The CD18 candidate forum

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This was a well-organized event, and my kudos to everyone who put it together in such a short period of time. I just have a couple of comments.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Candidates vying to fill the congressional seat of the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee made one final appeal as to why they are the most qualified to fill her shoes during a Saturday forum at the Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy.

Jackson Lee died July 19 following a battle with pancreatic cancer. She represented the Houston area for more than 30 years.

The district’s 88 precinct chairs have been placed in charge of selecting the party’s nominee for the race since there is no time for a primary. They have been conducting interviews with candidates throughout the week and will convene at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church’s Community Life Center to select their nominee.

Gov. Greg Abbott has also called for a special election to fill the remainder of Jackson Lee’s term, which ends in January. Candidates with eyes on that race will have until Aug. 22 to sign up.

Ahead of that selection, seven of the race’s contenders — including former Mayor Sylvester Turner, state Rep. Jarvis Johnson and former Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards — spoke about a wide array of topics, from the Houston ISD takeover and the cancelation of Metro’s University Line to overcrowding and understaffing at the Harris County Jail and job creation in the district.

The seven candidates who appeared onstage Saturday were the top picks surveyed by precinct chairs for the nomination, the event’s hosts said.

The story goes on to list some top takeaways, and you can read that and the other coverage, which I will link at the end, for more. Of the seven candidates that were on stage, I’ve done interviews with four of them (Amanda Edwards, Rep. Jarvis Johnson, Rep. Christina Morales, and former Mayor Sylvester Turner), while the other three were new to me. Everyone presented themselves well, and even the ones I have ranked at the bottom of my personal preference list made some good points.

My main complaint is that some of the questions were not really useful. Too many were on local issues: the state takeover of HISD, how CenterPoint conducts its business, the issues at the Harris County jail. The latter was used as a springboard for broader criminal justice reform and mental health matters, which were useful and illuminating, but the point is that the question isn’t really about what Congress can do. A question about immigration policy, or about court reform (candidate Cortland Wickliff repeatedly harped on SCOTUS and the need to reform it, mostly echoing the recent Biden proposals, and while that was good and easily his best moments, I’d have greatly preferred it to be a question for all and to go beyond just SCOTUS), or about voting rights (again brought up by some candidates as a priority for them and a means to achieve some of the other items asked about), or about tax policy would have been better.

The question about term limits was bizarre, in part because we’ve all spent the last month lauding Rep. Jackson Lee for all the things she was able to accomplish in her 30 years in office, including her most recent efforts on making Juneteenth a national holiday. Like, would any of us feel that we’d have been better off if she’d been arbitrarily forced out of office after four terms or something like that? The voters kept returning her to office because they wanted her there and they approved of her performance. I don’t believe in taking that choice away from them. The one candidate who answered that question in a way I approved of was Mayor Turner. To be fair, the younger candidates in particular bemoaned the lack of opportunity for people like them to get taken seriously as candidates, and connected this with the perennial efforts to engage younger voters. Making the question about that instead of a referendum on term limits would have been far better.

Even with the question choices, the candidates had some good things to say. This was aired last night on Fox 26, and you can see the video here. The election itself is tomorrow at 6 PM, and I’ll report on that afterwards. The Trib, Houston Landing, and the Press have more.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

News flash: Ted Cruz is extremely anti-abortion

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s cut to the chase here, shall we?

I hear Cancun is nice

Texas Democrats are making abortion rights a major campaign issue after Republicans in the state banned the procedure, and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred is casting Ted Cruz’s views as “extreme” in his bid to oust the senator.

Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in three decades, but abortion could be a weak spot for Cruz. Public polling shows a majority of Texas voters oppose an outright ban. Cruz, who is staunchly anti-abortion, has expressed support for Texas’ law that only has an exception in cases where the patient’s life is at risk.

Cruz doesn’t have a say in state laws, but members of both parties in Congress have at times floated national abortion legislation both before and after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Allred said that, if elected, he would “fight for Texas women to get their freedom back.” He has supported efforts to codify abortion protections at the federeal level.

Cruz has largely avoided talking about abortion rights during this campaign. He declined multiple requests to answer questions about his stances on the procedure or how he would approach the issue if he wins another six-year term in the Senate.

Hearst Newspapers asked Cruz for an interview about abortion in July, which the senator turned down through a spokesperson. He also declined to answer eight written questions on the subject, including whether he would support a federal abortion ban and whether the federal government offers enough resources for low-income pregnant patients.

He also declined to say whether the state or federal government should clarify the emergency medical exception to Texas’ abortion ban. Dozens of women across Texas have reported that the abortion ban has prevented them from receiving necessary medical care, even when their life was at risk and the pregnancy was unviable, because doctors feared legal repercussions.

Cruz has, however, addressed some abortion questions in other public forums. After the Supreme Court threw out federal abortion protections in 2022, Cruz said the ruling was “nothing short of a massive victory for life.”

He’s avoided answering those questions because he knows his answers suck. We can get dragged into a debate about definitions and vibes and what counts as a “ban”, but all you really need to know is that the most radical forced-birth lobby groups out there think he’s an A+ Senator. If you want to restore and protect abortion rights and access in Texas and elsewhere, vote for Colin Allred. If you want the rest of the country to have Texas’ abortion laws, Ted’s your guy. It’s as simple as that.

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On burying a freeway and building a park over it

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Noting this for the record.

Klyde Warren Park in Dallas (Nathan Bernier/KUT News)

As a high-stakes project to sink I-35 through downtown Austin kicks into gear this summer, city officials and the University of Texas are looking to Dallas for a possible glimpse of the future.

The vision: a vast, green expanse covering sections of I-35, similar to Klyde Warren Park in Dallas. The 5.4-acre sanctuary spans the sunken Woodall Rodgers Freeway, connecting the densely populated Uptown neighborhood with a thriving Arts District and downtown business center.

Since it opened in 2012, this “deck park” has been widely hailed as a success, boosting land values and stimulating the development of luxury high-rise buildings with homes and offices that are among the most coveted in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

But the project also raises important questions about how Austin and UT should navigate the governance of their potential new parks, balancing public accessibility with privatization and commercialization.

“When we started this, TxDOT was like, ‘What are you talking about? That’s insane,” reminisced John Zogg, a Dallas real estate professional who helped launch the deck park project in 2002. “It started with that flimsy of an idea and somehow it got legs and just kind of took off.”

You can read the rest, about the history of that flimsy idea and the fight to do something similar in Austin. I just wanted to point out that there’s a similar idea for Houston and the godforsaken I-45 project, though our version of it involves turning the to-be-abandoned Pierce Elevated into a park. It sadly would still leave a to-be-vastly-increased amount of overhead traffic, just relocated to the east of downtown. There was a proposal for an I-45 tunnel to be built from the Beltway through downtown, with the aboveground space converted into a more scenic local roadway; it was later dubbed the I-45 Parkway, as the upper portion was styled in a similar fashion as Allen Parkway. I last thought about that in 2015, in a post that mentioned that the I-45 project, which had been dormant for some time, was “estimated in current dollars at $1.1 billion, isn’t expected to start construction until 2025”. I find that both absolutely hilarious in terms of its cost estimate and more than a little scary in terms of its timeline accuracy.

Anyway. My point is that what Dallas has and what Austin is fighting for we could have had, if we have to have this accursed thing at all. We gave our best shot to defeating the project, which was noble and successful for a long time, and accomplished a lot of good along the way. Maybe I-10 can get what I-45 didn’t, if we have to have that damned thing, too.

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Weekend link dump for August 11

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“That said, although dismissing an idea as weird might be an effective political strategy, journalists have different standards and are committed to the spirit of free inquiry. Let’s take this seriously for a second and ask: Did expanding the franchise by passing the 19th Amendment in 1920 deliver a permanent blow to U.S. economic growth and productivity? Did women crush the American dream like they’ve crushed so many dreams of having “a night out”? Would we (Americans) already be living in a future world of flying cars and thousand-year life spans if we (men/job creators) weren’t always getting nagged to take out the trash?” (Spoiler alert: No.)

“Don’t reward the racist for being a racist.”

“The Man Behind Project 2025’s Most Radical Plans”.

“Chuck Schumer’s ambitious plan to take the Supreme Court down a peg”.

“Elective plasmapheresis for healthy people represents yet another manifestation of the myth of detoxing. Private clinics with varying degrees of oversight offer it, attracting rich medical tourists – even healthy ones.”

“Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy case was officially dismissed after his lawyers agreed to end the case”. Good.

“The Harris campaign on Sunday unveiled more than two dozen endorsements from Republicans, including former governors, members of Congress and Trump administration officials.”

“Overall, California is indeed a high-tax-high-service state, but the big difference is that Texas and Florida tax grocery store clerks and janitors way more than they tax millionaires. California taxes them less.”

Honestly, if you’ve never watched The Leftovers, you should. That article will be very spoilery if you haven’t watched it and now want to, so watch first and click later.

RIP, Charles Cyphers, actor best known for the Halloween movies.

“This Olympics Moment Shows Where Anti-Trans Calls to “Protect Women” Have Brought Us”.

“Tim Walz Has a Stellar Record on Voting Rights”.

“Peggy Flanagan could become the first Native American woman governor if Tim Walz steps down”.

“Walz Is A Big And Vocal Supporter Of Access To IVF, Contrasting Vance”.

“But here we’re talking about politics. And in the realm of politics, decency can seem extraordinary. I’m not talking about “civility” or mere politeness, but rather about what it can mean when basic decency and kindness are allowed to guide policy.”

“So, no: The Internet is not real. But the messaging is, and the journalists who spend all day on it pick up on that messaging. It’s millions and millions and millions of dollars in free publicity and good vibes. And that’s exactly what Tim Walz brings to the ticket.”

“Walz, with his cheerful goober dad persona, offers a view of masculinity that is far tougher than that displayed by even the most steroid-inflated men of the MAGA world.”

I don’t know who else needs to hear it, but please make this happen. Thanks. (Update: Alas.)

Here’s that New Yorker story about RFK Jr, which I didn’t make my way through but which contains the “dead bear cub in Central Park” tale.

RIP, Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, second openly gay former player.

RIP, Patti Yasutake, actor best known for Beef and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

“Hollywood Totally Lied to Us About AI: Why Cinematic Cyborgs Are So Much Smarter Than What We Have in the Real World”.

“There’s a recognizable press cycle around inflammatory Netflix specials: right-wingers flock to see their favorite mouthpieces pop off while angry progressives meet the moment online. Being funnier than the ignorant asshole on your phone or TV can feel like a big win for human decency in the moment — but when does pushing back against something slide into giving it free publicity? In the age of ye olde algorithms, it might be sooner than you think.”

RIP, Lisa Westcott, British makeup artist who won an Oscar for Les Misérables.

RIP, Mitzi McCall, actor, comedian, game show panelist. Mark Evanier shares a remembrance.

RIP, Chi Chi Rodriguez, legendary golfer, eight-time PGA tour champ, subject of a classic joke on WKRP in Cincinnati.

RIP, Mike DeGuerin, renowned local defense attorney, brother of fellow renowned local defense attorney Dick DeGuerin, who helped to exonerate Clarence Brandley.

RIP, Cartoon Network’s website.

“Tim Walz’s military record is beyond reproach“.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 2 Comments

RFK Jr qualifies for the ballot

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Whoopie.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate, will be on the Texas general election ballot this November.

The Texas Secretary of State’s office announced Thursday afternoon that it had accepted Kennedy’s petition to appear on the state ballot with 122,513 valid signatures. The Texas election code required a petition to have at least 113,151 valid signatures.

