Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Abbott outraises Davis on 30 day report

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Would have been nice to have done better.

Sen. Wendy Davis

Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott outraised Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis by more than 3-to-1 in the first three weeks in January in the race for governor, according to figures reported by each campaign Monday.

The $3.1 million-plus that Abbott raised from Jan. 1 through Jan. 23, the period covered by campaign finance reports due Monday, gave him $29.4 million in cash on hand for the race against Davis.

Davis, of Fort Worth, raised $912,996 over the same period, counting two of her committees and a joint effort with Battleground Texas, which is dedicated to making Texas competitive for Democrats. She reported she has $10.2 million in cash on hand.

The comparison could take off some of the shine from the big money that Davis hauled in during the last six months of 2013 when, counting the same three fundraising committees, she took in $12.2 million compared with $11.5 million for Abbott, long a top fundraiser.

“With the previous announcement, she got a lot of positive attention because she had raised more than people expected and had more relative to Abbott than anyone expected,” said University of Texas-Pan American political scientist Jerry Polinard. “This is another way (for Abbott) of reminding people, ‘Wait a minute, we are still in a very red state. I’ve got more money.'”

It’s also a way for the media to rehash its stories about Davis from the past two weeks, since apparently there isn’t anything else to report on. Candidates in contested primaries have to make 30 day and 8 day reports; candidates like Leticia Van de Putte, who are unopposed in the primary, get to go till July before their next reporting deadline. At this pace, Davis would raise about $10 million for the rest of the year, which ain’t nothing but which would only get her a bit more than halfway to her stated goal of $40 million. The great thing about having a large donor base, as she does, is that you can go back to them and ask for more. Maybe not so quickly, however. As for Abbott, it sure is nice to have a bunch of panicky zillionaires in your corner; hr took in more from five deep-pocketed benefactors than Davis did overall. I’m sure that was the message they meant to send.

On a side note, we find that Greg Abbott received even more contributions than we first thought from payday lenders last year. My guess is he’s taken in more in the current report. Maybe someone can check that when the reports are posted. Like I said, nice to have some deep pockets you can reach into. Campos has more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Election 2014, fundraising, Governor, Greg Abbott, payday lenders, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

School districts deal with ACA paperwork

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The headline for this story says that Texas school districts are “struggling” to deal with requirements of the Affordable Care Act, but there’s not much evidence of actual struggles in the story itself.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Texas school districts are scrambling to meet an Affordable Care Act provision that requires them to offer health insurance to thousands of substitute teachers, bus drivers and other workers who clock at least 30 hours a week.

While many of these workers are already eligible for health insurance, tracking compliance is proving cumbersome for administrators. Compared with traditional employers, school systems rely on more variable-hour workers and follow an unusual calendar.

“It’s kind of a nightmare. It’s extremely complex,” said Holly Murphy, senior attorney for the Texas Association of School Boards, who is touring the state to address school administrators’ questions about the new requirement.

How districts choose to handle the mandate could spell either good or bad news for employees. Some school systems may cap part-time employees’ hours, while others appear to be creating new full-time positions to ease the demand from hourly workers. Both options should make the bookkeeping aspect of compliance prior to the Jan. 1 deadline simpler, officials said.

The Fort Bend Independent School District posted job openings for 74 educational assistants – one at each campus – who will essentially be full-time substitutes eligible for benefits. Those positions should help take pressure off the district’s pool of 1,000 part-time substitutes, administrators said, although the district would still face the increased cost of providing benefits to more employees.

“We basically solved the issue around the Affordable Care Act,” said Kermit Spears, chief human resources officer at Fort Bend ISD.

Groups of suburban and rural school districts are considering creating co-ops that could share and provide benefits for full-time substitutes, Murphy said.

[…]

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said limiting hours isn’t in the spirit of the law and wouldn’t even be an option in the Houston ISD, which already struggles with substitute shortages.

“That’s the sort of shoddy behavior we were worried about,” she said.

She applauded the Houston ISD’s move to begin offering this month a basic $5-a-month health insurance plan to employees earning under $25,000 a year.

“HISD did very early compliance,” Fallon said. “We have paraprofessionals and clerks and food service and custodial (employees) who can afford insurance for the first time, and we got told instantly it was the Affordable Care Act that did this.”

Sounds more like “School districts have a variety of options for meeting the requirements that workers’ hours are documented and that everyone who works at least 30 hours per week receives a health insurance plan” to me. Limiting some workers to a maximum of 29 hours per week, which a number of unscrupulous businesses in food service and similar industries have tried to avoid offering health insurance at all, is an option for school districts as well. The vast majority of these employees are already eligible for health insurance under the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, so the situation is very different here. School districts will have to do some more paperwork to be in compliance with the ACA, but if anyone is equipped to deal with paperwork it’s school districts, and the net effect will be that more employees wind up with health insurance. I’m okay with that.

Posted in School days | Tagged Fort Bend ISD, Gayle Fallon, health insurance, HISD, schools, TASB, Texas, Texas AFT | Comments Off

On, Wisconsin

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

From the ACLU of Wisconsin:

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin and the law firm of Mayer Brown filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of four same-sex couples who wish to marry in Wisconsin or are seeking recognition for their legal out-of-state marriages.

The plaintiffs include Roy Badger and Garth Wangemann of Milwaukee, who have been together 37 years. Three years ago Wangemann had much of his right lung removed after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Following the operation, a complication occurred and he was put into a medically induced coma for nearly a month. His progress was uncertain, and Wangemann’s father attempted to override Badger’s power of attorney to have his son taken off life support. Before that could happen, Wangemann recovered.

“What upset me the most was that after all of our time together, our relationship was not fully recognized by my family and there was a real danger that my wish to give Roy the ability to make decisions about my care could be stripped away,” Wangemann said. “Thankfully, our wishes held in this case. But without the protections that come with marriage, the consequences can literally be a matter of life or death.”

Other plaintiffs in the case are Carol Schumacher and Virginia Wolf of Eau Claire; Charvonne Kemp and Marie Carlson of Milwaukee; and Judi Trampf and Katy Heyning of Madison. Read their stories.

Wisconsin’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples prevents them from securing the hundreds of protections that state law provides to married couples. Wisconsin law subjects same-sex couples to an additional harm that is unique among states that deny same-sex couples the freedom to marry. The only way for Wisconsin couples to get the federal protections that come with marriage is for them to go out of state to marry. But Wisconsin law says that may be a crime punishable by nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Among the plaintiff couples, Schumacher and Wolf were legally married in another state, raising the possibility of prosecution back at home. The lawsuit challenges the overall ban as well as the application of this criminal law to same-sex couples who are forced to choose between being denied federal protections and the risk of criminal prosecution.

“These families simply want the security and recognition that only marriage provides,” said Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin. “They have built their lives and raised children here. It is wrong for the state to treat these loving and committed couples as second-class citizens, and it is cruel to place them in a catch-22 where they can’t even travel elsewhere to obtain federal protections without their marriage being labeled a crime.”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. The plaintiffs allege that the state’s constitutional marriage ban sends a message that lesbians, gay men, and their children are viewed as second-class citizens who are undeserving of the legal sanction, respect, protections, and support that heterosexuals and their families are able to enjoy through marriage.

Criminalizing out of state marriages is a nasty little twist. I’m surprised there wasn’t a lawsuit sooner.

Meanwhile, the Virginia case was heard yesterday.

The ban on same-sex marriage is just like an old Virginia law that made interracial marriages illegal, and it’s time for Virginia to stop discriminating against gays and lesbians, a state attorney told a federal judge Tuesday.

But lawyers who support the ban said if the law is to change, it should be done by the legislature. They also argue that there has never been a fundamental right to same-sex marriage.

“We have marriage laws in society because we have children, not because we have adults,” said attorney David Nimocks of the religious group Alliance Defending Freedom.

The case is the first one in the South to reach oral arguments before a federal judge. Recently elected Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring announced Jan. 23 that he would not defend the state in the lawsuit because he believed it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In overturning bans in Utah and Oklahoma, federal judges have also said those laws violate the 14th amendment.

Virginia Solicitor General Stuart Raphael told the judge Virginia had frequently been on the wrong side of history, citing the state’s ban on interracial marriages, its defense of segregation as well as its opposition to allowing female students into the Virginia Military Institute.

Raphael said supporters of the ban have failed to prove how allowing gay marriage would make opposite sex couples less likely to marry.

“That’s the Achilles heel in the argument,” he said.

[…]

U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen said she would rule soon. If Wright Allen finds Virginia’s law unconstitutional, Raphael asked her to issue a stay so that nobody can get married until the case is heard on appeal.

He said the state wanted to avoid the situation Utah found itself in after marriages were briefly allowed to occur there before a stay was issued.

With Herring’s office deciding to side with the plaintiffs, the job of defending the law fell to the legal team of Norfolk’s Circuit Court clerk.

Attorney David Oakley said the court should respect the legislative process that created the law. If the law is to be changed, it should be done through the legislature, he said.

In addition, an attorney for the religious group Alliance Defending Freedom argued on behalf of the Prince William County’s clerk, which was allowed to intervene in the case. The clerk asked to intervene because of worries the attorney general’s office wouldn’t do an adequate job defending the law.

And there was some action in Utah as well.

The state of Utah offered a tailored defense of its ban on same-sex marriage in a brief filed late Monday evening with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing its laws are all about the long-term interests of children.

Utah has chosen a definition of marriage that is “principally a child-centered institution, one focused first and foremost on the welfare of children rather than the emotional interests of adults,” the state said. “And by reinforcing that understanding, the state gently encourages parents to routinely sacrifice their own interests to the legitimate needs and interests of their children.”

That definition is not designed to demean other family structures “any more than giving an ‘A’ to some students demeans others,” the state said.

But redefining marriage in “genderless” terms likely would result in lower reproductive rates and fewer children being raised in the ideal environment provided by biological, opposite-sex parents, the state said.

[…]

Attorneys for the three same-sex couples who are challenging Utah’s ban have until Feb. 25 to file a response, and the state’s final filing must be submitted by March 4.

Oral arguments are scheduled for April 10 in Denver. The three-judge panel that will hear the case — as well as an appeal from the state of Oklahoma involving a similar ban — will be picked 10 days before the hearing.

You can see the full brief here. I’m pretty sure these are the same basic arguments that were made in the Prop 8 case in California. There may be some differences, but I’m not a lawyer so this is just my impression. I am sure we’ll hear more of the same when Texas’ case gets heard.

Posted in National news | Tagged ACLU, DOMA, gay marriage, gay rights, lawsuit, Oklahoma, SCOTUS, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin | Comments Off

Interview with Maxey Scherr

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Maxey Scherr

As previously noted, there’s a huge gaggle of candidates running for Senate this year – eight Republicans, counting incumbent John Cornyn; five Democrats, four (!) independents, three Libertarians, and a Green, who may or may not be in a pear tree. The first Democrat in the race and the subject of today’s interview is Maxey Scherr. Scherr is a Texas Tech graduate and attorney from El Paso. Though this is her first campaign for office, she and her family have long been involved in Democratic politics. Her campaign so far has been as much about Ted Cruz as it has been about John Cornyn, and that was one of many things we discussed.

You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, interviews, Maxey Scherr, Senate, Texas | Comments Off

Pay no attention to Mark Jones

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This is a really bad idea.

I’m the One True Conservative!

At least for the time being, the Republican primary is the decisive election for the governance of Texas.

In contrast, the most pressing issue facing Houston-area Democratic primary voters will be whether they prefer safe mainstream candidates or provocative and potentially damaging outsiders as the party’s long-shot nominees for U.S. senator and agriculture commissioner, and as the Democratic candidate for Harris County district attorney.

Opinion polls reveal that in recent years, a large majority of the Texans who vote in the GOP primary elections are very conservative. At the same time, many of the most conservative advocacy organizations have become increasingly sophisticated in monitoring and evaluating politicians and aggressive in backing candidates they support and in attacking those they oppose. For better or worse, the days of some elected officials being able to successfully maintain separate and distinct Austin and district personas appear to be numbered.

This political context has created strong incentives for GOP candidates to avoid allowing any credible rival to move to their right. In turn, the goal of not being ideologically outflanked often generates a centrifugal force that pulls the candidates further and further to the right. Only in Texas do candidates feel it necessary to vehemently deny claims that they are moderate, pragmatic or reasonable.

The GOP lieutenant governor and attorney general primaries, in which candidates are trying to outflank each other with issues popular with the base GOP constituency such as illegal immigration and abortion, are prime examples of this phenomenon.

For every action, there’s a reaction, and some Texas Republicans are now trying to pull the party back to the center-right. These pragmatic center-right conservatives view their “movement” conservative brethren, commonly called the tea party, as excessively ideological and obstructionist. They fear the latter’s rhetoric and actions jeopardize the state’s continued economic success as well as the Republican Party’s long-term dominance in the Lone Star State.

[…]

Texans who wish to take a side in this GOP civil war, or who simply want to have a greater say in the direction of public policy in Texas during the latter half of the decade, should seriously consider participating by voting early, by mail or on Election Day in the March 4 and May 27 (runoff) Republican primaries.

