From last week: The plaintiffs suing the city of Houston over its charitable feeding ordinance have abruptly dropped a suit they filed over the issue, just hours after the judge in the case recused himself. The ordinance, which requires property owners’ advance written permission for the charitable feeding of more than five people, was one [...]
Posts Tagged ‘petitions’
Bring the USWNT to Houston
I’m in. If you love the beautiful game, you should want to help Jen Cooper. Cooper has been on a crusade for women’s soccer in Houston for almost two decades. She’s on a mission again. Cooper is one of the key figures leading an Internet campaign to get Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan and the rest [...]
The ballot propositions we won’t have
Today is the 78th day before the November 6 election. That makes it the statutory deadline for ordering an election, as noted by the Secretary of State. They cite Sec. 201.054 of the Elections Code for this, which seems wrong to me; Sec. 201.051 appears to be more on point, though that still doesn’t specifically [...]
Petitions to overturn homeless feeding ordinance submitted
There’s plenty of signatures, but no guarantee that this will make it onto the ballot. Activists seeking to repeal a new law requiring City Hall’s permission to serve charitable meals on city-owned land turned in 34,000 petition signatures on Monday asking that the issue be put to voters in November. Despite the passion surrounding the [...]
Another homeless feeding update
Depending on how you look at it, time is either running out for the petition signature gatherers who hope to overturn the homeless feeding ordinance, or it isn’t. Free to Give Houston, a recently formed political action committee, needs about 28,000 registered voters’ signatures to trigger a charter amendment election in November. The group sent [...]
Mailing letters about the homeless ordinance
Not really sure what to make of this. Activists against Houston’s new restrictions on feeding the homeless plan to mail around 30,000 letters Friday to urge voters to sign a petition to trigger a charter amendment election in November. Paul Kubosh, a defense lawyer who was also behind the referendum effort against the red-light camera [...]
Petty withdraws lawsuit against Hecht
A couple of weeks ago, Democratic Supreme Court candidate Michele Petty filed a lawsuit that sought to determine if her opponent, Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, had fulfilled his legal requirement to gather petition signatures from 50 registered voters in each of the state’s 14 appeals court districts. Petty alleged some technical violations in the [...]
Petition drive to overturn the homeless feeding ordinance
It’s underway. The petitioners have until July 1 to gather their signatures because that’s when the ordinance goes into effect. City Attorney David Feldman just informed me that petitioners have the longer of either 30 days following an ordinance’s passage or until the ordinance’s effective date to gather signatures. In this case, it’s the latter. [...]
Lawsuit filed against Justice Hecht’s ballot access
Interesting. Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht’s Democratic opponent has filed suit seeking to delay the printing of ballots and other election material to allow time to investigate potential problems with Hecht’s candidacy petitions. Several unfilled blanks in petitions from the Fort Worth area could invalidate signatures, leaving Hecht short of support needed to be [...]
Ours aren’t the only primaries being delayed
Americans Elect has postponed theirs, but in their case litigation had nothing to do with it. The deadline for candidate ‘support clicks’ at Americans Elect Corporation was midnight last night (May 1), according to both its official Pre-Election Convention Rules and their online summary. That deadline came, and went, ten hours ago as we write. But as yet [...]
Pink slime
I don’t know if you’ve been following the “pink slime” debate, but Bettina Siegel, who is one of the main catalysts behind it, had an op-ed in the Chron that summarized the main arguments. Last week, the online publication The Daily set off a media firestorm when it reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture [...]
Americans Elect starts the petition process
And they’re off. Americans Elect — an emerging, alternative third party that plans to use the Internet to field a presidential ticket this year — is starting to gather signatures of registered voters in Texas to try to gain a spot on this year’s election ballot. “Americans Elect continues to gain ballot access state by [...]
Look out, here comes The Donald
Make of this what you will. Donald Trump supporters have met an official ballot deadline in Texas, paving the way for the business mogul to become a third-party candidate there, a source close to Trump tells The Blaze. Trump himself acknowledged the filing in a statement. According to an email sent by the source to [...]
One can ban backer will face recall
The can ban battle in New Braunfels is not over yet. New Braunfels city councilman Bryan Miranda, who supported a hotly debated container ban on the Comal and Guadalupe rivers, will face a recall election in May after voters signed a petition seeking to oust him from office. [...] Miranda did not return phone messages [...]
No recall for New Braunfels Mayor
Looks like the can ban battle is over for now. A petition for an election to recall New Braunfels Mayor Gale Pospisil failed when organizers submitted an insufficient number of valid signatures. City Secretary Patrick Aten said that of the 1,117 signatures submitted Friday, city staff could only verify 668, 67 signatures shy of the [...]
Can Ban opponents get their vote
Impressive. [New Braunfels] City Council, confronted Wednesday by a petition challenging a controversial new law, called for a Nov. 8 election to let voters decide whether disposable containers will be banned from local rivers. The “Can the Ban” coalition gathered more than 4,300 signatures during a whirlwind, weeklong campaign after the City Council passed the [...]
