The Paxton prosecutors’ personal dispute

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m just going to leave this here.

A crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton never would have been sent to prison if his fraud case had gone to trial, the prosecutors now say.

In the week since Paxton, a Republican, cut a deal to have his charges dropped and upcoming trial canceled, the two special prosecutors have traded barbs over how each handled the case. They’ve questioned each other’s choices, motives and even whether they’ve always been truthful with each other.

From indictment to deal, the case lasted nine years. The prosecutors entered the case as partners, longtime colleagues, even friends, and leave it as adversaries.

The one thing they do agree on: Neither thinks Paxton was going to end up behind bars.

During a Friday interview on WFAA, lead prosecutor Brian Wice was asked if prison was ever a likelihood if the case had gone to trial.

“The answer to your question is two words: absolutely never,” Wice said.

“I never envisioned any scenario, any universe in which, by which, through which, that a judge or jury put Ken Paxton in prison based on either the third-degree felony failing to register as an investment adviser rep, or, for that matter, the first-degree felony securities fraud cases,” he added.

In an interview with The Texas Newsroom, Wice’s former co-counsel agreed.

“That’s probably the one true thing that Brian [Wice] said,” said Kent Schaffer, who resigned from the prosecution in February after he and Wice split over how to handle the case.

[…]

Wice said he’d received a slew of hate messages from people who wanted to see Paxton answer to a jury. They questioned why a deal would be cut the month before Paxton was scheduled to go to trial — especially since the case had dragged on for as long as it did.

Schaffer, who was not part of the final negotiations, said it was “kind of stupid” that Paxton will do his community service in Collin County, where the attorney general has a home and practiced law for years. He believes Paxton will get more favorable treatment there.

“Anybody with an IQ over 60 understands Paxton’s never going to do one hour of community service,” Schaffer told The Texas Newsroom.

Cogdell said Paxton will “absolutely” comply with the terms of the deal.

Schaffer tried to cut a different deal with Paxton’s defense team before he stepped off the case. But Wice scuttled it, he said.

Then, on Feb. 16, the day Schaffer resigned from the case, Wice publicly criticized Schaffer’s deal as tantamount to giving Paxton “a cocktail, a hot meal and a breath mint” because he said it did not include restitution for the accusers.

Schaffer said his deal would have included restitution if Wice hadn’t cut off talks. Clapping back at his former partner, he told The Texas Newsroom that Wice’s deal is like giving Paxton “a cocktail and a hot meal and a backrub.”

He said Wice is unfairly criticizing his work on the case now to throw off scrutiny: “At this point, he’s just looking for somebody to get all the negative attention off him.”

In three pages of comments provided to The Texas Newsroom, Wice said Schaffer was the one unfairly criticizing him.

See here and here for some background. I don’t have much interest in litigating this – I have no idea who’s “right” and “wrong” in this Wice/Schaffer dispute – so I will just say two things. One is that Ken Paxton and his buddies did an awful lot to sabotage this case from the beginning, with the way that Collin County Commissioners Court refused to pay the special prosecutors being at the top of that list. In retrospect, it probably would have been for the best if this case could have been given to another county’s District Attorney for handling, as that would have largely settled the cost matter and left it up to people whose only job is to do prosecutions and didn’t have to worry about being properly compensated for it. And two, Ken Paxton is one lucky goddamn son of a bitch. A whole constellation of factors had to line up just right for him to end up without even having to plead guilty to something to get off like that, and they did. There’s a very small list of people who deserved that less than he did. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go light about a hundred candles for that grand jury in San Antonio.

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Still waiting on details for paying the firefighters

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

A lot of the same stuff we’ve heard before here, but a little bit more details.

Mayor John Whitmire

Houston Mayor John Whitmire detailed his last three months as the fourth-largest city’s top boss and outlined some of his ongoing projects in a one-on-one conversation with former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett Wednesday night.

Some of those plans include seeking voter approval to raise the property tax revenue cap and using his political experience to “mend” government relationships among local and state officials, which he addressed at an event with the Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Here are some important takeaways from the discussion:

The city is considering multiple ways to halt its anticipated economic shortfalls and pay for massive deals with some of its first responders. Whitmire believes all options are up for discussion. “We’re going to put everything on the table,” Whitmire said when asked how Houston plans to pay for the projected $1.3 billion firefighter deal. “We are the only major city in the state that doesn’t have a garbage fee,” he added.

In addition to a possible garbage fee, Whitmire plans to ask voters to increase their property taxes, a potential hike the city hasn’t seen in nearly two decades. “I will ask the public to make an exception for public safety on the revenue cap,” he said. “It would be $15 a month to have the response time for fire and police that I think a safe city needs. We’re a great city but we’ve got to protect our investment and go forward.”

[…]

While the city faces a potential $200 million budget hole, Whitmire suggested combining city and county department services to save some money, which could result in layoffs. It’s still unclear how the project would be implemented, but he said he’s open to the idea.

“We got two library systems and two parks, and I could go on and on,” Whitmire said. “We got 85 law enforcement agencies in Harris County. They don’t even talk to each other. They can’t talk to each other and help each other on the radio.”

There’s more in this earlier Chron story. The Houston Landing went into some detail about the pushback Mayor Whitmire has been getting from Council. The main new information here is the number specified for a property tax rate hike, though how much that might raise and how that would work with both the city and state revenue caps is unclear to me. Consolidating services with Harris County is an ongoing project – certainly the library is a ripe target for that given the recent goings on. It does take two to tango, and as much as the Mayor likes to talk about improving relations with the state government, he shouldn’t lose sight of the relationship we have with our county government. Some of the commissioners are fond of bicycles. I’m just saying.

Anyway. It’s my understanding that members of Council still haven’t seen the deal details, which one assumes they will need to do in order to vote on it. We still don’t know what a bond issue to fund the back pay looks like. I at least don’t know what happens if we do have a vote and it ends in failure. There’s still a lot to do, and there’s still a budget to write and pass. On we go.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

More Census changes coming

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This seems like a good idea.

On the next U.S. census and future federal government forms, the list of checkboxes for a person’s race and ethnicity is officially getting longer.

The Biden administration has approved proposals for a new response option for “Middle Eastern or North African” and a “Hispanic or Latino” box that appears under a reformatted question that asks: “What is your race and/or ethnicity?”

Going forward, participants in federal surveys will be presented with at least seven “race and/or ethnicity” categories, along with instructions that say: “Select all that apply.”

After years of research and discussion by federal officials for a complicated review process that goes back to 2014, the decision was announced Thursday in a Federal Register notice, which was made available for public inspection before its official publication.

Officials at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget revived these Obama-era proposals after they were shelved by the Trump administration. Supporters of these changes say they could help the racial and ethnic data used to redraw maps of voting districts, enforce civil rights protections and guide policymaking and research better reflect people’s identities today.

[…]

OMB’s decision to change its statistical standards on race and ethnicity for the first time in more than a quarter-century also marks a major shift in the U.S. government’s definition of “White,” which no longer includes people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups such as Egyptian, Iranian, Iraqi, Israeli, Jordanian, Kurdish, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian and Yemeni.

That move sets up “Middle Eastern or North African” as the first completely new racial or ethnic category to be required on federal government forms since officials first issued in 1977 standards on racial and ethnic data that the Census Bureau and other federal agencies must follow.

For more than three decades, advocates for Arab Americans and other MENA groups have campaigned for their own checkbox on the U.S. census and other government forms, and recent research suggests that many people of MENA descent do not see themselves as white, a category that the federal government previously considered to include people with “origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”

Studies by the bureau show that the government’s previous standards have also been out of step with many Latinos. Those standards required asking about a person’s Hispanic or Latino identity — which the federal government considers to be an ethnicity that can be any race — before asking about their racial identity.

Combining a question about Hispanic origins with a question about race into one question, while allowing people to check as many boxes as they want, is likely to lower the share of Latinos who mark the “Some other race” category on census forms, the bureau’s research from 2015 suggests.

Recent research, however, suggests it’s not clear how someone who identifies as Afro Latino is likely to respond to a combined race-ethnicity question. According to the Federal Register notice, about half of participants in a recent study for OMB selected only the “Hispanic or Latino” box when presented with a combined question after previously selecting both the Latino and Black categories.

This new question format, along with the addition of a “Middle Eastern or North African” box, could also decrease the number of people who mark the “White” box.

The point here is to get better Census data that more accurately reflects our current reality. There are nuances and there will still be some confusion and unclarity about how to answer the new questions, but I believe it’s worth the effort. It’s already the case that private enterprises like Amazon have their own data that’s at least as good as what the Census collects. Whether the Census can get its hands on that is likely to be another bitterly fought partisan issue, with Republicans doing everything they can to block it. If we have another Republican president in place for the next Census, who knows what kind of shenanigans we’ll see. That’s a worry for a later date. For now, this is where the Census would like to go.

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Hey look, it’s a story about the HCAD elections

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

About damn time.

A question you are unlikely to hear at any bar, diner or dinner table over the next month: Who are you voting for the county appraisal district board?

Few area residents are aware of the election, even though many of them voted to approve it only a few months ago.

In Harris County, the first-time election, scheduled May 4, has drawn 13 candidates seeking three seats on the nine-member Harris County Appraisal District board.

Voters will be asked to select governing members of the agency that determines annual property values used by local taxing entities to set their property tax rates and budgets. Appraisal district boards have the ability to hire and fire the county’s chief appraiser, the person in charge of carrying out property appraisals.

Last November’s state Proposition 4 set a temporary maximum on appraised property values and increased the homestead exemption, a tax break homeowners can place on their primary residence, from $40,000 to $100,000. The measure was overwhelmingly approved by 83 percent of voters.

Along with changes to the tax code, the final line of the proposition created four-year terms for three appraisal board positions in the 50 Texas counties with a population larger than 75,000. Previously, all nine members were appointed by local taxing entities represented by the district.

The changes to appraisal boards in the Houston region also apply to Liberty, Montgomery, Galveston, Brazoria and Fort Bend counties.

[…]

Terms for the elected board members will begin July 1 and last until July 31, 2026.

Election day will be held on a Saturday, coinciding only with the Texas Senate District 15 special election to fill the final eight months of Mayor John Whitmire’s vacated term.

The elections are being held quickly after November’s constitutional amendment so board members are in place before property tax season begins in the fall, [Sen. Paul] Bettencourt said. The May election day also serves to ensure the positions are nonpartisan and do not require a primary, further removing the process from political back-and-forth, the senator said.

Going forward, appraisal district board elections will be held in November.

[…]

The races are being held at significant cost to the appraisal district.

The May election is being administered by the Harris County Clerk’s office, but state law requires the appraisal district to cover the $4.1 million cost estimated by county officials. No estimate was available for a potential July runoff, according to the clerk’s office.

Election costs on crowded November ballots generally are spread among the political entities holding races, according to the clerk’s office.

State Rep. Mano DeAyala, R-Houston, argued the springtime election offers voters the opportunity to better familiarize themselves with the positions and candidates without other races competing for their attention.

“It’s a subject matter every voter should want to be informed about because it affects a vast majority … directly,” DeAyala said. “I think the voters are going to get engaged. I think the voters are going to get informed.”

The novelty and low attention on the elections has some suspicious of further meddling in Harris County’s affairs by the Texas Legislature.

“Everybody is kind of scratching their heads at this,” said Jay Malone, political director for the Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation. “Ultimately, the way we have to think about this is in the broader context of the attacks by the legislature on local control.”

Low voter turnout is likely, but the timing is necessary to allow new board members to get to work, state Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, wrote in a statement.

“It enhances the democratic nature of the appraisal process,” Thierry wrote. “By expanding the representation on the board, we ensure a diversity of perspectives and interests are considered, leading to more fair and equitable outcomes.”

The labor federation has endorsed Blueford-Daniels, Noriega and Adeleke in their respective elections.

Malone said the federation is supporting the trio because of their experience working for or with taxing entities. He said it was crucial to avoid electing someone who could support the board naming an ant-tax chief appraiser.

“Millions of dollars are being spent for an outcome that is really unclear,” Malone said. “We can speculate on the motivations, but in the context of the last two sessions where we saw all this legislation pass to defund schools and school services … we know there could be a risk to our really important revenue streams.”

That’s the first real story I’ve seen since January when we first learned about this new election. If you look at the list of candidates who filed for the races and compare it to those listed on that sample ballot the story links to, you’ll notice that two people have withdrawn, Era Ford and Melody Ellis. With at least three candidates in each race, we’re very likely to get at least one runoff, which will be in July.