In the competitive statewide races, including those for lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and agriculture commissioner, there exist notable differences among the candidates in terms of their ideological position, policy profile and vision for the future of the Texas GOP. Similar differences exist in a myriad of contests at the legislative district and local levels. Of course, in many races, to uncover these differences, you have to wipe away the near-identical “strong conservative” body paint the candidates have covered themselves with. But once you review each candidate’s record, the individuals and groups supporting them and their platform, you will find in most instances that they are not all peas from the same pod.

Where to even begin with this?

1. To say that “some Texas Republicans are now trying to pull the party back to the center-right” is a giant copout. Who are they, what are they doing, and what influence do they have? The fact that Jones doesn’t cite even a single name or organization is telling. Sure, there is some pushback going on in some local races – see, for example, the primary challenge to first term teabagger extraordinaire Rep. Jonathan Stickland in HD92, or the fight for Harris County GOP Chair – but if there’s something like this happening at the statewide level, it’s not apparent to me.

2. I’ll stipulate that there are candidates for Lite Guv and Attorney General – one in each race – that have a track record of mostly pragmatic, non-crazy governance. Both of them are running as fast as they can away from those records, since they correctly recognize that their records are obstacles to overcome in their current races. Note also that Jones did not name the candidates he had in mind. I’ll venture a guess that one reason he didn’t name names is because he knows what would happen if he did: Every other candidate in those races would pounce on his proclamation that so-and-so is secretly a moderate and would govern as one if elected, and the candidates themselves would then be forced to respond by making statements along the lines of “I am not a moderate! I eat moderates for breakfast and gnaw on their bones for a late night snack!” As for the Comptroller’s race, I have no idea who he thinks the undercover moderate is. The three main contenders are a Senator best known for sponsoring the draconian anti-abortion bill HB2, a member of the House that Jones’ own metrics identified as one of the more conservative members last session, and a gadfly whose main claim to fame is running to the right of Rick Perry in the 2010 GOP primary for Governor. Boy, I can just feel the center-right goodness emanating from these races.

3. Believing that a candidate with a moderate/pragmatic/non-crazy past record but who is campaigning for another office as a fire-breathing Cruz-worshipping One True Conservative will revert back to his old ways once elected is just breathtakingly naive on its face. Perhaps Mark Jones also believed that Mitt Romney would have acted as if he were back to being Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney if he had been elected President. Here’s the thing: Voters don’t actually like it when a candidate they’ve elected who promised to do certain things then goes and does the exact opposite of what they said they’d do while campaigning. Just as legislators can’t pretend to be one thing in Austin and another in their home district, candidates can’t pretend to be one thing on the trail and another at the Capitol. We have the Internet now. It’s impossible to maintain two personas any more. Maybe that’s a bad thing, but as Mark Jones himself noted, it is how it is these days.

4. But let’s take Mark Jones at his word for a moment that we Democrats who foolishly think we have our own candidates to choose should go ahead and support the Secretly Moderate and Pragmatic Republicans in the Lite Guv and AG races. How do you think these candidates will react if we help propel them to victory? Will they react by saying “Boy, I sure am glad all these voters saw through my charade of being a raving loony conservative so I can go back to being the moderate pragmatic that I’ve spent the past six to twelve months vehemently denying that I am”? Or will they react by saying “I thank all those voters who recognized me as the One True Conservative in this race, and I will reward your faith in me by governing as the One True Conservative I have promised to be for you”? When one is rewarded for a certain type of behavior, one tends to continue behaving in that fashion. I don’t know about Mark Jones, but if I were to catch my dog pissing on the rug, I’d yell at him to stop doing that right now. I wouldn’t go and give him a Milk Bone on the theory that he’d always been a well-behaved dog up till now and I’m sure he intends to going back to being a good dog again once he’s finished proving his canine bona fides to the cat.

5. Finally, we Democrats do have important decisions to make in our own primary. Wendy Davis does have an opponent, after all. Whoever we nominate for US Senate will be a massive underdog, but taking our eye off the ball and letting Kesha Rogers even slip into a runoff would be a disaster of Biblical proportions, one that really would do damage to Wendy Davis’ campaign. The Ag Commissioner race does matter, and Dems have a choice between two very different candidates, each with a plausible case to make for their candidacy. (I’m ignoring Jim Hogan, who doesn’t appear to be campaigning.) The Railroad Commissioner race matters. Locally, not everyone is in SD15, but you’d better believe that race is a big deal. We have to decide who we want to run against County Clerk Stan Stanart, and anyone who follows elections closely knows how important that is. And of course, unless we want to concede the DA race to Devon Anderson, it’s vitally important that everyone with any inclination to vote Democratic get out there and support Kim Ogg. If you want to vote in the GOP primary, Mark Jones, knock yourself out. Beyond that, please keep your brilliant ideas about how the rest of us should vote to yourself.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Attorney General, Comptroller, Democratic primary, District Attorney, Election 2014, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, HD92, Jonathan Stickland, Kim Ogg, Lite Gov, primaries, Republican Party, SD15, Senate, Stan Stanart, Texas, The Lege | 5 Comments

EPA and TCEQ settle lawsuits over flex permits

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

One less court fight for us and the feds.

The EPA and Texas on Wednesday said they have reached a deal over state permits for industrial air pollution, ending a four-year fight that to some had become a symbol of regulatory overreach by the federal government.

The agreement comes after the federal agency initially rejected Texas’ permitting system, which allows some operating flexibility to oil refiners, chemical makers and others to meet emissions limits.

Despite the EPA’s earlier reservations, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s permit system appears largely unchanged – leaving environmentalists disappointed.

Ilan Levin, an Austin-based attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, said the system has the same potential loopholes as before. “The flexible permit program has a long history of abuse, and a lot of the damage is already done,” he said.

But Bryan Shaw, the TCEQ’s chairman, said the agreement shows that the federal government “now understands why the program is legal and effective.”

The EPA invalidated the flex permit system in 2010, and later that year threatened crackdowns on plants that didn’t meet federal standard. All of the flex-permitted plants agreed to abide by federal standards in 2011, but in 2012 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals – yes, them again – ruled that the EPA had overstepped its authority. The EPA chose not to appeal that ruing, and this settlement is the conclusion of that litigation. The Sierra Club statement on this agreement sums it all up nicely.

“The history of TCEQ’s flexible permitting program in Texas has been almost 20 years of confusion and litigation. As TCEQ itself has acknowledged, every single former holder of flexible permits has now received new standard permits, without a single plant closure or loss of a single Texas job, contrary to the heated rhetoric we got from Chairman Shaw and Governor Perry several years ago.

“Moving forward, if TCEQ stays true to the wording of the new program and only issues flexible permits to truly minor facilities, we don’t foresee major problems.

“However, if our large refineries and chemical plants once again try to hide their emissions with unenforceable flexible permits, we’ll have another 20 years of confusion and litigation.”

Scheleen Walker
Director, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter

The details always matter. Having the right people at the TCEQ, people who will care about those details, matters as well. TCEQ members are appointed by the Governor. Consider that yet another reason to vote for Wendy Davis this November.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged air quality, Clean Air Act, Election 2014, Environmental Protection Agency, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Governor, lawsuit, pollution, Rick Perry, TCEQ, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

The historic Astrodome

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure what effect this will have.

Not historic but still standing

The National Park Service has added the Astrodome, the world’s first domed stadium, to the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for tax breaks to aid in its rehabilitation but offering no real protection from the wrecking ball.

Historical preservationists, who successfully pushed for the Dome’s inclusion on the National Register, pledged Friday to continue their battle to save the Houston icon by asking the state to declare it an antiquities landmark – a designation that could limit Harris County’s power to alter or demolish the 49-year-old structure without a permit from the Texas Historical Commission.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett responded through a spokesman that he would “oppose anything that would tie the hands of officials elected by Harris County taxpayers, who own the Dome.”

The National Register’s decision Thursday to add the Astrodome, which opened in 1965, makes it eligible for inclusion on the state list. The historical commission normally takes six months to rule on such nominations, but once the process starts, a site is protected until a decision is reached. In recent years, said Gregory Smith, the agency’s national register coordinator, commissioners annually have granted fewer than six landmark designations to buildings.

[…]

Nominating the Astrodome for the national register were Cynthia Neely, owner of Black Gold Productions, a Houston film company, and Ted Powell, a LaPorte retired chemical engineer who led the fight to save and restore the Hurricane Ike-damaged Sylvan Beach pavilion.

Through the efforts of Friends of Sylvan Beach Park & Pavilion, the 1950s-era building was saved from demolition and restored in a $4.9 million project funded largely by federal hurricane recovery funds.

Neely and Powell confirmed Friday that they plan to push for the protective antiquities landmark designation.

The issue as always is whether someone – Harris County or a private investor – is willing to put up the money to Do Something with the Dome. Being added to the Register makes the Dome eligible for various tax breaks, but I don’t know how much effect, if any, that may have on the financial calculations for this. I suppose designating the Dome as a nationally historic structure might add to the pressure to not demolish it, but that doesn’t move it forward otherwise. But hey, every little bit helps.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Astrodome, Cynthia Neely, Ed Emmett, Harris County, Houston, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, preservation, Ted Powell, Texas Historical Commission | 1 Comment

Interview with Mike Fjetland

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Michael Fjetland

As the Trib recently noted, there are twenty-one candidates for US Senate this year in Texas – eight Republicans, counting incumbent John Cornyn; five Democrats, four (!) independents, three Libertarians, and a Green, who may or may not be in a pear tree. We’re interested in the Democratic hopefuls here, and I’ll have interviews with two of them this week. First up is Mike Fjetland, a business man, attorney, and international relations expert. Fjetland is the most experienced candidate among the Democrats, having run multiple campaigns against Tom DeLay in CD22, in the Republican primary and as an independent. We covered a lot of ground in the interview:

You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, interviews, Mike Fjetland, Senate, Texas | 3 Comments

How extreme is too extreme?

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The GOP candidates for Lite Guv are doing their best to test the hypothesis that having an R next to your name is all you need to get elected statewide in Texas, regardless of your stated positions on issues.

Lord Voldemort approves this message

The Republican candidates for lieutenant governor do not seem worried about Democratic challengers and independent voters, or particularly concerned about whether their public conversations and debates fuel the Democrats’ election-year motif of a war on women.

If they were, they would not be talking like this. You would not have seen what you saw during the debate early this week as they all raced to the conservative end of the pool, hoping to win the hearts of the Republican voters they will face in the primary election in March.

Instead, you would have seen a quartet of Republicans trying to win a primary without blowing their chances of winning over the more moderate voters who will come out in November.

If this election goes the way of other recent Republican primaries, the candidates’ first encounter will be with a small and conservative bunch. Fewer than two of every 25 Texans will be voting in the primary. General elections draw larger turnouts with different voters. The Democrats will be there, of course, along with political moderates, independents and the sometimes-engaged voters who might be drawn out by a noisy race for governor.

Judging from their responses, the Republican candidates are thinking about the first cohort and not the second. All believe, with varied degrees of enthusiasm, that creationism should be taught in public schools. All four, talking about a recent case in Fort Worth that got national attention, said state law should be rewritten to override a family’s desire to remove life support from a clinically dead woman until her child can be delivered. And each underscored his position on the issues by saying that abortions should not be allowed except when the life of the mother is in danger; that is a break from a more conventional Republican position that would allow exceptions in cases of rape and incest.

Indeed, an earlier Trib story showed just how out of touch these positions on abortion are with even their own voters.

Though it’s hard to envision given the tone of the Texas Republican Party’s primary contests so far, the GOP candidates for lieutenant governor lurched even farther right in Monday night’s debate in their collective rejection of access to abortion in instances of rape.

While defenders of abortion rights might be tempted to dismiss the candidates’ support for childbirth after rape as another sign of alleged misogyny in the Texas GOP, a plurality of Republicans surveyed in the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll have consistently supported permitting abortion in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s life — 41 percent in the October 2013 poll, and this after a summer of highly partisan public conflict over abortion legislation.

In that same survey, only 16 percent of Republicans (compared with 12 percent of Texans overall) said that abortion should never be permitted. This was on the low end of the typical GOP embrace of the prohibitionist position, which has fluctuated between 14 and 27 percent over the life of the poll, with the usual reading in the low 20s.

Allowing abortion only in the case of rape, incest or threat to the woman’s life has consistently been the most common GOP position, typically supported by just over 40 percent of Republicans. Support for the most permissive position on abortion was 19 percent among Republican voters in the October 2013 poll, also in a range consistent with previous results.

Overall, 78 percent of Texas Republicans believed that there were some situations in which abortion should be accessible. Each and every candidate dismissed even the most restrictive version of this position in Monday night’s debate. (Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst seemed to suggest he would have concerns about the life of the mother if she were his wife in such a situation, though he was unclear how these feelings translate into his policy position.)

