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.