I have done interviews with three of these candidates and I have a fourth one in the works; I’ll run them over the next two weeks. These are weird races because there’s not that much that appraisal district boards and their members actually do, at least in terms of things they can make promises about on a campaign trail. I think Jay Malone has the right idea here, so be sure to listen to the interviews I’ve done and make sure you get out and vote in this election, for which early voting begins on April 22 and runs through April 30. As noted in the story, the SD15 special election, now featuring just Molly Cook and Jarvis Johnson, is also on May 4, with the same early voting schedule. Turnout will be very light. Make your voice heard.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Extremely active” hurricane season coming

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Be prepared.

The emergence of a La Niña weather pattern and warmer tropical waters could lead to an “extremely active” 2024 hurricane season, according to researchers at Colorado State University who issued their first hurricane season outlook of the year on Thursday. Colorado State’s outlook marks the first widely recognized hurricane forecast of the season and comes out more than a month before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues their seasonal outlook.

Colorado State University’s annual hurricane outlook, which is considered an authority in hurricane forecasts, has been published every April since 1995. This year’s hurricane outlook has the highest number of hurricanes ever projected in April, said Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist and Atlantic basin seasonal forecast specialist at Colorado State.

“The team cites record warm tropical and eastern subtropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures as a primary factor for their prediction of 11 hurricanes this year,” researchers said in a statement.

Here’s how the numbers look and why this season is expected to be so active.

The number of named systems, which includes tropical storms, is forecast to be 23. Of that number, 11 are expected to become hurricanes and 5 of those could become major hurricanes, which are Category 3 or stronger. Major hurricanes bring wind speeds of at least 111 mph and often lead to the most costly damage.

This forecast is quite a bit higher than what the 30-year average from 1991 to 2020 shows. The projected number of named storms is nearly 9 more than average, with the number of expected hurricanes being roughly four more than average.

We’ve already had a couple of other forecasts saying similar things. The folks at Colorado State had a good track record, so their outlook is always anticipated. The main takeaway from this is not that you need to panic but that you should be prepared, in all the ways you should normally be prepared. We’ll deal with what comes as best we can. The Eyewall has more.

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HISD discouraging STAAR test prep

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Why must Mike Miles fold, spindle, and mutilate my brain like this?

As Houston ISD students prepare to take the STAAR in less than two weeks, appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is instructing schools to avoid direct test preparation, instead telling principals to have their teachers focus on daily lessons as usual.

The directive is a departure from the norm at many HISD schools, according to multiple district teachers and administrators, who say the weeks leading up to the exam usually included reviews of key concepts, mock tests and sometimes even “STAAR Olympics,” which included educational games to make test prep more engaging.

Miles laid out his instructions last Wednesday in his weekly email to principals, the information in which applies to all schools in HISD “unless specifically called out.”

“Neither the STAAR exams nor the NWEA and EOY assessments should be overemphasized for teachers and students,” Miles wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Houston Chronicle. “Teachers should focus on the curriculum and the quality of instruction. Students should focus on the (Demonstrations of Learning) and learning the objective for the day every day.”

“Direct instruction and a reasonable amount of (differentiated instruction) spent reviewing key concepts is OK. However, there should be little test prep — whereby students take a series of assessments to prepare for STAAR or NWEA,” he wrote.

Erin Baumgartner, the director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, said that the legacy of No Child Left Behind, the federal legislation signed in 2002 that required states to implement standardized tests, has made test prep standard practice at schools nationwide.

While mock exams and other strategies can help familiarize students with the format and presentation of a standardized test, she said, there is no evidence that explicit test prep necessarily leads to greater outcomes on the assessment itself.

“If test prep isn’t something that necessarily is shown to work, then it shouldn’t matter too much whether schools are doing a lot of it or not, but it’s become the norm,” Baumgartner said.

[…]

Some teachers and administrators expressed frustration with the directive and fear it could unfairly impact their evaluations, arguing it limits their ability to prepare students for a unique assessment they only take once a year. Even staunch opponents of standardized testing, such as Community Voices for Public Education co-founder Ruth Kravetz, said the lack of direct preparation could harm students and schools, given the high stakes associated with the results.

Kravetz, a former HISD teacher and administrator, said that the online-only format of the recently redesigned STAAR makes it necessary to familiarize students with the assessment before its administered, pointing to a Houston Public Media report that revealed 46% of fourth graders scored a zero out of 10 on the writing portion of the STAAR in 2023, the first year the new test was implemented.

“I can’t believe I have to argue for letting students review so they don’t go in cold. The fix is in at the front end and the back end, and that’s not the way we’re supposed to treat schoolchildren,” Kravetz said.

I’m no fan of the STAAR either, certainly not on the emphasis placed on it. But the fact remains that HISD was put into this cursed takeover status because of insufficient STAAR scores, and HISD will remain in this cursed takeover status until its STAAR scores improve to a particular level, and as such it sure seems weird to take such a seemingly indifferent attitude towards them, at least for this year. The STAAR also provides the first apples-to-apples comparison for the before-Miles and after-Miles era, so one way to interpret this is that HISD is just trying to lower expectations ahead of that. When you don’t trust the source, it’s easy to find nefarious motives in their actions.

Margaret Downing at the Press sums it all up nicely.

There is considerable irony in all this.

For years HISD parents and teachers justifiably complained that there was too much emphasis on the STAAR both in execution and test prep. Critics said students should be learning what they need to learn in classes designed to cover the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills criteria. This extra time spent preparing for one test is nothing more than gaming the systems with “strategies” and taking kids away from what they should be learning, they charged.

Well now they got — in part — what many of them asked for with a Superintendent who echoes those views. And a lot of them don’t like it. Their anxiety levels are rising and conspiracy theories have reached new levels: Is this being done so scores will tank and then the next year HISD Superintendent Mike Miles can show a dramatic improvement or call for more resources? Is this a way to get rid of more unwanted teachers? Is this a way to close down schools because no parent wants their child at a school with low test scores and with a drop in population those campuses will have to close, won’t they?

“No one likes teaching to the test but it’s those test scores that got our district in the situation it is and the scores are what will get us out. Is this intentional tanking?” one teacher asked.

Previously, passing the STAAR was a grade promotion requirement for students in grades 5 and 8 but the Texas Education Agency, saying it wanted to relieve pressure, dropped that part in 2023.

The pressure is still on for teachers, though. A big part of their annual assessment is based on how their students do on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness which began in the 2011-12 school year. Poor assessments can lead to not getting the school assignments they want or in worst cases, not having their contracts renewed.

The anxieties and rumors are probably part and parcel of not only a lack of trust of Miles and his academic and administrative policies in some quarters, but of an increasing wariness on the part of many teachers to share their true feelings with their administrators.

That we did too much STAAR prep before and that we are doing too little now can both be true. An administration that cared about its stakeholders and worked to build trust in the community could reasonably explain its change in strategy and what we should expect from it. That is not what we have here. As with everything Mike Miles has done, I feel I am forced to hope that he knows what he’s doing despite my strong misgivings. We’ll know in a few months how it turned out.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

That “Prop A committee”

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I mentioned the establishment of a Proposition A committee yesterday, so let’s take a closer look at it.

CM Ed Pollard

Tensions flared at Houston City Council on Wednesday, as Mayor John Whitmire and council members clashed over the application of a new charter amendment that allows members to add items to council meeting agendas.

Last November, Houston voters passed Proposition A, an amendment that allows any three council members to come together and add an item to a council agenda, marking a sharp shift from the “strong mayor” system that dominated Houston politics for years.

[…]

Since Whitmire has taken office, his administration has created a Proposition A Committee that serves as a platform to review proposals that members want to bring forward.

The city charter does not require a council member to go through the committee in order to add an item to the agenda, but a lack of council feedback on a Wednesday agenda item sparked a heated debate at City Hall about Proposition A and Whitmire’s committee structure.

Council Member Edward Pollard presented an ordinance change that would make it easier for council members to add speed bumps in their neighborhoods. The agenda item was cosigned by Council Members Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, Fred Flickinger, Tarsha Jackson and Tiffany D. Thomas.

Whitmire told council at the start of the discussion that while he supported Proposition A, he thought Pollard could have approached the issue in a way that encouraged feedback from other council members, the public and first responders.

He stressed that he thought the item should go through the Proposition A Committee, and said that council members needed to consider the “unintended consequences” of the items they tried to add.

“I just think it would be better if you allowed a public hearing and let your colleagues that are not familiar with the process that you’re trying to correct play a role,” Whitmire said.

Pollard argued that his approach was in line with what voters approved in November and running proposals through committee was not a necessary step.

“That charter change was not meant for committee hearings,” Pollard said. “It was meant for council members to bring any item that is lawful to the agenda at any designated date. That is what it says.”

A city attorney told the council that while items did not need to be heard by the committee before being placed on the agenda, they were subject to the same rules as other agenda items once they were added. Whitmire argued that was the precise reason he believed the committee was necessary.

Since the speed bump item had not been discussed in committee, Whitmire said it required his office and the city’s legal department to rewrite it so that it was legally compliant.

As noted, this was in yesterday’s post, with a link to a Houston Landing story that covered a lot of this ground. As you know, I was very much a skeptic of this proposition when it was first announced – I thought three was too few Council members to trigger the agenda item, better to have more like six to make it harder to pull shenanigans with it – but over time I came to accept it as a worthwhile idea.

I was also a little skeptical when I first saw that the speed hump proposition had been referred to this committee, which I thought could be its own kind of speed hump, designed to at least slow down these proposed ordinances, if not deter them outright. On further reflection, I thought that was an overreaction – this isn’t the Legislature, I don’t think there are a plethora of ways to bottle up bills in the committee process. That said, it could certainly be a way of altering the initial proposals, perhaps to a form the Council members who brought it forward would find objectionable.

I take the Mayor’s point that the City Attorney should have some ability to review proposed ordinances to ensure they’re legally kosher, and there’s value in taking some time to vet and discuss them before a final vote. Where this will get contentious is if an ordinance put forward via the Prop A mechanism gets truly slow-walked or derailed; it’s not hard to imagine a lawsuit resulting from that. We’ll see how this plays out in practice, but for now I’ll take the Mayor at his word. I’m OK with the existence and use of this committee. And I await the outcome of that speed hump proposal.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Migrants’ lawsuit against company that flew them to Martha’s Vineyard can proceed

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

A federal judge in Boston has ruled that migrants flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022 can proceed with a lawsuit against the Florida company that took them there.

The judge also dismissed claims against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials named in the suit.

Three migrants from Venezuela, along with an immigrant rights group, filed the lawsuit. They say that Florida’s governor, others in his administration and an air transport company conspired to mislead them and deprive them of their civil rights when they recruited and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.

In their lawsuit, the migrants, identified as Yanet, Pablo and Jesus say they were told they were going to Massachusetts, but didn’t know their final destination was Martha’s Vineyard until shortly before landing.

The plaintiffs say a videographer hired by the DeSantis administration recorded them arriving and boarding vans. But apart from the videographer and van drivers, the plaintiffs say no one else in Martha’s Vineyard had any advance notice of their arrival.

In her order, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs says the case can proceed against the air transport company, Vertol. Judge Burroughs dismissed claims against Gov. DeSantis and other members of his administration out of jurisdictional concerns, but did so “without prejudice.” That means the legal team representing the migrants can seek to bring DeSantis and others back into the case as it goes forward.

In the 77-page filing, Judge Burroughs had harsh words for those involved in the scheme. “Vertol and the other Defendants here were not legitimately enforcing any immigration laws,” she wrote, adding, “the Court sees no legitimate purpose for rounding up highly vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly injecting them into a divisive national debate.”

See here for some background. The Bexar County Sheriff later filed some charges relating to this but I don’t recall ever seeing the details about that; my guess it was mostly small-potatoes stuff. The city of Los Angeles took steps to sue Greg Abbott over the buses sent there, but again I haven’t seen much in the news about it since then. While it would be nice to haul the likes of Abbott and DeSantis into court over stull like this, successfully suing the bus companies and airlines that do their dirty work is almost as good, as if it costs them a big judgment to get involved, they’ll stop doing it. I suspect we have a long way to go with this one, so be patient. The Current has more.

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Dispatches from Dallas, April 5 edition

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, it’s a grab bag with a lot of topics, including: cybersecurity; avian flu; scary anti-abortion GOP types; Tarrant County commissioners up to their usual shenanigans; immigration news; heat islands in Dallas; another theory about the Dallas City Council’s Project X; South Dallas news about Fair Park and the Forest Theater; the bling of a World Series ring; and baby Jameela the gorilla finds a foster mom at last.