The belief that pregnant rape victims should be required to bring their pregnancies to term, evident on the debate stage, seems to be more about positioning in the Republican primary than a careful reading of public opinion. And while the Tea Party remains the easy scapegoat for the GOP’s rightward push, in this case at least, our polling shows that only 13 percent of Tea Party Republicans support a complete prohibition on the procedure.

They’re pandering to a minority of a minority within their own party. I only wish someone had asked them during the debate if they’d support the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and women who receive them. I mean, if it’s murder and all, why wouldn’t they? Clearly, there’s still space for them to move further to the right on this.

The bigger question is whether November voters are paying attention. The Observer has video of the debate in case you have the stomach for it. Jacquielynn Floyd was watching.

Monday’s televised four-candidate debate — which I bravely tied myself to a chair to watch in its entirety — seemed less like a political forum than a tribal pageant to be crowned the Truest Conservative in All the Land.

Voters hoping to be illuminated on the issues facing Texas were surely disappointed in what they got from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and his three GOP challengers: Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and state Sen. Dan Patrick.

Their joint performance brought to mind a flock of talking myna birds — or perhaps a single monster parrot with four heads — that kept shouting out the same disjointed phrases: “Conservative leader!” “Secure the border!” “Protect life!”

All four of these candidates voiced wholehearted agreement that the corpse of a legally dead pregnant woman, Marlise Muñoz, should have been forced to continue incubating a malformed fetus — despite her own stated wishes, the pleas of her family and ultimately the decision of a state district court judge.

Each in turn agreed that creationism, an anti-science, biblical literalist explanation for the origin of life, should be routine curriculum for all Texas students — even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching it in public schools violates the Constitution.

They declared in perfect four-part harmony that rape victims or girls molested by their own fathers should be forced to carry pregnancies to term.

They spoke darkly about the dire threat posed by alien hordes pouring across our undefended border — and they didn’t mean Canadians.

To a lot of people, this all transcends so-called extremism. It’s crazy talk.

Funny how respect for the Constitution only extends to things they agree with, isn’t it? Lisa Falkenberg was also watching.

As I watched that debate among four Republican lieutenant governor candidates earlier this week, I couldn’t help but wonder: How on Earth did we get here? And at this rate, where in the hell are we going?

Actually, the first question isn’t a mystery. We’re here because relatively few Texans vote, thereby surrendering the political fate of our great state to the whim of Republican primary voters who make up only 5 to 7 percent of the voting-age population.

The farther right that sliver of the electorate slides, the farther out to la-la land the candidates have to go to reach them. So you get what we had in Dallas the other night.

The candidates – Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, state Sen. Dan Patrick, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, all but the last from Houston – provided political theater at its best, policy at its worst. They seem to operate in a kind of alternate universe where pragmatism is a sin, moderation is a slur and the word “conservative,” which used to stand for fiscal responsibility, personal freedom and limited government, is farce.

It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Take the horrifying case of Erick Muñoz, the anguished father and husband who had to fight a Fort Worth hospital in court after it refused to remove his 14-week-pregnant, brain-dead wife from machines that kept her lungs and heart going.

The hospital cited a state law that denies life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient; the husband cited his wife’s wishes never to be kept breathing by machines.

The fetus itself had been deprived of oxygen after the mother’s collapse and family attorneys said the child suffered severe deformities, fluid on the brain and possible heart problems. So-called pro-lifers talk about fetal pain. This seemed more like fetal torture. It compounded the agony of Muñoz, his toddler son, and the rest of the family. That agony went on for two months before a mercifully sane judge finally ended it this week, ruling what had been obvious to many from the beginning: Marlise Muñoz was already dead.

That fact didn’t seem to matter to the Texas lieutenant governor candidates. Only Patterson even acknowledged it. Everybody seemed to agree the judge erred and the fetus should have been kept alive at all costs.

“If I had been in that judge’s shoes, I would have ruled differently,” Dewhurst said. Thank the Lord he wasn’t.

But he could be re-elected Lt. Governor, and if he’s not it will be at least in part because these extreme voters he’s desperately trying to please didn’t think he was extreme enough. The Texas Democratic Party cheekily congratulated Sen. Leticia Van de Putte for winning the debate by virtue of not being one of the crazy people on stage, but she can’t win if people don’t pay attention. Sen. Van de Putte won’t drive us into the ditch like these guys are promising to do. We need to do our part.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged abortion, creationism, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Election 2014, Jerry Patterson, Leticia Van De Putte, Lite Gov, polls, rape, Texas, Todd Staples | Comments Off

Get ready for the taxis and Uber debate

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s the first challenge for the new Council.

City officials, armed with a new study showing weaknesses in the local system, are inching toward regulatory changes that would open Houston’s cab industry to new players, such as Uber, which enables customers to schedule trips with a smartphone application, bypassing much of a traditional taxi company’s bureaucracy.

Such companies can’t operate now under city codes, which are focused on making sure limos and private cars do not directly compete with cabs.

“We need a pretty comprehensive restructuring of our taxicab regulations to get in line with what’s the city’s role in making sure passengers have the safest and best choice available to them,” said Chris Newport, spokesman for the Houston Administration & Regulatory Affairs Department.

The city-commissioned study, by the Tennessee Transportation and Logistics Foundation’s director, Ray Mundy, suggests Houston serves certain ride-seekers well. Getting a ride to and from the city’s airports, for example, is easy.

What’s unclear is the city’s ability to handle more intercity routes because many cabs rely solely on taxi stands and major trips. Further, the study found some Houstonians have a negative impression of cab rides because of poor service by drivers. Many riders also find the litany of cab colors and company names confusing.

[…]

City staff, based on the report, recommended elimination of a $70 base fare on all private trips and a requirement that trips must be arranged 30 minutes prior to departure.

To pave the way for companies like Uber while ensuring safe trips, Houston officials would also establish insurance liability requirements for dispatch companies that cover the drivers. Drivers in the company’s Uber Black service would be independent contractors, not employed by Uber, but part of a partnership with the company that connects them with interested riders.

Under the city staff recommendations, the insurance would apply whether the car was carrying a customer or en route to pick one up. The insurance coverage could potentially be extended to all times the vehicle is in use, according to a city memo issued Friday.

Here’s the memo to the Mayor’s office from Tina Paez, the Director of Administration & Regulatory Affairs, with a review of the study and the recommendations for Council. A brief glimpse, from the Conclusions section:

The City of Houston has an interest in strictly regulating the taxi industry because it serves a vital public interest and ordinary market forces have proven themselves incapable of delivering reliable service at reasonable prices in the absence of regulation. This framework is supported by theory, empirical fact, and both local and State law.

We recommend moving forward with a phased approach to amending the vehicle-for-hire ordinance to address new entrants and technologies in the market, as well as address the taxicab issues identified in the taxicab study. Addressing the taxicab issues will involve major changes to the existing regulatory structure; thus, we recommend the taxicab changes to the ordinance occur in the second phase of the Chapter 46 amendments, after substantial stakeholder input is solicited and incorporated.

In the interest of public safety, the new entrants and emerging technologies can and should be addressed in the shorter term, in Phase I of the Chapter 46 amendments. In this phase we can expand the existing mobile dispatch provisions in our ordinance to ensure public safety standards are explicitly outlined, and we can update those provisions in the ordinance that may have become outdated due to the emerging technologies – such as the 30-minute reservation requirement for a limousine trip. With the advent of smartphone applications that can dispatch vehicles-for-hire at the press of a button, a 30-minute waiting period is no longer reasonable. Several regulatory authorities around the country have reconsidered this requirement and have replaced it with a definition for “prearranged” that instead speaks to the intent of the passenger, i.e. in order for the passenger to request a ride he/she must download the application and agree to the service agreement with the transportation provider, including providing a credit card. This shows clear intent by the passenger to prearrange a trip. Further, these trips cannot be hailed. All passenger information must be provided in advance.

Emphasis in the original. The memo goes on to identify Uber and Lyft as the main firms poised to enter the Houston market and the changes they say they need to be made. I’ve done a bit of blogging about Uber before, and I continue to believe there’s room in the market for companies like them and the existing cab industry. I think they’re coming whether we or the cab companies like it or not, and I’d rather the city took the approach of adjusting its existing regulatory structure in a way that everyone can at least live with rather than do nothing and wait for someone to file a lawsuit or for the newcomers to enter the market as rogues. As it happens, a couple of weeks ago I was having lunch in the tunnels downtown and I ran into Joshua Sanders having a meeting with representatives from Lyft, who were preparing to make their initial pitch to Council. Like I said, it’s coming.

I believe that if done well, the potential is there for the car-for-hire industry in Houston to expand and serve a larger audience with better service and a broader array of options. Frankly, if this happens it will be a boon for those who advocate for more density and a less car-centric culture in at least the inner-urban parts of Houston. It’s a lot easier to go carless or be a one-car household if you know there’s a convenient and affordable ride readily available when you need it. Having said all this, while there’s a lot of justified focus on the customer experience here, we need to keep in mind the needs of the drivers, especially those that will be serving as “independent operators” and thus will have less clout than full-time employees of a company would have. The Roosevelt Institute has some well-timed thoughts on this subject, which I would encourage Council members to read. Let’s make sure everybody’s interests are being represented and considered as we go forward with this.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Department of Administration and Regulatory Affairs, Houston, Houston City Council, limousines, Lyft, taxis, Uber | 9 Comments

HISD schools searching for new nicknames

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck to them.

The process of determining new school nicknames – a task that elicits passion from generations and has triggered countless “Are you serious” suggestions and even more heartfelt recommendations – is underway at four Houston ISD campuses.

Lamar and Westbury high schools and Hamilton and Welch middle schools had their previous nicknames banned by the HISD board earlier this month, and they are expected to finalize new nicknames by March.

“We’ve already talked with the student council and the students, and they’re very serious about this,” said Lamar Principal James McSwain, who has been flooded by suggestions for the new nickname. “They understand that we were the Redskins for 76 years, and at the end of 76 years, people feel very passionately.

“What you want is – after 76 more years – people to feel as passionately about the mascot that you choose as the one that we had.”

As you know, I’ve been following this issue closely. Some people are unhappy that HISD instituted this policy, and some people will be unhappy with the new names and mascots that get chosen. That’s life, and it won’t be long till it’s all forgotten. This was the right thing for HISD to do, and I hope the students and alumni of these schools view it as an opportunity.

On a related note, I commend you to read this fascinating story of the history of the Washington NFL team’s nickname, and the ongoing fight to get them to change it. One tidbit from the story stood out to me:

Students, parents, and Native Americans alike successfully argued for name changes in school districts and states across the country. A number of state boards of education have conducted a system-wide reviews of every Native American mascot in use in their schools. Miami University in Ohio, named after the Miami tribe, changed its name from Redskins to Redhawks in 1997. High schools across the country made similar changes, dumping “Redskins” and other names in favor of new monikers. In 2005, the NCAA passed a bylaw prohibiting schools from wearing any logo it deemed “hostile” or “abusive” toward Native Americans on uniforms during postseason play. Schools with such mascots wouldn’t be allowed to bring them to postseason games. As a result, the University of Illinois, with much consternation, dropped its iconic Chief Illiniwek mascot, who for years performed faux-Native dances at basketball and football games. Other schools followed.

In 1970, more than 3,000 high school, college, and professional sports teams had Native American nicknames or mascots. Today, fewer than 1,000 remain.

That’s a lot of progress in the last 40-some years. Still a ways to go, but substantial progress. I wouldn’t want to be the last school or the last school district to sport one of these offensive nicknames or mascots. Deal with it now and let someone else earn that dubious honor.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged high school, HISD, Houston, Lamar High School, NCAA | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for February 2

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

We’re not reading as much as we used to, but there are some promising signs.

“So why aren’t these CEOs clamoring for economic policies that might actually address this?” I’ll give you three guesses.

From the couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy department.

On the reboot of the Carl Sagan TV show Cosmos, now with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Would this mean that all currently married couples in Oklahoma would need to get a divorce?

There’s no such thing as unanimous acclaim. Whatever it is, someone somewhere won’t like it.

“How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages”.

Meet Ceres, the last frontier of our solar system.

RIP, Morrie Turner, creator of the Wee Pals comic strip and the first nationally syndicated African-American comic strip artist.

“See, the more black people a place has, the more divided it tends to be along racial and economic lines. The more divided it is, the more sprawl there is. And the more sprawl there is, the less higher-income people are willing to invest in things like public transit.”

Amazon’s production of a Harry Bosch TV show would be enough to get me to subscribe to their streaming service.

RIP, Luis Avalos, best known (by me, anyway) for his role on The Electric Company.

Greta Susteren thinks Erick Erickson is a jerk. Right-thinking people everywhere say “Duh!” Erickson then goes on the prove her point, as if we needed further evidence.

“You might think that a bar fight is most commonly started between two guys fighting over a woman. That’s not so, at least not in my experience. Ejection seems to be a more precipitating event.”

RIP, Pete Seeger, legendary folk singer.

Good move, MLB. Pitchers could use a little protection out there.

The folks at NOM don’t much like heterosexual marriage, either.