State Democrats said that Kennedy’s campaign didn’t have enough valid signatures and that his “attempt to overwhelm the system with bad signatures is just another example of his campaign’s disregard for the rules.”

Questions have been raised in other states about Kennedy signature gatherers and the use of misleading tactics while collecting signatures. This push from state Democrats to keep Kennedy off the ballot also aligned with national Democrats’ efforts to keep the Independent candidate off state ballots as his campaign continues to try to get ballot access in all 50 states.

Per the Chron, this may not quite be finalized just yet.

Last month, the Texas Democratic Party indicated it may sue to keep Kennedy’s name off the state ballot, alleging that most of the campaign’s signatures were invalid.

The party’s lawyer, Chad Dunn, wrote in a letter to the Secretary of States’ office on July 18 that he and his client John Mott, the Texas Democratic Party’s voter protection director, checked the signatures, which they obtained via a public records request.

They matched the names up against voter registration data and found that of the first 245,000 signatures, almost 70% were invalid, but they did not explain why.

Dunn asked the office to “kindly let us know of your decision on the certification of this application as soon as possible and with sufficient time for any aggrieved party to seek appropriate court review.” He could not be immediately reached for comment on whether the party intends to sue.

Lots of maybes in there, so we’ll just have to wait and see. I would bet on him remaining on the ballot if it came to it, and the time to file a lawsuit before the deadline for finalizing the ballot is rapidly running out.

Is RFKJr likely to have an effect on the outcome in the state? On the one hand:

Kennedy’s ballot appearance has faced challenges from Democratic officials in multiple states, arguing his campaign used misleading tactics while collecting signatures. According to the Dallas Morning News, Texas Democrats, who haven’t won a statewide election in over 30 years, view Kennedy’s independent bid as a potential threat to their chances of breaking that streak.

However, now that President Joe Biden decided to withdraw from the race, Kennedy has had a strange effect in the polls: he is taking more votes from Trump than from Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to the Washington Post, polls with third-party candidates and Kennedy result in Harris [gaining on] Trump. A poll conducted by the Marquette University Law school had Harris leading Trump by six points (53 percent to 47 percent) in a head-to-head matchup; in a race including Kennedy and third-party candidates, Harris led Trump by eight points (50 to 42).

It’s clear that Kamala Harris has fired up the Democratic base, which should help reduce defections to gremlins like RFKJr. I think it’s way too soon to say whether the total effect benefits one candidate or the other. Or, as Mark Jones would have you believe in the Chron story, that it might benefit a downballot candidate like Colin Allred. I’ll need to see a lot more polling evidence before I draw any inferences.

And on the other hand.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign is disappearing — both on the trail and in the polls.

The last public event put on by Kennedy was in Freeport, Maine, on July 9. Kennedy has since spoken virtually and appeared at a cryptocurrency conference and events put on by others, but he hasn’t been stumping on the campaign trail. (He did speak in person with reporters the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.) And it’s been months since his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has had a public event on the campaign trail.

Kennedy’s public poll numbers are dropping, from around 9% or 10% in national surveys before Biden dropped out, to about half that level now. His last financial report showed the campaign carrying debt equal to more than half of the $5.6 million it had in the bank. On a media call last week, Kennedy said Democrats and Republicans colluded to make it “insurmountable” for an independent to get on the ballot in all 50 states — which he and his campaign had previously talked about as a matter of when, not if.

Maybe the guy’s just a low-energy grifter who will slowly fade from the public view as the brain worm and bear carcass stories run their course. I haven’t decided yet whether the over/under line for him in Texas is two points or three, but for sure I’d bet the under on five points.

Posted in Election 2024, The making of the President | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Going younger at HPD

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure about this.

Mayor John Whitmire

Mayor John Whitmire wants to tap into a younger audience for police recruits, but doing so may require going to Austin and changing state law.

During a news conference introducing new Police Chief Noe Diaz, the mayor said he is in talks with lawmakers to try to see what he could do to get younger cadets for HPD as a means of addressing its officer shortage, but the trouble with that was that the current law on the books doesn’t allow those younger than 21 to carry a weapon. He said he wanted to explore ways to introduce younger candidates with proper safeguards, training and background checks.

“Let’s grab them while they’re fired up, give them a mentor and get an HPD career started younger,” the mayor said Friday, adding that the city could seek to gain officers from the local community colleges too.

In a text to the Chronicle, Whitmire clarified he wanted to lower the age to carry under “special circumstances,” particularly as a recruiting and training tool for those who want to be HPD officers before they turn 21. He said the law, if changed, would strictly apply only to police officer cadets in order to be trained as HPD officers.

“I want to bring as many qualified people to HPD as possible, and we are going to have to review policy and laws to get that done,” Whitmire said Monday. “Then I think it’s going to be done responsibly.”

Diaz stressed the need to bring people into the department who are already vested in the community.

“We need them,” Diaz said Friday. “This is our home, and who better to fill the ranks than the young people that we have in our community?”

[…]

Greg Fremin, a retired HPD captain, was one of three 19-year-olds in his 1984 HPD class and said at the time, he couldn’t buy bullets.

Granted, Fremin already had two years in the Marine Corps under his belt and an understanding of weaponry when he was going through the academy.

If he were involved in the decision-making process, Fremin would not lower the legal age to below 19.

“I would say that as long as these young men and women that are applying are mature and they have great life experiences, let them do it,” Fremin said, adding that HPD needed to be very careful with its vetting and screening processes if the law were to change.

But if a background check fails and a younger person who shouldn’t have a weapon is armed, Fremin said “it could be a worst-case scenario.”

Fremin, who used to be captain over HPD’s police academy, stood by the department’s vetting process and said they used to go through hundreds of applicants before getting to the 70 to fill a cadet class. Those vetting processes don’t always prevent slipups, though, even after doing everything you could.

There’s risk with hiring younger officers with maturity, but that maturity will also depend on the person, Fremin said.

“You’ve got young men and women that are still maturing their thought processes, their critical decision-making skills, their rationale, you know their ability to communicate effectively,” Fremin said. “I mean, all these things you get better with in time from a maturity standpoint.”

State law already allows for the younger police recruits. HPD’s own rules limit recruits to being at least 20.5 years old; Mayor Whitmire says that would need to wait for the law about carrying guns to be changed before it would be revised. I don’t object to the narrowly-tailored law change, especially given that the restriction on under-21-year-olds having handguns was halted by a federal court and is not currently being enforced by DPS. I do share the concerns expressed by former Captain Fremin. We know that people’s brains are still maturing at that age, and police officers are asked to make a lot of judgment calls as part of their job, with potentially deadly consequences. I would suggest that HPD look at other avenues for recruitment before pursuing this one.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The NFL will use facial recognition for its ticketing at all stadia

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The future is here, like it or not.

It’s just a month away from the Cowboys’ season kickoff, and fans better stay on their best behavior once the stadium doors reopen. This year, the Cowboys and the rest of the NFL will use facial recognition software to identify each fan who enters a stadium for a game.

The league took a test drive with facial authentication technology last year through the use of “Express Entry” at several NFL stadiums. The system, launched by Verizon and software startup Wicket, allowed fans to pre-enroll their facial scans into a database that allows them to enter stadiums in conjunction with walkthrough security scanners at a walking pace.

The trial run seems to have scored big, as Wicket COO Jeff Boehm announced the program’s league-wide expansion for the 2024 season. In a LinkedIn post, Boehm said Wicket’s facial authentication software will “streamline and secure the credentialing program” and “ensure that properly credentialed media, officials, staff and guests can easily and safely access restricted areas, including the playing field, press box or locker rooms.”

The selfie-based biometrics system runs alongside Accredit Solutions’ accreditation software, which checks credentials at security checkpoints throughout the stadiums. Those who have registered credential badges can have a real-time selfie compared to a user-submitted photo that is already in the system’s files at a checkpoint.

[…]

One of the main purposes for the system is to provide accountability, according to a Sports Business Journal interview with Billy Langenstein, senior director of security services for the NFL.

“[The league and the teams] know every single person who is being credentialed to work an NFL game, who they are and the access levels they should have to do their job,” Langenstein said to SBJ. “And a big part of it is accountability for those individuals, embracing it, learning it and evaluating the safety and security of the program.”

Major League Baseball has been using similar technology this season, and a note at the bottom of this article says that Wicket “tested facial recognition for ticketing at this year’s Australian Open”. In other words, expect this to spread out to the rest of the sports world. I guess it makes sense, it’s just a little dizzying to me.

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Two more small updates on CD18

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I learned two things of interest from this Houston Landing story about the CD18 situation. The bulk of the story is about the candidate forum today and the recent Zoom interviews that candidates did (see here for more on each), but there were two news items of interest. First:

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, state Rep. Jarvis Johnson, state Rep. Christina Morales, At-Large City Council Member Letitia Plummer, Harris County Department of Education board member Erica Davis and former City Council Member Amanda Edwards are among at least 10 people who have announced their interest in being selected for the nomination.

The same Erica Davis who made that weirdly unfocused primary challenge to Judge Lina Hidalgo in 2022? That this is the first I’ve heard of her interest in this race, four days out from when I will be one of a very small number of people voting in it, says a lot. I’ll just leave it at that.

Second:

In a late Thursday statement, Erica Lee Carter announced she was “strongly considering” running to fill the remaining weeks of her mother’s congressional term. She said she would announce her decision next week.

The filing deadline is Aug. 22, after the Democratic nominee will be chosen by the precinct chairs.

I got a text about that announcement early on Friday. When I talked about the possibility of a runoff in this special election, I said that a candidate with a sufficient level of name recognition could still win it outright. I didn’t have anyone specific in mind for that, but Erica Lee Carter would certainly fill the bill. Good for her if she decides to do this.

Finally, on a tangential note, I thought I’d address this letter to the editor about the nomination replacement process.

Regarding “Jackson Lee’s children endorse former Mayor Turner in crowded battle to succeed her in Congress” (Aug. 5): The person who will replace the late Sheila Jackson Lee on the ballot will be selected by the Harris County Democratic Party precinct chairs. That is not fair to the people of the 18th Congressional District.

The politicians and other political leaders here are trying to be kingmakers in Harris County and in this race. They carry a lot of weight and money. When are politicians are going to allow young people to take over the politics?

Sylvester Turner is 70 years old. He has been recovering from cancer and is not in the best of health. Congresswoman Lee just passed away from cancer. Why should we maybe have to go through this twice? Why can’t Turner use his expertise to mentor young people?

I worked as a poll worker back in the mid-1970s and early ’80s. I am 70 years old, and I know how politicians have worked on precinct chairs to persuade voters who to vote for. I know some precinct chairs who have been involved with the process for more than 50 years. Some have accepted tickets to events for years, as well as other benefits.

To be clear, the majority of precinct chairs are honest. But many have been doing it for so long that they are well known by both the community and politicians. I do not believe, in this situation, this is not the best way for this position to be resolved. The law needs to be changed. The people of the 18th Congressional District should have a voice and a vote.

Well, I’ve been a precinct chair since 2008 and I have no idea what this person is talking about. Be that as it may, while it would be nice to have a more inclusive process to replace Rep. Jackson Lee as the Democratic nominee on the ballot, let’s keep the timing in mind here. She died on July 19, which is about five weeks out from the deadline date for ballots to be finalized, thanks in part to a federal law that makes it easier for military and overseas voters get mail ballots in a timely fashion. That’s five weeks in which to run not only a general (primary) election campaign, but also almost certainly a runoff, with time for early and mail voting, canvassing results, curing provisional ballots, and possible recount requests. To put it bluntly, ain’t no way that could happen.