This week’s post was brought to you by the ambient modern classical music of Nils Frahm, which is good accompaniment to writing.

This week we have something of a grab bag, so let’s dive into it:

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The Fifth Circuit has its merits hearing on SB4

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is the big one.

A federal appeals court heard arguments Wednesday from Texas and the federal government about whether it should continue blocking a new Texas law that would let state police arrest migrants suspected of entering the U.S. illegally.

The three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans now has to rule on the appeal of a lower court’s injunction that stopped Senate Bill 4 from going into effect. The same panel decided to keep SB 4 on hold a week ago until it could rule on whether the law is constitutional.

The Biden administration and civil rights organizations sued Texas to stop the law, claiming SB 4 is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal immigration laws. The law’s proponents have argued that the law simply mirrors federal law, which they claim is not being enforced by federal authorities.

Texas Solicitor General Aaron Lloyd Nielson told the appellate panel on Wednesday morning that the law was crafted in a way that “goes up to the line of Supreme Court precedent,” and conceded it may have crossed that line.

[…]

Nielsen said Wednesday that under the law, Texas “doesn’t deport anybody.” He said police would take migrants to a port of entry, which are controlled by the federal government.

“Texas takes them to a port of entry and the United States then decides what to do,” Nielsen said. “That’s critical about this … it’s portrayed as Texas is ourself just like flying people off to some other place and that’s not accurate.”

Mexican officials have said they won’t accept repatriations from Texas. Mexico has agreements with the federal government detailing which migrants it will accept after they’re deported by U.S. immigration officials.

Biden administration lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny pointed to a part SB 4 that requires a person to be returned to the country from which they entered the U.S.

“They now say, I guess, that you don’t actually have to do that, that maybe you just go to the port of entry and that’s good enough,” Tenny said.

See here and here for the most recent updates. The arguments here aren’t substantially different than those made in the hearing over whether to keep the temporary block in place. The main difference is that the state of Texas seems to have accepted that it’s not going to get a clear victory, so they’re trying to encourage the court to keep at least some of the law in place. Which could happen – I have no idea what the odds are of that, or how much of the law we could be talking about, but this is the Fifth Circuit and they do have a long history of giving Ken Paxton what he wants. The real question is how long it takes them to hand down their opinion. CNN and TPR have more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Fifth Circuit has its merits hearing on SB4

More on Rep. Nehls’ ethics investigation

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Again, could be something, could be nothing.

Rep. Troy Nehls

U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls said he is cooperating with a House ethics committee “matter” that he says is related to his campaign finances.

After the House Ethics Committee last week acknowledged they were looking into an undisclosed issue involving Nehls, the Fort Bend County Republican quickly offered to assist them.

“My campaign has complied with every Federal Election Commission (FEC) law, and my books are open,” Nehls said.

[…]

In December 2023, the FEC flagged Nehls’ campaign report for inaccurate fundraising totals. In October, he reported raising nearly $365,000 and spending $216,000. After the FEC inquiry, he submitted an amended report in January showing he had actually raised $484,000 and spent about $314,000.

Those campaign fundraising totals have since grown to $525,274 raised and $353,000 spent, according to his latest report filed in February. He had about $588,000 in his campaign account heading into the March primary elections.

See here for the background. This is all consistent with there being a clerical error or some other readily fixable situation. It’s also possible this goes quite a bit deeper. We won’t know until we hear from the committee, which as noted will be in May. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Extending parking meter hours downtown

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m okay with this.

Houston City Council will vote to extend the time residents will have to pay city parking meters on Wednesday.

The current ordinance requires drivers who park in metered spots to pay between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The new ordinance would keep the start time at 7 a.m., but extend the period people will have to pay to 2 a.m.

The new change will not increase parking rates, if passed, but is expected to generate more revenue for the city, said Council Member Edward Pollard, who introduced the agenda item with Council Members Fred Flickinger and Tiffany Thomas.

“This is a way in which we can trickle on small amounts that will add up over time,” Pollard said.

City ordinance requires ParkHouston, which oversees parking meters in Houston, to keep a $2 million fund balance. Any revenue made that exceeds the fund balance goes into the city’s general fund, said Billy Rudolph, chief of staff of the city’s Administrative and Regulatory Affairs Department.

Before the pandemic, the city received approximately $10 million in ParkHouston revenue for the general fund, Rudolph said. Last year, the city received approximately $5 million.

Pollard believes that cash amount could double with the extension.

“The administration says that we’re broke,” Pollard said. “I don’t necessarily believe that, but I do believe that we are going to have to find ways to bring in more revenue.”

[…]

Mayor John Whitmire did not respond directly to questions of whether he would support the proposal, but he said that a robust discussion would likely follow at City Council this week.

“In this case, three Council Members are playing an active role by introducing an idea to help bring additional revenue to the city,” Whitmire wrote in a statement. “Such a privilege also comes with a duty to do more than present a good idea.”

Whitmire added that before this proposal could go forward, council members would have to get input from the public and weigh the potential unintended consequences of implementing the change.

While Pollard is optimistic about the potential change, business leaders who work downtown, where many of the city’s parking meters are located, are raising red flags.

Kris Larson, president and CEO of Downtown Houston, which operates as the umbrella group for the area’s development organizations, told the Chronicle he was first approached about the potential changes by the mayor’s office and Council Member Joaquin Martinez, who represents downtown – not by the three members of council who put the item on the agenda.

“What problem are we trying to solve with this change?” Larson asked. “Is this simply about revenue and trying to maximize the amount of revenue that the city can collect in the short term?”

Well, yes. That’s what it’s about. And it’s fine. Look, if you go downtown to see a show or watch an Astros game and you park on the street, you’re probably paying to park through 11 PM. If the hours in which you have to pay get extended to 2 AM, you might pay for a little extra time, like to 11:30 or midnight, but not that much more. The shows we see at the Hobby Center are usually out by 10:30 or so. Astros games start at 7 and thanks to the new rules are likely to be over by around 10. You might pad your time a bit to hedge against the risk of a ticket, but at worst it’ll cost you another two or three bucks. Most people will barely notice. I get why Downtown Houston doesn’t like this, but I think they’re blowing it way out of proportion.

And yes, we need the revenue. There are only so many options for increasing revenue, which is absolutely going to be needed to pay for the firefighter pay agreement. Hell, it was needed even before this settlement. I’m not a fan of CM Pollard, but I appreciate that he’s thinking outside the box here and putting forward some solutions, using Prop A to make sure they get heard to boot. I hope the Mayor doesn’t oppose this proposal.

UPDATE: The parking meter proposal was delayed for a week while another proposal to allow for more Council discretion in getting speed humps built in their neighborhoods was referred to a new “Proposition A” committee, which is a Mayor Whitmire creation. We’ll keep an eye on that.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of April 1

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old Texas Progressive Alliance weekly roundup.

Continue reading →

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One more whiny election loser lawsuit

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I know, we all thought we were done with these.

Nearly five months after Harris County’s November 2022 election results were upheld in court, another unsuccessful Republican judicial candidate laid out a similar set of facts before the same judge in the same downtown Houston courtroom on Monday, seeking a different outcome.

This time, the case hinges on whether the judge can be persuaded to order a new election in a race with a much narrower vote margin.

Tami Pierce, like another 20 GOP candidates for Harris County offices, filed a lawsuit challenging the results of the 2022 midterm elections, which were marred by a ballot paper shortage on election day that impaired voting at around 20 out of 782 polling locations.

Though Judge David Peeples, a visiting judge from Bexar County who has presided over the entire group of lawsuits, has previously upheld results in other races, this lawsuit for the 180th District Court seat could swing in the other direction because Pierce’s opponent, incumbent Democrat Judge DaSean Jones, defeated her by just 449 out of over 1 million votes cast.

Peeples ruled last November that while he found “many mistakes and violations of the Election Code,” there were not enough votes in doubt to justify ordering a new election in the 189th District Court race, which GOP candidate Erin Lunceford lost to Democrat Judge Tamika Craft by 2,743 votes.

Peeples upheld results in 15 cases for the same reasons, while another three candidates dropped their lawsuits before his ruling. Lunceford’s case is currently on appeal.

Pierce finally got her day in court on Monday – the last case to go before the judge despite having the closest margin. The case was separated from the others and set on a delayed track after Jones filed a motion that was meant to deter meritless lawsuits.

See here for the last update, which was the ruling in the previous batch of lawsuits. The plaintiff’s case in this one is more or less the same as before – I drafted this on Monday night but didn’t see any further updates on Tuesday – so it’s basically whether the judge thinks maybe this election could have been affected, if the same claims about “missing” votes are considered to be factual. If they are, I’ll note that loser Tami Pierce would still need to win about 58% of those missing votes in order to make up that 449-vote deficit; it’s just below 58% if we believe every one of those people would have voted in that race, and just above 58% if we assume an undervote rate of 3.5%, which is what it was for the other ballots in the 180th Civil District Court election.

Now, if you could name all 2,891 missing voters and determine where they lived and what their race and ethnicity and class and education and past voting histories were, you could imagine a pool of that size in an election that was otherwise almost uniformly Democratic that might have voted 58% or more for a Republican. But of course we can’t do that because (whoops!) the Republican plaintiffs and their lawyers and enablers were never able to find any actual voters who could credibly claim that the temporary loss of the printer at their voting location meant they were completely unable to vote at any time or any other location in Harris County. So given that, we have to ask what are the odds that a random group of 2,891 voters in Harris County would be 58% Republican. That question answers itself.

Does that make this a slam dunk for the defendant? Well no – if it were, surely the judge would have strongly entertained a motion to dismiss by now, to save us all the trouble. I don’t know what the judge will do – I thought he was a little histrionic in his original ruling, even if he got the answer correct – but this is the math. You tell me what the odds are.

Oh and by the way, while this was the closest race won by a Democrat, it wasn’t the closest race from the 2022 election. That would be the race for County Criminal Court #3, in which Democrat Porsha Brown lost to Republican Leslie Johnson by 267 votes, a bit more than half the margin in the contested Jones/Pierce race. But you haven’t ever heard of that race, because Porsha Brown didn’t file a whiny sore loser election lawsuit. She accepted the outcome of the election, as one does. Just so we’re clear about that.

UPDATE: And here’s the Chron story from day two, which reports that plaintiff Pierce is trying to get a bunch of people’s votes thrown out, which is a change in strategy from the original set of lawsuits. Still reprehensible, but at least it’s not a rerun.

Posted in Election 2022, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The judge-shopping will continue for the foreseeable future

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re gonna have to make them stop.

The chief judge of the northern district of Texas, home to infamous Trump judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, has informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that the district will not change its case assigning practices, in repudiation of a new anti-judge shopping policy.

“The district judges of the Northern District of Texas met on March 27, 2024, and discussed case assignment,” Chief Judge David Godbey wrote to Schumer in a letter dated March 29. “The consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time.”

It’s a brazen rejection of a recent policy change at the Judicial Conference, the policy-making body for the federal courts. Last month, the Conference announced that all cases seeking nationwide relief against a federal or state government action should go through a randomization process — necessary to stop right-wing litigants from planting anti-Biden administration cases with judges like Kacsmaryk, who gets virtually all of the cases filed in his division. His habitual granting of nationwide injunctions means that his rulings are not only nearly always a win for those litigants, but that they also block federal government action for the entire country.

Schumer wrote to the northern Texas chief soon after the Judicial Conference announced its policy change, posing a list of questions, including when the district would adopt the new policy.

In a Monday statement, the Senate majority leader called it “unfortunate” that Godbey wouldn’t end the “odious practice.”

“The Senate will consider legislative options that put an end to this misguided practice,” he added, though such efforts have lost steam before, and would almost certainly die in the Republican House.

See here for the background. There was concern at the time that there could be issues with enforcing this new process, and you can see why with this response. The question now is what can be done about it. The obvious-to-me answer is to codify this (and some other reforms about national injunctions and other matters) into the law, and include a provision that says any judge who violates these procedures is subject to sanctions up to and including removal from the bench. This can’t be left up to the impeachment process because there’s no way on God’s green earth that there will ever be a two-thirds majority to impeach a federal judge for acting like a blatant partisan. Also, too, appoint more judges that do respect the law and the fact that we live in a society. Needless to say, both of those remedies will require another Democratic triumvirate, one that does not rest on the likes of Manchin and Sinema. That ain’t gonna be easy, but it’s what we need to do. KERA has more.