The bat shard that Roger Clemens threw at Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series is now up for auction. In case you were looking a present for that special someone.

“It’s time to recognize that income inequality is a sustainability issue, too.”

“It’s like an episode of The Goldbergs, but with less Jeff Garlin screaming in his underwear and more references to technologies and hairstyles gone by.”

Maybe milk isn’t as good for you as the dairy industry would like you to believe.

“Allowing a woman’s boss to call the shots about her access to birth control should be inconceivable to all Americans in this day and age, and takes us back to a place in history when women had no voice or choice.”

“Post offices could deliver [simple financial] services at a 90 percent discount, saving the average underserved household over $2,000 a year and still providing the USPS with $8.9 billion in new annual profits, significantly improving its troubled balance sheet.”

RIP, Don Luis Cruz, known in Houston as the “Violin Man”.

Darryl Strawberry is making sense.

“Medicare Payments for Vacuum Erection Systems Are More Than Twice As Much As the Amounts Paid For the Same or Similar Devices By Non-Medicare Payers.” I dare you not to click on that.

The ten worst Super Bowl halftime shows. Hard to argue with any of them.

Maybe we should just create one Super Bowl city and be done with it.

It’s generally better to help one’s constituents than to use them as political props.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

The coverage gap

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

As you may know, the intent of the Affordable Care Act was to get people below a certain income level onto Medicaid, with people at or above that income level receiving subsidized health insurance via the exchanges. Unfortunately, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion mandate was unconstitutional, it meant that in states that refused to expand Medicaid people who fell below that income level but above the income level for Medicaid eligibility as things were would be left out of coverage – too poor to receive insurance subsidies, not poor enough for Medicaid. More than one million Texas adults fall into that coverage gap. Here’s a story about one of them.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Damaged discs in Irma Aguilar’s neck make it hard to raise her arms, something she must do repeatedly when stacking boxes at the pizza restaurant where she earns $9 an hour as an assistant manager.

Sometimes, her untreated high blood pressure makes her so dizzy she has to grab onto something to prevent a fall.

And she struggles with anxiety, a heart-pounding fear that can strike at any time, but especially at night, when she lies in bed and wonders how she’s going to make ends meet.

Without insurance, she worries about how she will find the money to treat her health problems, which threaten her livelihood and the well-being of her family.

[…]

Aguilar’s four children are covered by Medicaid, which provides free or reduced-cost health care. But Aguilar makes too much money – $19,200 a year – to qualify. Texas’ Medicaid eligibility requirements are among the tightest in the nation, and Aguilar has to be nearly destitute to meet them – making no more than $4,200 a year as head of a family of five.

Emphasis mine. What that means is that if you make more than two dollars an hour working fulltime, you make too much money as the head of a family of five to qualify for Medicaid in Texas. Think about that for a minute.

Still left out of Medicaid, Aguilar hoped to get insurance under the ACA, but to qualify for a tax credit to help her pay for it, she would need to earn more than she does – at least $27,570 a year. Only those earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level are eligible for the subsidies. Aguilar is at 70 percent.

This puts her in the gap, with neither Medicaid nor affordable health insurance.

If she could get a subsidy, Aguilar would have shelled out about $46 a month for a midlevel health plan. Without one, the cost would have zoomed to more than $200 a month, a price that puts health insurance out of her reach.

“I have to scrape by as it is,” Aguilar said. “By the time I pay rent, lights and water, there’s not much left over. Sometimes, I don’t eat so my kids can eat.”

[…]

As Texas rejected the extra Medicaid money, state lawmakers committed more resources to health care in the past session, said Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The Legislature set aside $100 million in added money for primary care services for women and an additional $332 million for mental health services, she wrote in an email.

“We’ve also developed a strong network of health centers across the state that provides low-income citizens with access to both preventive care and treatment for medical issues,” she said.

Such clinics depend on a mix of revenue – Medicaid, private insurance and patient fees – to enable them to provide care to those who lack insurance.

But those front-line providers don’t have enough money and resources to care for all the uninsured, including those in the coverage gap, said José Camacho, head of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers.

Nor can health centers provide a broad range of services, making them a too-porous safety net, others say.

“They’re no substitute for not having coverage,” said Anne Dunkelberg, a policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans. “They can’t provide specialty treatment or trauma care. If you’ve been hurt in a car wreck or have a broken bone or cancer, if you need a CT scan, you’re going to be out of luck. Health centers are wonderful for primary care, but they’re not a substitute for comprehensive care.”

Ms. Aguilar has chronic conditions, as noted above, so these health centers likely wouldn’t be of much good to her anyway, assuming she could afford their fees. Even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to afford any medications they might prescribe. So she’s pretty much SOL. I personally think that Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ted Cruz, and everyone else responsible for Texas’ horrible lack of health insurance for so many of its residents should be made to personally explain to Ms. Aguilar and her kids why they don’t want her to be able to get health care. Not that I think it would have any effect on them, but maybe if they had to explain it to all one million plus Texans that they have excluded from coverage it might eventually wear them down.

I do know one way that Ms. Aguilar and the million others like her could get helped, and that’s by electing Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte this November. No guarantee that they’d be able to overcome legislative resistance, of course, but there was some sentiment for expansion in 2011, and at least they wouldn’t be adding to that resistance. And if the Lege still can’t stand the idea of expanding Medicaid, there’s another way they could help Ms. Aguilar and many others like her: Raise the minimum wage. If Ms. Aguilar earned a bit more than $13 an hour, then her fulltime salary would make it to that magic $27,500 level – which is to say, exactly at the federally defined poverty line – and she’d qualify for insurance subsidies on the exchange. Either way would be fine by me.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged CPPP, health care, health insurance, HHSC, insurance exchanges, Medicaid, minimum wage, poverty, Rick Perry, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

More on TxDOT and high speed rail

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

First come the studies and the public hearings. Then we wait and see what happens.

What a weird map of Texas

The Texas Transportation Commission is expected to vote Thursday at its monthly meeting on the creation of a high-speed rail commission focused on the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Separately, TxDOT is holding a series of public meetings around Texas and Oklahoma, starting this week, to hear comments on a study looking at the feasibility of high-speed rail projects between Oklahoma City and South Texas.

Texas Transportation Commissioner Victor Vandergriff stressed that the two initiatives should not be interpreted as a decision by TxDOT to develop any high-speed rail projects in Texas.

“We have not yet discussed a broader charge with respect to transportation policy and funding,” Vandergriff said Friday in Dallas at the Southwestern Rail Conference, which was hosted by Texas Rail Advocates. “The Legislature sets our course for that.”

The new high-speed rail commission will advise state transportation officials on “the development of intercity rail corridors, new transportation policies, and funding and procurement strategies as they relate to the implementation of proposed high-speed rail connecting the Dallas and Fort Worth areas,” according to TxDOT’s agenda for the meeting.

“It is a limited purpose and scope assignment,” Vandergriff said. “It is not an indication that there is any funding for high-speed rail.”

[…]

TxDOT launched its Texas-Oklahoma Passenger Rail Study last year to take a wide-angle look at the impact of potential rail service projects between Oklahoma City and the Texas-Mexico border. This month, TxDOT officials announced plans to expand the scope of the study south, to Monterrey, Mexico, to account for interest in building a high-speed rail line between Monterrey and San Antonio.

See here and here for the most recent entries in this saga. The schedule for TxDOT’s public meetings on the Texas-Oklahoma prject is here. As for the Houston-Dallas privately funded project, Chron transportation reporter Dug Begley has more on what they’re saying. Texas Central High-Speed Railway is expected to file some federal documents in April that will tell us more about their plans, including their preferred route. I’ll be keeping an eye out for that.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Dallas, high speed rail, Houston, Monterrey, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Texas, Texas Central High-Speed Railway, TxDOT | 1 Comment

Too old for death

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Fascinating story about Texas’ oldest inmate on death row. He’s been there for 36 years.

Two weeks after he turned 40, Jack Harry Smith showed no signs of letting middle age slow him down. So on the first Saturday in January, he put on a ski mask, grabbed his pistol and a buddy, and went charging into a Pasadena convenience store.

As career criminals go, Smith never had been newsworthy nor successful. That changed by the time he ran out the front door of Corky’s Corner, and it wasn’t because of the small sack of cash in his hand.

Behind him lay the body of Roy Deputter, the store’s bookkeeper who lived in a trailer behind the store and had rushed inside with a gun when he heard the commotion. Before him loomed capital murder charges.

Smith’s lawyer says his client recalls little of the event. Prosecutors and lawmen typically are skeptical of convenient memory loss, but there’s a good chance he is telling the truth. On the day that Smith earned his ticket to death row, Jimmy Carter was threatening to slap a tariff on imported steel, Egypt and Israel were closing in on a historic peace accord, and the Dallas Cowboys were on the verge of their second Super Bowl title.

Which is another way of saying that Smith is old. By the standards of Texas’ death row, in fact, he is ancient. No one lasts that long in the nation’s most aggressive capital punishment state, certainly not a three-time loser who has spent most of his life behind bars. This isn’t California, which sends many people to death row but rarely executes them. The only inmates to escape the death chamber are those spared by appeals courts or those so mentally ill they are not competent for execution. And there are but a handful of those.

Smith is not one of them, and by rights he should not be alive. Yet he has beaten the odds and lingered on since 1978 – through six presidential administrations, countless Middle East negotiations and too many Super Bowls to remember. Tragedy has stalked his case for years and put his appeal on hold again and again. Now he is 76 and there’s no end in sight, at least not one imposed by the courts.

By “tragedy”, they mean that the original judge in the case and two of Smith’s lawyers died while his appeals were in process. That all helped delay the process, in addition to the usual slow pace of the system; the average inmate spends a bit more than ten years on death row before the sentence is carried out. At this point, the Attorney General’s office is officially pursuing matters, though the Harris County DA’s office could still be involved. Smith’s co-defendant was paroled a decade ago, and if his death sentence were to be commuted, he’d be paroled as well, though he has no family left and thus has no one to go home to. It’s hard to see what would be gained by continuing all the legal machinations. The best resolution, for some value of “best”, anyway, is probably to leave things as they are and let nature take its course.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Attorney General, death penalty, Harris County, Jack Harry Smith, parole, Texas | Comments Off

Endorsement watch: Fitzsimons for Ag Commissioner

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron recommends Hugh Fitzsimons as the best choice for Ag Commissioner in the Democratic primary.

Hugh Fitzsimons

A 59-year-old San Antonio native and third-generation rancher, Fitzsimons produces honey and raises grass-fed organic bison on his ranch in Dimmit County. One of the top reasons he’s running for office, though, is water.

Before running for agriculture commissioner’s four-year term, Fitzsimons served on the Wintergarden Water Conservation District. That experience becomes apparent when he discusses ways for Texans to conserve water, balancing the needs of cities, farmers and fracking.

As part of a solution, he says he’ll work to promote water recycling in the fracking process and irrigation systems that prevent evaporation.

He is also the only Democrat to receive the endorsement of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a national organization dedicated to supporting independent family farmers.

And while many other candidates speak only in hyperbole about immigration, Fitzsimons speaks with compassion. Instead of horror stories about death along the border, he talks about the time he kayaked down the Rio Grande.

If you care about the future of the Texas Democratic Party, vote for Fitzsimons. If you’re tempted to vote for Kinky, make a donation to the Drug Policy Alliance instead.

The Chron also endorsed Eric Opiela on the Republican side, with a kudo for J. Allen Carnes and a brickbat for former Rep. Sid Miller. They wrote about twice as much for the Dem primary endorsement, beginning with two paragraphs of potshots at Kinky Friedman and his pro-pot campaign. Their objection was more about Kinky and his past history of being more showman than statesman in his campaigns, which I can certainly understand, than it was about marijuana policy. I’ve got interviews with Kinky and Fitzsimons set to run next week, and I’ll have more to say about this primary in a future post. On the merits, this is an unassailable recommendation, and if you aren’t acquainted with Hugh Fitzsimons yet, you really should get to know him.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Democratic primary, Election 2014, endorsements, Eric Opiela, Hugh Fitzsimons, J. Allen Carnes, Kinky Friedman, marijuana, Sid Miller, Texas | 1 Comment

Saturday video break: Everyone’s a Captain Kirk

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

How is it that I’d never actually seen the video for “99 Red Balloons” before?

One of life’s little mysteries, I suppose. And may I just say…leather pants. God, I miss the 80s sometimes.

I also got to wondering if there were any decent cover versions of this. Here’s Goldfinger:

That’s pretty good. Here’s another, by Bella Ferraro, of the Australian version of “The X-Factor”:

Eh. She has a good set of pipes, but they chopped the hell out of the song. I’m not the only one who hates it when radio stations do that, am I?

Posted in Music | Tagged cover songs, videos | Comments Off

Harris County threatens to sue Harris County Appraisal District

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

That headline may sound dry, but this is a big deal.

Worried about the erosion of the tax base, county officials said Wednesday that they may consider suing the Harris County Appraisal District over concerns it is undervaluing certain business properties at the expense of homeowners.