(Yes, yes, I hear you cry “But we could have instant runoff voting to shorten the process!” That would also require the law to be changed. Good luck with that. And five weeks would still be too little time for just the one election.)

It’s true that Rep. Jackson Lee’s case was an outlier as far as the timeline goes. El Franco Lee passed away on January 3, 2016, past the deadline for filing in that year’s primary but in plenty of time to hold the kind of election this letter writer would have liked. But that would either require disallowing candidates already on that year’s ballot, like the eventual winner of that year’s process, then-Senator and now-Commissioner Rodney Ellis, or having to have at least one (and in that case two) more such elections, with decreasing amounts of time for each. Maybe that would have been doable, I don’t know. I doubt we’d have gotten a different result. Limiting the candidates who could run in the name of minimizing the electoral chaos would also be undemocratic.

One could argue that if Sylvester Turner wins on Tuesday, whatever one thinks of his candidacy, the fact that he promises to serve only two terms means we’d get an open primary election in 2028, which certainly fulfills any reasonable democratic yearning. (He, or anyone else who wins on Tuesday, could also be challenged in the 2026 primary.) Not the letter writer’s unrealistic ideal, but it’s something. The current process has its flaws, but I prefer it to leaving the seat vacant until January and then having special election, which would mean no representation at all for the district for something like eight months. Between the precinct chairs and the special election, especially if Erica Lee Carter clears the decks as I suspect she will, we’ll only be without for about three and a half months. And that could have been less if Greg Abbott had done the honorable thing and set the special for September. You want to be mad about something, aim it at him.

Anyway. I will wrap up by quoting myself, from my report on the precinct chair convention that elected Rodney Ellis as the Democratic nominee for Commissioners Court in Precinct 1 back in 2016:

It was an honor to take part in this process, but in all sincerity I hope I never have that kind of power again. It’t not something I’m comfortable with. I’m glad there are people for whom it is a better fit who can and do take on that challenge with wisdom and humility.

Yeah, that. May we not have to do this again any time soon.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Harris County Flood Control District tax hike proposal on the ballot

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

One more item to vote on.

Harris County will ask voters in November to increase the Flood Control District’s property tax rate to fund a “transformational” investment in drainage for years to come.

The district’s current tax rate is 3.1 cents per $100 of assessed value. That works out to an annual tax bill of about $94 for the owner of a $380,000 home with a 20 percent homestead exemption.

Commissioners Court is proposing a flood control district tax rate of 4.879 cents per $100 of assessed value. If approved by voters, that would mean an additional $60 from that owner.

If voters reject the measure, the tax rate would default to the highest rate allowed under state law without voter approval, which is 8 percent.

The default rate normally is 3.5 percent, but because of the emergency declarations from the derecho and Hurricane Beryl, local governments are able to flex the rate higher, officials said.

Commissioners Court will hold a public hearing on the proposed increase on Aug. 15.

[…]

Harris County is looking at spending $5 billion on flood control projects over the next five years, county Budget Director Daniel Ramos said.

“If we don’t have the maintenance dollars to maintain those (projects), they’re going to fail,” he said.

Ramos said the county also has lent the flood control district $59 million in the past year. Raising the tax rate would help create a financially sustainable department, he said.

Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey said the increased tax rate is long overdue.

“If you live in Harris County, you live in a floodplain,” Ramsey said. “And since we live in a floodplain, shouldn’t that be one of our highest focused areas?”

Personally, I think that if Harris County Commissioners Court decides that the Flood Control District needs more revenue to do what it does, they should just be able to raise the rate and be done with it. Let the people vote out the Commissioners if they disagree. We always have to do things the hard way in this state. Be that as it may, I’m wondering what voter outreach there will be for this. Campaigning for a bond is one thing, this feels a little different. I suspect most people support the idea of doing more flood mitigation work, and the Republican on the Court supporting the increase blunts the usual attack lines against it. But you can never take these things for granted, so I’ll be interested to see what is done to ensure its passage.

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So many teachers gone

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I just can’t see how this is a good thing.

More than 4,000 employees left Houston ISD in June, bringing the total departures since the state takeover to over 10,000.

The record number is three times higher than the June departure average for the past five years, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of district employment records. Over 75% of the departures were recorded as “voluntary,” including retirements and resignations.

Teachers accounted for more than 2,400 of the employees who left in June, with the monthly tally exceeding the total number of teachers who typically leave HISD over an entire school year, according to the analysis. About 4,700 of HISD’s roughly 11,000 teachers left the district during the 2023-24 school year.

Some teachers cited state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ strict new reforms and sudden class assignment changes as the reasons they left. June’s bloated number of departures includes job cuts and terminations linked to job status notices.

Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, which represents 7,000 HISD employees, called the level of departures “unprecedented.”

“As to how many vacant positions exist, we are concerned because school is about to start next week, and we don’t want to see our classrooms without certified teachers. This is a very high number,” Anderson said.

[…]

The Chronicle requested the number of vacancies the district sought to fill over the summer. The district commented via email, “Houston ISD’s number one priority is making sure that every HISD student, has access to high-quality instruction in every classroom, every day. Because of the remarkable success of our students over the past year, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of talented educators who want to work with Houston ISD’s students.”

A district spokesperson wrote that principals have been hired for all but one campus. The Chronicle found that 76 principals left their positions in June.

“Additionally, HISD has only 43 teaching vacancies to fill across the entire district, and the North Division has filled every single teaching vacancy,” a spokesperson wrote. “This is remarkable considering that just two years ago, the District began with 640 vacancies, and thousands of students didn’t have a teacher on the first day of school.”

Anderson, the Houston Federation of Teachers president, stressed the need for certified, qualified teachers to fill vacancies.

“And we don’t want to see them just picking people off of the street, putting them in a classroom in front of our students for the sake of saying that there’s a teacher in the classroom,” the union leader said. “Because we really believe that high-quality instruction must be given by someone who is qualified, capable and well-trained to deliver that instruction.”

HISD said it sent out 6,500 teacher contracts just ahead of the last day of school and that there are an additional 250 to 300 teachers on continuing contracts that did not require renewal.

Because enrollment is declining, it is likely that HISD will employ fewer teachers. The district reported 183,900 students in late October, a drop of more than 6,000 from the 2022-23 school year and more than 30,000 since 2016-17. The district hit a 10-year peak of about 216,000 students that year.

The district did not comment on the extent to which it is hiring uncertified teachers. At least 830 uncertified teachers worked in HISD in the last academic year.

This was a followup to the principal departure story. It came out before the story on CityCast Houston episode that while he expects enrollment to continue its downward trend, he thinks maybe the district’s improved performance will attract people back to HISD, away from charters and other options. Maybe he’s right – we’ll know soon enough. I fear he’s not and that HISD will be changed in ways we didn’t want or expect when he was foisted on us.

UPDATE: And then there’s this.

Houston ISD hired around 850 uncertified teachers for the upcoming school year, more than matching the number of uncertified teachers employed across the district last year, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said at a Thursday press conference.

That means roughly 1 in 3 of the 2,770 teacher vacancies at the end of the last school year were filled with teachers without proper credentials. Those educators have two years to earn certification, he said.

At last count, HISD had 47 teaching vacancies, Miles said.

Copy all my previous comments about the unsustainability of all this and paste them here.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

HISD approves the bond referendum for November

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I expect there will be some vigorous campaigning over this. I’ll be very interested to see how much money gets raised and spent.

Houston ISD will ask voters in November to pass the biggest school bond package in Texas history, after the district’s state-appointed board members voted unanimously Thursday to approve putting the $4.4 billion measure on the ballot.

The package, which pledges not to raise property tax rates, proposes to fund campus rebuilds, fixes to faulty air systems, school security upgrades and other improvements.

District leaders said the measure is sorely needed because HISD has gone longer than the recommended time period since its last bond, leaving students to learn in too-hot classrooms and under leaky roofs. HISD’s most recent bond election came 12 years ago, while large urban school districts typically pass bonds roughly every five years.

“We have a lot of kids today whose parents went to school in the same building,” board member Rolando Martinez said. “Their same grandparents came to their school in temporary buildings that are now being used. Our schools need new buildings.”

However, a faction of Houstonians have vocally opposed the proposal, arguing they cannot trust HISD leaders to responsibly manage a multibillion-dollar bond package. Texas’ largest school district has been embroiled in controversy for over a year, after Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed a new superintendent, Mike Miles, and nine-member board in June 2023 amid academic sanctions against HISD.

“Mr. Miles refuses to listen to feedback or adjust his plans based on concerns he hears from anyone,” said Heather Golden, the parent of a high school student at Houston Academy for International Studies. “We cannot give him more money.”

See here for the most recent update. The Chron adds some details.

The proposal, if passed, would allocate about $2 billion for rebuilding and renovating schools and $1.35 billion for lead abatement, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning improvements and security upgrades. It would also provide $1 billion to expand pre-K, build three new career and technical education centers and make technology upgrades.

[…]

The bond will be split up on the ballot into two propositions. Proposition A would allocate $3.96 billion for school building renovations and expansions, including safety and security infrastructure, while Proposition B would allocate $440,000 for technology equipment, systems and infrastructure. It would not raise taxes if approved, according to the district.

Eligible voters will be able to cast separate votes on each proposition, as Texas state law requires school districts to put the “acquisition or update of technology equipment” as a separate proposition on the ballot when issuing a bond election. The election order also authorizes Miles to execute contracts and agreements to carry out the election process.

[…]

Among other proposals, the bond would allocate $580 million to move, or “co-locate,” students at eight schools to seven existing campuses, which would be renovated or rebuilt to accommodate the new students. The schools would operate independently and retain their own staff and while sharing larger communal areas like cafeterias and gyms, according to the district.

[…]

The bond also would spend $425 million on CTE centers to expand students’ access to career programs, including $375 million to build three new centers in the south, west and central divisions of the district, and $50 million for renovations at Barbara Jordan Career Center, which is the only established CTE center in HISD.

First, I’m pretty sure that Prop B would allocate $440 million, not $440K, as the latter is chump change in this context and the overall package doesn’t add up to $4.4 billion otherwise. It sounds like nothing has changed since the last Board discussion, despite some reservations and unanswered questions about why we want all those CTE centers. We’re just swimming in oversight over here.

As previously discussed, my inclination is to vote for this bond. I have objections to some of its aspects as noted above, and I don’t trust Mike Miles at all. But the need is too great, and I just don’t see how voting the bond down advances any anti-Miles interests. He’s not going to leave any sooner if this fails. One could argue that he’s more likely to leave sooner, or at least on time, if HISD is able to spend the money to fix the plumbing and air conditioning and such on so many campuses, as that will be beneficial for the students.

I don’t begrudge anyone’s opposition – I totally get it. I just don’t see myself voting against this. Supporting school bond issuances is normally such an easy thing to do, and I hate that it’s plausible and reasonable to consider otherwise. I wish we had done this a few years ago, which would make a delay now less burdensome. But we didn’t, and here we are. That’s how I see it. You are welcome to see it differently.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Of course the I-10 project will cost more than expected

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The sun rises in the east, water is wet, etc etc etc.

Lifting Interstate 10 out of White Oak Bayou’s floodway is poised to cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars more than anticipated, as bids to build the project came in above $400 million.

Last week in Austin, Texas Department of Transportation officials opened bids on the project to elevate I-10 between Interstate 45 and Heights Boulevard. The apparent low bidder, Webber LLC, offered a construction price of $407.8 million. Williams Brothers Construction, the only other firm to submit a bid, priced the job at $459.5 million.

