Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

On Rep. Kay Granger

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

On Saturday I was perusing Bluesky, and posts like this were all over the place:

US Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, hasn’t voted since July. The Dallas Express reports that it found her in a “memory care and assisted living home” after she was “found wandering lost and confused in her” old neighborhood. She is 81 and a sitting congresswoman.

dallasexpress.com/tarrant/excl…

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— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) December 21, 2024 at 7:04 PM

One might note a couple of things about this. The story comes from a wingnut “news” site that probably none of us had heard of before this encounter. It contains multiple unsourced or uncorroborated allegations. Just a month ago, Rep. Granger was in DC being publicly feted for her career, which anyone with any experience with dementia can tell you is absolutely not something that a person in memory care who is a risk to wander off could handle. It’s true that she hadn’t cast a vote in Congress in several months, and there’s a story that should have been reported about that. This was not that story, it was a hit piece filled with reckless speculation.

And after at least 24 hours of that story being shared all over the Internet – a Google news search on Saturday for her name was filled with identical versions of the story from equally dubious sources – there was finally a story from a more reputable outlet about the situation.

Retiring U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, has missed votes in Congress since the summer and her son said she has been “having some dementia issues late in the year.”

The last time the 81-year-old congresswoman cast a vote on the House floor was the morning of July 24.

In a statement from her office, Rep. Granger expressed gratitude for the public’s concern and said that since early September, her health issues have made frequent travel to Washington, D.C., “both difficult and unpredictable.”

“As many of my family, friends, and colleagues have known, I have been navigating some unforeseen health challenges over the past year,” the statement said.

She added she was able to return to Washington in November to hold meetings and oversee the closure of her office.

From South Carolina, Brandon Granger, 52, told The Dallas Morning News Sunday morning, “It’s been a hard year,” adding it has been a surprise how quickly it progressed.

Brandon said his mother is living at Tradition Senior Living in Fort Worth, but she is not in a memory care facility, as some media reports have stated. He said that while the facility has a memory care community on the same property, Rep. Granger resides in the independent living facility.

On its website, Tradition Senior Living says it offers “resort-style living with ultra-inclusive services” on “approximately six acres along the Trinity River with miles of walking trails.” Brandon said she made the move because she wanted to be in a more active community of other older people.

“There’s nothing wrong with someone wanting to live in a community with other folks their age,” he said. “She’s in a building with a lot of other folks her age that are super active that she really loves. She has exercise classes, she gets to be around people all the time, it’s wonderful for her for this point in life.”

Tradition Senior Living said it was not able to confirm the residency status of any individual when reached by phone Sunday morning.

After the publication of the DMN story, a bunch of more mainstream outlets jumped in, though some still largely parroted the original hit piece. I’ll credit Axios doing some good followup reporting and approaching the underlying issues about the advanced age of some members of Congress and the lack of transparency about Rep. Granger’s absence with a fair amount of seriousness. All I can say is that I’ve never felt the adage about a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on more acutely.

There’s still a lot we don’t know here, and frankly some of it we’ll probably never know, and some of that is fine and appropriate. I don’t have the energy to litigate this in detail, but having had personal experience with dementia in loved ones, it is fully credible to me that Rep. Granger’s situation went from one where she was mostly in control to one where she just couldn’t operate as she had done before quickly an unexpectedly. I’m happy to have a larger conversation about how old Congress is and how hard it is for younger candidates to get elected and younger members to advance. I’m just angry that this conversation, such as it is, was started by a nasty hit piece that was full of reckless speculation, all of which was swallowed whole by far too many people. That’s what really sucks here, as far as I’m concerned.

UPDATE: For those that want to know more about the Dallas Express and sites like it, the Texas Observer has done you that service. I think what most offended me about this whole saga is that there were actual journalists like Sahil Kapur doing the sharing without first asking themselves if the source they were boosting was a credible one.

Posted in National news | Tagged CD12, Congress, Election 2024, Kay Granger, Texas | 4 Comments

HISD to add metal detectors at all high schools

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Inevitable, I suppose. Ridiculous, but inevitable.

Houston ISD will introduce new weapons detection systems to its high school campuses in the spring semester after experiencing an uptick in confiscated weapons in the 2024-25 school year.

More than 10 guns have been confiscated from HISD schools since the start of the school year, putting the district on track to outpace previous years, interim police chief Shamara Garner said. While the district did not disclose the number of metal detectors that would be installed, Garner said HISD will implement one lane for every 600 students enrolled.

“I need not say much about the uptick of weapons discovered on our campuses and the climate within our nation,” Garner said. “Our number one most important priority is the safety of our students.”

Students can walk through the portable OpenGate systems without removing their bags, although they must hand laptops and other devices to nearby staff. If the light at the top of the system turns red, students will then be searched by staff members for further inspection. Two employees will staff each lane, and HISD police will provide assistance if a threat is detected but will not assist in staffing.

Houston ISD and other districts across the country experienced an influx of school threats following the Sept. 4 Georgia high school shooting and the current social media environment, experts told the Houston Chronicle in September.

FBI Houston received 66 school-related threats to life in September, up from 13 that month both in 2023 and in 2022. HISD, the state’s largest district, said Sept. 23 seven student arrests were made in connection to hoax threats. Several HISD schools have experienced lockdowns this school year due to weapons detected on campus, stabbings and other threats.

Garner said the district was in “active discussions” on purchasing metal detectors in September, an idea echoed days later by state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles in a virtual parent town hall.

I get it, and I’m not going to argue against it. This is the world we live in, and even if we could get the kind of gun control laws we deserve in place tomorrow, the culture isn’t going to change any time soon. These will be fully rolled out to all district high schools by the end of the spring semester – I’ll have to ask Audrey what she sees at her school – and that will come with a restriction to one point of entry for students at each school. It is what it is.

Not mentioned anywhere in the story – the cost, and how much of any of it will be picked up by the state. Note that just installing the machines isn’t the end of it – they will need to be maintained and eventually replaced, they will need people who have been trained in their use to operate them, and so on. It would be nice to know how much this will cost us, now and going forward.

Posted in School days | Tagged gun control, guns, HISD, Houston, metal detectors, Mike Miles, schools | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for December 22

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“We are all passengers on the NFL’s journey. Private equity is too. It just gets to sit in better seats.”

“Put simply, we don’t have anywhere near enough pardons: both at the federal and the state level.”

“Our antivaccine friends appear energized for some reason. Doesn’t take much to figure out why. I anticipate a rough few years ahead.”

“Whooping cough cases skyrocket in Michigan, as vaccinations decline”.

“This, I think, is what has befallen America. This is a disease of affluence, not poverty. This isn’t a story of a working class that is being pinched. It’s the story of a working class that is doing better than any comparable working class ever has and a professional class who are angry about that. Who feel that this newfound security means they no longer show proper deference to their social betters.”

“Sarah Michelle Gellar Has Come Around To The Idea Of A ‘Buffy’ Offshoot”.

“The roots of Hegseth’s version of Christianity are worth a look as he heads into confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate in January 2025.”

RIP, Reef, one of the white tigers at Houston’s Downtown Aquarium.

RIP, Kelly, a 44-year-old orangutan who spent decades at the Houston Zoo.

“Because what we have here is a stunted, misleading, misconception of what does and does not constitute “politics” — one that leaves out any consideration of 90% of the political formation and political discipling that occurs in congregations.”

“Beyond covering legal expenses and giving people the confidence they won’t be bankrupted by Trump these are really pro-wrestling-derived public spectacles and performance art aimed at telegraphing power and demoralizing enemies. So much of our politics in the Trump era amounts to this. We’ve seen this. We know this if we’re paying attention. And Trump’s opponents need to learn to speak in that language. Otherwise it’s a professional wrestling grudge match, a taunt-fest with only one side taunting.”

Oh, my God, no. Just, no.

RIP, Jim Tunney, longtime NFL referee who officiated some of the league’s most memorable games.

“More people are turning to IVF to have children than ever before. But new research, out last month, finds that the success of in vitro fertilization — a delicate process that works less than half the time — could be affected by air pollution.”

“Legal sports betting revenue in the US has gone from $430 million in 2018 to $11.04 billion last year, i.e., more than a 25-fold increase in five years. Note that revenue means total bets minus total payouts, so that $11.04 billion is the net loss to legal sports gamblers in America last year. Given the growth curve, I’d be surprised if that figure was less than $15 billion in 2024, which would mean that Americans legally wagered something like $150 billion on sports this year!”

“Trump’s nominations represent an unprecedented triple assault on constitutional appointment norms: First, many are unqualified or hostile to their agencies’ missions. Second, rather than making a few controversial picks, Trump has flooded the zone, nominating an entire slate of problematic candidates that burdens the Senate’s capacity for proper vetting. And third, Trump has signaled willingness to circumvent the confirmation process through legally dubious tactics such as forced Senate adjournment. Together, these moves threaten to transform the appointments process from a constitutional safeguard into a vehicle for installing loyalists regardless of competence.”

“How to Lose a Fortune with Just One Bad Click“. One critical takeaway: Google will never call you to tell you that there’s a problem with your account. If you get such a call, it’s a scam. In general, for calls like that, hang up, look up, and call back.

“In 2024, TV shows that took on abortion largely failed to depict the many barriers to abortion access or reflect the real-life demographics of abortion patients — and in some cases, reinforced misleading tropes, according to a new report about abortion representation on television.”

“Four Ways to Unbend the Media’s Knee”.

“A scientific journal on Tuesday retracted the March 2020 study that introduced the world to hydroxychloroquine early in the COVID-19 pandemic – and confirmed that the attention was undeserved from the start.”

“The world’s largest hornet, an invasive breed dubbed the “murder hornet” for its dangerous sting and ability to slaughter a honey bee hive in a matter of hours, has been declared eradicated in the US, five years after being spotted for the first time in Washington state near the Canadian border.”

“Trump has sewn himself into a sack with Elon Musk, a few billion dollars, a cat and a snake and had the sack tossed into the Tiber. That’s the story here. And it will go on for a while.”

“Netflix and FIFA have agreed a deal for the streaming giant to have exclusive United States broadcasting rights to the next two FIFA Women’s World Cup tournaments, global football’s governing body confirmed on Friday.” I’d really prefer they be on ESPN or one of the networks, but no one asked me.

1-800-CHAT-GPT. No, seriously.

RIP, Rickey Henderson, MLB Hall of Famer, all time leader in stolen bases, and honestly just a damn legend. As Bill James once said, if you cut Rickey in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers. There will be tons written about Rickey, as well there should. Here‘s a good starting point.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 2 Comments

CenterPoint finds a use for those useless-to-us generators

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

San Antonio, here they come.

No longer seen at I-10 and Sawyer

A plan is in the works to partially relieve Houston-area ratepayers of CenterPoint Energy’s $800 million lease of controversial generators that have sat mostly unused during power outages.

The bulk of the lease includes 15 large generators, each big enough to power roughly 30,000 homes. These generators have been under public scrutiny since July, when a Houston Chronicle investigation revealed CenterPoint has never deployed them to restore outages, including in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, because they take days to move and aren’t suited for use after storms damage neighborhood-level power lines and poles.

According to a proposal under evaluation by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s power grid operator, the 15 generators could be sent to CPS Energy, San Antonio’s electric utility, to mitigate a power supply crunch in that region.

While the generators are in San Antonio, CenterPoint would receive no revenue or profit from ERCOT for their use. CenterPoint would also not charge Houston-area customers for any costs incurred while the generators are in San Antonio, which would reduce customer bills starting in spring 2025.

ERCOT’s board will vote on the plan at its next meeting in February. If approved, the generators would be moved to San Antonio in the spring and stay with CPS Energy for approximately two years, or until additional power lines are built to relieve the region’s power shortfalls.

Even after CPS Energy is done with the generators around 2027, CenterPoint wouldn’t charge its Houston-area customers for any future use of the generators until its lease is up in 2029, according to a statement from the Houston utility. CenterPoint said it plans to “market the units for other purposes” and mentioned that there is significant demand for such generators as artificial intelligence drives a massive build-out of data centers desperate for electricity.

[…]

If the proposal is approved, CenterPoint’s generators would replace the need for CPS Energy to continue operating two natural gas power plants at its Braunig complex past their planned March retirement. Maintaining operations at these two power plants is expected to cost $56 million, which would be paid by utility customers across the state.

ERCOT has already ordered CPS Energy to keep the largest of the three Braunig power plants open at a cost of $34 million. Additional power supply is needed in the San Antonio region because there isn’t enough power line capacity to move plentiful electricity generated by wind farms in South Texas to power-hungry cities further north, according to ERCOT.

Without the Braunig units, which are located north of the bottleneck, or CenterPoint’s generators, those power lines could become overloaded, which could in a worst-case scenario lead to outages. Overloaded power lines in South Texas were a major trigger of a grid emergency in September 2023, the first to occur since the infamous outages of the February 2021 freeze.

Chad Seely, ERCOT’s general counsel, told the PUC at its Thursday meeting that ERCOT is still assessing how much it would cost to use CenterPoint’s generators to mitigate San Antonio’s power shortfalls instead of the Braunig units. ERCOT plans to issue on Friday a request for companies to submit other solutions to see if a more cost-effective alternative emerges, he said.

“The market (would be) competing against what we believe is a better, more reliable solution that is probably less costly than the Braunig units,” Seely said, referring to the proposal to use CenterPoint’s generators, which would still be paid for by utility customers across the state.

