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Primary runoff results: Harris County

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

So this happened:

That was quite the storm, though after what we’ve already experienced just this month it’s not as impressive as it might have been. It was even worse in North Texas, where some polls stayed open until 9 as a result.

Be that as it may, over 300K CenterPoint customers were without power yesterday afternoon (we were thankfully not among them), and as of that disturbance about 7K people had voted. While it was no doubt a pain in the butt for anyone trying to vote at that time, the number of people doing so was probably small.

As of 10 PM, with about a quarter of the Tuesday votes in, I feel confident saying that Lauren Simmons will win in HD146, Annette Ramirez will win Tax Assessor, Velda Faulkner will oust Justice Jerry Zimmerer on the 14th Court of Appeals, Vivian King will win for Criminal District Court 486, and Jerome Moore will win for Constable Precinct 5. Jarvis Johnson was leading for SD15 and Charlene Ward Johnson was leading for HD139, but in both cases the margin was close enough that it could change by morning.

And that’s where I’m going to leave it for tonight. I’ll update in the morning.

UPDATE: And overnight, Molly Cook has taken the lead in SD15. That article itself is a bit out of date, as Cook’s lead grew all the way to 74 votes as the last voting centers came in. Meanwhile, Charlene Ward Johnson maintained her lead in HD139.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Angeanette Thibodeaux, Annette Ramirez, Charlene Ward Johnson, Constable, Democratic primary, Desiree Broadnax, Election 2024, endorsements, Gemayel Haynes, Harris County Tax Assessor, HD139, HD146, interviews, Jarvis Johnson, Jerome Moore, Jerry Rodriguez, Jerry Zimmerer, judicial races, Lauren Ashley Simmons, Molly Cook, Q&A, runoff, SD15, Senate, Shawn Thierry, Texas, The Lege, Velda Faulkner, Vivian King | Comments Off

Primary runoff results: Statewide

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Unlike Harris County, most of the races of interest here were on the Republican side. We’ll start with the race against House Speaker Dade Phelan, which the Speaker has won by a narrow margin.

Rep. Dade Phelan

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top electoral target for a far-right faction of Republicans intent on controlling the Legislature, declared victory Tuesday over a well-funded challenger endorsed by Donald Trump and his allies.

Phelan defeated former Orange County Republican Party chairman David Covey, who also had the backing of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton and former Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi. In doing so, he avoided the ignominious fate of becoming the first House speaker to lose a primary in 52 years.

With all precincts reporting, Phelan was up 366 votes — within the margin that Covey can call for a recount.

Phelan, 48, who has seen his popularity plummet among Republicans since he backed the impeachment of Paxton on corruption and bribery charges exactly one year and one day ago, was defiant in his victory speech at JW’s Patio in Beaumont.

“I will be your state rep for HD 21 and I will be your speaker for the Texas House in 2025,” Phelan said to a raucous crowd of more than 100 supporters. “This was a true grassroots effort — not the fake grassroots.”

I’m sure there will be a recount, and the way these jackals are I won’t be surprised if there’s a lawsuit – I mean, at this point, why not? – but for now at least, Phelan has avoided ignominy.

The pro-voucher ghouls made more progress.

Three House Republicans who opposed school vouchers last fall were losing through early returns in their primary runoffs Tuesday, putting Gov. Greg Abbott on track to secure a tentative majority in the lower chamber on his signature issue.

With ballots still being counted across the state, anti-voucher GOP state Reps. DeWayne Burns of Cleburne, Justin Holland of Rockwall and John Kuempel of Seguin were losing to their runoff foes. All three would need to dramatically reverse course in election day returns to overcome their early deficits.

A fourth GOP voucher holdout, state Rep. Gary VanDeaver, R-New Boston, led runoff opponent Chris Spencer through early returns and a fraction of election day results.

By Abbott’s count, voucher supporters headed into Tuesday’s runoff needing to net just two votes to gain a majority in the House, the chamber where a firewall of Democrats and rural Republicans has shot down past attempts to provide taxpayer funds for private school tuition.

[…]

Ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, voucher supporters had already knocked off six of the GOP holdouts. They were also poised to nominate at least four pro-voucher candidates to fill seats vacated by retiring voucher opponents, netting a total of 10 seats before the overtime round.

Another seat that was vacant at the time of last fall’s voucher vote is all but certain to be filled by a pro-voucher member next year. That put voucher supporters at 74 votes in the 150-member chamber heading into Tuesday — assuming all pro-voucher Republicans hold onto their seats in the November general election.

Most of Texas’ House districts have been drawn to heavily favor Democrats or Republicans, making most seats unlikely to change hands this fall. But Democrats are eyeing at least one seat Abbott is counting as a voucher pickup: San Antonio’s House District 121, where state Rep. Steve Allison lost to an Abbott-backed primary challenger, Marc LaHood, in March.

You know what I think about that. If we’re not reaching out to the Republicans that Abbott screwed over, and we’re not contesting as many of these seats as is even marginally plausible, I don’t know what we’re doing.

Finally, State Rep. Craig Goldman won in CD12, and Rep. Tony Gonzales appears to have held on in CD23. Now tell us more about that laundry list, Tony.

Not really anything interesting on the Dem side outside of Harris County. I’ll do that in the next post.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged CD12, CD23, Congress, Craig Goldman, Dade Phelan, DeWayne Burns, Election 2024, Gary VanDeaver, Greg Abbott, HD121, HD21, Marc LaHood, primaries, runoff, Speaker's race, Stephanie Klick, Steve Allison, Texas, The Lege, Tony Gonzales, vouchers | Comments Off

Houston will get some World Baseball Classic games

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Very cool.

Houston will be one of four host cities for the World Baseball Classic when the international tournament is next played in 2026, Major League Baseball announced on Thursday.

Minute Maid Park will host group stage games and a quarterfinal round, MLB announced. Miami, Tokyo and San Juan, Puerto Rico, will also host group stage games. Miami will host the other quarterfinal, the semifinals and the final at Loan Depot Park, home of the Marlins.

The tournament is scheduled for March 2026. Houston will be a WBC host city for the first time. This will be the sixth iteration of the WBC, which was introduced in 2006.

“We are excited and honored to be hosting World Baseball Classic matchups for the first time,” Astros owner Jim Crane said in a statement. “Houston is a global city with the best baseball fans, and we are proud to welcome fans from across the globe to watch international competition at Minute Maid Park.”

See here for the background. I’m definitely going to want to get some tickets. Sports-wise, at least, 2026 is shaping up to be a great year for Houston, with this and the FIFA World Cup coming. I’m looking forward to it. CultureMap has more.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged Astros, Baseball, FIFA, Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, Houston, Minute Maid Park, World Baseball Classic, World Cup | 4 Comments

We’re just not allowed to have close elections anymore

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

That’s my takeaway from this.

A judge’s decision to order a new election in a close Harris County race from 2022 is putting election officials statewide on notice: Any type of error — large or small — has the potential to trigger a challenge and disqualify votes if the margins are narrow enough.

Some of the problems that prompted the judge’s order occur frequently around the state, especially in high-turnout elections, election officials told Votebeat. With the prospect of election outcomes being negated because of paperwork errors, they said, there’s now added pressure to train election workers and strictly follow procedure.

“We have been stressing the importance of paperwork needing to be filled out properly,” said Trudy Hancock, elections administrator in Brazos County. “We emphasize to our workers how important this is, that we get public records requests, and that we’re already being questioned about why something wasn’t done properly. We’re telling our workers that people are looking at this.”

In the Harris County judicial race in question, the original margin of victory was 449 votes. Judge David Peeples ruled that there were enough questionable votes to put the true outcome in doubt.

Peeples, a visiting judge from Bexar County who had upheld Harris County election results against other challenges, found that more than a thousand votes in Harris should not have been counted because, in most cases, there were deficiencies with two types of forms that some voters have to fill out at the polls.

One is a statement of residence form, filled out by voters who tell election workers at polling places that they have moved. The other is a reasonable-impediment declaration form, filled out by voters who don’t have proper identification and must explain why by listing an allowable reason.

In some cases, the voters filled out the forms with information that the judge found should have rendered them ineligible to vote. For example, the judge found that hundreds of voters wrote on the statement of residence form that they did not actually live in the county. Other forms were technically deficient because they were incomplete — in some cases entirely blank — or missing the signatures of the polling location supervisors, which are required.

Half a dozen election officials counties across the state told Votebeat that the problems with the forms are likely tied to insufficient poll worker training, which would be exacerbated by the loss of experienced poll workers. In almost every county, such problems loom especially large during midterm and presidential elections, when turnout is high.

“We need to make sure those forms are completed, that they’re reviewed before the voter is processed, because that didn’t happen in these cases,” said Bruce Sherbet, the elections administrator in Collin County.

[…]

To avoid being put on [the suspense] list, voters should update their voter registration information when they move. But many voters cast a ballot only every two years — during midterm and presidential elections — and they don’t always update their voter registration information promptly.

That leaves election judges and clerks at the polling site to deal with address discrepancies and review the forms. If it’s a statement of residence form, poll workers have to be familiar with their county’s geography and boundaries to ensure the addresses entered by the voter qualify them to vote in that polling location; they don’t have access to an automated way to verify that. If the election worker is reviewing a reasonable-impediment form, they also have to be versed on what’s required by law.

Poll workers on Election Day already handle many other prescribed tasks as well as unexpected issues, such as troubleshooting equipment. In Harris County, the third largest county in the nation, election workers are processing thousands of voters at some busy locations.

Harris County’s 2022 election was troubled in several respects. Less than three months before the election, the county hired a new elections director from out of state. Some polling locations had ballot paper shortages, malfunctioning equipment, and late openings that led to long wait times.

In a hectic environment, it is not unusual for things to get overlooked and for some of the issues Peeples pointed out in his ruling to fall through the cracks, Sherbet said.

“There’s no way to avoid this kind of thing,” Sherbet said. “And Harris is such a huge county, and so you’re going to have these kinds of situations occur in every election. Also because you have human beings that are handling this process and they make mistakes, and voters make mistakes.”

So you take complicated and frequently changing laws that are designed to make voting hard, a bunch of novice election workers, large turnout, limited time, all kinds of pressure, a close election, and a judge who doesn’t understand math, and this is what you get. It’s almost as if the whole thing is designed by a party that only cares about its own power to reduce faith in the democratic system.

In the meantime, Judge DaSean Jones remains on the bench, for now.

While Judge David Peeples ordered a new election for what was a narrow judicial race, his ruling didn’t strip Jones of his position — and it didn’t undo any of the myriad decisions Jones has made in innumerable cases that have come before him since he took office in January 2023.

That may not stop lawyers from trying to overturn the outcomes of cases over which Jones presided if there is a new election that ousts Jones, according to political observers.

“Nobody seems to know what exactly would happen to those cases,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “This is not a test that has a legitimate grounds of an appeal. I think we don’t know what precisely this would look like.”

But any potential challenges would be unprecedented — and likely become a question for the legal system to answer. And Peeples’ ruling was aimed squarely at how Harris County elections counted ballots in the race — not at anything Jones did.

“This is a pretty unprecedented situation, but I would be surprised if it was anything that affected any cases that he tried, as far as them being overturned or anything like that,” said Murray Newman, a defense lawyer who also serves as the president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association.

[…]

For Jones, another potential political wrinkle is a rule that limits judges from running for two seats at the same time, said Rottinghaus, the political scientist. Jones will be on the ballot in November for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court. It is not clear what would happen if the order for a new election for the district court’s judicial seat is upheld and also scheduled for November.

Boy, I forgot that he was running for Supreme Court, which he could normally do since this wasn’t a year in which he’d expect to be on the ballot otherwise. He’d be a strong favorite to win re-election if he had to be on the ballot for his District Court seat, but what about his statewide race? My guess is he’d have to choose one race or the other. If he manages to delay the question until after November – he could also win his appeal, which would be nice; I for one hope his lawyer brings up the math question in their appeal – then we’d have another weird countywide special election. For that one, I’d bet there’d be a lot more attention, at least. If it comes to that. Which I hope it doesn’t. But here we are.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged DaSean Jones, Election 2022, Election 2024, election contest, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, judicial races, lawsuit, Supreme Court, Tami Pierce, Texas, voter ID, voter registration | 3 Comments

Firefighter settlement officially approved

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The legalities are mostly over, but there are still a bunch of items to handle.

Mayor John Whitmire

A state district court judge has signed off on a settlement between the city of Houston and the firefighter union, clearing one obstacle for a $1.5 billion deal that remained a work in progress on Thursday.

With little fanfare, 234th District Court Judge Lauren Reeder on Tuesday signed a final judgment approving the settlement – and potentially bringing to a close the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association’s seven-year legal battle with the city.

If all goes well, the fire union hopes to have raises for firefighters kick in July 1. By the end of that month, members would receive back pay settlements that could amount to tens of thousands of dollars.

The settlement still must win approval from City Council and survive a legal challenge from Houston Fire Department command staff who were left out of the settlement, however. Meanwhile, there also are a “handful” of provisions in the union’s proposed five-year contract that have yet to be finalized, according to City Attorney Arturo Michel.