If state highway officials accept the Webber offer, it would be $62.8 million more than officials estimated the work to cost, after increasing their prediction from the $312 million they expected two years ago. Combined with other assorted costs, such as right of way, the project’s total cost could top $440 million.

The price increase is not likely to make officials rethink raising the freeway.

“There is no delay or pause anticipated,” TxDOT spokeswoman Kristina Hadley wrote in an email, noting that all projects are still subject approval by the Texas Transportation Commission.

Of course it won’t. Only mass transit projects are affected by cost increases. I doubt TxDOT would have blinked if the low cost estimate had been double what it was. That’s just not how this works.

As discussions of the managed and transit lanes being combined continue, the elevation work is set to start sometime between November and January, Hadley said. Work will start on the westbound portion of the freeway, leading to the lanes being narrowed and traffic shifted toward the center of the freeway.

“There will also be a temporary adjustment to the I-10 westbound exit ramp to Heights Boulevard to maintain that operation during the first phase of construction,” Hadley wrote.

Eastbound lanes and the HOV ramp to downtown will be unaffected by the first phase of work.

Changes and delays, meanwhile, are inevitable as construction proceeds. Lanes will be reduced in some locations to 11 feet, from the typical 12-foot width. Westbound will also drop from four lanes to three until the new elevated lanes are built, Hadley said, with some entrance and exit changes during construction.

Once the westbound lanes are on the new elevated roadway, workers will move on to the HOV lane and eastbound lanes.

Work is expected to take about four years after the start of construction, during which costs can continue to rise or weather can delay progress.

Emphasis mine. Uuuuuuuuuugggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhh.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, August 9 edition

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have another grab bag including: Six Degrees of Clarence Thomas; election news; shenanigans in Fort Worth; law enforcement news, mostly about the jail, from Tarrant County; suburban school district news; the DMN’s opinions about all sorts of local news; the state of Dallas’ community pools; religious buildings in the burbs; new local music; the State Fair finalist foods (with photos); and more.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of local heroine St Vincent.

Let’s jump right in:

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July 2024 campaign finance reports – City of Houston

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY:
Senate and Congress
State offices
Harris County offices

No preambles here. This used to be a dead time in the city electoral cycle, as no one was allowed to fundraise until the January of the election year. That’s long since been ended. This is now the time that some folks begin to build back their campaign treasuries. Let’s have a look.


Name          Raised      Spent       Loan     On Hand
======================================================
Whitmire     591,220    468,079          0   2,542,941

Hollins       87,594    145,863          0     205,616

Ramirez       81,269     17,469     30,000      62,536
Davis
Carter        20,850      4,132      4,000      20,212
Plummer
Alcorn

Peck          33,850     14,655          0      57,972
Jackson
Kamin        101,572     14,503          0     301,721
E-Shabazz      9,500      8,375          0       1,759
Flickinger    25,650     26,646    103,000       9,313
Thomas
Huffman       42,800     17,154          0      28,020
Castillo      67,393     28,507          0      43,394
Martinez      61,952     30,175          0      90,298
Pollard      162,275     33,516     40,000   1,037,040
C-Tatum       64,397     13,244          0     274,871

Turner             0    310,693          0     514,728
Robinson           0    206,878          0     235,112
Jackson Lee   15,000     21,742          0      28,815
Khan           5,000          0      5,000         539
Edwards            0      7,508          0       3,592
Laster             0          0          0     144,383

The January 2024 reports are here. That includes links to posts about the later reports from the 2023 election. Neither Fred Flickinger nor Letitia Plummer had a January report on the site; everyone else listed here did so. Plummer and the others with blanks do not have one for July. As with the January reports, I didn’t save the ones I did find to my Google drive. I’ll do that again when we’re in the next campaign season.

The reports for David Robinson and Sylvester Turner come with an asterisk: For Robinson, $6,878 of the listed spending is for things like wages/salaries/labor, and $200K is for the purchase of certificates of deposit at Veritex Community Bank. For Turner, $250K was used to buy a CD, at the same bank. In other words, they moved a bunch of leftover campaign cash into an interest-bearing account. At some point they will have to spend or donate it, but that day is not today.

I don’t have anything particular to say about these totals. As noted, this is the time when incumbents, especially new ones and ones who were in runoffs, refill their coffers. You can like that or not, it is what it is. But from here on, for the rest of the year, or at least through November, no one who considers themselves a Democrat should be raising money for anything except candidates on the ballot now. I will be looking at the January 2025 reports with a very close eye for that. Anyone who does otherwise should be expected to face some pointed questions about it. The same will be true, with some more leeway, in 2026. The election in front of us is – or at least should be – the priority. Never has that been more true than now. I hope everyone gets the memo on that.

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HISD reports significant drop in D and F-rated campuses

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is very good news.

Houston ISD state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said Wednesday that the number of the district’s schools that earned a D or F rating in the Texas Education Agency’s accountability ratings dropped by about two-thirds compared to the unofficial ratings the district calculated last year under revamped, harder standards that were protested by districts across the state.

The TEA typically assigns annual A to F ratings to each public district and campus based on standardized test performance, student growth, and progress on closing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps, although it hasn’t done so for all campuses since 2019 due to COVID-19 and legal challenges. The agency plans to release official scores on Aug. 15 based on performance data from the 2023-24 school year.

HISD reported that 41 schools earned D or F ratings in 2024, which is down from 121 in the unofficial 2023 ratings, and the number of A- and B-rated schools increased from 93 to 170, according to preliminary data. In 2022, prior to the most recent overhaul of the state accountability system, 10 HISD campuses received Ds or Fs.

The district must keep all schools from earning consecutive failing grades, along with meeting certain additional criteria, to end the state takeover and restore an elected board.

The district’s reported decline in D and F-rated schools comes after it saw several percentage point gains in student performance on the reading and math State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, even as average performance statewide on the exams largely declined.

Miles said he attributed the district’s decline in D and F schools this year to what he described as improved quality of instruction, additional training for campus leaders, efforts to implement a stronger curriculum and a “high performance culture.”

“The (TEA’s) exit criteria calls for zero campuses that have a D or F rating, so we took a big chunk out of the 121 and if we continue to work hard and work well, we’ll get that 41 down to single digits at the end of this school year,” Miles said.

Let’s be clear up front that this is great news. It’s great for the students, and it’s great for the End of the Takeover Countdown. One of the many infuriating things about this whole situation is that you have to root for Mike Miles to succeed so that we can be rid of him. Grit your teeth if you must, but him succeeding is the vastly better option than him failing, no matter how satisfying the “told you so” would have been.

I think implementing the change in how reading is taught was a big part of this. HISD was already headed in the direction of making that change, though whether Superintendent Millard House and the elected Board could have made it happen last year is unclear. He got it done, so he gets the credit for it. Putting more resources into the NES schools has helped – and again, I marvel at how the official solution to underperforming schools is to throw more money at them, just like we’ve always said they should – though I remain concerned about how sustainable it is given the state’s continued fiscal penury and the fact that HISD has taken away a bunch of money from other schools to make this work.

In the end, we have to ask, could we have gotten something like these improvements without all the turmoil and turnover and utter indifference to how anyone felt about any of this? We will all be deliriously happy to see the back of Mike Miles when he finally leaves not because he was incompetent but because he’s an asshole who made so many of us miserable, for reasons we still don’t understand. Not that I’d wish it on them, but maybe some other large urban district will have to go through this, but will get a less bulldozer-like Superintendent to do the job, and then we can get some kind of comparison. In the meantime, we are one day closer to getting rid of Mike Miles. If you want to grit your teeth a little harder, you can hear him talk about the accountability grades and avoid answering some questions on Monday’s CityCast Houston podcast, and Houston Landing has more.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Translators needed for non-criminal courts

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

Harris County has long afforded free interpreters to people navigating criminal cases, but it does not always offer the same to those with civil cases, local lawyers say. The denial for interpreters has become so routine that some legal advocates say they rarely even submit requests anymore.

Harris County has a population of 4.7 million people who speak more than 145 languages, according to U.S. Census Data. The county, however, has only 92 court-certified interpreters, according to the Texas Office of Court Administration Judicial Branch Certification Commission database that tracks the information.

Legal advocates and attorneys say the lack of interpreters, combined with what they say is a lack of cooperation from the judiciary, creates an unnecessary barrier for people to get justice.

The problem is not unique or new to Houston.

In 2010, Harris County was sued by the Texas Civil Rights Project for not providing a civil court interpreter to a woman with limited English proficiency. The woman, who was not named in the lawsuit, had gone to court to seek a protective order, custody of her young daughter and child support after leaving an abusive relationship. Living in a shelter and barely able to support her family, the woman was forced to pay more than $1,000 to hire interpreters to attend hearings.

The county ended up agreeing to a settlement in which it committed to adopting a formal plan to provide interpreters to indigent litigants and witnesses in civil hearings relating to family matters.

In neighboring Fort Bend County, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation in 2021 in response to complaints that its district and county courts had denied meaningful access to people with limited English proficiency. The probe ended in a settlement that required the county to develop a plan for tackling language barriers, including offering interpreters for free in civil and criminal cases. Federal investigators said in August 2023 that the jurisdiction complied with its settlement terms and closed the investigation.

Harris County Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Lesley Briones say the problem has long been on their radar. If the county does not solve the problem, Garcia said he fears the county could face a federal investigation next.

The Commissioners Court’s power is limited, however: the county could develop a more comprehensive policy to fund interpreters at the civil courthouse, but it is up to courts and judges to implement and utilize that policy.

[…]

Certified interpreters are required in court for a number of reasons, including conflicts of interest and a need for specialized training to avoid making mistakes while translating complex testimony.

Interpreters in Houston often require a two-hour minimum for services, which can present an additional obstacle to litigants. In addition to the financial burden — services typically can cost $200 or more an hour — it can present logistical challenges.

Case hearings often last mere minutes, lawyers said, and frequently are postponed. Clients, nonetheless, still are on the hook for the interpreter minimum. And if a case goes to trial, an individual could be looking at thousands of dollars just to make sure they understand what is going on. The cost, lawyers said, often results in people opting to drop their legal cases.

That’s the issue in a nutshell. There’s a lot more to the story, so go read the rest. I assume this is not just a Harris county issue and not even just a Texas issue but a national one, though there’s no mention about how the problem is being addressed elsewhere. There’s some tug of war between the Commissioners and the courts over what has and has not been done and what still needs to be done; I’m sure a lawsuit or federal investigation would sharpen the focus, but I’d rather it not come to that. Cost and the availability of qualified translators is an issue, and if all of the jurisdictions that should be addressing this try to do so, I’m sure we’d run into some shortages. The bottom line is that everyone should be able to access the courts, and that means that translators need to be more widely available. How we get there from here is the big question.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of August 5

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is now a fan of women’s rugby and the pommel horse as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Two small updates on the CD18 race

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From this Trib overview of the five candidates “with extensive elected experience” in the CD18 race:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Since the candidate selection is internal within the party, there is no formal filing process for candidates and precinct chairs could theoretically choose anyone. Of the 15 Democrats who have been in touch with the county party, five run with extensive elected experience: former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards — who faced off against Jackson Lee in the primary, state Rep. Jarvis Johnson, state Rep. Christina Morales and Houston City Council member Letitia Plummer. Former Houston City Council Member Dwight Boykins, who put his name in the ring on Friday, said Monday that he dropped out of the race after Jackson Lee’s family endorsed Turner.

The election is separate from the special election on the same day for a representative to serve out the rest of Jackson Lee’s current term, which ends on Jan. 3, 2025. Candidates have until Aug. 22 to run in the special election.