If it means that we in Houston don’t get charged any more for these things, then it’s all fine by me. It would be nice if the state made some investment in more and better transmission lines to take advantage of all that wind energy that could be used instead, but that’s a different issue. If you want to know more about CenterPoint and the many issues and proposals surrounding it, you should listen to my interview with Sandie Haverlah of the Texas Consumer Association, in which she answered a bunch of questions about those things.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, CPS Energy, derecho, ERCOT, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, interviews, Public Utility Commission, San Antonio, Sandie Haverlah, Texas, Texas Consumer Association | Leave a comment

Who is all this Enron performance art for?

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have no idea.

The company that recently resurrected Enron’s fallen brand announced Friday it would host a “town hall” to address residents’ concerns after its CEO was allegedly targeted in a pie attack in New York.

Despite the Chronicle’s best efforts, nailing down the details of Enron’s supposed town hall proved an elusive task. The company did not respond to multiple requests for more information, and never publicly shared an address or time for the event. All Enron shared in terms of specifics was that it would be hosted “near Enron’s original headquarters.”

Efforts to RSVP to the town hall within minutes of the event being announced on social media were met with an automated response claiming it was full.

The company initially claimed the town hall was scheduled for Monday, but later shared pictures of a $50,000 check generously made to the “Citizens of Houston” dated Sunday.

It’s unclear who the beneficiaries of the check were intended to be, but the Chronicle was unable to verify any Houston resident receiving a payout as of Thursday evening. Enron did not respond to a request for clarification.

See here and here for the background. The story goes on from there, and I commend Chron reporter John Novax IV for his persistence and ability to keep a straight face. But look, phony checks aside, someone is providing the money to pay for this joke. I can’t tell who their audience is, or at least who they might think it is, let alone what they’re actually planning to do with them. I was going to go on a lengthy diatribe about this, but the Chron’s Gwen Howerton beat me to it.

What, exactly, is the joke here? They bought the trademark for $275 because it was a radioactive brand name. The countdown on its website promising more was sure to invite the curiosity of media outlets who, for some reason, cover it as if it’s a serious company. A brazenly fake pie-in-the-face stunt only furthered speculation. The “company” held a “town hall” in “Houston” with “Houstonians” where a $50 million check was made out to the “Citizens of Houston.” As of this writing, another countdown on the website promises even more in 18 days. Conveniently, the only thing on the website that’s clear is the very real and very overpriced merch that you can buy. The “company” has also applied for a wider patent to sell everything from Enron-branded beer to crypto.

Sure, perhaps it’s a bit funny that Enron would come back in an era of brazen corporate fraud. But again, how can you satirize a moment that is already beyond parody? One where people willingly participate in memecoin scams or AI hoaxes, where elderly dementia patients unwittingly donate their life savings to politicians and “sustainable” car companies dump wastewater into municipal sewer systems?

Just as Zombie Enron is not a real company and shouldn’t be treated as such, it isn’t particularly good or interesting parody, either. It’s also not particularly funny. Don’t just take it from me; former Enron employees aren’t laughing. What it is, then, is just another stunt built to capture your attention and your hard-earned cash. In an era where attention is a commodity, I am begging you to not give the Enron guys any more of it. Their 15 minutes of fame have long expired.

I’ll probably continue to pay attention just because I want to see how this ends. You should feel free to tap out. Oh, and because I can’t help myself, the check in question was for fifty thousand and not fifty million, but if you look at the picture, you can see where that bit of confusion may have arisen. I’ll stop now.

Posted in Enronarama | Tagged Connor Gaydos, cryptocurrency, Enron, Houston, The College Company | Leave a comment

Harris County adopts plan for court translators

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good start, now needs follow through.

Harris County’s district and county courts unveiled an updated plan Wednesday for expanding interpreter services for those navigating the court system, but said they will need millions in additional funding to sustain the effort.

The revamped plan calls for increasing the number of available interpreters, training judges and staff around language access and posting the availability of interpreters online and in the courthouse. The plan also calls for additional notice and signs about individuals’ rights to interpreter services.

The announcement comes three months after Harris County Commissioners Court bolstered the courts’ funding by $725,000 to help increase the number of publicly-funded courtroom interpreters in district and county civil courts.

The county long has provided free interpreters to people navigating the criminal courthouse, but does not always offer the same to those involved in civil cases.

Some lawyers say the denial of publicly-funded interpreters in local civil courts has become so routine they rarely bother to submit requests.

The cost of interpreters can run to hundreds of dollars per hearing, which advocates say can create an unnecessary barrier for lower-income non-English-speaking residents trying to understand and participate in their own court proceedings.

Even with the additional funding from the county, District Judge Latosha Lewis Payne, who also serves as the local administrative judge for Harris County’s state district courts, said there is no way the courts can “adequately and timely” provide interpreters with current staffing levels.

“We will definitely need funding in order to make sure that this plan is successful,” she said.

See here for the background, and read the rest for more. As the story notes, some 145 languages are spoken in Harris County, so this is a significant issue that will require a steady and sizeable funding source. Ideally, there would be some kind of state or federal grant to help with that – this is, at some level, a human rights issue, and that’s not something that should be left up to a local government to guarantee – but for obvious reasons one shouldn’t expect much there. We’ll see what plan the county develops.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Adrian Garcia, budget, Harris County, Justice Department, Latosha Lewis Payne, Lesley Briones, Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Texas Office of Court Administration, The Lege, translators | 6 Comments

Lawsuit filed over SpaceX pollution

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

So many lawsuits, so little time.

Rio Grande Valley groups are suing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, accusing the agency of bypassing state regulations by allowing SpaceX to temporarily discharge industrial water at its South Texas launch site without a proper permit.

The groups — the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, along with the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and Save RGV — filed the lawsuit Monday after the agency decided last month to allow SpaceX to continue its operations for 300 days or until the company obtained the appropriate permit.

It is the latest in a string of lawsuits filed by environmental groups aimed at curbing the possible environmental impacts of SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica on the southern tip of Texas.

Earlier this year, TCEQ cited SpaceX for discharging water into nearby waterways after it was used to protect the launchpad from heat damage during Starship launches four times this year.

SpaceX did not admit to any violation but agreed to pay a $3,750 penalty. Part of the penalty was deferred until SpaceX obtains the proper permit and on the condition that future water discharges meet pollution restrictions.

The environmental groups say that allowing SpaceX to continue is a violation of permitting requirements and that TCEQ is acting outside of its authority.

“The Clean Water Act requires the TCEQ to follow certain procedural and technical requirements when issuing discharge permits meant to protect public participation and ensure compliance with Texas surface water quality standards,” Lauren Ice, the attorney for the three Rio Grande Valley organizations, said in a statement.

“By bypassing these requirements, the Commission has put the Boca Chica environment at risk of degradation,” Ice said.

I mean, a $3750 fine might not be enough to deter me, and I’m worth [checks bank statement] a lot less than Elbow Musk. What are we doing here?

Other lawsuits filed by the same group of plaintiffs include one against the FAA over approval of expanded rocket launch operations, another against the FAA for failing to properly analyze the environmental impacts of the first Starship launch before issuing a revised license for its second launch, and one to stop the Boca Chica land swap, which is now moot. I see no reason to think these will slow down any time soon.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Boca Chica Village, Cameron County, Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, Federal Aviation Administration, lawsuit, pollution, Save RGV, South Texas Environmental Justice Network, SpaceX, TCEQ, Texas | Leave a comment

Dispatches from Dallas, December 21 edition

Posted on December 21, 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, we have another grab bag: the Lege; the Bum Steers from north Texas; updates on the disastrous search for Dallas’ new City Manager; a Prop S suit that has nothing to do with Monty Bennett; Fort Worth political news; news from Denton, Princeton, and other suburbs; school district news, especially around demographic changes; how the North Texas Toll Authority is suing for unpaid tolls; the Washington Post’s long interactive on the former police chief in Maypearl and his history of abusing kids until he was caught; local history and arts news; and a sad story about a local pup with a happy ending.

This week’s post was brought to you by a Spotify playlist called “Christmas Music You Won’t Hate”, which is mostly jazzy takes on Christmas classics featuring names like Vince Guaraldi, Dave Brubeck, and Booker T & the MGs. As a confirmed holiday hater, I found it surprisingly pleasant.

As we move into the holiday season, the news gets quieter. Let’s dive into another short week:

I said I wasn’t going to get into David Cook (R-Mansfield) and his race for Speaker but Texas Monthly did me a solid and wrote it up for me. That was last week so it’s already out of date, but it’s a nice summary of the circular firing squad going on among Texas Republicans.
Lone Star Left has some bad climate bills and I specifically note HB553, by our own Jared Patterson, which is all about hating on renewable energy. May it die in committee.
Collin County’s favorite, Ken Paxton, is not Texas Monthly’s favorite. He’s only the runner-up. But the actual Bum Steer is also from our part of the state: Jerry Jones. I don’t even care about the Cowboys but I agree with this choice.
The City of Dallas is still looking for a City Manager, a job that nobody in their right mind would want. City Council can’t get their ducks in a row or even a quorum of members to show up to talk about it. KERA and D Magazine have more on that. Meanwhile the Dallas Morning News reports that two of the original semifinalists have withdrawn from consideration and it sounds like the chaotic process is part of the problem, or at least the part they’re willing to talk about.
The DMN is also doing a series about downtown Dallas in 2025 if that’s your thing. They also have an editorial suggesting reforming parking minimums in the city instead of getting rid of them.
We knew Prop S was going to cause a wave of lawsuits, but this one isn’t Monty Bennett and his minions: the Neighborhood Coalition of Dallas is going to sue if the City doesn’t get rid of all the termed-out members of boards and commissions. All those folks are under the same term limits as the City Council and Mayor: four consecutive two-year terms. Some folks are still in place long past their limits and others, it’s impossible to tell from looking online. That is something of a silver lining to the Prop S thundercloud.
Fort Worth City Council is having a moment about Council member Chris Nettles having called Mayor Mattie Parker and a couple of other council members racist back in 2022. An activist released a video of the incident, and related it to some kind of election interference around Marc Veasey’s (CD-33) seat. Nettles is one of the Council members who thinks the fix was in on the selection of Jay Chapa as Fort Worth City Council. Read about it all in the Star-Telegram and the DMN.
Fort Worth, like Dallas, has a short-term rental ordinance being fought by a lawsuit from the STR owners. The case had a hearing on December 19 and the Fort Worth Report has the details.
You may recall that Dallas County had some issues with their electronic pollbooks during the November election. The County is ready to give ES&S, their vendor, the heave-ho if they can’t get their software updated and certified in time. We have a city election coming up in May, so the timeline is already tight. More from KERA and the DMN.
Dallas County is about to pay $1.65 million to female jailers in a discrimination suit. This was in response to a sherriff’s office policy that gave full weekends off to male jailers but not to women. Apparently the Fifth Court of Appeals overturned a bad precedent that limited the kinds of discrimination cases plaintiffs could bring, too, so there’s a double reason for celebration.
Two items about the Tarrant County Appraisal District. First, unofficial results from the November election are out and we have a list of the incoming members of the board. Second, they’re quitting the state association of appraisal districts because the association disagrees with the district about how long the appraisal cycle should be. Most districts reappraise every year; Tarrant County, as you may recall, wants to go to every other year, which may not be legal.
Denton just put a controversial nominee on its library board for the next two years. You don’t know Ellen Quinn Sullivan, but you probably have heard of her son Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans and other Farris/Wilks projects. Council members and the mayor who voted for her said social chatter about her beliefs wasn’t substantiated and she won’t be a book banner.
The mayoral runoff in Princeton is over and the challenger, who says the city isn’t managing growth properly, beat out the incumbent. Two members of the council also lost to challengers. You may remember Princeton as the suburb that put a six-month moratorium on residential development back in September so the city could upgrade its infrastructure. The Dallas Observer has more about that and what will happen next in Princeton.
Drones, drones everywhere, and north Texas is no exception. White Settlement, west of Fort Worth, has been seeing them which is a problem because the area near the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth is a no-fly zone. Oops. Meanwhile, in case you needed to know, it’s illegal under federal law to shoot down drones, and it’s illegal in the state of Texas to fly them over private property for surveillance reasons, unless you’re a cop working on reasonable suspicion of a crime, of course.
Here’s one way to solve underfunding and declining enrollment: Frisco ISD is planning to accept out-of-district transfers to fill 900 places in K-7 grades next year instead of closing schools.
Texas Monthly hits the same question for Prosper ISD: what happens when the growth stops and when all the shiny facilities that are bringing families in are no longer new? I recommend this one if you’re interested in suburban sprawl and development issues.
And here’s a DMN editorial on the declining enrollment problem and what needs to be done to deal with it. They include increases in state funding; good luck with that.
Bonham ISD, which is northeast of Dallas near the Oklahoma border, is facing a civil rights complaint from former students and staff about racism against Black and Latino students and discrimination against students with disabilities. I wish I could say I had confidence this would go somewhere, but with the change of administration, I don’t.
There was a big interactive expose in the Washington Post this week on Kevin Coffey, who was the police chief in Maypearl until he was ousted in 2015 for sexually abusing a teenaged girl. He was sentenced to 40 years. Maypearl is spitting distance from Scarborough Faire, the north Texas Renaissance festival I’ve been attending for about three decades, and I’d heard nothing about this case. It’s one of those shocking but not surprising stories.
Fort Worth PD fired an officer for slamming a 60-year activist who was videoing an arrest he was making to the ground back in June. Unsurprisingly, the police union is demanding arbitration and wants to see the officer reinstated.
An update on the Robert Roberson case: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is under instructions from Attorney General Ken Paxton to route all communication with Roberson through him. The gist of it is that Roberson may not appear before the House Criminal Jurisprudence committee because of Paxton’s interference. More details from the Texas Tribune.
Remember the days when Harris County DA Johnny Holmes sent all those cases to the death chamber? These days Tarrant County is the hanging capital of the state. There were six death penalty convictions in Texas in 2024 and three of them were in Tarrant County.
This week I learned that Dallas-area houses cost four times the median income of the area and that prices here continue to outstrip incomes, as they do nationwide. Also I learned that the city of Dallas could be short up to 76,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
In related news I also learned that the Metroplex has 8.3 million residents, with growth concentrated in northern suburbs like Prosper and Princeton.
The Dallas Observer has a report on the extremes of north Texas weather in 2024: highs, lows, wind, rain, hail, and a non-weather bonus earthquake.
Here’s an interesting story about the North Texas Toll Authority: it’s started filing suits against busi>ness toll scofflaws in the state’s district courts. On the one hand, flagrant long-term toll scofflaws are awful. On the other hand, some of the charges are unproven, as in they may not be owed by the folks the NTTA is suing, and the court allows the NTTA to tack on legal fees. In addition it turns out one of the district judges whose court gets a lot of these suits was a partner in the law firm the NTTA is using. This article is part of the DMN’s investigation into the local toll authority and is worth your time if ride these roads.
Despite state and local initiatives to improve road safety in Dallas, traffic fatalities this year are slightly higher than they were in 2023 and we’re not quite done yet.
The Mavericks have a new CEO: Rick Welts, a Hall of Fame NBA executive with the Golden State Warriors. I note this because he was hired by the Adelson folks, and one of Welts’ resume points is his development of a new arena, like the casino arena that the Adelsons want to build.
KERA has a ten-minute video about the history of Fair Park as the center of racial politics in Dallas. If you want to know about local civil rights icon Juanita Craft and the desegregation of the State Fair, this should be your video. It’s in my to-watch list.
The Dallas Observer sent a bartender to The Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek to check out one of their $75 cocktails. Too rich for my blood but I’m glad they’re worth it to someone.
The former Dallas Black Dance Theater dancers, who got their settlement last week, held a benefit this week. It was originally planned to shore up finances after the dancers were fired, but now it serves as a capstone to the whole saga.
James Turrell has completed the Skyspace installation at Keith House in Fort Worth. It’s on my list.
In February, an interactive exhibit about the Titanic will open in Dallas. Or rather re-open, since apparently it was at Fair Park in 2000. This time it’s at Pepper Square in the northern part of town, the better to attract all those northern suburban families.
Last but not least, let’s have a sad story with a happy ending: Twiggy, a two-year old dog, came to the Humane Society of North Texas flea-ridden, sick with worms, and sick with a respiratory infection in early November. When they got that under control, they figured out Twiggy had been shot in the face by someone! The sweet girl is recovering from surgery now and should be ready for her Christmas miracle of a forever home soon.