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And the seas will rise

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re so not ready for this.

Cities along the Gulf Coast are bracing for 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050, and data from a study in the journal Nature last week showed those risks will be exacerbated as urban areas sink to meet the sea.

Researchers from Virginia Tech, Brown University and other institutions mapped the impacts of sea level rise and coastal subsidence, or the sinking of land near the ocean, and found that land sinking would exacerbate sea level rise in some urban areas along the Gulf to a greater degree than other cities in the 32-municipality study.

The study projected that between 2020 and 2050, subsidence would account for about a fifth to a third of the new land below sea level in the urban areas analyzed on the Gulf Coast, compared to just over a tenth on the Atlantic coast and about 5% on the Pacific.

“As sea level rises and land subsides, the hazards associated with climate extremes (for example, hurricanes and storm surges), shoreline erosion and inundation of low-lying coastal areas grow,” the study said.

The authors identified each coastal city’s risk of storm damage using localized data on flooding and calculating how much each segment of land had been subsiding. Sinking ground is found most often in urban areas with clay-like soil where groundwater and oil extraction irreparably compact the earth.

“A lot of the coastal areas that we have around the U.S. are made up of young sediment, the latest geological materials to be deposited on land,” said Leonard Ohenhen, a coastal resilience expert at Virginia Tech and the study’s lead author. “They are easily compressible, and that… compaction leads to subsidence.”

His team’s paper also honed in on the potential costs of high tide flooding for five Texas cities: Port Arthur, Galveston, Texas City, Freeport and Corpus Christi.

The analysis found that across the five coastal Texas cities in the study, thousands more homes and tens of thousands more residents could be exposed by mid-century to flood devastation following the combination of sea level rise and sinking land.

You can read the paper here. The authors do say that we’re a lot better at disaster preparedness now, which will mitigate the overall impact, so we’ve got that going for us. Look, there is a lot being done to try to minimize the effects of climate change, and there is also a lot being done to resist those efforts. Maybe taking a few of the leaders of that wretched resistance and burying them up to their heads in the sand in places like Port Arthur and Galveston might help a bit. I’m just thinking out loud here.

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The SD15 special election is now a two candidate race

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From Campos.

Rep. Jarvis Johnson

Commentary said this after the Democratic Party Primary about three and a half weeks ago:

“For what it is worth, according to the Texas Secretary of State website, Michelle Bonton, Molly Cook, State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, and Todd Litton were the only ones to file for the May 4 State Senate District 15 Special Election to fill the vacancy and serve out the rest of the term that ends on December 31 of this year. Looks like only Jarvis and Molly will be campaigning.”

I got my mail ballot for the May 4, 2024, election which includes the State Senate District 15 Special and the Harris Central Appraisal District Board of Directors races. See the featured photo. Only Molly Cook and State Rep. Jarvis Johnson are listed on the ballot for SD 15. I guess Michelle Bonton and Todd Litton had their names removed from the ballot. I think. Oh, well.

Molly Cook

I can confirm this. The SOS Candidate Lookup actually shows that five candidates had filed – the four mentioned by Campos plus Beto Cardenas, which comes as a surprise to me because he was not listed there before – but the three who aren’t Molly Cook or Jarvis Johnson all show a status of “Withdrew”. Not a big surprise that the people who know they will not be on the ballot in November have decided not to invest time and energy in the race to serve out the remainder of Mayor Whitmire’s term. It also means there won’t be a runoff for this, which I think we can all agree is a benefit.

It does leave in place the possibility that the winner of this race will not be the person getting sworn in next January. (Yes, I know, there’s a Republican on the November ballot too, but come on. He ain’t gonna win.) If we’d continued to have more than two candidates, the special election runoff would have been in June, and we would have known who the November candidate was. In that case, the person who had lost the primary runoff could have dropped out of the special election runoff and ensured uniformity of service. That it turned out this way isn’t a surprise given the elections calendar. At least either way we avoid a June runoff.

Well, we avoid a June runoff for this race. Remember that the HCAD elections will also be on May 4, and each of those three positions has more than two candidates in it. I can guarantee we will have at least one and probably all three of those races going into overtime in June. If you think this election is going to be sparsely attended, wait until the runoffs for those HCAD spots. That said, if they all boil down to a D versus R showing, we could see some actual money come in and maybe boost participation a bit. But believe me when I say, your vote in those HCAD races will count for a lot. Because so few other people will also be voting. It’s crazy, I know, but at least it’s only in May (and June) this one time.

I will have some interviews with HCAD candidates starting next week. Look for those so you can figure out who to support.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Influencer disclosures

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I approve of this.

Texas’ top campaign finance watchdog gave initial approval last week to a proposal that would require social media users to disclose if they are being paid to share or create political advertisements.

The Texas Ethics Commission’s action comes just months after The Texas Tribune reported that a secretive and politically-connected company, called Influenceable LLC, paid internet influencers to defend Attorney General Ken Paxton ahead of his Senate impeachment trial.

The proposed rule could be finalized at the commission’s next meeting in June.

Commissioners did not mention Influenceable by name at their March 20 meeting. But the agency’s general counsel, James Tinley, noted that the rule change was in response to “at least one business” that paid social media users for undisclosed political messaging.

“It is not a hypothetical,” he said. “There is at least one business whose business model now is to do just that.”

In August, the Tribune reported on Influenceable’s attempts to sway public opinion ahead of the impeachment trial by paying Gen Z social media influencers — some with millions of online followers — to claim that Paxton was the victim of a witch hunt. They also flooded social media with posts that accused House Speaker Dade Phelan, a longtime Paxton foe who greenlit the House investigation, of being a drunk.

[…]

Influenceable’s tactics outraged some Republicans last summer. Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, told the Tribune at the time that he was disgusted by the “manufactured outrage” and called for Influenceable to be investigated. Oliverson, who announced last week that he is running to be House speaker for the 2025 legislative session, also said he’d like lawmakers to address companies like Influenceable when they next meet. Since then — and amid a 2024 GOP primary that was rife with misinformation — other Republicans have also suggested reforming some of the state’s ethics and political advertising rules.

See here for some background. There’s a lot that ought to be done with campaign finance reform, much of which would certainly run afoul of SCOTUS as currently constituted. One thing that might be doable is exactly this, increasing the amount of transparency required for the money that freely and often very discreetly flows into the system. Maybe it wouldn’t do much to stop it, or to get people to see the puppetmasters when they become more visible, but it would do something. At the very least, the truly repugnant and rapacious forces behind all that cash mostly seem to not like having their names attached to any of it, so this could provide somewhat of a disincentive. I’m more than willing to try it and see. I’m a little surprised to see even this much support for this relatively modest reform, if only because like so much else it all traces back to the same handful of billionaire theocrats that run the modern Republican Party in Texas, but it’s there and I’ll take it. Now let’s see if this also translates to some action in the Lege next year. It would be nice to have at least one piece of legislation to anticipate with something other than dread and disgust.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hearing the eclipse

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is cool.

Blind and low-vision people across North America will be able to experience the upcoming total solar eclipse, thanks to a handheld device that translates light into sound.

The LightSound Box is a tool designed specifically to help people in the visually impaired community experience the eclipse.

“We’ve talked to some blind or low-vision individuals who said in 2017, they felt excluded or they couldn’t participate in the eclipse in a meaningful way to them,” Harvard astronomer Allyson Bieryla said. “They’re really excited to be able to have these devices to use them for the eclipse to experience it in a way that is meaningful to them.”

Bieryla said there’s a light sensor in the device that records the light and brightness. There is also a synthesizer that uses the brightness data recorded to play a corresponding sound.

The device has an audio jack that can be used with headphones or connected to a speaker.

They’ve mapped out a wide range of brightness with different instruments to be able to present the wide range of sunlight that occurs during the eclipse. Bright light is a flute. Mid-range light is a clarinet. Low light is a clicking sound.

“That clicking even slows down and almost goes away in totality,” Bieryla said. “The idea is to not take away from the experience of totality too. During totality, there’s a lot going on. People are gonna react. Animals, insects react. There’s a lot that’s happening so we didn’t want to take away from that either.”

The project was conceived in 2017 ahead of that year’s solar eclipse by Wanda Díaz-Merced and Bieryla. Díaz-Merced, who is blind, and Bieryla first discussed ways to make labs accessible to students.

Then the conversation turned to that year’s solar eclipse. Bieryla said the conversation sparked the idea to create a “low-cost, easy-to build” device that could convert light to sound.

[…]

Three locations in the Houston area have been sent a LightSound Box for next month’s eclipse, according to the LightSound Box website, including Space Center Houston and Conroe ISD.

As I said, very cool. You should go to the LightSound Box website to learn more. The bad news is that the weather forecast for Monday isn’t looking good for eclipse-watchers right now. Maybe that will change for the better. I’m planning to see it as best I can regardless. Be that as it may, kudos to the Harvard team for coming up with the LightSound Box. Axios has more.

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Woman arrested on abortion charge sues Starr County DA

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good for her.

When a Texas woman was arrested and jailed for self-inducing an abortion in 2022, her name and mugshot were quickly broadcast around the world. Three days later, the Starr County prosecutor dropped the charges and was later disciplined for bringing them at all.

But for Lizelle Herrera, now Lizelle Gonzalez, the damage had been done. The “humiliation of a highly publicized indictment and arrest” has “permanently affected her standing in the community,” according to a new federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

Gonzalez is suing Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez and Assistant District Attorney Alexandria Lynn Barrera for more than $1 million. Prosecutors typically have wide-ranging immunity but the lawsuit alleges Ramirez and Barrera waived that when they undertook the investigation of this case and misled the grand jury.

[…]

According to the lawsuit, Gonzalez first went to the Starr County emergency room in January 2022. She was 19 weeks pregnant and, according to the lawsuit, had taken Cytotec, also known as misoprostol, to purportedly induce an abortion.

She was still registering a fetal heart rate, so she was sent home. The next day, she returned to the hospital by ambulance, complaining of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. There was no fetal cardiac activity, and she was diagnosed with an “incomplete spontaneous abortion” before she delivered the stillborn child by cesarean section.

At some point between those January visits and late March 2022, the lawsuit says, employees of Starr County Memorial Hospital told the Starr County District Attorney’s Office about Gonzalez’s attempted abortion. The allegations were investigated directly by Ramirez’s office, not the sheriff or the local police department, according to the filing.

Barrera and Ramirez then took their findings to a grand jury. The lawsuit says they “present[ed] false information and recklessly misrepresented facts in order to pursue murder charges against Plaintiff for acts clearly not criminal under the Texas Penal Code.”

Gonzalez was arrested for murder on April 7, 2022, and incarcerated at the Starr County jail on a $500,000 bond. Her arrest made international news and mobilized activists across the country, led by organizers in the Rio Grande Valley. The lawsuit says she was taken to the hospital while incarcerated, although it does not say why.

Gonzalez was released on bail organized by national advocacy groups. Three days after she was arrested, Ramirez dropped the charges.

“In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her,” Ramirez said in a news release at the time.

This did little to quell the attention on the case, the lawsuit says.

“Because the charges stemmed from abortion – a hot button political agenda – the dismissal of the charges did not result in any less media attention,” it says. “Rather, the media attention was heightened after the dismissal due to the fact that the prosecution was frivolous.”

Gonzalez is asking for an excess of $1 million for the “deprivation of liberty, reputational harm, public humiliation, distress, pain, and suffering” she experienced as a result of this prosecution. No hearing dates have been set.

See here for the previous update. The basics of this are that Ms. Gonzalez was arrested for actions that are absolutely not illegal under Texas law, that the Starr County DA’s office knew that her actions were not illegal (or damn well ought to have known), that they didn’t bother to utilize law enforcement agencies to investigate before deciding to arrest her but investigated on their own, and that the result of their seemingly reckless actions were directly harmful to her above and beyond what a mere false arrest would have been. That’s why she’s suing. I have no idea how this will do with the “qualified immunity” obstacles that exist, but she is entirely justified in pursuing this and seeing where it goes. I wish her well.

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San Antonio responds to “Reproductive Justice Fund” lawsuit

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck.

A lawsuit over the City of San Antonio’s controversial but still undefined Reproductive Justice Fund made its way to a courtroom Thursday.

While the city’s legal team tries to get the case thrown out of court, the city council is close to finally discussing how to spend the money it set aside more than six months ago.

Anti-abortion groups sued the city in October, shortly after the city council created the new $500,000 fund. The city has not determined how the money will be used, but groups like the San Antonio Family Association (SAFA) believe it’s meant to help women access legal, out-of-state abortions by covering their travel costs.

