This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in recent news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have election news, including the state of the Dallas charter amendments; voter registration news, including Crystal Mason and that Fox report about illegal aliens in Tarrant County registering; what’s up with area school districts; the latest Tim O’Hare shenanigans, including the ones with implications for FWISD; everybody who’s quitting their academic and civic posts this summer; updates on the local environment; the DMN on Y’all Street; some local history; and new food at Cowboys games plus the State Fair food winners. And more!
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Howard Jones and ABC, whom we saw last week in Oklahoma City.
The last two weeks have seen a lot of news about the election, mostly focusing on the Democratic National Convention and its fallout on the presidential race. There have also been some developments in North Texas elections that you may not have heard so much about.
Here in Dallas we continue to wrangle with the charter amendments, particularly the three sponsored by Dallas HERO. Dallas HERO and its supporters are now suing the city and most of the council over the ballot language for the amendment suite and the city’s counter-proposals. (DMN) One of the citizen plaintiffs is a paralegal working for one of the businesses belonging local troublemaker Monty Bennett, the money man behind Dallas HERO. D Magazine has an overview of the whole thing. Meanwhile, the Dallas Observer had a piece last week about how Dallas is already having trouble hiring more police. One of the amendments requires the city to hire between 900 and 1000 officers; the current goal is to hire something like 250 in the near term.
To hire that many officers, to fund their pensions (already an issue) and to support them materially, the city would have to give up a lot of other things it’s currently doing. That’s before we get to the demand that half of additional revenue over what we have currently budgeted would go to the police. We have a goal to cut unsheltered homelessness in half by 2026 that would have to go. The Dallas library has already lost its online access to newspapers; the advice is to get a card at the Houston library. Budget cuts may already force the closure of some neighborhood libraries. If you’ve been reading this column regularly or following Dallas politics in other ways, you know we’re past our fat years of COVID money from the federal government and into our lean years. Dallas HERO is going to direct most of what we get to Dallas PD if their amendments pass. It will absolutely wreck our city budget until we have a chance to undo it in the next charter update ten years from now.
We all know the answer: vote against these jackasses. And vote against anything that involves Dallas HERO or Monty Bennett, who doesn’t even live in Dallas but wants to tell us how to run our city.
In other news, starting with elections:
- As noted by our host, Tarrant County is appealing the verdict that overturned Crystal Mason’s conviction for illegal voting. The DMN editorial board disapproves of this travesty of justice
- As also noted by our host, we’re facing another batch of voter purges based on discredited stories from Fox News. In this case, Fox host Maria Bartiromo told a friend-of-a-friend story about voter registration at “the DMV” in Tarrant and Parker Counties with the clear implication that registering Hispanic Texans to vote had to be about undocumented aliens and not citizens. A little investigation into matters by local officials and the local Republican Party should have cleared this rumor up, but the truth is still putting on her shoes while a lie on Fox news has run halfway around the country. The Star-Telegram’s Bud Kennedy has a nice closeout of this tempest in a teacup.
- In related news, Tarrant County has received approximately 53,000 voter registration applications so far this year. It has rejected eighteen (18) from non-citizens.
- Here’s an example of actual election fraud in Tarrant County in the 1930s, when a dying candidate for sheriff was fraudulently elected in a contested primary.
- Collin County Judge Chris Hill proposed bringing back hand-marked ballots for the November election but couldn’t get anyone to second his motion. Instead the county will look into using them in future elections.
- In November election news, KERA has a piece on the competitive HD 112 race between incumbent Republican Angie Chen Button and Democratic challenger Averie Bishop.
- And Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has been named a national co-chair of the Harris campaign.
- In J6 news, an Oath Keeper from Granbury pled guilty to felony federal charges and will be sentenced in January for his role in the insurrection. And the Dallas Observer has updated its list of every Texan charged for J6 crimes as of earlier this week.
- Yes, Ken Paxton is suing the city and the State Fair because the State Fair won’t let people bring guns. Here’s an explainer about why he thinks he can sue and why the State Fair thinks the ban is legal.
- Dallas has picked a new police oversight director. Her qualifications sound great, but after all the trouble the city has had with allowing oversight to actually do anything about police who get out of him, I’m not confident she’ll last.
- The Dallas County DA has exonerated Ben Spencer for a 1987 killing he was convicted for after he spent 37 years struggling to prove his innocence. Kudos to the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit for helping Dallas County do the right thing here.
- Let’s briefly update what school districts in the greater DFW area have been up to recently:
- Frisco ISD is the last district fighting Ken Paxton over electioneering charges stemming from the March primary election. Several school districts got in trouble for stating the truth about how much vouchers were costing public schools and all of them but Frisco have settled with the Attorney General.
- Keller ISD has added a number of “parental rights” policies: specifically, if a kid asks to do any of a laundry list of things that indicate they might be transitioning socially, parents must be notified within 24 hours. There’s also a phone ban.
- Fort Worth ISD has received a civil rights complaint about the unequal allotment of federal COVID funds that disadvantaged Black students.
- Fort Worth ISD is also in trouble with the Mayor and city council. The Fort Worth Report has the data behind their call to improve district performance and the Star-Telegram has information about how the district is avoiding a Houston-style state takeover: they’re closing the low-performing campus that put the district at risk. Nowhere in any of the discussion I’ve seen about the district has anyone related poor performance to the constant pressure to reduce taxes in Tarrant County (more about that below).
- Accuracy in Media is going after North Texas school districts, using hidden cameras to find teachers they believe are violating the state ban on teaching critical race theory. Their current target is Coppell ISD’s director of science.