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

The coming push to require proof of citizenship to register to vote

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a complete non-problem, but “solving” things that aren’t problems and in doing so creating real problems that then need to be solved is very on brand for Republicans.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Republicans are making a big push for legislation requiring Texans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, and key lawmakers are signaling that they’ll make it a priority next year.

The push is part of a national effort by the GOP and conservative allies who assert that such legislation is needed to stop noncitizens from illegally casting ballots, even though such cases are already very rare.

Texas Republican lawmakers have filed at least five bills so far ahead of the legislative session opening in January. It’s too early to tell which ones could get traction when the session starts. Some of the bills appear to be modeled after federal legislation considered earlier this year by the U.S. Congress, where the measure passed the House but stalled in the Senate. At least one calls for placing a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot next year for voters to consider. Others mirror a law adopted 20 years ago in Arizona, the only state that currently enforces a proof of citizenship requirement for voters.

Because of conflicts between Arizona’s law and federal voting rights laws, Arizona maintains a split voter roll, with a small percentage of residents who haven’t provided proof of citizenship and are allowed to cast ballots only in federal elections. The makeup of the “federal only” list shows how certain demographic groups — including Native voters and young people — are at greater risk of being disenfranchised over citizenship documentation requirements, a Votebeat analysis has found.

If Texas were to adopt a similar system, experts say, it could also potentially disenfranchise citizens, because research has found that millions of Americans — for various reasons — do not have access to documents that prove their citizenship.

And, as in Arizona, such a law could impose new administrative burdens for election officials who would need additional training and resources in order to comply.

“This will be something that affects you if you’re young, if you’re old, if you’re Republican, if you’re Democrat, it really doesn’t matter,” said Jasleen Singh, legal counsel for the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a voting rights nonprofit that has studied the potential effects of requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. State lawmakers are putting “millions of people at risk of not being able to meet those requirements,” Singh said.

The story outlines the different bills that have been filed and the experience that Arizona has had with this kind of law, which is a big administrative burden to local officials and took years to implement correctly because it’s such a disruption to the system. As this law is almost certainly going to be aimed at new registrants, you and I wouldn’t have to do anything. Unless we move to another county, and then have to re-register. Do you have your passport on hand? There are some other docs that would be acceptable, but that too is one of the complexities of this law. It’s also just a matter of time before someone’s identity is stolen because their passport or passport number got mislaid or mishandled. Won’t that be fun? This is a priority for Republicans because their lord and master told them it was, so get ready for this to happen.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Arizona, Donald Trump, passports, Texas, The Lege, voter registration, voter suppression | 10 Comments

Expanding Metro’s micro-transit

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Okay fine, but show me the numbers.

Metro will expand on-demand rides of its micro-transit to include services in Second Ward, Third Ward and downtown Houston through a partnership with the city of Houston and Evolve Houston.

The expansion comes after transit officials approved increasing its commitment to shuttles in Houston neighborhoods. The deal with the Houston nonprofit, approved by transit officials in June, increased to more than $1 million for operations of Evolve’s free ride program from August to the end of January.

[…]

“Integrating micro-transit into METRO’s public transit system demonstrates a commitment to finding innovative solutions that meet our customers where they are,” Metro Board Chair Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock said in a statement.

The service features small electric vehicles designed for short-distance routes. It offers eco-friendly transportation options where distance, weather, hazardous crossing and mobility challenges may have kept residents from reaching bus and rail services. It also utilizes the Ride Circuit app to track systems, view the maps and check operating hours, the release reads.

“Microtransit is a proven solution to get more people where they need to go safely and efficiently,” Houston mayor John Whitmire said in a statement. “Connected communities are safer communities and bringing microtransit to Houston builds on my promise for smart, fiscally sound infrastructure growth.”

The shuttles operate within a designated zone to connect riders to destinations such as Metro transit centers, bus stops, rail stations, grocery stores and medical facilities, according to the release.

See here and here for the background. The main thing that sticks out to me about this story is that it has no numbers other than the dollar figure being invested. The stated purpose of this partnership was to increase ridership. It’s been almost six months now, so do we have any data to suggest that such an increase, even a modest one, has occurred? If so, tout the success, and if not please tell me what you think is happening. Are there any goals for this expansion? Or are we just taking Mayor Whitmire and Chair Brock’s word for it?

I don’t think I’m asking for much here. I do think this idea has merit, but especially given everything that has been cancelled against the will of the voters by Metro because the numbers supposedly didn’t justify them, we deserve to know how well this one little expansion of services is doing. I will also note that downtown is included in this RYDE expansion, and as someone who has worked downtown in the past, we used to have various free circulating trolleys, and downtown was the original location for BCycle. Why do we think this will be a better and more used and useful service than either of them? Again, all I’m asking for is the numbers. CultureMap has more.

UPDATE: This is a great summary.

Nick Arcos, director of communications at LINK Houston, a group advocating for a robust transportation network in Houston, told Chron they haven’t been able to analyze ridership data or parse through demographics using the service because it’s not a fully integrated METRO product yet. He thinks microtransit can play a role in Houston’s transit system, but doesn’t believe it to be a “catch-all-solution.”

“Microtransit can play an important role in addressing gaps like the last mile problem, but we should be careful to address it as a catch-all-solution,” Arcos said.

“It can help that college student get from one side of campus to the other, but there are other options that could be used instead, like funding towards repairing or building new sidewalks so that the first mile and last mile isn’t as hazardous of a trip,” he added.

Arcos has taken a ride in the shuttle and says its app, which is separate from METRO’s current family of mobile applications, is easy to use for technology-natives and sighted users. He estimates he waited about 30 seconds for a shuttle to pick him up and take him to his destination. However, he worries the vehicles’ lack of air conditioning and heat could hamper ridership.

Evolve is working on adding climate control to vehicles and is already starting to test it across a couple of vehicles that Brown described as a “2.0 version” of the original vehicles. That version would service downtown and have a bigger battery capacity to expand hours of operation.

“There needs to be a balance in the levels of how they are choosing to conduct METRO services,” Arcos said “They previously had METRO Curb to Curb before this Evolve partnership happened and that’s a very similar experience where you’re able to find out and schedule a ride from your home to a transit center so that you’re able to connect to the larger bus system…

“We do believe it’s important, especially for senior citizens or those unable to afford a car, but they need to be addressing the entire problem, which is building connected sidewalks and making sure their bus stops are accessible,” Arcos added.

Give us the numbers!

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged B-Cycle, bicycles, downtown, Election 2019, electric buses, Elizabeth Brock, Evolve Houston, Houston, John Whitmire, Metro, RYDE, University line | Leave a comment

IAH Terminal E to be named for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Fitting.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a resolution to rename a terminal at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in honor of the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

The late congresswoman, who died in July from pancreatic cancer after representing the 18th Congressional District for almost 30 years, was a frequent flyer between Houston and Washington, D.C., where was remembered as a “fierce advocate” for her adopted city, helping secure millions dollars in federal funds for the airport.

The resolution kicks off the official renaming process, which next will be considered by the Houston Airport System before returning for City Council committee discussion, public comment and a final vote.

“Naming Terminal E after (Jackson Lee) is not just a tribute to her work on the federal level but the service she gave to the city and its people,” said District F Councilmember Tiffany Thomas, reading a statement from Jackson Lee’s daughter who could not attend the meeting. Erica Lee Carter won a special election in November to finish her mother’s final term and thanked the council for supporting the proposal.

District J Councilmember Edward Pollard, one of the eight council members to sponsor the resolution under Proposition A, pushed to have Wednesday’s vote serve as final approval.

The rename was first noted in a Chron story from last week, in which I learned that Terminal D is named after U.S. Rep. Mickey Leland, and Terminal C is named after former Mayor Lewis Cutrer. The airport itself is of course named after former President George H.W. Bush – I’m old enough to remember when it was just plain old Intercontinental Airport. (*) Now I’m wondering why Terminals A and B have no namesakes.

Anyway. I approve of this and look forward to the official renaming ceremony. CM Pollard argued in this story that Council’s action should be sufficient; I don’t have an opinion on that, as long as this happens it’s fine by me. Kudos to all for getting this done.

(*) In those old days, my fellow Rice geeks called it “Intergalactic Airport”, because it was so far out of town and was such a long drive from the campus. Those were simpler times.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Edward Pollard, Erica Lee, Houston, Houston Airport System, Houston City Council, IAH, Sheila Jackson Lee, Tiffany Thomas | Leave a comment

Now Buzbee sues Roc Nation

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Back and forth, back and forth.

Prominent Houston attorney Tony Buzbee has filed a lawsuit against Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation and several attorneys who represent the American rapper for allegedly conspiring with and paying former clients to sue the Buzbee Law Firm.

Buzbee is currently representing over 100 clients in lawsuits against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs for alleged sexual abuse. He is also the subject of two federal lawsuits recently filed by his former clients accusing him of fraud and other transgressions, which he claims are backed by Roc Nation in an effort to intimidate him and his firm to not pursue cases against Combs. The allegations come weeks after Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, said his lawyer received a demand letter from Buzbee in relation to the lawsuits involving Combs.

“The Defendants overstepped, got sloppy, and stupidly got caught in their illegal scheme on tape,” Buzbee said in a statement. “We intend to cooperate with authorities to ensure all involved are prosecuted to the full extent allowed under Texas law.”

“Tony Buzbee’s baloney lawsuit against Roc Nation is nothing but another sham,” a spokesperson with Roc Nation said in a statement to the Chronicle. “It’s a pathetic attempt to distract and deflect attention. This sideshow won’t change the ultimate outcome and true justice will be served soon.”

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, listed as a defendant in the suit, currently represents Jay-Z in a lawsuit against the Buzbee Law Firm, according to court documents.

In a statement to the Chronicle, a spokesperson for Quinn Emanuel said Buzbee’s “frivolous lawsuit is an attempt to distract from his other frivolous lawsuits.”

“We have no idea what he is talking about,” the statement reads.

Two former clients are accusing Buzbee of fraud and other transgressions in separate lawsuits filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Both former clients accuse Buzbee and his firm of abuse and unethical conduct in the handling of two personal injury suits last year.

[…]

Buzbee said he has contacted authorities about what he called the “illegal conduct” of Roc Nation and his former clients regarding the lawsuits.

“Roc Nation has been illegally soliciting individuals for several weeks to sue my law firm,” Buzbee said. “These two individuals who took the bait were promised money to bring the case. Both of these cases are utterly frivolous and will be summarily dismissed.”

See here, here, and here for some background. I skipped the details of the other lawsuits against Buzbee because they seem like pretty run of the mill malpractice claims. Buzbee’s assertion that they are somehow connected to Roc Nation seem very weird to me, but then this whole situation is bizarre. It would be funny if there weren’t some very serious and ugly allegations about Sean Combs underneath it all. So I’m just sitting here waiting to see how this plays out. I’m sure there will be more.

