Council will vote on the proposed Uptown/Memorial TIRZ this week, which may or may not put an end to some of the wild speculation about what expanding the Uptown TIRZ boundaries to include Memorial Park may mean. Imagine you’re jogging through Memorial Park, squinting past rows of neon signs in front of fast food joints, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Ellen Cohen’
Endorsement watch: Planned Parenthood gets an early start
From the inbox on Friday: Today the Board of Directors of the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast ACTION FUND Inc, (PPGCAF) voted to endorse the following candidates for the November City Election. Each of the endorsed candidates has demonstrated a strong commitment to the health and well being of Texas women and families. PPGCAF encourages all [...]
Clearing the rape kit backlog
Some excellent news from the Mayor’s office. Mayor Annise Parker and the Houston Police Department today announced details of a plan that will eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault kits (SAK). Under the plan, which will be formally considered by Houston City Council next week, the untested kits will be sent to two outside [...]
Council approves Washington Avenue parking benefit district
We’ll see how this works. The Houston City Council on Wednesday formed a special parking district along Washington Avenue, intended to ease the woes associated with the bustling corridor’s mix of bars, restaurants and residential streets. The plan will add parking meters on about 350 spaces along Washington, and will make it easier for residents [...]
On the Parking Benefit District
A proposed ordinance to create a parking benefit district in the Washington Avenue corridor was on Council’s agenda this week, but it was tagged and will wait a week while everyone gets up to speed on it. District C Council member Ellen Cohen says the city has been working with business owners to come up [...]
Strip clubs sue city over $5 fee
Remember the $5 per customer strip club fee that was added as a budget amendment by CM Ellen Cohen as a way to fund clearing HPD’s backlog of rape kits? The clubs threatened to sue the city at the time this was debated, and last Thursday they followed through on that threat. In the lawsuit [...]
After school programs
I see a lot of merit in this. After-school programs prevent crime, Councilman C.O. Bradford said, so some of them should be paid for by the police. “This sounds strange to hear a gun-packing, badge-toting, 24-year cop talking about this,” said Bradford, Houston’s former police chief, but he proposes hiring 20 fewer police officers in [...]
Funding to rebuild Yale Street Bridge acquired
Good news. Calling the Yale Street bridge “functionally obsolete” after a recent engineering study, the Texas Department of Transportation has secured “out of cycle funding” to replace the bridge, Councilwoman Ellen Cohen announced late Monday. Cohen said that means the project won’t have to go through federal bureaucracy and that a new bridge could be [...]
Yale Street Bridge to get makeover
You may recall that last November the load limit on the Yale Street Bridge was reduced by TxDOT to 8,000 lbs per single axle and 10,000 lbs per tandem axle, which has resulted in truck traffic being forbidden on the bridge. That hasn’t stopped trucks from actually using it, of course, but they’re not supposed [...]
Council adopts strip club fee
Here it comes. Seeking a solution to the bedeviling problem of untested rape evidence that is in some cases decades old, council imposed a $5-per-customer fee on strip clubs Wednesday so it can buy speedier lab work. That simple solution, however, may come with complications of its own, starting with court costs. “Houston has now [...]
Council defers on strip club fee
Tagged for a week. Consideration of a $5-per-head fee on customers of strip clubs to pay for reducing the city’s backlog of untested rape kits has been delayed for a week. Council members Melissa Noriega and Al Hoang both tagged the item, a parliamentary maneuver that puts off an agenda item for one week, no [...]
Budget amendment time
Now that Mayor Parker has formally submitted her proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, it’s time for Council members to submit their amendments for consideration. I’m going to start at the bottom of the story with the two proposals that intrigues me the most. Two members called for a November election to amend the city’s [...]
January finance reports: Harris County state races
In addition to county candidates, my 2012 Democratic primary election page has information about state and federal candidates who will be on the ballot in Harris County. There are numerous contested primaries, and while I’m not tracking information about Republican races on that page, I thought it would be useful to check on the finance [...]
More thoughts on the Council elections
One district at a time… – I confess that I did not see the District A result coming. Helena Brown did raise a decent amount of money since entering the race at the filing deadline, about $22K through the end of October, which makes me wonder how she might have fared if she had gotten [...]
2011 Houston results
Let’s go through the races… – Mayor Parker won with a shade under 51%, with none of her opponents cracking 15% on their own. Obviously, this is not a position a Mayor with no serious opposition wants to be in, and it won’t surprise anyone if one or more potential opponents for 2013 are on [...]
Eight day reports, part 1
The eight day finance reports started getting posted on the city’s campaign finance page yesterday. I’m still working through putting them on my 2011 Election page, but here are a few highlights so far: – Next to Mayor Parker, the big spender in October was CM Stephen Costello, who made full use of his deep [...]
Chron overview of District C
The Ashby Highrise is casting its shadow over the race for the open seat in District C. Even with substantially redrawn boundaries, which in January will extend from north of Loop 610 down through the Heights and south to the Braeswood area, District C still is ground zero for the battle over height regulations. After [...]