Petition drive to “can the ban”
The backlash against New Braunfels’ ban on disposable containers on the rivers has begun. The New Braunfels “Can the Ban” petition drive, up and running days after the City Council banned disposable containers on the city’s rivers, slowed to a crawl Tuesday when it ran into state election laws and confusing government databases. The citywide [...]
Closing prisons needs to be on the table
From Change.org: Texas’ prison population is shrinking. The state has made great strides in recent years to offer community alternatives to long sentences. But with a budget crisis looming, state prison officials are saying they won’t consider closing a single prison. Laying off staff and cutting prison programs while keeping 112 costly prisons running is [...]
Red light camera opponents turn in their petitions
I was beginning to wonder if the anti-red light camera crowd was ever going to turn in their petition signatures, as it’s starting too get a little late in the game. They made their move on Monday, submitting 30,000 petition signatures (22,000 valid ones are needed) to City Secretary Anna Russell to get their proposition [...]
ReNew Houston officially makes the ballot
From their press release: The ReNew Houston Campaign is pleased to announce it has met state requirements for qualified signatures from registered Houston voters to call for a charter amendment to create a dedicated funding source to improve and renew Houston’s decaying streets and drainage system. In other words, ReNew Houston is certified! City Secretary [...]
Renew Houston submits petitions
Renew Houston has submitted signatures to get its drainage improvement proposition on the ballot this November. Renew Houston, a group of influential local engineers, has collected more than 30,000 signatures in a push to seek voter approval for an $8 billion initiative — and a monthly drainage fee – to better prevent flooding across the [...]
Dems drop effort to remove Greens from the ballot
After the initial Supreme Court ruling, it was probably a long shot. The Texas Democratic Party today cleared the way for Green Party candidates to remain on the ballot this year by dropping its state Supreme Court challenge to the legality of the Green’s ballot access petition drive. However, the Democrats indicated the party will [...]
Green Party appeals to Supreme Court
As expected. Even if allegations about an illegal petition drive are true, knocking Green Party candidates off the November general election ballot before they can be proven imposes “a death penalty,” lawyers for the party argued Monday in a written appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. The party has until Friday to certify its candidates [...]
Greens temporarily make the ballot
The Texas Secretary of State has certified the petition signatures to allow the Green Party on the ballot this fall. On Wednesday, the secretary of state’s office announced that the party had presented sufficient signatures to field candidates in the fall. The party hasn’t fielded a statewide slate since 2002. Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer [...]
Were the Green signatures obtained illegally?
Wayne Slater follows up his previous reporting on the petition signatures that were gathered by an outside organization for the Green Party with the question about the legality of it. It’s unclear who paid for the petition drive, but funding went through Take Initiative America, a Missouri nonprofit corporation. Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and [...]
Who helped the Greens get on the ballot?
According to Wayne Slater, it was “an out-of-state Republican consultant with a history of helping conservative causes and GOP candidates.” Green Party officials said an outside group gathered the 92,000 signatures and gave them as “a gift” to the party, which delivered them to the secretary of state, who oversees Texas elections. If the secretary [...]
Followup on Renew Houston
So I attended that blogger briefing I wrote about last week to learn more about Renew Houston. It was very informative, and I want to thank CM Costello and his staff for taking the time to talk to us. They have a slick presentation, which we were given in paper form, but it’s unfortunately not [...]
More on Renew Houston
The effort to create a dedicated fund for flooding and drainage is moving along at a good clip. Renew Houston, the non-profit committee formed to seek at least 22,000 ballot signatures in a bid to put the matter to voters in November, sent direct mail this week to about 150,000 households. Many received automated phone [...]
Here come the Greens
As Perry noted the other day, the Green Party of Texas submitted petitions to the Secretary of State to get on the ballot in certain races in Texas. They failed to do so in 2006, so this will be the first time in eight years that you will see them on your eSlate machine, assuming [...]
The Valero effect
This is just what all of our cash-strapped local budgets need right now. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is not typically a big player in school finance debates. But an upcoming decision by the commission could strike a major blow to the budgets of many school districts that will have to be made up, [...]
Bill Hobby bashes the SBOE
Boy, I don’t know who put the hot sauce in former Lite Guv Bill Hobby’s Cheerios, but keep it up, I say. Go read it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. When you’re done with that, you can go sign State Rep. Mike Villarreal’s petition calling on the SBOE to knock it off [...]
Petition to bring back WestFest
Those of you who remember the old Westheimer Street Festival may be interested to know there’s a petition to start it up again. For twenty years, the Westheimer Art Festival / Westheimer Street Festival served as an essential shared community experience within the Montrose neighborhood, brought welcome revenue to Lower Westheimer merchants, and put forth a [...]
The lineup, slightly revised
Here is the slightly revised final lineup for the City of Houston ballot this November. Note that a couple of candidates dropped off, including Donald Cook in At Large #1 and Alfred Molison in District C. I do not know what happened with Cook, but I have been told that Molison filed by petition rather [...]