UPDATE: And now there’s this.

An anonymous Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against Tony Buzbee in New York Thursday alleging the embattled Houston attorney gave her a venereal disease, according to court documents.

[…]

Buzbee told the Chronicle in a statement that this suit is just the latest move in a campaign to dissuade his firm from pursuing litigation against Combs and his associates.

“The conspiracy to discredit me and intimidate me from pursuing claims in the Diddy litigation has become criminal,” Buzbee said in an email. “This latest case, like the others, is frivolous, laughable and ridiculous and will be dismissed like the others.”

The Jane Doe alleged that she contracted the disease from Buzbee in 2018 after he flew her to Texas and seduced her, according to the suit. The woman claimed Buzbee concealed the disease during their initial intimate encounter, and later offered to represent her in a 2021 divorce proceeding in exchange for her silence.

“At Defendant’s insistence and direction, Plaintiff entered into a divorce agreement that resulted in a dramatic loss for Plaintiff, who otherwise stood to recover an equitable split of the marital assets,” the suit alleged.

A copy of the complaint is here. I got nothing.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged California, Jay-Z, lawsuit, rape, Sean Combs, sexual harassment, Texas, Tony Buzbee | 2 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 16

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance would like some hot chocolate to go with this week’s blog roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Leave a comment

There was some good news from Odessa last month

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good to hear.

Craig Stoker

When Craig Stoker pulled the flyer out of the mailbox, he chuckled.

It was a political mailer, one of many deployed this fall in Odessa, the West Texas city in the heart of the oil-rich Permian Basin.

His opponent, incumbent City Council member Denise Swanner, compared her stance to his. The two were total opposites except for the fact that both were in relationships with men.

It was the latest attempt in a Republican stronghold to tie Stoker’s sexual orientation to his support of the LGBTQ+ community and, by extension, the Democratic Party.

The people behind the advertisement wanted voters to elect candidates who advanced conservative values, only this election was supposed to be nonpartisan.

While Stoker and his allies had hoped the local election would be about infrastructure and city services, his opponent attempted to shift the battlefield to national political issues. Across the country, Republicans were running countless attack ads on Democrats for their support of transgender people.

The strategy backfired — at least in Odessa. The three City Council incumbents lost, a stunning result that analysts and longtime observers say revealed voters’ desire for local elected leaders to focus on roads and garbage pick up, not national flashpoints.

Stoker, the scion of a prominent Odessa family, became the first openly gay man elected to Odessa’s City Council. He won his at-large seat with 56% of the vote at the same time President-elect Donald Trump won all of Ector County with 76% of the vote.

“At the end of all of this, we are neighbors. You’re electing the people you live with,” Stoker said. “And no matter what happens, what you say about each other, the energy you put out about each other, you still have to live together.”an

Long story short, Odessa had previously elected three wingnuts to its Council, including the Mayor. Earlier this year, they passed an anti-trans bathroom ban. And then, not much later, they all got unelected, and it wasn’t close. Turns out even Odessa was able to want local electeds that prioritized local issues over national hot-button stuff that had no positive effect on anyone’s life. Maybe there’s something we all can learn from that.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged City Council, Craig Stoker, Denise Swanner, Election 2024, gay rights, Javier Joven, Mayor, Odessa, Texas, transgender rights | 2 Comments

Somehow, the Boca Chica land swap is off

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I only found out about this now because this story, dated November 14, was either never on the Houston Chronicle homepage or was missed by me when it was, until it was on Page One of the December 16 print edition.

SpaceX has backed out of a controversial land swap that would have given the commercial space company 43 acres of state parkland near its launch facilities in South Texas.

The company told the state in a September letter that it was “no longer interested in pursuing the specific arrangement.”

It did not offer an explanation but said the company first notified the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department of its decision in July.

“SpaceX appreciates the ongoing cooperation of the State of Texas and Texas Parks and Wildlife as SpaceX’s operations in South Texas continue to expand,” the Sept. 26 letter said.

The deal, which was approved by the parks department in early March, would have given SpaceX room to expand into Boca Chica State Park, which surrounds the facility where it’s building and launching the world’s most powerful rocket. In exchange, SpaceX agreed to buy 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge and give the land to the state to create a new state park.

Cameron County Appraisal District records show SpaceX did buy the 477 acres.

In a statement, the parks department said it will “continue to identify and develop new state parks across Texas for wildlife conservation and public recreation.” SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

[…]

The commission unanimously approved the deal. The decision drew a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Texas indigenous and environmental groups who alleged the state violated its obligations to minimize harm and consider alternatives to giving away state parkland.

In a filing Thursday in Travis County District Court, the parks department and parks commission asked that the case be dismissed.

“There is no longer a live controversy due to SpaceX’s withdrawal from the proposed land exchange authorized by the Commission resolution appealed in this case,” it said.

See here, here, and here for the background. The basic idea of this swap was always a little weird and puzzling to me, but it wasn’t clear that it was a bad deal for the state on its face. That said, I’m never surprised to see Eben Musk go back on his word, and I’m never unhappy to see him not get something that he once wanted, for whatever the reason. MySanantonio and Texas Standard have more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Boca Chica State Park, Boca Chica Village, Cameron County, Elon Musk, Esto'k Gna Tribal Nation of Texas, lawsuit, Sierra Club, South Texas Environmental Justice Network, SpaceX, Texas, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department | Leave a comment

The Dustin Burrows dilemma

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have four things to say about this.

Rep. Dustin Burrows

Five years ago, Rep. Dustin Burrows’ reputation sustained a major blow among his House colleagues.

The Lubbock Republican resigned as chair of the House GOP Caucus after it was revealed that he and then-Speaker Dennis Bonnen tried to collude with a right-wing activist by providing a list of 10 GOP members they believed should be targeted by the activist’s political organization in the upcoming primary. The actions amounted to a shocking betrayal from House leaders who had previously threatened consequences for any incumbents who campaigned against fellow members in future elections. One of the would-be targets, Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo, said it was time for the House to “begin to heal and rebuild trust” — something that could only happen if Burrows was “no longer in leadership.”

Bonnen retired. Burrows retreated from the spotlight, but steadily worked behind the scenes regaining his standing in the chamber.

Five years later, Burrows finds himself at the center of another Republican House leadership skirmish. Yet again, he got there because of his proximity to a sitting House speaker — this time Dade Phelan — who lost favor with a majority of GOP members. And once again he is at odds with many of the same political powers that contributed to his original demise.

Now, Burrows is seeking the gavel for himself, emerging as the chosen pick of establishment and moderate GOP lawmakers — including one-time critic Darby — after Phelan exited the race earlier this month.

His eleventh-hour speakership bid attracted immediate ire from the House’s rightmost faction and their allies outside the chamber. That contingent has vowed to censure and wage aggressive primary challenges against any House Republicans who do not vote for their preferred candidate, Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield. Cook became the House GOP Caucus’ speaker nominee after some of Burrows’ supporters walked out of the caucus’ meeting last weekend.

In a declaration of political war, Burrows disregarded Cook’s endorsement and quickly announced that he had enough supporters to win the speakership in January when the full chamber votes. He released a list of 76 supporters, just enough to win, made up equally of Republicans and Democrats. Immediately, a few Republicans named on Burrows’ initial list of supporters asked for their names to be removed.

To date, Burrows no longer has enough public supporters to win. But publicly he is projecting confidence that he will. His path to victory appears to be relying on a coalition made up of more Democrats than Republicans, leading to a situation where his critics on the right are characterizing him as too liberal, while Democrats opposing him complain he’s too conservative. In a blow to Burrows, Gov. Greg Abbott last week urged members to back the candidate “chosen by a majority of Republicans in accordance with the Republican Caucus Rules,” though he did not mention Cook by name.

[…]

As Phelan’s proxy, Burrows is viewed by most Democrats as the more palatable option between the two Republican speaker candidates — as evidenced by the 38 members of the minority party on Burrows’ initial list of supporters. One of those members, state Rep. Josey Garcia of San Antonio, later said she was not supporting anyone for speaker yet. (No Democrats have publicly supported Cook.)

Burrows’ backing among Democrats is far from universal. A group of more than 20 Democratic House members have withheld their support, with some citing his authorship of a sweeping new law, dubbed by opponents as the “Death Star bill,” aimed at sapping the power of local governments, particularly in Texas’ bluer urban areas.

All this has left Burrows to perform a delicate balancing act where his efforts to woo Democrats over to his side could lead to more Republican defections, and vice versa.

Cook, for his part, has vowed to end the practice of appointing Democrats to chair any House committees — a longstanding tradition continued by Phelan and previous GOP speakers, who have all granted Democrats a limited number of chairmanships. Cook has also pledged to ensure that GOP priority bills reach the floor before any Democratic measures.

Burrows said he has not made any concessions to Democrats. On the issue of appointing Democratic committee chairs, he said he would leave it to the members “to work that out amongst themselves” when they approve the House rules next session.

Rather than making specific promises, Burrows said he is courting Democrats by leveraging relationships he has developed working on bipartisan issues, and by signaling support for House rules “that allow the majority to rule but the minority to have their voice heard and respected.”

“And it doesn’t hurt that the other side has wanted significant rule changes to shut them out of the process completely,” Burrows said of his efforts to court Democrats.

1. I am not a fan of Rep. Dustin Burrows, not after his authoring of the “Death Star” bill along with his insulting comments about cities and mayors and whatnot. I empathize with Dems in the Legislature who feel similarly, and there are a few vocal ones out there.

2. That said, if some Dems think they will do better in a House with a Speaker Burrows than a Speaker Cook – not at all an unreasonable thought – then they should by all means talk to him and hear him out. Just be sure to get something in return for that support, and not just something for you but for your colleagues and your constituents.

3. By the artisanal calculations of poli sci professor Mark Jones, Dustin Burrows is somehow one of the more “moderate” Republicans in the House. We need to find a better word for this than “moderate”, because that word has no meaning anymore.

4. By making an enemy of Gollum-wannabe Michael Quinn Sullivan, Dustin Burrows does have at least one redeeming feature.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Dade Phelan, David Cook, Dennis Bonnen, Drew Darby, Dustin Burrows, Josey Garcia, Speaker's race, Texas, The Lege | 3 Comments

Expanding ETHAN

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Sounds like a good idea.

The city may spin off the Houston Fire Department’s emergency telemedicine program to a local government corporation in hopes of generating enough funding to support the initiative and, perhaps, even turn a profit.

The city’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Persse, and new Fire Chief Thomas Muñoz pitched the idea to a seemingly receptive City Council Public Safety Committee Tuesday.

The full council is expected to take up the proposal Oct. 28.

Should the body approve the idea, the city would create the local government corporation, and then hammer out an interlocal agreement with the board that would allow the corporation to offer Houston’s Emergency Telehealth and Navigation system, known as ETHAN, to other cities.

Persse and Muñoz told the council committee the program potentially could generate more than $9 million for city coffers in five years.

Under the existing program, which the city began in 2014, some residents who call 911 can speak with an emergency physician to determine the best way to proceed before accumulating ambulance and emergency room costs. Callers, for example, could opt to take a cab to an urgent care clinic for a minor affliction rather than use an ambulance to go to an emergency room.

ETHAN has saved the city approximately $22 million in ambulance costs since 2014 and served more than 37,000 patients, Persse said Tuesday.

As a corporation, the program eventually would be sustainable without the use of general fund tax dollars, partnering instead with insurance companies and neighboring cities, Persse said. Currently, 200 Houston Fire Department emergency vehicles have access to the program.

“This ETHAN is going to be a critical resource for us, as I said before, a force multiplier that allows us to utilize the resources that we have now to respond to those quote, unquote, true emergencies,” Muñoz told the council committee.

This was from October, I’m publishing it from the drafts. It was indeed approved by City Council on October 28 as noted. I had forgotten about ETHAN, but I did note its existence back in 2015. I’m happy to have this reminder about it. The story says that over 90% of the cases on video calls do not need an ambulance, so there’s real value here. Making it into a local government corporation means making it like Houston First, which is a familiar model. The amount of revenue this could generate is modest, but it’s a good idea on its own merits, and even a modest amount of extra revenue – plus the savings of not funding this out of the budget – would be welcome. Now that it has moved forward, I look forward to seeing it succeed.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged 911, ambulances, Amy Peck, budget, David Persse, emergency rooms, ETHAN, HFD, Houston, Houston City Council, local government corporation, telemedicine, Thomas Munoz | Leave a comment

Uplift Harris 2.0 still on hold

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Just part of the process at this point.

Harris County’s second version of a guaranteed income program has been blocked as it awaits a final appeal after a recent court order stopped the county from distributing funds under the revamped cash assistance program.

The move is the latest in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s battle against what he has called a guaranteed income “scheme,” and a struggle between Harris County leaders’ goal to support low-income households amidst the murky constitutionality of cash assistance programs and Republican leaders’ criticism of handouts.

“Harris County is not above the law and cannot ignore the Texas Constitution,” said Attorney General Paxton. “They made a blatant attempt to end-run a Texas Supreme Court ruling by duplicating their unlawful handout program, and we have successfully blocked them yet again.”

[…]

In his original petition in April, Paxton’s office called the first-version of Harris County’s guaranteed income program a ‘socialist experiment’ at the hands of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. While the litigation for the $20.5 million Uplift Harris program was still ongoing, the clock was ticking to use the necessary funding from American Rescue Plan Act, which must be allocated by the end of 2024. So, Harris County launched a second version of the program called the “Community Prosperity Program” in August.