[…]

In his bid to succeed Jackson Lee, Turner is highlighting his relationship with her, promising to continue fighting for some of her biggest priorities, including securing federal funds for Houston. Jackson Lee brought in millions of federal dollars throughout her time in Congress for Houston flood control, health care and public safety. Turner also supports legislation to protect women from domestic violence, codify access to abortion federally, protect LGBTQ rights and enhance transparency in policing.

But Turner, who opted not to challenge his old friend in the Democratic primary, is also the oldest major candidate at 69 years old and said he would serve a maximum of two terms if elected — a fact others seeking the nomination said would limit his ability to build seniority in the hierarchical Congress.

The endorsement of Turner came out after my weekend update, so this is my first chance to acknowledge that former CM Boykins has withdrawn from consideration. It’s possible others could do the same – Turner’s overall list of endorsements from elected officials is pretty fearsome – but so far this is what we have. There are multiple other candidates of lesser visibility, though the question of whether they can get a precinct chair to nominate them and another chair to second the nomination may render that moot.

As for Mayor Turner’s two-term pledge, he mentioned that he intended to only serve for a limited duration when he spoke to me about his candidacy. (Reminder, I’m a precinct chair, I’ve heard from all of the named candidates, they’re surely trying to reach all 90 or so of us.) He didn’t give an exact number to me, but I assumed he meant something like two or three terms. Now I know which it is. It’s a reasonable approach and I appreciate the thought. One could argue that it would be better for the next member of Congress in CD18 to start accruing seniority right way. I’ll leave it at that.

One last thought, as this has been brought up in the comments, is that we could get a runoff in the CD18 special election, which would mean that the eventual winner would have even less time to serve in Congress; it would also mean more expenses for Harris County and the County Clerk, who I’m sure is mainlining Advil at the thought of yet another goddam election this year. Maybe we’ll get at most two candidates. Maybe one candidate will have the name ID to win outright regardless. Maybe the runnerup will do us all a favor and bow out of the runoff. I can’t wrap my head around it right now. Just know that it’s a possibility.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

New Mexico seeks to poach Texas doctors

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Clever.

The governor of New Mexico on Sunday announced an initiative intended to lure Texas doctors and other medical professionals to relocate to her state.

New Mexico’s Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham aimed this effort specifically at those medical professionals impacted by Texas’ abortion ban.

In a letter published as a full-page advertisement in the Sunday editions of the San Antonio Express-News and newspapers in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, Lujan Grisham launched the “Free to Provide” campaign to promote New Mexico’s commitment to providing complete health care, including abortion access.

The campaign also uses billboards to share the message.

On Sunday, Lujan Grisham posted on social media, “This ain’t Texas,” a reference to the popular country crossover song by Beyonce. “Here, you’re free to provide and practice what you were trained to do in medical school.”

And in a separate post, she said that physicians can work in her state “without interference from politicians or police.”

[…]

The “Free to Provide” website includes varied resources, including information about job opportunities, scholarship opportunities, and a brief guide to cultural events and sights around the state.

The governor’s office maintains that “Free to Provide” is part of a broader effort to improve healthcare in New Mexico with competitive incentives.

It’s a smart idea. We’ve seen plenty of stories about how states with abortion bans are finding it hard to attract and retain doctors. Not just OB-GYNs, either, but all kinds of doctors. It’s easy to understand why, and while I think there’s a limit to this, there’s no reason why a state like New Mexico shouldn’t be out there waving their credentials in front of any MD that might be rethinking their future. I hope someone tracks the data on this, I’d love to see what the effect is in a year or two.

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What’s in a name, Bexar County GOP 2024 version

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Hilarious.

Kristian Carranza

Bexar County GOP officials said they may file a lawsuit against Texas House District 118 candidate Kristian Carranza, a Democrat, alleging that she changed her last name from Thompson to appeal to voters on the city’s largely Latino South Side.

Carranza is running against Republican incumbent Texas Rep. John Lujan, who’s represented the district since 2021. A political newcomer, Carranza won the Democratic primary against Carlos Quezada in May, securing 63% of the vote. Since then, she’s been running an aggressive ground campaign, knocking on doors and attenting community events.

The Bexar County GOP’s move comes as Carranza continues to make gains in the tightly contested race for a district Democrats hope to flip. District 118 has traditionally leaned blue.

During a Tuesday press conference in front of Bexar County Courthouse, county Republican Chairwoman Kris Coons argued that her party’s potential legal action isn’t about trying to protect Lujan’s seat but to shield voters from Carranza’s “youthful deception.”

“We believe that [her last name] was changed, possibly, you know, to have a beautiful Hispanic last name in a beautiful Hispanic district to influence voters,” Coons said.

Carranza was born Kristian Kelly Renee Thompson. However, she legally changed her last name from Thompson to Carranza, her mother’s maiden name, in January 2023 — nine months before the candidate registration deadline, according to documents filed with the state.

In a statement, Carranza maintains that she changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name because she’s estranged from her father.

“I take my last name from my single mother who raised me, not my absent father,” Carranza said. “My mom and grandmother raised me on the Southside [sic] — and I’m incredibly proud of my family’s story.”

[…]

A notice the Bexar County GOP sent to the media on Monday announcing its press conference said the party “intends to pursue a lawsuit” against Carranza. However, Coons admitted during Tuesday’s event that attorneys hadn’t yet done so. Lawyers will “be reviewing [the facts] and consider filing,” she added.

What’s more, Coons couldn’t elaborate on what law Carranza allegedly broke when she changed her name.

“I’ll let our lawyers tell you that, my friend,” Coons told reporters.

I Am Not A Lawyer, but I can tell you, my friend, that there is no law that Candidate Carranza has violated. This is her legal name. Even if it weren’t, Texas law is generally pretty lenient about what you can call yourself on a ballot, the occasional Grandma Strayhorn situations excepted. For example, if “Carranza” were her husband’s name, she could almost certainly use it on the ballot or not whether she had legally taken it or not. The GOP is welcome to make a campaign issue out of this – and for sure that’s what they’re doing here, to try to protect an endangered incumbent from a well-resourced opponent – but an actual lawsuit would be laughed out of court. Thanks for the giggle, y’all. The Trib has more.

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Endorsement watch: SJL’s kids for Turner

Posted on August 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Sylvester Turner

Over the past several weeks we’ve been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and love from the residents of the 18th Congressional District. Countless people have reached out to express not only condolences for our mother’s death, but to share personal testimonies about her impact on their lives. Our mother was a true public servant who loved the people she served, and it has been gratifying to know that love was reciprocated.

While no one will ever replace Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, there must be a successor. Our greatest hope is that her immediate successor has the capacity and commitment to sustain the service upon which the constituents of the 18th District have come to rely. For that reason we are proud to endorse Sylvester Turner for the 18th Congressional District.

We have no doubt Mayor Turner will carry on our mother’s legacy of service because we’ve witnessed it almost our entire lives. Our mother had no greater partner than Mayor Turner and he honors her with his willingness to dutifully and humbly serve as a sturdy bridge to the next generation of leadership for the historic 18th Congressional District of Texas.

The giants of the 18th Congressional District came to leadership through affirmation, not coronation. And so it should be for those that would assume the mantle for the future. This seat belongs to the people of the 18th, and the people–who affirmed Barbara, Mickey and Sheila–will no doubt identify and select the 18th’s next great champion as well.

We look forward to supporting Sylvester Turner as the next Congressman of the 18th Congressional District, as well as supporting the next generational leader who earns the people’s trust.

Jason Lee and Erica Lee Carter

I got this in my inbox yesterday morning; the Chron reported on it later in the day. An endorsement like this would be very powerful in a primary race. How much will it matter in an election where the entire voter universe is at most 90 people? I have no idea. I’ll find out a week from today, when I and the rest of those precinct chairs get together to cast our votes. I’ll be at the candidate forum on Saturday as well (see here at the bottom for details) and may get a sense of what’s to come then. What’s your reaction to this?

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Questioning the police response to the Santa Fe school shooting

Posted on August 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

Testimony by a former Galveston County sheriff’s deputy Thursday raised questions about how fast and effectively police responded to the mass shooting inside Santa Fe High School.

Sgt. Brent Cooley, retired from the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office, testified that he waited for other officers to join him before approaching the art room where Dimitrios Pagourtzis is accused of killing eight students and two teachers during the May 18, 2018, shooting.

“I knew that if I had gone into the door by myself, he would have killed me,” Cooley said, and that Pagourtzis’ position inside the classroom had created a “fatal funnel” that would have exposed him to danger as well.

“I chose not to kill myself,” Cooley said.

Cooley, the officer who eventually handcuffed Pagourtzis when he surrendered to police, bristled while responding to questioning from defense attorney Lori Laird, herself a former police officer. Laird suggested that he waited 30 minutes to breach the classroom and asked how many of the Santa Fe victims may have bled to death while officers waited to breach the room.

“Be careful at what you are suggesting,” Cooley said at one point.

“It’s not as simple as you’re trying to put it,” he said at another point.

Cooley and another officer testified that officers exchanged gunfire with Pagourtzis.

Laird attempted to have security footage from inside the school be shown to the jury, but that request was denied by County Court at Law Judge Jack Ewing.

Victims and their families filed a lawsuit against the shooting suspect, seeking damage for battery, and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Mary Kosmetatos, for negligence over allegations that they didn’t safely secure the guns used in the shootings and didn’t act to address their son’s mental illness before the shooting.

Thursday’s testimony raised the specter of the police criticism that would become a national outrage in the Uvalde school shooting in 2022.

Late Thursday, family members of Santa Fe shooting victims said they were frustrated by the defense attorney’s efforts to deflect blame for the shooting.

“I’m not here to talk about what the police did or didn’t do, I’m here to talk about the parents who didn’t lock up their guns,” said Rhonda Hart, the mother of shooting victim Kimberly Vaughan.

Defense attorneys during opening arguments suggested that blame should also be cast on other groups that aren’t party to the lawsuit, including the Santa Fe Independent School District and the company that sold ammunition to the then-17-year-old suspect.

[…]

Neither state nor federal agencies have ever investigated or issued a report on the Santa Fe shooting. Pagourtzis’ criminal trial on capital murder charges has been indefinitely delayed after he was ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial and sent for treatment to a state hospital in North Texas.

Parents have called on the federal government to open a belated investigation into the shooting.

“We want this information public,” said Scot Rice, the husband of wounded teacher Flo Rice. “We want everybody to listen and learn from this.”

I’ve only written a little about the Santa Fe mass shooting, so I have no idea if there have long been questions about the police response or if this is something new. I favor there being a federal investigation either way, and for there to be more such investigations across the country. We’ve done so little in other areas to prevent and mitigate mass shootings, we may as well aim to force improvements in this area.

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The cost of the Michelin stars

Posted on August 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Seems like a reasonable investment to me, to be honest.

In July 2024, the Michelin Guide, the international dining guide run by the French tire company Michelin, announced that it had finally made its Lone Star State debut. Many speculated that the guide’s arrival in Texas — to five cities, no less — would come at a hefty cost. And lo, behold: it did.

Houston First, the city’s tourism department, revealed that it is paying $90,000 per year for three years — meaning the city will invest a whopping $270,000 to have the Michelin Guide here in Houston. Holly Clapham-Rosenow, Houston First’s chief marketing officer, says the city redirected some of its budget from various departments to the guide, which is standard for opportunities that come about during the year or when business strategies shift. “Budgets have some fluidity if the right opportunities come about, and opportunities like Michelin, Top Chef, and James Beard — we’re going to jump on them,” she says, adding that the investment seemed worth it considering the culinary scene is one of Houston’s biggest traveler draws.

According to Houston First’s 2023 Strategic and Budget Summary, money spent on food and beverage accounts for around 32 percent of the money spent during day trips to Houston and 24 percent of the money spent during overnight trips — the highest cost behind lodging. The tourism department itself budgeted $15.7 million, or 17 percent of its annual total budget in 2022, for the city’s dining scene. “From our perception, our culinary scene and cultural diversity are leaders and have been. We refer to ourselves as the culinary and cultural capital of America,” Clapham-Rosenow says. “Our diversity comes with great flavors that are reflected in many different areas, and it’s truly a reflection of our city’s DNA as a destination.”

Clapham-Rosenow says that while Houston’s tourism department worked closely with other Texas cities, including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio, on the Michelin initiative, the department is not privy to how Michelin uses funds from state or city tourism boards, or how many Michelin inspectors will be venturing to Houston’s restaurants for research. “But I could only imagine a city like Houston, with more than 11,000 restaurants, they’d need to hire enough inspectors to do an adequate sweep,” she says.

[…]

For now, Clapham-Rosenow calls the Michelin partnership a perfect match. “It’s a global culinary brand in a global culinary city. It really strengthens Houston’s reputation as a culinary capital,” she says. Though some chefs have communicated concerns about how the guide’s presence might influence the scene, most have been excited about Houston getting its stars, she says. Some chefs have noted that it could help them recruit young talent to the Houston area, while others say reservations at their restaurants have already increased with just the speculation that they could receive Michelin recognition.

“I’m glad we were able to create that opportunity,” Clapham-Rosenow says of the heightening anticipation surrounding the news. She predicts that the guide’s official publication with be a monumental moment for every participating city. “Celebrating the awards will be a second chapter,” she says. “The excitement has just begun.”

The three-year agreement, Clapham-Rosenow says, will give both Michelin and the city enough time to understand the benefits of its partnership. She predicts that discussions to renew the guide in Houston will begin around halfway through the three-year assignment.

See here for the background. WFAA had previously reported that the state of Texas Travel Office is paying for half of the entire cost of the Michelin Guide, with each of the five cities splitting the rest. That makes the total annual cost a cool $900K per year, divided between the five cities and the Travel Office.

My initial reaction to that is “hey, wow, an arm of the state government is doing something beneficial for cities!” I mean, who even knew that was a thing. It’s a decent amount of money in all, though a pittance in terms of state and city budgets. I do feel a little weird about this arrangement, for reasons I can’t fully articulate. This is how Michelin does it, everyone knows that, and there’s not really a comparable alternative out there. Either you do or you don’t, and while one can make a principled argument for “don’t”, this is the sort of thing that the city’s visitor’s bureau is supposed to do. It’s positive attention for the city, and it will drive some tourism. From the perspective of Houston First, it’s a no-brainer.

There’s a nuanced conversation to have about the effect of Michelin ratings – see the previous post for some of that – and the fact that we pay for it adds to the complexity. For sure, if that dollar figure had been higher, it would seem less worthwhile. I’m comfortable saying this was a good investment, but I’m open to further discussion. Does this change how you feel about it? What if anything would?

UPDATE: The Fort Worth Report has more.

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July 2024 campaign finance reports – Harris County offices

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY:
Senate and Congress
State offices

Lina Hidalgo

Rodney Ellis
Adrian Garcia
Tom Ramsey
Leslie Briones

Sean Teare
Dan Simons

Ed Gonzalez
Mike Knox

Christian Menefee
Jacqueline Lucci Smith

Annette Ramirez
Steve Radack

Teneshia Hudspeth
Carla Wyatt
Marilyn Burgess


Candidate     Raised       Spent       Loan     On Hand
=======================================================
Hidalgo      187,400     191,623     51,400      66,750

Ellis        807,040     425,843          0   6,239,978
Garcia       812,725     400,197          0   1,487,554
Ramsey       558,834     398,175          0   1,537,435
Briones      398,260     342,025          0   1,539,261

Teare        420,399     270,175          0     154,034
Simons       136,734      53,464     45,000      98,359

Gonzalez      80,809      81,993          0      51,586
Knox          37,896      24,425    100,000      64,434

Menefee       34,864      66,829          0     262,294
Smith         11,325      14,369     20,000           0    

Ramirez       18,457      29,539          0       3,719
Radack             0      49,220          0     715,239

Hudspeth       6,200       8,686          0      14,342
Wyatt            290           0          0       3,698
Burgess       27,714      14,515      5,207      26,747

The July 2023 reports for Harris County are here and the January 2024 reports are here. Everyone who was on the ballot in March filed 30-day and 8-day reports for that period; Annette Ramirez, who was in the May runoff also filed reports for then. Any weirdness in comparing the January reports to this is almost certainly explained by that. It also means that the length of the period in which money was raised and spent varies with who the filer was.

My first reaction in looking at Judge Hidalgo’s report and totals is “Huh”. Put aside for now the question of whether she’ll face a prominent opponent in the 2026 primary, I’d like to know why for two periods in a row she’s spent more than she’s taken in. That’s not sustainable. I’ll just leave it at that.

The Commissioners are all around where I’d have guessed them to be. I expect they will all be involved in November campaign activities. Neither Rodney Ellis nor Tom Ramsey has any reason to worry about their own races, but they (and Adrian Garcia, and Leslie Briones) have plenty of things to do with other candidates and campaigns.

Sean Teare and the DA race were the big dollar tickets before, and they remain so now, though likely with less spending until we get into the fall. For what it’s worth, Kim Ogg had raised $58K, spent $342K, and had $12K on hand as of the end of June.

Beyond that, not much to say. Christian Menefee spent down his treasury a bit but still has plenty in reserve. Ed Gonzalez currently has less on hand than Mike Knox, but the amounts are small enough to not really matter. There’s usually not much spent on the Tax Assessor’s race; Stave Radack’s longstanding cash total could change that, but it’s not worth thinking about right now.

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Full Fifth Circuit overturns Galveston redistricting ruling

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Terrible. They’re just making this shit up as they go.

Commissioner Stephen Holmes

Distinct minority groups cannot join together in coalitions to claim their votes are diluted in redistricting cases under the Voting Rights Act, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday, acknowledging that it was reversing years of its own precedent.

At issue was a redistricting case in Galveston County, Texas, where Black and Latino groups had joined to challenge district maps drawn by the county commission.

A federal district judge had rejected the maps, saying they diluted minority strength. A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially upheld the decision before the full court decided to reconsider the issue, resulting in Thursday’s 12-6 decision.

Judge Edith Jones, writing for the majority, said such challenges by minority coalitions “do not comport” with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and are not supported by Supreme Court precedent. The decision reverses a 1988 5th Circuit decision and is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

“Nowhere does Section 2 indicate that two minority groups may combine forces to pursue a vote dilution claim,” wrote Jones, who was nominated to the court by former President Ronald Reagan. “On the contrary, the statute identifies the subject of a vote dilution claim as ‘a class,’ in the singular, not the plural.”

Jones was joined by 11 other nominees of Republican presidents on the court. Dissenting were five members nominated by Democratic presidents and one nominee of a Republican president. The 5th Circuit reviews cases from federal district courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

See here, here, and here for some background. Courthouse News adds on.

The ruling addresses three lawsuits that were filed against Galveston County and consolidated for arguments. In addition to the voters, the plaintiffs include three chapters of the NAACP and a chapter of the League of Latin United American Citizens located in the region and the Biden Administration.

Adopted in 2021, the maps at issue eliminated precincts in which a coalition of Black and Latino voters selected the county’s sole Democratic commissioner. In addition to their claims under the Voting Rights Act, the NAACP and voters argued in their lawsuits that the new map was intentionally discriminatory and racially gerrymandered.

A lower court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered that the maps be redrawn, leading the county to appeal. While the appellate court’s decision reverses the lower court’s decision, it also overturns the court’s precedent in Campos v. City of Baytown, which allowed minority groups to band together to bring vote dilution claims.

Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee, was joined by 11 judges — all appointed by Republican presidents — to determine Black voters and Latino voters do not share any defining characteristics that would allow them to bring their claims together.

Rather, either group’s claim that the maps negatively impact them based on their belonging to a minority class should be examined separately.

[…]

The only claims surviving the majority’s opinion are the discrimination and racial gerrymandering claims put forth by the NAACP branches and the voters.

Robert Quintero, president of League of Latin United American Citizens’ Galveston chapter, said in an email to Courthouse News that he was disappointed in the court’s ruling but remains optimistic.

“We still have a shot at the counts that were handed down back to the lower court and we feel optimistic about those two counts,” said Quintero.

The dissenting judges identified the overturning of Campos as a critical error.

In her short dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes wrote that the claims presented by the plaintiffs affirmatively met the preconditions to bring vote dilution claims under the precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles.

U.S. Circuit Judge Dana Douglas, a Joe Biden appointee, was joined by four judges appointed by Democrat presidents in her 38-page dissent. She wrote that the majority’s decision “dismantled the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act in this circuit, leaving four decades of en banc precedent flattened in its wake.”

Douglas argues that her colleagues had to reject methods of statutory interpretation and essentially jump through hoops to reach its conclusion in the majority opinion. Where the majority sees the singular “class” identified in the statute, Douglas sees that the use of the singular does not lead to an explicit prohibition on coalition claims.

“To imply, as the majority does, that discrimination is permissible so long as the victims of the discrimination are racially diverse, is not only an absurd conclusion but it is one with grave consequences,” wrote Douglas. “Because the majority’s conclusion is atextual, ahistorical, and it allows the Constitution to ‘make a promise which the Nation cannot keep,’ I dissent.”

Furthermore, Douglas highlighted the plaintiff’s case as the exact reason the Voting Rights Act exists: to prevent a white majority from voting in unison to eliminate any chance of Black and Latino voters in Galveston County of electing the candidate of their choice.

Just shameful. Even recent precedent means nothing if it stands in the way of what they want. Supreme Court reform is all the rage now, but anything that doesn’t also include tearing the Fifth Circuit down to the studs and rebuilding it from scratch isn’t sufficient. This lawless court cannot stand. The Trib and Law Dork have more.

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A high level overview of passenger rail in Texas

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

There’s stuff happening, mostly talk for now but maybe there will be more.

A robust passenger rail system has long been seen as a pipe dream in car-dependent Texas.

But a glut of federal dollars for rail projects and a growing realization that road expansions won’t ease chronic congestion on the state’s busiest highways have some Texas officials and policymakers flirting once more with the idea of expanded passenger rail.

“It’s like the perfect storm forming because 20 years ago if we talked about passenger rail in Texas, it would fall on deaf ears,” said Peter LeCody, who heads the organization Texas Rail Advocates.

Congress set aside $66 billion in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to advance rail projects across the country. That pot of funds has rekindled interest in exploring how to boost conventional passenger rail between Texas’ major urban areas and anticipate the transportation needs of the state’s booming population.

Texas has added hundreds of thousands of new residents in recent years, and the state’s population is projected to grow from 30 million people to 47 million by 2050. Without some form of reliable passenger rail between the cities, officials fear car dependence will grow and congestion will only get worse.

“The alternative is to condemn Americans to evermore crowded interstates, to condemn taxpayers to just paying for ever-widening of highways and potentially using evermore crowded airports,” Andy Byford, senior vice president of high-speed rail development at Amtrak, told reporters earlier this year.

At the epicenter of rail ambitions in Texas is the 10-year-old and embattled high-speed rail project between Dallas and Houston. The company behind the project, Texas Central, has long promised to ferry passengers between the two cities at speeds north of 200 miles per hour, which would pare down a 3.5-hour commute by automobile to a 90-minute ride by train car. The project lost steam for a time amid a leadership exodus and problems securing the land needed to build the system but Amtrak resurrected the plan last year.

Amtrak officials consider the route ideal for high-speed rail. It would connect two of the country’s largest metropolitan regions, which haven’t had any form of passenger rail between them since Amtrak shuttered a Dallas-Houston route in 1995. And it would run through relatively flat land, allowing the train to reach top speeds and travelers to bypass congestion on Interstate 45. What’s more, Amtrak officials believe the route could be the cornerstone for a potential national expansion of high-speed rail.

But while Texas’ chances of getting rail to connect its biggest cities are higher than they’ve been in years, lingering skepticism at the state level and local disagreements could still imperil the projects.

The Texas Department of Transportation recently obtained two federal grants to study how to boost passenger rail service on an existing Amtrak route from Houston to San Antonio and, in an effort separate from the Texas Central high-speed project, see if a conventional rail line between Houston and Dallas can be reinstated.

The agency wrote in the applications that increased congestion has made “highway travel unreliable” and boosting intercity passenger rail would remove hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year off Texas highways, easing congestion and hopefully traffic deaths. Expanding passenger rail would also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, TxDOT noted.

The Amtrak connection between Houston and San Antonio has come up a couple of times recently. Other lines mentioned besides the Texas Central line from Houston to Dallas in partnership with Amtrak include the Dallas-Fort Worth route and the once-again-revived Austin-San Antonio Lone Star Rail. The D-FW one is the closest to actual construction, which isn’t saying much. There remain plenty of hurdles, like the entrenched opposition to the Texas Central line and the need to buy a lot more land to make it feasible, plus the Legislature’s extreme unwillingness to spend money on anything that isn’t more highways. That said, the fact that TxDOT even applied for these grants is something. The utopia goal of a high-speed rail network is still out there, it’s just going to take a lot more work to make it happen.

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Weekend link dump for August 4

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“Scientists in Brazil have come up with the first evidence that sharks are being exposed to cocaine.”

“A common ancestor to some of the most widespread animals on Earth has managed to surprise scientists, because its taco shape and multi-jointed legs are something no paleontologist has ever seen before in the fossil record, according to the authors of a new study.”

“What’s more bizarre is that the couch joke was only one of the three most off-putting things Vance has been known for during his first 10 days as a VP nominee, and the only one that wasn’t verified as true.”

Honestly, Flavor Flav being a five-year sponsor of the US women’s water polo team is the best Olympic story I’ve seen so far.

“The likelihood that other technologically sophisticated societies exist is smaller than previously thought, because basic amenities we take for granted on Earth—continents, oceans, and plate tectonics—are cosmically rare.”

“Religious freedom should not be contingent on the next government. It should be off the table. A lot of things should be off the table. Then, and only then, we can vote safely without life having to suck for everybody.”

Army Lt. William L. Calley, Jr., the only U.S. service member convicted in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968, has died. I recommend you read a little about Hugh Thompson (scroll down to find the item), a helicopter pilot who intervened to try to stop it.

“This is the offer of an extreme immunity. Nothing, though, requires any president to accept it. Instead, a president or candidate for president could openly pledge to waive any immunity from prosecution for any acts done to advance an unofficial objective, even if those acts included the exercise of core presidential authority. Issuing such a waiver could become a ritual in any campaign for president. Kamala Harris should begin that ritual tomorrow.”

“We scared @elonmusk and @DonaldJTrumpJr so much tonight they suspended our account and won’t let us back in. These guys are running scared of the success we’ve had tonight, but we’re not going to quit.”

Norman Padgett, who falsely accused the Groveland Four of rape, has died. I will admit that I had not heard of the Groveland Four before reading that. This Marshall Project story from 2017 was on the same Google results page when I went looking for more, and you should read it. Brace yourself, it’s brutal. As for Padgett, she never recanted her false accusation.

“What Trump Meant by “You Won’t Have to Vote Anymore” Is Weirder Than You Think”.

“The Justice Department’s Inspector General detailed how close Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Bill Barr came on June 1 to invoking the Insurrection Act, which gives the President nearly limitless powers to use the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.”

RIP, Francine Pascal, creator of the “Sweet Valley High” novels.

“Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is suing Elon Musk and his social platform X, alleging a breach of contract and misappropriation of Lemon’s name and likeness, among other claims.”

Boy, some tender, delicate snowflakes sure had their feelings hurt.

“HBO’s Succession looks more and more like the House Of Murdoch, where Patriarch Rupert is fighting with three of his adult children over who will control the family media empire when he passes.”

“Naturally, Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, want to make this story all about Trump.”

“‘Swifties for Kamala‘ ready to speak in 2024 presidential election”.

RIP, Lorna Onizuka, founding member of the Challenger Center, widow of astronaut Ellison Onizuka.

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Special election for CD18 set for November 5

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I was beginning to wonder if this would even happen.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday set a special election to fill former U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s seat for the remainder of the term on Nov. 5, the same day as the general election.

The special election will select an official to represent Texas’ 18th Congressional District for the two months remaining in the Congress after the election.

The general election, on the other hand, will determine who represents the district for the full two-year term beginning in 2025. Houston-area voters will decide on both at the same time.

Early voting for both the special and general elections will begin concurrently on Oct. 21.

[…]

Meanwhile, any eligible Texan may file with the Secretary of State by Aug. 22 to place their name on the special election ballot — except for the full-term nominee Democrats select in August and Lana Centonze, the Republican running for the seat. Those candidates cannot appear on the same ballot twice.

Mike Doyle, chair of the Harris County Democrats, called the special election “an attempt to confuse and create havoc in voting in November.”

Abbott was not required to set a special election to fill the seat for two months, Doyle said, and doing so means that voters will see two ballots for the same office.

“This is gamesmanship — nothing more, nothing less,” he said.

Note that this is the election to fill out the remainder of Rep. Jackson Lee’s current term. The winner of this race gets to serve from November through January 2, or whenever the next Congress is sworn in. We could have had this election in September, and thus allowed the future Congressperson to get a running start as well as some extra seniority, but the law gives the Governor the discretion to set the date, and that’s what he did. I’m a little confused by the condition that the November nominees can’t appear on the ballot twice, because that was not the case in 2006 when Shelley Sekula Gibbs did so for CD22. Remember “vote twice for Shelley”? I assume the law has since been changed, but if so I was not aware of it.

In any event, there’s not much at stake now. Not much happens in the two months at the end of a term, as ol’ shelley should know by now, so I don’t think that the runners-up for the nomination will bother to go for this small consolation prize. That means we’re likely to get a bunch of non-A list types filing for it, none of whom are likely to make much of an impression in the short time they’ll have to run and the lack of anything substantive they can promise. Maybe Shelley ought to give it another try. She at least has some experience in these matters.

UPDATE: As Heath in the comments reminds me, Shelley was a write-in for the full term election in 2006. So that mystery is solved.

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Lawsuit filed over another social media law

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re going to be litigating this past legislative session for a long time.

Two tech industry groups, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to block a new Texas law that would require platforms like Instagram and Facebook to register the age of all users and get consent from a parent or guardian before minors create an account.

Here’s what you need to know.

The background: Texas lawmakers in 2023 passed House Bill 18, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, to limit minors’ access to social media platforms and to protect them from seeing harmful content if they do gain access.

State Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville, carried the bill and said its purpose was to give parents more control of how minors’ information is collected and used by digital service providers, which are companies that operate websites, applications, programs or software that collects or processes personal identifying information.

Lawmakers said children’s overexposure to digital platforms resulted in increased rates of self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, human trafficking and other mental health issues. “Texas parents have had enough,” Slawson said in a statement after the bill was voted out of a House committee.

Under the law, digital service providers would have to get a parent or guardian’s consent before allowing a minor to create an account. And it forces those companies to give parents the ability to supervise the minor’s use of the digital platform. The law also requires social media platforms to figure out ways to prevent children’s exposure to “harmful” material, such as content that promotes self-harm or substance abuse.

[…]

In their legal filing, the plaintiffs argue that HB 18 unconstitutionally violates First Amendment free speech rights by forcing websites to monitor and remove certain types of speech and by restricting minors’ access to lawful speech.

Plaintiffs argue that parents already have tools to regulate if and how their minor children use the internet and that the companies they represent effectively moderate their content.

The legal filing pulled heavily from CCIA and NetChoice’s recent complaint against House Bill 20, a 2021 Texas law prohibiting large social media companies from banning users’ posts based on their political viewpoints.

“Just like its last attempt, Texas has enacted a law targeting disfavored online publishers and their dissemination of protected, valuable expression online,” the filing states.

I don’t have any earlier posts about HB18, but I have been covering the litigation against HB20, which remains blocked after SCOTUS sent it back to the lower courts. There’s not much in this story, but the NetChoice press release and this Twitter thread by their litigation director, gives a clear view of the grounds on which the suit was filed. I was a bit skeptical of their assertions at first, but the more I read the more I tend to agree that this law is broad, vague, and given that it includes an SB8-style vigilante provision, will almost certainly lead to speech restrictions. We’ll see what the courts make of it. The law is scheduled to go into effect on September 1, so I expect there will be a ruling on a temporary restraining order before then.

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Whitmire endorses Harris

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

A bit behind his peers, but he got there.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the race for U.S. president.

“Her tough-but-smart-on-crime history assures me she is committed to public safety,” Whitmire wrote in a Thursday post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “She will be the partner I need to improve infrastructure and help Houston recover from recent disasters. We will drive Houston forward and ensure a brighter future for all Americans.”

Harris emerged as the Democratic party’s pick for the candidacy following President Joe Biden’s exit from the race July 21. Harris has been endorsed by Biden and other prominent figures in local politics like Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Whitmire took heat after his name did not appear on a list of U.S. mayors who said they were endorsing Harris for president days after Biden left the race.

There were definitely people who noticed that the aforementioned list of Mayors did not include Whitmire. With Vice President Harris in Houston for multiple events this past week, it would have been weird if he hadn’t taken action. In the grand scheme of things this isn’t a big deal – I can’t believe endorsement, or just about any endorsement for that matter, swings more than a handful of votes – but that’s not really the point. The point is that this is an election about democracy itself (among many other things) and no one gets to be a bystander. Welcome aboard, Mayor Whitmire.

Posted in Election 2024, The making of the President | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The election to nominate a candidate in CD18 has been set

Posted on August 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Per an email that I got yesterday from the HCDP, the Executive Committee meeting of CD18 precinct chairs to fill the vacancy on the November ballot will be next Tuesday, August 13, at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, with the meeting beginning at 6 PM. I’ll get back to this in a minute.

There will be a candidate forum for CD18 on Saturday, August 10, which will be broadcast on Fox 26. I don’t have the details on that. Before that, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week, there will be precinct chair interviews with candidates, which you can see on Zoom. Here are the Zoom links:

Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

The calls are scheduled from 6 to 8 PM. I don’t know at this time who will be interviewing whom on any of those dates.

And finally, we have a candidate update now that the funeral for Rep. Jackson Lee has taken place.

Former Mayor Sylvester Turner was the first candidate to publicly declare his interest, and he made his campaign official on Friday morning. Former Council Member Amanda Edwards, who challenged Jackson Lee in a March primary, and Council Member Letitia Plummer also announced Friday. State Rep. Jarvis Johnson and former City Council Member Dwight Boykins already had declared their interest.