Officials said HCAD’s Appraisal Review Board in recent years has agreed to set values for commercial and industrial properties that are far below what those properties later sell for, suggesting the independently governed agency did not adequately fight property owners who challenged their appraisals in court.

Commissioners Court on Wednesday took the unprecedented step of agreeing to hire independent appraisers to double-check HCAD’s valuations of business properties. Court members said they would take the appraisal district to court, if necessary, but suggested their action was meant more as a warning to the agency or the Texas Legislature.

“They haven’t been pushing to get these appraisals done the way they should have on some of these major buildings,” said Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack, who placed the item to hire independent appraisers on Wednesday’s agenda. “I think they need to be shook up and understand that they have a very important job to do and not bow down to pressure from people that, you know, hire big guns to get their taxes lowered on buildings, some of which are clearly more valuable than their appraisals.”

[…]

Commissioners Court wants independent appraisers to closely monitor the appraisal process this year, and for the county attorney to be prepared to challenge the results, if the court deems it necessary. Any challenge must be filed within 15 days of HCAD submitting preliminary property values to the Appraisal Review Board, which typically occurs in mid-May.

The Houston Press had a cover story last year about large commercial properties getting lowball appraisals that were costing the county millions in revenue, and before that former Chron business columnist Loren Steffy covered the topic with the specific example of the Williams Tower, which anyone over 35 still thinks of as a the Transco Tower. The issue has been known for a long time, but this is the first time that the county has taken direct action about it. It’s interesting that it comes at a time when real estate is hot and revenues are rising – we sure could have used some of that lost revenue a few years ago when the bottom fell out of the market and everyone that depended on property tax revenues had to cut the hell out of their budgets – but the concern for the longer term is valid and pressing. The response from HCAD is less than convincing to me.

HCAD Chief Appraiser Sands Stiefer defended the settlement process, and predicted the county’s venture would not result in a lawsuit. He said HCAD has implemented changes since he started last June to ensure “that nobody gets away with something unfair” during litigation.

For example, if a proposed settlement exceeds a certain percentage in value, Stiefer said it must be “discussed with me before it is finalized.” Appraisers also must submit formal reports on the settlements before a final agreement is made, he said.

“It’s absolutely untrue that we are giving away the store in that settlement process,” he said, noting that Houston’s hot real estate market means that market values often change rapidly, especially for certain commercial properties.

Sales prices also do not have to be disclosed, which Stiefer described as a “roadblock.”

I agree that sales price disclosure is an issue, but if this is the process to ensure accurate appraisals, it seems lacking to me. Not to be insulting, but what assurance do we have that the head guy isn’t in the same tank as everyone else? Given the track record to date, having a fresh set of eyes on the process sounds like a good idea to me.

Appraisal district critics such as George Scott, who worked for HCAD as a spokesman until 2012, applauded the county’s action Wednesday, saying it would enable it to make a strong case to the Legislature in 2015 for changes to improve the appraisal process for business properties and potentially encourage HCAD to better defend market values.

“It is a powerful, powerful step to tell the Harris County Appraisal District that everything that transpires is now going to be high, high, high on the radar,” Scott said.

Scott’s blog is here, and while he covers a variety of topics these days, HCAD is still his main hobbyhorse. See here and here for a couple of examples. I don’t think anyone believes this matter will actually wind up in court. Radack et al are seeking leverage to get HCAD to change how it does things. I think they’ll win in the end, but it may get messy along the way. I suspect other large urban counties will be keeping a close eye on this as well, and of course other entities within Harris County – Houston and all the other cities, HISD and all the other school districts, HCC and Lone Star College, etc – are affected by this and may want a piece of the legal action if it comes to that. I’m sure we’ll be hearing quite a bit more about this in the next few months.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Commissioners Court, Ed Emmett, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, HCAD, lawsuit, property taxes, sales price disclosure, Steve Radack | 5 Comments

Chron overview of DA primary

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I can’t stress enough how much this race matters.

Kim Ogg

Running for the Democratic nomination for Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg has spent the past four months shaking hands, staking out her positions on criminal justice issues and raising about $100,000.

Her opponent, perennial candidate Lloyd Oliver, has been watching television.

“It’s my race to lose,” Oliver said after reporting that he has neither raised nor spent a dime on his campaign. “My strategy is to watch a lot of TV, I think. That’s all I’ve been doing.”

That may be all he needs to do in a down-ballot race in a primary that is not expected to see high voter turnout.

In 2012, Oliver befuddled the political establishment when he bested much better-funded Democratic primary opponent Zack Fertitta. In that race, Oliver spent only $300, for laminated flyers.

“Ogg’s got to figure out a way to get a reasonable share of the African-American vote, which Mr. Fertitta did not get in 2012,” said Richard Murray, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. “We may have only 60,000-70,000 come out for the (Democratic) primary and with two million registered voters, it’s a real crapshoot.”

This year, Oliver said, he does not plan to campaign until the general election. Name recognition, he said, will determine who wins the primary.

And Oliver appears to have plenty of that. Since 1994, Oliver has run for judge five times, and district attorney once. Having his name in front of voters every few years – which Oliver uses as advertising for his legal practice – paid off in his race against Fertitta. He expects it will again.

“There’s really nothing you can do,” he said. “Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen in the primary.”

Nonetheless, Ogg, 54, is taking him seriously.

“I’ve believed Lloyd every time before when he’s said he runs as a publicity stunt,” she said. “I’m not about to take one thing for granted, even Lloyd’s ability to get votes despite when he does nothing.”

Taking a cue from his missteps in 2012, Oliver said he purposefully is doing little in order to minimize criticism.

It’s my hope that this time when people see Lloyd Oliver’s name on the ballot, they’ll remember all that well-deserved negativity from 2012. When people remember the reason why they recognize your name and realize that it’s not for good reasons, then name recognition isn’t much of an asset. Ideally, Ogg will spend some of that money she’s raised helping people remember why they remember Lloyd Oliver’s name. The thought of nominating Oliver again is just too gruesome to contemplate. If you’re voting in the Democratic primary in Harris County, please make sure you vote for Kim Ogg, and make sure your friends know that they need to vote for her as well. We can’t afford to screw this up again.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, District Attorney, Election 2012, Election 2014, Harris County, Kim Ogg, Lloyd Oliver, Zack Fertitta | 2 Comments

So you want to see Bigfoot?

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

He’s coming to your town, Houston and San Antonio. Or at least, whatever the huckster Rick Dyer is trying to pass off as a Bigfoot carcass is coming to your town.

Steve Austin knows the truth

Dyer, 36, says he killed an 8-foot-tall Bigfoot in San Antonio in 2012 with a 30-06 rifle after he lured “the beast” near his tent with a set of Wal-Mart ribs he rubbed with a secret ingredient.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true,” said Dyer, who is coming back to the Alamo City and Houston in February to showcase his catch.

He tows the corpse behind a 40-foot coach in a trailer across the country to show folks just how real Bigfoot is.

“A lot of times they don’t believe it,” he said. “You can show someone something that is real, but they won’t, or can’t, believe it because they think it doesn’t exist.”

Dyer killed the mysterious creature in a wooded area near Texas 151 and Loop 1604, he said Sept. 6, 2012.

After getting “leads” from homeless locals, Dyer set up a tent in the woods and booby trapped trees around his tent with ribs he purchased from Wal-Mart, who in fact does have the best ribs for Bigfoot-huntin’, as well as the best return policy.

“I woke up to the sound of bones crushing,” Dyer said. “I knew it was a Bigfoot eating the ribs I hung, so I grabbed my cell phone and filmed it.”

Snopes helpfully reminds us that Dyer made a similar claim in 2008, and his “Bigfoot” turned out to be a rubber ape costume. But don’t worry, even though he won’t give any tissue samples for testing Dyer assures us that some university he can’t name because of “nondisclosure” is doing some testing for him, so we can totally trust him this time.

OK, we all know this guy is a carny barker, and he’s doing this to scam a few bucks off of the gullible. I’m sure he’ll succeed at that. What’s more, I’m feeling strongly tempted to see his “carcass” for myself, so I can get a good laugh out of it. I’ll probably hate myself afterward, but I’m still feeling the pull. Someone please talk me out of this.

To their credit, Texas wildlife officials have the right idea here.

“We don’t acknowledge that one exists, but if you wanted to shoot and kill a Bigfoot in the state of Texas you would just need a hunting license,” Major Larry Young, game warden with Texas Parks and Wildlife, joked Tuesday.

Young said that although it’s legal, he doesn’t exactly think it is moral.

“It’s kind of like shooting a person,” he said.

“We can’t prohibit anyone from hunting fictional characters, including Sasquatch, Chupacabra and other urban myths,” said Steve Lightfoot with Texas Parks and Wildlife.

And just in case this story isn’t weird enough for you:

The folks at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals don’t think that Bigfoot is real, but do feel strongly about those that would shoot something exotic for sport.

“The bottom line is, when someone sees a rare, exotic animal their first instinct shouldn’t be to shoot and kill it,” said PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt. “Just because you see something pretty, that doesn’t mean it should be mounted on your wall.”

If anything the hunting and killing of a fictional animal teaches a lesson about hunting culture in general. According to Rajt, the popularity of hunting for sport is in decline, and has been since the late 1970s.

“Wildlife watching is gaining popularity over hunting,” she said.

“As an organization we do oppose hunting of any kind. It’s cruel and unnecessary and can damage populations and ecosystems,” Rajt said.

Yeah, we wouldn’t want to have to put Bigfoot on the endangered species list, right? I got nothing.

Posted in Skepticism | Tagged Bigfoot, PETA, Rick Dyer, Texas, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department | Comments Off

Lance Berkman

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Former Astro and Rice Owl Lance Berkman hung up his spikes this week.

Lance Berkman
(credit: Photo Mojo on Flickr)

Lance Berkman, who starred at Rice before becoming one of the most clutch hitters in Astros history, is retiring after a 15-year career in the major leagues.

“He’s going to go down as one of the great players in Astros history,” said Phil Garner, who managed Berkman during the team’s playoff runs in 2004 and 2005. “A local Texas kid, goes to Rice, makes good, comes to the big leagues. He’s been a fabulous player in the big leagues, and he’s done it all with a touch of class.”

It was at Rice where Berkman’s smooth swing first got noticed. He hit 41 homers in 63 games as a junior and was drafted in the first round (No. 16 overall) by the Astros in 1997. Just two seasons later, Berkman was in the majors to stay.

From 2000-09, Berkman hit .300 for the Astros, averaging 31 homers and 103 RBIs.

“There aren’t many better in this generation,” baseball historian/statistician Bill James said at the time.

Among switch hitters, Berkman ranks among the best of all time. His career on-base-plus-slugging percentage of .943 is second only to Mickey Mantle’s .977 among switch hitters, and he ranks third among switch hitters in on-base percentage (.406, behind Mantle and Roy Cullenbine) and fourth in home runs (366, behind Mantle, Eddie Murray and Chipper Jones).

No question Berkman was a great hitter. But is he a Hall of Fame player? There’s certainly local sentiment for that. My gut intuition was that his career was a little short and left his overall numbers, especially the kind of counting stats that tend to most impress Hall of Fame voters, a bit below the standard. Cliff Corcoran took a deeper look and agreed with that.

Berkman ranks second in baseball history among switch hitters with at least 3,000 plate appearances in OPS+, behind only Mickey Mantle, and fourth among switch-hitters in home runs (behind Mantle, Eddie Murray and Chipper Jones, though Carlos Beltran will likely pass him this year). However, he doesn’t fare quite as well in the other cumulative stats (which covers everything from hits to wins above replacement), and that reveals the soft underbelly of his Hall of Fame case. For the bulk of his career, Berkman was a tremendously productive hitter, but not only did he play just 15 seasons, he only played in 140 or more games in eight of them.

[…]

Berkman’s retirement doesn’t come as a great surprise, particularly given how close he was to hanging it up a year ago. It does leave us with the question of whether or not he is a Hall of Famer. Jay Jaffe’s JAWS stats say no. Berkman’s 51.8/.38.9/45.3 career/peak/JAWS scores all fall short of the standard at first base and left and rightfield, his three primary positions (he also played 166 games in center early in his career, which yielded this gem on Tal’s Hill).

It may be surprising that Berkman doesn’t at least meet the standard on peak score, but the combination of the offense-heavy era in which he played, the Astros’ move to the hitter-friendly Enron-cum-Minute Maid Park in 2000, and some brutal fielding scores undercut those impressive statistics above. That, in combination with his short career, make the Hall seem like a longshot for Berkman, though he may get some extra points from the voters for his postseason performance, being a switch-hitter, and for his personality and honesty with the press.