- Rockwall ISD is dealing with a scandal surrounding the alleged sexual assault of a pre-K student.
- Dallas ISD’s enrollment is holding steady this year after years of decrease.
- Collin County voters have reached the end of their willingness to spend on high school football stadiums.
- And in a piece of actual good news, McKinney ISD couldn’t find anyone to second a motion to forbid “boy DNA” in girls’ facilities.
- It’s the season for resignations, especially in academic settings. After a thirty-year term that changed the university, the President of SMU is resigning. The President of UT Dallas is also resigning after eight years. Both will continue in their current positions for the remainder of the school year that’s just starting.
- Meanwhile, elsewhere in Dallas, our library director is resigning after two decades; the Chief Medical Examiner is resigning after more than 35 years; and a second Dallas County juvenile detention center leader has quit.
- In Fort Worth, the jailer who pepper-sprayed Anthony Johnson has resigned while the family demands the DA indict him. They’d also like to see some discipline for the Sheriff.
- County Judge Tim O’Hare gave his State of the County address, focusing on public safety and praising the Sheriff. More details from the Star-Telegram.
- Despite O’Hare complaining that the county jail is being used as a mental health facility in his State of the County address, the budget for next year has zeroed out money for the Mental Health Jail Diversion Center.
- Also, last week, rather than listen to public comment about their decision to cut funding to Youth Advocate Programs, judges broke quorum by leaving, ending the public comment period.
- O’Hare has denied scripting the Tarrant County Appraisal District changes approved last month despite the emails that say he did. The Star-Telegram doesn’t like O’Hare’s direction for the appraisal district now that cronies whose campaigns he financed are on the appraisal board. Meanwhile, Fort Worth ISD, whose funding is affected by these decisions would like voters to know the impact of constant tax cuts on students, a subject that, as I mentioned, has been overlooked in complaints about student performance.
- Fort Worth City Council would also like to cut taxes in 2025.
- In environmental news: Dallas County has reported its first heat-related death of the year; a UPS driver passed out behind the wheel in McKinney leading to union demands for better working conditions; everybody’s power bills are through the roof (mine sure are); and Dallas has gone from 46 extreme heat days in 1972 to 72 in 2023. Yikes.
- The city of Killeen has been shut down by the same criminal hacker gang that got Dallas last year.
- Here’s an explainer about the Dallas Black Dance Theater union-busting firings.
- The DMN has its own piece on Y’all Street and Dallas’ ambition to become the next big city in finance.
- SMU researchers are trying to figure out how to predict earthquakes caused by fracking.
- Rural Johnson County farmers and ranchers are suing the EPA over PFAS “forever chemicals” in biosolid fertilizer that have leaked from neighboring farms into their property, killing livestock and other animals. I didn’t understand until I read this WFAA article that “biosolids” meant that they bought human waste from Fort Worth and treated it before using it as fertilizer. Which is historically normal practice, but poisoning your neighbor’s land with it isn’t.
- Fort Worth’s West Nile season is starting early.
- Vaccination rates are down in Dallas County. Not just COVID vaccines, but the standard childhood vaccines like rubella, measles, and mumps. Yikes.
- Unsurprisingly, the survivors and families of the victims of the shooting at the mall in Allen last year are suing the mall. More from the DMN.
- Normally I don’t care what Peter Thiel thinks, only the terrible things he’s doing with his money, but I’m glad he couldn’t live in Houston, Dallas, or Austin. Guess what, we don’t want you either. On the other hand, he’s not wrong about Dallas having an inferiority complex about New York and LA.
- I found out from this DMN editorial that the draft recruitment brochure for the city manager job in Dallas had a cover featuring the skyline of the city of Houston. Oops.
- In some good news, the cruelty alleged by PETA at a Fort Worth mall seems to be unsubstantiated after an investigation. I hope it’s true because the allegations were pretty awful.
- In February of last year in Sherman a bald eagles’ nest was destroyed and now U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services is offering a reward for the culprit. That’s a good first step but as CultureMap notes, $1500 a year and a half later isn’t a serious investigation. The nest was on private land being developed for a subdivision; no word on the status of the subdivision in any report I’ve read.
- In a small-town Texas story, the president of the Maypearl Youth Cheer Association allegedly embezzled $20,000 over three years.
- Texas Monthly has a history lesson about the Dallas teacher, Navy vet, and devout Christian who tried to get the state’s sodomy law overturned in 1979.
- A Dallas singer-songwriter has written a song about Half Price Books. Get ready to feel ancient: the 20-year-old is nostalgic for CDs.
- The new record for the most expensive item of sports memorabilia ever sold has been set here in Dallas: Babe Ruth’s “called shot” jersey from the 1932 World Series sold for $24.12 million.
- Here are some gorgeous photos of the historic downtown Fort Worth post office.
- The Atlantic has a profile of Dallas-area evangelical influencer Allie Beth Stuckey, whom the headline describes as “a new Phyllis Schlafly”. If you have the pie for her, I’ll drive the getaway car.
- We have new food this year for Cowboys’ home games, including a pizza burger, a wagyu truffle burger, a honey bourbon steak sandwich, a churro waffle, and more. Click through for some photos.
- And last, but not least, the State Fair has chosen its food winner for 2024: the Dominican Frittura Dog, Russo’s Cotton Candy Bacon, and Texas Sugar Rush Pickles. The bacon sounds like it might be edible but honestly the other two are “more for you”. Click through for photos and descriptions, and decide for yourself.