This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have a grab bag that starts with some important news about the November election in the Metroplex, including how a familiar set of fingerprints is on some of the charter amendments. We also have the brouhaha about banning guns from the State Fair; Dallas County jail and budgeting woes; what Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare is up to; suburban school district news; a death at the CrossFit games in Fort Worth; more cricket in DFW; Dr Phil lays off folks from his new network; the Dallas Cowboys are worth more than $10 billion; and an Infinity Room is coming back to the Dallas Museum of Art. And more!
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Harold Budd, the pianist, composer, and collaborator with both Brian Eno and the Cocteau Twins.
Let’s start with election news, and not the sort that involves calling anybody weird.
While everybody should be checking their voter registration on the regular, folks in North Texas are in particular danger as elections administrators in Collin, Rockwall, and Denton counties have been flooded by challenges to voter eligibility. True the Vote is the main suspect.
Meanwhile, in Tarrant County, Civera voting software is going to be used to allow residents to view images ballots online, with personal identifying information redacted. The Star-Telegram article discusses the privacy issues; I have to admit my first reaction is “there’s no way anything could go wrong with that!” But making the ballot images available is required by state law, and you know how we change that.
One of the big ballot categories in Dallas in November is going to be the much-discussed charter amendments. The Dallas Morning News has an op-ed piece by former mayors Mike Rawlings, Tom Leppert, and Ron Kirk on which amendments they oppose and why. They don’t like twelve of the fifteen proposed by the council nor any of the four petition amendments.
That last category is of real interest to me. One of the four petition amendments is about loosening marijuana enforcement. Two of other three are detailed in this KERA article about the massive budget cuts the amendments would cause. The three measures would increase Dallas PD by 1,000 officers (about a third of the number of current officers per DPD) and dictating that some new city revenue be used to fund the police department; and basing the city manager’s pay to a resident survey. The third would allow Dallas residents to sue the city to enforce the charter, ordinances, or state law.
KERA tells us who’s behind those three amendments: a group called Dallas HERO, who I’m sure are familiar with the history of that term in Houston city management. The article names several people as members: Pete Marocco, a Trump administration appointee; Stefani Carter, former Republican representative to the Texas House (HD 102) and current board member of Braemar Hotels and Resorts; and local hotelier Monty Bennett of Braemar Hotels and Resorts, whose name you will have read before in these pages.
It sure seems like Bennett and his cronies have figured out how to run the city and want to do it without the pesky necessity of “getting elected”.
In other news:
- The Wall Street Journal has a puff piece on the Dallas finance sector and how great it is to live here (archive link).
- Last week, the State Fair decided to ban guns at the fair after last year’s shooting incident. Republican legislators and House nominees petitioned the Fair to change its mind and threatened it with additional legislation in the upcoming session, and Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to sue the Fair. The Star-Telegram explainer on state law suggests the question hinges on whether Fair Park is managed by a non-profit rather than by the city; in 2016 AG Paxton wrote an opinion on that subject that conflicts with his current stance.
- Dallas County’s Juvenile Board has a new (old) leader: they’ve tapped former director Mike Griffiths, who led the juvenile department from 1995 to 2010 and again as interim director, to serve as interim director again while the county finds a permanent replacement.
- The DMN editorial board has complaints about the Dallas County court system and the jail. We’re currently close to capacity at the county jail but since nobody has mastered the new criminal court case management system since May 2023, we don’t know for sure. Supposedly the software will be updated this month or in September; the county should have data about the criminal court system then.
- Also, if the county can’t get spending under control or reallocate some of its budget, tax increases are on the horizon. Responsible for most of the overspending: unplanned overtime at the sheriff, jail and juvenile departments.
- A new book, Bringing Ben Home, details the fight to overturn the wrongful conviction of Benjamine Spencer for a 1987 murder here in Dallas. Axios has a backgrounder to catch you up. DA John Creuzot’s conviction integrity unit agrees that the conviction should be overturned; it’s up to the DA whether to dismiss the case or find that Spencer is “actually innocent”, which would not just exonerate him but entitle him to compensation from the state.
- Tenants and other Fort Worth locals are wondering what’s going on in Sundance Square, the 37 square block business and entertainment district owned by one of the billionaire Bass family heirs and his wife. Complaints about management date back to at least 2022 per this Star-Telegram story, but only one tenant and nobody from management is willing to address concerns. The stories make it sound like the Bass family is running the tenants out slowly as their leases expire so they can do something else with the land.
- Fort Worth assistant City Manager Fernando Costa is retiring at the end of September, continuing the brain and experience drain from Fort Worth and Tarrant County administration.
- The Star-Telegram’s editorial board lays into County Judge Tim O’Hare’s defunding of Youth Advocate Programs for juvenile offenders over the mention of systemic racism and other DEI concepts on the web site.
- Also there’s an allegation that O’Hare wants to remove Cesar Chavez Day as a county holiday and replace it with Veteran’s Day. It was in this article that I learned that he was on the city council in Farmer’s Branch back in 2006 when that city attempted to unconstitutionally prohibit landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.