30 day finance reports for City of Houston races
The 30 day campaign finance reports for City of Houston elections were due last week, and they are now mostly up on the city’s campaign finance report website, with a large number showing up today. Already I’m seeing questionable, curious, and interesting things in the reports. Some highlights so far: Helena Brown, the late-filing candidate [...]
Endorsement watch: Cohen and Adams
It’s a twofer, and it’s apparent confirmation that the Chron is going alphabetically by district. First, they tap Ellen Cohen for the reconfigured District C. Among a strong field of candidates for Houston City Council District C – the district that includes Montrose, Meyerland, Braeswood, Oak Forest, Southampton and parts of the Heights – Ellen [...]
Supremes uphold strip club tax
In a ruling that reverses the 3rd Court of Appeals, the State Supreme Court has unanimously held that the so-called “pole tax” is constitutional. The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that a $5-per-customer fee on strip clubs that serve alcohol doesn’t violate free speech rights. [...] “We think a $5 fee poses no greater burden [...]
Interview with Ellen Cohen
We move now into District C, where a newly-drawn inner Loop district has drawn a fair amount of interest. First up is former two-term State Rep. Ellen Cohen, who represented a fair piece of this district while serving in HD134. Cohen’s candidacy drew some national attention early on, but really, this is just another open [...]
A closer look at finance reports: Elected officials
In addition to contributions from PACs, there was another class of donor that I thought was worth highlighting: Elected officials and candidates for public office. Basically, the idea is to see who “the establishment” is supporting, to see what we might learn from that. So without further ado, here’s a Google spreadsheet with all the [...]
Council officially approves new redistricting map
Let the filings begin! The Houston City Council approved a new political map for the city on Wednesday that expands the council by two seats and gives Houston’s burgeoning Latino population what community leaders see as its best opportunity to capture a third seat in November elections. [...] The City Council’s approval of the new [...]
Our first campaign drama of 2011
I’m pretty sure we’d have had some sort of kerfuffle like this by now if we hadn’t had to redraw Council lines, which has pushed the timeline back a bit. Lone Star Strategies has dropped City Council candidate Jenifer Rene Pool as a client in anticipation of working for another candidate in the race to [...]
Mayor presents revised Council map
Here’s the release. There was a press conference today at 10 to roll it out. Mayor Annise Parker today revealed a second version of the staff redistricting map that incorporates recommendations from members of various Houston communities. The new plan includes four districts in which the total population and voting age population is majority Hispanic; [...]
NYT on Ellen Cohen
You don’t expect Houston City Council races or candidates to get written up in the Times, but Ellen Cohen isn’t your everyday candidate. Well, and there’s the partnership with the Texas Tribune, too. Of interest is the question of whether going from the Lege to Council represents a step down of some kind. Running for [...]
Proposed new City Council map is out
Feast your eyes: Numbers and a sideways view of the map can be seen here. You can also see these docs plus a map of current Council districts at Houston Politics. A few rough observations: – The first thing you need to do is go read Greg’s liveblog of the Council meeting in which this [...]
Cohen looking at City Council
Former State Rep. Ellen Cohen is exploring a run for City Council in the updated District C. “It has a real appeal to me,” added Cohen. Potential candidates do not have to register until August at the earliest, though Cohen may act long before. “I’ll know where I’m heading on this soon,” she said. Cohen, [...]
Gambling proponents still optimistic for some reason
The conventional wisdom, to which I subscribe, says that the results on this election are bad news for proponents of expanded gambling. One reason for this is that the Republican wave means more socially conservative members. Gambling proponents are doing their best to put a smiley face on their prospects in the new Lege in [...]
Here comes the late money
The 8 days out finance reports are in, and it’s about what you’d expect. Millions of dollars poured into Texas legislative campaigns during the past month as interest groups tried to maximize their influence and partisans readied for the upcoming fight over the redrawing of House and Senate districts. Those millions, predominantly from business owners [...]
Endorsement watch: ParentPAC
I haven’t mentioned the Texas ParentPAC lately, as there’s been so much other stuff going on lately, but they are as busy with endorsements as ever. Here’s a list of candidates that they have announced they are backing for the general election. The links are to the press releases they sent out in each case: [...]
Another poll in HD134
Back in April, the Ellen Cohen campaign released a poll showing her to be in strong position to win re-election. Nearly six months later, they have released another poll showing the same thing. The initial (uninformed) trial heat in the HD 134 race currently shows Cohen leading by a 57% – 30% margin and holding [...]
Interview with State Rep. Ellen Cohen
Rep. Ellen Cohen was elected to the House in 2006 after an 18-year stint as the President and CEO of the Houston Area Women’s Center (HAWC) in a high-profile and hard-fought race that tipped the partisan balance of the Harris County House delegation in favor of the Democrats. Cohen is a cancer survivor and a [...]
Fundraising: Harris County State Reps
I’ve collected fundraising reports for Harris County State Rep races of interest; they’re all beneath the fold. Here are the highlights: – In the rubber match between State Rep. Kristi Thibaut in HD133 and former State Rep. Jim Murphy, Thibaut has a slight lead in fundraising – she collected $116K to Murphy’s $112K – and [...]