Good for them. Attorney General Greg Abbott’s opinion [last] week, while not binding, is the latest of several challenges to same-sex benefits across the country that so far have had mixed results in the courts and prompted changes after officials in other states took action. In Texas, local governments from El Paso to San Antonio [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Dallas County’
As if you needed another reason to support Medicaid expansion
Even more data on why Medicaid expansion makes sense from Texas Impact. The study, by former Texas deputy comptroller Billy Hamilton, says Texas shouldn’t pass up the chance to insure up to 2 million of its more than 6 million uninsured people. Hamilton cited other benefits. Expansion of the Medicaid rolls would “provide relief to [...]
Working the county Medicaid expansion angle
As statewide Medicaid expansion is being pushed in Austin, some activists are going to various County Commissioners Courts to push for the county option to expand Medicaid as well. “A broad spectrum of people across business, faith and health care communities are coming together to ask that we find a way to draw down these [...]
SOS ups the ante against Sumners
It’s getting real at the Tax Assessor’s office. Harris County election officials got a bit of a surprise Friday morning when they attempted to open the county’s spending account on the Texas Secretary of State’s office website and found their access blocked. State officials have temporarily cut off the county’s voter registration funding. “We received [...]
CSAPR stayed
There was some bad news at the end of the year. A federal court ordered [last] Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial cross-state air pollution rule be stayed — to the delight of Texas officials and the chagrin of environmentalists. The rule, which sought to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power [...]
“Beyond DNA”
The Dallas Observer has a good story about the state of the exoneration business now that most of the cases involving DNA have been handled. Since Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins took office in 2007, incidents of wrongfully convicted men being released from Texas prisons have become almost commonplace. Dramatic scenes of innocent men [...]
More map feedback
In addition to AG Abbott’s pitiful whining, a few other parties have been heard from regarding the interim legislative map. First, Speaker Joe Straus performs his duty as a Republican. Here’s his statement: “As the panel of three federal judges prepares to issue its ruling on district lines for the Texas House of Representatives, I [...]
Sen. Chris Harris and Rep. Will Hartnett to retire
One more out the door of the upper chamber. State Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, announced [Monday] afternoon that he will not seek reelection — the fourth veteran lawmaker to announce their retirement from the Upper Chamber. He is the longest serving Republican in the Senate and chairs the Senate Jurisprudence Committee. “I want to express [...]
What if we didn’t have to worry about county lines?
The federal lawsuit that will be heard by a three-judge panel in San Antonio begins next week, but in the meantime there have been depositions taken by various players, and some interesting things have come up in them. Texas Redistricting highlights one of the assertions made by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus about the need [...]
Primary news: HD90, HD113, HCDE
State Rep. Lon Burnam has an opponent in March. Fort Worth School Board trustee Carlos Vasquez has announced he will challenge state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, in next year’s Democratic primary. Vasquez, a former elementary school principal, has been on the board since 2008 representing the district’s north side. “After careful consideration I have [...]
Veasey’s Congressional plan
We didn’t get a Congressional map from the Senate Redistricting Committee, though we may now get one in a special session but that didn’t stop State Rep. Marc Veasey from drawing his own before sine die. In Veasey’s map, thirteen of the state’s 36 districts would be minority districts, all of which would lean Democrat, [...]
Let’s not look for excuses
Last week, MALDEF released a Congressional redistricting plan for Texas that was aimed at drawing two new Latino Congressional seats. Paul Burka has a complaint about one of the districts they drew. The other district in Plan 108C is the new 35th district, one of the four new seats that Texas is scheduled to get. [...]
A couple of maps to contemplate
Over at the Swing State Project, frequent commenter blank has taken a crack at drawing a new Congressional map for Texas that looks mighty plausible. He’s also contributed a couple of scenarios for redrawing State House districts in Dallas County, which drops from 16 seats to 14 for this decade, that he sent to Greg [...]
Census stories: Dallas and its neighbors
The city of Dallas isn’t growing. Despite a surging state population and double-digit growth rates in Austin, Fort Worth and San Antonio, the city of Dallas grew by a paltry 1 percent in the last decade, according to the new census figures — a rate lower than any of the 20 largest cities in Texas. [...]
Dallas County’s elections administrator resigns
I spotted this story in the DMN the other day. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins has called a meeting of an obscure commission charged with appointing a county elections chief, raising the suspicion that it’s an attempt to oust longtime Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet. The County Election Commission, which county officials say has not met [...]
Opening thoughts on the carnage
In no particular order… – Republicans gain 22 seats in the State House, for a 99-51 advantage. That’s with Pete Gallego, Hubert Vo, and Donna Howard, all of whom had been trailing early, coming back to win. Howard’s margin of victory is a microscopic 15 votes, so she’ll have to survive a recount. No Republican [...]
Endorsement watch: Dallas Democratic legislative candidates
As we know, the Dallas Morning News dumped Double-Dip Joe Driver from its list of endorsed candidates. Here’s what they said about some other legislative races of interest to Democrats: Editorial: We recommend Haldenwang in HD105 Republican Linda Harper-Brown has represented Texas House District 105 since 2003. We previously have recommended her as a knowledgeable [...]
Yes, the “D” in “Big D” stands for “Democratic”
I continue to not understand the belief that some folks have that Dallas is a swing county. Ridgewood Park was a battlefield staging area for riled-up Republicans determined to take back their legislative district, their city and their county. In shorts, T-shirts and walking shoes and fortified by breakfast tacos and orange juice, approximately 50 [...]
Double-Dip Driver
In case you missed this the other day. State Rep. Joe Driver of Garland, who rails against the evils of runaway government spending, admitted Monday that he has pocketed thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for travel expenses that his campaign had already funded. The veteran Republican legislator, faced with findings from an investigation by [...]
It’s still hard to free an innocent person
No surprise, right? While some appellate attorneys are applauding Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos’ establishment of a Post Conviction Review Section, whose work led to the freedom of two wrongfully convicted men in the past week, Texas law continues to make it difficult for inmates appealing convictions to be heard in court. The Texas [...]
Redistricting hearing in San Antonio
It’s that time of the decade again. Monday’s joint hearing of the House Committees on Redistricting and Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence — on the University of Texas at San Antonio’s downtown campus — marked the unofficial kickoff for that process. The first Texas redistricting meeting held this year outside of Austin, it attracted some of [...]
Claude Jones
Claude Jones was a Texas inmate who was executed ten years ago. He protested his innocence of the crime for which he was put to death till the end. Now we may get to see if he was telling the truth about that. Visiting Judge Paul C. Murphy this week ordered testing of a strand [...]
The Trib talks with Craig Watkins
Good stuff. For the 11th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the district attorney of Dallas County about why and how he’s worked to exonerate the wrongfully imprisoned and whether he’s dragging his feet on a controversial corruption case involving county constables. We’ve provided the conversation with the in three forms: video, full audio [...]
An early look at redistricting
The House Redistricting Committee is holding some hearings around the state in advance of the 2011 Census reports, and if there’s one thing we know already, it’s that West Texas will be losing influence next year. The state population increased from 20.8 million in 2000 to an estimated 24.8 million in 2009, or 18.8 percent, [...]
Beyond DNA exonerations
We’re all familiar with the way the Dallas DA’s office has handled using DNA to review cases in which a defendant’s guilt may have been in question. Now that most of the cases in which DNA evidence still exists have been reviewed, they are moving on to other kinds. The emphasis of the conviction integrity [...]
Gay divorce lawsuit update
It’s all a little surreal. A man seeking to end his same-sex marriage in Dallas County is arguing an ironic point in a state that doesn’t recognize his nuptials: Grant the divorce and there will be one less gay marriage in Texas. “My client is a married man and he needs a divorce,” said the [...]
Counting inmates where they’re from, not where they’re incarcerated
I’ve noted before that prisoners in Texas are considered for Census purposes to be residents of the county in which they are incarcerated, not the county where they were actually living at the time of their arrest. This tends to have a distorting effect on the real population of some smaller rural counties where state [...]
The Trib talks to Craig Watkins
The Trib has a fascinating article about Dallas DA Craig Watkins, who is running for re-election for the first time this year, in which he defends himself against charges that he has not been sufficiently vigorous in prosecuting political malfeasance. He’s been skewered in The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Observer for taking no [...]
Population and voting trends: 2002 and 2006 judicial elections, Part I
For the next entry in this series, we’re going to look at how county returns changed from 2002 to 2006 in statewide judicial races in Texas. Again, I’m using judicial races here because they tend to reflect straight partisan preference a bit more closely. It might have been nice to compare Senate races or Governor’s [...]
Runoff roundup
Here’s a look at some of the runoff elections that will be on the ballot next month. On the Democratic side…boy, there’s not much. No statewide runoffs, as Linda Chavez-Thompson got a majority in her three-candidate race for Lite Guv. One for Congress, where Robert Pruett and Winston Cochrane compete for the right to challenge [...]
Hodge pleads guilty, will resign
Well, at least this got resolved before the primary. State Rep. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, pleaded guilty early this morning to lying on her tax returns in connection with the FBI’s Dallas City Hall public corruption investigation, an act that ends her 14-year political career. Hodge, 69, now a convicted felon, is dropping her re-election plans, [...]