“We think eventually that’s what’s going to take place. Incrementally, they’re going to do that, yes,” the group’s president, Michael Knuffke, said Thursday. “How they do — how they go about that, how they do it legally, I don’t know. But that is exactly the purpose for our case — is to stop it from happening.”

SAFA and Texas Right to Life are the primary plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which asks the court to declare the fund’s establishment in the budget invalid and that it can’t be used to fund any group “that ‘procures’ drug-induced abortions, aids or abets self-managed abortions in Texas, or aids or abets drug-induced abortions in which the pregnant woman swallows either of the two abortion-inducing drugs in Texas, or expels her unborn child in Texas.”

The City of San Antonio has asked the case be dismissed since there has been no decision yet on what services or programs the Reproductive Justice Fund will cover.

“The city could make any number of decisions about what to do with the Reproductive Justice Fund. It could decide to spend money on prenatal care, maternal health services, education, postpartum care. Abortion care is just one of many possibilities,” argued attorney Lauren Ditty in a Thursday court hearing, the first in the case.

[…]

City Manager Erik Walsh initially said the council would discuss the parameters of the fund sometime that fall. More than six months later, that discussion still hasn’t happened, though it appears to be just around the bend.

San Antonio Metropolitan Health District staff are expected to present their recommendations on the fund’s use during an April 10 council meeting.

City Attorney Andy Segovia told KSAT he believed the council has had other priorities on which it wanted to focus first, and it’s difficult to schedule the council’s “B-Sessions,” which typically feature an in-depth discussion on one or two subjects.

“I would say it had nothing to do with the ongoing lawsuit,” Segovia said.

Metro Health will put out a request for proposals after the April 10 meeting, taking into account whatever council members said during the discussion, Segovia said. However, the council will only vote after Metro Health has chosen potential recipients and needs approval for the contracts.

See here for the background. The argument that it’s premature for a lawsuit since the funds haven’t been allocated yet has merit, but if any part of it does go towards abortion access in any form, we’re just delaying the inevitable. And when it does come to that, I remain pessimistic. The reason that fund was set up is also the reason why it’s almost certainly doomed in court, if not right away then later on when it gets to SCOTx. This is also an open invitation (not that any was needed) for the Republicans in the Lege to get even more involved in smacking cities around. I have a lot of sympathy and respect for what San Antonio’s City Council is trying to do. I just don’t think it has any chance of working, and could lead to further bad outcomes. The one positive thing that could happen is more fuel for the Legislative races; there are three potentially flippable districts in Bexar County, and each one represents a step towards saner government. I hope the people who are going to be disappointed and angry about how this turns out remember that. The Current has more.

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Travis Scott wants out of Astroworld lawsuit

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I would too if I were him. Whether he should or he will is another matter.

Houston-born rapper Travis Scott said he should not be held personally responsible for the deaths of 10 people who died in the crushing crowds of his 2021 Astroworld concert, court records show.

In a new motion filed in Harris County 11th Civil District Court this week, Scott — whose real name is Jacques Bermon Webster II — asked for a summary judgment in his favor, which would remove him from the sprawling lawsuit brought against dozens of companies and individuals connected to the concert by hundreds of victims of the tragedy.

[…]

In his motion, Scott argued the plaintiffs’ lawyers hadn’t proven that he or his touring company, XX Global, could be held responsible for injuries people suffered while trying to watch his performance.

“Performers are not expected to render special protection to the audience, nor to safeguard them from the rest of the crowd,” the motion read.

Texas law doesn’t require performers or promoters to protect audience members, the motion reads. And even if it did, Scott’s lawyers said he supported efforts to make more room on the festival grounds by removing rides and ended the show when he was directed to.

“No one disputes that tragedy struck the Astroworld Festival,” the motion read. “But promoting and performing at at a concert do not equate to the power to control a crowd or to design a venue safely.”

In his filing, Scott acknowledged that he “conceived” of the Astroworld concert as an ode to Houston’s defunct amusement park, and that he had some responsibilities for the concert planning: including arranging musical acts, marketing and his own performance.

But Scott said it was understood he was not responsible for venue security, safety or the site’s layout.

In separate motions, other companies connected to Scott, including his Cactus Jack Records label, have sought their own summary judgments.

The record company in a March 11 filing said the plaintiffs’ attorneys had shown “no evidence” that it was responsible for Astroworld.

A grand jury in June declined to indict Scott and others on criminal charges related to the concert.

See here for previous coverage. As noted in the story, several other defendants filed similar motions earlier in the week. I don’t have an opinion on this one as well, though on a gut level Scott seems to me to have some amount of culpability. That has nothing to do with what the law says, of course. Hearings for these and I presume other motions will be heard beginning this week. I’m very interested to see what else comes out of this.

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Weekend link dump for March 31

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is giving away $640 million to 361 nonprofits, her organization — Yield Giving — and Lever for Change announced”.

“Spies, War, Trump: We Still Don’t Really Understand What Paul Manafort Is Up To”.

“What’s needed is a narrative frame about the Trump presidency, crystalizing the choice facing voters, on which all of Trump’s disturbing remarks can be hung—regardless of their intended meaning.”

A deep dive into Mister Rogers’ fashion style.

“As a vocal critic of media coverage of the far-right, I am often asked how the media should cover them. This is a complex issue for a variety of reasons. One is that there is a big tension between how the media are seen by many journalists and readers and what they really are. The idea that the media are the watchdog of democracy is popular, including among journalists, but the reality is that almost all media are businesses. Consequently, they ultimately have an economic, not a political or democratic, logic. Which explains their symbiotic relationship with the far-right. This is not to say that things cannot be improved.”

“Seven states have legalized human composting to date, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Vermont, and New York.”

A billionaire and his many thugs can avoid a whole lot of scrutiny for just about anything.

“There are clear economic and adaptability benefits to farmers who raise pythons rather than raising pigs”.

“Elon Musk Loses Pathetic Defamation Case Against Hate Speech Watchdog”.

People who like this sort of thing will probably find this the sort of thing that they like.

“Jeopardy! celebrated its 9,000th episode with the Friday, March 22 installment. And every single one of them for the past 40 years has been announced by Johnny Gilbert, who at 95 is still going strong.”

RIP, George W. S. Abbey, former director of the Johnson Space Center and a longtime leader at NASA who was on the team that earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom for bringing home astronauts on the troubled Apollo 13 mission.

“Once you figure that out, you know who’s being scammed in this deal. The answer is: anyone who buys stock in DWAC.”

“And if anyone truly deserves to have Trump steal their money and ruin their lives, it’s his fans. You really can’t argue against it. The face-eating leopards have to eat somebody’s faces, after all, and if people are lining up to get their faces eaten, then it’s difficult to muster up the energy to try to talk them out of it.”

“Several Apple customers recently reported being targeted in elaborate phishing attacks that involve what appears to be a bug in Apple’s password reset feature.”

“Meet the Hos.” I wish that were the start of a joke, but if it is, the joke’s on us.

“Why IVF looks different in the US than in the rest of the world”.

Some birdwatching drama for you.

RIP, Joe Lieberman, former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate.

Disbar him. He should totally be locked up too, but one step at a time.

“Online Conspiracies About the Baltimore Bridge Collapse Are Out of Control“.

“The U.S. State Department on Wednesday offered up to $10 million for information on the “Blackcat” ransomware gang who hit the UnitedHealth Group’s tech unit and snarled insurance payments across America.”

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema circuit is reportedly up for sale. Hope whoever buys it doesn’t screw it up.

RIP, Louis Gossett, Jr, trailblazing actor who won an Emmy for Roots and an Oscar for An Officer And A Gentleman.

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Of course Ted Cruz is getting paid to podcast

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is so stupid.

I hear Cancun is nice

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s office has repeatedly dismissed ethical questions about his three-times-a-week podcasting gig, saying he makes no money from the venture with a company that lobbies Congress.

But over the last year, iHeartMedia, the massive radio network that picked up the “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast in 2022, has made regular, and growing, payments to a super PAC supporting the Texas Republican’s reelection effort. The payments, which the media company says are associated with ad revenue from the podcast, total $630,850 — about a third of the $2 million the Truth and Courage PAC reported raising since the start of 2023, according to the latest Federal Election Commission data.

Ethics and campaign finance experts say the payments appear to be a novel arrangement that blur the lines between what is allowed under campaign finance law and Senate ethics rules. Cruz is the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the communications industry.

“This is not an arrangement we’ve seen before, and it seems like Sen. Cruz is trying to find a way to walk the lines between not falling into an ethics violation and not falling into a campaign finance violation,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which filed an ethics complaint about the senator’s podcast deal in 2022.

The Truth and Courage PAC’s stated focus is “ensuring that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024.” It already has started rolling out ads targeting U.S. Rep Colin Allred, the Dallas Democrat and former NFL player running against Cruz in one of the highest-profile races in the nation this November.

Cruz is seen as one of the only potentially vulnerable Republicans in the Senate after narrowly winning reelection in 2018. Cruz’s campaign has been warning donors that the senator already is tied with Allred in polling and bracing for a tougher 2024 reelection campaign than GOP voters might expect.

Ports said the payments from iHeartMedia beg “the question of whether this is an unlawful contribution.” Federal officeholders are prohibited from soliciting a contribution of over $5,000 to a super PAC or directing over $5,000 to a super PAC. So if Cruz told iHeartMedia that it could or should move money to the super PAC, he could be in violation of that law, Ports said.

[…]

IHeartMedia’s latest payment to the PAC, $214,752.98 on Feb. 15, was first reported by Forbes. It was highlighted on social media by Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic strategist working for the Lose Cruz PAC, which has run ads attacking Cruz for the time he spends recording and promoting the podcast. Hackett called for the Senate Ethics Committee and Federal Election Commission to investigate.

The extent of the payments, which go back to March 1, 2023, have not been previously reported.

The Truth and Courage PAC did not respond to questions about how the payments came to be or how it was using the money. The PAC reports the payments not as political contributions, but as “other receipts,” which Ports said is typically how super PACs report money they earn from things like selling lists of mailing or email addresses of past contributors.

The payments come directly from the iHeartMedia company, which is headquartered in San Antonio. Cruz’s super PAC appears to be the only political organization to receive regular payments from the company, according to FEC records. The network has its own PAC that regularly gives to politicians on both sides of the aisle, though in much smaller increments.

Rachel Nelson, vice president of public relations at iHeartMedia, said the network sells the advertising inventory for Cruz’s podcast “as it does for other podcasts — this is a common practice.” Nelson said the payments are “associated with those advertising sales.”

“Senator Cruz volunteers his time to host this podcast and isn’t compensated for it,” Nelson said.

But ethics experts say Cruz is clearly getting something out of the deal.

“Volunteering generally means you’re doing something expecting no personal benefit, but Cruz here is clearly benefiting from the ad revenue that is being generated by his iHeartMedia show,” said Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. “He will be getting political support from iHeartMedia’s ad revenues.”

The “volunteers his time” claim is just an insult to everyone’s intelligence. Robert Maguire has this exactly right. The money doesn’t have to be going into Ted Cruz’s pocket for it to be a payment to him. It’s going to his campaign, in a form that is at the least skirting existing law, if not actually illegal. If this truly were a volunteer gig then no money would be changing hands at all. Heck, even if IHeartMedia declined to sell ads on Cruz’s behalf, just having his dumb show on their network is a benefit to Cruz and therefore an in-kind contribution to his campaign. Ted Cruz can pay for his own hosting and sell his own ads, as many independent podcast producers do, or he can get out of the Senate and make podcasting his life’s work, in which case IHeartMedia is welcome to have him on their roster. How much he’d be worth to them under those conditions is another question. The point here is that both IHeartMedia and Ted Cruz are benefitting financially from this arrangement. No one who doesn’t have a basic understanding of how the world works can honestly dispute that. The Current has more.

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HISD’s current goals

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

They have ’em. Some I totally agree with. Others, well, we’ll see.

Houston ISD is expected to expand several of its controversial reforms during the 2024-25 school year, according to a preliminary version of the district’s plans shared earlier this month.

HISD’s state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles presented a draft version of the district’s action plan to the District Advisory Committee last week, along with the Board of Managers. He also previewed the plan with the Principal Advisory Committee and the Teacher Advisory Committee.

The plan, as of March 17, lists 10 of the district’s planned “key actions” for next year, which include plans to reduce hundreds of central office staff positions, call a bond election in November and mandate leadership training for principals.