The full list of candidates, updated from the previous one, is as follows:

IN:
Sylvester Turner
Amanda Edwards
Dwight Boykins
Rep. Jarvis Johnson
CM Letitia Plummer
Rep. Christina Morales
Corisha Rogers
Robert Slater

Most of these were known as of my previous update. Rep. Morales is the elected official that I had spoken to who was thinking about running but had not come to a decision at that time. Rogers is the leadership engagement and support manager at the Harris County Democratic Party, and is on leave pending the outcome of this election. Slater was the third candidate on the March primary ballot; he had said he was dropping out but it was past the deadline to do so and so still appeared on the ballot, getting a bit less than 3% of the vote.

NOT ANNOUNCED YET:
Bishop James Dixon
Rep. Jolanda Jones

Dixon is quoted in this Chron story saying he’s still thinking about it. Rep. Jones was mentioned in the earlier story as a potential candidate but was not named in this one. I don’t have any further information about her status.

DEFINITELY NOT RUNNING:
Controller Chris Hollins
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee
Rep. Jolanda Jones

Hollins posted on Twitter that he was not running. The earlier story mentioned that Menefee had taken himself out of the running.

UPDATE: Rep. Jones is on the long list of Sylvester Turner endorsers, so I think it’s safe to say she’s not running.

And that’s what I know at this time. Let me just add this bit of news from the announcement I received as a precinct chair about how the election on August 13 will be conducted:

The vote will be conducted by roll call given the anticipated high number of candidates. Each Precinct Chair’s name will be read and the Precinct Chair will announce the name of the person they are voting for. Rules of the Texas Democratic Party prohibit secret ballots and provide that the chair of the meeting, not the members, chooses the method of voting. Pursuant to TDP Rules, there may be no proxy voting at this meeting; all precinct chairs must vote for themselves and in person.

[…]

If no candidate receives a majority of the votes, a runoff will be held immediately in accordance with Texas law (between the candidates with the two highest numbers of votes).

The runoff will be done by “division of the room”, which is to say all those voting for candidate A will move to one side of the room, and all those voting for candidate B will move to the other, and whoever has the most people on their side of the room wins.

For better or worse, everyone will know how I and all of my fellow Chairs vote in this election. This is a very tough choice, I mostly know and respect these people, and all but one of them is going to see me pick someone else. It is what it is. All I can say is that I will be taking this very seriously, I trust we will elect a qualified and deserving candidate, and I wish everyone the best. See you on the 13th.

UPDATE: The candidate forum will be at 1 PM on the 10th at the Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy, 1906 Cleburne St, Houston TX 77004

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HPD has a new Chief

Posted on August 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Meet the new guy.

Months of searching for Houston’s next full-time police chief ended with Mayor John Whitmire naming J. Noe Diaz, leader of the less than 100-person Katy Police Department, as Troy Finner’s replacement in charge of the nation’s fourth-largest city’s law enforcement agency.

“Chief Diaz brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of service and dedication to his new role,” Whitmire said Thursday in a letter to City Council members, who must vote on appointing the next chief.

The mayor praised Diaz’s work with the Narcotics Division of the State Police, where he was stationed in Houston. In that time, he worked with the Harris County Organized Crime Task Force, Houston police, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.

Diaz was appointed as a Texas Ranger in 2008, serving in Rio Grande City before returning to Houston. As a Ranger, he spent over a decade
working on what the mayor called high-profile public corruption investigations.

Diaz will now step into to run one of the largest police departments in the country, one reeling from a recent scandal that involved more than 260,000 dropped cases that toppled the former chief. The department has a budget of more than $1 billion, a staff of 6,288 and a dire need to replenish the ranks of police officers after a wave of retirements and resignations.

“The comments I’ve gotten are that he’s a fair, even-handed guy,” Mike Knox, a retired Houston Police Department officer and a Republican candidate for Harris County sheriff, said of conversations he’s had with Katy police officers. “He’s not too political — he’ll just follow the law and do his job.”

[…]

While multiple people with knowledge of Diaz’s tenure in Katy praised the work he’s done, Knox acknowledged there’s a big adjustment in running a 70-officer department versus a department with more than 5,000 officers.

“Working with 70 officers as opposed to 5,100 will be a little different for him,” Knox said. “But I think he’s a smart guy and will be able to do just fine.”

There’s a companion article with more biographical details about new Chief Diaz. He certainly has plenty of experience in law enforcement, in a variety of roles. I don’t know enough about him to say more, but he seems fine. The point raised by former CM Knox about the big step up in department size is the main concern one might have at this point. It doesn’t need to be an issue, but the dropped cases scandal is very much about management and oversight, and I’m sure there will be a learning curve. I wish him well in getting his arms around it. Outgoing Acting Chief Larry Satterwaite also now has a new gig, so best of luck to him as well. The Mayor’s press release is here, and Stace, the Press, and Houston Landing have more.

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The lost Harvey recovery funds

Posted on August 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good job on the audit front. Now let’s see what we can learn from this.

Controller Chris Hollins

Houston lost at least $8.5 million in potential reimbursements for a federally funded Hurricane Harvey home repair program due to missed deadlines and filing errors, according to a new audit from Controller Chris Hollins.

Program guidelines require the city to submit reimbursement requests to the Texas General Land Office within 90 days of expenditures. Auditors from the controller’s office reviewed a sample of 57 such requests and found that 24 were submitted late, resulting in a loss of $2.5 million. Of the timely submissions, 14 contained errors and were either rejected or withdrawn, leading to another $6 million in lost funds, according to the report.

As the city faces steep financial challenges, Hollins and council members stressed the need to prevent such waste in the future.

“I hate hearing about any loss of funding, and there’s sure to be more disaster money coming our way,” said Council Member Sallie Alcorn, chair of the city’s Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee. “So I’m sure lots of the recommendations in this report will help us in the future.”

The Housing and Community Development Department, which administered the program, has since improved its reimbursement process by adding target a due date for every expenditure and creating a standard checklist to catch common errors, according to the department’s response to the audit findings. The department also noted some late submissions were withdrawn due to ongoing legal disputes with third-party consultants who sent the invoices.

The latest findings brought back into the spotlight Houston’s Harvey Homeowner Assistance Program, a now-concluded initiative once mired in controversy and political sparring.

Established in 2019, the city program initially aimed to use around $400 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding to provide repairs, rehabilitation and reconstruction of Houston homes battered by the 2017 hurricane.

Following a series of disputes between the Democrat-led city and the Republican-led General Land Office, however, the state office took over the program in early 2021, a transition that confused and frustrated many participating homeowners. The program ended up providing assistance to 731 local families.

Issues with filings and deadlines are not new concerns for the program. In the months leading up to the takeover, officials from the General Land Office criticized Houston’s efforts as “extremely slow and unproductive,” saying the city was not on track to meet its aid distribution deadline.

Former Mayor Sylvester Turner, in turn, said the land office failed to provide clear guidance on required documents and frequently changed the process, forcing the city to redo hundreds of files.

You can find a copy of the audit report here; it’s 27 pages, so not too long to read. A one page executive summary is here, most of which is mentioned in this story.

I’m glad to see this report, and I’m glad to see Controller Hollins getting into the audit business, especially at this time with the city’s financial challenges. We’re not going to come close to cutting or optimizing our way out of the fiscal hole we’re in, but fixing clear problems is always a good idea. I’m sure there will be more to come.

As for the money itself, I try whenever possible to put numbers in context. Like, how does this compare to the past or to our peers? Is it in line with what we might expect or is it an outlier? It’s hard to tell in this case, since Harvey was a unique disaster and one that cities like Dallas and San Antonio didn’t experience, at least not in the same way. Maybe there’s a comparison to be made with Hurricane Ike, which had plenty of its own recovery issues, but the program that’s been audited didn’t exist at that time, and even if all the relevant data is available and usable, there may not have been a comparable program. This is the number we have, we’ll have to do what we can with it.

The question is what the city does in response to this audit. What do they need to change or update or implement or stop doing as a result of what we’ve now learned? It’s encouraging that some changes have already happened – this is how it’s supposed to work in the audit process. This particular audit was about a program that isn’t active anymore, so there won’t be ongoing savings to measure, and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that I hope there won’t be any opportunities to apply what we’ve learned anytime soon. The general principles ought to apply to other things, so that should be a positive.

A harder question, one that this audit can’t really address, is about where all the lessons need to be learned. The General Land Office and the city have pointed fingers at each other for years over the challenges this program faced. It would be very nice to know how to apportion the blame, because there’s only so much the city can do to move the needle if the GLO was really jerking them around. If on the other hand the city’s assertions about the state’s behavior is mostly self-serving and in denial of the reality, then the lessons we should learn need to go beyond mere process tweaks. (You know where I have stood on this. I could of course be wrong.) I don’t know if that was outside the scope of this report, but it would be valuable to be able to address that question.

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The House gets its turn to yell at CenterPoint

Posted on August 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

They mostly focused on tree maintenance, which seems reasonable enough.

No longer seen at I-10 and Sawyer

House lawmakers on Wednesday questioned CenterPoint Energy’s tree maintenance ahead of Hurricane Beryl, in which tens of thousands of trees knocked out power lines, shutting off electricity to 2.3 million Houston area customers.

CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells told a roomful of House members meeting for the first time on the storm’s aftermath that nearly two-thirds of the outages were caused by trees and bushes outside of the utility’s right of way, meaning the company was at the whim of private landowners to control their growth.

But Wells did not explain what lengths the company had gone to ahead of the storm to identify problematic vegetation on private land, or to get permission from landowners to trim it. A Chronicle investigation found that even as CenterPoint has spent more money on vegetation maintenance over the past decade, the total miles of land it kept clear near distribution lines has dropped 20%, from 5,800 miles to 4,600 miles.

CenterPoint has not responded to questions from the paper about the decrease, and it did not immediately answer questions Wednesday about its attempts to manage the trees and bushes it says were beyond its authority.

“Your actions speak to your priorities, that vegetation management has not been a priority. Why?” asked Rep. Ana Hernandez, a Houston Democrat and vice chair of the House’s State Affairs committee. “Is it perhaps because you don’t get the rate of return on that expense?”

Wells said that 60% of the trees and branches that were cleared after the storm came from outside the utility’s right of way. To clear or trim vegetation outside of a utility’s easement — roughly a “football goalpost” area around a powerline in which utilities can manage vegetation, said Wells — a company like CenterPoint has to get permission from property owners.

Wells said CenterPoint had increased funding to remove the most hazardous trees. “The most effective way for us to do that is to be able to attack those trees that are outside of our right of way that have the highest risk of failure,” he said. “We will endeavor to do everything possible to work with those property owners to target those trees. But again, it requires their consent. We don’t have the legal right to do that.”

[…]

Rep. David Spiller, a Jacksboro Republican, pressed Wells on his assertion that the company is not responsible for trees and other natural hazards outside of the company’s easement. He noted that even if that was true, a huge proportion of the outages were still caused by trees and bushes within its purview.

“Almost half the damage was due to trees that you clearly had a legal duty and obligation to maintain and trim and keep that area clear,” he said.

Spiller also said CenterPoint’s easement agreements appeared to show that it has “the absolute right” to trim trees on adjacent properties if they interfere with a power line. He cited a 1999 Texas Supreme Court case that appeared to back that up.

“It was my testimony, my understanding, that we don’t have the ability without property owner consent to address” that vegetation,” Wells said later, in response to questions from Rep. Richard Raymond, a Laredo Democrat.

“Then we got to change the law,” Raymond replied.

See here for the Senate’s yelling at CenterPoint. Gotta say, I think all three House members quoted here did a good job with their questions. I want to be a little hesitant to give utilities more power to trim trees wherever they think they need to – they are not always known for doing so in a way that is good for the tree’s long-term health. Proceed with some caution, that’s all I’m saying.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments