Knowledge Is Good
Look who’s back:
Need I mention that it was posted on the fence surrounding an empty lot? Look for other signs just like it on a utility pole near you. And be sure to tell anyone who wants to vote for Eric Dick for Mayor to be sure to check the straight ticket Republican box on this year’s ballot.
Posted in: Election 2013.
Still no limits on corndogs
The full House, for the second time in eight years, drove a stake through the chance of imposing term limits on the governor and other statewide officeholders.
The proposed constitutional amendment that would have gone to voters was defeated 80-61 on Wednesday. The Senate had passed the proposed amendment last month 27-4.
Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, fought for the proposal saying that 36 other states had similar restrictions that allows fresh ideas and talent into the executive branch.
Larson invoked Rick Perry’s long tenure and pointed out that he has controlled state government through making every appointment in the state — the first governor to do so.
Perry has served more than 12 years in the top office and said he will announce in June whether he will seek a fourth full term as governor.
[...]
In addition to the governor and lieutenant governor, the bill would have limited the attorney general, comptroller, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner and secretary of state to two, consecutive four-year terms. The three members of the Railroad Commission would be subject to two, consecutive six-year terms.
The Senate last passed a term limit proposal in 1995, which would have restricted both statewide officials and lawmakers. But the resolution, which lacked the backing of then-House Speaker Pete Laney, died in committee without a full House vote.
See here for the background, and here for SJR13. Note that there were 80 votes against SJR13. It didn’t just lack sufficient support to qualify for the ballot, it couldn’t get a majority. I’m rather stunned by that, as I’m sure is Rice prof Mark Jones, who predicted smooth sailing for it in the House in that earlier story about it easily passing the Senate. Here’s the unofficial record vote; by my count, a small majority of Dems voted Yes, while a fairly large majority of Rs voted No. I suspect it may be awhile before we see another attempt to impose term limits. If the Rick Perry argument didn’t work, I don’t know what would.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
In last week’s Texas blog roundup, we saluted Amy Valentine for successfully turning her blog about surviving breast cancer into a book about surviving breast cancer. Amy is a friend of mine from my class at Trinity University, and I’ve been following her blog since its inception, partly because I’ve cared about what’s happening with her, and partly because she’s dealt with this awful situation with great humor and courage. It turns out that the joke is on her, as her book – a Kindle download – has been classified by Amazon as something it is not.
Breast cancer is not erotic
Amazon’s Kindle has categorized my digital breast cancer memoir as Erotica. The funniest part is that I notified Amazon of the error. After all, there is nothing erotic about breast cancer. Yet, Amazon refused to recategorize my book! They pointed out the book’s “adult content” and told me it would never be placed in a “general public listing.” I felt like I was a 12-year-old girl getting a scolding from her Sunday School teacher. I know my book’s title, Killer Boobs, can be a bit risque and the cover art, which was in the stock photos that Amazon provided, is of a naked woman’s torso, but when partnered with the overall book topic, it all works. After all, my breasts did try to kill me. And the skinny model’s torso on the cover looks more like a cancer patient in my eyes than a sexy playboy model. I don’t know who I feel most sorry for: folks hoping for Erotic literature who mistakenly buy my book, or my 77-year-old mother’s friends who purchase the digital book and then find out that other buyers purchased “Bondage Babes” and “Whips, Chains, and Lipstick.” Amazon Kindle editors will really be upset when I publish my memoir’s sequel on my harrowing and sometimes funny trip through breast cancer world: “Cleavage to Die For.”
I joked to Amy on her Facebook page that the title and art would work equally well for a Mickey Spillane novel, but there is a bit of serious business underneath all the boob jokes. Every book has a potential audience, and no book can find its audience if it’s off in the wrong section of the bookstore, whether virtual or not. If you are sent a link to Amy’s book, and see that the webpage its on contains recommendations like the ones listed above or the books that were recommended for me, you’re probably not going to have an accurate picture of what it is you’re looking at. I don’t know what Amazon’s algorithms are, but surely they ought to have some capacity for taking a writer’s word for the fact that her book is about chemo and healing and not whips and handcuffs when she tries to tell them that. A book about breasts is not necessarily a book about sex.
Posted in: Books.
You solo drivers on US 290 can now take advantage of the HOV lane to make your daily commute a little less grim, beginning today.
Based on time of day, drivers will pay between $1 and $5 for using the lanes, while eligible carpoolers can still use them for free. In the mornings, vehicles must have three occupants between 6:45 a.m. and 8 a.m., while only two people per vehicle are required at other times.
The carpool lanes run from near FM 1960 to the Northwest Transit Center near Interstate 10 and Loop 610. The transit center, park and ride buses and the carpool lanes are operated by Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Metro also manages toll lanes along Interstate 45 and U.S. 59. Carpool lanes along 59 north of downtown are scheduled to open later this year.
About 7,500 vehicles use the carpool lane daily along 290, Metro officials said. Adding solo drivers who pay is expected to increase the use to about 9,000 vehicles. Raising and lowering prices is meant to control use.
See here for some background, and here for more on Metro’s HOV/HOT lane service. Doesn’t sound like it’s enough volume to make much of a dent in the daily commute time for most folks, but I suppose if you’re one of the ones paying for the privilege of driving in the HOV lane it’ll make a difference for you. It’s going to be a long couple of years while 290 gets revamped and expanded, and I hardly ever have to drive on it.
Posted in: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Turns out “tiger” parenting isn’t such a good idea.
When pirate costumes go wrong.
“Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. Oh, and they should put those damn smartphones down and get off my lawn already.”
Please turn off your portable electronic devices prior to takeoff. Unless you don’t feel like it. Really doesn’t matter much one way or the other.
President Obama would like to use 3-D printers to make weapons, too. Someone alert Steve Stockman.
I realize we’re coming to the end of the school year, but this advice on how to get along with your child’s teacher is still timely.
Rand Paul is at least as nuts as his father.
“The Benghazi attacks (the consulate and the CIA compound) are absolutely not unprecedented even though they’re being treated that way by Republicans”.
It’s time for passwords to die. The current system is insecure and unmanageable.
“To put it bluntly, we will see far more handgun deaths due to black market firearms this week than we will see from 3D printed guns in our entire lifetime.”
The UN thinks we should eat more bugs. That sound you hear is Ted Cruz’s head exploding.
“It is, as you might expect, the biggest pile of direwolf excrement I’ve seen on the internet this week.”
There’s a long list of reasons why “racecraft” is a disreputable field of study.
RIP, Dr. Joyce Brothers, pop psychology pioneer.
“Today’s CBO estimate puts the deficit at 2.1 percent of GDP by 2015. Simpson-Bowles called for reducing the deficit to 2.3 percent of GDP by 2015. So we got beyond their recommendation without punishing any old people or cutting taxes even more for the wealthy and corporations. Go figure.”
RIP, Billie Sol Estes, the kind of flamboyant Texas con man they don’t make anymore.
“Still, the fact that the right is being forced to fall back from predicting a staggering rise in health-care costs to explaining away the staggering decline in health-care costs represents real progress.”
“The whole “second term curse” narrative is mostly a media construct, but it’s actually a self-perpetuating one.”
“There is a scandal in all of this—several, actually, and some are more significant than the one that is getting all the attention.”
Ten real world princesses who don’t need Disney makeovers.
If writing that the “great, deluded middle class–subsidized by the government and coddled by politicians” needs to experience a decade-long siege of high unemployment isn’t “get[ting] off on other people’s suffering”, I don’t know what “getting off on other people’s suffering” could possibly mean.
Posted in: Blog stuff.
A big step forward for those who would like to see more charters.
Senate Bill 2 passed on a 105-34 vote on second reading. It now faces a third reading before it can be reconciled with a similar version the Senate passed last month.
“I think the bill supports quality charters, helping them to expand and grow but at the same time helping to shut down the poor performers,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen.
Its author, Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, has called SB2 the most comprehensive charter school legislation since the state introduced the publicly funded and privately run schools in the 1990s. Previous efforts to change the system made it through the Senate but failed to gain traction in the House.
The bill would update rules on the renewal, expansion and revocation of charters, raising the current cap of 215 charters that can be authorized at any one time by allowing an additional 10 per year up to a total of 275 by 2019. Charter holders may operate multiple schools under a single charter.
It would also tighten nepotism rules – an amendment exempts current employees – and give operators the right of first refusal on the lease or purchase of unused facilities in traditional public school districts.
[...]
The House adopted other amendments, including one requiring teachers at charter schools to hold bachelor’s degrees and another requiring the majority of a charter’s board members to be “qualified voters.”
Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, introduced the latter amendment, saying it was not aimed at any particular charter operator. Critics of the Harmony Public Schools charter network have complained to lawmakers in the past about the presence of Turkish citizens among Harmony leadership.
Since the House adopted amendments that make the bill differ from the one that the Senate passed, it has to go through a conference committee and get re-passed by each chamber. I don’t expect that will cause any problems, but sometimes strange things happen in the last days of a session. Trail Blazers and the Observer have more.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
With exoneree Michael Morton by his side, Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday signed a measure that aims to avoid wrongful convictions by preventing prosecutors from suppressing evidence.
“This is a major victory for integrity and fairness in our judicial system,” Perry said of Senate Bill 1611, which was named for Morton, who spent 25 years in prison before being exonerated. It was the governor’s first public signing ceremony of the session.
[...]
Under SB 1611, prosecutors will be required to turn over evidence to defendants accused of crimes and to keep a record of the evidence they disclose. The landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland already requires prosecutors to give defendants information that is “material either to guilt or to punishment.” The Morton Act requires disclosure of evidence regardless of its materiality to guilt or punishment. It is the first significant reform to Texas discovery laws since 1965.
[...]
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who co-authored the bill with state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, said the bill’s passage represented “an important milestone in the journey toward justice in Texas.” Duncan said the legislation would help preserve liberty in the state.
After signing the bill, Perry handed Morton the pen he used to do it, and state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, presented Morton with the gavel used to mark the passage of the bill in the House.
Well done all around. When SB1611 was first introduced, it was opposed by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association on the grounds that it would have also required defense attorneys to open their files to discovery, much like prosecutors are required to do. I hadn’t followed this bill very closely so I wasn’t sure if the TCDLA was now on board with SB1611 – their website and Facebook page give no indication that I could find. I eventually found a comment by TDCLA President-elect Bobby Sims on this Grits post (scroll all the way down; Sims’ handle is Longhorn74) which makes it clear that in the end the TDCLA did support SB1611. All’s well that ends well. It would be nice if there were an equally happy ending for HB166, the bill to establish an Innocence Commission, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. One step at a time, I guess.
Posted in: Crime and Punishment.
In downtown Houston, there are about 3,200 parking spaces on the street – and a whopping 5,800 signs drivers must decipher to use them without getting towed or ticketed.
Aiming to fix this “confusing mishmash of signs,” as Mayor Annise Parker put it, City Council on Wednesday approved a $1.3 million contract with a Houston firm that will spend the next year removing signs and replacing them with a standardized set.
The types of parking signs posted downtown will drop from 120 to as few as 16.
“The goal is to have people be comfortable coming downtown knowing where they can park and not having a nasty surprise with their car being towed,” Parker said. “The theory apparently was previously that it’s better to have specific signs to say, ‘On this block you can do this between these hours.’ I don’t believe that. I think there ought to be consistency across downtown.”
Downtown Management District staff spent a week in a golf cart traveling streets, cataloging and photographing parking signs. The list showed, for example, at least 22 different versions of the same “no parking” message. In some places they found five or six signs stacked on the same post pointing in various directions, in what Councilman James Rodriguez called a befuddling “totem pole.”
Such proliferations of placards make it easy to miss the one that applies to you, Parker said, adding that the city also must keep curbs painted yellow in no-parking areas.
“I don’t want any ‘gotchas’ out there,” she said. “We want people who come downtown for a festival to have a great time at the festival and go back and find that their car is still in the same place they left it. Hear me: My goal is to write fewer parking tickets in downtown Houston and encourage everybody to come down and have a good time.”
I think everyone who has parked downtown has experienced this. It’s a welcome effort, and one that is not without cost to the city – as noted elsewhere in the story, the city collects $9.1 million from parking tickets but only $6.1 million from parking meters. Clearly, this is part of the recent focus on downtown retail, to help remove one of the obstacles to successful retail downtown by making people feel less confused and intimidated by the parking situation. I don’t know how much difference it will make, but it can’t hurt. Oh, and turning the old signs into an art project is all kinds of awesome. I can’t wait to see what that looks like. KUHF has more.
By the way, tacked on to the very end of the story is a note that Council approved the Uptown/Memorial TIRZ. You’d think after all the buildup leading to that vote that it might have warranted its own story, but apparently not. I understand that CM Helena Brown did vote no. That isn’t newsworthy anymore, either.
Posted in: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
There’s a lot less of them than there used to be.
Between 2001 and 2010, Texas added only 2,578 drivers age 16 to 21 while the age group grew by more than 238,000 statewide, dropping the percentage with a license from 62.4 percent to 55.9 percent.
Young adults who drive are doing so less often, researchers said, following a decade-long trend of higher gas prices and fewer young adult drivers.
Young people and transportation experts cite a variety of reasons why obtaining a driver’s license, once a rite of passage for any youngster, is becoming less important.
“Their status symbol, and maybe their focal point of choice, is their phone and the device they carry,” said Russell Henk, program director for the Teens in the Driver’s Seat program, a safety campaign created by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. “A car, 10 to 20 years ago, was the way to get together. Not anymore.”
The economy, and the need to lower costs by reducing gas consumption, is part of the reason for the drop, which officials say has yielded safety benefits.
“That has been a clear reason why we have seen a decrease in fatal crashes for that age group,” Henk said.
Fatalities for young drivers dropped dramatically between 2007 and 2010, including a 47 percent drop in fatalities for 16- and-17-year-olds, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Preliminary data for 2012, however, shows road fatalities among young people might be on the rise.
Some suggest environmental consciousness is convincing young adults to ditch their gas-guzzling cars when possible, or to bike or walk to get some exercise.
Classes are being taught via webcast, goods can be bought without driving and friends can connect online from their respective homes. Even the workday commute can be erased.
“We live in a world where productivity is valued over placement,” said Taylor Kilroy, a University of Houston Law Center student and head of the school’s Energy and Environmental Law Society. “If an employee can produce the same quality work from home, why not allow them to work instead of being stuck in traffic?”
The trend nationwide goes farther back than 2001, and there’s not a strong consensus on the reasons for it. The economic downturn certainly contributed to the steeper decline of the past few years, but there’s more to it than that. This Grist story from 2010 gets at some of the other reasons.
Consider, for example, the fact that teen employment has been falling for most of the last decade. In 1978 (the beginning of the period that Advertising Age looks at) about 48 percent of driving-age teens in the U.S. held a job. By 2008, that number had fallen to 33 percent, and it now stands at just 26 percent. (Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) And while I couldn’t find reliable stats on the relationship between teen employment and teen driving, it’s easy to believe that falling employment meant that teens had less reason to drive, and also less money to pay for cars and gas.
Likewise, the fall in teen employment coincided with both an increase in college attendance, and a decline in the real earning power of minimum wage work, particularly in the 1980s and the early- to mid-2000s. Rising college attendance may have have contributed to a decline in the need to drive, while falling minimum wage earnings reduced teens’ purchasing power.
And then consider the effect of rising oil prices. The chart below shows the difference 1970 and 2008 — a different period than Advertising Age looked at — but the lesson is pretty clear: By 2008, it was taking an awful lot of time for a young worker to earn enough money to fill the tank.
I was a teenage driver nearer the beginning of the period in question. I got my license in New York when I was 17, but most of the driving I did back then was of the weekend and summertime variety, because I didn’t have my own car and I wouldn’t have driven to school even if I did – I went to high school in Manhattan, so driving would have been really expensive, and there was no place to park. I lived on campus as a college student, and didn’t have a car till midway through my junior year, when I inherited my grandmother’s car after she passed away. So my experience tracks with what that Grist article suggests – I did most of my driving between the ages of 17 and 21 during the summer after I graduated high school, when I had a job that I couldn’t get to via public transportation. Otherwise, I just didn’t need a car that much.
I think the key to understanding this trend is to see if driving among people in their 20s, especially those who came of driving age during the tough economic times of recent years, also declines. If so, then we may be seeing a long-term shift that might have implications for our road capacity needs of the future, among other things. If not, it’s probably no big deal. See The Highwayman and EoW for more on related topics.
Posted in: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Song #19 on the Popdose Top 100 Covers list is “Crossroads”, originally by Robert Johnson and covered by Cream. Here’s the original:
Robert Johnson was just an amazing pioneer of blues music, who had a huge influence on rock and roll music. Odds are pretty good that if you like rock, you’re familiar with some of the music that was shaped by his influence. Like this Cream classic, for instance:
Great stuff. Rest in peace, Robert Johnson, wherever you are.
Posted in: Music.
Top House and Senate negotiators agreed to a two-year budget for the state of Texas Friday that restores about $4 billion of $5.4 billion in cuts to public education made in 2011. It also creates a path for lawmakers to put $2 billion toward water infrastructure projects.
The five House members and five Senators of the Budget Conference Committee voted unanimously to adopt a final draft of the portions of the budget that remained unresolved, including Article 3, the portion focused on education and the area on which most of Friday’s negotiations focused on.
The main numbers of the budget are still being calculated by the Legislative Budget Board. But John Opperman, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s budget director, said the total budget would be less than the $195.5 billion budget the Senate approved earlier in the session. The budget is about $700 million below the state’s constitutional spending limit, he said. The budget still needs to be approved by the full House and Senate and signed by the governor.
The budget adopted Friday does not include a controversial rider setting guidelines around how Texas might negotiate with the federal government over expanding Medicaid. Senators had adopted the rider in their budget plan but the House had voted it down.
“The House wouldn’t agree to it,” said Senate Finance Chair Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands.
Under Friday’s deal, the $2 billion in water funding will come from the state’s Rainy Day fund, a reserve made up mostly of oil and gas taxes. That funding will be found in House Bill 1025, a supplemental budget bill that addresses funding on various issues.
The roughly $4 billion for public education hews closely to what Democrats had pushed for all week after acknowledging they were not going to be able to completely restore last session’s cuts. Budget conferees agreed to $3.2 billion for the Foundation School Program, the main account the state uses to fund public education. Another $200 million is expected to be added to the Foundation School Program in HB 1025.
As part of the $4 billion education package, negotiators also agreed on a $330 million infusion into the Teacher Retirement System’s pension fund.
All in all, not too shabby. The lack of a Medicaid rider is disappointing, but not terribly surprising. Too many Republicans, starting with Perry, Dewhurst, and Abbott, who just don’t care if people can’t get health care. The $4 billion in public education money is impressive, the highest number I’ve seen all session for public ed. It’s not $5.4 billion, but it’s a pretty significant fraction of it. There were a lot of twists and turns and allegations and accusations along the way, with various deals along the way being reported as agreed to and blown up, with threats of a special session featuring all kinds of awful agenda items for Democrats if they didn’t give in. Burka accused the Democrats of “forgetting how to win” after they spiked a deal that would have infused $3.5 billion into public ed but represented a walk-back of prior commitments by the Rs. I wonder what he thinks of them now. There are of course still reasons why a special session may happen, but assuming Rick Perry doesn’t spike the budget the scope for such sessions is now a lot smaller, and thus a lot less dangerous. Nice work, y’all. BOR has more.
Posted in: Budget ballyhoo.
A raft of bills that would dramatically alter the way beer is sold and consumed in Texas sailed through tentative approval from the House on Friday after a lengthy and disputatious process between brewers and beer distributors. If finally approved next week, the legislation will go straight to the governor’s desk without another stop.
The bills represent the largest overhaul of the industry in Texas since the Legislature legalized brewpubs in 1993. Under the new regulatory scheme, brewpubs and craft brewers would be allowed more flexibility to sell their products — privileges beermakers have sought for more than a decade.
The package includes Senate Bills 515, 516, 517, and 518, by state Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, which decrease restrictions on craft brewers and brewpubs.
Under the new rules, the cap on brewpub production would be doubled, from 5,000 barrels a year to 10,000. Brewpubs would also be allowed to sell their beer to distributors, in addition to selling limited amounts of their own beer directly to retailers.
The bills adjust breweries’ right to circumvent beer distributors and sell beer directly to retailers. Larger breweries than before would now be allowed to self distribute, but the limit on how much they are allowed to self distribute has been lowered.
Also, breweries would now be able to sell beer for on-site consumption — a major victory for Frank Mancuso, the Central Texas sales representative for the Saint Arnold Brewing Company of Houston, the oldest craft brewer in the state. Mancuso came to the House Gallery with a large number of other Texas brewers, who broke into applause when the last of the bills finally passed.
“We’ve been working on this for eight sessions now,” he said. “Selling beer at our location is something we’ve wanted to do for a long while.”
I only remember this going on in the last four sessions, but regardless, it’s been a long and arduous road to this point. I’m going to crack open a Saint Arnold’s to celebrate. Major kudos to everyone involved – I’m especially proud to say that my State Rep through 2012, Jessica Farrar, was an early and ardent leader in this fight. Here’s a little beer music to commemorate the moment. Please note that it contains some naughty language, so exercise care while watching:
We do love beer. Thanks to these bills, it’s easier to love.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
For the first time, someone says out loud the rumor of a special session on redistricting.
Still not Greg Abbott
Attorney General Greg Abbott let House members know in the Republican caucus meeting on Tuesday that he expects and is hoping for a special session on redistricting — sooner than later.
Several lawmakers in the meeting confirmed that Abbott was hoping the governor will call a special session very shortly after the regular one ends on May 27.
“Don’t pack your bags on May 28,” several members quoted him saying.
[...]
Everything is kind of on hold until the Supreme Court rules on whether the pre-clearance requirements, mostly imposed on Southern states with a history of discrimination, is even legal. That is likely to come next month.
In the meanwhile, Abbott would very much like to codify the maps tweaked by the courts, giving him strength if he needs to return to court to defend the districts.
[...]
If Perry does call a special session, he’s likely hoping it will be swift and sure because the maps are already in place. While there is certain to be a minority push for better representation, the truth is everyone in the Legislature got there last November running in those districts.
With a filing deadline for offices coming in early December, the Legislature would have to get the maps to the court by late August to give adequate time for review, Li said. That’s cutting it pretty close.
More likely in June. But there’s also another deadline looming: Perry is expected to become a grandfather for the first time around June 20. Bets are he won’t want to be dealing with a special session when he’s got something more special going on.
See here, here, and here for some background. “Expects” and “is hoping for” are two different things, so it’s still not clear if this means anything more than rumor, albeit a better-sourced rumor. It still doesn’t really mean anything until we hear Rick Perry say it. And Perry still isn’t talking, though just about everybody else is.
“I think a special session is pretty much certain,” said state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. “The reason is that the attorney general wants the Legislature to approve the maps the courts have drawn for redistricting. There are a number of people (Democrats) who won’t vote for that. (The Republicans) don’t have the votes to get it through in the regular session, but they can push it through during a special session.”
During the regular session, Senate Democrats can block legislation under the so-called two-thirds rule, which requires 21 votes to bring up a bill for debate. That rule doesn’t apply during special sessions.
State Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, who chaired the Senate’s redistricting committee two years ago, acknowledged that redistricting might be the focus of a special session.
“Even though no one has uttered a word to me about it,” he said, “we all know that’s out there.”
In the House, state Rep. Dan Branch, a Republican from Dallas and member of House Speaker Joe Straus’ leadership team, called a special session on redistricting a “real possibility.”
State Rep. Drew Darby, R- San Angelo and chairman of the House Redistricting committee, said his staff is looking into what would be involved if a special session on redistricting is called.
“We stand ready. We are preparing for any eventuality,” Darby said.
For all the speculation about a special session, the governor’s office has remained quiet on the issue. And only the governor has the power to call one and to put items on its agenda. Josh Havens, a Perry spokesman, said it’s premature to talk about a special session.
Once again, the mere fact of a special session doesn’t mean the two thirds rule is not in play. The Senate sets its rules at the start of each session, and it can choose by majority vote whether or not to adhere to that rule. I’d expect that they would choose not to, but my point again is that it is a choice, not a default.
The reasons for having a special session now remain unclear, at least to me. Dems want to wait till SCOTUS rules on Section 5, while Abbott is talking about how having the interim maps be codified by the Lege would make his position in court stronger. That sounds like both of them have some expectation that Section 5 will survive, though it should be noted that there were Section 2 violations found in the original maps as well, so regardless of what SCOTUS says there likely will be some ongoing litigation. We know that most of the plaintiffs are not willing to settle for the interim maps, though the fact that everyone in the Lege was elected under those maps, nearly all more comfortably than in 2008, might complicate things a bit. I’m still not sure that everyone has thought all of this through, and I’m not sure it’s even possible to do that coherently. At this point, I have no idea what to expect.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
HISD’s proposed laptops for all proposal has been scaled back from an 18 school pilot to a ten school pilot in response to concerns that they weren’t quite ready yet for anything bigger than that.
Lenny Schad, chief technology officer for the Houston Independent School District, told the school board via email this week that consultants recently concluded HISD’s technological capacity wasn’t yet sufficient to dole out that many laptops. The review, he said, found that the bandwidth was lacking, and current staff wouldn’t be able to support the increased network demand.
In late April, Schad told the board that he hoped to start the laptop program at up to 18 high schools, but that the number depended on further analysis of the district’s readiness. Schad said he and his staff agree with the consultants’ recommendation to scale back to 10 schools, which would amount to more than 17,400 laptops for students and teachers.
The proposed campuses (at least one in each trustee’s area) are Sam Houston, Kashmere, Chavez, Bellaire, Sharpstown, Lee, Austin and Madison high schools, the all-boys school and the all-girls school. The single-gender campuses, which serve middle school students, already have a one-to-one technology program, according to HISD spokesman Jason Spencer.
“Implementing at 10 high schools will provide HISD with a good user base to ensure our plan and strategy is tested,” Schad said in his email to the school board.
This will likely knock the initial price tag down from $10 million to something smaller, though HISD did not provide a figure at this time. In my previous entry on this, I got some feedback asking how HISD was going to be able to service all this new equipment; I think we now have an answer to that concern. Better to start a little smaller than you originally hoped than too big and not be able to handle it.
Posted in: School days.
More Memphis and more foreign places.
1. Leningrad – Billy Joel
2. Lisdoonvarna – Ceili’s Muse
3. Liverpool Sunset – Gerald Jay Markoe
4. London Homesick Blues – Flying Fish Sailors
5. (Making The Run To) Gladewater – Michelle Shocked
6. Marching Bands Of Manhattan – Death Cab For Cutie
7. Memphis Exorcism – Squirrel Nut Zippers
8. Memphis In The Meantime – John Hiatt
9. Merano – from “Chess”
10. Miami – Shorty Long
Lisdoonvarna is a spoken-word song about a small spa town in Ireland that used to be the site of a large music festival. It remains the site of a ginormous annual matchmaking festival, which frankly sounds like an even better subject for a song. Merano is in northern Italy and has a long association with the game of chess. Memphis, I trust, you are familiar with.
Posted in: Music.
We’re all familiar with the craft brewing industry in Texas, but did you know there is also a growing number of craft distillers in the Lone Star State? Whether you knew that or not, you will probably not be surprised to learn that they too have been held back by archaic alcohol laws, but like their brothers and sisters in the beermaking world, things are looking up for them now.
Yellow Rose Distilling
Twenty years after the rebirth of the craft-beer movement, and 30 years after boutique wineries found a foothold in America, spirits including scotch and bourbon are finally getting the small-batch treatment, with local distilleries redefining made-in-Texas spirits.
Distilleries of any kind were banned in Texas until 1997, when Tito Beveridge of Tito’s Vodka fought for legislation to legalize the industry once again. Now there are 43 distilleries with active permits in the state (though not all licensees are actively producing spirits), enough to place Texas at ninth in the nation with plenty of room to grow. California, the nation’s leader in distilleries, has about 250 independent producers operating.
Most of those Texas distilleries make spirits that don’t require aging, such as vodka or rum, but in the past five years a fledgling movement toward craft whiskeys has flourished across the state, with new brands that are already getting international attention.
[...]
Unlike wineries, distilleries in Texas are currently barred from offering tastings of their spirits on site or from selling directly to the consumer from the distillery. That’s set to change if Texas Senate Bill 905, which passed the state Senate in March and the House earlier this month, is signed by Gov. Rick Perry.
“Allowing distilleries to have on-premise and off-premise sales will bring visitors to the distilleries, which will hopefully increase sales and bring attention to Texas products,” notes the staff of state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, one of the bill’s authors.
Other bills designed to help Texas distilleries compete with out-of-state brands are under review by the Texas House of Representatives, including SB 828, which allows in-state distilleries to designate an official agent to conduct product samplings and take orders from wholesalers, as out-of-state distilleries do, and S.B. 652, which will allow Texas distilleries (as well as wineries and breweries) to buy and sell their products to other licensed distilleries.
Here are SB905 and SB828, which has also passed the House by now. SB652 is on the House calendar for today, as are the craft beer bills for which we’ve all been patiently waiting. I can only presume the reason why the distillers got their legislation through with no apparent fuss is that there isn’t an established industry of large distillers and liquor distributors to oppose them.
Anyway. The Press had a cover story on Texas’ craft distillers back in 2011 that’s worth your time to read. Yellow Rose was the first to open in the Houston area last year, and the craft distillery legislation that currently awaits Rick Perry’s signature would directly affect them:
Assuming SB 905 is signed and takes effect, Yellow Rose will move its microdistillery to central Houston near North Post Oak and Katy Freeway, seizing the opportunity to use tours as a marketing and sales tool.
As it is currently located north of Tomball, that would most likely mean it will become an actual Houston business instead of merely a “Houston-area” business once SB905 is law. I hope one of the city’s lobbyists has expressed support for this bill to Perry.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
Very sorry to hear this.
DA Mike Anderson
Mike Anderson, Harris County’s district attorney, informed his staff Thursday that he has been diagnosed with cancer.
“I have great doctors and am undergoing treatment. I fully intend to beat this,” said a brief email sent Thursday and signed “Mike.”
“Many people have asked how they can help me. I would ask that you keep me and my family in your prayers and continue to do the great work that you’re doing to make this the best DA’s office in these United States.”
Sara Marie Kinney, a spokeswoman for the office, released the email and said no other details were available, including the type of cancer and how long the elected district attorney has had it.
I wish DA Anderson all the best for a swift and full recovery. His Facebook page is here if you want to post a get-well message. KTRK has more.
Posted in: Local politics.
State Impact Texas tells us that there will be no sunset bill, and thus no reforms, for the Texas Railroad Commission this session.
The name and the logo remain
After a lengthy review of the agency, required by state law under the Sunset review process, the Railroad Commission will continue instead with the same name and without any reforms. So what happened?
For one, there were conflicting ideas on how to reform the commission. A more industry-friendly plan in the House, HB 2166 by state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, which ended up being stripped of many of its reforms (and ultimately a name change) didn’t ever make it out of the House.
But a stronger Senate bill, SB 212 by state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, had better luck, until [Tuesday].
It would have made Railroad commissioners resign if they were going to run for another office. Commissioners would not have been allowed to accept contributions from parties with contested cases before the commission. And campaign contributions to run for re-election to the commission would only have been allowed in the 17 months before an election. It would have also renamed the commission the Texas Energy Resources Commission, a much more apt title. (The Railroad Commission no longer has anything to do with railroads.)
Despite the fact that those reforms sailed through the Senate, they died today in the House Committee on Energy Resources. The office of Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, told StateImpact Texas that the committee couldn’t agree on the bill, so they opted not to vote it out.
[...]
So what’s next? The sunset review process says an agency under review must have its Sunset bill pass, or it essentially gets shut down. That is unlikely to happen with the Railroad Commission, however, as lawmakers hope the agency is spared in what’s called a “schedule bill,” legislation that essentially kicks the can on a review of the agency to a legislative session further down the road. The Railroad Commission could be added to a basic schedule bill already in the Senate, HB 1675, also by Rep. Bonnen, which could give it several more years without reform. A similar move was used in the 2011 legislative session when lawmakers couldn’t agree how to reform the Railroad Commission.
See here and here for the background. I’ve lost track of how many times the Lege has tried and failed to update the Commission’s name. That’s fairly small potatoes compared to changing how the Commission does its business, but we shouldn’t be surprised by that failure. Wait till next session, I guess.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
Good.
Legislation allowing Texas drivers to prove their insurance coverage with a wireless communications device is on its way to the governor after winning final approval from the Senate on Thursday. The measure by Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, would bring Texas in line with six other states that already enable drivers to prove insurance coverage with a smart phone or wireless device. Another 21 states also are considering such a change.
Hegar said his bill allowing cell phone insurance verification “is just another step into the 21st century for Texans” and mirrors the growing use of cell phones for a variety of purposes other than phone calls. For several years,Texas drivers have had to carry an insurance ID in their vehicles, or risk being ticketed and paying a fine if stopped by a police officer. Failure to comply with the law can eventually lead to revocation of a drivers license.
The bill in question is SB181. When I wrote about this before, the story was about a couple of House bills that did the same thing; in the end, one of the authors of a House bill, Rep. Ryan Guillen, was a sponsor of Sen. Hegar’s bill. Several insurance companies already offer such apps since this is legal in some other states, and others are sure to follow. I’m not a big phone app person, but I am a person who often forgets to put his insurance card in his car, so this will be one for me to download.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
Mayor Parker has released her FY2014 budget, and it’s great news for those of you that have been waiting for their single-stream recycling bin.
Mayor Annise Parker
More than 100,000 Houston homes will be added to the city’s single-stream recycling program by this fall, doubling the number of households receiving the 96-gallon green bins.
About 35,000 homes will receive single-stream service via the wheeled containers in July, allowing curbside recycling of glass, newspapers, magazines, cans, cardboard and plastic. Another 70,000 homes will be added in October.
Today, 28 percent of Houston homes have single-stream, and 26 percent use 18-gallon tubs, in which glass is not allowed. Another 46 percent do not have curbside recycling. The $7.8 million plan would expand single-stream service to about 55 percent of the city’s households, Mayor Annise Parker said. Of the initial 35,000 homes, a Solid Waste Department spokeswoman said, 15,000 will be first-time recyclers and 20,000 will upgrade from the 18-gallon tubs.
“To be a little more than halfway there is a great milestone,” Solid Waste Management Director Harry Hayes said, adding he anticipates a $500,000 savings in waste diverted from landfills.
The announcement came as Mayor Annise Parker rolled out her budget for the 2014 fiscal year, which starts July 1. The proposed budget, which must be approved by City Council, is $4.5 billion, including enterprise funds such as the aviation department and utility systems, and represents a 6.4 percent increase over the current fiscal year.
The proposed general fund budget, supported chiefly by property and sales taxes, is $2.2 billion, an increase of 4.9 percent over the current budget, but just 2.4 percent over projected spending for the current year.
Most of the spending increases – 51 percent – are driven by contracts with the city municipal, police and fire unions and each group’s pension board. Another 8.4 percent will go to rising health care costs.
The Mayor’s press release on the budget is here. Expanded recycling is the big deal, but there are a lot of other goodies in there as well. Some highlights include the completion of the rape kit backlog; $2.2 million to fund operations of the city’s new public safety radio project, which is about harmonizing communications with Harris County and other entities; the creation of the Forensic Transition Special Fund to keep separate and account for costs related to the Houston Forensic Science LGC; an extra $693K for BARC; and for the first time ever, a line item for infrastructure maintenance, renewal and replacement. The release also notes that all services that were cut two years ago will be restored if they have not already been. Like I said, ain’t it great to have the money for the things you need?
UPDATE: From the Texas Campaign for the Environment and my inbox:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 15, 2013
Contact: Tyson Sowell (713) 337-4192 (office) or (217) 418-9415 (cell)
Environmentalists Applaud Recycling Expansion But Opposed to City’s “Recycling Scheme”
HOUSTON–Environmentalists applaud Mayor Parker’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Proposal that would expand curbside recycling to 100,000 households, while also urging her office to let curbside recycling work before adopting unproven waste schemes. The proposed expansion of single-stream recycling, separation of recyclables in one cart and garbage in another cart, is the single largest expansion of curbside recycling in the City of Houston’s history.
“We are very happy to hear a renewed commitment to the expansion of single-stream recycling,” Tyson Sowell, Program Director for Texas Campaign for the Environment said. “Over the previous years, the city has said that they cannot expand curbside recycling due to budget constraints. We’re glad to see that they have decided to make recycling a priority.”
The proposed curbside expansion comes on the heels of recent negative public reaction towards the Mayor’s proposal to build a “dirty MRF (materials recovery facility)”.
The “dirty MRF” would cost an estimated $100 million, and would sort recyclables and garbage that have been combined or sorted by residents and collected in one truck. Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE) says that similar facilities in other communities and have failed to achieve high recycling rates.
“Houstonians want to recycle and we want real recycling. The announced expansion is a direct result of thousands of letters written by Houstonians to the mayor and city council members asking for real recycling, not some magic system that will not work,” Mr. Sowell said. “Houstonians get it. They understand that dirty MRFs do not work because of contamination issues. They understand that paper is ruined when you place your coffee grounds on top of it. Hopefully this is a sign that the City of Houston understands this now, as well, and will allow real recycling to work.”
Currently, the city services 375,000 households with garbage collection services. Of those 375,000 households, 170,000 households do not have curbside recycling available to them. The proposed expansion would cut the number to those without curbside recycling to 135,000 households at the start of fiscal year 2014 and cut it again to 70,000 by the end of fiscal year 2014.
Mr. Sowell says that the next step is for the city to commit to similar expansions of recycling for the next two fiscal years so that everyone will have single-stream curbside recycling by 2016 and for the city to abandon the “dirty MRF” idea.
Posted in: Local politics.
It’s a small step, if it’s allowed to be taken, but the bill to require donor disclosure on so-called “dark money” is a step in the right direction.
Senate Bill 346 takes direct aim at the cloak of anonymity that currently shields so-called “dark money” groups – those tax-exempt organizations whose donors drop big bucks to influence elections and ballot measures but have not been required to reveal who is behind the spending.
Under the proposal, non-profits set up under section 501(c)4 of the federal tax code would be required to publicly disclose contributors who pony up more than $1,000 to any “dark money” group that spends $25,000 or more on politicking. Labor unions are exempt.
SB 346 by Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, passed on a 99-46 vote.
[...]
A Perry spokeswoman said Monday that the governor will review the final bill if it hits his desk. However, the House lawmaker shepherding the proposal through the lower chamber speculated Monday that its fate could be all but sealed once it leaves the House.
“They’re staying real quiet on it,” Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, said after Monday’s vote. “But they’ll veto it.”
The issue has been a political lightning rod since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v the Federal Election Commission. That decision paved a path for outside groups like super PACs and 501(c)4s to raise and spend unlimited sums from corporations, labor groups and deep pocketed individual donors.
And while both 501(c)4s and super PACs can accept unlimited sums of cash, only super PACs are required to identify donors.
As a result, super PACs tend to set up sister outfits in the form of a 501(c)4s to funnel money anonymously to candidates or to fund attack ads. That’s how they got the ominous title “dark money” groups.
According to Texas Redistricting, the vote in favor on second reading was actually 95-50, but that’s a nitpick. The bill has now been approved on third reading by a 95-52 margin, and since it was not amended – which is what the real fight in the House was about – it’s on it’s way to Rick Perry. It’s amazing this bill got to a vote at all considering what it went through on the way to the House. The Trib touches on that.
The bill, which would affect major political givers on both sides of the aisle, originally passed the Senate 23-6; a day later, led by state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, senators voted 21-10 to reverse themselves, some saying they hadn’t understood what the bill required. Seliger said at the time that his colleagues had faced heavy lobbying by major political donors to change their votes.
The Senate’s effort was too late; the measure was already in the custody of the House. State Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, the bill’s House sponsor, has been shepherding the measure through the lower chamber, working to get it passed without amendments so it doesn’t have to return to the Senate.
“Certain groups keep scorecards and continuously bombard the internet. All that’s fine, it’s what this process is about,” Geren said. “The problem occurs when these groups wade deep into the political process … and use a loophole that keeps their donors secret.”
See here and here for more on the history of SB346. Among the fascinating things about this is the fact that it’s happening against the backdrop of the revelation that the IRS targeted some conservative 501(c)(4) groups for investigation. While the national media is saying that no progressive groups were similarly targeted, there is reporting from 2012 that indicates otherwise, and the IRS did the same thing to liberal groups when George Bush was President. It would be nice if Congress tightened the language governing who does and doesn’t qualify for 501(c)4 status so that the decision isn’t simply left up to IRS agents to determine, but we all know how this will play out.
Be all that as it may, you may wonder why legislative Republicans are taking this action. Simply put, they have more to fear from 501(c)(4) groups than Democrats do in this state, with the likes of Empower Texas and other slash-and-burn groups spending copious amounts of money in Republican primaries. Geren in particular has survived numerous such challenges, as has Speaker Straus at this point. The peril will even out as Democrats gain more footing, but as Democrats have more ideological reasons to support legislation like this, there was enough of a coalition to get it passed. I’ll be shocked if Rick Perry doesn’t veto it, as Geren and Seliger expect he will, but at least they made the statement. The Observer and the TSTA have more.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
This is one of the stranger “draft somebody” movements I’ve seen.
Susan Reed
A movement has been building among local Republicans over the past few months to encourage Susan Reed to run for state attorney general in 2014.
Reed, the hard-nosed, four-term Bexar County district attorney, would be the first female AG in the state’s history, a historic point that some of her supporters have used to coax her to run, according to GOP sources.
Reed concedes that she’s been getting phone calls about the attorney general’s race, including a couple from “leading [Republican] party elected people.” While she declined to name the officials, one source told me that Reed backers have enlisted U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to persuade Reed.
This under-the-radar draft-Reed effort has been operating on two tracks, with a shared objective but differing motives.
The dominant group is composed of ardent Reed fans, who think her reputation as a prosecutorial pit bull would make her a dynamic AG candidate.
A smaller group has tired of Reed’s act and would like her to seek higher office at least partly because it would give new candidates an opening for the office that she has controlled for nearly a generation.
Whatever works, I guess. Reed, understandably, isn’t committing to anything as yet. She’s not going to run against Greg Abbott, she’ll only consider it if Abbott leaves to run for Governor or something else. Of course, she’s not the only person who would consider it – State Rep. Dan Branch, who had eyed the office in 2010, has already expressed his interest in it this time. While Reed would have history on her side, Branch has a more tangible advantage: As of January, he had over $2.5 million in the bank, compared to $126K for Reed. The battle doesn’t always go to the strong nor the race to the better funded, but that’s usually the safe bet.
One more thing to note is that Reed would be up for re-election in 2014, so this is an either-or choice for her. Here are the percentages for her previous four elections:
2010 53.84%
2006 60.57%
2002 unopposed
1998 57.18%
She easily outpaced the field in 2006 but was just slightly above average for Republicans in Bexar County in 2010. It’s not out of the question she could lose a bid for a fifth term, given the partisan trends in Bexar County. I doubt that will factor much into her consideration, but there it is anyway. Texpatriate has more.
Posted in: Election 2014.
The Texas Progressive Alliance is thankful for the mothers in their lives as it brings you this week’s roundup.
Posted in: Blog stuff.
There are two types of people in Texas: Those for whom the tax code is written to favor, and everybody else.
The Dallas Country Club, not a place usually thought of as needing a huge tax break, used a quirk in state law to reduce its taxable value by nearly half.
Valero, one of the largest oil companies around, also used this provision to twice to force the Texas City school district to repay millions in collected taxes.
At a time when budgets are tight and school districts are hurting, counties statewide are watching their tax bases shrink by hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases as big business takes advantage of a 1997 amendment to the tax code that was intended to make sure homeowners were treated fairly.
The tax clause allows companies to file lawsuits year after year to reduce taxable value on their properties without any regard for the true market value, slowly shifting the tax burden to homeowners, officials in several Texas counties say.
In Bexar County, the clause allowed a new $600 million J.W. Marriott resort, in 2010 the largest Marriott in the world, to reduce its taxable value by more than half.
To Michael Amezquita, Bexar County’s chief appraiser, “It’s the equivalent of backing up the Brink’s truck to the public trough and driving away.” In his opinion, “It’s a legal way to steal dollars.”
As of Jan. 1 this year, there were 4,222 lawsuits challenging property values in Harris County, about 98 percent of them using the tax clause. The lawsuits represent about $35 billion in taxable value.
[...]
Lawsuits using the tax clause flooded the courts after the Texas 14th Court of Appeals ruled in 2005 that tax consultants testifying for the property owner did not need to use approved methods for determining value. The judge only has to believe that the testimony is reasonable.
“It’s like the Legislature just gave them a big red ‘easy’ button to reduce property taxes on the basis of equity,” said Sands Stiefer, attorney and deputy chief appraiser for the Harris County Appraisal District.
The lawsuits are nearly always successful, and most are settled out of court.
“It’s going to shift the tax base back to residential property,” said Ken Nolan, chief appraiser for the Dallas County Appraisal District.
Amezquita, the Bexar County appraiser, said that after Marriott lowered its tax value, he was sued by nearly every hotel in the county for tax rate reductions.
In El Paso County, a refinery used the law to slash its $781 million taxable value by 60 percent.
In Harris County, Houston 8th Wonder Properties purchased 104 acres of unimproved land for $77 million and a judge reduced the taxable value to $38 million. The appraisal district is appealing to the Texas Supreme Court. Houston 8th Wonder Properties officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The key element of the 1997 law allows companies to reduce their taxable value to the median value of similar properties. But because there is no definition for a comparable property, businesses are able to pick properties that in reality are dissimilar, appraisal district officials say.
In Harris County, HCA Gulf Coast compared 62.5 acres of prime, undeveloped property with a strip of property 90 feet wide, so narrow that it cannot be easily developed, according to an example of unfair property comparison given to legislators by the Harris County Appraisal District. The court reduced the value of the prime property by half.
Isn’t that nice? The effect of this ridiculous largesse is in the tens of billions statewide; it cost HISD $11 million just last year. There was a bill by Sen. Wendy Davis to try to limit the damage of this by restricting these lawsuits to properties valued at under $1 million, but it never had a chance in the Senate. Way too much money at stake to for that.
Hand in hand with this kind of generosity towards the wealthiest taxpayers is the notion of tax “reform” that lowers their taxes even more but does nothing for anyone else.
When the Texas House began debating HB 500 last Tuesday, the proposal would have reduced the collective tax bills of Texas businesses by $400 million. After several hours of debate, that figure had ballooned to $627 million as lawmakers eagerly tacked on amendments for various industries who said they had been treated unfairly under the state’s “margins” tax.
After all, Gov. Rick Perry has promised the Legislature will approve $1.8 billion in tax relief. Why say no to any exemption?
“HB 500 takes a stupid tax policy and makes it stupider,” a frustrated Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, told the House at the end of the lengthy debate. The bill, especially with all the amendments just approved, he said, would make the margins tax “more inequitable and more arbitrary.”
What the Legislature should be doing, he said, is a complete overhaul of the tax.
As Tuesday’s debate showed, that is easier said than done.
Texas’ tax system is “unbalanced, inefficient and inequitable,” said Bernard Weinstein, an adjunct professor of Business Economics at SMU’s Cox School of Business. And yet, elected officials view tax studies as opening a Pandora’s box, said Weinstein, a member of the 1987 Select Committee on Tax Equity,
“It’s great to sit down and talk about the big picture, but I don’t know too many politicians who are willing,” he said.
“Tax reform to many people equals tax increase.”
For those who are already winning, maybe. For the rest of us, it might mean we’d be screwed a little bit less. Again, we can’t let that happen.
“When the state cuts, local governments have to pick up the pieces,” said Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities. “You can’t just cut taxes. We need tax reform.”
[Former Deputy Comptroller Billy] Hamilton agreed that it made sense to view “state and local tax structure as a unit.”
“High property taxes are the price we pay for the tax system we’ve got,” he said.
When the governor promises tax relief, added SMU’s Weinstein, an important question is: “For whom?”
Unless you have a lobbyist there in Austin schmoozing for you, the answer is not you. You don’t get the breaks, you get the tab. It’s not by accident, it’s the system we’ve put in place.
Finally, on a related note, Mayor Parker’s office put out this statement on property tax fairness yesterday.
Property tax fairness is an issue important to the city’s bottom line and that of every residential property owner because they are bearing an unequal tax burden. Clearly, all properties need to be valued appropriately. The current system is obviously inequitable and rewards a lack of transparency by the owners of many commercial properties. All too often, sound valuations made by Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) are unfairly attacked by these owners, and HCAD, bound by a system that favors the owners, is forced to defend its actions with one hand tied behind its back. It is time for a change, and the state legislature is the primary place to make that change. The City of Houston will work with HCAD, the Houston Organization of Public Employees and other groups to achieve that change.
See here for more. It’s a little late to address this in the current legislative session, but the sentiment is correct, and I hope the fight for more tax fairness is a highlight of the next session.
Posted in: Budget ballyhoo.
Most discussion of the Uptown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone’s plan, which goes before City Council this week, has been about a proposal to annex Memorial Park into the zone and spend $100 million restoring the drought-stricken park. The centerpiece of the zone’s plan, however, is a $187.5 million vision to widen and rebuild Post Oak Boulevard with dedicated bus lanes in the middle, build 7,500 feet of elevated bus lanes on the West Loop, and finance a transit center and parking garage at Westpark and the West Loop.
“We’re doing a lot to improve streets in the Uptown area to help make it more convenient for people to get around, but getting to the Uptown area, we’ve done about all we can with the automobile,” said John Breeding, director of the Uptown zone. “What we need to do is find some way to grow our transportation supply, and that is by bringing in transit.”
Breeding stressed that Post Oak’s existing six lanes and protected left turn lanes would be preserved.
More than 65 percent of Uptown workers live to the southwest and northwest in areas served by HOV lanes and Metro’s park and ride service, Breeding said, but just 10 of 300 daily park and ride buses visit the Galleria; most go downtown.
“We are badly underserved right now,” said Kendall Miller, an Uptown zone board member. “We have some local routes that kind of go through us, we have some van pools that are organized by the big companies. It’s very ad lib.”
About 37 percent of all downtown workers take a Metro vehicle to work, Breeding said, and 62 percent of them make more than $80,000 a year, showing people choose transit for many reasons and that everyone from oil executives to retail clerks would use the buses if they served Uptown.
[...]
Metro board member Christof Spieler said about half the people who live in areas served by park and rides use the service, adding that Metro has long wanted to add Uptown to that list.
“It’s never been possible because, in order to get from the Northwest Transit Center or the Southwest Freeway to Uptown, those buses would have wound up stuck in same traffic with everyone else,” he said. “I really think this is a game-changer for transit in one of our most important job centers.”
City Councilman Oliver Pennington, who represents the area, said Greater Houston Partnership data show there are almost 200,000 jobs in his district, 91 percent of which are filled by workers living elsewhere, creating “a terrific traffic nightmare.” The proposed transit plan would make the area more competitive and more livable, he said.
“I’m a firm believer that we need some things to show what a great city we are. I think it will not only serve the people, but it will show the world that Houston is doing things for its citizens. We need some physical evidence of the kind of life that we enjoy here.”
See here, here, here, and here for the background. I think this is the first mention I’ve seen of elevated bus lanes for the West Loop, which would enable the park and ride buses to avoid the traffic of the Loop and thus be more attractive to potential riders. It certainly makes sense to expand the park and ride network into Uptown, and I do think it will be heavily used once that happens. Having the support of CM Pennington makes approval of the TIRZ expansion very likely, though I’m sure there will be some lively discussion given the Memorial Park concerns that have been raised.
Expansion of the TIRZ is still a necessary condition for any of this to go forward. Funding for this plan is dependent in part on a grant from the Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council, which has not yet approved said funding but could take the matter up once soon.
The proposals could come for consideration before the regional group’s Transportation Policy Council – the body responsible for allocating the federal grants – on May 24 or June 28, said Alan Clark, H-GAC’s transportation director.
“The council allocated around $400 million in grants at its April 26 meeting. The projects in question were not slated for action, but money was held back so these projects can be considered,” Clark said.
Before the proposals go for a TPC vote, an H-GAC advisory committee will consult with the Texas Department of Transportation about one phase of the plan that would involve linking bus service on Post Oak to Metro’s Northwest Transit Center, Clark said.
Current ideas include creating a grade-separated bus way above the main lanes of Loop 610 that would be connected to a Post Oak transit line, he said.
“Because this (the connection between Post Oak and the Northwest Transit Center) is so integral to the overall plan and its anticipated benefits, the Technical Advisory Committee wants to do further study,” Clark said.
Again, I feel confident that this will go through, but it’s fine if H-GAC wants to take its time and think about it some.
One other point to stress about all this is that by extending Metro’s park and ride network into Uptown, which includes the BRT lanes on Post Oak, we are also building for even more expansion and connections in the future. The Westpark transit center would obviously be of use when the University line finally gets built. If there is ever a commuter rail line along US 290, the Northwest transit center, which is the northern endpoint of this project, would be the gateway from it into Uptown. Adding a node to a network has value beyond the node itself. This plan has a lot to offer for Uptown, but it’s potentially very good for the big picture as well.
Posted in: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Usually, the city election season doesn’t get into full swing until summertime, safely after the legislative session has ended. But clearly, it’s on in District I.
The photo in question
Houston City Council District I candidate Graci Garces is calling for opponent Ben Mendez’s apology after Mendez — or someone with his campaign — allegedly e-mail blasted a photo of….um, Garces enjoying a meal at a restaurant.
“I was appalled that Ben Mendez and his campaign would distribute a photo of me that is intended to bully, harass, and discriminate,” Garces explained in her statement.
She continued: “The Mendez campaign crossed the line of decency and should be held accountable.”
Hair Balls has to admit: we’re a little confused by the whole thing. We’re not sure what the Mendez hoped to gain by distributing the photo, or if it was just someone’s idea of a joke. What’s the message of this photo? That Garces is not a size 2, and therefore is a freak of nature whose very existence must be documented and shared with the rest of the world?
We think Garces and her supporters — some of whom have written their own open letter demanding an apology — are raising too much of a stink over this, but that’s politics. What bothers us most of all is the way Mendez’s campaign is(n’t) dealing with this.
Campos, who is Graci Garces’ campaign manager, has copies of the open letters. The first one has links to pages that talk about bullying and fat shaming, which is the direction I assume Garces intends to go with this. You can see the photo embedded above, which was included in the open letters. Garces is not a size zero, and nobody looks good in a photo taken while eating, especially a non-thin person and double especially a non-thin female person, who is likely to be reduced to an object of ridicule and derision by some number of people who see said photo. (See, for example, some of the comments on that Hair Balls post.) Garces wants to head that off, and I understand and admire that impulse. On the other hand, she herself has now made that photo of her more widely known than it was likely to become without her actions, and it’s not clear that the message she’s sending with it will accompany all of those images or sink in with the people who see them. One can argue that from a strategic perspective, she should have let it go. I think her course of action was the right thing to do, but not necessarily the best way to win the election.
As for Mendez, I don’t know the story behind this, and if you read through that Hair Balls piece, you can see that his campaign is not exactly on top of things response-wise. Whatever his intent was, let’s hope this steers the campaign for this open seat back to more substantive matters. District I voters – really, all of us – deserve that much. Texpatriate has more.
Posted in: Election 2013.
What Nonsequiteuse says:
I’m really upset that the Houston Astros have left the Houston Area Women’s Center in the lurch as far as the gala this year. I know the people and the programs that will suffer without those funds, and let me tell you, it will hurt.
I’d like to suggest some constructive next steps the parties involved in this meltdown might take to not just repair the damage, but to launch a new partnership that is beneficial to each party and the larger community.
You can read the basics at KHOU (which broke the story), CultureMap (and an update here, with comments from the Astros), the Houston Press (which brings in some additional elements of recent developments with the ball club), and undoubtedly many other places. Great, long history and details on the Houston Chronicle. But the quick history:
- The Astros, through their Astros’ Wives organization, traditionally held a black-tie gala benefiting theHouston Area Women’s Center, our region’s oldest, largest, and exceedingly well-respected nonprofit organization supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence and educating the community on how to create a world free of such violence.
- The gala has happened for so long, and been so well-received by the community, that the proceeds have become a key line item in the agency’s annual operating budget.
- The ball club just announced that it is “officially” disbanding the Astros’ Wives, and that the club will redirect its charitable focus toward troubled youth and inner-city baseball programs.
- KHOU broke the story [Tuesday] morning.
My thoughts, which I hope might form the basis for constructive move-aheads:
Fill the Gap
The immediate need is making sure HAWC has the funds they need to finish their budget year. Making do without the gala proceeds is like asking a team to play without a shortstop.Let’s not wait for the team to act. You can donate here. Share the link once you’ve kicked in your bit, and remember, even $15 or $50 helps.
You should read the full post by Nonsequiteuse for a number of ways that this can be fixed or mitigated. The HAWC does great and necessary work, and it doesn’t deserve to be left hanging like this. While the Astros Wives Organization is a separate non-profit that is not affiliated with the ballclub, surely Jim Crane could have given the Women’s Center more notice about this change in policy. Maybe one last gala for old times’ sake, then part ways with plenty of time for the HAWC to plan for the next year. Failing that, there are some fine ideas in NS’ post, so check it out. I hope we can all come together and find a way forward for the HAWC this year.
UPDATE: More this morning, on the Astros’ response and what could have been done about the things they brought up.
UPDATE: Sean Pendergast piles on.
Posted in: Elsewhere in Houston.
There are three points of interest in this Statesman story about Battleground Texas. Point One: They’ve convinced the people who most needed convincing, the money people and the dedicated volunteers.
Battleground Texas quickly won the allegiance of Steve Mostyn and Mary Patrick.
Mostyn is a Houston trial lawyer who, with his wife, Amber, is the foremost contributor to Democratic and liberal causes in Texas. He was among Obama’s top donors nationally. Big, bald and bold, Mostyn has emerged as the Daddy Warbucks of Texas Democratic politics.
Mary Patrick, slight, gray and indefatigably determined, is the epitome of the long-suffering progressive Austin uber-volunteer, on whom Battleground Texas’ success will depend every bit as much as on Mostyn’s money.
It was Patrick signing people in at the Battleground Texas organizing event at the AFL-CIO hall in Austin in early April. It was Patrick, an active volunteer with the Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, who has opened the doors of its fellowship hall every Saturday morning since mid-April so that Battleground Texas can train its recruits and have them sworn in as volunteer deputy voter registrars, phase two of their battle plan.
“I’ve been real pleasantly surprised,” said Mostyn over a bowl of gumbo at Shoal Creek Saloon on Lamar Boulevard. “When they came and met with me, the question we had for them was, ‘How do you replicate any enthusiasm when you don’t have a candidate?’”
“They said, ‘We may have to build excitement,’” he said. And, so far, they have.
Persuaded, Mostyn traveled to New York, California, Colorado and D.C., “meeting with people from all over the progressive movement who understand that there are four majority-minority states, and Texas is the only one that’s Republican.”
“We’ve never seen the money commitment that’s coming and the money commitment that I’m going to put in,” said Mostyn. “It’s large, and that’s new and it’s sustaining. All of us are talking – those of us in the donor world – about a long-term plan.”
What kind of money are we talking about?
Mostyn pauses: “Battleground’s budget is millions and millions and millions and millions and millions.” (Battleground Texas doesn’t have to file its first semiannual fundraising report until July 15.)
The Battleground crew likewise impressed Patrick, who has been active in Democratic campaigns and liberal causes in Austin since graduating from the University of Texas in 1968.
“This is a very smart group of people. If they had never done this before, I’d say, ‘I don’t know.’ But they’ve done it before, and they know what to do,” said Patrick.
“It’s very exciting, and I’m very eager. I want this to happen before I get too old; please, sometime before I’m 90,” she said. “For those of us who have been slogging it out for years, we want it now.”
Money matters, of course. Battleground Texas needs smart, dedicated people at the helm, crafting strategy and directing resources and crunching data and so on and so forth. People like that – the Jeremy Birds and Jenn Browns and Christina Gomezes – are in demand, and can work on any campaign they want to work on. They need office space and computers and access to data and the people who can make sense of the data, and they need those things now and will continue to need those things after the next election is over. Having the money to pay for those things, and knowing that the money will continue to be there to pay for those things, is critical to this effort. But as important as that money is, the core value of Battleground Texas is people power, neighbors talking to neighbors. If the worker bees don’t buy into the vision, all that money won’t really do very much. We need both. Getting both sides of this equation on board was BT’s first challenge, and they met it. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Point two: Nobody is really sure what to make of all this.
But, those who study political demography, such as Robert Stein and Mark Jones at Rice University, project that Democrats could start winning statewide in the 2020s – a long time from now, but, considering the enormous stakes nationally, well worth a protracted Democratic effort to lay the groundwork.
Still, Richard Murray, director of the Survey Research Institute at the University of Houston, is dubious that national Democrats will pour money into a sustained long-term effort in a state as vast and expensive as Texas when the money could be used to far greater tangible effect elsewhere.
“To my knowledge, there is no precedent nationally of an attempt to change a state that is pretty solidly in the other party’s political base by investing surplus resources that don’t have any immediate payoff,” Murray said.
Texas Democrats have romantic notions about what Hillary Clinton as the potential Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 could do in Texas, but Murray observes that if Clinton were within striking distance of winning Texas, she would be on her way to an electoral landslide that wouldn’t require Texas.
For now, Brown finds herself having to tamp down the expectations her very presence has excited.
“I’d like to do well in 2014 and convince somebody we are here for them,” she told the Austin organizing meeting at the AFL-CIO hall on Lavaca Street.
But if not, “that’s OK,” she said. And if Democrats don’t carry Texas in 2016, “that’s totally OK too. If 2020 is the year we turn this state blue, that’s OK with me.”
Despite what Steve Mostyn said about BT’s budget, I don’t think it’s going to take a ridiculous amount of money for BT to have an effect. It’s not BT that’s going to be buying TV ads for candidates, which is where the real expenses are – it will be the candidates themselves, and whatever third parties that want to get involved. Frankly, if even half of the money that flows out of Texas to candidates elsewhere in the country stayed here in Texas, that would go a long way towards powering BT. That said, I agree with Dr. Murray that there really isn’t a model for what BT is trying to do. Sure, they’re trying to replicate the Obama campaign in states like Ohio and Florida, but in a state that hasn’t seen a Presidential campaign in the lifetimes of the BT braintrust. But just because something hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it can’t. I don’t see that as a blocker for BT. I do think it will need to show some kind of results beginning next year to help maintain the energy that it has generated so far. I do think BT will need to set some goals – it’s OK if they wait till there are some actual candidates before they do – and I think that an overall turnout goal is a fine place to start. But this is a long-term project, and we have no idea how it will go.
Point three: Republicans say they’ll spend a ton of money if BT is effective. I say “So what?”
“They talk about they’re going to be putting tens of million into Battleground Texas,” said [state GOP Chair Steve] Munisteri. “If there ever were a significant threat because somebody put $20 million in, our business community would probably spend that on Republicans by a factor of several-fold; $75 million was raised just from Texas for Romney. None of that money was spent in the state. Over a six-year period, the RNC raised $41 million in Texas and spent about $400,000. Those dollars can easily flow back the other way if we need them, so if they spend $10 million, we can spend $100 million.”
If so, for a national Democratic donor that would mean for every dollar spent in Texas, Republicans would spend $10, money they wouldn’t be spending elsewhere. That’s not a bad return on investment.
All that money didn’t do much to help Republicans nationally, either. The vast majority of that money, once the consultants and other bottom-feeders like Karl Rove skimmed off their piece, went to TV ads, which were of minimal effectiveness last year. I’ll take engaged volunteers over that, thanks. Be that as it may, doing nothing is not an option. If we’re going to get scared about what the Republicans might do when we try to win, we may as well not try.
Posted in: Show Business for Ugly People.
Council will vote on the proposed Uptown/Memorial TIRZ this week, which may or may not put an end to some of the wild speculation about what expanding the Uptown TIRZ boundaries to include Memorial Park may mean.
Imagine you’re jogging through Memorial Park, squinting past rows of neon signs in front of fast food joints, the music from bars in a kitschy corridor akin to San Antonio’s Riverwalk barely audible over the roar of nearby bulldozers.
This is the dystopian portrait some citizens paint of a proposal to annex the park into the Uptown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. They say the move is a takeover of the city’s most precious green space by an unelected board, and fear the process could result in disruptive projects being built before the public has a chance to weigh in.
The problem with this view is that there is no evidence to support it, as city leaders repeatedly have said; Mayor Annise Parker bemoaned the “really goofy theories” that have been swirling.
Adding the park to the nearby Uptown zone is simply a way to funnel $100 million during the next 27 years from one of the city’s richest redevelopment boards into a park ravaged by the 2011 drought and in need of erosion control projects, irrigation, a new jogging trail and other repairs, officials say. Though the Uptown zone or Memorial Park Conservancy may take the lead on select projects, officials stress any improvements in the park must be specified in advance and approved by the city Parks and Recreation Department and by City Council.
Parker pointed out the Uptown zone already is working in a small portion of the park in its boundaries, and that a similar arrangement is succeeding in Emancipation Park.
That has not stopped Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, whose District C includes Memorial Park, from fielding numerous calls and emails from concerned residents.
“What I want to hear from you is that we’re not looking at Ferris wheels along Memorial Park, fast food restaurants lining Memorial Park,” she said to parks director Joe Turner at a hearing last week. “We’re not looking at any of the kinds of things that really would destroy the integrity of the park if this program goes through.”
Turner assured her no such plans are being discussed. The only specific project on the table today is the Uptown zone contributing $1 million toward a new master plan for Memorial Park, which he said would include ample time for public comment, including at least four public meetings, in addition to several hearings before City Council.
The concern about “neon signs” and comparisons to the Riverwalk come straight from that Lisa Falkenberg column about whether there is sufficient transparency built into the TIRZ plan:
They make some important points – none better than Olive Hershey, the stepdaughter of Terry Hershey, the determined conservationist and life member of the conservancy who fought government agencies trying to pave parts of Buffalo Bayou in the 1960s.
“There’s been virtually no disclosure of the real details of this scheme and the public stands to lose any meaningful control of an irreplaceable park in our public lands and waterways,” Hershey told the council Wednesday. “Memorial Park must not be turned over to a group of bureaucrats who may have little understanding of how to nurture and defend this fragile jewel. If the city needs money to reforest the drought-damaged landscape there, it seems a shame to basically turn the park over to TIRZ 16 because the city can’t afford to protect the remaining trees.”
She wondered aloud whether the powerful influence of developers and other interests over a relatively few conservancy members could lead to “neon signs” along trails and retail developments similar to San Antonio’s Riverwalk. The mayor dismissed such scenarios as “far-fetched” and stressed that the park can only be used for “park purposes.”
I didn’t address this when I wrote about it then because it seemed a bit ridiculous to me. I understand the concerns about transparency and public input, but I just don’t find the scenario being put forth here as remotely realistic. If there were ever even a rumor of this sort of thing being proposed or in the works, people would storm city hall with pitchforks and torches. Nobody who could be elected to anything in Houston would allow this to stand. I don’t understand where this is coming from. There may be less-farfetched things that could happen, but I don’t know what they are, and it’s still not clear to me what level and form of public input would be acceptable to assuage these fears – I still haven’t seen any suggestions to that effect. As noted in the story, the TIRZ meetings are open to the public, and five of the eight members are appointed by the Mayor and Council, which gets back to that pitchforks and torches thing. I totally get the desire to ensure that Memorial Park is preserved. I’m right there with that. I just want to know what the remedy is that would also allow for the needed improvements and infrastructure repairs to be made to the park.
Posted in: Elsewhere in Houston.
I still think it’s dead, but I could be wrong about that.
It’s constitutional – deal with it
The fate of Medicaid reform in Texas could rest solely on an up-or-down vote on the 2014-15 budget.
State Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, a member of the conference committee that is hashing out the differences between the House and Senate budget plans, said Monday he’s relatively confident that a rider stipulating the Legislature’s preferred Medicaid reform terms — like cost containment measures and private market reforms — for any deal with the federal government is “sticking” to the 2014-15 budget. The rider does not expand Medicaid, he clarified, and said he would be “happy to defend it” to his colleagues.
The 2014-15 budget is not yet finalized. Budget conferees are meeting Monday evening to discuss the health and human services section and could discuss the rider. It could also come up in future discussions on the proposed budget this week.
Republican lawmakers have made it clear that they won’t approve an expansion of Medicaid eligibility this session. And although some conservative GOP House members have vowed to reject the budget proposal if such a rider is included, Zerwas said the rider has the support of the majority of budget conferees. The budget does not include financing to expand Medicaid eligibility in the upcoming biennium.
“No amount may be expended to modify Medicaid eligibility unless the [Health and Human Services Commission] develops a plan to create more efficient health care coverage options for all existing and newly eligible populations,” states the budget rider, which was authored by Senate Finance Chairman Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands.
The rider also says the Legislative Budget Board, which includes the lieutenant governor and House speaker, must ensure that any deal reached with the federal government to expand Medicaid eligibility cuts uncompensated care costs; promotes the use of private coverage and health savings accounts; establishes wellness incentives, cost-sharing initiatives and pay-for-performance initiatives; and reduces the state’s need to gain federal approval to make “minor changes” to the program.
(You can read the budget rider here, under contingent provisions in Article 9, Sec. 17.12. Certain Medicaid Funds.)
[...]
The Senate has approved the rider, but the House approved a nonbinding motion directing budget conferees not to include the rider on the budget.
State Rep. Van Taylor, a Tea Party favorite from Plano, told the Tribune on Tuesday that the conservative faction of the House was prepared to vote down the budget, if it called for an expansion of Medicaid.
“John wants it. I want it — so there’s two of us” who want to include the rider in the budget, House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, said on Tuesday.
I presume Sylvester Turner, who is also on the House conference committee, would be in favor of this as well. If so, then that should be enough support to include it. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. I’m sure Pitts is smart enough to not doom his own budget, but I don’t know how much faith I’d put in the Republicans; Democrats will have their own incentives, which may or may not line up with what Pitts wants. And if we are going to a special session as Burka is convinced we are, then I wouldn’t put it past Rick Perry to veto the budget out of spite. Let’s just say that the conference committee, which is meeting again and making some progress, is likely the lowest hurdle for this to clear.
Posted in: Budget ballyhoo.
This has been in the works for a long time.
Terry Grier
The [HISD Board of Trustees] voted unanimously on a revised policy governing its beloved magnet school program, saying the schools would be held more accountable for academic performance and their ability to attract students.
While some of the 113 magnet programs are nationally recognized and draw waiting lists, others have languished over the years.
“Woo! We finally passed a magnet policy,” board president Anna Eastman said immediately after the vote.
Houston Independent School District Superintendent Terry Grier took his excitement to Twitter.
“HISD approves Magnet Policy after four years of discussion!” he wrote.
The policy does not address individual schools – a politically tougher topic. Grier and the board have said no changes will take place for the coming school year.
Yeah, it’s when the board gets around to deciding the fate of individual schools that stuff will start to get real. Be that as it may, I think this is sensible. HISD has a lot of great magnet schools, but that doesn’t mean they’re all worth keeping, or at least worth keeping as is. It’s perfectly reasonable for them all to have to demonstrate their value. This preview story has some more details.
The policy that the school board is set to approve Thursday is general, but makes a point that magnet programs should have “fair and equitable” resources and should be held accountable for academic performance. The proposal also calls for magnet schools to strive for at least 20 percent of their students to come from outside the neighborhood, but Eastman suggested this week that the provision should be loosened.
“We have to use common sense,” Grier said in response. “We’re not interested in hurting schools that are attracting kids.”
Data obtained from HISD show that 50 of 113 magnet programs don’t meet the 20 percent standard.
The programs drawing the fewest students from outside the neighborhood – fewer than 15 – are Worthing, Scarborough, Kashmere and Lee high schools, Long Academy and Ryan Middle. Combined, those schools are receiving more than $558,000 in special magnet funding this year, the data show.
The school board already has agreed to close Ryan and reopen it next year as a magnet school focused on health careers, modeled after the prestigious DeBakey High School for Health Professions.
In all, HISD gave about $17 million extra to its magnet schools this year, and the district spends another $10 million on transportation. The funding for programming varies widely. Six magnet programs got no extra money this year while three – Carnegie Vanguard High School, Parker Elementary and Garden Villas Elementary – received more than $400,000 each.
Trustee Rhonda Skillern-Jones, who helped revise the magnet policy, said she hopes it will spur better programs with more relevant themes. Once the board approves the new policy, Grier’s staff plans to write more detailed standards such as specific academic benchmarks.
There’s certainly room to massage the 20 percent standard – at the very least, if things are working well at a school otherwise, there should be some discretion to leave things be. Ultimately, the goal should be to keep what’s good and fix or get rid of what isn’t. The details are obviously important, but let’s not get so bogged down in them that we lose sight of that.
Posted in: School days.
With the Thursday midnight deadline for bills to pass on second reading in the House, I figured this would be a good time to take a look at the status of some major legislation and legislative priorities. There are two weeks left in the regular session, and the specter of overtime is hazy but present. A full list of failed House bills is here, I’m going to aim for the highlights.
Budget – In conference committee. The two chambers weren’t that far apart on how much they spent and what they spent it on, but there were real differences and things have gotten a little testy. Still, I don’t expect there to be too much drama on the basics.
Water and transportation – This is where it has gotten sticky. The Senate passed a joint resolution to allocate up to $5.7 billion from the Rainy Day fund for water and transportation projects, with some extra for public education. The House has rejected this approach, and compounded the issue by failing to pass a bill to fund water projects and pulling a bill to raise vehicle registration fees to pay for transportation matters. Both are stated priorities of Rick Perry, who says we’ll go to a special session if something isn’t done about these things. Complicating matters further is an opinion from AG Greg Abbott that Rainy Day fund spending counts towards the constitutional spending cap. The Senate’s approach would have avoided that, but Speaker Straus says it’s a non-starter in the House. The House would prefer to just vote to raise the cap, which requires only a majority, but David Dewhurst doesn’t want to do that because many Republicans (like him) might get attacked in the 2014 primaries for doing so. It’s quite the dilemma. Everyone is saying that one way or another these things will get done, but it’s not clear to me what the path forward is.
Education – We know that some more money will be spent on public education than in 2011, but the full cuts from 2011 will not be restored, and the final amount that will be added is still up in the air. The charter school expansion bill has not yet been heard in the House, and it’s not clear how it will go. Vouchers appear to be dead. HB5, the big bill to cut back on standardized testing and revamp the high school curriculum, was amended by the Senate after being passed by the House, and is now in conference committee after the House rejected the Senate’s amendments.
Medicaid expansion – Dead. As with all things, there are ways to raise the dead in the Lege while it’s still in session, but it ain’t happening here.
Expanded gambling – Also dead. Check back in 2014, if the Supreme Court upholds the school finance ruling.
Guns – The House did manage to pass a number of gun-expansion bills in the days before their Thursday deadline, including at least one truly demented bill. Many of them likely have no future in the Senate, which ought to make everyone whose bills died on the vine on Thursday from lack of time rethink their priorities (not that it will), but the campus carry bill may get a chance to be heard.
Abortion – A combination of resistance by two normally anit-abortion Democrats to some noxious bills in the Senate and that slow-roll calendar in the House have caused all of the major anti-abortion bills to be held at bay so far. The advocates of these bills in the House at least are unlikely to give up, and I for one have a very bad feeling that if there is a special session for any reason, Perry will add this legislation to the call. If the two-thirds rule is not adopted by the Senate for the special, then that’s all she wrote. If there is a special session, I expect a lot of people will pressure Perry to address this, and I expect he’ll listen to them. I hope I’m wrong, but as I said, I have a very bad feeling about it.
Redistricting – Who knows? I’ve seen several people mention that they have heard Perry will call a special on redistricting, but I have not seen Perry himself mention this, though he has talked about a special for water and transportation if they don’t get done. The idea of a special for redistricting came up late in the 2011 session, so this is certainly a possibility, but in my experience Perry usually telegraphs his intentions. But seriously, I have no idea. For updates on other election-related legislation, see Texas Redistricting.
Criminal justice – I defer to Scott Henson on this.
Beer – In case you were wondering, the craft beer bills were passed by the Senate and thus were not subject to the House Thursday deadline, as that was for House bills that had not yet been heard on the floor. The package of Senate craft beer bills should be heard in the House this week.
That’s about all I can think of. if I’ve missed anything obvious, let me know.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
Modified again, this time enough to garner support from the teachers.
Teachers, the state of Texas and school districts all would pay more to help support the Teacher Retirement System of Texas under a bill passed by the Texas Senate Wednesday.
Under Senate Bill 1458, the $117 billion TRS fund would get a boost from members, whose contributions would increase from 6.4 percent of their salaries to 7.7 percent over four years. Meanwhile, the state’s contribution would increase from 6.4 percent to 6.8 percent, and school districts that do not pay into Social Security would contribute 1.5 percent. Additionally, about 102,000 teachers who have retired since 1999 would receive a 3 percent cost of living adjustment under the new bill.
See here and here for the background. The main points of objection from the teachers had to do with the size of the state’s contribution, and with increasing the teachers’ contribution all at once instead of phasing it in. While this story has no details, the Texas AFT spells out the changes since the last time:
The combination of grass-roots pressure and hard negotiating by our legislative allies has led to this substantial improvement in the TRS bill. Sens. Kirk Watson (D-Austin), Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), and Royce West (D-Dallas) played crucial roles in winning the Senate-passed improvements. Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) too gets credit for leaving his door open to negotiations to modify his bill.
As this legislation now moves over to the House and ultimately to a House-Senate conference committee, the same combination of grass-roots communication and tough negotiations in the capitol could bring further improvements sought by Texas AFT for retired and active school employees, such as an immediate benefit increase for all rather than just one-third of retirees, as well as prospective-only application of a new minimum retirement age for full pension benefits. (As it now stands under SB 1458, school employees who do not have five years of service credit by September 1, 2014, would be subject to the new minimum age of 62 for full, unreduced retirement benefits). So be prepared to launch another wave of messages to members of the Texas House!
To review: Under SB 1458 as amended on the Senate floor today, employee contributions would remain at 6.4 percent in fiscal 2014 (starting September 2013), while the state contribution would rise to 6.8 percent. In fiscal 2015, the employee contribution would be 6.7 percent, while the state continues to contribute 6.8 percent, plus school districts that do not contribute to Social Security would kick in another 1.5 percent. In fiscal 2016, the employee contribution would go to 7.2 percent, while the state and district contributions would hold at 6.8 percent and 1.5 percent; in fiscal 2017, the employee contribution would rise to 7.7 percent, which still would be less than the combined state/district total of 8.3 percent.
If the state were to reduce its contribution below 6.8 percent, employee and district contributions would fall by an equal percentage.
They released a statement thanking Sen. Duncan and the Democrats that worked to improve the bill and called on their members to support it. There are still issues to be settled, so don’t file this one away just yet. The Morning News has more.
On a related note, things were happening for the bill to modify the Employee Retirement System, but it didn’t get to a vote in time on Thursday, so whatever happens there will come from the Senate bill. At last report, labor had dropped its opposition to the ERS bill after some changes had been made. We’ll see what happens from here.
Posted in: That's our Lege.
I didn’t pay much attention to Saturday’s elections, since there was nothing on the ballot for me and there were few races of interest around the state. One place where there were races worth watching was in Farmers Branch, and the news from there was excellent.
CM Ana Reyes
Ana Reyes became the first Hispanic to win a seat on the Farmers Branch City Council in the new District 1 after historic single-member district balloting forced on the city by a federal judge. The 39-year-old Reyes maintained her 2-to-1 ratio in balloting throughout the night.
Reyes, the district manager of state Rep. Rafael Anchía, beat 48-year-old William Capener, a print shop manager with Tea Party ties.
In another upset, incumbent David Koch, a 51-year-old attorney, lost his re-election bid to 73-year-old Kirk Connally, a retiree who had served on the planning and zoning board for years. Koch fought hard against the voting rights charges and led an effort to appeal the lower court judge’s order. Connally had said he was fed up with all the spending on litigation.
“I’m excited and excited about Kirk Connally’s win as well,” Reyes said in a phone interview. “Together, we can do great things and move forward.”
Single-member districts generally make it easier for minorities to gain political position in venues where there’s been polarization in vote patterns. Voting rights suits have increased in North Texas as Latinos challenge governments with at-large electoral systems that result in all-white city councils and school boards.
The Justice Department sent election monitors to the city on Saturday — for their fourth poll watch since 2007.
Farmers Branch, a suburb of 29,000, has been a fount for litigation since 2006 when it passed an ordinance to bar immigrants in the U.S. illegally from rental housing. The measure led to shouting matches inside and outside of council sessions and a chain of litigation that has cost the city nearly $6 million. A federal judge ruled the latest version of the rental ordinance was unconstitutional and it has yet to be enforced. The ordinance is on appeal.
The acrimony seeded Reyes’ interest in politics in Farmers Branch, where she has lived nearly all her life. She is the daughter of two immigrants from Mexico. The naturalized citizens, Antonio and Maria Reyes, voted for their daughter in the historic election. They were also two of the ten plaintiffs that sued the city of Farmers Branch.
Saturday night, Maria Reyes said she was “very content” with election results. She never hesitated in being a part of the civil rights suit, she said. “We had no representation and now we do.”
Reyes’s campaign treasurer was Amelia Baladez, another of the plaintiffs in the voting rights suit. One of her biggest donors was Bill Brewer, a Dallas corporate attorney whose pro-bono affiliate launched the successful suit against the city of Farmers Branch. The firm, the Bickel & Brewer Storefront, also sued the city over the rental ordinance, inspiring one councilman to criticize the law firm for “bullying.”
[Saturday night], Brewer said, “Farmers Branch is so obviously polarized in voting among the races. It was a suit that needed to be brought. She is going to be great councilwoman.”
BOR had a preview of the race and a brief chat with CM-elect Reyes that you should read. Farmers Branch has been a cesspool of racism and xenophobia these past few years, spending millions of dollars in pointless efforts to punish people who committed no crime. The elections of Reyes and Connally are the first step towards draining that swamp and getting Farmers Branch back on the road to productivity and good stewardship of its resources. Congratulations to Ana Reyes and Kirk Connally, and best of luck to both of you on Farmers Branch City Council.
Posted in: Election 2013.