The listed key actions also include several previously announced plans or initiatives, such as expanding the New Education System to 45 schools, adding hundreds of additional pre-K seats, and creating a new teacher evaluation system to implement in the 2025-2026 school year.

In a statement, HISD said the final version of the document is expected to be publicly released in mid-May, along with the budget proposal.

Here are the goals – the story gives some background info on each of them – with my annotations.

1. Additional New Education System schools
2. November bond election
3. Higher quality instruction
4. Strengthened principal leadership
5. Special education instruction, services
6. Central office efficiency
7. K-8 reading proficiency
8. College, career and military readiness
9. Pre-K program expansion
10. Teacher evaluation, compensation system

Numbers 3, 5, and 7 through 9 all sound good. Number 2, the bond election, is badly needed but more than ever will the details be of vital importance; I would absolutely be willing to play hardball in return for my support on it. Number 4, I think it’s fair to say at this point, is controversial. Number 6 is needed to try to meet the fiscal needs of everything Mike Miles is doing as well as the current budget situation. All we’ve gotten on it so far have been a lot more talk than action. That leaves numbers 1 and 10, and that’s all tied up very much in one’s belief that Miles has us on the right track, among other things. I don’t think I have anything new to add to what I’ve been saying, so let’s leave this here as a note for future reference. We’ll definitely be coming back to the bond one, trust me on that.

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“If you’ve ever gardened, you know you have to weed”

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

What Allyn West says.

I moved to Montrose in 2008, just in time for Hurricane Ike to welcome me to the Gulf Coast formally, and I lived on Crocker at Avondale during the pandemic. When Hurricane Harvey claimed the Honda Civic I’d been driving, I didn’t have much choice but relying on my own two feet, BCycle and Metro to get around. (And Uber. OK?)

It was all my years of trudging that made me perk up most when I saw the Montrose Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone’s long-term plan to turn Montrose Boulevard into an experience worthy of the name. Hundreds of new trees! Wider, comfortable sidewalks! Safer intersections! Bedroom-sized boxes buried underground to catch the worst of increasingly heavy rains! What’s not to want?

If only it were so simple. The plan — and now the TIRZ itself — has faced opposition of late by people whose online petition and participation at public meetings suggests a concern with the fate of the boulevard’s street trees. I get it — I’m a professional treehugger. Trees for Houston’s Barry Ward told me years ago his organization plants 20,000 trees a year — and that’s all they do. But we should be planting more like 200,000 a year. We need as many trees as we can get.

Which is why I don’t get why there’s opposition to a plan that calls for 137 new live oak and cypress trees to be planted just on the first 0.3-mile stretch of the project between West Clay and Allen Parkway. David Greaney is a Gauge Engineering project manager working with the TIRZ. He told me that nearly 600 new trees will be planted from here to U.S. 59 in all, replacing every one they remove with at least two more. (Much of this is online.) Though 57 older trees, not all live oaks, need to be removed for the first part of the project for one reason or another, a TIRZ presentation stresses, “existing mature trees will be protected and preserved.”

In all-caps, just above that, it practically shouts: “NO HEALTHY, MATURE LIVE OAK TREES IN THE MEDIAN WILL BE REMOVED OR REPLACED.”

What am I missing? What’s so special about these 57 trees — some redbuds, some crape myrtles, some live and post oaks — that, TIRZ president Joe Webb said, were planted less than strategically in the 1990s? What about them justifies a “demand” for “a pause” on a plan that would result in at least 80 more 65-gallon-sized, 14-foot trees than are there now and hundreds of others that will outlive us all?

There’s a video at the top of the op-ed that shows some of what West is talking about, watch it before you read. I’d seen a few stories about the mishegoss over this plan but hadn’t really read about it. With the broader concern about pedestrian and bike-friendly infrastructure projects now, I thought I’d better get up to speed. This project is fully funded and is just awaiting approval from the Mayor. As with West 11th Street, there are some disproportionately loud voices in opposition who seem to be getting all the attention. I lived in Montrose for a decade before moving to the Heights, and Allyn is right about how it really should be much more walkable, but it’s not. And this is a great chance to do something, a very big something, about it. I too don’t know why this is being held up. Let’s please move forward with this.

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Crystal Mason’s conviction for illegal voting overturned

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Justice at last.

A Texas appeals court on Thursday overturned the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.

The decision by the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals means she is formally acquitted of the felony voting charge. The court said in the decision that there was no evidence Mason knew she was ineligible to vote when she cast her ballot — which is a condition that must be met in order to convict her of illegal voting.

Mason has maintained throughout the seven-year case that she did not know she was ineligible and would not have risked her freedom if she had. She said Thursday in a statement that her long legal fight, which gained international attention, was devastating.

“I am overjoyed to see my faith rewarded today,” Mason said. “I was thrown into this fight for voting rights and will keep swinging to ensure no one else has to face what I’ve endured for over six years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack.”

The case thrust Mason, who is Black, into the political fray amid a Republican-led crackdown on voter fraud, partly fueled by baseless claims of rampant illegal voting.

“I’ve cried and prayed every night for over six years straight that I would remain a free Black woman,” Mason said. “I thank everyone whose dedication and support carried me through this time and look forward to celebrating this moment with my family and friends.”

The Second Court of Appeals initially upheld her conviction but two years ago was instructed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason, saying that the lower court had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.”

“We are relieved for Ms. Mason, who has waited for too long with uncertainty about whether she would be imprisoned and separated from her family for five years simply for trying to do her civic duty,” said Thomas Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “The harms of the criminal prosecution can never fully be undone, but this decision is vindication for Ms. Mason and a win for our democracy, which can only thrive when people can fearlessly engage in the civic process.”

[…]

In its 2022 ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that Texas election law requires individuals to know they are ineligible to vote to be convicted of illegal voting. The law had been clarified by lawmakers in 2021 with additions to the election code stating Texans may not be convicted of voting illegally “solely upon the fact that the person signed a provisional ballot,” and instead required other evidence to corroborate they knowingly tried to cast an unlawful vote.

The appeals court wrote in its 2022 decision that the new law showed that that lawmakers never intended to convict a voter with good intentions.

“To construe the statute to mean that a person can be guilty even if she does not ‘know the person is not eligible to vote’ is to disregard the words the Legislature intended,” the court wrote. “It turns the knowledge requirement into a sort of negligence scheme wherein a person can be guilty because she fails to take reasonable care to ensure that she is eligible to vote.”

Thursday’s decision by the Tarrant County court acknowledged that.

“We conclude that the quantum of the evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support the conclusion that Mason actually realized that she voted knowing that she was ineligible to do so and, therefore, insufficient to support her conviction for illegal voting,” the decision reads.

See here, here, and here for the background, and here for all previous coverage. This should be the end of the very long line. It’s hard for me to see how Tarrant County could try again to convict her – I assume that double jeopardy would attach, if nothing else – but I Am Not A Lawyer, so perhaps I’m missing something. Assuming I am right, this is a big win for justice that took way too long to happen. Be that as it may, I am thrilled for Crystal Mason and I wish her nothing but the best going forward.

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Appeals court upholds injunction that halted DFPS investigations of trans kids’ families

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Today, the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, upheld injunctions in two related cases against the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) and Commissioner Masters, barring them from implementing the agency’s rule expanding the definition of child abuse to presumptively treat the provision of gender-affirming care as child abuse.

The injunctions bar DFPS from implementing the rule by investigating these families based solely on allegations that they are providing gender-affirming care to their adolescents, or taking any action in open investigations other than to close them so long DFPS can do so without making further contact with the families.

Today’s ruling came in two lawsuits, Doe v. Abbott and PFLAG v. Abbott, filed by Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project, the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the ACLU of Texas, and the law firm of Baker Botts LLP.

“Texas PFLAG families are grateful that the court has once again recognized the harm caused by investigating parents for affirming and loving their transgender kids,” said Brian K. Bond (he/him), CEO of PFLAG National. “PFLAG National and our members and supporters will continue leading with love, just as we’ve done for the last 51 years, because when courageous love takes action, our families are stronger, our communities are safer, and our LGBTQ+ loved ones across races, places, and genders thrive.”

“We are gratified that the Court upheld the district court’s injunctions protecting families of transgender young people across the state from unlawful investigations under the DFPS rule,” said Paul D. Castillo, Senior Counsel, Lambda Legal. “The Court recognized yet again that being subjected to an unlawful and unwarranted investigation causes irreparable harm for these families who are doing nothing more than caring for and affirming their children and seeking the best course of care for them in consultation with their medical providers.”

“Transgender youth have always existed and always will, and the vast majority of Texans do not support separating them from their families or taking away their life-saving health care,” said Ash Hall (they/them), LGBTQIA+ Policy and Advocacy Strategist with the ACLU of Texas. “The maneuvers by Texas state officials against transgender youth are bullying masquerading as policy. Nothing could be further from abuse than parents loving and supporting their transgender children. This decision is another much-needed victory for trans youth and those who love and support them.”

“We are grateful the court saw through this dangerous and transparently discriminatory action by Texas officials,” said Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “Our clients and countless families like theirs are guided by love and compassion for their transgender youth, following the guidance of their doctors and fighting for the futures their family deserves. These baseless and invasive investigations are a dangerous abuse of the state’s power and one we’re thankful the Texas courts have consistently ruled against.”

Read today’s decisions here: PFLAG-Decision.pdf (lambdalegal.org) and Doe-Decision.pdf (lambdalegal.org)

Read more about the two lawsuits here: https://www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/cases/pflag-v-abbott and https://www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/cases/doe-v-abbott

Read more about PFLAG and its support of transgender youth and Texas families: https://pflag.org/resource/texas-faq/

See here and here for some background, and here for a statement from Amber Briggle, one of the parents/plaintiffs. This is a nice companion to the injunction in the other PFLAG lawsuit, and as with that I didn’t see any news coverage of it as I drafted the post. I’ll update with a link when I find one. This will of course go to SCOTx, and I’m less optimistic there, not to mention that the next Legislature can affect things even more. But for now, a reason to be happy.

UPDATE: And here’s KXAN with the story.

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The continuing problems of At Large-only school boards

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Houston Landing take a look at the big picture.

In Katy and several Houston-area districts, school boards have employed an election system — known as “at-large districts” — that has contributed to most trustees living in wealthier neighborhoods, a Houston Landing review of election records shows. As a result, many families and students in lower-income areas have had no nearby board members representing their interests.

In Pasadena, four of the district’s seven trustees live within 1 ½ miles of each other. In Spring Branch, an overwhelming majority of trustees have lived in wealthier neighborhoods south of Interstate 10 over the past decade. And trustees in Humble have typically lived anywhere but their district’s less-affluent areas.

School boards have enabled this phenomenon by using at-large districts, in which elected officials are chosen by voters throughout the district.

While school boards haven’t explicitly tried to exclude candidates from less-affluent areas, the at-large system has had that effect in several districts. That’s largely because voter turnout is typically stronger in higher-income areas, where residents often support their neighbors for elected office.

Other school boards, meanwhile, have embraced an alternative known as “single-member districts,” which breaks up a school district into smaller geographic areas, with one elected official chosen by residents of each area.

The single-member approach doesn’t guarantee a high-functioning school board. Houston ISD, which uses the setup, has been marred for years by trustees from different factions of the city fighting each other.

“I think (geographic representation) is important, but … I really want the best person for the position,” said Shawn Miller, who lives on the historically underrepresented north side of Katy and lost his bid for the school board in 2023. “If that means two people from the same area for the two top candidates, then so be it.”

But supporters of the single-member system argue it produces elected officials who more intimately understand the needs of underrepresented neighborhoods. Campbell said Katy trustees would be better positioned to address student behavior challenges at Paetow High, which reported the most fights and in-school suspensions in the district last school year, if more board members lived near the campus.

“It’s easy to feel isolated,” he said. “Like I want the best for my kid, but am I the only one?”

A lack of geographic representation has persisted for years across several of Houston’s largest school districts.

Katy serves over 90,000 students at 72 campuses across the suburbs west of Houston. The fast-growing, rapidly diversifying district stretches over 180 square miles, with many of its Black, Hispanic and lower-income students attending schools on the north side of Interstate 10.

Yet today, only one of Katy’s seven school board members lives north of the highway. Since 2014, no trustee has lived in the boundaries of three high schools — Paetow, Mayde Creek and Morton Ranch — that rank lower on the state’s academic accountability system.

“The makeup of the board certainly does not reflect or seem to reflect the entire district,” said Scott Martin, who centered his 2018 school board campaign around switching election systems when his neighborhood on the district’s east side lacked a local representative. “If I had a problem or an issue, it wasn’t at all obvious to me who I would have called about it.”