- One thing O’Hare is doing is calling on TCU to fire an instructor whose politics he doesn’t like.
- The family of Anthony Johnson has added three more jailers to their wrongful death lawsuit against Tarrant County.
- Fort Worth City Council has approved a settlement with its former police chief and some IT workers for whistleblowing for a total sum of $9.6 million. For those who came in late, this Axios explainer has you covered on how it all happened.
- Mark Melton of the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center talked to the Dallas Observer about the terrible and possibly illegal policies some apartment complexes have. Unsurprisingly, he calls out South Dallas as a part of town where some of these terrible rules that treat the residents like criminals or residents of a halfway house are common.
- The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System is lining up for a lawsuit over whether Dallas City Council has to approve the plan to remedy unfunded pension obligations. The pension system is legally obligated to adopt a plan by November 1, so they’re cutting it pretty close.
- The Texas Tribune has an interview with Congressman Michael Burgess, who is retiring from his seat in CD-26 as of the end of his current term.
- A woman is suing an Arlington hospital for refusing to treat an ectopic pregnancy under EMTALA. The health system involved is the one my GP belongs to; I’m desperately relieved that I no longer am at risk of needing abortion care for the rest of my life.
- Here’s this week’s movement in the Adelson push for casino gambling in the next Lege session.
- A couple of suburban school district news items for you: Keller ISD has appointed its second new board member this year and more on the employment history of Granbury ISD superintendent Jeremy Glenn as he moves to take over the same job at Southlake Carroll ISD.
- The City of Dallas planning process has been a mess for a long time. This week’s example is how the neighborhood of Elm Thicket-Northpark near Love Field, which underwent zoning changes in 2022 to preserve its historic character as a former Freedmen’s Town. Unfortunately nobody in the city incorporated those changes into the permitting process and developers have been building according to the old regulations. Now the city has issued stop-work orders on incomplete homes, leaving builders high and dry with no way to move forward. I’m glad our interim City Manager is doing something to fix the busted processes that allowed this mess to happen.
- Health news: We have flea-borne typhus in McKinney and the first West Nile death in Tarrant County. Be careful outdoors, friends.
- In sad news, the CrossFit Games in Fort Worth resulted in the death by drowning of one of the athletes. A Star-Telegram columnist explains why the death was avoidable and the paper’s “Reality Check” talked to experts who agree the culture around the sport is partially to blame. I don’t know anything about the sport, but I think anyone who wants to do outdoor sports in Texas in August needs to reconsider for health and safety reasons.
- Speaking of sports, UT Dallas is going to be hosting “sixty strikes” cricket, as explained by Axios. I consulted with an Australian friend in the hopes she could explain what this version of cricket was; apparently it’s even more abbreviated than the Twenty20 version the other US league is playing. My source says the play in Twenty20 is limited in strategy compared to full-on cricket as practiced in the rest of the Anglosphere, and Sixty Strikes is even shorter with fewer options. She also opined that it was unlikely that the US can support two cricket leagues. I’m pretty sure she’s right on that one. I hope these players will be inside during the August heat.
- Dallas is naming SH 310 after the late Dr. S. M. Wright, a Black pastor and community leader. This is a case of “the second-best time to do it is now”, because the bill to rename SH 310 was passed under and signed by Governor George W. Bush.
- You may remember that Dr. Phil started a new network in Fort Worth earlier this year. They just laid off almost 40 behind-the-scenes workers. The DMN has more, including the ugly detail that some of the laid-off workers had moved to Texas for these jobs. Good luck to them finding better ones.
- This week I learned there’s an aquarium at Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth and they treat their animals so badly that many of them have died. Content warning for animal cruelty death on that link, obviously.
- Dallas Black Dance Theater fired all members of its main company after they voted to unionize.
- Congratulations to the Stagecoach Ballroom in Fort Worth on receiving an official historical marker from the Texas Historic Commission.
- The Dallas Cowboys are officially the first sports team with a value of more than $10 billion according to Sportico, a sports business site. Somewhat related, it’s the 45th anniversary of North Dallas Forty, the cult classic film that fictionalized the culture of the late 70s Cowboys team.
- D Magazine has a piece on what it’s like to plan and serve food in Dallas ISD cafeterias.
- In news for picky adult eaters, OpenTable picked 11 DFW restaurants for icon status. Of them, the only one we’ve eaten at is Restaurant Beatrice, which I recommend highly to any of you who like Cajun food.
- I know this means not so much to most of you, but it’s with great relief that I report the DFW area Alamo Drafthouses are all reopening this month. My neighborhood Alamo is already open. Now if they’ll just have a movie I want to see!
- Two items from the Dallas Museum of Art: first, their Kahlo exhibit, Frida: Beyond The Myth opens on Sunday. Second, next year the Yayoi Kusama infinity room “All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins will be back in May 2025. Get your cameras ready!