Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Dispatches from Dallas, July 13 edition

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

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

The last few weeks, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have a grab bag of catch-up items from elections to storms and their chasers; a lot of unpleasant people with big money putting in the hands of other unpleasant people; roundups of schools and environmental issues; Saks buys Neiman Marcus; where the high-speed rail is going around downtown Dallas; the Boomstick Glizzy; the State Fair semifinalist dishes; and more.

This week’s post was brought to you by Apple’s New Wave Essentials playlist, because I wanted to work with something familiar and beloved on. I didn’t finish the almost seven hour playlist while writing, but I was glad I had enough music to keep me company the whole way.

And now, the news, and what passes for news:

Let’s start with the last election results from the spring: a summary of the June runoffs following the May elections. And now we’re lining up for November.
As you may have seen in the Texas Tribune last month, the True Texas Project, a bunch of Christian nationalists, are holding their fifteenth anniversary celebration at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. After the identity of the group was exposed and speakers started dropping off the agenda, the city is forcing the Botanic Garden to host to avoid a lawsuit. As we approach the anniversary, activists are planning to protest the event. I expect we’ll wrap this up next week, hopefully with no violence.
You’ve probably also read about the racist attack on a Palestinian family in Euless back in May, which received national coverage and presidential mention. The latest update is that the attacker’s bond is set at $1 million and Tarrant County is investigating the attack as a hate crime.
The Dallas Observer has a piece on how the city is faring in recovery from the Memorial Day storms. Best wishes to my Houston pals as y’all go through the same process after Beryl.
Sort of related: an article about one of the treasures of the Metroplex, Texas Storm Chasers. They’re the first folks I turn to when weather gets really bad here. I have their app and follow their Facebook, which is where I found out they’d been kicked off of TikTok. Apparently when people broadcast live from inside the car during a storm, it violates some sort of unsafe driving rule, even if the person pointing the camera is riding shotgun.
You may remember that back in May, Dallas hosted the NRA’s national convention. Here’s a substack piece on the writer’s experience at the convention. It’s both interesting and upsetting. Blast from the past: apparently John Lott’s people had a booth at the convention!
Our host has been keeping you up to date on the hijinks around the high-speed rail that Dallas doesn’t want going through downtown. This week’s story is the newest iteration of the line loops around downtown. Not at all coincidentally, the renovation and expansion of the city’s convention center, which will cost $3.7 billion, is now underway. The new route will move the rail, which clips the current center’s footprint, toward I-35.
One of the biggest items of local financial news in the last month has been the sale of local fashion titan Neiman Marcus to the folks who own Saks Fifth Avenue. This is a sale despite the way the local media refers to it as a merger; the purchase price is $2.65 billion. The Saks people are in charge, and, even scarier, Amazon is an investor.
Two jailers involved in the death of Anthony Johnson, one of the half-dozen or so people who have died in the Tarrant County jail since the start of the year, have been charged with murder, booked, and released on $125,000 bond each. The jailers were also fired a second time, this time in accordance with civil service procedures. I’d like to point you at the Star-Telegram’s editioral advocating a release of all the jail footage of Johnson’s death. I hope this case, which seems to be staying in the public eye, drives a larger investigation of the jail and inmate deaths.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Dallas’ suburbs want to cap their revenue share with DART at a considerably lower level than they’re currently paying, cutting about 25% of their contributions. As this DMN editorial notes, that follows the Dallas City Council considering raiding DART to cover the city’s pension obligations. The DMN is right, though: we need public transit and we have to pay for it.
Related: here’s an op-ed from the head of the retired police union in Dallas reminding us we do need to pay the pensions of the people who served the city.
And speaking of government entities who are out of money: Dallas County is facing a $40.6 million deficit in 2024, mostly because of Sherriff Department overtime.
Supposedly not contributing to the Dallas County deficit this year is our juvenile detention center. They have other problems: community leaders are protesting living conditions inside the center including overflowing toilets. I have to admit I’m so used to hearing complaints about the county’s juvenile system that I glossed over the headline on this story. I was horrified to read what the county is doing to kids in juvie, including 23 hours a day on lockdown, which is illegal. There is a law, and we’re going to have to make them obey it. And we’re going to have to pay for it.
The Star-Telegram has a news analysis piece on what happens if abortion regulations in Texas get tighter and it’s not a pretty picture. One of the possibilities that anti-abortion reactionaries are pushing is subjecting people who terminate pregnancies to capital murder prosecution.
Related, sort of: Vice President Kamala Harris was in town this week for the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority’s national convention. She used the trip to announce a new federal initiative to cut maternal mortality rates. This is something we really need in Texas. Childbirth is killing Texans in droves and has been since before the Republicans banned abortion.
Awkwardly related to the sorority convention: One of the hotels here in Dallas was hosting both sorority sisters and a gay daddy convention. The hotel booted the daddies, claiming that other visitors complained about public nudity. The real cause of complaint could be that, could be a “boom boom room”, could be drugs. In any case it’s not a good look and blaming it on the sorority sisters is also not great.
Time for an update on those DFW suburban school districts we love to … well, watch from a safe distance in most of y’all’s case:

Southlake Carroll is in court again: they just won the first round in their suit against the feds over Title IX protections. Meanwhile the district is also wrangling with the Department of Education over a civil rights violation letter where they claim they haven’t received the letter. Notice from this article that the Alliance Defending Freedom is arguing on the District’s behalf in the lawsuit mentioned above.
Northwest ISD’s 2024-2025 budget is $15.8 million in deficit.
Making Northwest ISD look good, Arlington ISD has a $25.5 million deficit for 2024-2025.

Meanwhile Keller ISD managed to balance its budget without layoffs by, among other means, not offering raises to teachers.
Related: in rural school districts, unlicensed teachers make up almost three quarters of new hires.

Princeton ISD canceled its Pride event even after the ACLU complained.
And Mansfield ISD will tell parents if their kid is trans.
The family of the late congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has resolved their claims against Baylor Scott & White over her treatment and death. While the settlement is confidential, the money will go to the new Eddie Bernice Johnson Lives Foundation.
You have to be a creeper to get the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to publicly reprimand you for sexual harassment. Tarrant County Judge Jesus Nevarez got that reprimand and, for all the good it will do, is going to have to take four hours of education including two on sexual harassment.
The Dallas Observer fact-checks a Colin Allred commercial. Unsurprisingly, Allred is playing fast-and-loose with facts, but not outright lying.

Another roundup, this time on environmental issues:

Here’s an article in Time on the noise folks in Granbury are putting up with from bitcoin miners. The Time piece mentions some noise citations; the operators were found not guilty this week. And just in case the way they’re ruining the areas where the “mines” are built isn’t enough for you, the bitcoin miners may crash our rickety power grid.
You may remember GAF, the west Dallas shingle factory that local activists want to force out of the area. They’re considered the likely culprit in a Texas A&M-fronted study that shows almost three times as many folks in west Dallas have asthma compared to the statewide rate. Also the air quality in west Dallas is worse than in Joppa, the freedmen’s town in south Dallas that’s been a byword for pollution for decades.
The Texas Observer has from the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group in Arlington that’s fighting fracking in the city. They’re currently fighting a new well permit for French energy company Total. All of this is in the shadow of the 2015 law that bans cities from banning or regulating fracking, and we all know we’re not going to get rid of that until we get rid of the Republicans in Austin.
I’m pointing out this this “Reality Check” from the Star-Telegram about ERCOT because it demonstrates the way that media in Texas buys everything the petroleum industry and its bought and paid for academics are selling.
This summer the city of Dallas is doing another urban heat island study. Last year, the study mapped about 100 square miles; this year they’re planning to map 245.
Not directly related, but relevant to the environment are these two articles about folks working in the heat. First, the widow of Eugene Gates, the postal carrier who died of heat-related illness last summer, says the USPS isn’t doing enough to protect carriers. I’d be perfectly happy to get my mail at home at night during the summer if it kept postal workers from getting sick, personally. And second, the construction industry is pushing back against proposed OSHA rules to protect their workers. Remember that here in Dallas we used to have water breaks for construction workers by city ordinance, but as this article reminds us, the Death Star bill killed those protections.

In the finale of the T.C. Broadnax saga, the city paid him his due, to the tune of $467,000. Related: the DMN tells us who the highest-paid city workers were in 2022 and 2023.
Last month we saw that almost a quarter of Fort Worth homes were owned by commercial interests. The Fort Worth Report did some digging and figured out that the majority of those commercially owned homes belong to mom-and-pop landlords. In June, meanwhile, for those folks who live in the homes they own, the Tarrant County homestead exemption increased to the state maximum of 20%.
You may remember there was a brouhaha in April about the Tarrant County courts administrator when County Judge O’Hare wanted to defund the position. O’Hare got what he wanted last month, as Gary Shugart stepped down.
I’m sure you’ll all be surprised to hear that casino magnate and new Dallas Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson is giving big money to Ted Cruz.
While we’re looking into who’s paying for our esteemed political opponents, here’s a Texas Monthly investigation into who really paid Jonathan Mitchell, of SB8 infamy, for his work representing Right to Life of East Texas.
And the Texas Ethics Commission voted unanimously to require social media influencers to disclose when they’re paid for political advertisements. Note some of the names involved in the Paxton defense campaign that inspired this regulation: Defend Texas Liberty and Trump favorite Brad Parscale. Also notice our old friends Wilks and Dunn being mad about it, which means we’re moving in the right direction. Seriously, though, if I can expect an Instagram account to tell me if they’re being paid to show off jeans, I ought to be able to expect the same for their politics.
I keep an eye out for news outlets that might shed light on different aspects of the Metroplex, but I’m going to be avoiding Hoodline, which is using AI to write its articles but giving them bylines as if they were written by people. No thanks.
I thought this was the Onion at first but unfortunately it’s real: a Dallas area company is putting vending machines that sell bullets in grocery stores in Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas.
A juvenile, presumably a teenager, in Smith County is suspected of making more than 100 calls for bomb threats and swatting across several states. Yikes.
You may have heard there’s a big Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader documentary on Netflix. The $64 question is how much do they make? Apparently the answer is “I would say I’m making…like a Chick-fil-A worker who works full time.”.
A couple of Dallas athletes are going to the Olympics and as you can imagine, local media are all over them. First is Sha’Carri Richardson, who is joining the track team, and is apparently also the subject of a Netflix documentary. The second is teen gymnast Hezly Rivera, who will join the squad led by Simone Biles. Congratulations to both of them!
In some good arts news, the DMA is putting more Caddo pottery on display for the first time since the 2022 break-in where a monumental piece was destroyed. Caddo artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles, who created the gar that was broken two years ago, has made three new pieces for the DMA and incorporated pieces of the destroyed work. I’m looking forward to seeing it the next time I’m at the DMA.
Somebody almost donated a painting by Texas Impressionist Julian Onderdonk to Goodwill but they figured it out in time. Instead it was sold at auction for $112,500.
Posted without comment: Texas Rangers’ Boomstick Glizzy Ranked Longest Wiener in MLB. Behold. OK: I do have a comment, which is click through and look at it. That is one big hot dog.
It’s summer, which means it’s time to start talking about State Fair food again. Pick your poison from the list of semifinalists, which you can check out at Eater Dallas or the Dallas Observer. The crookies and the cookie butter nachos sound delicious, and the Hammy Pimento Meltdown is on my list, but I’m dubious about the LAY’S Potato Chip Drink.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged Dallas, guest post, linkdump, Texas | Comments Off

The CenterPoint criticism

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Lots more people in positions of power with things to say about CenterPoint’s performance this week. Here’s Rep. Sylvia Garcia:

U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia is tired of feeling left in the dark by CenterPoint Energy – both literally and figuratively.

On Wednesday morning, the Congresswoman, whose district wraps around much of the eastern edge of Houston, sent a strongly worded letter to the energy company’s CEO, Jason P. Wells, demanding answers as to why more than a million Houstonians remained without power two days after Hurricane Beryl slammed into the city.

“I write today to inquire about CenterPoint’s preparation for Hurricane Beryl, which left millions of your customers in the Houston region without electricity for now going on day 3,” Garcia wrote. “With scorching temperatures in the area, CenterPoint’s inability to restore power more quickly is creating a public health crisis forcing people to recover from a hurricane while they survive extreme heat.”

In the three-page letter, the Congresswoman poses several questions, including: Why were so many workers deployed the day after the storm ended, and not the same day?; Why was the outage tracking map never brought back online in the nearly two months after the derecho event?; and What is CenterPoint doing to improve reliability? How is this going to be prevented in the future?

“We just want to make sure that CenterPoint knows, in a strong and loud way, that people are unhappy,” Garcia said. “There are 1.3 million people who are still waiting. They need to know: Hey guys, this is Houston. It ain’t our first rodeo. We’ve been through this before. Why do we have to go through this every time we have an event?”

She lamented the fact that CenterPoint seems eager to share news when their quarterly earnings reach more than $1 billion, “but we don’t know what they’re planning to do to make our power go up in a minimum of two days.”

Logan Anderson, a spokesperson for CenterPoint, declined to comment on the letter Wednesday afternoon. “The company intends to respond to Congresswoman Garcia directly,” Anderson wrote in an email.

“I would consider a Congressional hearing about this at a later date, but I would like to hear a response first and sit and visit with them,” Garcia said Wednesday.

These are good questions, and I appreciate Rep. Garcia asking them. I hope she gets her answers. I will say, I would love to see some specific things that our leaders want from CenterPoint, along with at least a discussion of what resources are needed and what oversight will be required. They don’t need to have all the answers themselves, but their goals should be clear.

Here’s Mayor Whitmire and City Council.

Mayor John Whitmire criticized CenterPoint’s response to Hurricane Beryl at a Houston City Council meeting Wednesday, saying the energy company “needs to do a better job” restoring power to millions of customers who lost it when the storm tore through Houston.

“That is the consensus of Houstonians, that’s mine,” Whitmire told reporters after the meeting.

Whitmire, however, declined to give a grade on CenterPoint’s performance.

“I’m not in the business to grade,” Whitmire told the Houston Chronicle. “I’m in the business of saying, ‘Let’s get it done. Let’s fix it.’”

[…]

Council Member Edward Pollard, who represents the southwestern part of the city, told [Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint’s vice president of electric distribution operations and power delivery] that he was getting calls from senior citizens and families with kids who didn’t understand why their power wasn’t being turned on, and he asked if CenterPoint would be changing its model.

“There has to be something that can be done or a learning lesson from how frequently and hard the storms are getting for us to be able to react and respond quicker,” Pollard said.

Tutunjian conceded that the company had to make changes. Vegetation management could be an option, he said, and more efforts to bury lines and make the system more resilient through modernizing the grid.

Tutunjian said CenterPoint as able to get around 175,000 customers back online quicker simply because they had more updated equipment.

Council Member Abbie Kamin asked about the cost of both the hurricane and the derecho in May. Tutunjian said the derecho cost the company “many millions” and that could not give a number on how much damage the hurricane caused.

Residents have raised concerns about CenterPoint’s outage map crashing after the derecho. Tutunjian said before Hurricane Beryl hit that CenterPoint had been working to get a cloud-based system up and running for its outage tracker and hopes to have it working by the end of the month.

All due respect, but I think it is in the Mayor’s purview to provide an assessment in this circumstance. I mean, “needs to do a better job” could mean “you’re an A student, please explain this C+ to me” or it could mean “you failed miserably”. Let’s at least be more specific about what we want, if for no other reason than we’ll know when and if we’re getting it.

On a side note, the Mayor also took a shot at the Astros.

“George Brown [Convention Center didn’t] have energy yesterday,” Whitmire said during Wednesday’s City Council meeting. “We have 1,500 students in the Marriott and the Hilton, but we’ve got a ballgame going on down the street two blocks [away]. We’ve got to get our priorities right.”

Not really sure what that has to do with anything. Would the GRB have had energy if the Astros had postponed their games? There are absolutely times when things like sports need to be set aside while more immediate matters are given proper attention. I don’t think the Astros were required to do that here.

And then there’s Greg Abbott.

Two days after Hurricane Beryl knocked out power for a record 2.26 million CenterPoint customers in the Houston area, Gov. Greg Abbott said he is directing the Public Utilities Commission to study why the region has not been able to access electricity “on multiple occasions.”

Abbott, who is currently on an economic development trip in Asia, said in two TV interviews on Wednesday that he wants to find out “why this is repeatedly happening in Houston.”

[…]

“They should not be losing power,” Abbott said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “I want to find out: Was there a structural flaw with regard to the electrical delivery system? … Or was this a personnel issue of not having enough power personnel in all the right locations to get power back and going again?

“All I can tell you is this: I want the PUC to provide information to both me and the Texas Legislature so that we will be able to act on it next year to make sure events like this never happen again,” Abbott told Bloomberg TV.

Thomas Gleeson, the chair of the PUC, said at a Monday press conference that the agency would work with local utility companies after the storm to conduct a post-event analysis of the state’s response “to review what we’ve done and try to get better.” Abbott’s directive seems to focus just on the Houston area.

You mean like all the stellar work you did to fix the grid after Uri in 2021? Get back to me when you have something on that. And have fun on your little trip to Asia, we’re doing just fine without you.

The PUC has its own feedback.

The Texas Public Utilities Commission urged CenterPoint Energy on Thursday to communicate better with its 1 million-plus customers still without power, but leaders of the state’s utility supervisor stopped short of interrogating or criticizing the company’s response to Hurricane Beryl.

Members of the PUC, which regulates Texas electricity providers, encouraged CenterPoint officials at a public hearing to better address widespread accusations that the company has been disorganized and inefficient following Beryl. CenterPoint customers have been particularly frustrated with a lack of detailed, accurate information about when to expect power back.

About 2.2 million Houston-area customers, or 80 percent of CenterPoint’s customer base, lost power following the storm Monday. About 1.1 million remained without electricity Thursday afternoon, and CenterPoint officials said about 500,000 could remain without power into next week.

PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson “strenuously urged” the company to rebuild trust with Houstonians after the disaster response concludes.

“Get out into the community. I don’t know if that’s town halls or what it looks like, but go talk to your customers,” Gleeson said. “Go talk to those residents about what happened, about ways that you feel you all can improve. Get feedback from them about their view on what can be improved.”

[…]

The hearing marked “the first step in the process” of evaluating how utility companies responded to the storm, Gleeson said.

Commissioners did not detail what actions will come next, but Gleeson said he talked to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick about the response to Beryl and “they’re going to figure this out.” Earlier this week, Patrick questioned CenterPoint’s response and said he expects a report on their preparations and response once restoration is completed. The company always completes post-mortem reviews after emergencies.

“We will probably end up filing a report as we head into the legislative session about our learnings, and potentially legislative solutions we may need,” Gleeson said.

Yes, that report plus potential legislative solutions are what I’m talking about. But see above in re: not fixing the grid after Uri. The “needs to do a better job” thing very much applies to the PUC.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged Abbie Kamin, Astros, blackouts, Edward Pollard, Freeze 2021, Greg Abbott, Houston, Houston City Council, Hurricane Beryl, John Whitmire, Public Utility Commission, Sylvia Garcia, Texas, The Lege | 12 Comments

Other Beryl stuff

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

A mini-roundup, with mostly non-CenterPoint things.

How’s your Internet service?

An Xfinity spokesperson said Wednesday that service was restored to approximately 355,000 customers — or about 36% of those experiencing service outages — in the 36 hours after Hurricane Beryl moved out of the Houston area.

Millions of Houston area CenterPoint customers lost power after a Category 1 hurricane swept through the region, and about 1.3 million are still without power as of early Wednesday afternoon.

Xfinity said most of its current service outages are tied to power loss at homes and businesses.

Approximately 620,000 customers still did not have service, an Xfinity spokesperson wrote, and more than 700 technicians are deployed.

“At our peak, there were approximately 975,000 residential and business customers who experienced storm-related temporary loss of service. Most service interruptions are due to power outages,” wrote Senior Director of Communications and Public Relations Foti Kallergis. “Comcast’s critical network facilities remained online during and after the storm.”

We had Internet service for a few hours after we lost power on Monday. (We used one of our backup batteries to power it and the WiFi router.) At some point our cable modem stopped receiving a signal, and that was the case through Tuesday; I stopped bothering to check after that. When the power came back, so did Xfinity. I am aware of at least one person who had power but no Internet (I don’t know if this person is a Comcast user; other providers had similar reports), so the two are not completely correlated. But if you have power, you probably also have Internet.

One of the things that made the lack of Internet service so frustrating was that cellular service was also biting it.

As Monday dawned and it became apparent that Beryl’s visit would be much more than a glancing blow, power went out and people began calling for help via their cellular phones.

And in many cases — and for many of us, it felt like in most cases — these devices we rely on so heavily were worthless. If you were like me, you could not get online to check news or storm conditions.

You couldn’t talk to friends or reach them for help. Calls wouldn’t go through, or if they did, they’d quickly drop, or one party could not hear the other. I had several conversations in which the other person sounded like they were some kind of weird robot.

Even texting, which cellular carriers say is the best way to reach out during a disaster, failed regularly. For example, I didn’t hear from my daughter, a regular user of texting via Apple’s iMessage, for several hours, when suddenly I got a burst of a half dozen old texts that suddenly went through.

The situation wasn’t confined to just one carrier —– I saw dozens of complaints on social media from customers all the major telcos. On Facebook, I asked people to sound off about their current power, internet and cell status. At this writing, nearly a hundred folks have responded, and every carrier appears in the messages. (That said, based on the responses AT&T seems to have fared worse, followed by T-Mobile and then Verizon.)

[…]

Cell towers connect to both the power grid and data network grids, and a disruption to either of those links can result in diminished or totally unavailable service. Disruption can happen because of a lack of power, or a cut to the lines delivering electricity or data.

Most modern cellular towers have some kind of backup for power — either batteries or generators. Travis Profitt, AT&T’s director of network services, told me that in the case of his company’s towers, there may be a mix of both at any given site.

“Battery backup lasts a few hours, then the fixed generator kicks in,” Profitt said. That generator may use some kind of fuel, such as diesel, or run on natural gas, depending on whether the latter is available at the tower site.

He said there are a handful of towers that don’t have backup power, but those locations are in place only to plug holes in coverage. Other towers nearby can provide some service.

Profitt said that, during a hurricane, slowdowns or lack of cellular availability is often caused by a glut of network traffic. Everyone’s trying to communicate at once, and in some instances, a tower may be offline.

Carriers design their wireless networks so a tower’s coverage overlaps with others nearby. If one tower has issues, another can take up the slack. But with high traffic volumes, the network might still have trouble keeping up.

In addition, if the tower closest to you goes down but another one nearby can talk to your device, it may make a connection but still be far enough away that the signal is weak. (That situation, by the way, can reduce your phone’s battery life.)

I didn’t have any specific issues with texting or calling on Monday or Tuesday as far as I could tell, though my daughter did have some issues with making calls. But any kind of web browsing was extremely flaky – ironically, I tried multiple times to use the Xfinity app to report my outage, and I couldn’t connect. To be sure, that could have been a back end problem, but plenty of other sites were slow to the point of not loading at all. Things were better by Wednesday, and as noted in the story all of the providers reported that their issues were mostly fixed. So at least we had that going for us.

Meanwhile, on the government side, there was this.

Texas was quick to ask for federal aid when Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, when Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017, and again when Hurricane Hanna touched down in 2020. But that did not happen this year as Hurricane Beryl approached Houston, triggering a round of finger-pointing between the White House and Texas officials over how quickly federal supplies including food, water and generators should have been distributed.

President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday that he had to personally reach out the state’s acting governor, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, for a formal request a day after the storm hit, knocking out power to more than 2 million CenterPoint Energy customers.

“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden said in a call.

That’s not how Texas leaders have handled past hurricanes.

The night before Harvey first made landfall in Texas in 2017, Abbott already had a request signed and submitted to then-President Donald Trump in anticipation of the storm making landfall near Rockport. Days later, the storm hit Houston, dropping more than 50 inches of rain on the city.

In 2020, Abbott requested a major disaster declaration from Trump before Hanna made landfall in South Texas as a Category 1 hurricane.

“I submit this request in anticipation of the impacts of Hurricane Hanna, currently forecast to make landfall as a hurricane along the southern coast of Texas with continuing impacts to counties along the entire Texas coast and further inland,” Abbott said in his letter to Trump.

Abbott’s predecessor, Rick Perry, filed a major disaster declaration with then-President George W. Bush on Sept. 12, 2008, the day before Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston as a Category 2 storm with 110-mph winds.

Let me just jump in here to say: all three of those instances occurred when there was a Republican President. Coincidence? You tell me.

Back to the story. Abbott hasn’t said whether he started working on a disaster declaration before swanning off to Korea for whatever it is he was doing there. He says he left Dan Patrick in charge, and ol’ Danno says he needed to see what the damage looked like before he could get on that. (He hasn’t waited to whine about the media, which is more in his wheelhouse.)

But neither he nor Perry waited to do assessments in the past, and a former FEMA official said major disaster declarations do not need to wait for thorough on-the-ground reviews. Since Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana in 2005, governors have routinely filed major disaster declarations even before storms make landfall to ensure federal supplies and personnel get to an area fast.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement on Tuesday that the Federal Emergency Management Administration was left to draft the wording of the Beryl declaration for Texas, something state officials typically do themselves.

FEMA said in a statement on Monday that it had emergency supplies, including 500,000 meals and 800,000 liters of water, “ready to distribute at the state’s request.”

Abbott’s absence during a major weather event is unusual, said Darryl Paulson, a political scientist at the University of South Florida.

“It’s standard operating procedure for governors of a state in a natural disaster situation to cancel any trips they may have planned to stay in their state and handle what potentially could be a massive state emergency,” Paulson said.

In 2008, when Hurricane Gustav was in the Gulf of Mexico, Perry and then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist canceled plans to attend the Republican National Convention in Minnesota even though both had spent weeks planning their trips. The storm never hit Texas or Florida, but because it could have, governors from all the Gulf Coast states stayed home.

“The governor’s responsibility first is to the people of his state and protecting the people of his state,” Paulson said.

Sure would be nice to have a Governor like that, wouldn’t it?

Anyway. If you or someone you know is dealing with major damage post-Beryl, beware of scammers.

On Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a disaster declaration was approved by President Joe Biden, which will allow affected residents to apply for federal disaster aid.

Now more than ever, it is important to keep a close eye for official news from city and county officials before giving your information away for any form of aid.

Scammers have become more creative and convincing, especially after emergency situations. Scams can come in several forms, such as text messages, emails, phone calls, or simply a person knocking at your door offering disaster-recovery services.

Here are some tips on how to identify and avoid scammers based on consumer advice by the Federal Trade Commission:

A lot of this advice will sound familiar, but there’s a reason these scams work. Read and review and watch out for the bad guys.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged AT&T, blackouts, cellphones, CenterPoint, Comcast, Dan Patrick, Donald Trump, FEMA, FTC, Greg Abbott, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Ike, Internet, Joe Biden, Lina Hidalgo, Rick Perry, Texas, Xfinity | 1 Comment

Re-impeachment?

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have a hard time believing this.

A crook any way you look

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday evening said the Texas House ethics committee, which scheduled a meeting for next week, is planning to recommend impeaching him a second time.

“Next week’s House General Investigating Committee is yet another desperate attempt by the Republican establishment to impeach me,” Paxton said in a statement. “Their bitter obsession with taking me down knows no bounds, and they will stop at nothing to remove me from office.”

Paxton did not provide evidence for his claim. A Paxton spokesperson did not respond to a request for further comment.

A member of the committee not authorized to speak for the group, however, said there was “no truth whatsoever” to Paxton’s claim.

[…]

In his statement Wednesday, Paxton said a second impeachment effort was being waged by “lame-duck Republicans” who “lost their primaries thanks to my support.”

Of the 60 House Republicans who voted to impeach Paxton last year, 13 lost their primaries and another four, including Murr, did not seek reelection. Most of the defeats were Republicans who were also targeted by Gov. Greg Abbott over their opposition to private school vouchers.

Putting aside the fact that Paxton is a lying liar who lies a lot and thus should never be believed, the claim just makes no sense on its face. Why would most of those Republicans want to revisit this issue, given the electoral consequences and the fact that it would be just as dead in the Senate now as it was last year? I can believe that enough of them might think Paxton deserves to be held accountable in some form, but this would just be another opportunity for them to be abused by the base. That might be worth the effort if they had a path to success, but they clearly don’t.

The story notes the recent signs of activity in the FBI investigation of Paxton, but 1) that’s all still rumor and hearsay, 2) even if it’s true we’re a long way off from anything resembling a trial, if it ever came to that, and 3) surely the Biden Justice Department announcing indictments against Ken Paxton would just cause more Republican rallying around him. How many legislative Republicans would still be on board after that? Color me extremely skeptical.

Honestly, the more interesting question is why Paxton would even bother to air this accusation. The primaries mostly vindicated him. Dade Phelan is highly unlikely to be Speaker again. Dan Patrick had his back. What’s his angle here? I’m open to suggestion.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Andrew Murr, Attorney General, Dade Phelan, Election 2024, impeachment, Ken Paxton, primaries, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

CenterPoint’s uninspired performance

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

So what happened here?

CenterPoint Energy faced an early round of scrutiny Tuesday about whether it adequately prepared for Hurricane Beryl, as more than 1 million Houston-area customers prepared to sweat through multiple days without power.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, utility experts and local residents questioned whether the company, which manages the electricity infrastructure serving nearly all of Harris and Fort Bend counties, could have done more to reduce widespread outages and shorten restoration times.

The scrutiny follows CenterPoint leaders acknowledging that they didn’t expect Beryl to hit Houston as hard as it did Monday morning, when the Category 1 hurricane slammed into the Texas coast and brought winds approaching 100 mph to the region. A CenterPoint spokesperson said Tuesday that the company didn’t forecast the storm turning toward Greater Houston, though meteorologists widely predicted the possibility of severe winds and scattered flooding hitting the region.

About 1.4 million customers remained without power as of Tuesday evening, about 36 hours after Hurricane Beryl arrived in Greater Houston. CenterPoint officials have said most of them might not have electricity until Thursday at the earliest.

Patrick, who is serving as acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is in Asia on an economic development trip, said Tuesday that he expects the state Legislature and Public Utility Commission of Texas will review CenterPoint’s actions before the storm. The lieutenant governor said he’s reserving judgment on CenterPoint’s approach until he gets a full report on how the company planned and dispatched work crews, though he was skeptical of claims that the storm path changed.

“Any thought that people were surprised that the storm might come to Houston is shocking to me,” Patrick said. “CenterPoint will have to answer for themselves if they were prepared and positioned.”

CenterPoint leaders attempted to dispel the idea Tuesday that the company wasn’t prepared for Hurricane Beryl, pointing to the 12,000 out-of-area frontline workers laboring to restore power Tuesday. CenterPoint coordinated before the storm with about 2,500 utility crew members from outside of the region and state to jump into action, then called nearly 10,000 more after the hurricane moved through Houston.

“No storm is alike. We looked at what was projected to be the path and what the impact would be and we prepared for that,” CenterPoint Director of Communications Alyssia Oshodi said in an interview Tuesday. “But what resulted was a little bit off what we thought the path was, and much more of a significant impact than what we initially thought we were going to see.”

[…]

While online criticism and political pressure toward CenterPoint mounted Tuesday, meteorologists and engineers cautioned that storm preparedness is a complicated calculus for utility companies.

Michael Webber, an energy resources professor and chair at the University of Texas at Austin, said utilities must run a cost-benefit analysis before every severe weather event to determine how many outside utility crews to hire. Webber said he didn’t believe CenterPoint was “particularly negligent,” noting that many people were caught off-guard by the severity of the storm.

“You don’t know how bad the hurricane’s going to be, and you don’t want to have 10,000 people there if you only need 3,000, because you have to pay for it,” Webber said. “It’s a balancing act.”

Matt Lanza, editor and meteorologist at Space City Weather, said in an interview Tuesday that Beryl was far more destructive in some areas than expected. Lanza said the storm rapidly intensified at landfall and lasted longer than expected over land, producing damage more representative of a stronger Category 2 storm.

“Meteorologists had all talked about that a couple days beforehand, saying we’re really going to have some issues, particularly south of I-10,” Lanza said. “The only thing a bit surprising was the damage north of I-10. I didn’t expect to see quite as much there.”

Still, Lanza said government officials and utility providers had at least two to three days of advance notice that the storm could cause major problems for Houston. Paul Lock, manager of local government relations for CenterPoint, argued Tuesday that the storm shifted in the 24 hours before it hit Houston.

“Especially after the derecho, why wouldn’t you overly prepare for something that could be more intense,” Lanza said.

[…]

While CenterPoint fields questions about its preparations for Beryl, Webber pointed to longstanding weaknesses in Texas’ electricity infrastructure — such as old poles, wires and transformers — as an issue that will continue to make hurricane season difficult for Houstonians.

“What’s happening now is more of a preview of the future than people recognize,” said Webber. “We as a society have to grapple with the fact that we built our grid for the weather of the 1970s and now we’ve got the weather of the 2020s.”

Webber noted that CenterPoint filed a wide-ranging resiliency plan with the Texas Public Utility Commission in April, outlining more than $2 billion in updates it wants to make between 2025 and 2027. The largest share of the spending, roughly $1.5 billion, would go toward replacing utility poles and towers, rebuilding circuits and upgrading equipment near the Gulf Coast.

Funding for the updates could come from government grants or customer rate hikes, among other sources.

“There’s a fundamental reckoning we have to go through as a society,” Webber said. “That means investing more to make the system more robust, and that’s going to cost more.”

In no particular order: I’ll believe Dan Patrick’s threats to Do Something about CenterPoint when I see him actually do something, by which I mean actual oversight, with enforcement mechanisms, that doesn’t result in a bunch of costs being pushed onto the customers. Let’s just say that the track record there for our Republican state overlords is not compelling.

As for the mustering of repair workers ahead of the storm, I tend to agree with Matt Lanza here: Especially after the derecho experience, and with the clear threat of Beryl, it seems clear that it was better to overprepare. This too is something that Dan Patrick and the Legislature could address, including minimum thresholds and contingency funding to cover “over-prepared” situations.

And the point about having a 70s grid facing 2020s weather, that too could be addressed by the Lege, and also by Congress. Again, it’s one part a matter of standards and one part a matter of funding. What’s the plan here? What, ideally, would CenterPoint want to help them do better the next time?

Be all that as it may, the Chron was unimpressed.

Speaking of preparation, how about a little from CenterPoint? The company didn’t even have the foresight to stage out-of-town repair crews in Houston prior to Beryl making landfall. KHOU reported Monday

[…]

We’re also left wondering how a Category 1 storm could’ve caused more power outages in Houston than a stronger Category 2 storm 16 years ago. Is it possible that our disaster planning has regressed?

In the wake of Ike, which left around 2 million without power, some for more than two weeks, then-Mayor Bill White commissioned a task force, which included representatives from CenterPoint, to examine the cause of Houston’s power outages and outline needed improvements. Many of the recommendations, released in 2009, are as salient now as they were then, yet it’s unclear whether CenterPoint has followed through on all of them. The utility did not respond to our request for comment. evening that these crews still hadn’t arrived yet, roughly six hours after the storm exited the city. When asked why they weren’t here already, a CenterPoint spokesperson told KHOU, “Beryl made more of an impact to our area than many believed was going to happen.” Of course, anyone with a weather app on their smartphone had known for days that the Houston region was directly in the storm’s path.

Among the report’s findings was that tree limbs falling on power and service lines during high winds caused most of the grid failures during Ike. In the years since, CenterPoint trimmed tens of thousands of trees in the Houston area. Texas’ Public Utility Commission requires utilities to file annual reports about vegetation management, but, because this is Texas, doesn’t impose any specific requirements. In its 2023 filing, CenterPoint reported “proactive” vegetation management along 4,608 miles of power distribution circuits last year, with plans for another 3,500 miles in 2024, but the company didn’t specify where exactly that work was done.

White’s task force recommended building out an “intelligent” grid system with remote units attached to power poles that would allow CenterPoint to automatically re-route power where it’s needed without a technician showing up to fix it. NPR reported in 2013 that 25% of the Houston power grid was equipped with these devices, but it’s unclear if that work has been completed.

The report even floated the idea of placing power lines underground, which would protect parts of the grid from extreme wind events. This “undergrounding” process, however, can be prohibitively expensive: $35 billion for all of Houston, at least in 2009 dollars. And guess who would pay? The customers. Instead, the report recommended undergrounding lines primarily for critical facilities such as sewage treatment plants, hospitals and assisted living facilities.

Burying power lines, it should be noted, can also be problematic in a place like Houston that floods, and when lines are damaged below ground, it can take longer to identify the problem and make repairs.

Still, technology is always improving and there are other solutions out there for states that are willing to look.

Florida, frequently battered by powerful hurricanes, provides a beacon of hope. After a series of major storms in 2004 and 2005, the Florida Public Service Commission forced its utilities to adopt several measures to buttress its grid, including replacing wooden transmission poles with sturdier concrete ones, proactive tree-trimming and undergrounding some power lines. When Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm, hit the state in 2022, more than 2.1 million people lost power, yet within 24 hours roughly two-thirds of customers got it back. Within eight days, except for parts of the state where the grid needed to be rebuilt, every customer had their lights on.

I mean, when Florida is being held up as a good example for what you should be doing, you need to do better. I don’t know what else to say.

Anyway. Here’s that new CenterPoint outage map, which as of Wednesday morning didn’t have any indicators of when service might be back for a given area. All I know is that my immediate area is still in the “assessment in progress” state. Sigh. At least my mother-in-law has power back, so we have some relief. Hope you have power one way or another. The Press has more.

UPDATE: That new CenterPoint outage map has some accuracy issues. Caveat lector.

UPDATE: And since last night, my piece of the neighborhood has now moved into the green zone. Yes, I have power again, which is great and wonderful and not the norm for my immediate area. Hoping for the best for everyone who is still waiting. The map’s primary green color now means “partially energized”, which may be their way of explaining why some folks living in those areas are still in the dark.

UPDATE: Walking around the neighborhood this morning, it appears more power has been restored than the map made me think. Maybe they’re just slow in updating it, I dunno. Here’s the current status per the Chron:

About 1.2 million customers were still in the dark and without air conditioning in a triple-digit heat index two days after Hurricane Beryl ripped through Houston.

CenterPoint promised it would restore 1 million customers Wednesday; by the end of Tuesday, the company had restored about one-third of total outages. The company’s website showed 1,371,480 customers were still without power as of 4:55 a.m. Wednesday, down from more than 2.26 million during Hurricane Beryl Monday.

[…]

CenterPoint Energy plans to restore power by Sunday evening to 750,000 of the more than 1 million customers still without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, according to a release from the company.

Workers had restored power to 1 million customers by late Wednesday, and said they “are nearing completion” of work to assess damages from the hurricane and fallen trees in the area. Centerpoint said it plans to restore power to 400,000 customers by Friday night and 350,000 Saturday amid frustrations regarding the lack of power and a lack of clear communications from the company.

So much sympathy for everyone still sweating in the dark. I wish you all the best.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged Bill White, blackouts, CenterPoint, climate change, Dan Patrick, derecho, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Ike, John Whitmire, Public Utility Commission, Texas, The Lege, trees | 7 Comments

Flooding in Texas

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We have a lot. We’re going to get more. Any questions?

The combination of rising sea levels and sinking land along the Texas Gulf Coast has made the region one of the most frequently flooded in the country, according to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The frequency of flooding along the Texas Gulf Coast over the past decade averaged 10.7 days a year, compared with a national average for coastal regions of 6.8 days, the report found. The frequency is a marked increase from the 1950s, when flooding along the Gulf Coast was a relatively rare occurrence and Galveston averaged just 0.1 days of flooding per year, according to estimates compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

While coastal flooding in the United States was at one time largely linked to hurricanes and other larger storms, parts of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts will now flood even on sunny days, potentially turning what is now dry land into wetlands or open water, the EPA cautioned.

The report comes amid growing warnings from scientists that global greenhouse gas emissions threaten to further warm the planet and drive sea level rise up even faster in decades to come.

“Over the last 30 years the rates of sea level rise along the Gulf Coast have been the highest in the nation, and it’s only going to accelerate,” said William Sweet, an oceanographer at NOAA. “Beyond 2050 we’re talking beyond the goal posts, with the potential for some really big numbers if emissions don’t abate.”

While rising sea levels area are a global phenomenon, the Gulf is especially prone to flooding because the land around it is steadily subsiding, through a combination of natural compaction and the extraction of water, oil and natural gas, Sweet said.

NOAA estimates that by 2100 sea levels along the Gulf of Mexico will be between 2 and 6 feet higher than they are now, putting many of Texas’ barrier islands under water and inundating coastal towns and cities. That is likely to compromise sewage systems, roads and water systems, along with other infrastructure, potentially making many communities uninhabitable.

An earlier study suggested up to a foot of sea level rise along the Gulf Coast, but that was for everywhere, not just Texas. The study cited here is about climate change indicators and was sufficiently long that I didn’t scan through it looking for the specific data mentioned in this story. Suffice it to say, we may be seeing significant effects sooner rather than later. Might be nice to try to do something about it, I dunno. Here, here’s the song you’re thinking about now, to ease the mood a little:

I feel like we’re going to have to start rethinking our metaphors, some of this is hitting a little too close to home.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged climate change, Environmental Protection Agency, flooding, Galveston, Gulf of Mexico, NOAA, Texas, videos | 1 Comment

Judge Aguilar back on the bench

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

As expected following the dismissal of the charges against him.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct has lifted the suspension of a Harris County felony court judge after a misdemeanor assault case against him was dismissed.

The chair of the state commission on July 8 signed an order lifting Judge Frank Aguilar’s suspension, explaining that the decision came after the criminal case ended.

“The order of suspension required that such suspension remain in effect until the charge set forth in the information is dismissed…” Chair Gary Steel wrote.

Prosecutors earlier this month contended probable cause exists against Aguilar, of the 228th District Court, who was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at his Galveston property, but there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to their motion to dismiss. A judge signed off on the dismissal.

Aguilar had denied the allegations from the beginning.

See here, here, and here for the background. Not much to add, this is about as good an outcome for Judge Aguilar as he could want. I hope this is the last time he has to go through this.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged domestic violence, Frank Aguilar, Harris County, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Texas | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 8

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The thoughts and prayers of the Texas Progressive Alliance are with everyone in the path of Hurricane Beryl as we bring you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Comments Off

The power situation

Posted on July 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Rough times for CenterPoint.

Hurricane Beryl “more heavily impacted” Houston’s electric infrastructure than originally anticipated, the area’s primary electricity provider said Monday in an afternoon press release.

The Cat 1 hurricane led to widespread outages affecting more than 2.26 million customers across the Houston metro area, according to the utility’s website.

CenterPoint did not provide a timeline for service restoration in the press release, saying its crews are still assessing the damage sustained by its electric systems during the storm. Beryl pummeled Houston early Monday, causing widespread flooding, infrastructure damage and at least four deaths.

While customers along unimpacted systems may see power restored quickly, others in harder-hit areas “may experience prolonged outages and should prepare accordingly,” the company said. CenterPoint did not identify which areas should expect to remain without power.

That was from midday Monday. On Monday night, CenterPoint sent out an email saying they hoped to have at least one million customers’ power restored by the end of the day Wednesday. The Chron has more.

CenterPoint Energy estimated Monday evening that it would restore power to 1 million customers by end of day Wednesday, July 10.

[…]

CenterPoint’s outage tracker reported nearly 1.9 million customers affected — down from a peak 2.26 million– on Monday night. A spokesperson said Monday evening it restored power to nearly 285,000 customers on Monday; it is unclear how many of those are temporary restorations.

In a statement late Monday afternoon, CenterPoint said it would estimate when power would be restored only after its crews complete a damage assessment. The statement did not address how long the assessment would take; crews must also begin routing power through intact lines and clearing vegetation.

After that damage assessment, CenterPoint said it would begin publishing estimates of when power will be restored, with those projections growing more detailed over time.

At a press conference hosted by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Monday afternoon, CenterPoint official Paul Locke said in response to questions that the utility will “have a better idea sometime tomorrow (Tuesday) on the timeline (for) restoration.”

“We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat,” said Lynnae Wilson, a CenterPoint vice president, said in the company’s prepared statement. “We are laser focused on the important and time-sensitive work that lies ahead.”

The company’s statement also noted that “customers in the hardest-hit areas may experience prolonged outages and should prepare accordingly.” It did not specify the areas considered hardest-hit.

The number of homes and businesses in the dark is more than double those left powerless during the peak of May’s derecho event, which knocked 922,000 offline. It took six days to restore nearly all of those customers.

Monday morning’s outage is the largest total number of Houston area customers without electricity in CenterPoint history, topping the 2.1 million customers who lost power during Hurricane Ike in September 2008.

It took us three days to get our power back in May. I’m hoping we’re among the lucky ones this time, but we’ll see. The number of affected customers was at 1.7 million on Tuesday morning. I may or may not be able to get an update into this post before Wednesday. Hang in there.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, climate change, derecho, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Ike, Texas, trees | 13 Comments

More on the infant mortality study

Posted on July 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Mother Jones takes a closer look at a recent study that showed a significant increase in infant mortality in Texas since the passage of SB8 in 2021.

Since then, as wave after wave of post-Dobbs abortion restrictions have been enacted in deep-red states, reproductive rights advocates and journalists have—rightly—focused their attention on the effects of those draconian laws on the health and autonomy of women.

The reports of harm to pregnant patients, however, though wrenching, have been anecdotal, which has limited their ability to move the most conservative hearts and minds. Then there is an additional factor: It’s not clear that many far-right lawmakers and courts actually care about the well-being of women.

But they do claim to care about babies, which is why a new study about SB8 and infant mortality is so important. A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University has spent the two-and-a-half years since SB8 took effect crunching data on infant deaths in Texas and other states, then re-crunching it to confirm their results. They found that as women whose access to abortion was drastically curtailed by SB8 began to give birth in 2022, those infants were dying at much higher rates compared both to the period before the law took effect and to other states that didn’t have near-bans.

The likeliest reason, according to Alison Gemmill, a lead author on the study, is that more women were forced to carry what are sometimes called “medically futile” pregnancies to term. These are pregnancies in which the fetus had catastrophic genetic and other anomalies incompatible with life outside the womb. Unsurprisingly, many of those newborns quickly died. The study’s measured academic language— “Restrictive abortion policies may have important unintended consequences in terms of trauma to families and medical cost”—barely hints at the depth of suffering imposed by SB8.

I mentioned the study in passing here, but haven’t seen much written about it since then. For all the obvious and understandable focus on effects on maternal health, there are very few instances of women dying after childbirth annually, and not all such deaths may be the result of childbirth, all of which makes statistical analysis challenging. But there are a lot more infant deaths, and they are just simply the death of a child under the age of one year, so there are no questions about what “counts”. From the interview with Professor Gemmill:

Once you did your analysis, what stood out?

Overall, we found a 13 percent increase in the number of infant deaths in Texas after the law went into effect. For the rest of the United States, the increase was 2 percent. And deaths due to congenital anomalies—a fancy term for birth defects and the leading cause of infant mortality overall—rose by 23 percent in Texas, while in the rest of the US, there was a decline.

We expected to find an increase, based on the prior studies. But I was surprised at the magnitude of the change, especially the increase in babies who died from congenital anomalies.

We did our analyses in a number of different ways, and the findings were consistent. All of this very much points to a causal connection between the abortion policy and an increase in infant deaths.

Do you have an idea of what might have caused that spike in infant deaths?

No doubt, some deaths were related to complications suffered by the mother. The connection between maternal complications, for example preeclampsia [pregnancy-related hypertension], and the health of the infant is very real. But above and beyond that, there’s a more direct mechanism. Before SB8 parents who got a diagnosis of a serious fetal abnormality had the option to terminate. But after the law took effect, abortion was completely off the table. So you’re going to see more births of babies with congenital anomalies that are incompatible with life. And shortly after birth, those infants are going to die.

Could you explain what kind of birth defects you are talking about?

There are many types of congenital abnormalities, some of which are less serious. But in the case of this study, these were profound abnormalities—things like major heart defects, or vital organs that are missing or incomplete or not functioning properly. These are conditions that wouldn’t be detected before six weeks of pregnancy and once they were detected, might lead many parents to choose termination, because there’s a lot of potential suffering and pain associated with those cases, for the infant and for the families that have to go through that. But because the Texas law didn’t have an exception for fetal anomalies, they had to carry the pregnancy to term, even knowing the baby would die.

[…]

Since Dobbs, 14 states have enacted laws that are more draconian than SB8, including Texas itself, which now has a near-total ban. What would you expect to see as you begin looking at infant mortality data in states that ban abortions at any gestational age with no exceptions for fetal anomalies?

We have no reason to think that the relationship between those abortion policies and infant mortality would be any different in other states. This is something we’re looking into now.

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of anti-abortion leaders taking up the same message: abortion supporters who talk about pregnancy emergencies and life-threatening complications are just “fear-mongering.” You know, “Complications hardly ever happen, you’re exaggerating the risks.” Your study seems to show the opposite—a big rise in infant mortality is not what I’d call “fear-mongering.”

To be clear, from the maternal health standpoint, pregnancy can be very dangerous for women. While maternal death itself is rare, severe maternal complications are not nearly as rare as people might think, especially if you have risk factors. In the US, a lot of people have risk factors.

And then there are complications like miscarriage, which are a very common experience that people don’t talk about enough. About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies in the US end in miscarriage. Miscarriage management is an important issue to bring into this conversation because sometimes you need to have an induced abortion to treat that miscarriage.

Another complication that comes to mind is preterm birth. In the US, 1 in 10 babies are born prematurely, and the rate is much higher if you’re Black or live in certain states. About 1 in 12 babies are born too small. These are not rare outcomes, and they have lifelong impacts.

As you study the effects of abortion restrictions on infant health, what are the kinds of things you and your colleagues are looking at next?

We’re looking at the subgroup effects—disparities by race and other characteristics. We’re interested in infant morbidity [complications] because deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. Are abortion bans associated with changes in rates of complications like preterm birth and low birth weight? How long do infants have to stay in neonatal intensive care? For children with severe congenital anomalies, what kinds of medical interventions will they require?

And we’re looking at impacts on pregnancy care—what happens to people who show up to the clinic with life-threatening conditions in states that have bans? Did they experience severe maternal morbidity that potentially could have been avoided if they had received the care that they would have gotten prior to these bans?

There’s more, so read the rest. I’m a little surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention, but who knows why those things do or don’t happen. As the body of research increases, and undoubtedly continues to show the harmful effects of abortion bans, this will get out there.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, Alison Gemmill, infant mortality, maternal mortality, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Tuesday Beryl checkin

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve got no power but I do have Internet, so here’s a brief Beryl overview for you. We’re all fine and we do have some battery power to charge devices and keep the fridge and freezer cold, but expect things to be limited for the next couple of days.

Here’s storm coverage from TPR, Space City Weather, the Reform Austin. The main headline is that over 2 million CenterPoint customers in the Houston area are without power. Repair work will start in earnest once the storm is fully clear, so at the time of this writing there’s no estimate for how long it might take.

Mayor Whitmire is asking people to stay off the streets and shelter in place. There were a lot of downed tree branches in our neighborhood, though not as much as with the derecho. No uprooted trees that I saw, at least within a couple blocks of my house. I’m sure the earlier damage reduced the potential for this time. Maybe that will make recovery a little easier.

Finally, Greg Abbott had a Ted Cruz moment on his little junket to South Korea. Don’t hurry home, dude.

Hang in there, y’all. We will get through this.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, climate change, Corpus Christi, derecho, Greg Abbott, Gulf of Mexico, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, John Whitmire, Matagorda County, Mexico, NOAA, Texas, trees | 4 Comments

Should we appeal the zombie ReBuild lawsuit ruling?

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Controller Hollins says no. Mayor Whitmire seems likely to go ahead anyway.

Houston Controller Chris Hollins has warned Mayor John Whitmire’s administration about potential financial challenges the city could face if it were to appeal a state appellate court ruling requiring the city to put hundreds of millions more dollars toward street and drainage projects.

The yearslong lawsuit started after engineers who helped create a charter amendment affecting how Houston funded street and drainage projects sued the city, arguing that the way officials were calculating funding projects under the amendment was illegal.

In April, the 14th Court of Appeals ruled in the engineers’ favor and told the city it needed to put roughly double the amount of property taxes it currently puts toward its streets and drainage projects. Whitmire’s first budget put only $135 million in tax dollars toward drainage, but the lawsuit’s plaintiffs have said the court-ordered figure would need to be about $100 million more.

City Attorney Arturo Michel previously said the city plans to appeal the case to the Texas Supreme Court, which returned the case to a lower court last year before it found its way back to the 14th Court of Appeals. Drainage dollars will be allocated under next year’s budget in the case the court rejects the motion.

City Attorney Arturo Michel previously said the city plans to appeal the case to the Texas Supreme Court, which returned the case to a lower court last year before it found its way back to the 14th Court of Appeals. Drainage dollars will be allocated under next year’s budget in the case the court rejects the motion.

Michel has said the city wouldn’t feel a financial impact as a result of the lawsuit until the next budget in 2026. But if the city lost the lawsuit again, Hollins told the City Council on Tuesday, the city would have to pay back $110 million to $120 million immediately, creating another “big potential expense” in this year’s budget, which already is stretched thin.

“We have to be clear about in the instance that if we were to lose that lawsuit — which we’ve now lost twice in a row on it — how we cover that for the current fiscal year,” Hollins said.

Hollins also questioned Michel’s logic on the city not having to foot the bill this year.

“I haven’t seen any legal standing for that position,” Hollins said. “So we just need to be prepared and have an understanding, again, of how that cost is going to be covered on the downside scenario.”

See here and here for the background. The argument from City Attorney Arturo Michel is that if the city waits till the last minute to file, then given the likelihood of briefings and the Court’s slow pace of proceedings, there probably wouldn’t be a ruling until the end of this fiscal year. As such, any negative effects from an adverse ruling could be dealt with in the next budget. That may be true, and delaying expenditures via various technical means is a tried and true budgetary strategy in Texas (very much at the Legislative level, as Mayor Whitmire knows well), but I didn’t see an argument in there that the city had a shot at winning their appeal, which makes me a little skittish. I Am Not A Lawyer and I don’t know how these things go, but my general world view is that you keep fighting when you have a shot at winning or you have no other choice. I’m not sure that applies here. Am I missing something?

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Allen Watson, Annise Parker, Arturo Michel, Bob Jones, budget, drainage, Election 2010, Election 2018, Election 2023, flooding, Houston, John Whitmire, lawsuit, property taxes, Renew Houston, revenue cap, Supreme Court, Sylvester Turner | Comments Off

Here’s Beryl

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Hoping for the best.

Beryl is on the cusp of regaining hurricane status this evening as it lumbers its way north northwest through the western Gulf of Mexico. At this point, it’s mostly a waiting game as the outer bands of the core are almost ashore near Matagorda.

Beryl has thrown many curve balls at us during its life cycle, and the one curve tonight is whether or not its inner core has completely shed the dry air it took in yesterday off Mexico. Satellite imagery suggests it has not shed this dry air, and that may be what has kept Beryl from looking like it’s ready to take off today. The cinnamon bun look to Beryl on radar is another tell-tale sign of this. It’s organizing and strengthening; it’s just slow and steady. It is somewhat fortunate that it took in that dry air yesterday because otherwise, we would almost certainly have a rapidly intensifying hurricane approaching Texas tonight.

With the storm likely to make landfall between midnight and 3 AM, it has roughly 6 to 8 hours to do whatever it is going to do. This certainly caps the upside of intensity a bit, and it feels a little difficult to think a category 2 will happen here. Category 1? Certainly a possibility, even a likelihood. And really, it becomes mostly a technicality at that point. We still expect hurricane-force winds in the Matagorda Bay region, perhaps into Brazoria County and 10 to 20 miles inland from there. Tropical storm force winds will likely overspread much of the Houston metro. I would say widespread power outages remain a good bet, though the hope will be that the damage is cosmetic enough that restoration will take less than 5 to 7 days for most people. That’s somewhat speculative but that’s the hope.

Meanwhile, the rainfall story will be status quo, Heavy rain is expected along and to the right of Beryl’s track into Texas. This will lead to a pretty healthy flash flooding event in the Houston area and beyond. The limit is on how quickly Beryl will move, which should help cap rain totals somewhat. Still, travel will be difficult in Houston and other parts of Texas overnight and Monday morning.

The flash flooding threat will lift quickly into northeast Texas and parts of the Piney Woods tomorrow afternoon. Beryl will assist in bringing heavy rain all the way north into parts of the Midwest, including near Chicago and into Michigan and Indiana. The remnants will be absorbed into a front and system that moves into New England by Wednesday or so as well, so a flooding threat from Beryl may extend far from where it comes ashore tonight.

That was the update from last night at 9:30. By now, as you read this, you have some idea of how bad this storm is. Hopefully, its effects will be mostly in passing. Stay safe and we’ll keep an eye on the recovery.

UPDATE: Beryl made landfall near Matagorda as a Cat 1 hurricane. It could have intensified more on its way here but was limited by drier air. It’s still on its way to the Houston area at this time.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged climate change, Corpus Christi, Gulf of Mexico, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Matagorda County, Mexico, NOAA, Texas | Comments Off

Bond spending so far

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

HISD is presumably going to spend some amount of money to get its bond passed. It has already spent some money putting the bond package together.

Houston ISD has spent at least $700,000 developing and promoting its $4.4 school bond proposal that it plans to put on the ballot in November, according to district records.

HISD said in a statement that it has paid at least three different firms between February and April to “research, explore and engage the community on the need for a potential bond,” which includes conducting a facilities assessment, holding focus groups and meetings, developing websites and presentations, and analyzing enrollment and facility utilization data.

The district said it has budgeted to pay for all of its bond-related expenses through its general fund, but it did not say how much it plans to spend in total on the bond before a potential vote. If the bond is approved, the appointed Board of Managers approved a resolution that would allow HISD to reimburse itself with bond funds for any eligible bond expenses spent after April 12.

“If the Board does not decide to put the bond on the ballot, or if the voters do not approve the bond, all of these initial expenditures will inform future decision-making and drive the ongoing work to improve the facilities conditions for all students,” the district said in a statement.

First, as a matter of full disclosure, I’m friends with Mustafa Tameez, the CEO of Outreach Strategies, which is one of the three firms mentioned in this story.

The main issue I have with this story is that I don’t know how to evaluate it. It’s not surprising to me that HISD would spend some money putting the bond proposal together. That seems like a fairly normal expenditure, the sort of thing you hire consultants for since you don’t have that expertise in house. What I don’t know is how this compares to previous bond issuances. Is the amount spent on the development of this proposal in line with earlier ones, with adjustments made for inflation and the size of the proposal, or is it not? How does it compare with other large urban/suburban school district issuances? I have no idea. It would be nice to know. This is something that should be checked as a matter of course, but especially for this no-oversight administration, which has extensive transparency issues and deserves zero benefit of the doubt.

Now, assuming the bond does go forward, there will be more spending to come. HISD will spend some amount of money promoting the bond, though they are limited in what they can say. Others can set up PACs to support or oppose the bond, and it remains to be seen how much money will be spent on those efforts. With the lack of competitive races locally, this could be the big ticket item on the ballot. We’ll know for sure by mid-August.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, Election 2024, HISD, Houston, Mike Miles, New Education System, schools, Texas Education Agency | Comments Off

The answer to “who watches the watchers” is “Ken Paxton”

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t think even Molly Ivins could have found a way to make this funny.

Still a crook any way you look

For more than a year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has owed the state over $11,000 in fines for filing late campaign finance reports. Now, his office is charged with collecting the money.

The situation presents a clear conflict of interest for enforcement of the state’s campaign finance laws, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group.

“If I didn’t pay a parking ticket and incurred a fine as a penalty, most Texans would find it absurd if I also got to review my fine and have a role in deciding whether any action should be taken to collect that fine,” he said.

The Texas Ethics Commission can levy fines against candidates who miss the deadline to disclose their campaign donors. If they don’t pay, it’s up to the attorney general’s office to file suit to collect the money.

The ethics commission referred Paxton’s unpaid fines to the attorney general’s office in April, public records show. The office has not yet filed collections litigation against him and did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did his campaign.

The office, as of mid-June, has only filed one collections lawsuit this year against a state House candidate who owed more than $40,000, the fourth-highest delinquent fine in the state. Before that, the office had not filed any suits since September 2023.

[…]

Campaign finance enforcement isn’t the only state process in which the Texas attorney general’s office is its own overseer. The office’s open records division has the ultimate say over what is exempt from disclosure under state law — including when the public records requests seek information about Paxton or his agency.

The office has said in previous interviews that it institutes a firewall within the agency to make sure that all requests are treated fairly. Gutierrez said that’s not enough.

“It just isn’t realistic to expect any state agency employee, who serves at the pleasure of the person elected to lead that agency, to be able to be truly independent in making judgment calls about their boss,” Gutierrez said. “There is no firewall that would make this process workable. We simply need a different process.”

Paxton’s just ahead of the curve as usual, correctly anticipating a world in which immunity for “official acts” that were once naively seen as “crimes” is baked into the system. The man is nothing if not in the right place at the right time.

As the story notes, Paxton’s co-insurrectionist First Assistant Attorney Brent Webster also owes a $1,000 fine for campaign finance violations from 2016. That has also been referred to the AG’s office, and I’m sure they’ll get right on it now that it’s in the papers. Other states have less stupid means of enforcing campaign finance laws, such as having an independent agency be responsible for enforcement, or just not letting campaign scofflaws file for election until they resolve the complaints against them.

The Lege of course could resolve this, but of course they won’t. The traditional reason for this was that they didn’t want to empower any potential future consequences against themselves. The modern reason is that after the impeachment fiasco last year followed by the GOP primary revenge tour, there’s absolutely no reason for any Republican legislator to try to do the right thing. It’s one thing to make a sacrifice for an accomplishment, and another thing to self-immolate. I’d have some sympathy if they weren’t all complicit in creating the conditions that led to this.

Some future government that is not like this one could deal with this problem when it gains power. Perhaps a future electorate will care enough about this sort of thing to make it a driver of their voting behavior. Perhaps the most expedient route to a solution at this point is to invent a time machine, go back to when these laws were first being passed, and convince those guys to do it better, given what we now know in the future. This would also work for quite a few other pressing issues of our time. Someone please get started on that.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Brent Webster, campaign finance reform, ethics, impeachment, Ken Paxton, Texas, Texas Ethics Commission, The Lege | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for July 7

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“Gotta bring back the bootleg DVD man. This shit ain’t right.”

“If that sounds like the narcissism of small differences exemplified in the classic Emo Phillips joke — “I said ‘Die heretic!’ and I pushed him off the bridge!” — that’s because that’s exactly what it is and exactly how it still functions today.”

“If you are opposed to abortion, you should be opposed to the practice of IVF.”

HBO >> MAX. I know, I’m as shocked as you are.

RIP, Orlando Cepeda, MLB Hall of Fame outfielder mostly for the Giants and Cardinals. I only saw this after last week’s roundup was published or it would have been in there.

“As we finally reach the end of another harrowing US Supreme Court term, one overarching theme has emerged: this Court doesn’t believe in the separation of powers.”

“The truth is that Trump has been getting the criminal justice system’s “platinum door” treatment from the start. His cases are unusual in that he’s a former president. But his status and political position have helped him far more than they have hurt him.”

The state of Louisiana owes Cecil B. DeMille royalties. Or an apology. Possibly both.

“It is unclear, after Monday’s decision, what constitutional checks remain to stop any president from assuming dangerous and monarchical powers that are anathema to representative government.”

“Democrats have no affirmative responsibility to listen to columnists. They don’t have to hold a symposium about everything. Sometimes you simply need to dive into a fight even if that means setting aside some of your own doubts. Democrats don’t have anything to prove on this front. It’s just dumb and self-defeating and if you want to know why no one bothers to write editorials about why Trump should drop out, again this is why.”

“Giuliani disbarred in New York for lies about Trump’s 2020 loss”. About damn time.

“Second, it’s important to notice that Colin’s desire for Penelope isn’t even addressed. Only the implausibility of that desire is mentioned. The truth is, though, that Colin wants Penelope, right? He’s not a prisoner in this romance, right? Yet, it’s not Colin’s desire that’s being pathologized or chided at all. It’s Penelope’s body.”

“Here’s a non-comprehensive list of longstanding precedents the Supreme Court has tossed aside recently”.

RIP, Charlotte, the stingray in North Carolina who became famous for her miraculous pregnancy that probably wasn’t.

“Former Chicago Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman, head coach Joel Quenneville and assistant general manager Al MacIssac have been reinstated by the NHL more than two years after they stepped down from their roles following an investigation into their handling of sexual assault allegations made by former forward Kyle Beach.”

“What Is a Safe Amount of E. Coli for a River?”

“It is a decision of surpassing recklessness in dangerous times.”

“MTV News Lives On In Internet Archive”.

RIP, Robert Towne, Oscar-winning screenwriter for Chinatown and Oscar nominee for Shampoo.

RIP, Glen Gondo, businessman and leader in Houston’s Asian community, known as the “King of sushi”.

Target will not take your personal check any more.

Meet Nikki Hiltz, a transgender nonbinary runner who just made the US Olympics team for the women’s 1500 meter race.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Comments Off

Keeping an eye on Beryl

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From Space City Weather:

In brief: Although we cannot be certain at this time, it increasingly looks as though Tropical Storm Beryl is on track to make landfall somewhere between Corpus Christi and Matagorda Bay on Monday. For the greater Houston area this will result in higher winds, some storm surge, and heavy rainfall, with the greatest impacts likely on Monday. This post goes into what to tentatively expect, and when.

There is understandably a lot of consternation about the forecast for Beryl, which shifted considerably northward during the last day or two toward Houston. However, overnight the majority of our model guidance has stabilized on a landfall along the Coastal Bend of Texas, somewhere between Corpus Christi and Matagorda Bay.

Given the unpredictability of Beryl to date, I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical about this forecast. However there are a couple of reasons for increased confidence. Most importantly, we are only about 48 hours from landfall, and the average track error at this point is approximately 60 miles. And secondly, the models have stopped swinging about wildly and begun to consolidate on a solution.

In this post, we will discuss the effects of this “most likely” storm path on the greater Houston area, from Katy to Baytown, and Galveston to Conroe. For effects across the entire state of Texas, I would point you to The Eyewall.

That was the morning post yesterday, and there have been updates since. Go check both sites for the very latest. Even though Beryl is likely to be a fairly modest hurricane by the time it hits our coast, it’s notable because it was such a big storm so early in the season. We know how active this season is going to be, and that’s what it means. It’s not just about the number of storms, it’s about their size and intensity and frequency, and how early in the season they start and how late in the season they linger. Welcome to the future. I just hope the reservoirs get what they need. The Chron has more.

UPDATE: The Sunday morning report concludes as follow:

Beryl will be an impactful storm for the Houston region. This is far from a worst-case scenario hurricane for our area, but it will be significantly disruptive tonight and on Monday. Beginning this evening, you should shelter in your home. The worst of the winds and rains will come tonight and into Monday morning, with improving conditions thereafter. Due to the likelihood of street flooding on Monday morning, you should carefully consider any plans before noon.

Take heed.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged climate change, Corpus Christi, Gulf of Mexico, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Matagorda County, Mexico, NOAA, Texas | 3 Comments

The HISD bond committee has some feedback

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Don’t we all.

Houston ISD should provide more communication and transparency around its $4.4 billion school bond proposal, including plans for pre-K expansion and co-locations of several campuses, before a potential vote in November, according to a recent advisory committee report.

After conducting community meetings and surveys in June, the district’s 28-member Community Advisory Committee shared a report with the appointed Board of Managers last week outlining more than 20 recommendations that address “challenges, opportunities, and questions” with the largest proposed bond in Texas history.

The committee’s list of suggestions for district leaders includes conducting regular public meetings about the bond, providing transparent project timelines, establishing internal officials who can be held accountable for work on the bond and clarifying how the district will address health and safety concerns at campuses if the bond does not pass.

“This is part of the beginning stages of a conversation,” said Judith Cruz, committee co-chair and former HISD board president. “We heard loud and clear from the community … how important that transparency piece is. What we’re recommending is making sure that there’s transparent systems in place and that there’s controls based on lessons learned from previous bond recommendations.”

The bond, if approved, would allocate about $2.27 billion for expanding, rebuilding and renovating campuses with “poor facilities and learning conditions,” with 40 schools set to receive significant overhauls. Of those funds, $580 million would go toward renovating or rebuilding seven campuses to accommodate eight other campuses that would “co-locate” their students.

The committee’s report states that HISD should explain how certain schools were selected for investment, including how the seven co-locations will “address the specific needs and concerns of the affected communities.” The co-locations also should take advantage of common areas and roles while retaining each campus’ unique identity and culture, the recommendations said.

Some of their other suggestions include asking the district to incorporate student enrollment projections and pre-K classrooms in building designs. The district also should explore options to share underutilized space with community partners that could provide services to students, the report says.

The report comes as several HISD teachers, parents and community members have said they are planning to vote against the bond due, in part, to a lack of trust in state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and his reforms, such as the New Education System, with some adopting the rallying cry of “No trust. No bond.”

Let’s put a pin in all that for a minute and zoom in on one specific aspect of the bond, which Houston Landing gets into.

A Houston ISD committee advising the district on its proposed $4.4 billion bond is questioning a big piece of the project: investing about $425 million in career and technical education centers.

District officials want to build three new CTE centers and renovate the district’s current CTE center, Barbara Jordan Career Center, which students across HISD visit during the school day for industry-focused classes. The new centers, which would be spread throughout the district, would give students more access to career and technology classes and shorten travel time for students.

But HISD’s bond advisory committee, a group of 28 community members responsible for providing feedback on the district administration’s bond proposal, pushed back in recent days on the plan. Committee members suggested the $425 million could be spent on existing schools, questioned how the centers fit into HISD’s overall CTE plans and called for more details on the proposal.

The committee didn’t oppose building the CTE centers, but it recommended the district consider delaying them until a future bond. The district’s state-appointed board of managers will decide in the coming weeks whether to ask voters to approve a bond package, which would be the largest in Texas history.

“We recommended it primarily because when we looked at the number of them and the amount of the bond proceeds going to the CTE centers, it seemed to be a large amount of money, compared to other priorities of the bond,” said advisory committee co-chair Garnet Coleman, who served three decades in the Texas Legislature.

[…]

HISD administrators, including state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles, said the district doesn’t have enough CTE centers to prepare kids for high-paying and high-tech jobs in the modern workforce. Most of the district’s high schools have career-focused classes, but few offer expensive technology and specialized training often found in CTE centers.

In a presentation to HISD board members last week, Miles said HISD needs to immediately build CTE centers to give students the resources they need.

“Even if the bond passes, it’s going to be three years from that time when the first career tech ed center is up and running,” Miles said. “We’re talking about a timeline here. I don’t think our kids can wait.”

This article has a good graphic that shows how the bond money would be allocated, as currently defined. Have a look while I hit on the three things that I thought about while reading these two stories.

1. If this version of HISD had been good at “provid[ing] more communication and transparency” about literally anything, we’d have far fewer problems now than we do. I mean, among many other things Mike Miles royally sucks at communications, to the point where the only reasonable conclusion is that he just doesn’t think it’s worth his time and effort. All I can say is that if the Community Advisory Committee is any better at providing more communication and transparency from Miles and his minions, can we please throw out the Board of Managers and replace them with the CAC? Pretty please?

2. It’s not really the CAC’s problem to manage, but whoever runs the pro-bond campaign really needs to understand the depths of the “no trust, no bond” movement and figure out a way to deal with it, or I believe they will have a hard time passing it despite the electorate’s normal propensity for supporting such bonds. I have no advice to offer here. I’m not sure how much of that contingent is persuadable. I’m just saying they ignore it at their peril.

3. There’s been a debate within HISD and at large for some years now about college readiness versus vocational readiness, which is a way larger discussion than I can deal with in this post. I don’t know enough about CTEs or the reasons why HISD needs more than one of them (unlike other large neighboring districts). I’m just going to note that I find it a little weird to see Mike Miles loudly advocating for them. I know he’s the Superintendent for all of HISD, but I don’t think I’m alone in seeing him first and foremost as a turnaround specialist with a limited mission, specifically to improve the performance of a set number of schools and a set of specific student populations. His main priority is that mission, and anything else he does should be viewed through the lens of whether or not it furthers that mission or distracts from it. I’m not saying we can’t have the CTE stuff in this bond, but to me the default position should be the one taken by the CAC, which is that it would be better to defer this to a later bond. If there’s a compelling reason for it, fine, but if not it’s a distraction and should be put aside.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, CTE centers, Election 2024, Garnet Coleman, HISD, Houston, Judith Cruz, Mike Miles | 1 Comment

Sheriff’s office looking at AI solutions

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This actually sounds pretty reasonable to me.

With thousands of hours of body camera footage and non-emergency calls and not enough staff to tackle it all, Harris County Sheriff’s officials are thinking of turning to artificial intelligence to handle some of the load.

Officials with the office named finding ways they might use AI as one of their chief goals for 2024, becoming one of the agencies on the forefront of the technology in law enforcement. But while some agencies are turning to technology like facial recognition software, administrators at the sheriff’s office said they see the biggest benefits are AI’s ability to parse through vast quantities of data.

“We are exploring the potential of AI to enhance public service by facilitating faster and more efficient data retrieval on our website,” said Gary Spurger, director of information technology for the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office has not any contracts for the technology, but are testing its use in several different areas, according to Spurger. Those include using it to sort through body camera video and helping people find incarcerated family members.

Spurger gave an example of a deputy looking into a case involving more than 100 hours of body camera video to sort through. The ability to enter keywords, such as “man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt,” will help the investigator more efficiently sort through data.

But while the technology can be a good aid, it would ultimately fall on employees to make final determinations, Spurger said.

That to me is a perfectly fine use case for AI. It’s in line with how we use AI in a cybersecurity context, as a way to do refined searches of vast quantities of data with a goal of identifying a generally small number of items of much greater interest. It’s still on the human analyst to review the search results and determine what warrants further investigation. Perhaps this what HPD meant when it was talking about using “AI surveillance” in its operations, and if so then I mostly retract my concerns. AI is good for taking labor-intensive drudge work and turning it into manageable tasks. If that’s the direction they’re going, and assuming that sufficient oversight and checkpoints are in place to assure that algorithms aren’t making judgment decisions, it’s worth pursuing.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged artificial intelligence, body cameras, Ed Gonzalez, Harris County, Harris County Sheriff, HPD, Texas | Comments Off

Amarillo to vote on abortion travel ban

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I sure hope the opposition to this gets all the support it needs.

Amarillo residents will vote on a so-called abortion travel ban in November, one of the few times Texas voters will have a say on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

Supporters of the measure, who gathered 6,300 verified signatures to petition for approval of the ordinance, submitted their request to city officials to have it placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after the Amarillo City Council rejected it last month, per local rules.

Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley confirmed reports about the committee requesting to add the ordinance to the November ballot. Stanley said the request will be on the agenda for the council’s next meeting on July 9. The council will take a procedural vote, which Stanley said is expected to pass, so it will be officially placed on the ballot.

[…]

After the Amarillo City Council balked at passing the ordinance last year, residents began collecting signatures to petition to have the council consider the measure, and to place it on a local ballot if it wasn’t passed by the council. Last month, the council rejected both the original ordinance and an amended version that would have declared the city a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and prohibited using city roads and highways to seek abortion out of state.

Once the council rejected it, supporters of the ordinance were allowed to place it on the ballot for local voters.

“The people will speak and we will hear what they want,” Amarillo City Council member Tom Scherlen said. “Through our process, we will see which side wins.”

Scherlen added, “When it gets down to it, we live in a democratic society where the vote does count.”

[…]

Stanley said the council would still have a role in making sure the public is properly notified on the language of the ordinance, because there are differences from similar laws passed by other cities and counties in Texas.

In a statement, the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, a local advocacy group that has rallied against the ordinance, said the travel ban had a “clear and resounding rejection.”

“We are deeply disappointed that the misguided initiating committee has chosen to ignore the majority of Amarillo citizens and our duly elected representatives by placing this unconstitutional ban on the ballot,” the group said in a statement.

I didn’t follow this saga, mostly because I was waiting to see how it ended. That still remains to be seen. As noted in the story, similar “bans” have been passed in other cities and counties, mostly but not entirely small rural ones. Amarillo’s a conservative Republican place, but its Council’s rejection of this ordinance in the past offers some hope. My hope is that the locals who have been fighting this all along get the support and resources they need to mount the fight they’ll need to have for November. Here’s the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance webpage if you want to learn more or give them a hand.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged abortion, Amarillo, Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, Election 2024, SCOTUS, Texas | Comments Off

Domestic violence charges dismissed against Judge Frank Aguilar

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Okay.

A misdemeanor assault case that led to the suspension of a Harris County felony judge was dismissed Wednesday by Galveston County prosecutors, court records show.

Prosecutors contend probable cause exists against 228th District Court Judge Frank Aguilar, who was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at his Galveston property, but there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to their motion to dismiss. A judge signed off on the dismissal.

Aguilar’s defense attorney, Mark Diaz, declined to comment on the dismissal. Aguilar could not be reached for comment.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct suspended Aguilar from the bench with pay in February, about two weeks after a misdemeanor assault charge was filed against him. The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of his suspension or whether it could be lifted.

Aguilar was arrested Dec. 31, 2023, after his girlfriend told police that Aguilar punched her and held his foot to her neck in the 9600 block of Teichman Road. The judge countered to authorities that she was intoxicated and throwing beer cans at him. The girlfriend was charged last year in connection with an assault at Aguilar’s property, according to court records.

An affidavit from Aguilar’s girlfriend filed in January urged prosecutors to dismiss the charge, saying that she fell down the stairs and that Aguilar never hit her.

Aguilar was acquitted of another domestic violence charge in 2010.

See here and here for the background. Not a whole lot to add here, the story is what it is. I assume sometime after the holiday weekend that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct will un-suspend Judge Aguilar. As with Judge Kelli Johnson, I hope Judge Aguilar is encouraged to address any underlying issues that may have contributed to this situation, with any and all help that may be available to him.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged domestic violence, Frank Aguilar, Harris County, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Texas | 1 Comment

A small followup on the West 11th Street safety study

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This doesn’t really add much to what we had before, but I figured a little low-stakes story about something good was a thing we could use.

11th Street in the Houston Heights area became safer for everyone, including drivers, after traffic-calming measures and protected bike lanes were installed, according to a Houston Public Works (HPW) study published by Axios.

“I’d say it’s not surprising,” said Nicholas Ferenchak, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at the University of New Mexico. “We did a study of bus rapid transit system in Albuquerque … and we’re actually seeing the same thing. So, it’s not just protected bike lanes, but protected bus lanes as well — just kind of making these corridors more multimodal.”

Despite the apparent improvement and an award from the American Public Works Association, the $2.4 million 11th Street redesign could be reversed. Mayor John Whitmire announced a re-evaluation of multiple street projects in March, along with a deemphasizing of the “Vision Zero” traffic safety initiative. Ferenchak published research in 2019 finding that cities with higher rates of biking are safer for all road users, including drivers. His coauthor was Wesley Marshall, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Denver.

“I think one of the big findings was that it was the bicycling infrastructure that was sort of the biggest differentiator between the safer cities and the less safe cities,” Marshall said. “More specifically, it was the separated and protected bike infrastructure … it wasn’t just painted bike lanes, it was the better infrastructure that seemed to be one of the biggest differentiators.”

[…]

The HPW study published by Axios found that overall travel times “do not appear to have increased significantly” because of the changes, with drivers experiencing less than 10 seconds of additional waiting time during the morning and evening rush hours at the Yale Street Intersection.

“I think there’s a lot of biases that come from behind the windshield, especially when you look at bike lanes or bus lanes,” Marshall said. “The way those operate, they’re gonna seem empty to someone who’s sitting in traffic congestion … you’re going to look over at a bike lane or a bus lane and think, ‘Oh, no one’s using that. I should be over there.’ The math doesn’t support that if you’re actually counting people instead of cars.”

See here for the background. The one thing I’ll add, as someone who has lived in the Heights for over 25 years and who drives down West 11th all the damn time, is that when it was four lanes in total, those lanes were empty most of the time. You’d get a rush of traffic when the lights changed at Studewood and Heights/Yale, but usually just in one of the lanes each way. A similar two-way, four-lane-total thoroughfare like Shepherd between US59 and Allen Parkway was way, way busier, any time of the day. It’s really not a surprise that vehicular traffic on 11th is mostly unaffected.

What those extra lanes meant on 11th was that it was easy to speed like you were accelerating to enter a freeway. That’s what made crossing 11th, especially at the bike trail between Yale and Shepherd, so dangerous. That behavior is now mostly extinct, which is why it’s so much safer. This is not hard to figure out.

Anyway. Even if the bike lanes on 11th didn’t get used all that much, the Heights trail that crosses 11th does, and one no longer takes one’s life in one’s hands when one makes that crossing. And we can put a dollar value on that, as a bonus. We’re not out from under the Mayor’s thumb on this yet – who knows how long he’ll do whatever it is he’s doing about it – but we have that on our side.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged accidents, bicycles, Bike Houston, bike lanes, Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, Heights, HFD, Houston, John Whitmire, pedestrians, sidewalks, Sylvester Turner, Texas Public Information Act | Comments Off

SCOTUS to hear appeal of Texas’ anti-porn law

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The hits are already coming.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will consider a challenge to a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the ages of their visitors.

The dispute centers around Texas House Bill 1181, which was enacted in June 2023 and aims to prevent minors from accessing sexual content online. The law requires any website that publishes a certain amount of “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify that every user attempting to access the content is at least 18 years old.

Websites covered by the law must also display health warnings about the alleged psychological risks of pornography. Search engines and social media platforms are effectively exempt from the law’s requirements. Violators may face up to $10,000 per day in civil penalties, and if a minor accesses sexual material, the Texas attorney general can seek an additional $250,000 per violation.

Similar age-verification laws are in effect in seven other states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia — and are scheduled to take effect in several more in the coming months.

The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, and a group of companies that operate pornography websites challenged the Texas law before it was set to take effect on Sept. 1, 2023, arguing it infringes on their First Amendment rights. A federal district court agreed to block the law’s enforcement one day before it was set to go into force.

[…]

Texas appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which allowed the state to enforce the law while it reviewed the district court’s ruling. In March, a three-judge panel of judges upheld the injunction as to the health warnings and disclosure requirements, finding it unconstitutionally compels the adult websites’ speech.

But the panel divided 2-1 to find that the challengers were unlikely to succeed on their challenge to the age-verification portions. The majority disagreed with the district court about the level of scrutiny it applied, and said the proper standard was rational-basis review, the minimum level of scrutiny for determining the constitutionality of a law.

Applying that level of judicial scrutiny, the two judges found that the age-verification requirement is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography” and therefore doesn’t violate the First Amendment.

Judge Patrick Higginbotham dissented as to the age-verification requirements, writing that the provision “cannot be reasonably read to reach only obscene speech in the hands of minors.”

“H.B. 1181 limits access to materials that may be denied to minors but remain constitutionally protected speech for adults,” he wrote. “It follows that the law must face strict scrutiny review because it limits adults’ access to protected speech using a content-based distinction—whether that speech is harmful to minors.”

See here for the previous update and here for an overview of the problems with Texas’ law; The 19th also has a good discussion of the issue. On the plus side, SCOTUS did hand down a good ruling on the stupid social media censorship law, one that recognized the free speech implications and went in the right direction from there. That was one of several bench-slappings that SCOTUS gave to the Fifth Circuit this past term, which suggests they have some limits, on some issues, some of the time. On the other hand, well, there was everything else SCOTUS did. Six of them are handmaidens to plutocrats and Christian nationalists, and they can and do plenty of damage. We’ll just have to see what they do with this one. The Associated Press and the Trib have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged data privacy, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Free Speech Coalition, lawsuit, Pornhub, pornography, SCOTUS, social media, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Judge Kelli Johnson appears in court

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I wish her well in resolving this.

Judge Kelli Johnson

Judge Kelli Johnson, 52, entered the misdemeanor courtroom — 11 floors below her 178th District Court bench — to face an elected official like herself as hundreds of defendants have done in her place. A prosecutor’s recitation of the probable cause that led to Johnson’s June 25 arrest was delayed until outside counsel could be appointed on behalf of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, who announced plans to recuse themselves.

The judge anticipates a special prosecutor will be tapped to the case by the week’s end.

Judge Leslie Johnson, who is presiding over the jurist’s case, held off on determining whether Johnson will require random urinalysis as part of her bail conditions until a new prosecutor joins the case.

Houston police arrested Johnson in the 7600 block of Kempwood Drive on the DWI charge. The arrest followed a traffic stop in April in which a Harris County sheriff’s deputy suspected that she had been drinking alcohol but issued her a verbal warning for speeding after she passed a field sobriety test, according to body-worn camera audio from the traffic stop that the Chronicle reviewed.

She took several weeks off from the bench in May and June after the traffic stop. She has since recused herself from felony driving while intoxicated cases, court officials said.

See here for the background. Reading this story, I apparently thought she had been arrested at that traffic stop in April, making this the second time she had been busted. That’s not the case and I regret the error. Even one drunk driving arrest is a serious matter, and just because she wasn’t charged with anything at that earlier traffic stop doesn’t mean she had been driving without incident. I say this to say that I want Judge Johnson to be healthy and safe, and if there is an underlying problem that needs to be addressed, which I hope she would recognize, then she needs to prioritize that. In the meantime, the next hearing is set for August 6, at which she is not required to appear, and we should have an appointed prosecutor for the case.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged drunk driving, Harris County, Kelli Johnson, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Texas | Comments Off

A few questions about Swyft Cities and the Whoosh project

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

In my earlier post about the Whoosh elevated autonomous cable car project in North Texas, I got a comment from Leonard Lee addressing some of the concerns I had raised. He invited me to contact him if I had any further questions, and well, I had them and so I did. The following is the brief Q&A I had with Leonard Lee, who is the Head of Communications for Swyft Cities, the independent business spun off from a Google project to do transit innovation. They are the sponsors of the Whoosh project. Here’s the Q&A:

1. The story I referenced only mentioned the five North Texas cities as being candidates for this pilot program. What other cities (if any) are also under consideration?

We are in discussions with cities and real estate developments around the world, but we’re particularly excited to be working with the five cities in North Texas, because North Texas has a long history as a center of transportation technology innovation. In addition, the CERTT program (Certification of Emerging & Reliable Transportation Technology) through the North Central Texas Council of Governments is a unique program that helps facilitate and streamline our discussions with the North Texas cities that are most interested in exploring new transportation technologies including ours.

2. Are the five North Texas cities being considered as a group, or are they competing against each other? How many grants will there be in the end?

We are having separate discussions with each city to identify the best site for the first pilot project, but we are hoping that multiple projects will result from the process.

As far as grants, that’s part of our discussions with the cities. but the grant process always carries a lot of uncertainty, so although we are hopeful, there is no way of knowing in advance how many grants might be involved.

3. What is the time frame for making a decision? What is the time frame for construction?

There is no set timeline for making a decision. We want to be thorough and work with the cities to identify sites where we have the most impact to address their transportation needs. But we are hopeful that in working with the cities we will have a list of candidate sites identified by the end of this year with selection of the first pilot site by mid-2025. The next phase after that would be engineering planning. Once construction starts, build time for the first pilot system is expected to be no longer than 18-24 months.

4. What are the criteria for the success of the project, and is that solely determined by Swyft Cities or do the participants have a say in it?

Each city may have different goals for what they would like the pilot system to achieve. Some may want to ease traffic congestion in areas where cars need to be used even for short trips. Or they want to connect neighborhoods that are cut off by freeways or other obstacles. Improving access to DART transit is likely to be an objective. Others may want to improve opportunities to develop new real estate by planning in new mobility options.

5. What happens to the infrastructure after the pilot?

The pilot system is intended to the initial phase of a system that can be continually expanded over time. We see one of the benefits of our system being that it is easily expandable.

6. By the nature of this technology, I assume that it can’t be extended to a greater area in the way a bus network can. If the goal is to make mass transit work better, is the idea that there could be several discrete installations in different city hubs?

Great question. Our system is designed be very flexible in how networks can be built. We sometimes liken it to building a transportation system like Legos. It could be a series of small networks built around existing transit hubs. Or it could all be stitched together into larger networks. To extend the Lego analogy, there’s almost no limit to how large a network could be built or how it could be configured.

7. Most large scale transportation projects have to go through environmental impact reviews and other time-consuming processes. Are there similar requirements for this project, either in the pilot phase or later in a full production phase?

Absolutely. As you mention, environmental review is part of any large infrastructure project, and we working with the cities on those processes.

8. Are there other pilots planned? What would a city need to do to participate in a subsequent pilot?

A hardware pilot system will break ground in New Zealand in coming months. Our discussions with cities in North Texas are for the first U.S. pilot system.

My thanks to Leonard Lee for his (very quick!) responses to my questions. I’ll be keeping an eye on this and look forward to seeing how it turns out. Honestly, I’m a little jealous this is happening in the Metroplex and not here. Not that we’d be serious contenders given current conditions. Maybe someday down the line if this works as intended.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Arlington, cable cars, Dallas, DeSoto, Frisco, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Plano, Swyft Cities, Texas, Whoosh | Comments Off

On cover songs

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s almost certainly because of Luke Combs and his amazing cover of Tracy Chapman’s classic “Fast Car”, but cover songs are back in the conversation now. I’m an aficionado of covers, I love a good one, so this is all right up my alley. I’ve been thinking about the AV Club’s recent list of 25 Best Cover Songs since it came out. It’s fine, there’s nothing I take strong issue with, but it was missing something for me, which was a sense of discovery. The Popdose list of 100 Greatest Covers is still the go-to for me, in that I found songs I didn’t really know before (“How Soon Is Now“, “Everybody Knows“) and some versions I didn’t know (Frente’s “Bizarre Love Triangle“, Gloria Jones’ “Tainted Love“, Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”; the first is a cover, the second is the original, and the third was from a KBCO acoustic in-studio collection by the original songwriter, which I found very affecting). I didn’t get that from the AV Club, which was a disappointment even if the list overall was fine and probably had some new material to check out for people who are less obsessed with this subject.

I got less out of their companion list of 25 Worst Covers, partly because about half of the songs struck me as more novelties than anything actually serious, partly because I wasn’t particularly moved to find a new-to-me version of the songs in question. This list I did have some quibbles with – I actually kind of like the Ugly Kid Joe version of “Cat’s In The Cradle“, and I don’t understand at all their hate for Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman“, the only tune on that list that I ever heard on the radio. But whatever, to each their own.

To me, a good cover song can be a faithful reproduction of the earlier work – Phil Collins’ “You Can’t Hurry Love“, for example – or a faithful version done in a different genre – Dwight Yoakum’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” – or a reasonably faithful version of a classic done in a more contemporary style – The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly“, or Bananarama’s “Venus” – or something completely new and different – CAKE’s version of “I Will Survive” is my favorite example of this, but of course famous covers from Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” to Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” all count. I’m a sucker for bands that can do complete transformations of songs into their own style – Manhattan Transfer’s “Unchained Melody“, the Austin Lounge Lizards’ bluegrass “Brain Damage“, the Asylum Street Spankers’ “Paul Revere“, the entire catalogs of Postmodern Jukebox and Scary Pockets, and so on. And of course, we can’t talk about cover songs without mentioning Coverville, which I’ve listened to for many years now (thanks, Ginger!) and which has given me many new songs to enjoy.

Anyway. The Luke Combs cover inspired Chris Molanphy to do an episode of “Hit Parade” about the history of cover songs on the Billboard charts, and it was terrific. It also gave me that bit of discovery that I always seek, in that it was in listening to that episode that I learned that Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes” was a cover. Whatever your own history with cover songs, I say check it out. And I’ll close out with a cover that wouldn’t ever be on the charts but encapsulates much of what I say here in terms of being faithful to the original while also going someplace new:

Happy Fourth!

Posted in Music | Tagged cover songs, Coverville, videos | 2 Comments

Judge rejects Paxton’s bullying against Annunciation House

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

An El Paso district court judge has denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to shut down the Annunciation House network of migrant shelters in El Paso, saying the state was harassing its employees and guests.

In a pair of rulings issued Tuesday morning, 205th District Judge Francisco Dominguez said the AG’s office efforts to shut down the nonprofit organization on allegations that it is operating a stash house are “unenforceable,” stating those statutes are pre-empted by federal law.

“The record before this Court makes clear that the Texas Attorney General’s use of the request to examine documents from Annunciation House was a pretext to justify its harassment of Annunciation House employees and the persons seeking refuge. This Court previously expressed its concern that the Attorney General did not identify what laws he believed were being violated from the outset,” Dominguez wrote in an order granting Annunciation House’s request to block Paxton’s demand for records.

“In fact, the record before the Court now establishes that the Attorney General was seeking evidence of alleged criminal activity all along. This is outrageous and intolerable,” Dominguez wrote.

In a second ruling, Dominguez rejected Paxton’s efforts to close Annunciation House for failing to produce records on demand, calling the state’s efforts to obtain documents from Annunciation House, which has deep ties to the Catholic church, “unconstitutionally vague.”

He said the request violated the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by substantially burdening its “free exercise of religion.”

“In my heart of hearts I would hope … that this truly would be a determining action and that this would bring it to an end. That’s my hope, that would be my prayer,” Annunciation House founder and director Ruben Garcia told El Paso Matters following the ruling.

“I’m realistic enough to know it probably won’t end here and for that I’m very sorry,” Garcia said, adding that he expects the attorney general to appeal the ruling.

[…]

In his ruling, Dominguez said the actions by Paxton, a Republican, were motivated by politics.

“As the top law enforcement officer of the State of Texas, the Attorney General has a duty to uphold all laws, not just selectively interpret or misuse those that can be manipulated to advance his own personal beliefs or political agenda,” the judge wrote.

See here for the previous post. That’s a strong ruling, but as we are all painfully aware, what ultimately matters is what the Supreme Court thinks. I assume this matter will get there, and while our State Supreme Court has not been out there actively strangling democracy, it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately. So, one and a half cheers for this ruling, pending further updates.

The Chron adds on:

Dominguez granted Annunciation House’s motion for summary judgment against Paxton on Monday and ruled that any subpoenas served by the attorney general on Annunciation House over the next two years must be filed with the court.

The judge denied Paxton’s counterclaim, which he wrote violates the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by “substantially burdening Annunciation House’s free exercise of religion and failing to use the ‘least restrictive means’ of securing compliance with the law.”

[…]

Dominguez’s decision comes as religious leaders, including a top U.S. bishop, have raised concerns that government officials’ targeting of faith-based border work, including Paxton’s attempts to shut down Annunciation House, infringe on religious freedom.

Republicans have grown increasingly critical of nongovernmental organizations along the border that have long assisted migrants arriving in the U.S. The groups, which often receive federal funding, help border communities manage new arrivals by taking asylum-seekers off the streets and helping them find transportation to other parts of the state and country.

“We obviously want to respect the law, but if that liberty is restricted, then yes, our religious liberty is being restricted because we can’t put into practice the precepts of the Gospel,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said during a news conference last month.

I dunno, man, maybe people who call themselves Catholic, especially those who call themselves Catholic and have been voting Republican, might find a reason to be offended by this and perhaps oppose Ken Paxton when he’s next on a ballot. The whole “impinging on religious freedom” thing might be a problem, maybe? I’m just spitballing here. The Trib has more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged Annunciation House, border, El Paso, immigration, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Ruben Garcia, Texas, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops | Comments Off

More on “No trust, no bond”

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m still inclined to vote for the HISD bond, but I’m listening to the opposition and am very interested in seeing what traction they can get.

Several HISD teachers, parents and community members say they are planning to cast their first-ever vote against a school bond if HISD puts the $4.4 billion school bond package developed under state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles on the ballot in November.

Critics recognize that this is one of their most powerful opportunities to voice their opposition to the state takeover, the replacement of HISD’s elected board members, concerns over financial accountability and a lack of trust in district leaders, especially Miles.

Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said the largest teachers’ union in HISD has never opposed any of the district’s past four school bond proposals — until now. She, like other bond opponents, have adopted the rallying cry of “No trust. No bond,” to stress to district leaders that much more must be done before they’d ever consider voting for the proposal.

“This is a very difficult position for the union to take and for teachers to take,” Anderson said. “We know that our schools need work. We know that, but because our collective voices and democracy have been stripped away from us, this is our only chance to express our disapproval at the direction that our district is going in.”

The full scope of the pushback to the bond in the HISD community, including if it will be able to swing the election, remains unclear. According to HISD, 69% of voters said they would support a bond with no tax rate increase in a poll from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, which was taken before the district publicly unveiled its bond proposal in May.

However, with more than three months until the potential vote, bond opponents say they’re working to raise awareness of their position and convince enough people to vote down the district’s proposal later this year through actions like regular chants at board meetings, selling anti-Miles yard signs and even creating public yarn installations advocating against the bond.

I’ve said my piece about the merits of the bond and of opposing it, so I’ll skip that here. I’m interested in a couple of other things. One is the possibility that bond opponents might try to bargain their way towards supporting it, or at least not actively opposing it. I don’t know who might organize such an effort (if indeed one exists; I’m going way out on a limb here), I have no idea what they might ask for – I think we can agree that “Mike Miles is given a one-way bus ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska” is not on the table – and I have no clue who might be empowered to grant them any of their wishes. I mean, other than that, it makes sense to try, because what have you got to lose? Like I said, I’m sure I’m reading way too much into a sentence that isn’t even Jackie Anderson’s own words, but it’s my blog and I’ll engage in a flight of fancy if I want to.

Second, I wonder how many times that one Kinder Institute poll, taken before the bond was authorized, will be cited as a factual level of support for it going forward. HISD bonds have done quite well in the recent past – more on that in a moment – and under normal circumstances I’d expect this one to pass easily. These are not normal circumstances. We should be clear about that.

How popular have HISD bond issuances been? Here are the results from the last four such elections:


1998: 142,233 For, 55,155 Against, 72.1% For
2002: 133,454 For, 67,677 Against, 63.4% For
2007:  43,657 For, 41,631 Against, 51.2% For
2012: 217,319 For, 97,787 Against, 69.0% For

Note the four-to-five year gap in between them before now. The lack of any bond issuance since 2012 is very much an anomaly, and is a big part of the reason why this one is as needed as it is.

As for the four elections, there were three easy wins, all in relatively high turnout environments thanks to the year in which they occurred. The outlier was the one that was controversial at the time, for reasons I don’t care to detail in this post. Go peruse my Election 2007 archives – there was precious little happening on the ballot that year – and see for yourself. (Fun fact, one of the main opponents of that bond was then-State Rep. Sylvester Turner.) That Kinder poll may be meaningless, but 69% support is not out of line with historic precedent. The question is whether this year’s referendum is anything like the ones of the past. I say an emphatic No to that, but that doesn’t mean the result will be any different.

One more thing to consider, via Campos:

I have yet to see any organized pro-bond campaign activity or anti-bond campaign activity. I assume the pro-bond forces will have the funds to conduct a campaign. I wonder if the anti-bond folks will have funds.

It’s a little early for that, but there will be a pro-bond campaign. There always is. If those who oppose the bond are truly serious about it, they will raise money, form a PAC and a campaign, and mount a real effort to defeat it. That remains to be seen.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, Election 1998, Election 2002, Election 2007, Election 2012, Election 2024, HFT, HISD, Houston, Jackie Anderson, Mike Miles, New Education System, polls, schools, Sylvester Turner, Texas Education Agency | 4 Comments

Future doctor shortage update

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Still going in a worrying direction.

According to new statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges, for the second year in a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.

Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, state fights over abortion access have created plenty of uncertainty for pregnant patients and their doctors. But that uncertainty has also bled into the world of medical education, forcing some new doctors to factor state abortion laws into their decisions about where to begin their careers.

Fourteen states, primarily in the Midwest and South, have banned nearly all abortions. The new analysis by the AAMC — a preliminary copy of which was exclusively reviewed by KFF Health News before its public release — found that the number of applicants to residency programs in states with near-total abortion bans declined by 4.2%, compared with a 0.6% drop in states where abortion remains legal.

Notably, the AAMC’s findings illuminate the broader problems abortion bans can create for a state’s medical community, particularly in an era of provider shortages: The organization tracked a larger decrease in interest in residencies in states with abortion restrictions not only among those in specialties most likely to treat pregnant patients, like OB-GYNs and emergency room doctors, but also among aspiring doctors in other specialties.

“It should be concerning for states with severe restrictions on reproductive rights that so many new physicians — across specialties — are choosing to apply to other states for training instead,” wrote Atul Grover, executive director of the AAMC’s Research and Action Institute.

The AAMC analysis found the number of applicants to OB-GYN residency programs in abortion ban states dropped by 6.7%, compared with a 0.4% increase in states where abortion remains legal. For internal medicine, the drop observed in abortion ban states was over five times as much as in states where abortion is legal.

In its analysis, the AAMC said an ongoing decline in interest in ban states among new doctors ultimately “may negatively affect access to care in those states.”

Jack Resneck Jr., immediate past president of the American Medical Association, said the data demonstrates yet another consequence of the post-Roe v. Wade era.

The AAMC analysis notes that even in states with abortion bans, residency programs are filling their positions — mostly because there are more graduating medical students in the U.S. and abroad than there are residency slots.

Still, Resneck said, “we’re extraordinarily worried.” For example, physicians without adequate abortion training may not be able to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or potential complications such as infection or hemorrhaging that could stem from pregnancy loss.

See here, here, here, and here for more. I recommend you go look at the linked article, because you can search by state and by specialty. It’s not just OB/GYNs who are not coming to Texas, pediatrics and other specialties are also falling behind. This is a slow-burn problem, one that may not become acute for a generation, when many of the current villains will have shuffled off the stage, but it’s coming, and if nothing changes it’s going to get bad. It already is bad for poorer patients and people in rural areas. It’ll catch up to us affluent city folks soon enough. Don’t say we weren’t warned.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, Kaiser Family Foundation, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 1

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone’s dogs a safe and quiet Fourth as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Comments Off

SCOTUS keeps Texas’ stupid social media censorship law blocked

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The US Supreme Court did an awful lot of Very Bad Things this past week. You don’t need me to get into that, the entire Internet is screaming about it, with much justification. They also did at least one not so bad thing, and that was this.

The U.S. Supreme Court sent the legal challenge to a Texas social media law back to a lower court, sidestepping a landmark ruling for now.

The legal battle centers on Texas’ law preventing large social media companies from censoring users’ content based on their political viewpoints.

On Monday, the Court said the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not properly analyzed the full scope of the legal challenge and redirected the case back to the lower court for relitigation. The Supreme Court sent a similar Florida case back to the Eleventh Circuit. Both states’ laws will remain blocked while the challenge continues.

Writing for the majority, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said neither court had fully considered how far the Florida and Texas laws could reach.

“The question in such a case is whether a law’s unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones,” Kagan wrote. “To make that judgment, a court must determine a law’s full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other. Neither court performed that necessary inquiry.”

Texas’ 2021 law, called House Bill 20, was championed by Republican state leaders in an effort to combat a perceived anti-conservative bias on social media platforms — a sentiment further spurred by social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, suspending former president Donald Trump from their platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol.

The suit was filed by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association who argued that social media have a First Amendment right to manage the content on their platforms and select the types of speech they deem appropriate — similar to curated publishing platforms like newspapers. And tech companies say that allowing government control over their content could lead to a surge of misinformation, which would be detrimental to users.

In a Monday morning statement, CCIA President Matt Schruers said he was pleased that the court seemed to recognize the First Amendment challenges in Texas and Florida’s social media laws.

“We are encouraged that a majority of the Court has made clear that the government cannot tilt public debate in its favored direction,” the statement said. “There is nothing more Orwellian than government attempting to dictate what speech should be carried, whether it is a newspaper or a social media site.”

See here for the previous update. I’ll leave it to Rick Hasen to explain what this means.

As I first explained at Slate back in February, Moody concerns a pair of laws, one from Florida and one from Texas, that regulate different aspects of social media. Among the most important provisions in each of the laws is a limit on content moderation. The state laws differ in their particulars, but both were motivated by the removal of Donald Trump from major social media platforms after the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and a general complaint that the platforms were unfairly “censoring” conservative voices on their platforms. A coalition of internet companies, NetChoice, challenged the laws claiming they violated the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit put key parts of the Florida law on hold but the 5th Circuit allowed Texas’ law to go forward pending further proceedings—an action the Supreme Court reversed as it considered these issues.

In Monday’s opinion in Moody, the Supreme Court was unanimous in holding that the way that NetChoice litigated its cases was not proper. It had brought a “facial” challenge to the law under the First Amendment, which essentially requires showing that in almost any way that the state might try to enforce its law, doing so would be unconstitutional. The justices agreed that these laws were very complex and the issues were not fully developed. As Justice Elena Kagan explained for the majority, the cases were litigated as if it was just about whether Facebook could curate its news feed. But it was not clear how this law might apply to Gmail, or Etsy, or Venmo. The case is going back for better legal and factual development to both courts.

That’s where the agreement among the justices ended. Speaking for herself, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Sonia Sotomayor, Kagan gave guidance on where the 5th Circuit went wrong in its First Amendment analysis in considering the constitutionality of the Texas content moderation decisions. None of this was necessary for the decision (in legal parlance, it was “dicta”), but the court addressed the issue because “[i]f we said nothing about those views, the court presumably would repeat them when it next considers NetChoice’s challenge.” The other justices would not have reached the First Amendment merits, although Alito expressed some serious reservations about the analysis.

Kagan’s guidance relied heavily on a 1974 case, Miami Herald v. Tornillo, in which the court held unconstitutional a Florida law that required newspapers to print the reply of someone who had been criticized in the newspaper. The court held that private actors like newspapers have every right under the First Amendment to include or exclude content as they see fit.

To Kagan, social media companies in moderating content were just like newspapers. She said that curating content is expressive activity protected by the First Amendment and that includes the decision to exclude content and that this principle is true even if most content is allowed and just a little bit is excluded. Further, when it comes to laws regulating speech, “the government cannot get its way just by asserting an interest in improving, or better balancing, the marketplace of ideas.” Were the rule otherwise, Kagan asserted, the platforms could be forced by Texas law to carry bad content including posts that “support Nazi ideology; advocate for terrorism; espouse racism, Islamophobia, or anti-Semitism; glorify rape or other gender-based violence; encourage teenage suicide and self-injury; discourage the use of vaccines; advise phony treatments for diseases; [and] advance false claims of election fraud.”

I for one appreciate Justice Kagan’s list of horrors; I hope they left a particularly bad taste in Ken Paxton’s mouth. The main point here is that SCOTUS said that social media sites are more like newspapers than telephones, which is what Texas and Florida wanted. That doesn’t always turn out for the best, as the site formerly known as Twitter clearly shows, but on balance it’s the right answer. It doesn’t come close to making up for the raw sewage that SCOTUS spewed at us recently, but it’s what we have.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Computer and Communications Industry Association, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Facebook, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Florida, Google, Greg Abbott, Instagram, lawsuit, NetChoice, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege, Twitter, YouTube | 1 Comment

Are we really gonna take this show on the road?

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Color me skeptical.

The seismic changes seen by Monsiváis’ son and the 180,000-plus students throughout HISD this school year are the result of the most dramatic state takeover of a school district in American history, a grand experiment that could reshape public education across Texas and the nation.

In stunningly swift fashion, HISD’s state-appointed superintendent and school board have redesigned teaching and learning across the district, sought to tie teacher pay more closely to student test scores, boosted some teacher salaries by tens of thousands of dollars and slashed spending on many non-classroom expenses.

The changes in HISD rival some of the most significant shake-ups to a public school system ever, yet they’ve received minimal national media attention to date.

Still, district leaders, citing private conversations with researchers and superintendents, said education leaders throughout the U.S. are following the HISD efforts to see whether they may be worth replicating. Adding to the intrigue: Texas lawmakers have looked in recent years to policies used by HISD’s new superintendent, former Dallas Independent School District chief Mike Miles, as inspiration for statewide legislation.

“I think people are watching and waiting,” HISD Board Secretary Angela Lemond Flowers said. “We’re stepping out there big, and it’s important because we are a big district and we have lots of students that we need to make sure we’re serving better. Not in the next generation. Not in five years. Like, immediately.”

Miles, the chief architect of HISD’s new blueprint, has pointed to early successes — including strong improvement in state test scores this year — as evidence that his model works where others have failed. For decades, Black and Latino children in urban school districts like Houston have trailed well behind wealthier and white students in school.

Miles’ critics, however, have blasted his approach as an unproven, unwanted siege on the district orchestrated by Texas Republicans. They cite high teacher turnover headed into the next school year and long-term questions about the affordability of Miles’ plans as indicators the effort may be doomed.

Regardless of whether the HISD intervention becomes a shining success, a historic failure or something in between, it could help answer one of the most pressing questions in education: Can a large, urban public school district dramatically raise student achievement and shrink decades-old performance gaps, ultimately helping to close America’s class divide?

I think you know what my level of doubt is at this point, so I won’t belabor this. It occurs to me just how effing funny it is to see the solution that Miles has presented is basically “spend a bunch more money per student” – I mean, after so many years of being told that throwing money at the problem is not the right answer, even I almost missed the obvious point that Miles is throwing a ton of money at the problem. He’s doing it in an entirely unsustainable way, of course, because the state has been unwilling and unable to sustain public school budgets, which like everything else have been affected by cost increases. He’s also been singularly unwilling to name that problem, for fear of disturbing his overlords or something, I have no idea. But if one result of all this is that the Lege ponies up a shitload more money for school districts like HISD so they can all get the Full Mike Miles Experience, I’ll have to admit that this all had some value to it. And then I will promptly expire from lack of oxygen as I am convulsed in bitter laughter.

By the way, just curious here, has anyone else noticed that Miles has made his current budget work in part by shifting a bunch of money from the already-successful non-NES schools to the NES schools? If the key to the NES schools’ success is the increase in funding they have received, then doesn’t that foretell worse outcomes for those non-NES schools? Are we going to be happy if there’s a commensurate number of schools dropping from A and B ratings to C as there are schools moving up from D and F to C? I’ll leave the socialism jokes to someone whose brain isn’t already falling out of his ears.

Whether this turns into a sustainable experiment or not, we’ll need more than a year or two’s data to know. The story helpfully drops a Michelle Rhee reference for those of us old enough to remember the turn of the 2010s. And before we even get to next year’s STAAR results, we still have to ensure that HISD’s enrollment doesn’t drop by some double-digit percentage, as parents who have the means to not have to deal with Mike Miles’ bullshit hit the exits, and we have to ensure that enough teachers with something resembling a qualification show up to run the scripts. I sure hope we get something positive out of this mess, because it’s been a whole lot of chaos and disruption so far. But as I said up front, I remain skeptical.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Michelle Rhee, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, New Education System, Placido Gomez, school finance, schools, STAAR, Sue Deigaard, Texas, Texas Education Agency, The Lege | 1 Comment

Whoosh!

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Okay, this is a new one.

Transportation planners have a new idea about how to take on congestion as Dallas-Fort Worth’s population grows: elevated autonomous cable cars that riders can hail on demand.

Five North Texas cities — Dallas, Arlington, Plano, Frisco and DeSoto — are vying to become the first in the U.S. to pilot the novel transportation system known as Whoosh. The system consists of electric vehicles that resemble conventional aerial gondolas but use autonomous technology to move along an elevated network of fixed cables and rails. The concept comes from Swyft Cities, a project that was born at Google but was spun out as an independent business aimed at innovating transit.

The company has been working with the North Central Texas Council of Governments to identify potential sites. Swyft Cities will choose which would be the best fit for the project’s first run.

[…]

Like buses, Whoosh vehicles would have predetermined stops on the ground, with the system initially covering about a three-mile radius — more stops could be added later. But unlike buses or trains, the on-demand nature means it would bypass all the existing stops to take riders directly to their designated one. Since it’s elevated, it also bypasses, rather than competing with, road traffic.

While each potential site has unique needs, Whoosh is a good fit for mid-density areas like the edges of a downtown — places that lack good last-mile transit solutions.

“The core of downtown is probably pretty well served by other modes, but there’s a whole lot places outside of downtown Dallas and Fort Worth that doesn’t have good solutions,” said Jeral Poskey, Swyft Cities CEO.

Swyft Cities chose North Texas because of an NCTCOG program that looks to attract new transit technology to the region and connect them with local governments. Staff at the transportation planning agency vet the companies first, making sure they offer potential solutions to some of DFW’s transportation challenges.

While cost depends on the specifications of each system, the buildout of a Whoosh system should take around $30–$50 million. Cities are in the process of applying for funding grants. Those should come to fruition around this time next year, along with system plans.

You can look at the Swyft Cities webpage for a bunch of whiz-bang pictures and whatnot. I couldn’t find any news stories about other locations that may be looking to kick the tires (as it were) on these things, so I can’t give you much in terms of how hot this is. It looks cool, but it also looks like a lot of infrastructure that I have a hard time believing would come in at that price tag. You’d also need some awfully wide sidewalks or other available surface-level space to put up those gondolas. Probably not a surprise that Houston is not on that short list for possible beta testers, and that’s without taking how utterly non–visionary our current Metro Board is. I have no idea if this is the actual Next Big Thing or a bunch of hyperloop-level nonsense, but at least it’s something other than building more road lanes. I’ll buy the hope, at least for now.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Arlington, cable cars, Dallas, DeSoto, Frisco, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Plano, Swyft Cities, Texas, Whoosh | 3 Comments

Lawsuit filed over Angleton ISD at large districts

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Add this one to the list.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that Angleton ISD is violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by denying fair representation to Hispanic voters by using an at-large system to elect all of its trustees.

Brewer Storefront, the advocacy arm of Dallas-based Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, filed the lawsuit on behalf of plaintiff Laura Jaso, claiming the district “denies Hispanic voters a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choosing to represent their communities.” Brewer Storefront brought similar lawsuits against several school districts, most recently against Humble ISD last month.

The 6,885-student district in Brazoria County currently uses an at-large method to elect school board members, rather than dividing the district into geographic sections. As a solution, the lawsuit suggests Angleton ISD switch to a system that would elect trustees from one or more properly apportioned single-member electoral districts that could be drawn in which the Hispanic Citizen Voting Age Population would constitute a majority of eligible voters.

The lawsuit points to a lack of diversity among Angleton ISD’s school board and teachers and alleges that, based on the district’s demographics, there should be at least one Hispanic board member. Students of color comprise 67% of the district’s student body, and about 52% of those are Hispanic.

Jaso, a Mexican American, ran for Position 6 on the AISD Board of Trustees in May 2021, but lost to Heather Brewer, a white candidate.

“Hispanic candidates who run for the Board are disadvantaged due to the at-large voting system, which illegally dilutes the votes of ethnic minorities,” the lawsuit reads. “Hispanic children, who are the majority of AISD students, are failed by this system and the Board.”

The lawsuit cites also “an alarming achievement gap” within Angleton ISD as only 46% of Hispanic students, 39% of African American students and 40% of English learners meeting grade level across all subjects and grades for the 2022-23 school year compared to 60% of their white counterparts.

“Unfortunately, the Board’s fiscal and policy decisions have resulted in a significant performance gap between white and minority students,” the lawsuit reads.

Other similar lawsuits involve Spring Branch, Katy, and Humble ISDs. Many other area ISDs have At Large only members, with similar issues of representation. All of those lawsuits, as well as the one against Houston City Council are ongoing, and all of them are dependent on the Voting Rights Act in a way that may be undercut by SCOTUS at any time. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Angleton ISD, lawsuit, SCOTUS, single member districts, Texas, Voting Rights Act | 2 Comments

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