The settlement still has skeptics on Council, as a Thursday budget hearing made clear. The settlement’s practical effect on department operations also remains uncertain, with Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña acknowledging that the back pay could have the unintended consequence of sparking a short-term exodus.

[…]

Reeder’s judgment is only one step in a complicated sequence that must be finished in order to put the settlement into effect by July 1, according to the city legal department. Council must approve refunding bonds for the back pay, along with the collective bargaining agreement and the overall budget that funds it. The city also must secure approval from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office that the refunding bonds meet legal standards.

Despite Reeder’s “final” judgment, a group of current and former high-ranking Fire Department officials are trying to throw a wrench into the settlement.

The settlement specifically excludes command staff members from receiving back pay, which the group alleges unfairly excludes the assistant fire chiefs nominally represented by the union.

Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals on April 30 denied the command staffers’ request to block Reeder from issuing a judgment, but the group’s larger appeal remains pending.

Citing the confidentiality of the settlement negotiations, the city has for weeks declined to release drafts of the proposed collective bargaining agreement.

At the fire department’s annual budget hearing Thursday, [CM Abbie] Kamin posed pointed questions about what the collective bargaining agreement contains.

Kamin said that by her reading of the agreement, Mayor John Whitmire would be forced to oust Fire Chief Samuel Peña.

Peña has served through the transition from former Mayor Sylvester Turner to Whitmire despite the enmity of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, which backed Whitmire on the campaign trail last year.

Kamin on Thursday asked Peña if the city’s collective bargaining agreement with the firefighters union included a provision that “effectively writes you out of a job as Houston’s fire chief.” Peña said that would have been the case with the initial draft.

Their discussion appeared to focus on a widely-circulated draft of the agreement, which states that the city’s fire chief “shall be selected from the current or retired rank-and-file of the Houston Fire Department having served at least 15 years.”

That language would not apply to Peña, City Attorney Arturo Michel said later Thursday.

“I don’t think it requires his departure,” Michel said, adding that the final language in that section of the agreement still is being hashed out.

See here, here, and here for some background. I confess, I either missed or lost track of the part of this agreement that seems to force Chief Peña out of a job. The Chron goes into that.

One notable provision under consideration would require the mayor to select future fire chiefs from current or retired Houston Fire Department rank-and-file members with at least 15 years of service.

Peña, who served as El Paso’s fire chief before former Mayor Sylvester Turner appointed him in late 2016, does not meet this criterion. He said during a Thursday City Council hearing that, depending on the final agreement, he might be disqualified from his job.

Union president Marty Lancton and City Attorney Arturo Michel told the Houston Chronicle that the proposed clause, if approved, would not apply to Peña but only to future chiefs. Under Houston law, they said, it will still be up to Mayor John Whitmire to decide who leads one of the nation’s largest fire departments.

At the same time, Lancton said Peña’s lack of familiarity with Houston’s operations is a key reason the union is pushing for the change. Having a fire chief who came from another Texas city, Lancton said, has contributed to “years of unrest and the worst morale we’ve ever seen.”

“Houston’s challenges are unique to Houston,” Lancton said. “If there were to be a new fire chief, we absolutely believe that it needs to come from the inside, otherwise we are going to be in the same position.”

Whitmire’s team has not yet released a draft of the labor agreement, prompting complaints from some City Council members about the lack of transparency, but Michel said the administration is still considering whether to include the provision on the fire chief’s appointment.

Whitmire told the Chronicle that he does not think the clause should be in the agreement because although he believes the fire chief should come from the department, he does not want any restrictions to limit his ability to select his preferred candidate.

“We’re not going to allow a contract to mandate to me or the next mayor who you can hire or fire,” he said.

Regardless of whether the clause makes it to the final draft, by law, “the chief could remain for as long as the mayor would like,” Michel said.

Whether this agreement would force Chief Peña out or not, it seems like a bad idea to me to mandate that future Chiefs must come from within the ranks. That strikes me as a recipe for stagnation and an obstacle to change. Every organization at some point needs to break out of its old ways, and every organization needs to be able to learn from its peers. I suppose one can do that while remaining completely insular, but it sure seems like that would be the hard way to do it. I hope Council has some questions about that.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Abbie Kamin, Arturo Michel, budget, collective bargaining agreement, HFD, Houston, HPFFA, John Whitmire, lawsuit, Marty Lancton, Mayor, pension obligation bonds, Samuel Pena, Sylvester Turner | 3 Comments

Lone Star Rail revival

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Maybe now is finally the time.

Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and Travis County Judge Andy Brown have jointly launched a committee of political heavyweights to explore the decades-old idea of connecting Austin and San Antonio via passenger rail.

The new, 24-member Central Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee held its first meeting earlier this month. Members including former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, District 6 San Antonio Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda and Amtrak Government Affairs Director Todd Stennis reviewed a draft charter for the group.

“The fastest-growing metros must leverage this moment to build a modern transportation system to serve the economic, environmental and public safety needs of all central Texans,” Brown said in a statement.

The group’s next meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 3.

Sakai and Brown first teased the idea of working together to find a solution to traffic along the dreaded I-35 corridor in a December social media video. In that clip, Sakai said he and his northern counterpart were “working together so that we can get Travis County and Bexar County to get all the fans to watch the San Antonio Spurs without going through IH-35.”

The committee’s inaugural meeting also comes after pro-rail advocates, including San Antonians for Rail Transit, RESTART Lone Star Rail District and the Texas Rail Advocates, have lobbied local lawmakers to re-explore the idea of connecting the two fast-growing metros.

It’s fair to say that the idea of this rail line has been around for decades; I’ve been blogging about it since 2009. It makes sense for many reasons, and has also utterly failed in every attempt for many reasons. The last attempt died in 2016, but because it’s such a compelling idea, it has never gone away.

Some more details from KXAN.

The committee is looking at more options to connect San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston.

“So instead of one trip a day, it’d be five to 10 trips per day. We’re working with Union Pacific to see, because it’s their track — and we have to work with them. Bright Line is a private company in Florida that has passenger rail on a freight line there,” he said.

Joseph Black, WSP director of rail operations and also a member of the committee, told KXAN he is exploring other options.

“Frankly, we can’t possibly pour enough concrete to keep up with the growth,” Black said.

Unlike efforts in the past, this committee gathers leadership from across cities and states to work toward a unified goal.

“The more space we give to the highways, the less space we have for other kinds of human activities,” Black said. “Despite all of the kind of the enthusiasm was a political champion, I think like a true political champion, who would be willing to take this to the legislature to other elected officials in the way that Judge Brown has been doing such a great job with so far.”

Whether it is any different this time around remains to be seen. The necessity of sharing tracks with Union Pacific was a big part of the reason it failed last time. Here we have a deeper bench of interested parties, a federal government that’s all in on rail projects (pending the outcome of the November election, of course), and an even more intractable situation with I-35. You can call this idea a fantasy, but it’s hardly any less realistic than the idea that we can somehow build enough lanes on I-35 to make it something other than a parking lot. I wish them the best, and hope some day to be able to ride on that train.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Amtrak, Andy Brown, Austin, Central Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee, commuter rail, freight rail, high speed rail, I-35, Joe Biden, Lone Star Rail District, Peter Sakai, RESTART Lone Star Rail District, San Antonians for Rail Transit, San Antonio, Texas, Texas Rail Advocates | 1 Comment

Primary runoff day is tomorrow

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth reminds voters that Tuesday, May 28, is Election Day for the Primary Runoff Elections. Voters can cast their ballots in person at one of the more than 300 vote centers in Harris County from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“Over 18,200 votes were cast in person during the five days of early voting for the May 28 Primary Runoff Elections,” said Clerk Hudspeth, the county’s chief election official. “If you did not participate in early voting, your last opportunity to vote in this election is Tuesday, May 28.”

Primary elections are how the Republican and Democratic parties determine their respective nominees for the November general election. The May 28 Primary Runoff Elections determine the winner for the contests in which no candidate received more than 50 percent of votes during the March 5 primaries.

“The important thing for voters to remember is that they must vote in the same party’s runoff election that they voted in during the March 5 primaries,” added Clerk Hudspeth. Voters who cast their ballot in the Republican primary on March 5 can only participate in the Republican runoff election. The same is true for Democratic primary voters. Eligible voters who did not cast a ballot in the March 5 primaries can choose which party’s runoff election to vote in on May 28.”

The address where a voter is registered and which party’s primary they chose to vote in determines what contests will be on the ballot. Voters can view and print their personalized sample ballot to take to the polls on the Harris Votes website.

Not all Republican voters in Harris County will have a contest on their May 28 Republican Primary Runoff election ballot. Only Republican voters residing in Congressional District 7 or Congressional District 29 can vote in the Republican Primary Runoff election.

All Democratic voters in Harris County have at least three countywide contests on their ballot, including the Justice, 14th County Court of Appeals District, Place 3, 486th Judicial District Judge, and County Tax Assessor-Collector. Voters registered within the applicable districts may also vote in contests for State Senator District 15, State Representative District 139, State Representative District 146, and Constable 5.

Additional election information, including the acceptable forms of identification needed to vote, is available at www.HarrisVotes.com. For news and updates on social media, follow @HarrisVotes.

Not a whole lot to add here. Check as always for the nearest location, don’t just assume one will be open. I doubt wait times will be an issue but you can see that as well if it matters. Review again if you need to my interviews and Q&A responses, and make good choices. I’ll have the results when they’re up. Happy Voting to all who haven’t done so yet.

More on the senior living situation

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I look forward to seeing what the city does about this.

Reyes and his neighbors at Independence Hall are among thousands of low-income and disabled seniors in Houston left to rely on their landlords for an organized response to last week’s catastrophic storms.

Many are low-income seniors with disabilities, living in subsidized housing and relying on functioning electricity to charge mobile oxygen machines, run in-home dialysis units, and power wheelchairs. With no power, some residents were rushed to the hospital after they suffered heat exhaustion or their portable oxygen machines died.

A Houston Landing review of federal housing data found at least 57 residential facilities in Houston – totaling over 8,800 low-income housing units – offering services to low-income and disabled seniors, with funding from federal tax credit programs for low-income housing developers.

It’s unclear how many facilities lost power and left residents to fend for themselves. Unlike nursing homes and assisted living facilities that provide higher levels of care, independent living facilities are not certified by the state of Texas, do not require state licensure and face scant oversight from regulators in comparison.

Texas also leaves property owners in charge of developing and implementing emergency response and evacuation plans. The results following Thursday’s storm have been disastrous, city officials say.

[…]

City Councilmember Abbie Kamin said she asked Linda Holder, vice president and chief operating officer at the nonprofit that owns the Heights Towers, about the company’s “emergency response” plan. According to Kamin, Holder responded: “We don’t have one.”

The dismal conditions inside some of the city’s senior living facilities have prompted outraged responses from public officials, including Mayor John Whitmire, who said residents were “abandoned.”

“Independence Hall Sunday afternoon was deplorable. People with no roofs over their apartments. The owners and managers had abandoned the site,” Whitmire said Wednesday.

Whitmire said the city was still in the process of surveying Houston’s senior living buildings.

“Part of our going forward will be to identify them, hold them accountable, and prevent that. They shouldn’t be doing business with any city, county or state or federal program when they’re so negligent to leave people,” Whitmire said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.

[…]

In an interview Wednesday, the director of the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, Mike Nichols, said there are 28 senior living facilities that receive some sort of city financial support.

Other facilities receive funding from entities such as Harris County or the Houston Housing Authority, he said. Meanwhile, an uncounted number rely on rent payments from residents who receive Social Security Disability Insurance. Nichols said he is not aware of a list of all the facilities that cater to seniors or disabled people.

While many senior living facilities may have flown under the radar in the past, Nichols said the city hopes to change that going forward.

“One of the other things I hope to come out of this disaster is a more settled and organized approach to dealing with these problems on an ongoing basis. But it’s a clear necessity in Houston, Texas that if you’re going to have a senior living facility, it needs power even when the grid goes down,” Nichols said.

More broadly, Nichols said the city has a “severe issue” with people who rely on Social Security Disability Insurance living in substandard conditions at facilities like boarding homes and senior living facilities.

“It’s an issue. It’s really a statewide issue, not just a city issue. And we need to think about how to protect those vulnerable individuals. At this point, it is not a very good situation,” Nichols said.

See here for the background. The management of these facilities have denied the allegations when asked about them. I expect they will continue to be asked and will continue to assert they didn’t do what is being said about them. Be that as it may, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement here, certainly from an emergency management perspective. Just for the city to know who and where these places are, what if any contingencies they have and some estimate of their more vulnerable populations, all of that would be helpful. The story cites the New Orleans example following Hurricane Ida, which shows some of the limits of this approach. I look forward to seeing what the city does. And on a side note, there’s also plenty of room for improvement in how CenterPoint provides information about its outages, which is a matter that affects all of us. Let’s talk about this too, City Council.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Abbie Kamin, blackouts, CenterPoint, derecho, Heights, Heights Tower, HFD, Houston, Houston City Council, Independence Hall, independent living facilities, John Whitmire, nursing homes | Comments Off

Another “extremely active hurricane season” forecast

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Buckle up.