In terms of a comparable candidate, one player that jumps to mind is Edgar Martinez. The legendary Mariners DH was also an undeniably great hitter who also had a memorable postseason moment, made essentially no contribution on defense by virtue of having been a designated hitter for the bulk of his career and had a similarly short career (just 12 qualifying seasons). Martinez hit .312/.418/.515 (147 OPS+) in his career to Berkman’s .293/.406/.537 (144 OPS+). Berkman hit more home runs (366 to doubles-hitter Martinez’s 309), but Martinez, perhaps crucially, surpassed 2,000 hits while Berkman did not (2,247 to 1,905). Martinez also played in more games (2,055 to 1,879) made more plate appearances (8,674 to 7,814), and had superior WAR (68.3 to 51.8) and JAWS scores (55.9 to 45.3). Martinez can also stake claim to being the greatest ever at his position, even if that position was designated hitter. Despite all of that, after five years on the ballot, he has yet to surpass 36.5 percent of the vote.

Edgar Martinez is a good comp, but I think it’s fair to say that Jeff Bagwell belongs in the Hall of Fame before Berkman gets there. He’s got a case, and I’ll be interested to see who argues for him in five years’ time, but I don’t think it’s inaccurate or insulting to say that the Big Puma was a great player and a fearsome hitter who falls a bit short of Cooperstown.

One thing for which there should be no argument at all is for Berkman to retire as an Astro. The team needs to make this happen.

The Astros should sign Berkman, give him his No. 17 to wear one last time for a farewell news conference, and let him retire as one of them, at home in Houston, where he belongs.

Berkman was a clutch hitter who gave the Astros many happy endings. Now they can give him one.

“He’s really an Astro,” said Phil Garner, who managed Berkman in Houston for parts of four seasons, including the teams that reached the playoffs in 2004 and the World Series in ’05. “He knows it. We all know it.”

That is the mother of all no-brainers. The Yankees did this last year for Hideki Matsui, who was a popular and well-regarded player that made key contributions to the 2009 World Series win and the 2003 LCS win over the Red Sox, but is hardly a franchise cornerstone. Whatever you think about the Yankees, they do this sort of thing right. If the Stros want to ensure at least one sellout crowd this year, they need to start planning for Lance Berkman Day at Minute Maid. (They should be planning JR Richard Day, too, but that’s another story.) It’s great that the team wants to bring Nolan Ryan on board, but one way or the other they need to give Lance Berkman a proper sendoff. Make this happen, y’all.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged Astros, Baseball, Hall of Fame, Houston, Lance Berkman, MLB, Rice University | 1 Comment

Friday random fourteen: Let’s talk about sex, baby

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Paste had a list awhile back of the “Fifty Sexiest Songs Of All Time”. Here’s how they described it:

“Our picks span a variety of eras, genres and styles—and while some are more overtly sexual than others, they all make us weak in the knees. To keep this from being a list of Prince and Al Green songs, we’ve limited ourselves to a maximum two tracks per artist.”

I figured it was time to go through my collection to see how many of those songs I had. Here, in honor of Mike “Uncle Sugar” Huckabee and all those ladies that just can’t control their libidos, here’s my list.

1. Be My Baby – The Ronettes
2. Fever – Julie Murphy (orig. Peggy Lee)
3. You Really Got Me – Van Halen (orig. The Kinks)
4. Crimson and Clover – Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
5. Criminal – Fiona Apple
6. Sugar In My Bowl – Asylum Street Spankers (Nina Simone, orig. Bessie Smith)
7. Night Moves – Bob Seger
8. I Just Want To Make Love To You – Muddy Waters (orig. Etta James)
9. Voodoo Chile – Stevie Ray Vaughan (orig. Jimi Hendrix)
10. Wicked Game – The Model (orig. Chris Isaak)
11. Tell Me Something Good – Rufus and Chaka Khan
12. Darling Nikki – Christina Marrs (orig. Prince)
13. I’m On Fire – Bruce Springsteen
14. Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye

I also have “Tom Cat”, by Muddy Waters, but as usual I prefer to limit these to one song per artist. Obviously, we all have our own list of what floats our boat, but I think we can all agree that this would make a pretty good playlist for the next Huckabee speaking engagement. What’s on your list?

Posted in Music | Tagged Friday random ten, Mike Huckabee, theme lists | 2 Comments

January campaign finance reports for Harris County legislative candidates

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This could take awhile, and that’s with me limiting myself to contested races. First, the Senate.

SD04
Brandon Creighton
Steven Toth

SD07
Paul Bettencourt
James Wilson
Jim Davis

SD15
John Whitmire
Damian LaCroix
Ron Hale

SD17
Joan Huffman
Derek Anthony
Rita Lucido

Here’s a summary chart. For the record, Davis, Whitmire, LaCroix, and Lucido are all Dems, the rest are Rs.


Candidate    Office   Raised    Spent  Cash on hand
===================================================
Creighton      SD04  296,267  205,591     1,002,464
Toth           SD04  107,752   48,048       123,116

Bettencourt    SD07  140,100   55,873       103,041
Wilson         SD07    7,675    5,129         3,224
Davis          SD07    1,250    1,250             0

Whitmire       SD15  298,874  148,973     6,978,885
LaCroix        SD15   16,329   33,866             0
Hale           SD15      123    1,441           123

Huffman        SD17  136,600   91,142       701,583
Anthony        SD17        0        0             0
Lucido         SD17   41,625   10,489        29,829

Technically, SD04 is not on the ballot. It’s now a vacant seat due to the resignation in October of Tommy Williams, and the special election to fill it has not been set yet; I presume it will be in May. Reps. Creighton and Toth aren’t the only announced candidates, but they both have the right amount of crazy, and at least in Creighton’s case plenty of money as well. It’s a statement on how far our politics have gone that I find myself sorry to see Tommy Williams depart. He was awful in many ways, but as the last session demonstrated, when push came to shove he was fairly well grounded in reality, and he did a more than creditable job as Senate Finance Chair. I have no real hope for either Creighton or Toth to meet that standard, and the Senate will get that much stupider in 2015.

Paul Bettencourt can go ahead and start measuring the drapes in Dan Patrick’s office. I honestly hadn’t even realized he had a primary opponent till I started doing this post. The only questions is in what ways will he be different than Patrick as Senator. Every once in awhile, Patrick landed on the right side of an issue, and as his tenure as Public Ed chair demonstrated, he was capable of playing well with others and doing collaborative work when he put his mind to it. Doesn’t come remotely close to balancing the scales on him, but one takes what one can. Bettencourt is a smart guy, and based on my own encounters with him he’s personable enough to fit in well in the Senate, likely better than Patrick ever did. If he has it in mind to serve the public and not just a seething little slice of it, he could do some good. The bar I’m setting is basically lying on the ground, and there’s a good chance he’ll fail to clear it. But there is some potential there. It’s all up to him.

I don’t have anything new to add to the SD15 Democratic primary race. I just don’t see anything to suggest that the dynamic of the race has changed.

I hadn’t realized Joan Huffman had a primary challenger until I started this post. Doesn’t look like she has much to worry about. I’m very interested to see how Rita Lucido does with fundraising. Senators don’t usually draw serious November challengers. The district is drawn to be solidly Republican, but Lucido is the first opponent Huffman has had since the 2008 special election runoff. I’m very curious to see if Lucido can at least begin to close the gap.

On to the House:

HD129
Sheryl Berg
Briscoe Cain
Mary Huls
Jeffrey Larson
Chuck Maricle
Dennis Paul
Brent Perry
John Gay

HD131
Alma Allen
Azuwuike Okorafor

HD132
Michael Franks
Ann Hodge
Justin Perryman
Mike Schofield
Luis Lopez

HD133
Jim Murphy
Laura Nicol

HD134
Sarah Davis
Bonnie Parker
Alison Ruff

HD135
Gary Elkins
Moiz Abbas

HD137
Gene Wu
Morad Fiki

HD138
Dwayne Bohac
Fred Vernon

HD144
Mary Ann Perez
Gilbert Pena

HD145
Carol Alvarado
Susan Delgado

HD148
Jessica Farrar
Chris Carmona

HD149
Hubert Vo
Al Hoang
Nghi Ho

HD150
Debbie Riddle
Tony Noun
Amy Perez

HDs 129 and 132 are open. Each has multiple Republicans, all listed first in alphabetical order; the Dem in each race is listed at the end. In all other districts the incumbent is first, followed by any primary opponents, then any November opponents. I will note at this point that the last time I mentioned HD129, I wrote that Democratic candidate John Gay appeared to me to be the same person that had run in CD14 in 2012 as a Republican, based on what I could and could not find on the Internet. Two Democrats in HD129 contacted me after that was published to assure me that I had gotten it wrong, that there were two completely different individuals named John Gay, and that the one running as a Dem in HD129 was truly a Democrat. While I was never able to speak to this John Gay myself to ascertain that with him – I left him two phone messages and never got a call back – other information I found based on what these folks told me convinced me they were right and I was mistaken. That post was corrected, but I’m pointing this out here for those of you who might not have seen that correction.

With that out of the way, here’s the summary:


Candidate    Office   Raised    Spent  Cash on hand
===================================================
Berg - R      HD129   28,101   13,597        29,530
Cain - R      HD129   17,246    9,614         4,131
Huls - R      HD129    1,254    3,784         1,969
Larson - R    HD129      325    1,130         4,226
Maricle - R   HD129    3,520   30,207           879
Paul - R      HD129   14,495   19,436        95,058
Perry - R     HD129   51,297   19,100        52,687
Gay - D       HD129        0    1,221           778

Allen - D     HD131    8,877   13,662        21,573
Okorafor - D  HD131        0    1,689             0

Franks - R    HD132        0    4,604        43,396
Hodge - R     HD132   51,330   19,741        41,925
Perryman - R  HD132   26,550    7,178        30,788
Schofield - R HD132   43,665   15,449        45.454
Lopez - D     HD132

Murphy - R    HD133  102,828   44,004       184,174
Nicol - D     HD133    2,380      750         1,640

Davis - R     HD134  171,990   70,369       145,561
Parker - R    HD134        0   10,213        10,161
Ruff - D      HD134        0      750             0

Elkins - R    HD135   28,150   17,136       331,672
Abbas - D     HD135        0        0             0

Wu - D        HD137   15,390   20,439        11,641
Fiki - R      HD137    2,320      167         2,320

Bohac - R     HD138   35,975   45,797        14,168
Vernon - D    HD138      500        0           500

Perez - D     HD144   18,400   23,705        34,386
Pena - R      HD144        0      750             0

Alvarado - D  HD145   51,915    6,585        54,035
Delgado - D   HD145        0      750             0

Farrar - D    HD148   37,771    6,739        75,861
Carmona - R   HD148      325      883         2,442

Vo - D        HD149    7,739    9,129        20,935
Hoang - R     HD149    4,550   17,550         4,222
Ho - R        HD149    4,198    1,211         3,736

Riddle - R    HD150   23,200   15,327        61,809
Noun - R      HD150   16,879   83,388        43,490
Perez - D     HD150    3,139      452           116

I’m not going to go into much detail here. Several candidates, especially in the GOP primary in HD129, have loaned themselves money or are spending personal funds on campaign expenses. If you see a big disparity between cash on hand and the other totals, that’s usually why. I’m impressed by the amount Debbie Riddle’s primary challenger is spending, though I have no idea whether it will have an effect or not. I’m as impressed in the opposite direction by Bonnie Parker in HD134. Maybe she’s just getting warmed up, I don’t know. I figure her 8 day report will tell a more interesting story. What catches your eye among these names and numbers?

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Bonnie Parker, Brandon Creighton, campaign finance reports, Damian LaCroix, Democratic primary, Election 2014, Harris County, HD129, HD131, HD132, HD133, HD134, HD135, HD137, HD144, HD145, HD148, HD149, HD150, Joan Huffman, John Gay, John Whitmire, Paul Bettencourt, Republican Party, Rita Lucido, Sarah Davis, SD04, SD07, SD15, SD17, Senate, special election, Steve Toth, Texas, The Lege, Tommy Williams | 2 Comments

Audit letters

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

There’s a thing called audit letters that I hadn’t known existed. We’ve got them for Houston, but we had not been making them public even though other cities do as a matter of course.

City Controller Ronald Green

Houston officials have blocked the release of letters detailing weaknesses in the city’s financial accounting even though other large Texas cities routinely share such letters as a matter of transparency.

“What are they trying to hide, if anything?” asked Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “The financial business of a government entity is everybody’s business. It’s our money, and it’s our government.”

State law requires public agencies to hire an external auditor to review finances each year, ensuring that governments accurately portray their fiscal health in reports to leaders and the public. When that audit is complete, the full report is accompanied by a management letter that notes any apparent problems with accounting procedures uncovered while testing the accuracy of financial statements.

[…]

Though [City Controller Ronald] Green previously had said he supported the release of the letters, he has deferred to the city attorney’s office, which sought an opinion from the Texas Attorney General’s Office on whether the city was required to release them.

Green last week did not respond to questions emailed to his office seeking further explanation of his stance, instead releasing a two-sentence statement. “Heretofore, Management Letters have not been disclosed based on direction from the City Attorney and Texas Attorney General. The City of Houston will continue, until advised otherwise.”

The attorney general’s office earlier this month issued an opinion saying the city did not have to release the audit letters.

“This is a discretionary section that city may elect to raise. It is not required,” wrote attorney general spokesman Jerry Strickland. “If other cities choose not to raise this exception and would rather release similar information, they have that option.”

[…]

Last October, City Controller Green refused to release the letters from the last 10 years when frequent city critic Bob Lemer and, later the Chronicle, requested them under the Texas Public Information Act.

At the time, Green said he believed the records should be public but deferred to the decision of the city attorney’s office and Texas attorney general. “I do not practice law here,” he said. “When it comes to Bob Lemer, he’s still looking for ways to gain legal standing over the city on Proposition 2.”

Lemer, a retired partner at Ernst & Young, said the refusal to release the letters bolsters his arguments that the city is hiding the extent of its financial troubles.

“They will not let the public know what a horrible mess the entire accounting system is,” he said.

In its letter seeking an opinion from the attorney general, the city attorney’s office cited an exception to the Texas Public Information Act allowing cities to decide whether to release “audit working papers,” generally seen as communications with city employees that auditors use to prepare their reports or incomplete drafts of their reports.

Lemer may well be a crank, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Whether he is or he isn’t, withholding this information does give him an air of authenticity, and a lot more grist for his grievance mill. A followup story in the Chron quoted several Council members who were also mystified by this and who called for the letters to be released. I don’t know what purpose was being served here, but in the end Mayor Parker stepped in and made the right call.

Amid questions from City Council members about the propriety of keeping them secret, the mayor’s office on Wednesday released audit letters detailing weaknesses in the city’s financial accounting.

[…]

The mayor’s office released 10 years of the audit letters, totaling 96 pages but did not include the appendices, which may include more detailed explanations of deficiencies identified by auditors. A spokeswoman said the mayor’s office released what the controller had sent to the city attorney last October and directed the Houston Chronicle to seek the appendices from Green.

[…]

“It sounds like exactly the right decision,” said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said of the letters’ release. “The more the public can review what’s being done with their money, the better.”

The most recent letters sent by outside auditors Deloitte & Touche on Dec. 18, 2012, noted three areas in which projected revenues appeared to be understated. Those three – $2.5 million in Municipal Courts, $2.9 million in “other revenues” and $4 million in construction activities – were deemed by city officials to be immaterial to the overall financial statements, and were corrected in the city’s annual financial report.

An appendix provided by Councilman Jack Christie’s office noted “significant deficiencies,” a term used by auditors to highlight policies or actions that could let inaccurate record-keeping or fraud go undetected.

“While there was significant improvement in the City’s financial reporting process in the current year, the City should enhance this process by requiring responsible financial reporting personnel, at the department level, to perform analytical reviews of financial results on a periodic basis,” the auditors wrote.

The 2003 audit letter listed 35 recommendations; the 2012 letter made only 10.

City finance department officials said in a written statement that they have addressed the findings, noting 2012 was the first time in 10 years that external auditors deemed the city a low risk for accounting errors in federally funded programs.

“There are less complaints than in 2003, and they are not that serious,” said Steven Craig, a University of Houston economics professor. “I’m not sure why they wouldn’t want to release that letter.”

You and me both. Houston Politics has a copy of the audit letters themselves, in case you’re curious. The original story says that the AG’s office issued the opinion in question “earlier this month”, but neither of the two opinions I see for 2014 on the index page have anything to do with Houston. In any event, this appears to be the end of this episode of mountains-from-molehills manufacturing.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Annise Parker, Attorney General, audit letters, City Attorney, David Feldman, Houston, Houston City Controller, Houston City Council, Ronald Green | Comments Off

Alameel wants a refund

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck with that.

David Alameel

Just like his first run for office in 2012, David Alameel’s second bid for public office is drawing questions about his past campaign donations.

Alameel, the owner of a multimillion-dollar chain of dental clinics that caters to Hispanics, is one of five Democrats vying for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn. In recent years, Alameel has emerged as one of the top donors to Democratic groups and candidates in the country. However, before 2010, his donations were more bipartisan. Over several years, he donated more than $750,000 to Republican candidates and groups, including $8,000 to Cornyn in 2004.

In a phone interview Monday, Alameel said he would not make the same donations to Republicans again.

“I want a refund right now because I believe John Cornyn and his Republican friends in Washington work for Wall Street and not Texans,” Alameel said. When asked if he regretted those earlier donations to Republicans, he reiterated that he wanted “a refund.”

Alameel said that his view of the Republican Party has changed in recent years.

“I used to think that Democrats and Republicans work together, but you know, it’s becoming more and more crystal clear that today’s Republican Party is far too extreme,” Alameel said. “John Cornyn is part of that extreme problem.”

Not clear from this story if he’s just asking for his $8K back from Cornyn or if he’s seeking to recover the whole enchilada. I kind of doubt it’s the latter, but if it is I don’t see how it happens. For that matter, Cornyn isn’t playing ball, either, and he does a nice bit of knife-twisting for good measure. Let this be a lesson about being careful to whom one makes political donations, kids.

There’s been a lot written about Alameel’s past history of political giving, with the Lone Star Project – a recipient of his largesse as well – highlighting his Dem-only track record since 2008, and the Maxer Scherr campaign understandably pushing his GOP donor history. Here’s a Google spreadhseet I’ve put together, based on a query of Alameel as a contributor, from January 1, 2000 forward, sorted chronologically. I’ve helpfully highlighted the Republican recipients, as best as I recognize them, for your convenience. As you can see, there are none after February of 2008, which is consistent with what the Lone Star Project has highlighted, but doesn’t explain the reasons behind the change.

I still haven’t gotten a date from Alameel’s campaign for an interview and at this point I’m not holding out much hope for one, so we’ll all have to decide for ourselves how sincere his apparent conversion is. At least by going from R to D no one can claim he’s doing it for the easier path to victory. Alameel has some other questions to answer as well, and I’m sorry I won’t get the chance to ask them, or to hear his answers for myself. I have no problem believing that Wendy Davis sees something worthwhile in Alameel, but I’m reserving my own judgment on that.

UPDATE: Sen. Leticia Van de Putte has endorsed Alameel, so she sees something in him as well.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged campaign finances, David Alameel, Democratic primary, Election 2014, fundraising, John Cornyn, Lone Star Project, Maxey Scherr, Senate, Texas, Wendy Davis | 6 Comments

New Braunfels can ban gets canned

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Pack your coolers, y’all. The beer can flow again on the Comal River.

Opponents of New Braunfels’ prohibition of large coolers and disposable containers — loosely described as a “can ban” on rivers that can host tens of thousands of tourists on any busy summer weekend — say a judge has confirmed their lawsuit claims that the codes are unconstitutional and unenforceable.

“The effect of this ruling is the court should grant a permanent injunction barring the enforcement of these two ordinances,” Jim Ewbank, the lawyer for water recreation businesses that sued the city, said Monday.

State District Judge Don Burgess for weeks had weighed competing summary judgment motions. On Sunday, he granted the one filed by the plaintiffs, which argued that the city rules were unconstitutionally vague, arbitrary, unreasonable and an overreach of municipal authority.

“We hope that, now that the court has spoken, declaring these ordinances unconstitutional, that we can sit down with the city and try to work out a solution that addresses everybody’s goals and purposes,” Ewbank said.

The city’s attorney, Mick McKamie, said that once Burgess enters a judgment and the City Council is briefed on it, a decision will be made on whether to appeal. City staff declined comment.

The last update I had on this was from June, 2012, when the suit was moved back to Comal County. Voters had ratified the ban in 2011, but that’s out the window now. I get what New Braunfuls was trying to do, and having discussed the issue with a cousin of mine who has lived in New Braunfels for the last fifteen or twenty years, I can see why residents liked the ordinance. It’s possible that a scaled-down and more specific version of this ordinance can pass muster, and maybe won’t be too repellent to the tubing industry. I look forward to seeing what the judgment has to say.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Comal County, Comal River, Election 2011, lawsuit, New Braunfels, Texas | Comments Off

Judicial Q&A: George Barnstone

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for judicial candidates in contested Democratic primaries. This is intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to those who plan to vote in March. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.)

George Barnstone

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

My name is George Barnstone, and I am running Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 10.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

This court hears A & B misdemeanors.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

I am running for this bench because I want to change the pipeline for mentally ill vagrants who are arrested for minor misdemeanor charges and sent to the Harris County Jail. The mentally ill need appropriate treatment, not imprisonment where they don’t receive adequate care.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I have been an attorney for twenty years, and I am a member of the College of the State Bar.

5. Why is this race important?

This race is important because it is an opportunity to bring new blood with new ideas on how to treat the mentally ill who are arrested for minor criminal charges. Many of those who live on the street are mentally ill. My opponent is part of the machine that has imprisoned people who need help. The way we treat those who are weakest and can’t defend themselves is a very poor reflection of us as a society and the criminal justice system. Shockingly, the largest mental health facility in the state of Texas is the Harris County Jail.

6. Why should people vote for you in the primary?

People should vote for me in the primary because we cannot afford monetarily or morally to continue the mass incarceration of those who are in need of treatment.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, George Barnstone, Harris County, judicial races, Q&A | Comments Off

Culberson says he’s killed the University Line

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

And maybe he has, though it wasn’t going anywhere at this time anyway.

Residents and business owners along Richmond Avenue are breathing a sigh of relief — at least for now — as U.S. Rep. John Culberson has had his way, quashing federal funding for light-rail along Richmond, west of Shepherd, and on Post Oak Boulevard north of Richmond. Rail proponents on the other hand will be disappointed to hear that Culberson succeeded in getting the key amendment tacked onto the transportation leg of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill recently passed by the Senate.

“I’m very proud to have been able to protect Richmond and Post Oak from being destroyed as Fannin and Main Street were destroyed,” Culberson told CultureMap following a fundraising luncheon at Tony’s, which not so coincidentally is located on Richmond.

Culberson trumped METRO in his long-running feud with the local transportation agency. He has been threatening and attempting to get his law passed for several years. “It’s a permanent federal statutory law. So it’s a felony if any governmental entities attempt to spend any federal money to push rail on those routes,” he said.

METRO board chairman Gilbert Garcia called the move “very disappointing.” He noted, however, “This is not our focus. We’ve got a full plate right now and we are not taking steps to complete the University Line. First and foremost, we want to complete the other two lines, get time under them.”

The water is muddy on the potential for future federal monies for rail along Richmond and Post Oak Boulevard. Culberson says the federal funding prohibition is permanent. “This is the end of all federal funding on Richmond,” he said.

I’m pretty sure Culberson, who tried this trick before, does not have the power to tell future Congresses what they can and cannot do. Congress will pass other budget and appropriations bills after this one, so some pro-University Line member of Congress, like maybe Rep. Ted Poe, could get an amendment in there to undo what Culberson did. Doing something is certainly harder than stopping something that hasn’t been done, so Culberson has the advantage now, but it’s not the final word. Despite his protestations about the popularity of rail on Richmond, opposing its construction has not been an electoral winner in the precincts along the proposed line. Perhaps this will galvanize rail proponents and they will help defeat Culberson in an election; a future Republican primary is the more likely path for that, but anything could happen. Perhaps Metro and the other stakeholders will get tired of Culberson’s act and find their own funding. The options aren’t great, but they never have been. The point is that the fight isn’t over just because Culberson says it is.

One more thing:

Not completely opposed to rail, Culberson noted that he has already begun working with Congressman Al Green on possible rail connections from Fort Bend County and that he would support the US 90A southwest rail corridor. On another potential east-west light rail route, Culberson said, “West Park would be perfect. They have the right of way.”

That was news to Garcia. “We would welcome him to shift his approach,” Garcia said. “That would be new information to me. If he told you that, that would be great.”

I suspect Culberson is peddling snake oil here, but let’s take him at his word for the sake of argument. Westpark only runs as far east as Kirby, and east of Shepherd you’re literally in people’s backyards. How do you connect the east end of the line at Montrose to the proposed Westpark part of it? That subject came up in 2006 and the non-Richmond options generated a lot of neighborhood opposition as well as some creative but impractically expensive solutions. Even if there is an affordable way to do this that the area residents would support, the simple fact remains that Richmond is where the people are, and Westpark isn’t. Getting to Richmond from Westpark or vice versa means walking under US59, which is not terribly appealing from a pedestrian perspective. Putting it another way, rail on Westpark will have lower ridership and thus be less useful. Why would we want to do that? If the choice truly is “Westpark” or nothing, then “Westpark” is better, warts and all. I see no harm in Gilbert Garcia giving Culberson a call and seeing if he’s willing to put some money where his big mouth is. I don’t think he means it, and even if he does I don’t think it’s the right answer, as I don’t think this fight is over. But let’s go ahead and find out, so we at least know what’s on the table. Link via Swamplot.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged CD07, Congress, Gilbert Garcia, Houston, John Culberson, light rail, Metro, Richmond, Ted Poe, University line, US59, Westpark | 4 Comments

How the voter ID law was and was not enforced in Harris County

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Greg does some investigative reporting on how the new voter ID law was actually applied in Harris County in the 2013 election.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

So what percentage of voters ended up signing an affidavit? … and what does it suggest about how the law was administered?

To get that answer, I obtained records from the Harris County Clerk and commenced tabulating the data. I’ll be spelling out some of these results in the days ahead. For now, here’s the big-ticket takeaway: voters in Harris County were qualified to vote by election workers in extremely different ways depending on the location that the voter voted at. In several locations, the law was followed in a manner as close to thorough as might be humanly possible. In others, it didn’t appear that election workers had gotten the figurative memo about the new law. In a plurality of Early Vote locations, the results were mixed.

For introductory purposes, a small sketch of the data: Trini Mendenhall Sosa Community Center in Spring Branch had signed affidavits from 0.43% (as in less than 1%) of its voters. Meanwhile, neighboring West Gray Multi-Service Center saw 15.1% of its voters sign affidavits. In other words: if you wanted to experience “no problem” with the law, then Sosa was the place for you to go vote. If you wish to subject yourself to more scrutiny by election workers, then head to West Gray. Discrepancies like this were rampant in Harris County. And I’m willing to guess that it’s not the way that architects of the law intended it to be administered.

What I find interesting about these results is that, for all intents and purposes, nobody can say for certain that the new law was followed in any kind of meaningful way. It’s that conclusion that makes it impossible to say “there was no problem” with the law since the law effectively wasn’t administered. I have little doubt that election workers knew to ask for a photo ID and that there may, indeed, be only the most minor of problems exhibited with this task during a low-turnout election. But if election workers weren’t checking the names on the ID against the names on the voting rolls, then there should be no assurance that they were doing anything meaningful with those IDs.

Through the remainder of this week, I’ll be rolling out some of the findings, and raw data to demonstrate how this played out in Harris County. Ultimately, I think there are findings that are likely to concern both advocates of the law as well as opponents. And while I’m not a believer in the necessity of the law, I think there are several things to review before the law goes full scale in a Presidential year.

Read the whole thing. Greg was an Election Clerk this year, so he got that training he’s talking about, and he is a staffer for State Rep. Gene Wu, so he’s in a position to help influence any potential changes to this law, assuming it doesn’t eventually get thrown out by the courts. For my own experience, I voted early twice at the West Gray location, once in the November election and once in the December runoff. In November I showed my ID and voted as always, no muss and no fuss. In December, the election clerk at West Gray noticed that my voter reg card has my full middle name and my “III” suffix while my drivers license has just my middle initial and no suffix, and had me sign the affidavit. So even at the same location, there were variations. I look forward to seeing the rest of Greg’s data.

Posted in Election 2013 | Tagged early voting, Election 2013, Gene Wu, Harris County, Houston, Stan Stanart, The Lege, voter ID, voter registration | 2 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of January 27

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready to delete the phrase “polar vortex” from its vocabulary as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

You know you’re not supposed to do fundraising activities while in your official capacity, right?

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Oops.

Shelli Miller

[On Wednesday], the Texas Democratic Party called on Rockwall County Clerk, Republican Shelli Miller, to close down the illegal campaign fundraising operation she is running within her official office to benefit a February 1st event featuring keynote speaker, Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Conducting campaign activities out of an official office is a direct violation of state law, punishable by a fine of up to $4,000 and up to a year in jail.

The Texas Democratic Party also called for an independent investigator to be named to conduct a formal criminal investigation.

Here’s What Happened

Republican Shelli Miller has been using her office and office employees to arrange for the purchase and pickup of tickets to a GOP fundraising event. Greg Abbott is the keynote speaker at the event, which will benefit him and other Republican candidates.

The Lone Star Project has confirmed the illegal activity by obtaining audio recordings of Shelli Miller and at least one other county employee arranging for the purchase and pickup of tickets to the GOP/Abbott event.

The use of official resources for political purposes is a violation of a number of state laws. For instance, it is illegal to accept political donations in certain government buildings under TEX. ELEC. CODE. § 253.039.

It is likely–if not certain–that Greg Abbott and/or someone on his staff was aware of the illegal activity. An independent investigation is required to assure proper enforcement of the laws broken by Rockwall County Republicans and perhaps by the Abbott Campaign itself.

Click over to hear the audio. As I drafted this last night, the only news coverage I saw of this was on the Rockwall Herald Banner and NPR station KETR, both of whom add a bit to the LSP report. We’ll see where it goes from here. BOR has more.

UPDATE: The DMN has a small story that doesn’t add anything new.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Election 2014, fundraising, Governor, Greg Abbott, Lone Star Project, Rockwall County, Shelli Miller, Texas | Comments Off

Interview with Gayle Mitchell

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Gayle Mitchell

As previously noted, the Harris County Clerk’s office has had its share of problems in recent years, from incorrectly reporting the winner of a Democratic primary in 2012 to complaints about slow reporting of results overall on Election Day. This year’s election is an opportunity to talk about how these functions of that office can be improved. Gayle Young Mitchell is one of the two Democrats vying for the chance to drive that debate in November against incumbent Stan Stanart. Mitchell worked in the County Clerk’s office for 20 years, in various departments like Probate, Microfilm, Personal Records, and Administration. We talked about her experiences in the office as well as the challenges that it faces going forward in the interview:

You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, Gayle Mitchell, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, interviews | Comments Off

Celia Israel wins HD50 special election runoff

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Congrats, Rep.-elect Celia Israel.

Rep. Celia Israel

In the special runoff election for District 50 in the Texas House, Democrat Celia Israel took the lead after early voting.

Israel, a Realtor, earned 58.8 percent of the early vote, and Republican Mike VanDeWalle, a chiropractor, took 41.1 percent. The total number of ballots cast during the early voting period, which ran four days last week, was 4,541, or 4.67 percent of all register voters in the northern Travis County district.

Polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and hour later than normal. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir successfully petitioned a local district judge earlier in the day to grant a request for the additional hour of voting because of inclement weather and the closing of eight of 36 polling places that operated out of schools that were closed due to bad weather.

The special election in District 50 took place to replace former state Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, who resigned last year to lead Google Fiber in Austin.

The final total is here. Israel wound up with ~~60.2%~~ 59.4% of the vote. And yes, turnout was pathetic. The weather obviously played a part of that, but there were other factors, too.

Turnout during early voting was extraordinarily low. Just 4.5 percent of eligible voters cast early ballots in the election — about half as many as in the last special election runoff in Travis County, according to the county clerk’s office.

Supporters of both campaigns have acknowledged the awkward timing of both early voting and election day. Early voting began last Tuesday, one day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and ended Friday, when polls opened five hours late because of icy weather.

So there were only four days of early voting instead of the usual five – really, more like three and a half days of early voting. And this runoff occurred during the heat of the primaries, three weeks before early voting for that begins. I think people could be forgiven if they took their eye off the ball a bit on this one. Such downward pressure on turnout can sometimes cause bizarre results, which would have been greatly magnified given the subtext of this election.

[Jeremy] Bird is one of the founders of Battleground Texas, a group dedicated to making this Republican stronghold competitive for Democrats. Celia Israel’s race for an open seat in the state House of Representatives is not expected to be difficult considering the district has historically voted for Democrats.

“It’s nice to have a special election and a little bit of a test,” Bird said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Identifying, engaging and turning out voters will help the Israel campaign now and (gubernatorial candidate) Wendy Davis, (lieutenant governor candidate) Leticia Van de Putte and other Democrats in November. Not only are people more likely to turn out to vote again, but the results will give us a chance to check our voter model and fine tune it for the election.”

[…]

On Saturday, Israel’s volunteers each had a list of homes to visit where Battleground’s research showed a reliably Democratic voter could be found. The volunteers were given a recommended script to follow, including thanking the prospective voter, asking whether the person would be willing to volunteer, and taking down an email address.

The data collected by Battleground staff, combined with publicly available voter records, is critical to the group’s strategy to identify, register and recruit the 2 million Democrats they estimate are not voting in Texas elections.

“Data collected from personal conversations is much more effective for predicting who people will support and at what level they’ll participate,” Bird said.

Israel is running against tea party Republican Mike VanDeWalle, but few voters know about the election, so Battleground’s help in getting out the vote is critical. Battleground Texas volunteers have knocked on over 14,000 doors over two weeks, Bird said.

“Battleground Texas is not just a political slogan, it’s a political muscle, and we’re going to use it in 2014,” Israel said.

The final total in this election was far less than 14,000 votes, but the weather was a big factor in that. That cut both ways, however, and in the end Israel’s vote percentage was quite good. Here’s how she compared to the top scoring Democrat in HD50 going back to 2002:

2012 results
2010 results
2008 results
2006 results
2004 results
2002 results


Year      High D   High D%
==========================
2014SpR   Israel     59.4%
2012       Obama     57.8%
2010       White     55.9%
2008       Obama     60.3%
2006       Moody     58.7%
2004      Molina     51.2%
2002       Sharp     54.3%

Note that Bill White and Bill Moody both outperformed the rest of the Dem ticket in their year by several points, and in all three off years several Republicans carried HD50. If 2008-level performance is the norm in other State Rep districts this fall, I’ll be plenty happy, and so I suspect will Jeremy Bird. For the record, I don’t think this special election runoff is a harbinger of any kind for November. It’s nice, but it’s one little data point. That said, if Israel had struggled to win, or even worse if she had lost, you could have wallpapered Reliant Stadium with the collected writings of every damn pundit, blogger, and assorted loudmouth in the state blathering on about how this portended doom for the Dems and proved Battleground Texas was a sham. I think I’m entitled to point out that Israel and BGTX easily met expectations, at the least. And now Rep.-elect Israel gets to do it again in November, against the same Republican opponent. I’ve made it this far without mentioning that Rep.-elect Israel becomes the second out gay member of the Legislature, joining Rep. Mary Gonzalez of El Paso, so I’ll rectify that here; see Lone Star Q and the Dallas Voice for more on that. Congratulations, Rep.-elect Celia Israel, and best of luck to you in November.

UPDATE: When I wrote this post last night, the Travis County results page had been updated at 9:13 PM, and the cumulative totals page showed 39 of 39 precincts completed, with Israel at 60.2% of the vote. It also showed that all of 700 votes had been cast on Tuesday, but who was I to argue with that? In any event, a 10:23 PM update shows 5807 votes cast on Tuesday, with Celia Israel now receiving 59.42% of the overall total. That’s down a bit from what she had as of the 9:13 update, but still a higher percentage than any other Democrat other than President Obama in 2008 (former Rep. Mark Strama was unopposed in 2012, the only year in which he ran under the new boundaries), so my point about how she and BGTX did in this race remains.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Battleground Texas, Celia Israel, early voting, Election 2014, HD50, Mark Strama, Mike VanDeWalle, runoff, special election, Texas, The Lege, turnout | 2 Comments

Where BGTX stands today

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s not quite where they thought they’d be when things first started up, but that’s in large part because so much has happened since then.

Jeremy Bird, Barack Obama’s former national field organizer, told The Texas Tribune that nearly a year into the creation of Battleground Texas, it has attracted more than 10,000 volunteers, exceeded the Republican Party of Texas in social media followers and has drawn more interest in field organizer “fellow” positions than it has openings currently available.

Battleground was formed last February to register more Democratic voters and turn them out for the party’s candidates, who haven’t won a statewide race since 1994.

“Those things are happening at a way accelerated pace. It’s because there’s an election that’s competitive,’’ Bird said. “But I didn’t think we’d be where we are today a year ago.”

[…]

Battleground has essentially become Davis’ field operation, and the group’s top staffers work side by side at the senator’s headquarters in Fort Worth.

“You know, just to be in the place where there’s a competitive election, and people are actually going to have a choice,” Bird said. “That’s fantastic for me. I didn’t think that would be happening so soon.”

I skipped over a lot of stuff in the story, so go and read it if you want. Much of it recaps current events. I did like the way Bird dismissively characterized James O’Keefe as the liar and convict that he is. Anyway, fun as that is it’s not what I wanted to talk about. Given that BGTX is basically the ground game for Wendy Davis’ campaign, it’s a little strange to recall that their original intent was to start laying the foundation for Texas to be competitive in Presidential years. It’s not a coincidence that Jeremy Bird is also Team Hillary, after all. 2014 wasn’t really on the radar at that time. Then Wendy happened, and now there was something concrete to work towards this year. The anecdotal evidence – voter registration, messaging, fundraising, activist engagement – is positive, but we won’t truly know how effective they’re being till November. The question is how to judge them afterward. They could facilitate big gains for Democrats but still lose every statewide race. Going from 58-40 losses to 50-48 losses would be a huge step forward and would surely put Texas on the map for 2016, which would exceed BGTX’s own stated timetable, but would still mean another statewide shutout and four years of Governor Abbott and his cadre of crazy. Twelve months ago, when all we had was the promise of a future Castro candidacy, that might have seemed like a great stretch goal. Now I daresay people will have decidedly mixed emotions. I’m sure I’ll be deeply conflicted. The best way to avoid those feelings, of course, is to get involved and do everything you can to maximize Democratic performance this fall. Let’s not have a case of the what-ifs and the if-onlys this November.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Battleground Texas, Election 2014, Election 2016, Governor, Hillary Clinton, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

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