And Texas began investigating which state exactly the pump station sat in.

The state found that the pump station was within Texas borders when it was built in 1989. But a new boundary established by Texas and Oklahoma in 2000 — the vegetation line along the south bank of the Red River — meant that part of the station now sat in the state’s northern neighbor.

In 2021, Texas sent Oklahoma a proposal for a new boundary that would ensure the station lived wholly in Texas. After years of discussion, the two states finally reached an agreement on how the boundary should be drawn. The Texas and Oklahoma Red River Boundary Commissions executed the new border on Oct. 30.

“This redrawn boundary line will ensure that millions of north Texans’ water comes from a secure source in Texas,” Buckingham said.

Texas and Oklahoma exchanged approximately 1.34 acre of underwater land, or about a football field each. Neither of the states grew or shrunk — if either state had gotten bigger, approval from the U.S. Congress would have been required.

Good thing it didn’t need to go through Congress, I’m sure Ted Cruz would have filibustered it. Also good to know we can still solve some border disputes without involving the National Guard. I don’t have anything to say really, I just liked the story and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to crack a couple of cheap jokes. I’ll stop now.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged border, Dawn Buckingham, invasive species, Lake Texoma, Land Commissioner, North Texas Municipal Water District, Oklahoma, Red River, Texas, water, zebra mussels | Leave a comment

Six Houston restaurants get Michelin stars

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

And the crowd goes wild.

After months of speculation, the Michelin Guide announced its inaugural Texas selection of restaurants at a private awards ceremony in Houston on Monday night.

The respected guide from the French tire manufacturer doled out 15 one-star reviews statewide — and nearly half of them went to Houston restaurants.

BCN Taste & Tradition, CorkScrew BBQ, Le Jardinier, March, Musaafer and Tatemó — all featured in the Houston Chronicle’s recent Top 100 restaurants guide — garnered one star each.

No restaurants in Texas received more than a single star, which are recognized for “high-quality cooking” and are deemed “worth a stop.” Michelin also recognized 45 Texas establishments for a Bib Gourmand, and 57 were designated as Recommended restaurants. Houston’s strong showing continued with 15 Bib Gourmands and seven Recommended spots.

Michelin’s debut in the Lone Star State is a milestone for Houston restaurant scene, which has gained national and international attention in recent years.

“Texas deserves its place on the U.S. culinary map but also the world culinary map,” said Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guides. “We feel the potential.”

Michelin recognized a total of 117 restaurants across the state in and surrounding Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. Poullennec added that 26 cuisine types were reflected in the guide’s selection.

Austin led with seven one-starred restaurants, including three barbecue joints. Dallas and San Antonio each had a single one-starred spot. Two Austin restaurants, Dai Due and Emmer & Rye, were the only recipients of a Green Star recognizing sustainably-operated restaurants.

Barbecue, however, took center stage in general. Six of the 15 Bib Gourmands in Houston specialize in barbecue, from the globally inspired smoke meats at Blood Bros. BBQ in Bellaire to Truth Barbeque, which originally started in Brenham before opening a second location in the Heights area.

See here and here for the background, and here for a list of all the winners, including the Bib Gourmands. There are a couple of places I’ve been to on that latter list and a few more I’d like to try, but I’ll be honest, I’m too basic for most of them. I’m happy for the winners and for all of the attention this has brought to our state’s food scene. I look forward to future updates.

There was a ton of coverage for this, in Houston and in the other named cities, so here’s a roundup of related links. Happy eating!

Houston food critic Alison Cook on the winners.

The anonymous “Chief Inspector” speaks.

Houston CultureMap’s pregame guide and postgame analysis.

Austin roundup from the Statesman, Axios Austin, and the Austin Chronicle.

Dallas coverage from WFAA, Eater Dallas, the Dallas Observer, and Dallas CultureMap.

And the San Antonio Current, Texas Public Radio, the Fort Worth Report, Houston Public Media, the Houston Press, Houstonia, and Texas Monthly (and again and again). Hope that holds you for awhile.