With the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season starting in less than 10 days, the nation’s top weather agency on Thursday released its most pessimistic forecast to date, giving this year an 85% chance of having an unusually high number of tropical storms and hurricanes.

Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cited several factors, including near-record warm ocean temperatures, the emergence of La Niña in the eastern Pacific tropical waters, reduced Atlantic trade winds and less wind shear.

NOAA has a 70% confidence that the Atlantic hurricane region, which includes the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico, could see 17 to 25 named storms. Such storms boast winds of 39 mph or stronger. Of those named storms, eight to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes, which have winds of 74 mph or higher.

“Of note, the forecast for named storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes is the highest NOAA has ever issued for the May outlook,” agency administrator Rick Spinrad said.

The number of hurricanes also could include four to seven major hurricanes, which reach at least Category 3 status with damaging winds of 111 mph or stronger.

These forecast figures apply to the whole North Atlantic, not just Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, because we can’t yet precisely predict where hurricanes will form or make landfall.

On average, the Atlantic hurricane region records 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes with winds of 111 mph or higher.

This is a slight uptick from the Colorado State forecast from April. It’s hardly a surprise, given the super warm Atlantic Ocean waters and the La Niña conditions, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. I hope we’ve actually recovered from the recent derecho before the first storm gets organized, regardless of where it goes. Here’s the NOAA press release, and The Eyewall has more.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged climate change, Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes, La Niña, NOAA, Texas | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for May 26

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“It’s hard to believe today, when the vast majority of Americans support it, but just 20 years ago the issue of same-sex marriage divided the country and drove voter turnout.”

“We were robbed of a Daisy Jones & The Six set at Lollapalooza”.

“Two voice actors are leading a class-action lawsuit against AI voiceover company Lovo for using recordings of them to create a bot that replicates their voices — and competes with them for work.”

“I try to have empathy for what they are going through. I try to have some humor with it, as well. I tell them that chemo is the worst; it [stinks]. But on days when they feel good, I encourage them to go out and be themselves. Be a kid, and do what you want to do.”

“I am not surprised that Sam Alito, a reactionary dunce who has not absorbed information from any non-Newsmax source since 2008, might feel sympathy for his preferred presidential candidate in the aftermath of January 6. But I admit I am kind of floored that he would be this brazen about it.”

Sorry, Kyle. Better luck next year.

“After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade nearly two years ago, paving the way for states to usher in new restrictions on abortion, doctors started seeing more young adults seeking vasectomies or getting their tubes tied, emerging research has found.”

“The idea of a moon economy complete with roads, food and sources of power can sound far-fetched. But companies are now planning for the realities of life in space, and dozens of startups are inking contracts to send goods to the moon, determined to have people going there by late 2026.”

“But after almost 500 articles in The Wall Street Journal, one thing I’ve learned from covering the tech industry is that failures are far more instructive. Especially when they’re the kind of errors made by many people.”

RIP, Ivan Boesky, onetime Wall Street titan-turned-convict who served as the partial inspiration for the 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street.

Many things about the Endless Shrimp-aided demise of Red Lobster have me gobsmacked, but nothing has ever shaken me as much as the revelation that the “average entree price” there was around $35. At Red Lobster? Seriously???

RIP, Jim Otto, Pro Football Hall of Fame center for the Raiders, known for having “00” as his uniform number.

“I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”

“There should be an investigation. There should be everything. Because that’s how politics works. Things breakthrough and you actually have an effect when you make noise, when you push on doors. We shouldn’t even be talking about it as a flag controversy. We need to investigate Alito’s support for the Jan. 6th coup attempt and demand he recuse himself from any case tied to the coup attempt. Why would you ever talk about it in a way that doesn’t make clear what you’re talking about or why it matters?”

“Outside groups like Turning Point USA and media outlets like the Daily Wire are providing communities and constituents with a playbook. Christian college administrators may think that by caving to the pressure they’ll save their institutions from bad press and protect their reputations in conservative circles, but that’s a short-sighted move. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. This is how this works.”

“Four months after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate, Donald Trump’s attorneys discovered four documents marked “classified” in his personal bedroom.”

“Undecided voters are concerned that if Donald Trump returns to the White House, he’ll never leave.” A very valid thing to be afraid of.

Bryce Harper is a mensch.

“The significance of this development is profound: If AI provides the answers to all the searches that you’re looking for, there is no need to click on the source articles that provide the answers. If you don’t click on the source articles, the publishers do not receive any ad revenue, and if the publishers do not receive ad revenue, they cannot pay their writers to provide the answers for Google’s AI to steal.”

“Supreme Court Makes Racial Gerrymandering Even Harder To Prove In New Ruling”.

“In a groundbreaking antitrust lawsuit that threatens to upend the way concertgoers pay for tickets, the US government and dozens of states sued Live Nation on Thursday, alleging that for years the parent company of Ticketmaster abused its industry dominance to harm fans nationwide.”

“Meet the baseball team hoping to win an NCAA title for a school that won’t exist in June”. The school is Birmingham-Southern, they’re Division III. As an alum of a Div III school, I’m familiar with them, as we’ve played them in football and basketball before. Not anymore, obviously.

RIP, Morgan Spurlock, documentary filmmaker best known for Super Size Me.

RIP, Kabosu, the dog behind the “doge” meme.

Congratulations to the Harris County Public Library system and the Houston Children’s Museum for winning 2024 National Medals for Museum and Library Service.

RIP, Richard M. Sherman, legendary songwriter mostly for Disney who along with his brother Robert won multiple Oscars and Grammys for Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and many others.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

Final EV totals for the May 2024 primary runoffs

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Here are your final EV totals for the May 2024 primary runoffs. I’ll go ahead and break out a chart, as per tradition:


Party   Mail    Early    Total
==============================
Dem   11,534   16,421   27,955
GOP      662    1,861    2,523

Again, one must remember that the Dems have three countywide races plus three legislative races in blue districts, while all the Republicans have are two Congressional runoffs in blue districts. There are multiple early voting locations where no Republican votes were cast, all because there were no Republican runoffs anywhere nearby. Shoutout in particular to the EV location at the Hockley Community Center in HD132, where a grand total of 20 votes were cast all week, all on the Democratic side.

Over 10K mail ballots were cast on the Dem side as of day one, and it wasn’t until Friday that the in person totals for Dems surpassed the mail ballots. Only about 42% of the mail ballots have been returned so far, which is probably indicative of where these voters are – my best guess is that the rate of return is much higher in SD15, HD139, and HD146 than everywhere else. On the GOP side, about 25% of the mail ballots were returned.

I’m not going to try to guess what final turnout might look like. I could look back at past primary runoffs and make some seat of the pants projections based on prior patterns, but it’s a waste of time. Runoffs are just too individualized, and my guesser has been especially off the last three times (since last November) I’ve tried. In all three cases, the share of early voting was higher, in some cases much higher, than past performance and my own intuition suggested. I’m not falling for that trick again. Whatever happens on Tuesday happens. I don’t think it matters much for any specific race, nor does it Mean Something for November. This is what it is. If you haven’t voted yet, go do so. I’ll post the results on Wednesday.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, early voting, Election 2024, Harris County, HD139, HD146, primaries, runoff, SD15, Senate, The Lege, turnout | Comments Off

Uvalde parents sue Daniel Defense again

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m rooting for them.

Several Uvalde families are suing Daniel Defense, the gun company whose AR-15 style rifle an 18-year-old gunman used to kill 19 children and two teachers and injure several others at Robb Elementary two years ago, lawyers said.

The family members of victims Friday also filed a separate lawsuit against California-based companies Meta — the parent company of Instagram and Facebook — and Activision, whose best-selling video game “Call of Duty” features Daniel Defense guns.

The lawsuits together will argue that the three companies marketed semi-automatic weapons to the Uvalde gunman before he was 18, accusing them of negligence and wrongful death. The shooter purchased firearms shortly after he turned 18 years old and then used one of those guns to carry out the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

In Texas, 18-year-olds can legally purchase long guns such as rifles.

Josh Koskoff, an attorney representing the Uvalde families, says there was a direct line between the companies’ conduct and the Uvalde shooting.

“Just 23 minutes after midnight on his 18th birthday, the Uvalde shooter bought an AR-15 made by a company with a market share of less than one percent,” Koskoff said in a statement. “Why? Because, well before he was old enough to purchase it, he was targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense. This three-headed monster knowingly exposed him to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his problems and trained him to use it.”

The lawsuits come on the two-year anniversary of the shooting.

Attorneys argue that Daniel Defense intentionally markets its weapons to adolescents and uses platforms including Instagram and first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty” to promote criminal use of their weapons.

They add that Instagram provides an unsupervised channel to speak directly to adolescent boys because of what attorneys say are flimsy and easily circumvented rules meant to prohibit firearm advertising to children.

The lawsuit against Daniel Defense is expected to be filed in Texas’ 38th District Court in Uvalde County on behalf of 31 family members of the deceased and injured victims. It accuses Daniel Defense of courting the shooter with marketing that lures adolescents into forming an attachment with its brand of AR-15s, particularly its flagship DDM4v7.

The lawsuit against Activision and Meta was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of approximately 45 family members of the victims. It accuses the gaming company of desensitizing young men to acts of mass violence and grooming them to seek out weapons like those featured in Call of Duty. While Instagram prohibits the marketing of firearms on its platform, the lawsuit claims Instagram fails to enforce firearm guidelines while rigorously enforcing other types of content guidelines.

[…]

This is not the first lawsuit families have filed against Daniel Defense. Uvalde victims’ families previously filed two lawsuits against the Georgia-based gun manufacturer, alleging that the company intentionally marketed its AR-15 rifles to young males in ways that “encourage the illegal and dangerous misuse” of its weapons.

Daniel Defense has sought to dismiss those lawsuits, which were filed in federal court and remain ongoing.

I count three previous lawsuits filed against Daniel Defense, but perhaps I’m mistaken. The story notes that attorney Koskoff, who is also representing the families that sued multiple DPS officers earlier in the week, was the attorney who led the successful suit filed by Sandy Hook parents against a different gun manufacturer. I’m all in favor of this strategy – honestly, we should be treating these outfits like we treated the tobacco companies in the 80s and 90s – but it’s not clear to me that the legal pathway is as available as it was even a few years ago. I sure hope it is, but we know who’s at the end of the line for this lawsuit, and it’s hard to have any optimism when SCOTUS is involved. We’ll see. Texas Public Radio has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Activision, advertising, California, Connecticut, Daniel Defense, Facebook, guns, Instagram, Josh Koskoff, lawsuit, Texas, Uvalde, video games | 1 Comment

Last Astroworld wrongful death suit settled

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Not unexpected, at least to me.

The family of the youngest concertgoer killed at the 2021 Astroworld Festival has settled with rapper Travis Scott, Apple, LiveNation and other companies on the heels of similar agreements in other fatality lawsuits, a lawyer for the family said.

Scott West, lawyer for the family of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, said his clients reached a confidential settlement with the defendants this week and that the settlement would be shared Friday with the court. The next hearing is scheduled for June 3.

“The family is happy to resolve its claim against all defendants following the death of their son, Ezra,” West said. “They look forward to continuing the process of healing and never forgetting.

[…]

West had anticipated earlier this month that his case would proceed to trial following recent settlements that left him with the lone fatality case stemming from the deadly concert. The trial date slotted for September will likely be reserved for one of the hundreds of injury cases from the same show, he said.

See here for the previous update. I skipped the two paragraphs in the story that described how this young man died. It’s exactly as upsetting as you think, so click with caution. My guess is that none of the defendants wanted to face the public testimony of these deaths, and that’s why they all settled once it was clear that they were not getting out of the lawsuits. I understand that strategy, and I wonder if the same will apply to the wrongful injury suits that will soon follow. We’ll know soon enough.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Apple, Astroworld, Harris County, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, HFD, Houston, HPD, lawsuit, Live Nation, Reliant Stadium, Travis Scott | Comments Off

A holiday weekend HISD roundup

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This will be a basic linkdump. I’ll start here.

The Houston ISD Board of Managers appears to have moved forward late Thursday with the termination of Herod Elementary School Principal Jessica Berry, who declined to resign in the district’s recent removal of several campus leaders.

Berry said she was pulled into an approximately five-minute meeting on May 8 with district employees who cited student growth in special education as their reason that she should resign.

After reviewing the resignation paperwork, Berry found that, if she signed, she would not be able to take any legal action against the district, would not be able to file any internal complaints or grievances against any district employee, and would not be able to seek another job in HISD.

She declined to resign in writing on May 10, and followed up with a formal letter on May 14. She said the district did not respond as of Thursday afternoon.

Berry said her biggest concern is looking out for the 770 students at the Meyerland magnet school. The campus is already set to have about 32 new teachers or teacher assistants, out of a total 43 teachers, in the fall.

“They’re not decisions that are being made in the best interest of kids,” Berry said, noting that teachers were pulled into conferences for the record during Teacher Appreciation Week.

District representatives declined to answer the Houston Chronicle’s questions regarding closed session agenda items for Thursday’s meeting and were unable to clarify the action the board took after midnight.

What happened at that Board of Managers meeting? The usual rubber stamping.

In the end, all the walkouts, sickouts, emails to board members, and impassioned appeals to the Houston ISD Board of Managers came to nothing. The Board of Managers voted in another lengthy session that started Thursday afternoon and went into the wee hours to fire every teacher, principal and custodian that Superintendent Mike Miles wanted them to.

Be they longtime HISD employees, teachers or principals of the year, loved by parents and students, or guardians of high-performing schools — it didn’t matter. At the end of this school year they’re gone. As several speakers commented: they welcomed a new agenda for schools at the bottom of the academic rankings, but never anticipated that Miles and his New Education System program would go after A,B and C schools.

The vote was 8-0-1 with trustee Adam Rivon abstaining.

Miles lasted three years in Dallas ISD before leaving to work on his charter schools in Colorado. Despite cries of “This is Houston!” to general applause as if things would be different here , it doesn’t appear that he’ll be leaving this city and its school district any time soon.

[…]

“You’re presiding over a purge,” said Herrod Elementary parent Jeff Waltman, speaking to the board. “A drainage of human capital like this district has never seen. Because Mike Miles doesn’t believe in people. He believes only his system, a proven failure that you’ll share unless you find the courage to tell him no.”

The complaints from the audience were many Thursday. Why was the meeting started at 4 p.m. which made it impossible for a lot of the public to show up at the beginning? Why has there only been one workshop on the budget which by state law must be signed off on in June? Why won’t certain board members do public speakers the courtesy of paying attention to them when they are talking (trustee Ric Campo was singled out for this one).

Several speakers questioned the increased amount of money for the NES program at a time when Miles has said there’s a $528 million gap to fill mainly because of what Miles maintains is his predecessor’s misuse of federal emergency COVID funds by plugging them into recurring costs like salaries.

I honestly couldn’t tell you what the purpose of the Board of Managers is. They have literally done nothing to affect any action Mike Miles has taken. I’m sure many of them went into this with good intentions, but at this point I don’t know how they sleep at night.

But at least some people are still speaking up.

Among the roughly 200 community members who turned out Thursday to condemn the chaos and instability being caused by massive forced resignations and terminations of principals and teachers in HISD was a former Principal of the Year who is now leading a “call to action” to remove state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles.

The Board of Managers appears to have ignored their pleas, passing personnel decisions after midnight pertaining to the principals of Herod Elementary School and Valley West Elementary School, after spending hours in closed session. HISD officials were unable to clarify what the decisions entailed.

Neff Elementary School Principal Amanda Wingard, among those asked to resign, told the board she had serious ethical concerns that she detailed in a “Call to Action.”

In that document, which was provided to the Houston Chronicle, she called for Miles’ resignation and the appointment of a takeover conservator. She pointed to a culture of fear, as well as inconsistent information shared with the Board of Managers and district stakeholders.

Wingard said she believes she was forced to resign, such as wanting to collaborate with other principals about data and being told she could not. She said her forced resignation did not pertain to instruction and that Neff was proficient, to a burst of applause in the room.

“I was asked to resign because the administration’s definition of leadership,” Wingard said. “I ask questions respectfully in the best interest of students. For that, I am proud. We work in fear: Fear of asking the wrong questions. Fear of not meeting unknown expectations. Fear of subjective failure.”

The document in question is embedded in the article.

On a side note, my daughter called home yesterday afternoon to inform my wife and me that her school all walked out that afternoon, one of several to do so yesterday, in protest of Mike Miles and in support of their principal. (Her school has a B accountability rating for last year, FYI.) She was quite excited about the whole thing. We told her we were proud of her.

HISD has one more piece of business to attend to.

With a few months left before HISD leaders must decide whether to hold a bond election, community members will have their first opportunity to weigh in on the potential multibillion-dollar package.

HISD announced Wednesday it is convening a Community Advisory Committee that will meet five times over the next two weeks to share information on the districts’ plan to upgrade campuses and hear public feedback. HISD Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration said it is looking into a bond totaling $4 billion to $5 billion that will not raise property tax rates.

A successful bond election allows school districts to finance the costs of building new campuses, updating aging facilities and buying new technology, among other items.”

As the story notes, this is a slightly late start for a bond advisory committee, but that’s consistent with the chaos of this school year. School bonds here generally poll well and pass easily, but it’s safe to say the politics for this one are more complicated than usual. We’ll return to that subject more than once going forward, I am sure. Have a nice Memorial Day weekend.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, Election 2024, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, New Education System, schools, Texas Education Agency | 2 Comments

HART trouble

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Not great.

Harris County paused its Holistic Assistance Response Teams on Wednesday after Commissioners Court failed to reach an agreement on whether to pay the vendor operating the program.

At issue is a $270,000 payment to Disaster Emergency Medical Assistance Consulting and Management, which initially was founded in California before expanding to Texas, for administering the program for the last two months. Without that payment, county officials said, DEMA would be unable to make payroll related to the program.

The county launched HART in March 2022 to help direct some non-emergency 911 phone calls to personnel trained in behavioral health. The idea is to reduce unnecessary law enforcement or hospital interventions and help residents who may be experiencing behavioral health issues, social welfare concerns or homelessness. Harris County has two teams that are based out of the Cypress Station area, seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Wednesday’s discussion about whether to pay the bill arose from a Commissioners Court directive to the county auditor’s office at the end of April to open an investigation into DEMA.

The call for an investigation followed an audit by Sonoma County, Calif., that found officials could not account for 40 percent of DEMA’s billing. The auditors also said they struggled to properly assess DEMA because the company had not tracked the work of its salaried employees.

That audit was sparked by a July 2023 investigation by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that revealed DEMA was awarded $26 million in no-bid emergency contracts in a little over two years and raised questions about billing for the company’s position of director of nursing.

A review of invoices for that position, the news organization wrote, showed $800,000 in billing that did not align with what current and former health care workers said they witnessed.

An online search for DEMA Management and Consulting lists an address in Pasadena, but the listed phone number connects to a rural hospital district in North Texas and its website is no longer is active.

[…]

Leslie Wilks Garcia, first assistant county auditor with Harris County, said DEMA is cooperating with the audit. So far, she said, the audit has produced nothing to show the $270,000 was improperly billed.

However, the audit is not complete and Wilks Garcia said it will take several more weeks before it is finished.

If the payment had been approved and the audit revealed DEMA had improperly charged Harris County, the county attorney’s office said the cost could legally be recouped.

“There are serious open questions about the practices of this company,” Briones said. “I love HART…it would break my heart but in good faith as fiduciaries to the taxpayers, (but). without these questions answered, I cannot vote.”

[…]

Garcia on Wednesday suggested the Harris Center for Mental Health and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, which presently runs the Houston Police Department’s version of the program, would be able to take over the program in place of DEMA. However, government meeting rules precluded the commissioners from discussing the option further.

Because the item on the agenda related strictly to payments, any conversations beyond that would need to be a separate agenda item at a future court, First Assistant County Attorney Jay Aiyer told the court.

Garcia said he planned to add an item for discussion at the next court meeting on June 4.

“From a managerial standpoint, I’m just concerned that it is a vendor keeping this program alive,” Garcia said. “It should have been employees.”

See here and here for some background. My read of this is that while it sounds like there are questions about how DEMA has handled its business in California, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing here. It’s fine to double-check, and it’s fine to look for a replacement if there are any doubts about them, but it’s important to keep this program running; all of the Court voiced their support for that. The original rollout of this program has already been expanded, and that’s the direction to go. Figure out who should be running it and go from there. The Chron has more.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Adrian Garcia, budget, California, Commissioners Court, DEMA Management and Consulting, Ed Gonzalez, Harris County, Harris County Public Health Authority, Harris County Sheriff, Holistic Assistance Response Team, HPD, jails, Lesley Briones, Lina Hidalgo, mental illness, Rodney Ellis | Comments Off

Not just Fertitta wants a hockey team here

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Do tell.

Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has company when it comes to bringing a pro hockey franchise to Houston.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman confirmed Tuesday that the league has received interest from other parties about a team in Houston.

“Tilman isn’t the only one who’s expressed interest in Houston,” Bettman said in a meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors in New York. “Houston’s a terrific market, but there’s nothing at the moment that drives us to the point of saying we’ll do this.”

[…]

Bettman, as he’s been wont to do over recent months, again stated Tuesday the NHL is “not currently planning on expansion.” In addition to Houston, he said the league has received “a lot of inbound, unsolicited expressions of interest” from markets including Quebec City, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Omaha.

The NHL is currently at 32 teams and for the first time since 2011, relocated a franchise in a complex transaction after it shifted the hockey assets of the Arizona Coyotes to Utah, brokering a sale to Ryan and Ashley Smith, owners of the NBA’s Jazz franchise, while making inactive the business operation of the Coyotes.

See here for the previous installment in this saga. I know it’s not Gary Bettman’s place to drop names, but I’m dying to know who else has made such inquiries. We’ve got plenty of rich people in this town so there’s no point in speculating. Give us some names, Gary!

That said, having a hockey team owner who doesn’t control the venue where hockey would be played is a complication, so maybe those other wannabes would be less likely to land a team anyway. Assuming there is a team to be landed, of course. Which, at this time, is not the case.

Two more things. First, my reaction to seeing Omaha as a possible expansion location was “Really? I didn’t think it was big enough.” The city of Omaha has just under a half million people, with a metro area of just under one million. That is definitely on the low end for cities that house major league sports franchises, but Omaha’s metro area is larger than that of Winnipeg, so it can be done. On the other hand, Winnipeg is experiencing some attendance issues and is very dependent on ticket sales to individuals; they have fewer corporate ticket buyers than any other franchise. This doesn’t have anything to do with anything and it would be Omaha’s problem to solve if they ever make it to the top of the expansion location list, I just thought it was interesting.

And second, in actual expansion news for a league that really should have a franchise in Houston:

Toronto has been awarded a WNBA franchise that will start play in 2026, according to multiple reports, when it will become the league’s first team outside of the United States.

The team will be owned by Kilmer Sports Inc., headed by Toronto billionaire Larry Tanenbaum. Tanenbaum is a minority owner and chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Maple Leafs and Raptors, among other teams.

The new Toronto club would be the 14th team in the WNBA. An expansion franchise in Golden State is set to join the league in 2025.

An official announcement is expected May 23 in Toronto, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which first reported on the expansion franchise.

“We continue to engage in productive conversations with interested ownership groups in a number of markets but have no news to report at this time,” a WNBA spokesperson said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Kilmer Sports also said there was “no update at this time.”

League commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in April that Toronto was among the cities being considered for expansion and that the goal was to reach 16 teams by 2028. Other cities mentioned by Engelbert for possible expansion were Philadelphia, Portland, Denver and Nashville as well as the South Florida region.

Congratulations to Toronto. Houston, sadly, is still not on the list. Tilman, if you actually want a WNBA team you’re going to have to show some real interest, not just a few words in passing when talking about your unrequited NHL lust. And for whatever richies that have been bugging Gary Bettman, look here! A league that is expanding right now! Maybe consider your other options for owing a sports team.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged basketball, Cathy Engelbert, downtown, Gary Bettman, hockey, Houston, Houston Comets, NHL, Omaha, Phoenix Coyotes, Texas, Tilman Fertitta, Toronto, Toyota Center, Utah, Winnipeg, WNBA | 2 Comments

Uvalde parents sue DPS officers

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I hope they can get this to a courtroom. I fear that “qualified immunity” will stop them beforehand.

Relatives of 17 children killed and two kids injured in Texas’ deadliest school shooting are suing Texas Department of Public Safety officers who were among hundreds of law enforcement that waited 77 minutes to confront the gunman at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary, lawyers announced Wednesday.

“Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah and nephew Jayce were killed, said in a statement.

The legal action against 92 DPS officers comes days before the two-year anniversary of the shooting in which an 18-year-old used an AR-15 to kill 19 students and two teachers in two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms.

Relatives of most of those students killed and two who were injured also announced Wednesday that they are suing Mandy Gutierrez, who was the principal at Robb at the time, and Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, who was the school district police chief, for their “inaction” that day.

The families’ attorney also announced Wednesday that the city of Uvalde will pay them $2 million to avoid a lawsuit. Additionally, the city will provide enhanced training for current and future police officers, designate May 24 as an annual day of remembrance and work with victims’ families to design a permanent memorial at the city plaza, among other things.

City officials and DPS did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

During a press conference in Uvalde, an attorney for the families, Josh Koskoff, said the state’s failure to prevent the deaths began long before the shooting occurred. He said Texas failed to provide small communities like Uvalde with enough resources to train their officers.

“You think the city of Uvalde has enough money, or training, or resources? You think they can hire the best of the best?” Koskoff said. “As far as the state of Texas is concerned, it sounds like their position is: You’re on your own.”

Koskoff also hinted that the families could also sue state and federal agencies, but did not name which ones. He also said the families are negotiating an agreement with the county, which would also avoid a lawsuit.

The wording on this story and on the TPR story, which says that a settlement has been reached with Uvalde County, is a little confusing to me. There are multiple lawsuits already filed by Uvalde parents, with that first one including Gutierrez, Arredondo, DPS as a whole, and the city of Uvalde as defendants. I originally thought this story meant that this was an amendment to that first lawsuit, but now I’m pretty sure it’s a new action, and that the city of Uvalde and Uvalde County were going to be defendants but were able to come to an agreement before they got served. It’s hard keeping track of all this stuff sometimes.

Anyway. The story notes the same issue with qualified immunity that I mentioned, so we’ll see where it gets. Far as I know, all of the other suits are still active. I wish them all good luck. The Associated Press, whose report I saw after I drafted this and which I found to be more clear on the timeline and the defendants, has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged DPS, gun control, guns, Javier Cazares, lawsuit, Mindy Gutierrez, Pete Arredondo, qualified immunity, Texas, Uvalde, Uvalde County, Veronica Luevanos | 1 Comment

The HD146 runoff

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve avoided writing about this for as long as I could, but it needs to be talked about.

Rep. Shawn Thierry

That Senate Bill 14 would pass was not in doubt.

The legislation, which would bar gender-transitioning care for children and teens, had universal Republican support and merely awaited final sign-off by the GOP-led House.

The only surprise that May evening in the Capitol was when Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Democrat from Houston, strode to the front of the chamber and announced she was breaking with her party to support the bill.

Children must be protected from transgender care because of its risk of harm, she said, citing precedent in Texas for allowing only adults to get tattoos, use tanning salons and purchase tobacco products. She said teenagers’ brains are not developed enough to make potentially irreversible medical decisions.

“This debate… was never about erasing trans children,” Thierry said in a tearful 12-minute speech. “For me, this discussion is about how to best protect and care for these children as they navigate through the challenging journey of finding the best version of themselves.”

Thierry’s remarks ignored that treatment decisions for minors can only be made by parents or legal guardians, as well as the consensus of major medical groups that gender-transitioning care should be available to children and teens in the care of doctors.

Republicans were quick to praise Thierry as a brave politician willing to buck her radical party. To Democrats, who watched the speech in stunned silence, she had betrayed their party’s commitment to protect LGBTQ+ rights and vulnerable Texans.

“It feels defeating, when you’re a Democrat in the Texas Legislature,” said Dallas Rep. Jessica González, one of several gay members of the caucus. “The last two legislative sessions had the most conservative bills. That’s why it’s even more important for us to stick together.”

The political fallout is spilling into the Democratic primary, where in her bid for reelection Thierry faces two challengers. One of them, labor organizer Lauren Ashley Simmons, is well funded and has secured the support of several Democratic officials — including sitting House members — and progressive groups like the influential Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus. A Democratic club in Houston censured her, accusing Thierry of turning her back on the gay and transgender community.

Thierry, whose small-dollar donations have largely dried up, now relies heavily on wealthy Republican donors to fund her campaign.

[…]

Lauren Ashley Simmons

Thierry, now 54, in 2016 was selected by Democratic precinct chairs as the party’s nominee for the seat after then-Rep. Borris Miles resigned to run for the state Senate. She was elected unopposed.

Thierry made an impression in her first session by fighting for bipartisan legislation to address the state’s high maternal mortality rate for Black mothers, drawing on the experience of her own difficult pregnancy with her daughter.

In the following sessions, Thierry voted reliably with her party. She joined most of the Democratic caucus in their 2021 protest of a GOP voter restrictions bill, where they absconded to Washington, D.C., for several weeks to shut down the House. It was an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of her mother, a civil rights activist who integrated Sharpstown High School in Houston.

In the 2023 regular legislative session, Republicans made sexuality and children their new top social issue. By the time lawmakers adjourned in May, much of the camaraderie Thierry had built with fellow Democrats unraveled.

Three major pieces of legislation proposed by Republicans became law last year: a bill aimed at removing sexually explicit books from school libraries, a designation critics feared would be used to target LGBTQ+ literature; a requirement that transgender college athletes play on teams that align their sex assigned at birth; and the ban on trans minors from receiving gender-transitioning care.

Thierry supported all three. She was not the only Democrat to break ranks — 11 others supported the book-banning bill. But she was by far the most outspoken in her support for the legislation. She said in another floor speech that the book bill would set up guardrails against explicit materials that have “infiltrated” schools, noting one that she said teaches children how to access dating websites.

Fellow Democrats told the Tribune they were especially frustrated that Thierry did not support their efforts to offer compromises on the transgender bill.

Rep. Ann Johnson, whose district borders Thierry’s, offered an unsuccessful amendment that would have permitted trans teens from receiving such care if two doctors and two mental health professionals approved — a high bar intended to assuage concerns that treatment such as hormones could be carelessly prescribed. Johnson declined to comment.

Thierry skipped the vote on the item, as well as all 18 other Democratic amendments. Thierry said that her positions reflected the views of her constituents.

You know how I feel about this one, so I’ll just point to my interview with Lauren Simmons again. It’s one thing to oppose the majority of your party on a given issue. Dems do that all the time – honestly, if you looked at the final vote on a lot of the higher-profile bills the Republicans passed last session, there were an often disappointing number of Democrats in support. It’s the combination of multiple such votes, refusing to even show up for Democratic amendments, parroting dishonest and harmful Republican talking points that put Rep. Thierry, who was not on my radar as a problem before last year, on the firing line. She may well pull this out – as noted, her record before now was more or less fine, and it’s never easy to oust an incumbent – but she’ll never have the same working relationship with her peers again. I hope this was worth it for her, especially if it becomes her well-deserved exit interview. The Trib and the Chron have more.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged censorship, Democratic primary, Election 2024, gay rights, HD146, Lauren Ashley Simmons, runoff, Shawn Thierry, Texas, The Lege, transgender rights | 1 Comment

Is anyone still defending Mike Miles?

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Anna Eastman is out.

As a former Houston ISD parent and school board member, I initially encouraged Houstonians to be open to the state takeover and its potential benefits for our kids. I know firsthand that many things in HISD are broken. I truly believe we’ve been lying to many students and their parents about what they are getting from our schools when we hand them diplomas after spending up to 13 or even 14 years in our classrooms.

At the same time, things in HISD can and do work well for those who are privileged or savvy enough to navigate the system. I hoped the takeover would fix what’s broken and expand what works.

That’s why I was crushed at a recent event hosted by the Houston Landing. State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles avoided answering thoughtful questions from graduating HISD high school seniors.

[…]

I learned the Japanese term kuuki yomenai, or “KY,” from my daughter’s Japanese-American college roommate a couple of years ago. It refers to people who can’t “read the air,” who don’t intuitively understand a given situation and behave accordingly — a highly valued skill in Japanese society.

I’m not sure there could be a more apt description of Mr. Miles’ demeanor and answers to the students’ questions.

Superintendent Miles visits many schools. He works very hard, and I think he believes he’s doing important work on behalf of Houston’s schoolchildren. I would agree that to some extent, particularly updating how we teach reading, this is true.

But to hear him tick off an impressive list of academic offerings in Dallas ISD as proof he was on the right track, apparently ignorant that HISD already offered all those things and more before he got here, was insulting.

Equally offensive was his response to brilliant, brave young people, who against many odds were realizing their and their family’s dreams of attending college. They asked how those who come after them will access and be prepared for college. Miles responded that he was going to offer more career and technology offerings. I know we need more quality, relevant career paths, but not at the expense of increasing college access for historically underrepresented students.

We have to make hard choices because our state government has failed to fund our public schools sufficiently. But are these really the choices we need to be making?

Over the last year, I have sat in countless meetings in meetings with non-profit boards, local foundations or over dinner with friends who worried about what the new HISD administration might do. I have repeatedly said, “No, they would never do that.” I honestly believed they would leave alone the things that worked. Now even Miles says that his biggest failure was not defining what autonomy meant for campuses.

About two months ago, I stopped defending the takeover. Now I fear that Miles and the nine appointed board membrs are wreaking havoc on schools that didn’t need fixing — havoc much like the storms last week that leveled many of Houston’s stately live oaks and left so many without power. They need to figure out how to read the air.

Eastman annotates the Q&A from that Landing story, so go read it for that information. I reached this point a long time ago, once it became clear that Miles was never going to give a straight answer about how he was going to finance the NES program, not to mention his dishonesty about central office cuts. I agree that changing how HISD teaches reading is a positive – maybe the one positive thing I can point to out of this debacle. It’s a significant positive, and if Miles’ tenure had been about that and really focusing on the schools and students that needed the most support, we’d be in a much better place. The combination of Miles’ ego, the complete lack of oversight or accountability he faces, the bizarre mission creep we’ve been subjected to, the disrespect for teachers and principals and everyone else – I could go on, but you get the point.

So to get back to my question, is there anyone out there that can credibly be called a supporter of public education who is still an advocate for Mike Miles? I have a hard time imagining it given the track record, but there’s always someone.

Posted in School days | Tagged Anna Eastman, Board of Managers, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, New Education System, Texas Education Agency | 8 Comments

Dispatches from Dallas, May 24 edition

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth we have election news; deaths and their aftermaths in the Tarrant County Jail; Dallas city charter updates; schools news; Texas history; and where to get your nude hiking on in North Texas. And more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of the Kleptones, who have just released the 20th anniversary remaster of A Night at the Hip Hopera, their fantastic take on Queen. Check it out on Bandcamp if you’re at all into Queen or mashups or hip hop.

First, let’s talk about the runoff next Tuesday. Early voting ends Friday and if you haven’t already cast your ballot, please get out there and vote! The Dallas Morning News has an overview of area races and recommendations. The Star-Telegram also has endorsements in area races. And if you want an alternative overview, check out the Dallas Observer’s rundown.

There are also a host of analyses and coverage of individual runoff races from various outlets: CD 12; two on HD 97; HD 33; Tarrant County precinct one; and the only race I had on my ballot, the Dallas County sheriff runoff on the Democratic side, where there’s no Republican running so the winner of the primary will cruise through the general. I’ve been getting a lot of texts from the candidates in the Sheriff race, some clearly official and others more mud-slinging and probably unofficial from somebody supporting Lupe Valdez.

We also have three stories about where money is coming from in the runoffs, specifically on the Republican side. First, the Star-Telegram introduces its readers to Mssrs. Wilks and Dunn and their contributions to candidates. Second, the DMN has a story about Greg Abbott giving $2.3m to voucher supporters in the runoff. Last, but not least, the Texas Tribune has noted the appearance of a new big donor in Texas politics: Miriam Adelson, part-owner of the Dallas Mavericks and casino magnate. She’s giving to Dade Phelan, by the way, so it’s going to be interesting to see who survives and gets the big bucks from her in the general.

The other news that I have found compelling and upsetting is the death of Anthony Johnson in the Tarrant County jail in Fort Worth back in April and its ongoing fallout. The short video of the incident leading to his death can be found with this KERA story; I didn’t watch it but I’ve read the descriptions. The two jailers involved were fired but reinstated Thursday evening by Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn because the firing didn’t follow state civil service procedures. The two jailers are currently suspended.

The Star-Telegram has additional coverage (also including the video). We’ve already seen a protest since the video was released, and Tarrant County commissioners want both better communication and better tactics (some of which are not actually better) at the jail to prevent future incidents.

To put this death in context, as mentioned in a number of the articles on this case, there have been more than 60 deaths in the jail since 2017. One recent case in the news this week was the death of a 63-year-old man with mental health problems in February. I don’t know whether this death counts toward the total number I’ve seen but this week Tarrant County approved a $1.2 million settlement to an inmate who gave birth in the jail to a baby that later died. And while the defendant discussed in this case is still with us, the family of this 21-year-old with the mental capacity of a child is trying to get him moved to a care facility before he becomes another statistic. One of the problems with many of these cases is that there is no mental health care available for these defendant/patients.

The DMN also has a relevant piece covering the death of Tony Timpa in DPD custody back in 2016. That story led me to this AP series from April about lethal restraint, also a factor in the death of Anthony Johnson. I literally found the AP investigation as I was writing this story so I haven’t read it yet. But I suspect that, like reading about the deaths in the jail in Tarrant County, it’s going to be frustrating and upsetting because there’s no easy answer to how to keep inmates from dying from poor jail conditions, warehousing mentally ill folks, and bad police practices.

In other news:

Dallas finally has an idea of the city charter amendments that might be on the ballot in November. It’ll take a while for Council to work through them, so we don’t know which ones will survive that process yet.
One of the items that may make it to the voters is a change to let the city offer a contract to the police chief. Axios explains what Dallas is paying to keep Chief Garcia in the absence of a contract.
Former City Manager T.C. Broadnax has acquired two more of his Dallas staff for Austin: Deputy City Manager Jon Fortune and Chief of Staff to the City Manager Genesis D. Gavino are both leaving. Meanwhile, as expected, Majed Al-Ghafry, Assistant City Manager, is moving on to become City Manager in DeSoto.
D Magazine explains Dallas’ pension shortfall, which is currently $3.3 billion.
We had the NRA in town over the weekend. I didn’t want to read about it, but if you do, the Texas Tribune, KERA, and WFAA have the details about what happened in the convention hall and the protestors outside.
KERA has coverage of County Judge Tim O’Hare’s state of the County speech. Two highlights: bringing more businesses to Tarrant County and reducing the population at the Tarrant County jail.
The latest in the Rashee Rice case: the photographer who was allegedly assaulted by Rice has filed an affidavit of non-prosecution. The investigation is ongoing.
Here are a number of stories about the woes of our North Texas school districts involving the lack of money and students. We’ll start with an overview; declining enrollment in Plano means four schools may be closed; the first draft of Arlington ISD’s budget for next year is $29 million in deficit; and in addition to school closures, Richardson ISD is facing problems as renters are being priced out of the area.
If you’re looking for something more cheerful about NTX schools after that, skip this item. Carroll ISD in Southlake is, unsurprisingly, fighting the Biden administration’s additional Title IX rules protecting sexual orientation and gender identity. They’re also complaining about the current status of the civil rights investigation into Southlake schools from April 2021. In other area school news, the ACLU has filed a discrimination complaint against Princeton ISD for refusing to let a school Pride group meet on campus. And you may remember that Grapevine-Colleyville ISD settled with a Black principal they wanted to fire back in 2021 and the trustees mouthed off, so the former principal sued for violation of the settlement. His claims were dismissed and now GCISD is about to sue him for legal fees from that suit.
Meanwhile, 70 years after Brown v Board of Education, school segregation in Dallas and Fort Worth continues. This one is worth a read; the discussion of the national studies is supplemented with discussion of specific schools in FWISD.
This profile of Mark Melton, who founded the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, was interesting.
Good and bad news about poverty and homelessness: CitySquare, a major group in poverty reduction here in Dallas, is out of money and will close at the end of the year. Also covered by the DMN. Meanwhile, Hotel Miramar in Oak Cliff is progressing toward its planned use as a supportive facility for the chronically homeless. And the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness says Dallas and Collin Counties have ended veteran homelessness, meaning they get homeless vets into housing in less than 90 days.
I’ve been living in Dallas for more than five years and I had never heard of Kleberg-Rylie, a neighborhood in southeast Dallas, until now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if residents’ allegations that they’re neglected by the city are true.
I don’t expect to make it to 2050 so it’s not a personal worry, but the numbers in the study about how many older people will be exposed to extreme heat (99.5 F) in that year widened my eyes. Climate change and an aging population are two problems that make each other worse.
Tarrant County has found its first West Nile mosquito of the year. ‘Nuff said.
Curious how Dallas picked up two professional women’s sports teams in 2024? This Dallas Observer story will fill you in.
Today I learned about Hernandez v Texas, a 1954 case that affirmed that Mexican-Americans could serve on juries in Texas and that their rights were protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. Shocking fact from this article: a sitting Justice referred to Mexican-Americans as “greasers” from the bench.
The Washington Post has an interactive story about the conflict between the Texas Rangers’ version of a shootout in South Texas in a hundred years ago and the version of the Tejano families of the men the Rangers killed. Come for the pretty graphics and the corrido, stay for the Texas State Historical Association controversy.
Billy Porter is going to be the first Grand Marshal of the Dallas Pride Parade. If you know, you know.
The Modern in Fort Worth has an exhibit focusing on Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism: Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940. I’m looking forward to visiting.
And last but not least, after finding out about nude beaches and the lack of good ones in North Texas, I’m pleased to report that there’s a naturist RV park in North Texas, about 45 minutes northwest of Fort Worth. News someone who sunburns less easily than I do can use!

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

You say “de-REY-cho”, I say “de-REH-cho”

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

If only we could have called the whole thing off.

A heat dome in Mexico contributed to Houston’s rare derecho event on May 16, when deadly and destructive winds whipped Southeast Texas, leaving eight dead and much of the nation’s fourth-largest city without electricity, according to the National Weather Service.

The recent derecho event in Houston was only the fifth derecho reported in Texas in the past 40 years. Derechos are widespread storm systems featuring straight-line winds that occur with bands of rapidly moving thunderstorms, such as bow echoes or squall lines.

Although a derecho can produce damage similar to a tornado, two of which also were confirmed in the May 16 storms, the damage typically runs in one direction along a relatively straight swath, the weather service says.

“The presence of the strong ridge over Mexico was likely a contributing factor to the system’s evolution, namely in the fact that it provided the area with an abnormally warm and, thus, unstable air mass,” said Tim Cady, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service office that oversees the Houston and Galveston areas.

[…]

The heat dome over Mexico, along with some other factors, is what produced last week’s storms.

“Widespread moisture was present across the area thanks to steady southeast winds over the course of several days, which transported Gulf moisture inland,” Cady said. “The system itself was triggered by the passage of a disturbance (of unstable air) and frontal boundary.”

He added that there was “a significant amount of wind shear that allowed the line of storms to sustain itself,” referring to sharp changes in wind direction and speeds the higher you go in the atmosphere.

You can get a nerdier explanation of derechos and their history in Texas at Space City Weather. And I suggest you get used to hearing about derechos, thanks to climate change. It’s another thing we need to deal with in this state but won’t thanks to our Republican leadership.

Houston’s late spring storm should frighten all Texans because it proved hurricane-force winds can strike anywhere in the state now, thanks to climate change. Unless we take practical steps, death and damage tolls will rise, insurance rates will spike, and companies will flee the state rather than seek tax refuge here.

Luckily, there is a lot we can do to preserve our economic prosperity, but it won’t come cheap.

First, we must understand that past weather patterns are no longer indicative of future threats. A global-warming-driven heat wave triggered the weather pattern that brought a derecho to Houston. If the heat dome had been a little to the north or west, the same winds could have struck San Antonio, Austin, Dallas or even Midland, causing even greater damage to cities not built for hurricanes.

[…]

We must harden the city and its infrastructure to better withstand storms, starting with building codes. The Legislature has never passed a statewide building code and only allows cities and counties to adopt the 2012 International Building and Residential Codes, which are outdated.

Florida has adopted the stricter 2015 codes with special provisions for hurricanes. Texas would do well to adopt the 2021 codes statewide so that homes and businesses will not only be safer but more energy efficient.

Developers have spent millions on lobbyists to prevent lawmakers from adopting statewide building codes or authorizing local authorities to use the latest versions. Builders complain the new codes will make construction more expensive.

In fact, cheaper construction merely shifts the financial risk to building owners, insurers and government disaster programs that must pay up when storms strike. The smarter solution is to build structures that will survive the next storm.

All Texans should demand that the Public Utility Commission order electricity transmission and distribution companies to build a more resilient grid. Wooden utility poles are prone to toppling, and electricity wires caught in tree branches cause most storm outages.

The electric grid also needs many more tall transmission towers to meet future electricity demand and to provide redundancy in case of an emergency or sabotage. New types of electrical wires and innovative technologies that allow lines to ramp up or down as needed should become the standard, not a luxury.

Taller steel poles are more expensive than wooden ones, and the more conductive wires and smarter switches have a higher upfront cost. But they also minimize outages, which cause personal suffering and economic losses.

Increasing our resiliency is critical because the storms will worsen as global temperatures rise. More extreme weather is inevitable because fossil fuel executives spent billions of dollars sowing doubt about global warming.

Conservative politicians continue denying reality because they don’t want to pay for the upgrades. Until Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other leaders agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will get warmer, and the weather will be more extreme.

We have a choice: pay now for safety or pay later for recovery. Texas’ geography guarantees we will feel the brunt of a changing climate. We are already seeing our insurance rates spike to cover the cost of more extreme storms.

We all know what they’re going to do. And we know what we need to do about it. Until then, watch out for falling glass.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged blackouts, climate change, Dan Patrick, derecho, downtown, electricity, Greg Abbott, Houston, National Weather Service, Public Utility Commission, The Lege | 1 Comment

On “bold things” for mobility

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

Mayor John Whitmire

Mayor John Whitmire started a noontime discussion about transportation in the region by saying he was “fired up” about the opportunity to improve the city’s mobility and infrastructure.

[…]

2. “I am going to do bold things for infrastructure… We are going to spend money.”

Whitmire was, after all, in a crowd of people in the business of making transportation projects happen. He joked that the TAG event counted as a one-on-one, since so many people present had been looking for some time with him.

That spending, Whitmire said, will come from multiple sources. Relying on his decades in the Texas Legislature, he said he is talking to state highway officials about more partnerships. He also is working with county officials for ways they can help city streets or split costs for street projects.

“We have got to find resources, and we are going to,” he said.

3. “I am sensitive to bike riders, I am… (But) we are not going to sacrifice our general mobility for recreation.”

Whitmire’s mandate for road projects in his administration has been clear: No reduction in lanes, lane width or adding of sidewalks wider than six feet.

He and others have said it is a matter of equity, noting that the Heights or Montrose should not have 10-foot sidewalks or bike trails when communities such as Alief and Denver Harbor have no sidewalks at all.

Repeatedly, he’s alluded to bicycling being a fringe activity or hobby as opposed to a means for mobility. For critics, that ignores thousands – albeit a small minority compared to drivers – who ride to work or school and are looking for safe options. And that does not include the ones who might ride for a quick trip to the store, if they felt safe.

“Since he first made this claim in March, Mayor Whitmire has heard from hundreds of Houstonians who depend on bikes for daily transportation,” said Joe Cutrufo, executive director of the advocacy group BikeHouston. “The city has a moral obligation to build streets that are safe for everybody, regardless of how they get around, and regardless of how this mayor feels about them.”

1. Not everyone drives everywhere. Some people can’t afford to buy a car, or live in a household that can’t afford to buy a car for everyone that might need one. Some people choose to live where they can get around without a car. Some people – I am in this group – prefer to walk or bike to places in their neighborhood whenever possible.

2. If you do drive everywhere, it’s actually in your interest to accommodate those who prefer an alternative to driving, because now they’re not competing with you for road space or parking spots. It’s a win-win when the people who live near to a popular destination can get there by not driving. If you have to drive there, you really should want to encourage that.

3. I really don’t think it’s going to be easy to get Harris County on board with this “roads and drivers above all else” strategy.

There are more things I could say, but I’ll leave it at that. As with other items on the Mayor’s agenda, we’re waiting on the details of his plans.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged bicycles, Bike Houston, bike lanes, Harris County, Houston, John Whitmire, Mayor, Metro, pedestrians, sidewalks, Sylvester Turner, traffic, urbanism | 11 Comments

That other high speed rail line update

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Keep on moving.

Transportation planners in North Texas continue their efforts to bring high-speed rail to the area, a system that would link Dallas and Fort Worth via Arlington and push south to Houston.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments held a public meeting Monday at which its planners detailed the status of high-speed rail in the region as well as the status of efforts to control air quality problems that have affected DFW for decades.

High-speed rail could be a reality in coming years, but success requires the completion of separate high-speed rail projects designed to connect, forming a system of travel from Arlington or Fort Worth to Houston with no need to change trains.

Last year, Texas Central Partners and Amtrak announced a plan to jointly study forward motion on a long-planned high-speed rail line to Houston.

“Texas Central, a private company, has been advancing that project and, even more recently, Amtrak seems interested in joining them in that project, continuing to advance the Dallas-Houston corridor,” Council of Governments Program Manager Brendon Wheeler said at the meeting.

The Council of Governments said it is moving ahead with plans to bring high-speed rail service to the Interstate Highway 30 corridor, connecting Fort Worth and Arlington to Dallas and a planned high-speed rail line south to Houston emanating from Dallas.
Wheeler said that high-speed rail projects under review include more than just the route to Houston.

“You have a planned study that TxDOT initiated several years ago, and then COG and several other metropolitan planning authorities along the route in Austin, San Antonio and Waco all the way down to Laredo advanced even further,” he said. That route could utilize other high performance lines such as magnetic levitation, or maglev, trains and high-speed rail.

Maglev systems of rail transport are levitated by electromagnets, thus eliminating rolling resistance of wheels. It is known to reach higher speeds than high-speed rail.

“Our study would look to connect all of these projects into a single system where they’re not simply corridor based, not just going from say Dallas to Houston or forward to Austin, but you’re able to create what the Regional Transportation Council calls a ‘one seat ride,’ where you go from Fort Worth to Houston on the same train,” Wheeler said. “You don’t have to get off this and get to a new station or get to a different train. You stay on the same train.”

Wheeler said the same thing applies if you’re coming from Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin or San Antonio — you stay on the same train. But don’t expect it to become reality soon.

“These projects take a long time to plan, to build — decades,” Wheeler said.

Tell me about it. As noted before, this project and the adjacent one to go south and also possibly north from Fort Worth have been around for awhile. The Dallas-Fort Worth line has also acquired most if not all of the right of way it needs and has some environmental reviews completed, too. If Amtrak can get the Texas Central line back on track, we could really have something here. Eventually.

(And now I’m daydreaming about a similar line here in the Houston area that maybe goes from Baytown to Katy with a stop in downtown, and also trying to figure out how to connect it to the proposed Texas Central station at 610 and 290. Don’t wake me up.)

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Amtrak, Arlington, Commission for High-Speed Rail in Dallas/Fort Worth, D/FW Airport, Dallas, Fort Worth, high speed rail, High-Speed Rail Alliance, Houston, Joe Biden, North Central Texas Council of Governments, stimulus, Texas, Texas Central High-Speed Railway | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of May 20

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone affected by the recent storms a full and fast recovery as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

Of course no one likes the Texas Medical Board’s proposed abortion guidance

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This was never a viable path forward. It was and is doomed to fail.

When Sarah Harrison addressed the Texas Medical Board at a virtual hearing Monday, she added her name to the growing list of Texas women who have shared stories of being denied medically necessary abortions.

Her testimony provided a timely example of exactly how confusing the state’s abortion laws can be in action, even to those tasked with enforcing them.

Harrison, an Austin attorney, learned late last year that one of her twins was not going to survive outside the womb. Her doctors advised her to travel out of state for a selective reduction to terminate the nonviable fetus.

On Monday, Harrison asked the medical board to more explicitly inform doctors they can perform selective reductions if continuing the pregnancy threatens the other fetus’ life. She pointed to the part of the law that says it is not an abortion if it is intended to “save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child.”

Stephen “Brint” Carlton, the board’s executive director, corrected her, saying that line applies to things like fetal surgeries and other interventions aimed at saving single pregnancies, not selective reductions of multiples. But then board chair Dr. Sherif Zaafran chimed in, saying that, in general, if a doctor feels a selective reduction is the standard of care and other expert physicians agree, it could potentially be allowed.

Harrison pushed back, saying her doctors did believe a selective reduction to be the standard of care.

“Under threat of criminal prosecution and losing their license, they were not going to provide a reduction because they couldn’t prove that I was at serious risk of losing my life or serious bodily function,” she said.

Later in the hearing, a retired OB/GYN said he didn’t believe Harrison would have qualified for an abortion in Texas. Then, a health lawyer weighed in to say she agreed with Harrison’s interpretation of the law.

“I thought that exception applied until I heard you today,” Louise Joy, an attorney who advises Texas hospitals, said to Carlton. “But that’s the very confusion we have.”

This is but one example of the ongoing confusion among doctors and lawyers about how to interpret the new abortion laws. The medical board has proposed guidance to clarify some of that uncertainty, but five hours of testimony and hundreds of written comments later, it’s clear no one is particularly pleased with their first attempt including, it seems, the medical board itself.

Zaafran said repeatedly that they would consider revisiting aspects of the proposal where doctors’ interpretations of the guidance was at odds with the boards’ intent.

“If the board was perfect, which we’re certainly not, then that would be it,” Zaafran said. “But having 1,000 sets of eyes [helps with] highlighting things that we may have overlooked and blind spots that we may not have been able to highlight.”

See here for the previous update. I’ve been plenty critical of the TMB but it’s not really their fault. They were set up to fail, because the law is both broad and vague and nothing matters except what Ken Paxton and the Supreme Court want it to be. We’re all just going through the motions, and in the end even the nominal result may be nothing: The Board either put forward the existing guidance for a vote, or start the public comment process over, and have more useless hearings like this one. We both know what the only way forward is. The Chron has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged abortion, Amanda Zurawski, Amy Bresnen, Attorney General, Center for Reproductive Rights, Election 2024, Election 2026, hospitals, Kate Cox, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Steve Bresnen, Supreme Court, Texas, Texas Medical Board, The Lege | 4 Comments

The senior living situation

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This story hit me in a couple of ways.

Ever since the power went out Thursday night from the devastating storm that hit Houston, Brian Cotten has been living on water and peanut-butter sandwiches in his sweltering apartment at a senior living center in the Heights.

“We were trying to help each other as best we could,” said Cotten, who lives with 230 residents at the Houston Heights Towers on 19th Street and serves as president of the community’s resident council.

For two days, no one at the city was aware of the residents’ plight. Cotten was worried about his neighbors, many of whom are on oxygen or use wheelchairs. The building’s landlord, the nonprofit Housing Corporation, had few employees on hand during the outage.

Cotten finally called the city’s Office of Emergency Management on Saturday to request help. City Councilmember Abbie Kamin said she was alarmed by what she saw when she arrived at the facility later that day.

“I pulled up, and an ambulance was already here because somebody was overheated,” said Kamin, who believes the landlord should have done more to make sure residents had what they needed during the Houston power outage.

On Sunday, Mayor John Whitmire harshly criticized the managers of the Heights Towers and other senior-living communities in Houston, alleging that residents had been “abandoned” during the power outage.

“It is outrageous,” said Whitmire, who specifically mentioned the Towers and another facility, Independence Hall, during a news briefing. Most troubling, the mayor added, is that there could be horror stories that the city doesn’t even know about.

“Are there facilities across Houston that no one’s been able to contact?” Whitmire asked. “We’re only able to fix what we know about.”

[…]

Kamin said she’s primarily concerned about what appears to be a lack of emergency planning for the nonprofit’s senior communities in the Heights, which provide housing for hundreds of low-income residents.

The councilmember contacted the nonprofit’s vice president and chief operating officer, Linda Holder, and wasn’t satisfied with her responses.

“‘I asked, ‘What is your emergency response (plan)?’” Kamin recalled. The answer: “‘We don’t have one.’” A message with Holder wasn’t returned Sunday.

“I said, ‘We’re gonna focus on getting y’all what you need right now. But we will be having some very serious conversations after this,’” Kamin said. “They keep claiming it’s a quote unquote, ‘independent living facility.’ I believe most of these residents are in wheelchairs or are amputees. There are individuals who are blind.”

The Fire Department had to be called Saturday night when a generator stopped working and a resident was trapped in an elevator.

“We had, at one point, like, four or five ladder trucks here,” said Kamin, who visited the facility with Fire Chief Samuel Peña.

My in-laws looked at this place in the past. My parents live in an independent living facility in the Portland area, which is a nice community that has had many problems relating to food service and maintenance and security that all boil down to their ownership looking for ways to cut costs without taking the effect of those cuts on their residents into consideration. My heart goes out to the folks at the Heights Tower and the onsite maintenance staff there who did heroes’ work trying to fix the problems caused by the storm.

As the story notes, while nursing homes are licensed by the state, there are no license requirements for independent living facilities like Heights Tower. I’m sure there’s a good argument to be made that reducing such regulatory burdens allows for the greater supply of such facilities, which are absolutely needed as the boomer population gets ever older. But there’s also a cost to that approach, as seen here. Having an emergency response plan, which would allow for better and more efficient coordination with the city when the need arises, is a good start. Whether there should be more federal or state oversight is a matter for another day, but it’s clear from this experience that what we’d always been doing isn’t the right approach. I look forward to seeing the city’s response down the line.

UPDATE: Here’s a second independent living facility that had issues in the aftermath of the storm; I only saw that story after I drafted this post. Residents complain that they were abandoned by building management after the power went out, the building management disputes that, Mayor Whitmire is involved. Again, I am interested to see what the city does about this sort of situation going forward.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Abbie Kamin, blackouts, derecho, Heights, Heights Tower, HFD, Houston, Houston City Council, independent living facilities, John Whitmire, nursing homes | 4 Comments

Debris collection time

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Today, the City of Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) will initiate the first pass of storm debris collection for single-family homes and neighborhoods affected by the Derecho Storm on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

Several city departments, within the city’s emergency management operations, have been conducting damage assessment procedures throughout the weekend and are now prepared to initiate debris removal operations on Monday, May 20. In order to safely expedite removal, all debris designated for collection should be placed at the curbside; at least five feet away from any obstructions and overhead obstacles.

Approximately 1 million cubic yards of residential storm debris is estimated to have been generated from this unprecedented storm. Debris removal efforts are expected to last for 2 – 3 months.

Residents are reminded to separate debris into the six distinct categories illustrated on the storm debris regulations document: Garbage, Vegetative, Construction and Demolition, Appliances, Electronics, and Household Hazardous Waste.

To aid in the coordination of collection efforts, residents of the impacted areas of the city are encouraged to report all debris removal needs to the 3-1-1 Call Center, visit our website at Houstonsolidwaste.org, and download the HTX Collects mobile application.

There’s tons and tons of downed tree branches lined up in front of many houses in my neighborhood right now. I hope the city can do something with all this waste – surely, there’s a mulching opportunity here – but I don’t know what the technicalities of that may be. Anyway, look for this stuff to slowly vanish from the streets as the city gets to it all.

I took a few pictures of the damage and the debris in my neighborhood, to document what happened before it all gets cleaned up. A few pics of interest for you:

Among many other things, this is a reminder that it could have all been worse. I wish you all the best with your cleanup and recovery. If you’re still without power, CenterPoint says they hope to be back to “status quo” today. Hang in there.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged derecho, Heights, Houston, photography, Solid Waste Management Department | 1 Comment

Primary Runoff early voting, Day One: First of two runoffs

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t plan to follow the early voting totals on a day by day basis for the primary runoffs. I’ll at least have the final totals in addition to Day One, and I may have one more in there if I feel so moved. The Day One totals for the primary runoffs are here. There were 13,695 total votes, with 12,716 coming on the Democratic side. That’s not a measure of anything, as Republicans have two runoffs in heavily Democratic Congressional districts and nothing else (many Republicans have nothing to vote for this round), while Dems have multiple races of great interest, including three countywide contests. You know what the races are and how to evaluate them, so all that’s left to do is vote. I’m aiming for Wednesday.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, early voting, Election 2024, Harris County, primaries, runoff, turnout | 1 Comment

Meanwhile, in Gillespie County…

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Bless their hearts.

The hand count of thousands of Republican primary election ballots in Gillespie County is on track to cost taxpayers more than double the wage costs of the 2020 Republican primary, according to records obtained by Votebeat.

Public records show Republicans employed 350 people to hand count, who collectively reported working more than 2,300 hours the day of the election at a rate of $12 per hour. That means more than $27,000 in wages.

Those numbers aren’t final, and they’re likely to grow. The tally does not include hourly wages for election clerks who worked at each of the county’s 13 precincts on election day checking in voters and performing duties other than counting. In addition, Gillespie Republicans will also hand-count ballots in a runoff election at the end of the month, which will add to the costs.

Gillespie’s experience illustrates how election costs could rise if the method is more widely adopted across the state.

Four years ago, for the Republican primary election, the party spent less than $13,000 total on election worker wages, including wages for those who worked during a runoff election.

The initial costs also show the hand count of this year’s primary is set to cost taxpayers more than what the county spends annually on electronic tabulating equipment that can be used across multiple elections.

Gillespie County paid $160,968 to purchase voting equipment from Hart Intercivic in 2021, according to a source familiar with the county’s contract. The equipment has a 15-year life expectancy. In addition, the county spends $9,120 annually on licensing fees and technical support for the machines, plus around $6,000 per election for programming the equipment.

[…]

Luis Figueroa, chief of legislative affairs at Every Texan, a nonprofit group that advocates for fair taxation and voting rights, said that over the past two years, Republican lawmakers have approved election policies based on administrative errors and discrepancies in Harris County — a Democratic stronghold — but are doing nothing about the issues that surfaced during the Gillespie hand count.

“A machine breaks down in Harris County, and lawmakers have multiple hearings and pass bills that not only would sanction them, but also to remove county officials, or want a redo of the entire election,” Figueroa said.

In contrast, in Gillespie, “they’re having inaccuracies doing hand counting, and there’s no accountability and no calls from anyone to stop this practice,” he said.

Bruce Campbell, Gillespie County’s Republican Party chairman, told Votebeat that increasing people’s confidence in the election is worth the additional cost. When asked if he thought county residents felt more confident about the process following the hand count, he could not say.

“I don’t have a sense of the county as a whole,” he said. “I know the 350 people who participated in it are mostly enthusiastic about it.”

See here and here for the background. I don’t think I could provide a better summary of the current Republican ethos than Bruce Campbell’s quote, so I’m gonna leave it there. I’m sure there will be more. Enjoy spending all that extra money on this weird obsession, y’all.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Donald Trump, Election 2020, Election 2024, elections administrator, electronic voting machines, Gillespie County, hand counting, primaries, Republican Party, runoff, Secretary of State, Texas, voter suppression | 1 Comment

City Council versus HISD

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I doubt they can do anything, but I’m happy to watch them try.

One year after the state takeover of Houston Independent School District, some City Council members are urging Mayor John Whitmire to take a more proactive approach in influencing the decisions of state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles.

Empowered by a new measure that allows council members to introduce proposals without the mayor’s approval, six members are banding together to push for a resolution condemning the widespread job cuts for HISD teachers, custodians and principals for the upcoming school year. The statement also expresses solidarity with all school district students and employees.

“The recent abrupt layoffs of hundreds of dedicated HISD employees, executed without sufficient notice or transparency, have caused significant distress within the community,” the proposed resolution reads. “The City Council disagrees with the lack of foresight, sensitivity, and transparency exhibited by HISD’s current leadership in handling significant organizational changes.”

Council Member Edward Pollard, spearheading the resolution effort, said he initially took a “wait and see” approach when state leadership first took control of the school district last year.

“I wanted to give them time to allow them to lead,” Pollard told the Chronicle. “But this one right here with the mass layoffs could no longer be ignored.”

He expressed frustration, in particular, over the departure of Amanda Wingard from Neff Elementary, a school in his district. Wingard, honored as HISD’s Principal of the Year in 2023, confirmed in a recent Facebook post that the district had asked her to resign.

Acknowledging the city’s lack of jurisdiction over the school board’s decisions, Pollard said Houston’s elected officials should still find ways to exert their influence. He said Whitmire, with decades of experience in the state legislature, should leverage his relationships to advocate for HISD teachers and families.

There’s layers to this one, beginning with Mayor Turner versus Mike Miles and the whole Prop A saga, for which CM Pollard appears to be the main protagonist. I’m going to make sure the popcorn machine is in peak working condition going forward.

As the story notes, Mayor Whitmire has discussed HISD and Miles before, and at the time (in January) he declined to mix it up, on the grounds that he wanted to do the whole “work with everyone and come to an understanding” process. Which, fine, perfectly reasonable for a brand new Mayor, especially one who campaigned on his chumminess with the Austin power brokers. That was then and this is now, and an awful lot of people are very mad about the state of HISD, the seemingly capricious ways in which well-loved teachers and principals are being shoved out the door, and so on.

Is that a matter on which the Mayor and City Council should be getting involved? CM Pollard and his co-sponsors (CMs Plummer, Alcorn, Thomas, Evans-Shabazz, and Jackson) would like to, though they understand that there’s not much beyond making noise they actually can do. If they want to put Mayor Whitmire on the spot, and nudge him to use those fabled connections to maybe get Mike Miles to listen to someone other than himself, I don’t see any reason why not. We’ll see how the Mayor responds.

Posted in Local politics, School days | Tagged Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, Edward Pollard, HISD, Houston, Houston City Council, John Whitmire, Letitia Plummer, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, Sallie Alcorn, Tarsha Jackson, Texas Education Agency, Tiffany Thomas | 12 Comments

Power by Wednesday?

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

As of 5 PM Saturday, CenterPoint said that 447K customers were still without power, which is about half of the original total from Thursday night. The hope is that 90% of all customers will have power by Wednesday. Which, given that CenterPoint has about 1.9 million customers in Harris County, still means that almost 200K will be out of luck.

As of Saturday night, we were still in that bucket. I’m writing this before heading over to our house to check on it status and plug the fridge into a battery; we’re also providing a battery to our next door neighbors so they can charge their phones and hearing aids. I’m starting to feel a little anxious about all this.

One bit of good news for Harris County is that FEMA will provide reimbursement costs for the recovery effort.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said the county “should be eligible” for public disaster funds, which would help the county and likely other public agencies tap Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for costs related to road cleanup and damage to public buildings.

“This is a big deal,” Hidalgo said. “Instead of us having to foot the bill on recovery, we can get reimbursed and use those funds on mitigation for the future and keep a balanced budget.”

The county alone has calculated significant damage to public assets, as well as the cost to help people rebuild. In a release, county officials said the damage included:

• 1.2 million cubic yards of debris that will cost about $27 million to remove.
• Harris County Engineering’s Delta building has significant damage that will cost an estimated $1.2 million to fix.
• 178 traffic signals not working. The county is coordinating with TxDOT to get generators to 8 locations that are critical intersections.
• 14 county buildings without power, 3 of which are courthouses.

“These are estimates for unincorporated Harris County and do not include any damage within individual cities or (school districts),” officials said. “Cities and (school districts) will report damage in the coming days, but this gives us a sense of the cost of the damage.”

So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. But if you’re without power and trying to figure out what’s up, it’s not so easy.

As crews are deployed dealing with power line and system failures from Thursday’s pounding storm, the site dedicated to alerting Houston area people when their power will return is going through some outages of its own.

CenterPoint Energy’s outage tracker — for many the first place to check on power problems — has been experiencing “technical difficulties” throughout Saturday morning, according to the website.

Company officials eventually abandoned the map in favor of updating people on the total number of outages, steering them toward its X social media platform and its text and phone service.

The tracker was slowed by a combination of the large demand and the wide area of the map with power problems to report, said Alyssia Oshodi, director of communications for CenterPoint.

“It is tied to the amount of outages,” Oshodi said.

She said the company would work to provide information as they can, but as of Saturday the map “was not functional.”

“We will of course look to see what we can do to improve,” Oshodi said, noting CenterPoint’s focus remains on restoring power.

Looking at the outage map that I could see through their online service, I’m not optimistic about getting power restored before Wednesday. I hope I’m wrong about that, but I suppose if it’s not me it’ll be someone else. I’ve no doubt CenterPoint’s staff is working around the clock to get everything restored – one of those live updates from the Chron said they’re dealing with about 5,200 problems related to locations losing electricity, which is juts a hell of a lot. We had our power restored quickly after Ike back in 2008. If this is the cosmic scales balancing out, so be it.

UPDATE: HISD has posted a list of campuses that will be open on Monday. As of 1:24 PM, CenterPoint says 80% of customers should have power back by Sunday evening. They were down to about 350K outages by then. We were still out as of early afternoon.

UPDATE: I have power back! I got the notification from CenterPoint at 6:24 PM on Sunday, just as we were about to settle in for the night at my mother-in-law’s. We got back home as fast as we could, and all is well. Plenty of people still aren’t so lucky. I wish them all the best.

UPDATE: The number of customers without power was 236K as of Sunday at 10 PM. I do a morning walk and saw power restored for the most part in my neighborhood, but there were several blocks that were still dark.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, derecho, FEMA, Harris County, HISD, Houston, Lina Hidalgo, schools | 3 Comments

Early voting to proceed mostly as normal

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth announces that early voting for the May 28 Primary Runoff Elections will start on Monday, May 20, as scheduled. Despite the challenges the county faces due to the storm on Friday, we are pleased to announce that 44 vote centers will be open from May 20 to May 24, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“Our hearts are with everyone affected by the storm. Although our office was also impacted, we have worked tirelessly around the clock to ensure that the May 28 Primary Runoff Elections proceed as planned,” said Clerk Hudspeth, the county’s chief election official. “Our office is committed to conducting well-organized, transparent, and fair elections. Under the current circumstances, the safety of voters and election workers remains our top priority.”

The Elections Department has been working with the Texas Secretary of State, Harris County Commissioners, the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Harris County Universal Services, the two major political parties, and vote center personnel to safely open as many vote centers as originally scheduled. Click here to view a list of the 44 vote centers open during early voting, May 20 through May 24.

The following locations will not open for early voting:

BakerRipley Middle School – 4414 Navigation Boulevard, Houston, TX 77011

Hardy Street Senior Citizens Center – 11901 West Hardy Road, Houston, TX 77076

Richard and Meg Weekley Community Center – 8440 Greenhouse Road, Cypress, TX 77433

North Channel Branch Library – 15741 Wallisville Road, Houston, TX 77049

Lone Star College Victory Center – 4141 Victory Drive, Houston, TX 77088

First Congregational Church – 10840 Beinhorn Road, Houston, TX 77024

“I want to remind everyone that there are only five days of early voting for this election. The most important thing to remember is that voters must vote in the same party’s runoff election that they voted in during the March 5 Primaries,” added Clerk Hudspeth. “If a voter cast their ballot in the Republican Primary on March 5, then they can only participate in the Republican Runoff Election. The same is true for Democratic primary voters.”

The address where a voter is registered and which party’s primary they chose to vote in determines what contests will be on the ballot. Voters can view and print their personalized sample ballot to take to the polls on the Harris Votes website.

All things considered, not too bad. Hopefully we’ll have the original complement of voting locations for the 28th.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Angeanette Thibodeaux, Annette Ramirez, blackouts, Charlene Ward Johnson, Constable, Democratic primary, derecho, Desiree Broadnax, early voting, Election 2024, endorsements, Gemayel Haynes, Harris County Tax Assessor, HD139, HD146, interviews, Jarvis Johnson, Jerome Moore, Jerry Rodriguez, Jerry Zimmerer, judicial races, Lauren Ashley Simmons, Molly Cook, Q&A, runoff, SD15, Senate, Shawn Thierry, Texas, The Lege, Velda Faulkner, Vivian King | Comments Off

First look at the HISD budget

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re up to $500 million in cuts. But we still don’t have any details.

The multibillion-dollar question of how Houston ISD intends to balance its budget went largely unanswered Thursday night, with district administrators revealing few specifics about job or program cuts as they unveiled a long-awaited spending plan for 2024-25.

HISD Superintendent Mike Miles said the district will move forward with slashing over $500 million, equivalent to about 20 percent of the district’s spending in the 2023-24 school year, due to an upcoming budget squeeze, but he only gave broad outlines of which departments would see the reductions. HISD likely will need to eliminate a significant number of jobs and scale back initiatives to trim $500 million next school year.

“We cut a lot of positions in central office and that’s very painful,” Miles said. “Anytime you cut, they’re real people, real jobs.”

HISD released its budget plan to the media Thursday afternoon at the start of the first and only scheduled board meeting about the budget, which trustees expect to vote on next month. However, destructive winds and power outages at HISD’s central office forced board members to cancel the workshop before Chief Financial Officer Jim Terry could present the budget to trustees. Miles spoke to the media prior to the meeting and release of the budget plan Thursday afternoon.

HISD is already behind its typical schedule for detailing its spending plans for the upcoming year. By mid-May last year, HISD had held four public budget workshops to explain plans to the board and gauge community members’ feedback, district records show. District officials plan to reschedule Thursday’s canceled meeting for May 23.

The delay in releasing detailed information to the public concerns elected trustee Sue Deigaard, especially with drastic cuts planned. Deigaard and the rest of HISD’s elected school board technically remain in place, though all of their power has been temporarily transferred to a state-appointed board of managers as part of sanctions against the district.

“It’s easier for the distrust to grow if enough people don’t understand why this is happening,” Deigaard said.

[…]

HISD plans to offset next year’s deficit, in part, by selling $80 million in property and dipping into $130 million of its “rainy day” fund. That would leave $800 million in reserves, which Miles said is a healthy level to maintain the district’s strong bond rating.

The key unanswered question, however, is how many positions the district plans to eliminate to save hundreds of millions of dollars. In early May, HISD terminated over a hundred wraparound specialists who serve students living in poverty, but those cuts likely will only save the district around $10 million.

See here and here for the background. I don’t have the brain space for this right now, so I’ll just note that the much-reviled elected Board of Trustees had its act together on presenting its budget to its stakeholders a lot more than the current bunch has. Make of that what you will. You can read the budget plan, it’s embedded in the story. I hope we get some actual details in the coming week.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, budget, deficit, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Mike Miles, New Education System, schools, stimulus, Sue Deigaard | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for May 19

Posted on May 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Meet Tonja Stelly, the mother of the only NBA-NHL brother tandem in history.

“For centuries, people have thought of parasites as nature’s villains. They often infect people and livestock. In fact, parasites are by definition bad for their hosts, but today, more scientists are starting to think about parasites as forces for good.”

“But what incentive do Libertarians have to help Trump? Why would the Libertarian Party, long a thorn in the GOP side—for example, forcing runoff elections in Georgia and helping Democrat Jon Tester eke out Senate wins in Montana—give one of the least libertarian Republican nominees in American history their coveted platform?”

“Former President Donald Trump used a dubious accounting maneuver to claim improper tax breaks from his troubled Chicago tower, according to an IRS inquiry uncovered by ProPublica and The New York Times. Losing a yearslong audit battle over the claim could mean a tax bill of more than $100 million.”

RIP, Susan Backlinie, actor and stuntwoman who was memorably the first to be eaten by the shark in Jaws.

“Robot dogs armed with AI-aimed rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation”.

“A new catalyst made from an inexpensive, abundant metal and common table sugar has the power to destroy carbon dioxide (CO2) gas.”

Ernie Johnson is a mensch.

“What Happens After Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Absolute Immunity: Mapping 3 Scenarios”.

Maybe we will get more “Shōgun”. Not sure how that will work, but we’ll see.

The main upshot of all this is that “Judge” Aileen Cannon needs to be impeached and removed from the bench.

RIP, David Sanborn, six-time Grammy-winning saxophone player who can be heard on James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and David Bowie’s “Young Americans”, among others.

RIP, Rev. William A, Lawson, civil rights icon, founder of Houston’s Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, father of former newscaster Melanie Lawson.

RIP, Dr. Cyril Wecht, celebrity pathologist who argued against the “lone shooter” conclusion in the JFK assassination.

“Julia Morales, Jenny Cavnar make history as women handling play-by-play on Astros-A’s TV broadcasts“. Good on them both.

“Paul Walter Hauser Is the Lead in an Adaptation of the Greatest Game Show Episode Ever“. IYKYK. If not, click and find out.

Meet your Golden Bachelorette, Good luck, ma’am.

Some strategies for winning on The Price Is Right.

“Even Clarence Thomas Can See That the 5th Circuit Is Just Making Up Nonsense“.

I love this story about how Jenny Lawson found some compelling paintings done by a woman who was a patient at the San Antonio State Hospital in the 1950s. The paintings themselves tell quite the story, but the story of the artist may be forever a mystery. See here and here for some background. It’s a great story.

“Turtle’s Minor League Debut Short Lived As It Is Ejected From Field”.

RIP, Dabney Coleman, Emmy-winning character actor best known for the movie 9 to 5.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 2 Comments

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