I confess to being a little confused at first when I read this. A half-dozen Harris County departments will spend the rest of the year scrambling to fulfill a Texas Supreme Court mandate that all civil courts accept only electronic filings, starting next January. In a ruling issued last December, the high court said large [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Chris Daniel’
On encouraging jury service
District Clerk Chris Daniel notes that many people do not get paid when they take off work to serve on jury duty, and that therefore they generally choose to ignore their summonses. During the upcoming session, the state Legislature can address this issue and ensure that jury pools include a true cross-section of county residents [...]
January finance reports for Harris County offices
For the most part, it’s way too early to start thinking about the 2014 Harris County elections – we have a legislative session and a city election cycle to get through first – but since January 15 is a reporting deadline for county officeholders, I figure I may as well have a peek at who [...]
You can donate your jury duty pay to charity
As you probably know if you have been called to jury service in Harris County, jurors get paid $6 for showing up, and $28 per day after the first day if they are selected to serve on a jury. What you may not know is that you can donate that pay to charity if you [...]
The demographics of jury service
Why is it that juries in Harris County tend to not reflect the demography of the county as a whole? District Clerk Chris Daniel explains why in a recent Chron op-ed. If you’re familiar with the concept of “citizen voting age population” (CVAP), you will likely nod your head as you read it. This isn’t [...]
Bailing out the bail bondsmen
It’s not often that the District Clerk makes front page headlines, but ours did late last week. Harris County District Clerk Chris Daniel has not collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs since taking office in January because, critics say, it would hurt business for bail bondsmen who contributed to his campaign. “He’s [...]
Fundraising: Harris County
The top story for the Harris County money race is that County Judge Ed Emmett has a big lead in financial resources over challenger Gordon Quan. Gordon Quan said he knew from the start that challenging County Judge Ed Emmett would be a David and Goliath race. Their bank accounts now confirm this: Quan has [...]
Election results: Harris County
It was a bad day to be the establishment candidate for Harris County Clerk, let me tell you. Ann Harris Bennett crushed Sue Schechter for the Democratic nomination, winning with 63% of the vote. On the Republican side, wingnut Stan Stanart, who lost a 2008 race for the HCDE Board of Trustees after taking out [...]