Posted in Food, glorious food | Tagged Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Houston First, Michelin Guide, restaurants, San Antonio, Texas, Travel Texas | Leave a comment

A brief HCC update

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

There’s not a lot of non-election news happening right now, but there was this.

Houston Community College officials are working to integrate virtual reality and more digital advances into every classroom and program by next fall, one of several goals that Chancellor Margaret Ford Fisher shared at the institution’s recent State of the College address.

The speech on Friday came about a year into Ford Fisher’s tenure at the head of the college system. HCC is building off enrollment growth following severe declines during the COVID-19 pandemic: More than 53,000 students enrolled this fall, up more than 7% from last fall, according to college data.

[…]

College officials will have a recommendation to the Board of Trustees by March or April, Ford Fisher said. On Friday, the chancellor called a name change a “must,” even though trustees were divided on the idea at a summer board meeting.

Several members had questioned making a new name a priority while they attempt to raise graduation and retention numbers for better funding from the Legislature. Former revenue formulas were mostly based on enrollment, but the performance-based metrics have not benefited HCC to the extent other institutions have seen.

A few board members had agreed with Ford Fisher, who raised the topic after HCC launched new four-year degrees in artificial intelligence and robotics as well as in healthcare management. They said dropping “community” from the name would appeal to a broader set of students and their potential employers, and they pointed to other community colleges that have changed their names to reflect status.

HCC is also undergoing a review to find where it might add new bachelor’s degrees, though Ford Fisher said the school is looking at labor market demands that are not in competition with local four-year universities.

[…]

HCC is reinventing its urban transportation programs, particularly related to flying taxis, self-driving cars and electric vehicles, according to the chancellor.

Those modes of transportation will require new infrastructure, including in maintenance and construction, that will require new skillsets, she said.

I remain ambivalent about the possible name change. I don’t object, but I do agree that there are higher priorities. I’d also like to see some data to suggest that changing the name, in particular dropping “Community” from the name, would enable the school to appeal to a broader audience. I’m not disputing the assertion, I’m just not accepting it as a given. Surely there’s been some studies, a survey, something to add some evidence to this?

On the subject of flying taxi maintenance, that does indeed seem like a wise direction to go. I’m curious how much of this new curriculum HCC would need to develop on their own and how much they would expect to inherit from the nascent manufacturers and providers. Are there other schools out there with the same idea, and if so how much can HCC collaborate with them? I don’t know what my expectations are here, but I’m very interested to hear more.

Posted in School days | Tagged air taxis, artificial intelligence, driverless cars, electric cars, flying cars, HCC, Houston, Margaret Ford Fisher, robots, taxis | 2 Comments

Three local marijuana decriminalization referenda passed last week

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Forgive me if my enthusiasm is modest.

This General Election, Texans voted to decriminalize marijuana on ballot measures in Lockhart, Bastrop, and Dallas.

According to The Dallas Morning News, about 67% of Dallas voters supported the proposition decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, Proposition R. The charter amendment prohibits police from arresting or citing individuals suspected of possessing four ounces or less of marijuana, with the expectation og benign part of a felony investigation involving violence or narcotics.

In addition, “Dallas police shall not consider the odor of marijuana or hemp to constitute probable cause for any search or seizure,” Prop R reads.

“We got all 3: Dallas, Lockhart, and Bastrop! Texans continue to prove when they have the opportunity to vote, they will overwhelmingly decriminalize marijuana!” Texas Cannabis Collective, a cannabis advocacy group, wrote on X.

[…]

Other Texas cities such as Austin, Denton, San Marcos, Killeen, and Elgin have also adopted measures to decriminalize low amounts of marijuana. Attorney General Ken Paxton unsuccessfully sued these cities arguing they don’t have the right to adopt such measures, however, it is possible that he’ll try to sue Dallas as well.

Meanwhile, voters expressed their support for the measure.

“We have a lot of people in jail for small amounts of marijuana, and it shouldn’t be like that,” Enoch Correa, a Dallas voter, told The Dallas Morning News.

“Together, we’ve taken a big step toward justice, freedom, and a better future for our community,” wrote Ground Game Texas, one of the groups behind the proposal. “This is more than a victory for marijuana decriminalization—it’s a win for the people of Dallas!”

I think it’s 100% likely that Ken Paxton will aim to block this ordinance from taking effect in Dallas. It is true that the lawsuits he filed against San Marcos and Austin lost in district court, but we all know this will end up at the Supreme Court’s doorstep, and I see no reason to be optimistic about it. And that’s assuming that the next Legislature, which will be both more Republican and more Paxton-friendly, doesn’t take another dump on home rule and local control and negate all of those referenda by fiat.

This has been my concern all along, and while the matter has taken time to move through the legal system, its ultimate fate seems clear. I’ll be happy to be wrong, but I’ll also be greatly surprised to see our Republican overlords allow for this particular finger to be poked into their eyes with no retribution. They have been very consistent on that.

It’s also time to retire the idea that putting forward a progressive ballot initiative will somehow help turnout for candidates who support those ideas. The votes to protect abortion rights in other states and the Ground Game Texas pro-marijuana votes have shown quite clearly that a lot of people are comfortable with supporting a particular issue while also supporting politicians who vehemently oppose that issue. The much harder work of electing a legislative majority for these issues, as well as a statewide leadership that won’t undermine them, is what needs to be done. I respect what Ground Game Texas tried to do, it was worth the effort, but it’s not sustainable. I wish there were an easier way, but there isn’t.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Austin, Bastrop, Dallas, Election 2024, Ground Game Texas, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Lockhart, marijuana, San Marcos, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Time once again for another “future doctor shortage” post

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This continues to seem bad.

Texas’ new abortion laws are stressing the state’s already beleaguered OB/GYN workforce, and threatening the pipeline of new doctors that would help provide relief, a new survey shows.

More than 70% of practicing OB/GYNs in Texas feel the near-total ban has negatively impacted their work, prohibiting them from providing high quality, evidence-based care for their patients, according to survey results released Tuesday.

One in five have considered leaving Texas, and 13% are planning to retire early as a result of the new restrictions. Meanwhile, a majority of OB/GYN medical residents say they’re considering the new abortion laws when deciding whether to stay in Texas after their training concludes.

Manatt Health, a health care consulting firm, surveyed all Texas-based members of the professional association American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and received responses from 450 practicing doctors and 47 medical residents.

Dr. Todd Ivey, a Houston OB/GYN and an officer with the Texas division of ACOG, said the survey results raise concerns about the long-term impacts of these laws. The state is expecting a significant shortage of OB/GYNs over the next decade, with some rural areas already unable to find the doctors they need.

Like many of his peers, Ivey considered leaving but decided to stay and provide the best care he could within the limits of the law. But he understands why a new doctor, who hasn’t yet built a practice or a family in Texas, might choose to go somewhere else.

“Not having people coming up is going to impact women’s health greatly,” Ivey said. “I just hope we don’t get to the day where women can’t get their pap smear screening, they can’t get their breast cancer screening, they can’t get prenatal care.”

[…]

Most Texas OB/GYNs say they haven’t thought about leaving the state as a result of the laws, the survey shows, and of those who have considered it, many said they were staying because of family or financial issues. But almost 15% of surveyed doctors said they were planning to retire early, which could accelerate the state’s looming shortage of OB/GYNs.

By 2030, Texas is expected to have 15% fewer OB/GYNs than is needed to keep up with demand. Many rural areas are already beginning to feel the effects of these shortages. More than 45% of Texas counties are considered maternity care deserts, meaning there’s no doctor to see during your pregnancy and nowhere to give birth.

Texas ranks 50th among states and the District of Columbia for women’s health, according to The Commonwealth Fund, which measured health care quality, outcomes, coverage, access and affordability.

Maternal mortality increased in Texas in 2020 and 2021, the most recent data available, before the state banned nearly all abortions, reversing several years of progress. Infant mortality is increasing faster than the national average, which researchers attribute to abortion restrictions.

[…]

With this retirement wave approaching faster than anticipated, Texas will need to quickly train and retain young OB/GYNs.

Historically, the state has done a lot on this front. Texas trains more medical students than any state other than New York and more residents than any state other than New York or California. About 65% of doctors who come to Texas for residency stay after their program ends, a better retention rate than the national average. In recent years, the state has built new medical schools, expanded residency programs and invested in physician loan repayment programs.

But Texas may be “undermining its own investment,” said Dr. Atul Grover, executive director of the Association of American Medical College’s Research and Action Institute. States that banned abortion saw a 16% drop in applications to OB/GYN residency programs this year, even as the number of applicants ticked up nationally, AAMC found.

There were other changes to the residency application process that muddies the data a bit, but the overall trend is clear, Grover said — medical students hoping to study OB/GYN are shying away from states that have banned abortion.

While some of the hesitation may be about the training they’ll receive or the care they’ll be able to provide, Grover said his group frequently hears another concern: the care these doctors can receive when they become patients.

“If you think about the ages of people who are graduating from med school, they’re 27 to 35,” Grover said. “They are very concerned about their ability to control their own health care or that of somebody close to them.”

The directors of Texas-based residency programs surveyed by Manatt Health said they are not seeing a decline in the quality of applicants and are still able to fill all their residency spots. But whether those doctors will stick around after finishing their program is a different story.

Almost 60% of surveyed residents said they were considering the new laws when deciding whether to stay in Texas after residency, and of that group, half said they were planning to leave as a result.

You can search future doctor shortage for past musings on this. This was drafted before the election, when we could speculate about restoring abortion rights at the federal level instead of worrying about a national ban. Regardless of that, I do worry about the trend. It may take a decade or more to really be felt, and of course those of us with means will feel it the least, but the potential for damage is great. All I can do for now is point it out and note once again what the solution is. The Chron has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, Kaiser Family Foundation, Manatt Health, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

Precinct analysis: In my neighborhood

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I won’t have access to a Harris County canvass for a couple of weeks, and I may or may not do some countywide comparisons, but I did wonder about how the vote went in my neighborhood. I do a lot of walking, I cover the basic area on foot or on bike pretty regularly, and at least at a vibes level things looked a lot like 2020. Lots of Harris and anti-Trump signs, and the small number of pro-Trump signs were just about all in the same yards as they were four years ago. Nothing to make me think that things right around me were any different.

But there’s vibes and there’s data, and it’s easy enough to look at the canvass returns on the Harris County Clerk website to see what the actual deal was in Precincts 0003 and 0004, where I do most of my walking. Here’s the story the numbers told:


Year     Dem     Rep   Other   Under   Total
============================================
2024   2,840   1,190      63      89   4,182
2020   2,307     956      70      37   3,370
2016   1,658     553     186     145   2,542
2012   1,316     935      82      22   2,355

Year     Dem     Rep   Other   Under
====================================
2024  67.91%  28.46%   1.51%   2.13%
2020  68.47%  28.37%   2.08%   1.10%
2016  65.22%  21.75%   7.32%   5.70%
2012  55.88%  39.70%   3.48%   0.93%

Allred 2,930  70.06%
Cruz   1,145  27.38%
Other     79   1.89%
Under     28   0.67%

A few caveats up front. Voting precincts get redrawn every ten years as well, so this comparison is by nature apples to oranges. I don’t have a map of the pre-2021 boundaries to do a comparison, but I can tell you that as far as registered voters goes, Precinct 0004 is more or less the same while Precinct 0003 now has slightly more than double what it had before. This is why there were so many more votes cast between 2020 and 2024.

That difference could have been even greater, except that in 2020 nearly every voter in both precincts turned out. I mean, 98.94% turnout in 0003, 90.60% in 0004. That’s why there were so many more votes cast in 2020 than in 2016 and 2012. In the other three years listed, turnout for the two precincts combined was in the mid-to-upper 70s. Good, but not world-beating.

That of course is a significant difference in its own right – some nontrivial number of people showed up exclusively in 2020. We can speculate about the reasons for that, but note that the outlier is 2020. Those precincts were the same as in 2016 and 2012, but the voter behavior was quite different. Please incorporate that fact into any hot takes you may have about this year. Note also that even with the extreme variation in turnout, the percentages from 2020 and 2024 are nearly the same.

I originally intended to just do the three Trump years, but then I got curious and threw in 2012 as well. I’m now glad I did, because you can see another stark difference from that year to the subsequent ones. The blue shift in affluent white areas happened here too. Good to know, but not too surprising. I’m pretty sure I know who a few of those Romney-but-not-Trump voters are.

“Other” includes Libertarian, Green, and write-in candidates. There were 18 such votes cast for Evan McMullin in 2016. Outside of that, I could have counted them on my hands and had plenty of fingers left over.

I calculate the percentages including the undervotes, which is not how they would show up on an official report. Normally, we use the votes cast in the race as the denominator. If I did that here, Hillary Clinton gets 69.17% of the votes, while Joe Biden gets 69.21%, which is as insignificant a difference as you can imagine. But I felt that the undervotes tell a story as well, so I included them. Feel free to argue with me about that in the comments.

The bottom line is that at least in my neighborhood, the Kamala Harris/Donald Trump race was nearly identical to the Joe Biden/Donald Trump race, at least as far as percentages go. Turnout was different, but again that was a function of 2020 being unusual, not 2024. If the rest of the country voted like my two precincts here, the current discourse would not be the same. So it goes.

I threw in the Senate race for 2024 at the bottom for grins. As observed elsewhere, there were some Trump/Allred voters in my neighborhood. If I ever find myself talking to one of them, you can bet I’ll have questions.

That’s it for now. I’ve got a couple more posts that don’t depend on the full canvass queued up, and I’ll do more of these when that canvass is available. And as I feel like it. Let me know if you have any questions.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, Heights, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mitt Romney, precinct analysis, Texas, turnout | 13 Comments

Paxton sues second doctor for providing gender affirming care to teens

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From before the election.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a second doctor for allegedly violating state law and providing gender-affirming medical care to minors.

Dr. Hector Granados is an El Paso pediatric endocrinologist. Paxton accuses him in the lawsuit of prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to more than 20 minors to treat gender dysphoria, or the distress someone can feel when their gender identity doesn’t match their physical appearance.

In 2023, Texas passed Senate Bill 14, which prohibited medical providers from prescribing certain gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers and hormones, to minors to assist them to medically transition.

Earlier this month, Paxton filed a similar lawsuit against Dr. May Lau, an adolescent medicine physician and associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The lawsuits say these doctors are “radical gender activists” who are circumventing the law. Both suits seek financial penalties as well as the revocation of the doctors’ medical licenses.

[…]

The lawsuit alleges Granados violated SB 14, but also says he engaged in fraud by continuing to provide patients with puberty blockers for gender transition while claiming in medical records that the treatment is necessary for precocious puberty, or the early onset of sexual development.

The minors Granados is accused of treating are between the ages of 12 and 17, with the majority 15 or older.

In August 2015, Granados helped open El Paso’s first clinic treating transgender children and teens through Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. At the time, the clinic was lauded as filling a necessary gap in the region.

“There’s a huge need for the care of trans youths, there’s very little physicians or few who have been trained to do so,” Granados told the Texas Tech student newspaper at the time. “It was very important for me to open this and we’ve seen great results.”

Granados now works in private practice, according to his website. He was an assistant professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso medical school until 2019. The university did not respond to a request for comment.

See here for the previous lawsuit. Hard for me to imagine a good outcome for these doctors or their patients at this point, especially after Tuesday. but I hope I’ll be proven wrong. For sure, Paxton will keep on doing this until he’s either driven all of these doctors out of the state or been forced to stop by a change in state or federal law. Or, you know, he gets booted out of office. Some combination of those last two would be nice. Oh, and if you think he and his comrades are going to stop at just minors, or at just trans people, I don’t know what planet you’re living on.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Attorney General, Hector Granados, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, May Lau, Texas, The Lege, Transgender Education Network of Texas, transgender rights | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for November 10

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“The European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped by eight percent in 2023, a course correction following a couple of years of post-Covid recovery. The 27 member states are collectively making real progress — though still not enough.”

I was (along with my dad) a volunteer for the NYC Marathon a couple of times in the early 80s when I was in high school. Getting that race up and going is an amazing feat of logistics and communication. The experience of actually running it is not something I shared. It sounds pretty intense.

“‘Wicked’s Two-Part Release Plan Solves a Problem With the Musical We Don’t Like To Admit”. And this is me saying again that the book is vastly different from the musical, mostly because it covers Elphaba’s whole life, and the parts of it that are in the musical make up maybe a quarter of the book.

“10 Scary Space Facts That Will Change How You Think about Outer Space”.

RIP, Quincy Jones, legendary musician, composer, arranger, and producer. I encourage you to listen to the June Hit Parade podcast for a comprehensive overview of Jones and his career.

RIP, Alan Rachins, actor best known for LA Law and Dharma and Greg, and was in the original cast of Oh, Calcutta! on Broadway.

RIP, Greg Hildebrandt, artist and illustrator who drew the original Star Wars movie poster, among many other things.

“A class action lawsuit filed in New York on Friday claims Paramount illegally shared Paramount+ users’ data with third-party apps like Facebook and TikTok. The lawsuit is seeking at least $5 million in damages.”

RIP, Tyka Nelson, singer, songwriter, Prince’s sister.

RIP, Jonathan Haze, actor best known for roles in a dozen Roger Corman movies, including as Seymour in the original Little Shop of Horrors.

From the “Who Asked For This?” department: “Amazon has turned to AI to create recaps for TV shows on Prime Video — starting with its own original series — in a way the company says won’t risk revealing spoilers.”

“[Prince Andrew,] The Duke of York has been cut off financially by his brother King Charles, according to an updated royal biography.”

RIP, Chauncy Glover, news anchor in Los Angeles and formerly Houston.

“Most of our problems — most of the problems with the world as a whole — come from people who understand and accept that they are important, and unique, and infinitely valuable, but then forget that the same exact thing is just as true of every other person they will ever meet.”

RIP, Elwood Edwards, local news broadcaster and voice actor who gave us the “You’ve got mail!” greeting for AOL.

RIP, Bobby Allison, NASCAR Hall of Famer.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

If we’d listened to OB-GYNs in the first place we wouldn’t be having these problems now

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I very much appreciate what they’re saying, but let’s be honest, their words will have no effect.

The newly reported deaths of two pregnant Texans sparked a renewed plea from Texas OB/GYNs, including dozens in the Houston-area, for lawmakers to change the state’s abortion laws.

More than 60 Houston-area OB/GYNs were among 111 of their colleagues across the state who signed a letter saying that the “heartbreaking” deaths of the two women — Josseli Barnica, of Houston, and Nevaeh Crain, of Vidor — “will continue to echo throughout our state and our nation.” The deaths were first reported last week by ProPublica.

“Texas needs a change,” the letter states. “A change in laws. A change in how we legislate medical decisions that should be between a patient, their family and their doctor.”

Texans cannot vote on abortion laws on Election Day, though the laws have been a central issue in key races, including U.S. Rep. Colin Allred’s bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Allred has cast Cruz as a defender of Texas’s abortion ban and, during the October debate, invoked the names of pregnant Texans who have been forced to flee the state for care. Cruz has accused Allred of voting to allow abortions in the third trimester but has largely avoided the issue on the campaign trail.

Both Barnica and Crain experienced delays when they sought care for miscarriage treatment, and experts said their deaths may have been preventable, according to ProPublica. Physicians had warned for months of the possibility that delays could lead to deaths in Texas, but no such stories had been publicly documented until now.

Doctors and patients have criticized the abortion bans since they took effect in September 2021, saying they go beyond banning elective abortions. The vague exceptions in the law, combined with strict penalties that include life imprisonment for physicians, disrupt the standard process for treating pregnancy complications, they have said in court filings and news reports.

Dr. R. Todd Ivey, a Houston OB/GYN and district officer of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said the group of physicians felt they needed to send the letter after reading the “gut-wrenching” stories. Ivey, who spearheaded the effort, posted the letter to social media on Sunday.

“These laws are not clear, and they’re not allowing women to get the life-saving care they need,” he said. “We need to change this, and we need to decriminalize this.”

See here and here for some background. The reason nothing will happen is because the fanatics who imposed this law on us already think it’s perfectly clear and that all of the problems we’ve experienced so far – the deaths, the bleeding out in parking lots, the unplanned trips to other states, that sort of thing – is the fault of the doctors who refuse to risk jailtime and their licenses and the pro-abortion activists who keep bringing this stuff up. I know I don’t need to tell you again what the solution to all this is, but I’m going to tell you again what the solution to all this is: Voting the bastards who passed these laws out. That feels a lot more daunting now, I know. But that’s what needs to be done regardless.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Election 2024, Josseli Barnica, Nevaeh Crain, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | 3 Comments

The Women’s Pro Baseball League

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Very cool.

A professional women’s baseball league aims to begin competition in the U.S. in 2026, according to a news release issued Tuesday.

The Women’s Pro Baseball League will feature six teams, based in the northeastern United States, and will be the only professional women’s baseball league in America, the release says.

The league’s co-founders are Keith Stein, a lawyer and businessman, and Justine Siegal, founder of Baseball For All, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for girls to play and coach baseball. In 2015, the Oakland A’s hired Siegal as a guest instructor for their club in the Arizona Instructional League, and she became the first female coach in Major League Baseball. She has also pitched batting practice for a handful of MLB teams.

Decorated Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato and former MLB manager Cito Gaston, who won back-to-back World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays, will serve as special advisors.

Sato was featured in “See Her, Be Her,” a two-hour documentary that premiered on MLB Network last Sunday and tells the stories of several top female baseball players. The film features a cameo by Maybelle Blair, 97, who played for the Peoria Red Wings in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1948.

[…]

The league is working on securing a national broadcast deal for its inaugural season.

In the news release, Stein, the WPBL co-founder, cited the success of the WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League as examples of “incredible interest and support for women’s sport.”

The announcement of this new league comes soon after the conclusion of what WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert recently called “the most transformational year in the WNBA’s history,” capped by a Game 5 that was the most-viewed WNBA Finals game in 25 years.

Also on Tuesday, the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) announced it is preparing to expand beyond its inaugural six teams, possibly as early as in the 2025-2026 season. The league’s second season is set to begin Nov. 30.

I’m excited to hear this. It is a great time for women’s sports – kudos to the PWHL on their planned expansion, by the way – so this new league should have some momentum behind it. I will admit that my first thought was to wonder where the talent pool would come from, since softball is far more prevalent and visible in the US, but there is a Women’s Baseball World Cup, which goes back to 2004 and which was hosted in the US for the first time in 2018, so there shouldn’t be any problems getting the rosters together. Awareness may be the bigger issue – I didn’t know there was a WBWC, for what it’s worth – but with the start of the league in 2026, there’s time to work on that. Maybe some kind of partnership with MLB, who knows. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on this. Yahoo Sports has more.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged Baseball, Baseball for All, hockey, Justine Siegal, Keith Stein, MLB, PWHL, Women's Baseball World Cup, Women’s Pro Baseball League | Comments Off

TDP Chair Hinojosa resigns

Posted on November 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Obviously.

Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced his resignation Friday on the heels of another election cycle in which his party suffered blowout losses atop the ticket and vastly underperformed expectations.

In a statement acknowledging Democrats’ “devastating defeats up and down the ballot,” Hinojosa announced he would step down in March when the party’s governing executive committee is scheduled to meet.

“In the days and weeks to come, it is imperative that our Democratic leaders across the country reevaluate what is best for our party and embrace the next generation of leaders to take us through the next four years of Trump and win back seats up and down the ballot,” Hinojosa said, calling on Democratic leaders “at all levels to join me in lifting up the next generation in order to unite our party.”

In the months leading up to Tuesday’s election, Hinojosa and other party leaders promoted Texas as a competitive state where Democratic candidates had a real shot of winning a statewide race for the first time since 1994. Instead, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 14 percentage points and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz defeated his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, by nearly 9 points. Democrats also lost three seats in the Texas Legislature and nearly every contested state appellate court race, and saw Republicans win 10 countywide judicial races in Harris County — reversing several years of Democratic dominance in Texas’ largest county.

Republicans also set a high-water mark among Latino voters, with Trump capturing 55% of the key voting bloc statewide, according to exit polls. He carried all four counties in the traditionally deep-blue Rio Grande Valley, including Cameron County, where Hinojosa previously served as county judge.

In an interview with The Texas Newsroom this week, Hinojosa said Democrats’ poor performance was in part a result of the way they handled the issue of transgender rights — comments that stirred backlash from party members and LGBTQ advocates.

“You have a choice as a party,” Hinojosa said. “You could, for example, you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”

Hinojosa later apologized for the comments, saying he recognized “the pain and frustration” my words have caused.

What happened in November was a “fire the coach” moment. As is often the case with the sports analog, there may have been factors beyond the coach’s control, but faith has been lost and a new direction is needed. There was no way he could credibly continue as TDP Chair.

I don’t know who should be next, nor do I have any advice for that person beyond “figure out what happened and what is and isn’t working, and go from there”. Whoever does take this position next has their work cut out for them. It won’t be easy, that much I know. Good luck, whoever you are.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Election 2024, Gilberto Hinojosa, TDP, Texas | 5 Comments

Whitmire’s Montrose Boulevard plan passes on second try

Posted on November 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Dammit.

A controversial Montrose Boulevard redesign plan is set to move forward with key revisions introduced by the Whitmire administration after board members of the area’s Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone voted to accept the changes Friday morning.

The Nov. 1 meeting drew over 120 attendees in person and online as polarized residents spoke for and against implementing revisions to the original boulevard overhaul plan.

The meeting was held by the Montrose TIRZ less than two weeks after the board first rejected a motion to move forward. Now that the motion passed, contractor Gauge Engineering will expedite a revised plan following the city’s new priorities for the roadway.

The meeting kicked off with a presentation by Muhammad Ali of Gauge Engineering, who said he had heard concerns after the last meeting and wanted to emphasize that the project’s original goals of improving drainage, improving safety and mobility and promoting a pedestrian-friendly environment would still be in effect.

“The only thing is we added a fourth objective, which is to preserve as many trees as possible,” Ali said, as well as adjusting plans for the road and sidewalk widths “consistent with the new city guiding mobility principles.”

Those new principles satisfied some attendees while drawing ire from others, whose comments were echoed by board members such as Jeffrey Watters who voted against the changes.

The new plan “suffers from a remarkable lack of vision,” Watters said, decrying the decision to leave the road’s lane widths at 12 feet and nix enlarged sidewalks.

See here for the previous update. Those of you who have a hankering to restore the Houston glory days of the early 80s, you’ve got the right Mayor. Those of us who’d like to see Houston move into the future, it’s now three years until the next mayoral election. Houston Landing has more.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Abbie Kamin, accidents, bicycles, density, drainage, flooding, Houston, John Whitmire, Montrose, pedestrians, sidewalks, TIRZ, trees, Trees for Houston, urbanism, Vision Zero | 2 Comments

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