But despite modifications, Paxton sued Harris County over its second version of the cash assistance program in September, calling it unconstitutional. In October, a Harris County judge sided with Harris County on the program. But a request to speed up the appeals process was granted by the Fifteenth Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 6, meaning that in the following two weeks the county and state have to get their opinions filed, Harris County cannot hand out money through the second version of the program.

See here and here for the previous updates, and here for the court’s order. All of the briefing should be done by early to mid-January, with a court date (not yet set, or at least not set in this order) likely to be shortly after. After that it goes to the Supreme Court, which is where it was always headed again. I don’t have anything new to add, we’re just watching the wheels go ’round and ’round. KHOU has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged 15th Court of Appeals, Attorney General, Christian Menefee, Commissioners Court, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Lina Hidalgo, Supreme Court, Uplift Harris | Leave a comment

Starbase City

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Elon Musk would like his own company town, please.

SpaceX’s goal is to colonize Mars. But first, it wants to create an official city in Texas.

Employees living on the site of SpaceX’s operations in South Texas are requesting a special election to determine whether the site can be incorporated into a city.

Current residents of Starbase, the company’s South Texas headquarters and launch site, submitted a petition to Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Thursday, according to a SpaceX spokesperson.

“We are investing billions in infrastructure and generating hundreds of millions in income and taxes for local businesses and government, all with the goal of making South Texas the Gateway to Mars,” said Starbase General Manager Kathryn Lueders in a letter to Treviño.

Lueders wrote the area is home to several hundred employees and that incorporating the site would streamline the processes of building amenities needed to make Starbase a world-class place to live. Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, announced earlier this year his intentions to move the company’s headquarters to Texas.

The spaceport — and maybe future city — sits on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and is about 25 miles east of Brownsville, the state’s southernmost city. A single stretch of highway connects the city to the launch site.

[…]

She assured that incorporating would not impact their efforts to minimize effects on the environment that were developed with state and federal agencies. This comes after regulators cited the company for not having the proper authorization for its water deluge system. The company remains a target for local environmental groups who are skeptical the company can operate without damaging the surrounding ecosystem.

Treviño did not respond to a request for an interview.

Last month, the Cameron County commissioners denied a variance request from SpaceX that would allow them to subdivide their limited residential area into more lots.

“SpaceX is not the typical developer whose purpose is to build and to sell infrastructure,” read an October 10 letter to the county commissioners from an engineering firm representing SpaceX.

I mean, I don’t trust anything Elmo says or does, so it would take a lot of convincing to get me to support this idea, if I were a Cameron County Commissioner. Maybe they’ll see it differently – I don’t claim to have any idea what the local issues are here, or what incorporating might do to address them. I’m just saying, the idea of Elno Musk owning and operating his own company town ought to give us all at least a little pause. Texas Public Radio has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Cameron County, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Starbase, Texas | 4 Comments

The leopards are going to be very busy

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a story about how the Trump administration is targeting Medicaid for cuts, mostly to finance its future tax giveaways to the wealthy, and how states like Texas could come in behind that and make even further cuts to Medicaid in their own budgets as a result. At the very end, we get the following, which is the essence of the 2024 election in a nutshell.

William T. Smith, a 65-year-old retired construction worker who lives along the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, said that he voted for Trump partly because he agrees that “there’s too much fat” and supports cutting some federal programs.

Smith has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which affects his lungs and makes it difficult to breathe. He said he also has bipolar disorder, sleep apnea and chronic pain after decades of performing manual labor.

Smith said Medicaid, which he has been trying to get since the summer, should not be where the federal government looks to reduce expenses. Instead, he said, the federal government should take savings from cutting other programs and put the money toward more people’s care.

“I don’t think they’re going to yank health care away from people,” he said. “If they do, I’d be really angry.”

I had to do some deep breathing exercises after reading this to avoid cranial combustion. The sad truth is, we are going to need to get some of the people who are now trying to reconcile the Trump they thought they were voting for with the Trump they’re gonna get on our side, whether they were ever there before or not. Among other things – and this hurts to say, believe me – it means we’re going to have to resist dunking on them. Well, mostly, anyway. Because this, I can’t resist.

“Stepped out of line.”
Never forget: @GregAbbott_TX thinks the Texas Legislature works for him, not for you #TxLege

— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) 3:18 AM – 16 October 2015

We’ll be using this a lot, won’t we?

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Donald Trump, Election 2024, Medicaid, Texas | 7 Comments

Weekend link dump for December 15

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“I don’t know how to explain to somebody what it feels like when your own military that you volunteered to fight for your country doesn’t want you.”

“It’s shark-infested waters to procure moms, to then procure their children, to then broker the baby to an adoptive parent. People are competing for women.”

“The raw milk movement didn’t start with leftist hippies. It started with cranky individualist farmers and their conservative customers, who fought against government regulators for their right to do as they pleased. From there it spread on both left and right, but even now it’s mostly a right-wing cause. The MAGA embrace of raw milk (and later RFK Jr.) is its natural end point, not a sudden embrace of crunchy hippiedom.”

Please enjoy the Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition for 2024.

“Millions of people are turning to AI for companionship. They are finding the experience surprisingly meaningful, unexpectedly heartbreaking, and profoundly confusing, leaving them to wonder, ‘Is this real? And does that matter?’”

“Normal people noted with satisfaction that all the Kennedys got together to denounce their relative for his conspiracism. For those inclined to believe in things like QAnon, that’s RFK’s best feature—not a bug. Those other Kennedys were frauds. RFK Jr., the only one with the courage to keep the faith, was Camelot’s true heir. That is his Kennedy magic: that he alone can defeat the Unspeakable.”

RIP, Merv Rettenmund, former ML player and coach who won two World Series and was an ace pinch-hitter.

Gifts for people you hate, 2024. If you are the type of person who needs this type of advice – and you know who you are – then this is the advice that you need. Also very funny regardless, and I’ve added a couple of the books it mentions to my Amazon list. There are lists from previous years as well.

“What is a boob?”

Three cheers for Armani Latimer.

“But the point is that you can’t cede the efficiency and reform brand to people whose real aim in cutting people’s Medicaid and Social Security. Because that’s pretty much where we are at the end of 2024.”

The reason why so many new shows on streamers get cancelled after one season is that the streamers have huge catalogs of older shows that perform really well for them.

“This is because conservatism isn’t Fox’s core brand. Outrage is. And the outrage isn’t just aimed liberals; it’s aimed at big government, big medicine, big banks, and anywhere else that outrage can be mined. This outrage naturally produces pessimism—why else would so many gold scammers advertise there?—and that pessimism is ultimately directed toward authority figures of all kinds.”

“Fog Data Science is a location tracking company that takes data harvested from smartphones and makes it accessible to cops. A document obtained by 404 Media shows the company explicitly says it will use doctors visits to unmask a target if needed.”

“What’s more, David Sacks’ appointment unambiguously indicates the tech vision that will win out under a Trump presidency: that we should disregard the very real dangers around crypto A.I.’s energy use and pollution and environmental plunder and copyright infringement and horrific output, for the direct benefit of the guys whose riches are fueling this dystopia—uh, sorry, for the good of the world or something.”

RIP, Rocky Colavito, former MLB player, coach, and broadcaster mostly with Cleveland, one of only 18 players to hit four home runs in a single game.

RIP, George Kresge, magician who performed as The Amazing Kreskin.

I have no idea how Bill Belichick will do as a college coach, but I’m fascinated by the idea.

“Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is required to remove a controversial login checkbox from WordPress.org and let WP Engine back into its ecosystem after a judge granted WP Engine a preliminary injunction in its ongoing lawsuit.”

“She’s full of shit and her prop of a sling is a pathetic ploy for attention.”

RIP, Janis Scott, longtime public transit advocate who was known as the “Bus Lady”. She was one of the first Black graduates of Rice University, in the class of 1974.

“The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla, according to a document seen by Reuters, a move that could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.” What could possibly go wrong?

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

We are again speculating about Judge Hidalgo’s re-election plans

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Well, Mayor Whitmire is speculating, anyway.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

County Judge Lina Hidalgo said she hasn’t decided whether to run for office in 2026 in response to a claim made Thursday by Mayor John Whitmire that she will not pursue another term as county judge.

Whitmire, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, said he had heard that Hidalgo was “fixing to announce that she’s not going to run.” He alluded to the judge’s personal struggle with depression and the pressures that accompany the job as county judge.

“She’s not enjoying her work,” Whitmire said. “And she’s happy now. I saw on social media she got back this weekend from her wedding destination. But let me tell you what, this is a tough job at any level. You definitely lose your privacy. She’s obviously documented some of her emotional issues, which, this is a terrible profession to be in if you’re struggling with pressure.”

In a statement to the Chronicle, Hidalgo said she is “fully focused on serving the people of Harris County” but didn’t directly say whether Whitmire’s comments about her political future were accurate.

“At this time, we have no announcement to make regarding future elections,” her office said.

[…]

Hidalgo already has one potential challenger for the position, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who may run for county judge as a Democrat. Parker told the Chronicle in April she hadn’t decided any plans for the future.

“I think Annise would make a great county judge,” Whitmire said Thursday. “But I’m also smart enough to know to wait and see if Hidalgo does what supposedly is supposed to happen.”

Parker told the Chronicle Thursday she was “leaning strongly” toward entering the race.

For what it’s worth, Judge Hidalgo said in May that she was planning to run again. It’s possible she could be thinking differently today – people do change their minds – but if she is I doubt she’s shared that with Mayor Whitmire, and I doubt she’s all that interested in his views on the subject. As for former Mayor Parker, we’ll see. I will restate my position that I would prefer to avoid a big nasty primary fight. It’s out of my hands from here. Campos has more.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Annise Parker, Democratic primary, Election 2026, Harris County, Harris County Judge, John Whitmire, Lina Hidalgo, Texas | 9 Comments

The birds and the trees and the religious liberties

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I really don’t know what to make of this, which is a story about an unusual religious liberties lawsuit that the city of San Antonio and the 2021 constitutional amendment that expanded religious freedom in Texas, stemming from a backlash to restrictions on church attendance during COVID.

And that’s the libertarian fuel that has reanimated a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio over its plans to fell dozens of trees and harass migratory birds to make way for a bond-funded redevelopment project in Brackenridge Park.

Religious faith takes many forms. Some encounter the sacred in a converted gymnasium with amplified guitars and drums, others at the bend of a river whose twists appear to reflect a constellation floating in the night sky. That’s the case for Gary Perez and Matilde Torres, members of the Lipan-Apache ‘Hoosh Chetzel’ Native American Church, two Indigenous area residents who have been fighting the City’s efforts to remove—at one tally—more than 100 trees from the river’s headwaters. They also oppose San Antonio’s ongoing harassment of migratory birds that have made the trees in the city park their home.

The religious liberty claim has proven to be a boon for, as Canales was quoted, protecting religious services from regulation wasn’t just a matter for Christians, but it was also “about mosques, it’s about all people of faith.”

For Perez and Torres, and those who join them at a bend of the San Antonio River known by the City of San Antonio as Lambert Beach, the headwaters, and this spot in particular, is a sacred site.

The waters, the trees, the birds, and stars above all organize a “sacred ecology” the group has sought to defend against the City of San Antonio’s redevelopment plans.

Their federal lawsuit that dropped the day after Mayor Ron Nirenberg pushed through a City Council vote in spite of warnings from a Council colleague that he was risking potentially permanently spoiling relations with the broader community that has mobilized to protect the site.

Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ruled that the City of San Antonio, which had fenced off the sacred area, ostensibly to protect the public from what they described as a hanging branch, must allow access for groups of 20 or fewer members of the Lipan-Apache Native American Church—but for no more than an hour and only on “specified astronomical dates.”

He rejected, however, the need to change plans to destroy the trees or stop aggressive bird deterrence in the park.

An appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was initially rejected. But the change to the Texas Constitution—Article I, Section 6-a—was later considered reason to consider the matter again through the lens of religious liberty.

On Wednesday, December 5, 2024, the Supreme Court of Texas heard oral arguments in “Perez v. City of San Antonio.”

“Like their ancestors before them, Gary Perez and Matilde Torres perform religious ceremonies at a bend in the San Antonio River,” said the couple’s legal representative, John Greil of the University of the University of Texas Law and Religion Clinic, during introductory oral arguments before the court.

“They believe that bend is sacred and that the cormorants that nest in the trees, and the trees themselves, form the central components of those religious ceremonies. The City of San Antonio has chosen a construction that will remove all but 14 of the 80 trees at that bank.”

Article I, Section 6-a of the Texas Constitution bars the state of Texas and any subdivisions within it (like cities and counties) from limiting or prohibiting the practice of religious activities. Though originally aimed at reopening churches which may have had their activities limited over pandemic-related health concerns, the amendment is broadly written. On Wednesday, the justices of the the Supreme Court of Texas met to attempt to figure out where the boundaries of that amendment lie. It is the first court case in the state’s history based around the religious freedom amendment, according to Greil.

“We’re moving the needle forward with this case,” Perez told Deceleration after the hearing. “We’re moving justice in the direction it needs to go.”

However, Perez stressed that the hearing was not about the validity of his group’s spiritual beliefs or practices in San Antonio. Instead, the court was debating what is necessary for a city to meet the requirements of the state constitution in regards to freedom of religion. “The state of Texas and its laws make it very clear that they protect the freedom of religion under just about any circumstance,” Perez said.

This is back in the State Supreme Court because of the change to the state constitution – the Fifth Circuit will use the ruling from this case, expected in August, to guide their action. We could get something sweeping or narrow, it’s too soon to say. For obvious reasons, I’m leery of expansions of religious liberty in this climate, but these are not the typical plaintiffs and I have sympathy for their claims. I had no idea about any of this, and I was drawn in by the story, so I’m noting it here and we’ll see what happens. Go read the rest.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Constitution, coronavirus, Election 2021, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Gary Perez, lawsuit, Lipan-Apache Native American Church, Matilde Torres, quarantine, Ron Nirenberg, San Antonio, Supreme Court, Texas, trees | Leave a comment

One more eVTOL in Houston

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I missed this story when it ran in September, but here it is now. It answered a few questions about how these things operate, which I liked.

Lilium, a German aerospace company, debuted its electric vertical takeoff and landing jet Thursday at Hobby Airport in the U.S. for the first time as it hopes the aircraft will be flying over Houston as soon as 2026.

The Lilium Jet is an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL, that can seat four to six people. Matt Broffman, Lilium’s commercial vice president in North America, said the range for the plane in 2026 will be 110 miles with the goal of expanding that range to connect the entire Texas Triangle by 2035.

“With ground-based EVs, we saw lower maintenance. The same is the case for aircraft electric vehicles. The maintenance costs being low and there being no fuel cost, which is one of the most expensive parts of any flight, means that this aircraft is incredibly efficient to operate, which means that price point for the end consumer can be way more affordable long term,” said Broffman, who called the aircraft the world’s first eVTOL jet.

Lilium Jets lift vertically like helicopters with their engines rotating down to push the aircraft up. Once in the air, the engines rotate back into a traditional position for the craft to head to its destination.

[…]

Lilium will start crewed flight tests next year to get approval from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The jet’s debut did not include a flight demonstration but invitees could climb inside and walk around the craft.

Thursday’s event, coordinated with the Greater Houston Partnership, came after Lilium announced an infrastructure partnership with Galaxy FBO. Galaxy FBO is a fixed-base operator with locations at Conroe North Houston Regional Airport, Addison Airport and The Woodlands Heliport in addition to Hobby.

Jimmy Spence, Houston Airports business development manager, said he and others are trying to figure out what locations at Bush Intercontinental Airport might be the best spot for a vertiport. He said their considerations include how the jets will approach the airport, and how will passengers be secured after landing and be able to enter and exit the airport.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” Spence said. “It’s challenging, but it’s fun.”

The length of the Lilium Jet is about 50 feet, Broffman said, and a landing strip needs to be about two or 2.5 times that length.

That means landing in downtown areas could be possible for the jet. He said parking garages have the potential to be good landing locations for the jet.

“We’re seeing people who are building parking garages begin to think about how do I incorporate landing facilities?” Broffman said. “Again, that’s one of the good things about being here in Houston is that we’ve talked to a lot of developers who are planning future projects. We’re saying you might want to consider having a landing location.”

That story was from September 27, and I found it when I read the recent Wisk story. Linguists will note the earlier appearance of the word “vertiport”, which I appreciate. This sounds less like a flying taxi service and more like a regional airline, perhaps as a charter since the jets are so small. That at least makes their business model clearer to me. If they can offer rides from more places than just airports, so much the better for them. As with Wisk and its ilk, I am genuinely curious to see how these businesses fare. I could possibly imagine taking one of these things to Galveston for a day trip instead of driving. What do you think?

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Addison Airport, airport, Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport, European Union Aviation Safety Agency, eVTOL, Federal Aviation Administration, Galaxy FBO, Greater Houston Partnership, Hobby Airport, Houston, Houston Airport System, IAH, Lilium, Texas, The Woodlands Heliport, vertiport | Leave a comment

Paxton sues out of state abortion provider

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The thing about rot is that it has a tendency to spread.

Still a crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit accusing a New York doctor of prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas resident in violation of state law.

This lawsuit is the first attempt to test what happens when state abortion laws are at odds with each other. New York has a shield law that protects providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions, which has served as implicit permission for a network of doctors to mail abortion pills into states that have banned the procedure.

Texas has vowed to pursue these cases regardless of those laws, and legal experts are divided on where the courts may land on this issue, which involves extraterritoriality, interstate commerce and other thorny legal questions last meaningfully addressed before the Civil War.

“Regardless of what the courts in Texas do, the real question is whether the courts in New York recognize it,” said Greer Donley, University of Pittsburgh professor who studies these kinds of laws.

In this case, Paxton accuses Dr. Margaret Carpenter of mailing pills from New York to a 20-year-old woman in Collin County. The woman allegedly took the medication when she was nine weeks pregnant. When she began experiencing severe bleeding, the lawsuit says, she asked the man who impregnated her to take her to the hospital. He had not been aware she was pregnant or seeking an abortion, according to the filing.

The lawsuit does not say whether the woman successfully terminated her pregnancy or experienced any long-term medical complications. Mifepristone and misoprostol, the medications Carpenter is accused of sending, are more than 95% effective if taken before 10 weeks of pregnancy. Texas’ abortion laws prohibit criminalizing or otherwise going after the person who undergoes the abortion.

Paxton is asking a Collin County court to block Carpenter from violating Texas law, and order her to pay $100,000 for every violation of the state’s near-total abortion ban. Violating Texas’ near-total abortion ban comes with up to life in prison, fines of at least $100,000 and the loss of a provider’s Texas medical license. Donley stressed that, based on the complaint, Carpenter did nothing illegal based on her home state’s laws.

Carpenter is not licensed to practice in Texas, according to the complaint. She is the founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, a national group that helps doctors in states with shield laws provide telemedicine consultations and abortion pills to patients in states that have banned abortions.

The group was founded after the overturn of Roe v. Wade by Carpenter, Dr. Linda Prine, and Julie Kay, a former ACLU lawyer who successfully argued the case that overturned Ireland’s abortion ban. They support doctors who want to become “shield providers” by advising them on licensure, data security, pharmacy contacts and legality.

Carpenter also works with AidAccess, an international medication abortion provider, and helped found Hey Jane, a telehealth abortion provider. Neither Carpenter nor Kay immediately responded to a request for comment.

[…]

Now that this case is here, lawyers who closely study these laws say this is exactly the type of situation New York’s shield law is designed to combat.

“The New York shield law exists to prevent Texas from having any ability to get someone in New York who is following New York law into Texas court in any way,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.

Cohen said New York’s law requires the state to refuse to order Carpenter to comply with Texas’ court orders, which effectively will leave Texas no defendant to bring this suit against.

“He might go forward to try and get a default judgment, and then they’ll have to try to enforce it,” Cohen said. “But really, we don’t know what he’ll do then.”

Oh, I think we know exactly what he’ll do, win or lose: Go to the federal courts with the intent of eventually getting this before SCOTUS, after first getting a room-service ruling from a wingnut judge here and the Fifth Circuit. I’m quite sure Paxton knows his case is a loser as things are now. The idea is to change that by whatever means he can, and these are the means he knows best. It’s also a clear part of the forced-birth lobby’s strategy, as is made clear elsewhere in the story. They’ve been waiting for a case like this, and now here it is. The Chron, the Dallas Observer, and Law Dork, who notices that the lawsuit was prepared for filing in October and has some parallels to litigation previously filed by Jonathan Mitchell, have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged abortion, Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, Aid Access, Collin County, Hey Jane, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Margaret Carpenter, mifepristone, New York, SCOTUS, telemedicine, Texas | Leave a comment

The plea deals no one wants

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Things are going great in the waning days of Kim Ogg’s time as Harris County DA.

Sean Teare

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has ordered prosecutors to make a plea recommendation of life without the possibility of parole in every pending capital murder case that’s more than a year old, the Houston Landing has learned.

Ogg’s instruction, delivered last week and detailed in internal communications obtained by the Landing, upends years of office precedent, could complicate prosecutions in more than 60 of the county’s most serious cases and creates uncertainty for victims’ loved ones.

“Kim asked us to place a case note in each pending capital murder in your division that read ‘Ogg administration recommendation is life without parole,’” wrote John Jordan, the agency’s most senior felony prosecutor, to the members of the office’s homicide division, in an email Monday. “We did not discuss the facts of any of your cases during that meeting, nor did we discuss the legal issues, theories or mitigation on any of your cases.”

Jordan declined to comment for this story.

Ogg’s decision, which current and former prosecutors called “unprecedented” and “offensive,” comes less than a month before the two-term incumbent is due to leave office and upsets standard procedures around capital plea recommendations.

Sean Teare, who defeated Ogg in March’s Democratic primary and will take office Jan. 1 after his victory in November’s general election, blasted the blanket recommendation as an “unbelievable” deviation from the norm that could complicate cases ultimately unsuitable for life without parole.

“In my 14 years inside that office, I’ve never ever heard of putting a life without parole (recommendation) on a capital murder before all the evidence and mitigation and everything is in, let alone not talking to the line prosecutor handling the case,” Teare said. “It’s not realistic for a variety of reasons… There’s a potential that there are some innocent people in that group and we’re going to dismiss the case as evidence comes in.”

In a statement to the Landing, Ogg painted a different picture, saying an offer of life without parole on non-death capital cases is typical in Harris County — at least until the office’s Capital Committee, a specialized group of prosecutors, decides otherwise.

“The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has historically recommended a sentence of life without parole on all capital cases in which we have not elected to seek the death penalty,” Ogg said. “Any lesser plea offer must be passed through the Capital Committee and always occurs late in the process of resolving the case.”

Current and former prosecutors and defense lawyers, however, disputed that statement.

“That’s just not true,” said one current prosecutor, who asked that their name be withheld out of concern for repercussions. “We do not make recommendations of life without parole routinely…. Until a case goes to the Capital Committee, there is no offer.”

A spokesperson for Ogg did not reply to a request for further comment.

Teare said the families and loved ones of homicide victims will suffer the impact of Ogg’s decision when some cases inevitably resolve with lesser punishments.

“I don’t understand the benefit (of the change) for anyone, but I certainly know what the negative is — retraumatizing these families that have gone through the most unimaginable tragedy to begin with,” he said. “We’re going to have all these families… feeling like their loved one’s case is just a political ping pong (ball).”

[…]

Murray Newman, a former Harris County prosecutor and defense lawyer who currently is representing “four or five” capital murder defendants, said prosecutors only make plea recommendations after an extensive review of the evidence and consultation with the Capital Committee — and, except in rare cases where the death penalty is an option, those recommendations are never so onerous as life without parole.

“Who would sign up for that?” Newman said. “There’s no reason to accept it. The only incentive that any defendant has to take life without parole is if the alternative is the death penalty.”

In practice, Newman said, the blanket recommendation of life without parole is unlikely to derail any prosecutions — but it could “create a headache” for Teare’s incoming administration when the plea recommendations inevitably change.

“What (Ogg) has basically done is set an atmosphere in which she can express some level of mock outrage (about) any plea negotiations done during the Teare administration,” said Newman, a longtime critic of Ogg. “The fact that she did it as a blanket move shows you what her intent was — to set up the incoming administration to look soft on crime for (modifying) plea negotiations that she had already entered into.”

I don’t know what’s going on here, and I’ll leave the speculation to those closer to the situation. I have faith that Sean Teare can deal with this and avoid the messes that other recent DAs have found themselves in. I was bolstered in that opinion after listening to his recent interview on CityCast Houston – he really comes across well and has some clear ideas about what he wants to do. Give it a listen for yourself.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged District Attorney, Election 2024, Harris County, Kim Ogg, plea bargains, Sean Teare, Texas | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, December 14 edition

Posted on December 14, 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: elections news; Dallas HERO’s connection with the incoming presidential administration; the State of the City in Dallas; City Manager picks and issues in Dallas and Fort Worth; the first Prop S suit against the City of Dallas is coming; quick hits from the suburbs and local districts; more from the UNT Health Science Center body-selling scandal; the Dallas Black Dance Theater saga comes to an end for now; Christmas Sweater Day at Dallas City Hall. And more!

Not in this week’s post: everything going on with David Cook (R-Mansfield) and his bid to become speaker of the Texas House, because that situation is moving so quickly and unpleasantly that anything I write will be wrong by the time it’s published. What a mess!

This week’s post was brought to you by NPR’s best songs of 2024, which is a mixed bag but is introducing me to a lot of new artists. I still like Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter best.

Let’s start with the Dallas Observer’s choice of stories to follow in 2025: hiring a new city manager (more on that below) and Dallas PD chief; the 2025 May election; the STR situation; Cruise robotaxis (nope, as our host observed); what’s going on in the Lege (more on that below); and sports stories.
We’re not over last year’s election yet: the DMN is big mad about Democratic efforts to destroy No Labels, which is exactly what you’d expect from an organization dedicated to the proposition that The Right Sort of Sensible People should make decisions rather than folks dedicated to nasty political parties.
But we’re also worrying about the 2026 election. As noted by our host, John Cornyn is facing a possible MAGA primary from Ken Paxton, or worse, as mentioned in that Downballot post, Bo French of the Tarrant County GOP. I really don’t know which of French of Paxton would be worse as our Senator. Fingers crossed it’s the devil we know.
Apparently Congressman Pat Fallon (R-Frisco) got into a screaming match with the head of the Secret Service during hearings on the Trump assassination attempt recently. I didn’t watch the video because I don’t like watching grown men have tantrums, but apparently it’s quite the thing.
Speaking of the Trump administration, we apparently have a Dallas connection there, one I don’t want. Pete Marocco of Dallas HERO (more on them below) is on the Trump transition team helping recommend national security hires. I didn’t know but am unsurprised to learn that Marocco and his wife are J6ers.
A couple of Lege items: LoneStarLeft profiles our new House Democrats, including Linda García of HD 107 here in the Dallas area. She’s replacing Victoria Neave Criado, who primaried Senator Nathan Johnson (my Senator). And in the Dallas Morning News, retiring representative Glenn Rogers (HD 60) tells us who’s controlling the messy Speaker vote. Spoiler: it’s the Republican megadonors.
Moving on to the city of Dallas, we have the State of the City address from our increasingly irrelevant mayor, Eric Johnson. Take your pick over coverage: D Magazine, KERA, or the Dallas Observer. If you’ve been following Dallas politics for any length of time, you’ll see it’s a medley of Johnson’s greatest hits: all filler, no killer.
Veteran political columnist Sharon Grigsby, who is leaving the DMN, spends one of her last pieces on the three things she thinks Dallas needs to do to get back on track: hiring a city manager (more on that below); fixing those pension fund shortfalls; and dealing with the budgetary implications of Props S and U (two of the HERO amendments, and more on S below). Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Speaking of that city manager job, and how Sharon Grigsby is going to be disappointed, it turns out that the search is frustrating council members and that the search firm kept at least 46 names from city council, just giving them the names of the finalists. To be fair, some of the applicants dropped their applications after the election, because who wants to deal with Props S and U? That said, Monday is going to be weird: City Council is meeting in the morning to finalize a candidate but the ad-hoc committee for the search is also meeting in the afternoon.
I told you we were going to get back to Dallas HERO: they’re threatening to sue the city over homeless encampments that they claim are forbidden by state law. As you may recall, Prop S gives the city no way to answer this suit, even though the city is working on removing those encampments and housing folks who are unhoused. KERA also has the story. This is the first of what are going to be a lot of lawsuits trying to get the city to run things the way deep-pocketed jackasses *koff*Monty Bennett*koff* want them run. Dallas voters wanted this and they’re collectively about to get it good and hard.
Another election outcome: thanks to Prop R, which decriminalized marijuana, Dallas’ vape ban now includes the devil’s lettuce. Details from KERA and the Dallas Observer.
City park news: Fair Park is getting $8.6 million from the National Park Service to replace 18 acres of parking with a park. Also in the DMN and D Magazine. The City is also buying an amusement park in North Dallas with plans to turn parts of it into a city park and leave the amusements under their current operator. That’s something we’re about to stop having the money to do under Props S and U.
D Magazine on how close Dallas is to getting rid of its current parking minimums, which date back to the 1980s and 1960s. City Council would like to replace it with a more flexible process. Check out that photo of Lower Greenville and the land that’s turned into parking lots! Related: this week I learned that my handicap placard means I can park free at any meter in Dallas. Useful to know.
Moving along to Fort Worth and its City Manager, their city council has picked former Deputy City Manager Jay Chapa. Looks like he’ll be making $435K plus benefits, which is more than T.C. Broadnax made in Dallas. But Fort Worth didn’t use a search firm, which has led to allegations that the fix was in. Two city council members have asked to restart the hiring process, also covered by the Star-Telegram. They’re not unhappy with Chapa’s qualifications, just the way the decisions were made by council and the mayor.
The next debate over hiring in Fort Worth is already lined up: the chief of Fort Worth PD is retiring at the end of May.
For those of you following Nate Schatzline’s Mercy Culture Church and its trafficking shelter, Fort Worth’s city council approved it on a 6-4 vote. Also in the Star-Telegram. In unrelated news, the city also approved expanding a Buddhist stupa.
Fort Worth City Council also approved a Media Production Development Zone, with the potential for a two-year use and sales tax exemption, for the Alliance development where Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone wants to film.
Quick hits from the suburbs and the schools:
- DeSoto may move to a four-day work week.
- The 26-year-old mayor of Rowlett is quitting to serve as the city’s emergency management coordinator. Why? The mayor’s job pays $467 a month.
- December 14 is election day in Princeton, where voters will pick a mayor in a runoff from the November election. KERA and the DMN have the details about the candidates and issues.
- Arlington wants its name on AT&T Stadium instead of Dallas’ for the temporary rebranding for the 2026 World Cup. The DMN also has the story.
- We have roundups of the North Texas districts and teachers implicated in the Houston fraudulent certification ring from the Fort Worth Report and the DMN.
- Highland Park ISD was hit by ransomware.
- Southlake Carroll ISD parents want the findings from the Office of Civil Rights investigation into the district that started back in 2021.
- The DMN has a list of area schools that are closing because of low enrollment, aka changing demographics.
In two technically unrelated stories, Dallas County continues to have problems with its payroll system shorting jail employees overtime pay. The DMN also has the story. Sounds like it’s a training issue related to a policy change, but still, what a moment to announce that after a year, Dallas County has finally hired a CIO. Good luck to Justine Tran, who is going to need it.
The Star-Telegram ran an op-ed on the new Bluebonnet Curriculum, the one Greg Abbott threw a temporary ringer on the SBOE to pass, by the VP of the First Liberty Institute of Plano. If that name doesn’t ring any bells, you may know some of its former employees and volunteers like Matthew Kacsmaryk and James C. Ho. Unsurprisingly, she’s in favor.
The Dallas Observer has a piece on self-censorship and punishment at universities in Texas, focusing on UT Dallas.
You may have seen this Texas Tribune story on high speed rail and its prospects in Texas. You probably did not see D Magazine’s short item about it, titled “Is high-speed rail doomed in Texas?”. This is the unusual case where Betteridge’s Law of Headlines does not hold.
The Roberson shaken baby case earns a DMN editorial about the judge’s recusal. Also, Jeff Leach says that Ken Paxton wants to run the clock out on the committee subpoenaing Roberson’s testimony, since the committee expires with the new session in January.
Here’s one for our host: Baseball winter meetings are coming to Dallas. They’re happening this week, so he probably knows more about the outcomes already than I ever will.
Y’all certainly remember that gruesome corpse-selling scandal where UNT Health Science Center was making bank on unclaimed bodies. NBC has more on the body trade that UNT fed those bodies into.
The DMN is shaking its finger at anyone who thinks the guy who allegedly shot the United HealthCare CEO is a hero.
The National Transportation Safety Board has released its findings in the 2022 Wings Over Dallas midair crash that killed six people. It was inadequate planning. The conclusions of the report can’t be used in the lawsuits over the crash but facts from the report can be introduced into evidence.
Dallas Black Dance Theater made peace with its fired dancers and the American Guild of Musical Artists with the assistance of the National Labor Relations Board. The peace is more than $500K of back and forward pay in lieu of reinstatement. It was too little, too late for City Council, though: DBDT did not get its funding back from the city and will have to replace $248K, or 7% of its budget.
I’ve been following the leadership crisis at Daystar Network, a Christian media company headquartered in North Texas that distributes the shows of celebrity pastors like local hero T.D. Jakes and Houston’s least favorite, Joel Osteen. The ugly has finally come out: the son of the founder, who has been ousted by his mother and her new husband, alleges his toddler daughter was abused by a family member in 2020. I hope whatever happens to the adults, the child gets the care she needs. And I’d be disappointed in the adults, but in 2024 hearing someone pastor-adjacent in the Metroplex diddled a kid is unfortunately par for the course.
Dallas-haters will enjoy this ChatGPT-generated roast of Dallas neighborhoods from Reddit. My neighborhood, Lake Highlands, didn’t even make the cut for mockery.
A North Texas ring that stole more than $400K in Lego has been busted.
Heritage Auctions, the Dallas-based company that sells all sorts of cool pop culture stuff, just sold one of the four surviving pairs of ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz for $32.5 million. Also on the block: the hoverboard from Back to the Future II, which went for $237,500.
Last but not least: check out Christmas Sweater Day at Dallas City Council, with pictures.

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

Will Cornyn get MAGAed in the 2026 primary?

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From The Downballot (scroll to the bottom of the “Senate” section).

Big John Cornyn

Republican Sen. John Cornyn has long been a loud and proud supporter of Donald Trump, but his occasional apostasies have drawn the ire of MAGA purists and could land him a primary challenge in 2026.

Cornyn’s most prominent would-be rival is Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said last year that a campaign against the incumbent was “on the table.” The two engaged in trash talk earlier this year when Paxton knocked Cornyn’s chances of succeeding Mitch McConnell as the GOP’s Senate leader by calling him “anti-Trump” and “anti-gun” and saying he’d be preoccupied with “a highly competitive primary campaign in 2026.”

Cornyn fired back by snarking, “Hard to run from prison, Ken,” a retort that lost its bite a few weeks later when federal prosecutors reached an agreement with Paxton on long-simmering fraud charges that did not include jail time. Cornyn also lost his bid to replace McConnell last month, though Paxton, once praised by Trump as a possible choice for U.S. attorney general, seems to have been passed over for a Cabinet post himself.

Even if Paxton, who’s also up for reelection in two years, decides to stay put, there are others who might give it a go. Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French recently issued a statement attacking Cornyn for expressing some mild hesitation about some of Trump’s nominees, saying he was “not ruling anything out.” (Tarrant is home to Fort Worth and is the third-largest county in Texas.)

Two years ago, Patrick Svitek, then at the Texas Tribune, reported that Rep. Ronny Jackson was considering a bid as well. At the time, Jackson didn’t rule anything out, but he doesn’t appear to have spoken publicly about the race since then.

It’s hard being in a position of having to sympathize with John Cornyn, but here we are. Cornyn’s bad, but he at least occasionally tries to do govern-y things that are intended to benefit society as a whole. Those other three…yeah, no. But that’s the March of 2026 we might have in store for us.

There was a time when I’d have openly cheered for the worst candidate to win in a race like this, on the theory that they’d be easier to beat. I do think Cornyn would be the strongest candidate of the four, but that’s not the same as saying the others would be vulnerable in the general election. I’d like for that to be true, and maybe by then things will have gone sufficiently off the rails to make it plausible, but we’ve all been burned way too many times to put any faith in the proposition. Let’s wait and see if any of them, or any other equally ridiculous but dangerous loonies take concrete steps towards a primary challenge.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Bo French, Election 2026, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, primaries, Ronny Jackson, Senate, Texas | 1 Comment

RIP, Cruise robotaxis

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Didn’t see that coming.

A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

General Motors said Tuesday it will retreat from the robotaxi business and stop funding its money-losing Cruise autonomous vehicle unit.

Instead, the Detroit automaker will focus on development of partially automated driver-assist systems for personal vehicles like its Super Cruise, which allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel.

GM said it would get out of robotaxis “given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.”

The company said it will combine Cruise’s technical team with its own to work on advanced systems to assist drivers.

[…]

GM’s brushoff of Cruise represents a dramatic about-face from years of full-blown support that left a huge financial dent in the automaker. The company invested $2.4 billion in Cruise only to sustain years of uninterrupted losses, with little in return. Since GM bought a controlling stake in Cruise for $581 million in 2016, the robotaxi service piled up more than $10 billion in operating losses while bringing in less than $500 million in revenue, according to GM shareholder reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The automaker even announced plans for Cruise to generate $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, but it scaled back spending on the company after one of its autonomous Chevrolet Bolts dragged a San Francisco pedestrian who was hit by another vehicle in 2023.

The California Public Utilities Commission alleged Cruise then covered up details of the crash for more than two weeks.

The embarrassing incident resulted in Cruise’s license to operate its driverless fleet in California being suspended by regulators and triggered a purge of its leadership — in addition to layoffs that jettisoned about a quarter of its workforce.

GM CEO Mary Barra told analysts on a conference call Tuesday the the new unit will focus on personal vehicles and developing systems that can drive by themselves in certain circumstances.

The company has agreements to buy another 7% of Cruise and intends to buy the remaining shares so it owns the whole company.

GM’s statement is here. It was just six months ago that Cruise made its return to Houston, though as far as I can tell they never got past the testing stage. (More recently, Cruise announced a pilot program for wheelchair-accessible vehicles; I have no idea what may happen with that.) Now if you want to ride in a robotaxi in Texas for some reason, you’ll need to go to Austin and sign up for a Waymo account. Let us know if you do. Business Insider, Car and Driver, TechCrunch, The Verge, and Jalopnik have more.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Alphabet, Austin, California, Cruise, driverless cars, General Motors, Google, San Francisco, taxis, Texas, Waymo | Comments Off

Trying to improve on ShotSpotter

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Meet Wytec, a new type of AI-powered gunshot-detection system.

Wytec International Inc., a builder of 5G wireless networks, is working on artificial intelligence software to deploy on networks of sensors to pinpoint the location of gunshots or other campus problems and immediately notify school district officials.

Founder and CEO William “Bill” Gray launched the company in 2011 to provide in-building cellular networks to schools. But that goal changed after the May 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.

“Now there’s a big focus on gunshot detection on campuses,” he said. “So we now are more and more focused towards that.”

Since then, the firm has added five provisional patents for its AI software and methods. It expects to roll out a pilot program to test the system at some Texas schools sometime in the next year. Judson, North East and Southside ISDs in San Antonio are among the 46 Texas school districts that have expressed interest in participating, according to Wytec.

[…]

Rather than manufacturing its own sensors and hardware, the company plans to integrate its AI software with other vendors’ equipment. Wytec’s software is compatible with various types of cameras and sensors that monitor motion, temperature, light, sound and pressure.

Sanchez said the system communicates via a private, secured wireless network.

Its centerpiece is Wytec’s LPN-16, a patented, small cellular base station that quickly processes the data coming from the sensors and cameras and provides information about unfolding events to school and security staff via a mobile app.

A company presentation showed the mobile app interface, which displays the event’s location and provides real-time video and communication.

In addition to gunshots, the sensors can detect smoke, fire, drugs and even chemical and biological agents.

One difference between Wytec’s system and others on the market is that it does not immediately call 911. Others, he said, immediately dial 911.

“If you’re very familiar with some of our competitive technologies, they get too many false positives,” Sanchez said.

By putting teachers or administrators in the loop, Wytec says its system can help limit unwarranted lockdowns or first responder callouts.

The company says it’s performed 500,000 lab tests of its software, logging “better than 90 percent accuracy” in identifying gunshots.

The system also will be able to pick up preprogrammed key words that could be used to trigger an alert.

That means that “teachers aren’t the only one with the ability to trigger things. Students can too,” Sanchez said. “If a student sees an incident, they call out, for example, ‘Code Red,’ you’ll be able to detect that on our system.”

There’s an Express News story that was in a print edition of the Chronicle that gets into how Wytec is supposedly better than ShotSpotter, which had been tried in San Antonio and later rejected for generating so many false positives and no true positives. It sounds to me like Wytec is basically requiring a human review on its alerts before the cops get called. That should cut down on the false positives, but it would also increase response times. The addition of a “Code Red” trigger means that there’s room for student shenanigans, too. Let’s just say I’m skeptical and leave it at that.

It also struck me in reading this that we’re preparing to spend a lot of money on better response to school shootings – in the Chron/EN article, the CEO of Wytec talked openly about the millions of dollars in contracts they’re seeking – but nothing was said about trying to prevent any of those shootings from happening in the first place. Yes, I know, the Lege passed a big school security bill in the last session, much of which unfunded and which came with significant logistical challenges. Perhaps that will help keep some shooters who don’t have a connection to the school in question from gaining entry. I’m just saying, by the time there’s gunfire it’s already a very bad situation. Putting my cybersecurity hat on for a minute, detection is important but prevention is preferred where possible. We’re more than a little out of balance on that here.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Technology, science, and math | Tagged artificial intelligence, gun control, guns, San Antonio, schools, ShotSpotter, Texas, The Lege, Uvalde, Wytec | 1 Comment

The HISD Board doesn’t want to hear it

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Curious move.

Houston ISD’s board of managers signaled early support Tuesday for limiting the public’s ability to speak freely about any topic during its monthly board meetings.

Board members voted 8-1 to advance a policy proposal that would eliminate a portion of the meetings called “hearing of the community,” when members of the public could address the board about any district-related matter. The policy cannot become official until the board holds a second vote, likely in early 2025.

The vote follows months of friction between HISD’s state-appointed leadership, which took power in June 2023 as part of sanctions against the district, and many members of the public opposed to Superintendent Mike Miles’ overhaul of HISD. Some community members have argued the board hasn’t engaged the community enough, and board members gave themselves a 1 out of 10 rating on community engagement in its annual self-evaluation in November.

HISD Board President Audrey Momanaee said the proposed changes to community involvement at public meetings are meant to make the gatherings more efficient. She argued a board meeting “is not the best way” for meaningful engagement with the public.

[…]

Under Texas’ Open Meetings Act, school boards are required to provide the public an opportunity to speak about items listed on the meeting agenda. However, they don’t legally have to give people the opportunity to address the board about any topic.

HISD has hosted “hearing of the community” for many years, allowing residents to address everything from principal changes to safety concerns to issues with getting special education services. While board members typically can’t respond directly to speakers, the public comments can bring issues to the attention of district administrators.

All of the Houston area’s largest school districts — including Cy-Fair, Katy, Fort Bend, Conroe and Aldine ISDs — offer the public an opportunity to speak about non-agenda items during monthly board meetings, though their public comment periods are often quieter and shorter than HISDs.

HISD’s lengthy and often raucous board meetings have frustrated some board members, prompting the proposal. Tuesday’s meeting lasted eight and a half hours, ending at 1:30 a.m., with public comment stretching for roughly two hours and the board going into closed session for about three hours.

Longtime HISD watcher Margaret Downing was not impressed.

It’s hard to imagine how much more of a misstep the Houston ISD Board of Managers is prepared to make than its proposal floated Tuesday night that would severely curtail what members of the public could address the board about at meetings and would end Zoom calls into the monthly public meeting.

This from a board whose president Audrey Momanaee promised all sorts of increased communication from its nine members with the public after its $4.4 billion bond issue went down in flames in the November elections. Unless, of course, you consider communication a one-way street.

What were they thinking? Whose bright idea is this? Superintendent Mike Miles who often gets shelled at these meetings? Board Vice President Ric Campo who’s made public statements about his dislike of long meetings. Board members Janette Garza Lindner and Michelle Cruz Arnold who’ve pushed for more “decorum” at meetings?

[…]

So, for instance, if members of the public wanted to bring up their continuing concerns about HISD students and rail lines by schools given this week’s death of a 15-year-old attempting to cross the tracks, well that wouldn’t be allowed.

Perhaps unnecessarily (if they do away with it), the revisions to board procedure also call for an end to the stipulation that the Hearing From the Community should begin no later than 7 p.m. Why is that important? Because previous boards had a handy policy of putting public comment last, filling the meeting with all sorts of things first, so by the time the community got a chance to speak, most of them had gone home.

The proposed changes remove the present policy of allowing students to go first in addressing the board, no matter what the subject matter. Instead their turn would be decided by whomever the board president is. Get a board president who really doesn’t want to hear from students, and you have another move that discourages input. Few, on a school night, can stay the course, only getting a chance to speak late into the night.

You have to wonder why these people even wanted to be on the board. Success in business is fine on a resume but in a public position, you have to be willing to hear from people and at least give the appearance of listening to them. Even if it is, at times, tedious as all get out and repetitive.

As anyone who has attended a Houston City Council meeting can attest, if you give the public an open microphone, you will get some unhinged commentary. That’s the price of admission. As both of these stories note, the Tuesday meeting included some bad actors trying to rile people up about library books (you know, from all those libraries HISD schools now have). There are some reasonable limits that can be put on speakers, in terms of time and decorum, but this is going too far. And for a Board that had taken some baby steps in the direction of being more self-aware. This is a bad idea and they should reconsider when they take that final vote next year.

Posted in School days | Tagged Audrey Momanaee, Board of Managers, bond referendum, Election 2024, HISD, Houston, Ric Campo, Texas Open Meetings Act | 3 Comments

Paxton versus 404Media

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

Still a crook any way you look

In October, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton subpoenaed 404 Media, demanding that we hand over confidential information about our reporting and an anonymous source to help the state of Texas in a wholly unrelated case it is pursuing against Google. This subpoena undermines the free and independent press. It also highlights the fact that the alarm bells that have been raised about legal attacks on journalists in a second Trump administration are not theoretical; politicians already feel emboldened to use the legal system to target journalists.

Paxton’s subpoena seeks to turn 404 Media into an arm of law enforcement, which is not our role and which we have no interest in doing or becoming. And so Friday, our lawyers vociferously objected to Paxton’s subpoena.

Paxton is seeking 404 Media reporting materials and documents related to an internal Google privacy incident database that 404 Media reported on in June. He has demanded these documents as part of a broader lawsuit against Google that claims the company has violated a Texas biometric privacy law that has nothing to do with 404 Media. Specifically, the subpoena demands the following:

“Any and all documents and communications relied on in the ‘Google Leak Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents’ article authored by Joseph Cox.

Any and all documents and communications considered when drafting the [article]

All unpublished drafts of the [article]

A copy of the ‘internal Google database which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues obtained by 404 Media.’”

At the time, we did not publish the full database because it contains the personal information of potentially thousands of Google customers and employees, and cannot be reasonably redacted. The subpoena threatens to hold us in contempt of court if we do not comply with its subpoena.

Friday, our lawyers objected to the subpoena on the grounds that it is “oppressive” and because our confidential reporting is protected under the California Shield Law (404 Media is incorporated as Dark Mode LLC in the state of California). “The information and materials sought by the Subpoena are absolutely protected from compelled disclosure by the California Shield Law,” our attorneys wrote. “Dark Mode further objects to the Subpoena on the grounds that it calls for the disclosure of unpublished information that is independently protected from compelled disclosure under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 2(a) of the California Constitution.”

Simply put: If Ken Paxton wants Google’s privacy incident database, he should get it directly from Google, not from us.

[…]

Paxton’s subpoena highlights the urgency of passing the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that has already passed the House and which has bipartisan support but which Democrats in the Senate have dragged their feet on for inexplicable and indefensible reasons. The PRESS Act would prevent the type of frivolous and inappropriate legal action Paxton is pursuing from the federal government, which is particularly important considering that FBI Director nominee Kash Patel has promised to “come after” journalists “criminally or civilly.” Attacking press freedom doesn’t always mean the government will directly sue journalists and news organizations. It can also, as Paxton has chosen to do here, demand information from them in an attempt to embroil them in wholly unrelated and costly legal proceedings, and to hold them in contempt of court when they choose not to commit professional and ethical suicide.

I was aware of the lawsuit, which may have merit, but my operating assumption is that everything Ken Paxton does is bad unless proven otherwise. For obvious reasons, I would like to see him get denied on this motion. 404Media is a subscriber-based investigative site that focuses on tech, AI, the Internet, that sort of thing, and they do some really fascinating work. Check them out, and read the rest of the post.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged 404Media, California, Google, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, privacy, Texas | Comments Off

Houston to get a pro volleyball team

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Pretty cool.

As far as professional volleyball goes, there isn’t much two-time Olympic medalist Micha Hancock hasn’t done.

Hancock won gold with Team USA at the Tokyo Games and a silver medal at the Paris Games. She played professionally in Italy for the last seven years. Before that, in Poland for two years.

This winter, though, she’s preparing to do something she’s never done before: play a season of professional volleyball in the United States, on a Houston team in a first-of-its-kind league debuting in January.

Whereas most sports leagues launch pro franchises and then develop academy and youth programs, League One Volleyball (abbreviated to LOVB and pronounced “Love”) did the opposite. It started with a network of established youth clubs all over the country, then branched upward to pro teams in six cities: Houston; Austin; Atlanta; Omaha, Neb.; Madison, Wis.; and Salt Lake City.

Until a few years ago, top American volleyball players had to go overseas to play professionally. LOVB Pro is one of three professional indoor volleyball leagues that have launched in the U.S. since 2021, but the only one that started at the grassroots level.

Hancock and U.S. Olympic teammate Jordan Thompson were the first two athletes to commit to LOVB Houston. Hancock said the new league gave her the opportunity not only to come home, but to help grow professional volleyball in what is hopefully a lasting way.

“I think it wasn’t the most important thing for this league to be first. It was like, we want to make sure we have time to do the things how we want to do them,” Hancock said. “In 10 years, I just want there to be one really good option for young women, and young men eventually, to stay home and play if that’s what they choose to do.”

LOVB started in 2020 and now has 58 junior clubs across the country. The six pro franchises each share a practice gym with a local affiliated youth club. LOVB Houston practices at Houston Skyline’s gym and will play home matches at the Fort Bend County Epicenter, with the first home match scheduled Jan. 9 against Austin.

LOVB Pro owns and operates each of its teams, a single-entity model also used by Major League Soccer and the Professional Women’s Hockey League. But LOVB Pro president Rosie Spaulding said she is unaware of a professional sports league anywhere in the world with the same community up structure.

“I think what’s been missing for a long time in the U.S. for volleyball has been the highest level of the game and this sort of North Star and halo effect that a pro league can bring,” Spaulding said. “And in doing it this way, we’re really forging this really strong connection from the very beginning so that kids playing in our clubs can see and actually train in the same gyms as our pro teams and see firsthand.”

[…]

The league will debut just sixth months after the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where Team USA took home the women’s volleyball silver medal.

The timing was intentional, Spaulding said. So was picking Houston as one of the base cities.

Houston Skyline was ranked the No. 1 youth club in the country this year, as the number of girls playing volleyball in Texas and nationwide continued to skyrocket. A record-high 479,125 girls participated in high school volleyball in 2023-24, second only to track and field, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Texas led the way with 52,608 girls volleyball participants.

At the college level, the Texas Longhorns are defending their national championship this month in the NCAA Tournament. In total, nine of the 64 teams in the field are from the Lone Star State, including Texas A&M, Baylor, SMU and Texas State.

When it came time to launch pro teams, Spaulding said LOVB started with a list of 28 cities. Houston easily rose to the top.

“We looked at everything from affinity for volleyball, USA Volleyball membership, where women’s sports where popular, cities that were easy to get to from a transport perspective for logistics, the existing pro teams and leagues that were already in cities — and of course, importantly, our clubs,” Spaulding said. “Houston Skyline continues to be one of the top clubs in the country, and it was a no-brainer for us.”

Rice also has a strong volleyball program, though they fell short of the NCAA tournament this year. I have no idea how big the audience will be for LOVB, but the league appears to be pretty well-capitalized and they have a broadcast deal with ESPN, as does the forthcoming Athletes United Softball League. If this is your jam you should buy a ticket and go see a game – if this is going to work, sufficient support out of the gate is a big deal. You can learn more about the league here and its apparently not-yet-named Houston team here. The schedule runs into the first week of April. I wish them well.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Houston, Jordan Thompson, League One Volleyball, LOVB, Micha Hancock, volleyball | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 9

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is holding space for its weekly roundup right here, where you can see it.

Continue reading →

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

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