Pasadena Independent School District covers 85 square miles in southeast Harris County, spanning from the refineries dotting Highway 225 to middle-class subdivisions on the district’s burgeoning west side. Nearly 50,000 students attend the Hispanic-majority district, about 80 percent of whom are considered economically disadvantaged by the state.

Despite Pasadena’s wide expanse, the district’s school board representation has been concentrated in the middle of the district, where every trustee but one has lived within a three-mile radius over the last decade.

Most strikingly, four current trustees reside within 1 ½ miles of each other. District budgets and county property records show the average home appraisal value in their neighborhoods range from about $325,000 to $350,000 — well above the district-wide average of about $200,000.

“No one takes responsibility in representing you,” said Yen Rabe, a former Pasadena teacher who ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 2019 and 2021. “When people run against that tight-knit group, they don’t win. … When you go to the board meetings, you’ll see everybody votes the same way.”

There’s more, so read the rest. Be sure to look at the included maps like the one I embedded above, they’re pretty striking. I’ve been an advocate for more single-member districts in cities and school boards precisely for this reason. It’s everywhere you look – before the city of Austin finally switched to single member districts for their City Council, it was the case that the large majority of their Council members only ever came from a handful of neighborhoods. That’s just not representative government. In addition, this is often associated with racial disparities in Council or Board memberships; that too was the case in Austin, and in Farmers Branch, and is the central allegation in the current lawsuits in Houston and Spring Branch.

One argument against single member districts for school boards is that school board members are supposed to represent and advocate for the school district as a whole, and that having members represent geographic areas can end up with them pitted against each other. Evan Mintz makes a version of this argument in the CityCast Houston podcast from March 8 when this story is discussed. It’s a fair point but the flip side of it is that many schools are often less visible to board members who don’t live near them, and they wind up on the short end of the stick because no one is advocating for them. Scott Martin’s point about not knowing who to call if one has a problem is another issue with at large-only systems.

That doesn’t mean that they have to be single member district only. A mix of single member districts and At Large representation, like Houston and Pasadena do for their City Councils, can make sense. This allows for members who explicitly represent the system as a whole and who can also serve as backup members for each district as needed. But imagine living north of I-10 in Katy ISD or Spring Branch ISD. Would you feel like your voice was being heard? It’s hard to see how.

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More on the Paxton deal

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This Chron story goes into some detail about how we ended up with the deferred adjudication deal that brought an abrupt end to the Ken Paxton securities fraud trial.

Still a crook any way you look

Special prosecutors assigned to the case said years-long procedural delays made it especially hard to win at trial. One of the alleged victims died while the case was ongoing.

“Criminal cases aren’t like fine wine,” said special prosecutor Brian Wice. “They do not get better with age.”

The case was “makeable,” said Kent Schaffer, who withdrew from the prosecution last month, but he and Wice estimated their odds of winning had been about 50-50. That’s why Schaffer said he resurfaced a discussion about a deal with the defense six weeks ago, just before he left.

In recent weeks, Wice and his new co-counsel, Jed Silverman, had narrowed their focus to two more severe felony charges after a key witness, appeared ready to side with Paxton on a third, which accused him of failing to register as an investment adviser.

Wice said they started reading interviews and re-interviewing nearly a dozen witnesses last month, some of whom “hadn’t been interviewed since the Obama administration.”

“As a result of that intensive interviewing and re-interviewing process, we had a sense of what these cases were — more importantly, what they weren’t,” Wice said.

The key witness, Paxton’s former friend and business associate Frederick “Fritz” Mowery, had already testified a decade ago to the Texas State Securities Board that he was the one who erred in not registering Paxton as a security adviser. Following a 2014 investigation, the board reprimanded Paxton and fined him $1,000 for the violation.

Wice acknowledged that testimony was technically public record but said they didn’t learn of the details until a month ago when Silverman re-interviewed the witness. Silverman said the interview elicited a “level of detail that would make it considerably harder for a jury to believe” Paxton knowingly broke the law.

Silverman and Wice described in interviews how the investment-related charges had a clear victim and a clear path to justice, unlike the registration charge, which Silverman described as “really an administrative matter.” Silverman said the victims told prosecutors their top priority was being made whole financially, and as lawyers, they were obligated to take that to heart.

Schaffer said most of the witnesses in the case were hostile to the prosecution and friendly with Paxton. He said the prosecution planned to show in court that Paxton had excelled in a securities course when he was licensed as proof that he should have known better.

Still, he said, there was no knowing if a jury might take pity on Paxton — that they would know he’s guilty but decide that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

“To not fill a form out from the state because you thought your federal form was sufficient? And it was (sufficient) up until three months ago?” Schaffer said. “You know, some jurors may feel kind of like look, nobody got harmed. You didn’t do it correctly. He did pay a civil penalty. He’s been punished enough.”

Schaffer added that the charge accusing Paxton of misleading investors might also have been difficult to prove because the law isn’t “crystal clear” about what a person soliciting investments is supposed to tell a potential investor, and Paxton allegedly didn’t lie outright, he lied by omission.

In his view, pretrial diversion was a way prosecutors could make sure there were some guaranteed consequences for Paxton, and it also implied guilt.

“It sends a signal to anybody who is paying attention that this guy obviously did what he’s accused of doing or he wouldn’t be entering into that agreement,” Schaffer said.

See here for the previous update, about the deal being made. This subsequent story has more details.

The lead prosecutor in Ken Paxton’s securities fraud case was scrambling in recent months to push back the trial date and find local district attorneys who could help him present a convincing argument to the jury.

The April 15 trial date set by Harris County Judge Andrea Beall was quickly approaching after years of delays and an attempt by Paxton’s team to have the charges dismissed for lack of a speedy trial was still pending.

Brian Wice, the lead private attorney appointed to prosecute Paxton, told Hearst Newspapers he and defense attorney Dan Cogdell agreed they were not going to be ready by that date and decided to set a meeting with Beall on Valentine’s Day to ask to move the trial to September. The judge flatly rejected them.

[…]

As Schaffer considered leaving the case in February, he approached Cogdell about a possible deal allowing Paxton to have the charges dropped.

At the time, restitution payments to the victims were not part of the discussion, Cogdell said, though he expected it likely would have come up if negotiations with Schaffer had continued. Wice was adamant that restitution be included.

Without a consensus and with his compensation still in question, Schaffer, an experienced trial and criminal defense lawyer who has represented high-profile clients like music artist Travis Scott, withdrew from the case.

That left Wice in a bind. Though also a veteran criminal defense lawyer, his expertise is in appellate law, and he hasn’t tried a case on his own in decades.

“That’s not my skillset,” Wice said. “That’s Kent’s skillset. Pound for pound, he’s one of the best trial lawyers in the Western Hemisphere.”

That was the point at which Wice began reaching out to various DA’s offices for assistance, according to the story. There are some disagreements with those offices about how that all went, so read for yourself. There were a lot of factors that led us to this conclusion, none of which should be confused for Paxton being anything but the crooked little shit that he is. In that first story at the end, Attorney Schaffer expressed his optimism in that San Antonio grand jury, to which all I can say is from your lips to God’s ear, sir. Read both of these or read this Reform Austin summary and see what you think.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hardy Toll Road connector approved

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a very different project than what was first proposed.

A planned extension of the Hardy Toll Road through the Near Northside into downtown Houston will proceed, but with various community-driven design elements.

Harris County Commissioners on Tuesday approved a plan by the Harris County Toll Road Authority for the extension from Loop 610 to the Elysian Viaduct near Interstate 10. Toll authority officials previously said it could be four years before construction of the long-proposed toll road extension is complete.

Despite being a tollway project, commissioners cheered the efforts to make the road more palatable to the community and add elements such as park space, bike trails, community meeting facilities, sound walls and trees that are much-needed in the Near Northside.

[…]

After county officials balked at a 2020 proposal for the extension, citing neighborhood concerns, HCTRA spent two years holding public meetings in the community and adding amenities to the project based on what residents said they wanted. Those discussion led to a number of changes, including:

  • An entrance and exit to the tollway at Cavalcade, so residents have some access to the tollway for their own use, rather than it simply running unimpeded through the area.
  • Green spaces both next to and on top of the tollway where it will be depressed, with parking beneath the portion of the road that will be elevated to increase access to the parks but shield the parking lots.
  • A HCTRA building planned for the agency’s IT offices in the area open to the community for public meetings and possibly classes.

“This project has morphed into something the community does support,” said HCTRA Executive Director Roberto Treviño.

Treviño said Monday he expects HCTRA to build many of the items the community sought prior to the tollway construction.

Despite the commitments, concerns remain that the amenities shroud what is still a large road to serve vehicle trips.

“Like many environmental justice communities, the Near Northside has been repeatedly asked to bear the burden of air pollution sources like highways,” said Jennifer Hadayia, executive director of Air Alliance Houston. “Unfortunately, this new highway will add even more air pollution to the community… Near Northside deserves investments like parks, recreation facilities and affordable housing without a four-lane highway going through the neighborhood.”

To address some of the concerns, county officials approved HCTRA’s plan, but also told the agency to work with Metropolitan Transit Authority, Harris County Pollution Control and other agencies to monitor and mitigate pollution, ensure the project does not displace affordable housing and offer improved transit.

See here for some background and here for a preview story in the Chron. As I said, this is a very different project now than what was first proposed, which was basically just highway through the neighborhood. It’s a little hard for me to imagine this much accommodation for the residents of those neighborhoods being made in the old days. Doesn’t mean this is a perfect project, doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to oppose it, just that where there’s a responsive government, we’ve come a long way. That’s worth noticing.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, March 29 edition

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: Ken Paxton gets off with a slap on the wrist; repercussions from the election including a Big Lie-inspired recount in my state house district; infrastructure problems in the Metroplex both physical and online; Dallas bond and charter updates; Dallas courts news; immigration stories; eclipsonomics; Black history in Fort Worth; what happened to jalapenos; and a gorilla baby leaves the Fort Worth Zoo to find a foster mom.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of CAKE, who are coming through Texas in September, and whose Dallas concert I am buying tickets for Friday morning.

The biggest Metroplex-associated story this week is, of course, Collin County’s favorite boy skating one more time with a fine, community service, and legal ethics education as a plea deal for securities fraud, as noted by our host earlier this week. Like most of us, I’m disappointed, and believe the man is a crook even if even the law never catches up with him. The DMN and Star-Telegram have some opinions (negative) about this action. According to the Dallas Observer, Paxton will be doing his community service in Collin County, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for news about what he’s up to. What does it all mean? Texas Standard has some early guesses.

In other news:

  • Our favorite junior senator wants senior government officials to get police escort through the airport, and on the one hand, in the world Ted Cruz helped make, there are a lot of people in Congress and election administrators who probably need that help. On the other hand, we all know he’s still mad he got spotted running off to Cancun and that’s what he cares about.
  • D Magazine has a Q&A with Colin Allred about his campaign for Cruz’s seat.
  • Before we get to the next election, we have to get through with the last one. Local Wilks and Dunn candidate Barry Wernick, who ran against incumbent Morgan Meyer in HD 108 (where I live) in the Republican primary, is asking for a recount in the election. He’s not trying to overturn the election, just wanting to “an effort to expose flaws, if any, inherent in the current election systems and to protect future elections”. Wernick lost the election by a few more than 500 votes, so wanting a recount makes sense. But given who paid for his run and who endorsed him (TFG), this looks less like a request for a recount in a narrow race and more like a Big Lie potshot at Dallas elections, and specifically at our new elections administrator, Heider Garcia, who was run out of Tarrant County by Big Lie proponent Tim O’Hare when he took over as County Judge there.
  • The DMN has an op-ed by State Rep. Kronda Thimesch, who was primaried out over the Paxton impeachment, on Republican infighting and dark money liars. I’m sympathetic about the dark money and the lying, but there’s a bit of Face-Eating Leopards in this complaint.
  • Related, the Star-Telegram’s Nicole Russell isn’t happy about the Christian/evangelical embrace of Christian Nationalism. I’m pretty sure she’s right about that not being what Jesus said, at least as I remember my readings from Bible class, but good luck getting the folks who need to hear that to listen.
  • Also related: the Texas Tribune on the race to succeed state GOP chair Matt Rinaldi, including the North Texas candidate considered his chosen successor. The article mentions the domestic violence call we talked about recently.
  • And, also related: Mark Steger in Richardson complaining about his gerrymandered state rep, who is a tool of Wilks and Dunn, whose fingerprints are all over the sorry state of politics in Texas. I feel for Steger; I used to be in Lance Gooden’s congressional district in the same sort of arrangement. But it’s not going to change until we throw the lot of them out of office.
  • Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth, who’s retiring at the end of her current term, is stepping down as the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
  • Earlier this week, Dallas City Council went into closed session to discuss “Project X”, a business prospect they don’t want to tell us about. Like our friends at D Magazine, I wonder if it’s related to keeping the Mavericks in Dallas.
  • According to an independent, nonpartisan survey, five of the most-travelled structurally-deficient bridges in Texas are in Dallas. These bridges don’t merely need repairs; “one of [their] key elements is in poor or worse condition”. Yikes.
  • Also in the damaged infrastructure department: turns out the reason the Tarrant County Appraisal District web site went down last week was a ransomware attack. The hackers are demanding a $700,000 ransom. In Tarrant County and wondering what information the hackers might have on you? The Star-Telegram has you covered.
  • The City of Dallas is also transitioning to a new web site for their utilities, including our water bill. How’s it going? We didn’t get the email with the information to log into our account (which we will eventually need anyway); don’t have the account information trivially available since we’re paperless customers and it’s all locked up in the old web site; called to get them to resend the email; went through the phone tree to get told we had to talk to a human; punched 0 to get to a human; and got hung up on. We filed a request with 311 but there has to be an better way to handle errant emails.
  • It’s all but official that T.C. Broadnax is going to the city manager job in Austin. He says the chance at the Austin job came at the perfect time, which, given how well Mayor Johnson has been governing since he officially switched parties, is more like a little late.
  • The city of Dallas is about to make construction more expensive for both commercial and residential projects. Apparently building fees have been low and they’re not supporting the permitting process. Some fees will triple but the largest increase is almost 2500% and that’s not a typo. This is the sort of boring story that doesn’t get a lot of coverage but has long-term effects.
  • One of Dallas County’s judges has more than 100 felony jury trials set for the week of April 1. This is apparently an effort to get back out from under the delays to her docket from COVID. The DMN is displeased. Presumably only one or two of these cases are actually going to trial. The best guess is this is an effort to force prosecutors and defense attorneys to strike plea deals, which is at best questionably just. The DMN also has analysis of the bar poll from 2023 and unsurprisingly, Givens is the lowest-rated felony judge.
  • The blowup around whether or not the police oversight board in Dallas can actually do anything may result in the watchdogs reporting to city council rather than the city manager in the charter election in November. I’ll vote for that.
  • A Sharon Grigsby analysis in the DMN of a proposal to put parks and recreation under City Council suggests it’s politics and not dissatisfaction with the amenities underlying the proposed change. At least in north Dallas, though the parks are expanding below I-30 as well. I learned a lot about how the Parks Department works, which is why I linked it instead of just saying the charter review commission turned the proposal down. One of the other things the Parks Department is doing is temporarily managing Old City Park while the city figures out what to do with its oldest park and the historic buildings there.
  • White Rock Lake has reopened after the sewage spill but tests show E. coli in the lake. I’m planning to go down to the lake for the eclipse next week but I’m not getting too close to the water.
  • D Magazine has a piece on the longlist for the City of Dallas bonds in the May election. There may still be some changes. Early voting on the bonds starts April 22.
  • When the state ties the hands of local government, this is what it looks like: Arlington City Council approving natural gas drilling expansion against the interests and wishes of its constituents.
  • I report police settlements not because I think the Metroplex is worse than other parts of the state, but because I want folks to realize how regularly we spend money to pay for cops behaving badly and how much money it is: Fort Worth City Council approved a $150,000 settlement for police misconduct. The case relied in part on a third-party report in 2022 that found a pattern of unnecessary use of force.
  • The Texas Tribune has a nice exploration of the bus depot in Longview. East Texas is not really my purview but I did want to bring it to people’s attention because it’s worth a read.
  • There’s a drive-thru McDonald’s in downtown Dallas and its permit is due for renewal. There’s going to be a fight about it that’s really a fight about the future of downtown. Part of the broader set of concerns is the store is near the Greyhound depot that’s closing later this year, which will change the driving vs walking calculus in the area significantly.
  • Here are a couple of immigration stories I’d like to bring to your attention. One is about how the feds are spending $50 million to cut visa wait times and passport backlogs. One of the issues with visa wait times is it costs the US a lot of tourism money, including some that will come to Dallas with the FIFA World Cup matches. The other is a heartbreaking tale about family separation that doesn’t go where you might expect.
  • Speaking of FIFA, D Magazine has some early news about logistics.
  • How about logistics for an event coming up much sooner than 2026? Apparently porta-potties are in short supply for the eclipse on April 8. Texas Standard also has some numbers about the economic impact of the eclipse.
  • This week I learned that Dallas saw its first eclipse in 1878. The scientists who came to Dallas to make observations were also trying to find out whether a planet called “Vulcan” between Mercury and the sun actually existed.
  • Another thing I learned this week is that “the father of Black baseball” played for a Fort Worth Negro League team in the early part of the twentieth century. I’m not a baseball person, but I didn’t need to be to get a lot from this story.
  • I also learned a lot from the Texas Observer’s deep dive into the history of a lynching in Fort Worth in 1921.
  • Grandmother of Juneteenth Opal Lee participated in the rebuilding of her childhood home in Fort Worth last week. The original house on the site was destroyed by a racist mob in 1939.
  • Are jalapenos blander or are you just getting old? Actually, you were right the first time: jalapenos are less spicy than they used to be and Aggies are to blame.
  • There was a big auction of movie memorabilia from the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain here in Dallas and the top prize was the door from Titanic, which went for $718,750. Personally I would have spent my fantasy money on Indiana Jones’ bullwhip, which would only have set me back $525,000.
  • Poor gorilla baby Jameela, born earlier this year by a C-section, struck out with her second foster mother and is moving from Fort Worth to Cleveland where zookeepers hope an experience foster gorilla mom will bond with her. Good luck, Jameela! And because I don’t want you to leave feeling sad, click through and look at this video of Korbel, the Fort Worth zoo’s baby giraffe, who sure is cute.
Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Dispatches from Dallas, March 29 edition

Fifth Circuit leaves SB4 block in place

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A federal appeals panel late Tuesday night declined to put Texas’s migrant deportation law back in effect, saying the state law seizes powers that are “likely reserved to the United States.”

The 2-1 opinion from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals keeps the law on hold while a broader legal battle plays out over the constitutionality of the state’s new immigration enforcement scheme. The appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case next week.

But the lengthy early ruling from the conservative appeals court is a sign of the uphill battle Texas Republicans face in convincing the courts the law, known as Senate Bill 4, does not run afoul of more than a century of precedent leaving immigration enforcement in the hands of the federal government.

Chief Judge Priscilla Richman wrote that even as the state is “nobly and admirably” trying to fill a “gaping void” in immigration enforcement left by a lack of funding and political will in D.C., “it is unlikely that Texas can step into the shoes of the national sovereign under our Constitution and laws.”

“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power,” Richman wrote. “Despite this fundamental axiom, SB4 creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses and related procedures regarding unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the country and their removal.”

The one judge on the panel to rule in Texas’s favor said the decision likely means the law will never take effect.

“We’ll likely never know how Texas’s state courts and its state law-enforcement officers would have implemented SB4,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham wrote.

[…]

Richman repeatedly pointed to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that held that only the federal government has the power to enforce immigration laws. In that case, the high court struck down portions of an Arizona law that authorized police to arrest anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

Richman said the Arizona ruling provides “considerable guidance” on whether Texas can succeed. She wrote that the Supreme Court in that case explained that a “principal feature” of the federal removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials. Those officials can decide whom to deport, and migrants can seek asylum or other forms of relief at any point in the process.

SB4’s provisions empowering state officials to make those decisions, Richman wrote, “significantly impair the exercise of discretion by federal immigration officials.”

“The broadest exercise of federal discretion is the Executive’s decision not to pursue either civilly or criminally the very noncitizens whom Texas has drawn a bead upon in enacting new state laws,” she wrote. “The discretion to pursue these same noncitizens likely lies exclusively with the Executive.”

See here for the previous update. This is what we’ve been saying all along, and at this point I’d expect the upcoming hearing on the merits of the initial injunction go along similar lines. The question as ever is what SCOTUS will do with it, whether they’ll respect this precedent, barely a decade old, or throw it out because there are different Justices on the bench now and the Republican Party really cares about this. We’ll find out eventually. The Associated Press, Law Dork, and the Current have more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Controller Hollins puts firefighter settlement tab at up to $1.3 billion

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

That’s once you factor in interest payments over the life of the bonds that will be issued to cover this.

Mayor John Whitmire

Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s proposed settlement with the firefighters union could cost significantly more than previously advertised, City Controller Chris Hollins said Tuesday.

The total cost of a back-pay settlement with the city’s firefighters could be $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion after taking into account interest and fees, Hollins said.

In addition, the total extra cost of a forward-looking, five-year contract with the firefighters’ union could exceed $140 million, according to the controller.

Hollins declined to weigh in on whether he thinks the settlement is fair, but his take on the settlement cost underscores the heavy hit to taxpayers from the deal that Whitmire struck earlier this month.

[…]

Hollins said his assessment of whether the deal is sound will hinge on a comparison of Houston firefighter pay to counterparts in other cities in Texas. He still is waiting on that analysis from the Whitmire administration, he said.

Whitmire has yet to release a detailed plan of how to pay for the firefighter settlement. Administration officials have broached the idea of instituting a garbage collection fee or creating an exception to the city’s property tax revenue cap to pay for the Houston police and fire departments, which make up the lion’s share of the city’s operating expenses.

Both of those ideas are worth exploring, Hollins said at his Tuesday news conference. He said the city cannot meet its mounting obligations through cost-cutting measures alone.

Adding the firefighter settlement to the city’s structural deficit, Houston soon will be on the hook for an extra $230 to $280 million dollars in expenses per year, Hollins said.

See here for the previous entry in this series. Mayor Whitmire still hasn’t provided a plan, and while it’s reasonable to give a topline figure for the total cost, there really will be a lot paid out in interest over the years. A million bucks twenty years from now is worth less than a million bucks today, but it still has to be paid. I don’t have a problem with that, but the line that this settlement was needed because the cost of losing to the firefighters in court would have been a lot more is at least a little disingenuous, in that the city could have prevailed in that lawsuit. I don’t know enough to know what the chances are of that or what a decent risk analysis would look like, the point is that the firefighters didn’t agree to a settlement out of a sense of civic duty, they did so because their risk analysis suggested the city made a worthwhile offer to them, taking into account the possibility they could lose or just not get as much if they won. It’s all a calculation.

It’s fair to say the city was going to have to pay something when the court case was done, and whatever you thought of the merits of the case there’s value in knowing what that amount is so a plan could be made for it. It’s just that, you know, now we have to make those plans. And they have to be made in the context of a budget outlook that is now worse because of it.

Houston Controller Chris Hollins has projected a budget shortfall of $230 to $280 million for the upcoming fiscal year, warning that the city’s savings cannot sustain the extra costs from the latest firefighters’ deal beyond another year.

[…]

Combining debt repayments, interest and planned salary hikes, the city’s budget is bracing for an additional cost of $70 to $80 million in the next fiscal year that starts in July. This is on top of an already projected deficit of $160 to $200 million that does not account for the impact of the firefighters’ agreement, Hollins said.

“This is a long-standing pattern that the city for years and years has been spending on a recurring basis more than is brought in,” Hollins said during a Tuesday press conference. “You start to look at the numbers and they pile up, and it’s my job to at some point say, ‘hey, we can no longer foot this bill.’”

Whitmire’s team has proposed potentially adjusting the city’s property tax revenue cap, charging a garbage fee and implementing 5% budget cuts across most city departments as potential ways to cut down expenses and generate new revenues.

Hollins said he has long advocated for removing the revenue cap and is open to exploring the addition of a garbage fee, noting Houston is the only major city in Texas without one. He said, however, that he does not support large-scale budget cuts or layoffs that would undermine essential city services such as water provision, trash collection and road safety projects.

“These are fundamental necessities that residents expect, depend on and pay for with their tax dollars,” he said. “We were elected with a mandate to not only maintain but to improve the quality of critical city services…and we must uphold that responsibility.”

I too have long advocated for getting rid of the stupid revenue cap, and I look forward to Mayor Whitmire making that case. It’s just too bad this has to wait until 2026, because we could use it now. Or, really, anytime in the past. But here we are.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments