From the “Obvious reactions to dumb things” department

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Item 1: Former Congressman Will Hurd is running for President.

Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, announced Thursday he is running for president, becoming the first Texan with experience in elective office to enter the Republican primary.

Hurd, who represented Texas in Congress from 2015-21, begins his campaign as a major underdog. He is an unabashed moderate and a Donald Trump critic in a party where many remain loyal to the former president and frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Hurd revealed his decision in a Thursday morning interview on CBS and followed it up online with an announcement video that began with Hurd listing illegal immigration, inflation and other problems before addressing the current and former presidents.

“President [Joe] Biden can’t solve these problems — or won’t,” Hurd said. “And if we nominate a lawless, selfish, failed politician like Donald Trump — who lost the House, the Senate and the White House — we all know Joe Biden will win again.”

I have a better chance of being elected President than Will Hurd does. But I’m sure this will be helpful for his future book sales and speaking fees.

Item 2: Can Ted Cruz convince people that he’s an effective legislator and not just a ridiculous partisan hack?

Not Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz often refers to himself as a happy warrior, and he has spent much of his time in the Senate fighting against bills backed by Democrats and Republicans alike.

But as the two-term senator gears up for a difficult reelection fight next year, he is working to buff up a less prominent side of his record: effective lawmaker.

The Texas Republican is touting past efforts to reach across the aisle to designate new federal highways, invest in space exploration and pass protections for women in military academies. And he is using his post as the top Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to make bipartisan pushes to mandate carmakers keep AM radio in the vehicles they sell and to require transparency in event ticket pricing.

It’s a new look for Cruz that comes as his highest-profile Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, is already slamming him for spending more time podcasting and vying for airtime on Fox News than getting work done in the Senate.

“My role in the Senate has been, No. 1, standing up and leading the fight against bad ideas, against extreme policies hurting the people of Texas, and, No. 2, working to deliver meaningful victories that make a difference in the lives of Texans,” Cruz said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers.

Short answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *gasp* *wheeze* *choke* HA HA HA HA HA *deep breath* *long exhale* No.

(Also, that thing about AM radio is totally about protecting wingnut talk radio hosts from extinction.)

This has been Obvious Reactions To Dumb Things. Thank you for your attendance.

Posted in Election 2024, The making of the President | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on From the “Obvious reactions to dumb things” department

Another look at Texas redistricting litigation after the Alabama SCOTUS ruling

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

An explainer from the Trib.

The state faces an assortment of legal challenges to its congressional and statehouse maps, including allegations of intentional discrimination, vote dilution and racial gerrymandering. For example:

In the Rio Grande Valley, the plaintiffs allege map-drawers reconfigured a congressional district to offer Republicans a more competitive edge by manipulating precincts in and out of the district based on race. They also argue lawmakers discriminated against Latino voters by “making improper and excessive use of race” in each of its maps.

Across North Texas, the challengers point to several instances in which communities of color were siphoned off from diverse districts and submerged into more rural districts dominated by white voters in which they will have less of a political voice.

In some areas where voters of color were gaining political ground, Republican map-drawers elaborately manipulated lines to create district boundaries that could diminish their influence.

Republican lawmakers and attorneys representing the state in court have denied that their work ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act or constitutional protections against discrimination.

[…]

While the pathway to challenging voting laws in federal court has been narrowed as the law has been weakened, voters have found a way forward through Section 2, which prohibits any voting practice or procedure that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” Violations of the law occur when, “based on the totality of circumstances,” groups of voters of color have less opportunity to participate in the political process or to elect representatives of their choice.

Texas has repeatedly run afoul of protections for voters of color in the past.

In a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court leaned on precedent to reject Alabama’s argument that Section 2 is unconstitutional because it places too much emphasis on race. Alabama’s various arguments, including a pitch for race-neutral tests, could have radically changed how Section 2 claims are litigated.

Lawmakers are generally not allowed to draw districts predominantly on the basis of race. But the Voting Rights Act can require them to consider race when sketching boundaries under certain circumstances, namely to protect or create “opportunity districts” in which voters of color make up a majority of the electorate and can usually elect their preferred candidate.

“[This] was the court taking a very, very standard approach to a redistricting challenge under the Voting Rights Act,” said [Nina] Perales, who is representing Latino plaintiffs in the Texas redistricting case after successfully challenging the state’s maps last cycle.

The Texas redistricting case, which is further behind than challenges to other states’ maps, is chock full of Section 2 claims.

Some plaintiffs’ lawyers said the Supreme Court’s ruling would not change much of their approach to those claims, while others said the decision clarified the complex legal framework needed to prove a violation of Section 2. But they agreed that the court’s ruling dispatched some of the arguments states like Texas might look to in defending against their challenges.

“One of the things that the majority did is it really refused to rewrite Section 2 along the lines of various arguments that defendants are raising across the country,” said Yurij Rudensky, who serves as a redistricting counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice and represents a group of plaintiffs in the Texas case.

See here for the background, and read the rest. There’s no question that Texas packed and cracked to its heart’s content in 2021. The question is whether the courts, up to and including SCOTUS, will rule that they did so in an acceptable way. I’m not dumb enough to try to predict that. Hell, given the status of the cases (see the story), we probably won’t even get an initial ruling in time for the next election. We’ll be able to see how the rulings go in other states first, as a consolation prize. Settle in, these things always take a lot of time.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I still don’t get how Mike Miles is going to do what he says

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s start with the big plans that appointed HISD Superintendent Mike Miles is touting.

Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles unveiled a dramatically expanded plan for the district at a Thursday board meeting, announcing 150 schools will see “wholesale systemic reform” by 2030.

The scope of Miles’ plan is much larger than the one he shared at the beginning of the month, when Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed him and nine new school board members to lead HISD as part of sweeping sanctions against the district. Miles initially said he will begin with major changes to 28 campuses this upcoming school year, nearly all of which are located on the city’s largely lower-income northeast side.

Miles’ plans for the 150 schools, equal to slightly more than half of HISD’s campuses, largely mirror those outlined in recent weeks for the 28 campuses. They include significantly raising teacher pay, restructuring the responsibilities of teachers to give them more time to focus on classroom instruction, and standardizing lesson plans and curricula. The campuses would see additional staff dedicated to more routine tasks, such as making copies and grading papers.

Principals, meanwhile, would be expected to spend more time in classrooms coaching teachers. Miles compared principals to football coaches, saying coaches don’t show up to practice every few weeks, but rather they’re constantly on the field giving instruction.

Miles also said he wants to decrease the number of students in pre-kindergarten classrooms to 15, beginning with the 28 schools and HISD’s eight early childhood centers.

Many community leaders, union officials and HISD families have opposed Miles’ proposals to date, arguing his system will place an overemphasis on standardized testing and cause unnecessary instability in the district.

[…]

Miles did not specify which campuses would be included in the 150 campuses beyond the 28 schools already announced, and he didn’t give a specific timeline for bringing campuses into the fold.

Miles also did not detail how he would pay for higher salaries and new positions, which could total hundreds of millions of dollars annually. He said teachers in the schools seeing wholesale changes, labeled as part of his “New Education System,” or NES, could eventually see average salaries of $90,000. First-year teachers were slated to earn $61,500 last school year, while those with 15 years of experience were expected to make $70,000, according to HISD’s salary schedule.

The superintendent said HISD can significantly boost teacher pay “if we work much more efficiently,” though he didn’t outline where the district is inefficient.

However, Miles did confirm earlier this month that he’s planning to reallocate $106.7 million budgeted by former HISD Superintendent Millard House II to fund his “Destination 2035” plan, which includes reshaping the 28 NES campuses.

Miles said he will pay for the added costs of the NES by slashing $50 million in vendor contracts; trimming $30 million from the central office, primarily through job cuts; and eliminating $25 million worth of positions supported by federal pandemic relief funds, which are expected to run out in September 2024. He said well-performing schools will keep the resources they currently have.

“I hope you can see already that NES isn’t about taking away,” Miles said. “NES is about getting more, and then we’re going to do as many of the schools as we can.”

The appointed HISD Board of Managers approved the budget at their Thursday meeting, a budget that Miles acknowledged in the story was “similar to that of the previous administration”. The question I have, which I have asked before, is how is the funding for all this going to work? How will it be sustainable? You can only slash the administrative overhead so much. Where does the rest of this come from? And sure, I get it, Miles has just gotten his feet on the ground and all, but he himself has been talking about how urgent this all is – and he’s right about that, the students don’t get any of the time that is spent trying to fix things back – and how he needs to get things changed right away. Well, that means you need to tell us how you’re actually going to accomplish that plan right away, too. If you can, that is. If it turns out you’re inventing this all on the fly, we need to know that, too.

It would be one thing to point at an established record of success and say we’re gonna do that so trust us. But the record is mixed at best, and doesn’t do anything to alleviate my concerns.

Already, the manner in which Miles has begun his new position in Houston is drawing comparisons with his short-lived stint in Dallas. Within a week of being appointed to lead Houston ISD, the largest school district in Texas, Miles announced an overhaul of certain campuses and a new program that will pay teachers more to work with students struggling academically, steps that resemble his approach during his last superintendent gig.

But while his management methods laid the foundation for some future success in Dallas ISD, they also left behind various scandals, caused veteran educators to leave the district and ultimately didn’t result in significant academic gains.

[…]

Miles’ plan for Houston ISD is similar to a program he started in Dallas before he resigned with two years left on his contract. That program, which launched after Miles resigned, gave teachers huge pay bonuses if they boosted standardized test scores in some of the campuses with the biggest needs. Some low-rated campuses saw improvements as part of the program, but scores fell again once funding dried up and teachers left because they weren’t getting paid the same.

Other school districts across the state implemented the program after its early success in Dallas.

Miles also was the driving force behind revamping the school district’s teacher evaluation system, which was used to calculate teacher pay based on a mix of test results, student feedback and performance rather than experience. Miles plans to implement a similar teacher evaluation system in Houston.

Dallas still uses this evaluation system but questions over equity have arisen as most of these high-qualified teachers were not going to the schools that needed them the most.

Similarly, lawmakers passed the Teacher Incentive Allotment program in 2019, which rewards teachers with salaries of up to six figures based on their students’ performance. About 13,000 teachers, or about 4% of the state’s educators, are currently part of the program.

In Dallas, the program received support from the majority of the board, including Morath, and from then-Mayor Mike Rawlings. But many teachers warned that they would leave the district if they received pay raises only based on tests taken once a year. Miles called his system the most rigorous in the U.S. at the time.

David DeMatthews, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin who has followed Miles’ career, said that while he believes testing is important, he hopes Miles doesn’t solely focus on getting standardized test scores up as it could lead to another exodus of teachers at a time when Texas schools are struggling to find and retain teachers.

In Texas, students’ STAAR test results are used to score schools on how well they are educating children. Critics of the test say it is not a great indicator of how well a child knows a subject and that its high-stakes nature adds undue pressure to both test-takers and teachers.

“It’s not an effective management tool to say that test scores are going to be the driver of reforms,” DeMatthews said. “Test scores don’t predict all that much about what happens to students in the future.”

[…]

Under Miles’ leadership, Dallas ISD consistently met the standards set by the state’s accountability system but failed to show any significant gains in standardized test scores. In some subject areas, test scores decreased and never really came close to reaching state averages. The number of schools that were in good standing with the state also dropped, while the number of failing schools increased.

The turnover rate for teachers increased from 12% to 22% during Miles’ first two school years at Dallas.

“Miles’ approach created a ton of controversy in Dallas ISD and it did lead to an increased rate of teacher turnover relative to the rest of the state,” DeMatthews said. “Hopefully, he learned his lesson in Dallas.”

I skipped the recounting of the scandals, most of which are fairly small and garden-variety but which still seem quite ironic given that the known dysfunction of earlier versions of the HISD Board of Trustees was a part of the justification for the takeover. You should go and read the rest of the story for a feel of it. People do dumb things and sometimes minor mistakes can be blown out of proportion, I get that. But if you’re being brought in as a savior, it’s fair to give those things some scrutiny, and to expect that you’ll be holding yourself to a higher standard.

The stuff that I focused on in that story is exactly what is giving me pause about Miles’ big plans now. Putting aside the financial concerns, I think anything that depends on teacher behavior needs to be viewed through a lens that considers how challenging the last few years have been for teachers and how many of them have just gotten out of the education business. Teachers obviously care about how much they’re paid and will respond to economic incentives in the same way that anyone else will. But they also care about being treated with respect and dignity, and I think a lot of the recent trend in teacher employment is more about that than it is about dollars and cents. Some of that is on Greg Abbott and the Lege, but a lot of it is on Miles and HISD. And in the end, if the incentive pay goes away, then so does the incentive, as we saw in Dallas. We still need to know what that long term plan to pay for all this will be.

The thing is, even with my doubts, I do think Miles has correctly identified the core problem.

All of which was an eerie echo of a HISD school board meeting held 12 years ago when several members of that board told parents that the state recognizing their schools as “recognized” or “exemplary” based on state – not national – student testing was essentially meaningless. School district leaderships have a problem when they crow over their A and B rated schools one day and then turn around and say that’s not the only mark of success, or maybe even a good one.

It was February 2011, in a stormy board meeting with upset parents arguing vainly against the district adding their schools to the Apollo 20 turnaround program. They feared the stigma, they didn’t want the changes it would bring, and they didn’t understand how it all could have been happened especially since the state had given them high ratings and told them it was so important that the students do well on the Texas standardized tests.

These parents and community leaders had supported the pizza parties, the pep rallies, the constant testing because there was a real goal to be achieved: top marks with the state when their children aced what was then the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test — whose scores were a major factor in whether the schools were awarded an excellence rating.

But as Miles did Thursday night and as then board members explained 12 years ago, the data from the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) known as “the nation’s report card” shows Texas students and HISD kids in particular significantly behind the norm, especially at certain schools and especially among Black and Hispanic students. Their positions are similar: The state-anointed labels don’t matter; too many of these kids weren’t doing well.

“The TAKS test means less than it ever did,” then-trustee Harvin Moore said at the time. “It does represent something. Unfortunately it represents less and less with each passing year. And we’re fooling our schools, we’re fooling our teachers and we’re fooling our public if we continue to focus solely on the TAKS test.”

“TAKS is not a competitive test. You’ve been misled and misdirected if you think being recognized is okay. Recognized is not okay. TAKS has no rigor,” former trustee Lawrence Marshall lectured the room. So the board voted to invest huge funds in Apollo 20, the brainchild of then Superintendent Terry Grier. Apollo 20 was not only was not successful but fostered resentment at many of the district’s other schools that were not getting those extra funds. Gains after a year were not as expected and those made were not sustained.

Now Miles wants to put his own system starting with these NES schools, a system that also takes money away from elsewhere in the district for its funding. And while he wasn’t as harsh as those trustees of 12 years ago, in a briefing after the meeting, he said the A and B ratings were just one marker and shouldn’t be the final word on whether students are doing well at a school.

The issue is bigger than state test scores at some schools. The NAEP data isn’t good, not nearly as good as it should be, and it’s not just because of a few schools. Some high-performing schools have significant populations of underperforming students, though it’s not clear how that might be addressed, either. Not enough HISD students go to college, and of those not enough graduate. We really do need to do a lot better by our students, all of our students. It would be great if Mike Miles can make that happen, or at least get us started on that path. I’m just not sure he has the plan for it. He still needs to convince me of that. Going into detail about what he intends to do would help.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

COVID immunity update

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Fascinating stuff.

Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were present in the blood of 96.4% of Americans over the age of 16 by September 2022. That’s according to a serosurvey – an analysis testing for the presence of these immune defense molecules – conducted on samples from blood donors.

A serosurvey like this one helps researchers estimate how many people have been exposed to any part of the coronavirus, whether via vaccination or infection. Both can trigger the generation of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. And by identifying which kind of antibodies someone has in their blood, researchers can break down the 96.4% into different types of immunity: infection-derived, vaccine-derived and hybrid.

COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States are based on only one part of the virus – the spike, or S, protein. Researchers can tell that a person has been vaccinated and has not been infected if their blood has only anti-S antibodies that target that spike protein. If someone has anti-N antibodies, which target the virus’s nucleocapsid protein, it’s a sign that they’ve been infected by SARS-CoV-2. To reliably identify someone with hybrid immunity, a researcher would need to match someone who has anti-N antibodies to an official vaccination database.

[…]

Antibodies are not just a marker of previous infection; part of their job is to help prevent future infection with the same pathogen. So, serosurveys can be used to understand levels of immunity in the population.

For some diseases, like measles, immunity is essentially lifelong, and having antibodies means you are protected. However, for SARS-CoV-2 this is not the case, because the virus has continually evolved new variants that are able to reinfect people despite their antibodies.

Nevertheless, many studies have shown that individuals with hybrid immunity will be more protected against future infection and variants than those with vaccine- or infection-derived immunity alone. It may be useful to know the proportion of the population with single-source immunity in order to target certain groups with vaccination campaigns.

About half of the people who have some COVID antibodies in their blood had it from both sources, the vaccine and a prior infection. Slightly more of the remainder had been vaccinated but not infected than those that had been infected but not vaccinated. I don’t have a point to make here, I just thought this was worth sharing. And for those of you wondering when it might be time to get your next booster, Your Local Epidemiologist has some news for you.

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Here are the Senate impeachment rules

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s go.

A crook any way you look

Suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton will answer to 16 of 20 articles of impeachment at a trial to begin Sept. 5, the Texas Senate said Wednesday night after spending about 20 hours drafting the trial rules in private.

Paxton’s wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, can attend, but she will not participate in deliberations or closed sessions when the Senate sits as a court of impeachment, according to the trial rules adopted without discussion Wednesday on a 25-3 vote.

The three votes in opposition included Angela Paxton and Sens. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, and Bob Hall, R-Edgewood.

The trial, which will be held in public, will begin with opening statements. Lawyers for the House impeachment managers will present evidence first, with cross-examination of witnesses allowed. Paxton’s lawyers will be allowed to present evidence and witnesses as well.

A list of witnesses, who under the rules can be compelled to appear, must be filed by Aug. 22 and made available to the opposing side.

Each article of impeachment will be voted on separately by senators. If an article is accepted by two-thirds of the present senators, it will be entered as a conviction. If it fails to reach two-thirds, it will be counted as an acquittal. If any article of impeachment is entered as a conviction, the House board of managers can ask for the judgment to disqualify Paxton from office, which would also require approval by two-thirds of the present senators.

A separate resolution, adopted 28-0, notified Paxton that he must appear in person in the Senate chamber “to answer the said charges of impeachment.”

After the votes, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, told senators, their staff and others involved in the court of impeachment to refrain from discussing the merits of the case with others, including Paxton, his lawyers and lawyers for the House impeachment managers.

A separate rule prohibits senators from discussing the case with one another as well, he said.

“No member of the court, or the presiding officer of the court, shall advocate a position on the merits of the proceedings to other members of the court or the presiding officer of the court until such a time as deliberations shall begin,” Patrick said.

A major question settled by the Senate rules was the determination that Angela Paxton has a conflict of interest in her husband’s trial. She can sit in on the impeachment trial because the Texas Constitution requires all members to do so, but she will not be allowed to “vote on any matter, motion, or question, or participate in closed sessions or deliberations.”

The Trib story doesn’t address the question of whether Sen. Angela Paxton’s presence will be counted in the total number of Senators, which is important in that it affects the threshold to convict: If there are 31 Senators present, it takes 21 votes to convict, but if there are only 30 it takes 20 to convict. The Chron does discuss this.

Senators approved the rules on a 25-3 vote, with Angela Paxton among the trio of opposition votes. Her chief of staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though she appeared ready to vote in the trial, saying in a statement this week that “my constituents deserve it.”

Under the rules, Angela Paxton will be present for the trial but is otherwise barred from participating in private deliberations or voting on any matter. Her recusal does not appear to lower the threshold of 21 votes — two-thirds of the 31-member Senate — required to permanently remove Ken Paxton from office or disqualify him from holding future office.

The rules also specify that witnesses cannot be present to hear other witness testimony, potentially complicating things if Angela Paxton is called to testify.

Reform Austin came to the same conclusion. I don’t quite understand the point of this, since as this stands she may as well be allowed to cast the vote to acquit that we all know she intends to do. With or without her, there needs to be at least nine Republicans to convict.

I should note that the four counts that relate to the state securities fraud charges against Paxton were excluded from the trial – “put in abeyance” is the technical term. The Senate may deal with them later, or they could be dismissed by majority vote. I’m not too worked up about that, there are plenty of other charges and it’s the whistleblower stuff that led to all this anyway.

At least now we know where we stand, and when we can expect things to happen. The defense, the prosecutors, and Rep. Andrew Murr all seem to be fine with the rules, so there’s that. Sen. Sarah Eckhardt outlined her reasons for voting No to the rules in the Senate journal, with the concise reason that “the unprecedented ability of the defense to win a dismissal of an Article of Impeachment by a simple majority vote” is “most disturbing”. Impeachment trial lawyer Ross Garber and Trib reporter Patrick Svitek have their takes, and Socratic Gadfly and the Press have more.

UPDATE: Two more Trib stories, about how the Senate rules gave the impeachment managers most of what they wanted but still provided a boost for the defense.

Posted in Scandalized!, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

A long look at Spring Branch ISD

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Houston Landing goes deep.

With only a week left before the May 6 election, school-board candidate David Lopez and a team of volunteers set out to block walk in the Spring Branch neighborhoods north of Interstate 10, trying to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

Lopez and his close friend Kim Espinoza had a list of about 80 doors to knock on. If they were lucky enough to get a few minutes of face-time, the main questions were, do you have a plan to vote? And if so, will they vote for a candidate from their community?

Their goal: Try to get Lopez elected to the board of the Spring Branch Independent School District, which until recently has never had a person of color serve on its board. If Lopez won, he’d be the first Latino who hailed from underserved neighborhoods north of the interstate.

“It’s the future of our district that suffers,” Lopez said. “I’m concerned about the future of Spring Branch ISD, and especially the Latino students in this district, how they feel and how they are included when they can’t see themselves on their own board.”

Lopez, 29, lost the May election, his second attempt at joining the Spring Branch board of trustees. An educator from the district’s north side, Lopez is among those who have fought to provide representation for these communities, a battle that has also yielded a federal lawsuit alleging the current election system used by the district has led to a lack of representation.

Virginia Elizondo, a resident of the north side who unsuccessfully ran for the board twice, filed the lawsuit in 2021. After several recusals by assigned judges, a trial for this case is slated for October.

The lawsuit alleges Spring Branch is violating the Voting Rights Act by relying on an at-large election system in which every voter in the district can cast a ballot in every board race.

The system penalizes candidates from under-represented communities in Spring Branch, the suit alleges, yet school officials have refused to switch to a single-member district system that would give underserved neighborhoods a better chance to elect their preferred candidates.

Elizondo’s suit says Spring Branch’s use of at-large elections has “deprived tens of thousands of minority voters in SBISD of their voting rights guaranteed by the law.”

[…]

A trial for the lawsuit was scheduled for 2022, but after a continuance, and several recusals by assigned judges, it’s set for trial in October before Judge Sim Lake, said Lucas Henry, an attorney representing the school district.

Since its filing in 2021, some things have changed, including the election of Perez, the first trustee of color, but even so, others, such as the fact all trustees reside in the south side, remain the same.

Part of the district’s argument is that the school system has a history of academic and financial stability.

“People move to Spring Branch ISD for the schools,” said Henry. “So the school board believes that the current voting system has led to elections that have served the students very well over the last several decades.”

Henry is part of the current law firm representing the school district, Abernathy, Roeder, Boyd & Hullett, P.C. The firm also represented other districts facing similar litigation, including Frisco ISD, which recently won a case allowing them to keep at-large elections.

The demographics in Frisco ISD have changed over the years. More than 70 percent of students identified as white in 2003. That dropped to about 36 percent in the latest state snapshot of the 2020-2021 school year. The attorneys representing the district and its at-large elections system argued this trend would eventually, and naturally, lead to more minority candidates on the board.

But in the case of Spring Branch ISD, the district has historically had more students of color than white students. Going back to 1995, the oldest state snapshot of the district available, Spring Branch ISD had a total student population of 28,442, with 43 percent identified as white, 41 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent Black.

The number of Hispanic, or Latino, students continued to increase over the years, reaching 59 percent in 2018, and slightly decreasing to 58 percent in 2021.

According to TEA’s 2022 report cards, only two out of 16 elementary schools in the north achieve A ratings, 11 landed B scores, and three had C ratings. The elementary campuses’ demographics show an average of 80 percent Latino, or Hispanic, students.

Six out of 10 elementary campuses in the south side, achieved A ratings in 2022, two had a B rating and one had a C. The demographics in these schools show an average of 24 percent Latino, or Hispanic students and 51 percent white.

The lawsuit against SBISD argues that by switching to a single-member district system, voters from that particular area will be able to choose a candidate from within the community, who regardless of their race or ethnic background, will be better connected to the issues that matter to them.

See here, here, and here for some background on the lawsuit. Spring Branch ISD has been in the news for other reasons lately, none of them good. I don’t know what will happen with the lawsuit, but between the good news from Alabama and the reporting that eight of the nine appointed HISD Board of Managers are from the more affluent parts of HISD, it’s very much of interest and I will be watching. Go read the rest of the story, there’s a lot more there.

Posted in Legal matters, School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, June 23 edition

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week (and from last week) in news from the DFW area: election results from the June 10 runoff; the Dallas short-term rental ordinance; Heider Garcia’s replacement as Tarrant County elections administrator; the history of Freedmen’s Towns in Dallas for Juneteenth; conservative women meets in the Metroplex; RIP LeAnn Mueller; and more. It’s a long post this time because last week’s post was eaten by family business. We’re all fine now and I’m glad to be back!

Dallas City Council only had one race in the June runoff. In D3 in southwest Dallas, Zarin Gracey beat Joe Tave to succeed term-limited council member Casey Thomas, who had endorsed Gracey. Inauguration was June 20 and Mayor Johnson’s speech focused on decreases in crime, improvements to our park system, and property tax relief. Unlike Mayor Johnson, I’m not sure being called the “new Dubai” is a compliment.

Forth Worth also had one council runoff, D11, where Jeanette Martinez won a new Hispanic-opportunity district to become the second Latine member on the city council. 30% of Fort Worth’s population is Hispanic and D11 is 60% Hispanic.

A couple of city school district seats were also on the runoff ballot, with funding the common denominator. In Fort Worth, Kevin Lynch outspent one-term incumbent CJ Evans in a civil race between similar opponents. In Dallas ISD’s D2, which the DMN described as “one of Dallas ISD’s most expensive board seats”, Sarah Weinberg beat Jimmy Tran. Weinberg had the endorsement of outgoing trustee Dustin Marshall.

In Collin College news, two Republican-backed candidates won seats on the board. Cathie Alexander defeated incumbent Stacey Donaldson in Place 3 and incumbent Jay Saad defeated challenger Scott Coleman in Place 2. Collin College board races, like most school elections, are technically nonpartisan, but as longtime readers know, Collin College is a hotbed of political conflict. Three faculty members have been fired over free speech issues in recent years, resulting in one settled lawsuit and one still in progress, and the American Association of University Professors censured Collin College for limiting academic freedom.

As mentioned in a number of the linked articles above, turnout was low. 5% of Dallas County registered voters participated in the runoff election and per the Fort Worth Report, Fort Worth turnout was about 4%.

At the same time, in Dallas we have low satisfaction with our City Council according to a recent city survey. This survey preceded recent changes to ethics rules that lowered evidentiary standards for ethics complaints (i.e., council members and associates have to disclose more potential conflicts).

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State Rep. Julie Johnson announces for CD32

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

As expected.

Rep. Julie Johnson

State Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Carrollton, announced Tuesday she’s running to replace U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, kicking off her campaign with a significant show of support from inside her party.

In an announcement video, Johnson highlighted her experience as an LGBTQ Texan, mother, lawyer and state legislator who unseated a Republican in 2018.

“From every table — the kitchen, to the courtroom, and in the Texas Legislature — I already know how to get the job done and win the toughest battles,” Johnson said, adding that she is running to “turn the tables in Washington and make government work for you.”

Johnson joins a crowded Democratic primary to succeed Allred, who is giving up his solidly blue seat to challenge U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz next year. Other Democrats who have announced campaigns include Dallas trauma surgeon Brian Williams, Dallas civil rights attorney Justin Moore, and prior North Texas congressional candidates Sandeep Srivastava and Jan McDowell.

Johnson’s campaign has been long anticipated, and she begins with a list of notable endorsers. They include the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers; the Human Rights Campaign; state Reps. Venton Jones of Dallas and Donna Howard of Austin; and U.S. Reps. Ritchie Torres of New York and Mark Takano of California. Torres and Takano are co-chairs of the Congressional Equality Caucus.

Rep. Johnson has been mentioned as a likely candidate from the get-go, so this was no surprise. She’s been a good State Rep and she did the world a favor when she bounced the racist little twerp who’s now the state GOP Chair from HD115 back in 2018. The story notes that two other State Reps who had been considering this race – Reps. Rhetta Bowers and Ana Ramos – have decided to stay put. As for the field she’s entering, we knew about Brian Williams and Justin Moore. Sandeep Srivastava ran in CD03 in 2022 and raised a few bucks along the way, though he’s likely to not be in the top tier here. As for Jan McDowell, maybe this means she’s finally giving up on CD24, which would be a good thing for the rest of us. Lastly, there’s already a candidate running to succeed Rep. Johnson. The circle of life, y’all.

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Arkansas law banning gender affirming care ruled unconstitutional

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This is a big deal.


A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for children as unconstitutional Tuesday, the first ruling to overturn such a prohibition as a growing number of Republican-led states adopt similar restrictions.

U.S. District Judge Jay Moody issued a permanent injunction against the Arkansas law, which would have prohibited doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18.

Arkansas’ law, which Moody temporarily blocked in 2021, also would have prohibited doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care.

In his order, Moody ruled that the prohibition violated the due process and equal protection rights of transgender youth and families. He said the law also violated the First Amendment rights of medical providers by prohibiting them from referring patients elsewhere.

“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,” Moody wrote in his ruling.

Republican lawmakers in Arkansas enacted the ban in 2021, overriding a veto by former GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Hutchinson, who left office in January, said the law went too far by cutting off treatments for children currently receiving such care.

The ruling affects only the Arkansas ban but may carry implications for the fates of similar prohibitions, or discourage attempts to enact them, in other states.

This is a big deal because it’s a final ruling, not a temporary restraining order. Law Dork goes into some detail.

Arkansas’s 2021 law banning gender-affirming medical care for minors is unconstitutional, the federal judge who has been overseeing the challenge to the law ruled on Tuesday, finding in favor of the plaintiffs and against the state “on all claims.”

Although there have been three other federal court rulings granting preliminary injunctions against such bans (in Alabama, Florida, and Indiana), in addition to earlier rulings as to the Arkansas law, such decisions are — as they suggest — preliminary.

Tuesday’s ruling, though, is the first final judgment from a trial court in a challenge to such a ban. It followed a two-week trial in a case that has traveled a long path — one that is still not over.

The law “is unconstitutional,” U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. stated in the opening paragraph of his 80-page ruling in the case, siding with the plaintiffs on equal protection, due process, and First Amendment grounds.

While a final trial court ruling in the case, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has already announced that the state will appeal.

While Moody’s ultimate ruling in the case and legal conclusions obviously matter, his findings of fact issued Tuesday could be the most important aspect of his decision. Because trial judges are able to review the evidence and are closest to the case at trial, their findings of fact are accepted on appeal unless the appeals court finds that the those findings constitute a “clear error,” a deferential standard.

See here and here for a bit of background, and read the rest of Law Dork’s post for a deeper dive into the ruling. I am confident there will be a lawsuit filed in Texas once its anti-gender affirming care law takes effect. It’s not hard to imagine a district court judge issuing a restraining order and the Fifth Circuit reversing it; it’s also not hard to imagine a similar verdict and an overturn by the Fifth Circuit. All this to say that one way or another this matter will make its way to SCOTUS. I am hopeful that the record will be heavily in favor of the plaintiffs by then, though whether or not that will matter remains to be seen. But in the short term, this is what we’re likely to see.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Freestone County opposes use of eminent domain on Fairfield Lake State Park

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Plot twist.

The Freestone County commissioners are decrying the state’s decision to move forward with eminent domain to seize the Fairfield Lake State Park property in their county.

At a Wednesday morning meeting, the five commissioners voted unanimously to send a letter to Texas Parks and Wildlife, asking them to “stop right now.” In the letter, which was later posted on the county’s website, the county commissioners labeled the eminent domain action as “an abuse of power and government overreach.”

The Freestone County commissioners voted to draft the letter Wednesday morning. By early afternoon Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said the agency had received the letter but did not yet have a response.

The county commissioners were responding to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s June 10 decision to use eminent domain to seize 5,000 acres of land in Freestone County. That land includes the 1,800-acre Fairfield Lake State Park, which the state operated on leased land for about five decades.

[…]

Freestone County Judge Linda Grant has for months been a vocal proponent of saving the park, and has spoken at legislative hearings about the importance of the park to the local community.

She said at Wednesday’s meeting, though, that she believes public sentiment has changed over time, as the discussion shifted from purchasing the park land to seizing the park land.

“I think the opinions have changed and I think people are not as supportive as they used to be,” Grant said at the meeting.

She added that Todd Interests’ planned development would also add to the county’s tax base.

“The tax revenue that this project is promising, that we will get, will be a great benefit to our county and to our taxpayers,” Grant said. “Hopefully more services will be able to be provided to our citizens, and I know we need a lot of things in our county that we’ve not been able to afford over time.”

In their letter, the Freestone County commissioners said that the county had already lost a big chunk of its tax base when Vistra closed the power plant that it previously operated near Fairfield Lake.

“For TPWD to steal an opportunity for us to replace that tax base would be selfish,” the letter said.

See here for the background and here for a copy of the letter. On the one hand, all of the momentum appeared to be going towards the current course of action – the TPWD is all Abbott appointees, and there’s been little opposition that I’d seen from elected officials. On the other hand, there’s a lot of Republican antipathy towards eminent domain, and it’s not a new thing, as anyone who remembers the Trans Texas Corridor from the mid-aughts can attest. Given that, I can understand this action, though I wonder how clear Freestone County’s position was to the TPWD before this. I don’t think this changes anything from a practical perspective – the state still has the right to use eminent domain, Todd Interests can still sue and at least get some leverage on how much they’ll be compensated – but it does alter the optics, at least a little. NBCDFW has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of June 19

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance keeps all of its top secret document boxes in the master suite for ease of access, not the guest bathroom, which is how it can bring you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Sen. Angela Paxton will be one of her husband’s jurors

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Really, there was no other way this could have ended.

Sen. Angela Paxton

After weeks of speculation, state Sen. Angela Paxton announced late Monday that she will attend the impeachment trial of her husband, suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, the McKinney Republican said in a statement issued late Monday.

“Each time I was elected, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of this great state, and Texas law compels each member of the Senate to attend when the Senate meets as a court of impeachment, Sen. Paxton’s announcement stated. “As a member of the Senate, I hold these obligations sacred and I will carry out my duties, not because it is easy, but because the Constitution demands it and because my constituents deserve it.”

[…]

Texas law requires each member to attend when the Senate meets as a court of impeachment, but Angela Paxton’s participation wasn’t clear prior to her announcement. Her role in the impeachment has been a point of speculation since her husband was impeached just days before the regular session ended in May.

The Texas Constitution also says legislators should recuse themselves from matters in which they have a personal stake, which Angela Paxton’s statement did not address. Her office did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday evening.

The Senate committee that is drafting rules for the impeachment trial is expected to present those to the Texas Senate on Tuesday.

I’ve been saying all along that I fully expected Angela Paxton to not recuse because she’s not ethical enough to do so. It’s always grimly pleasurable to have one’s assessment of character verified. Her argument that it is somehow her constitutional duty to partake in the impeachment trial is risible, but par for the course. And I will note again that if we are following the Tony Buzbee model, then of course she’d be recused, and it wouldn’t have been her call to make. Even if the trial were to be held in Collin County, there’s no way she’d have ever been seated on the jury for Ken Paxton’s securities fraud trial. Why is this any different?

Well, it just is. And to an extent, that’s true – this is an impeachment, not a criminal trial, and the rules are different. The rules of common sense do still apply, though. As for what the rules for the trial will be, we’re still waiting as of when I drafted this. We could be waiting for at least a few days. This much, we now know. The Chron, Texas Monthly, Reform Austin, and the Observer have more.

UPDATE: The Senate took no official action yesterday. At some point we will know what they did.

Posted in Scandalized!, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Funding for child DNA ID kits quietly dropped

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This is such a weird story.

For months, Texas lawmakers were on track to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to continue distributing child identification kits to Texas schoolchildren, a program championed by state officials.

In April, both the Texas House and Senate approved preliminary budgets that included money for the National Child Identification Program’s kits.

But less than a month after a ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found no evidence the kits have helped locate missing children, lawmakers quietly zeroed out the funding.

The news outlets also found that the Waco-based company that distributes the kits had used exaggerated statistics as it sought contracts in Texas and other states. And the investigation revealed that Kenny Hansmire, a former NFL player who leads the company, had a string of failed businesses, had millions of dollars in outstanding federal tax liens and had previously been barred from some finance-related business in Connecticut by banking regulators because of his role in an alleged scheme to defraud or mislead investors.

“After review and consideration, the House and Senate budget conferees agreed to remove this specific funding request for the upcoming biennium,” said state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Republican from Houston, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Huffman did not elaborate on the closed-door discussions of the lawmakers who had been appointed to work out differences between the two spending plans.

A 2021 law states that the Texas Education Agency, which was tasked with purchasing the kits, isn’t required to continue providing them if the Legislature stops the funding. In a statement, a spokesperson said the agency isn’t aware of any “alternative funding sources for the program.”

Hansmire, who did not respond to emailed questions for this article, has said the kits help law enforcement find missing children and save time during the early stages of a search. But none of the Texas law enforcement agencies contacted by the news outlets could recall the kits having helped to find a missing child.

Hansmire previously said that his legal disputes, including his sanction in Connecticut, had been “properly resolved, closed and are completely unrelated to the National Child ID Program.” He also claimed to have “paid debts entirely,” but did not provide details.

I only heard about this last year when HISD started distributing the kits. I thought it was kind of odd but didn’t give it much thought. The backstory is kind of amazing, and I would suggest you read this as your starting point, with the lesson being that any claim involving missing children that includes a shockingly large number is almost certainly untrue. More recently we find that Kenny Hamshire has a close connection to Ken Paxton, who was advocating for a different unproven program of Hamshire’s to Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who was suitably skeptical. Anyway, the bottom line is that defunding this program was a good choice. We should try to understand how we made that choice in the first place.

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Kubosh drops out of Controller’s race

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

In other city election news.

CM Michael Kubosh

Michael Kubosh, an outspoken member of Houston City Council since 2014, withdrew his candidacy for the city’s controller position Monday following a “series of health-related issues.”

Kubosh, who is 72, in a news release said he believed he had been recovering, but after his illness and a recent hospital stay, he felt it was in the best interest of the city for him to step aside.

“I no longer have the ability to sustain my campaign at the level required, while at the same time abiding by my doctor’s orders,” Kubosh said.

Within city government, the controller acts as a monitor for accounting and fiscal health. As an independently elected official, he or she is tasked with certifying available funds, processing payments, managing Houston’s $4.5 billion investment portfolio, auditing departments, selling municipal bonds and producing an annual report of city finances.

Kubosh currently is serving his third term as at-large Councilmember No. 3. After announcing his entry into the controller’s race in early January, he touted his experience running in city-wide elections, calling himself an outsider and political activist who would not shy away from confrontation.

“I have a cross-section of voters throughout the city,” Kubosh said at the time. “And I am very aggressive. I’ll speak up for the people.”

[…]

Candidates still in the running to replace him include his Chief Deputy Shannan Nobles, the city’s Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Dave Martin, former mayoral candidate Chris Hollins and former council member and county treasurer Orlando Sanchez.

I’m sorry to hear about the health issues. I wish CM Kubosh all the best with the next phase of his life.

That was all I had intended to say originally. And then I came across this.

The announcement that Houston City Council Member Michael Kubosh is dropping out of the race for Houston City Controller comes two days after KHOU 11 Investigates began asking Kubosh about questionable campaign finance expenses.

Kubosh had pledged to be a “budget watchdog” and “fight for transparency at City Hall and its budget” in his bid for city controller. He dropped out of the race Monday for health reasons, days after KHOU told him it reviewed nearly 1,700 pages of his campaign finance reports and cross-referenced those with social media posts made by Kubosh and his family members.

The analysis reveals thousands of dollars of expenses that appear for personal use, which is not allowed under Texas Ethics Commission rules.

In a February 2022 YouTube post, titled “Mike’s 71st Birthday at Marvino’s Italian Steakhouse,” Kubosh is seen thanking family members for attending his birthday celebration.

“We’re family, don’t ever forget that,” Kubosh said in the video.

His campaign finance report shows a $634.84 “food/beverage expense” at the same steakhouse in the same timeframe.

Another YouTube video in August 2022 is titled “Christopher Kubosh 41st Birthday Celebration” and shows several Kubosh family members singing at a Mexican restaurant.

It too shows up on his campaign finance reports — a $216.50 food and beverage expense in the same timeframe.

There are also several YouTube videos from a June 2022 family vacation in Wyoming in which Michael Kubosh, his wife Glenda and brother Randall Kubosh attended. KHOU discovered corresponding campaign expenses during the same timeframe as that vacation.

They include a $420.64 rental car charge and $168 for airport parking. Both items are labeled as “travel in district.”

“It’s a huge problem,” said Anthony Gutierrez, Executive Director of the non-profit watchdog Common Cause Texas.

“An officeholder may not use campaign contributions for family, entertainment or recreation, period… That is exactly what Mr. Kubosh seems to be doing.”

KHOU shared with Gutierrez a list of 20 questionable campaign expenses and corresponding social media videos. They include other expenses for family meals, and airport parking charges during out-of-state trips. The items span six years of Kubosh’s nine-year city council tenure and total $7,754.76.

“This is purely entertainment and recreation,” Gutierrez said. “And that’s exactly the thing that ethics commission said you can’t do this with your campaign dollars.”

Oops. Well, on the bright side, these ethical issues rarely end up in anything worse than a fairly modest fine. But one can see how this might have cut against the usual “fiscal responsibility” pitches one makes for the office of Controller.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Edwards drops out of Mayor’s race, to run for CD18

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Another shakeup.

Amanda Edwards

Former Houston city council member Amanda Edwards announced Monday she would withdraw from the mayoral race to instead vie for the Texas congressional seat currently held by Sheila Jackson Lee, who previously announced her intention to run for Houston mayor.

Edwards, who previously ran for U.S. Senate, revealed her campaign pivot during a news conference in front of a mural in Fifth Ward. She shifted her sights toward the Texas 18th Congressional District — a position Jackson Lee has held for nearly three decades — and which covers areas including Acres Homes, Fifth Ward, East Houston, Highland Heights and the Bush Intercontinental Airport area.

“As Congresswoman Jackson Lee seeks to come home to serve as Houston’s next mayor, I seek to continue the strong legacy of servant leadership in the 18th congressional District,” Edwards said. “From Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Congressman Mickey Leland, Congressman Craig Washington to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the people of the 18th Congressional District deserve the next leg of this relay to continue to be strong, bold, effective and focus on the people.”

[…]

Edwards said she has raised $1.3 million for the mayoral election but she will not be able to transfer the funds to her new campaign. She will communicate to her donors the option to get a refund for their prior donations or to put the dollars toward her new federal campaign war chest, she said.

I got an email on Friday afternoon teasing a “major announcement” from the campaign on Monday. Seemed pretty clear that it was going to involve Edwards exiting the race, and given that an endorsement of SJL seemed likely as well. If that happened, I figured Edwards would have her eyes on CD18, though I wasn’t sure if she’d formally jump into that race or wait to see how the Mayor’s race played out. I had speculated that someone might decide to get in without waiting to see if CD18 was open or not. I just hadn’t expected Amanda Edwards to be first in line for that. It’s a smart move – SJL might decide to step down even if she isn’t elected Mayor – and it perhaps puts Edwards in line for a reciprocal endorsement down the line. I’m still interested to see who may jump into this race, and at what point they make that decision.

Jeronimo Cortina, an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, said the two candidates’ withdrawal from the election was to be expected given the stark difference in name recognition and resources between them and heavyweights such as Jackson Lee and Whitmire.

Meanwhile, Edwards’ shot at capturing the 18th Congressional District will hinge heavily on the mayoral race results, he said. Based on the current timeline, if Jackson Lee loses the mayoral election in a run-off against Whitmire, she still would have a brief window in which to enter the Congressional race before the filing deadline.

“Does Edwards have an opportunity to primary out Sheila Jackson Lee in a district that has solidly supported Jackson Lee for the past 30 years? Not very likely,” Cortina said. “Now, if Sheila Jackson Lee does win the mayoral election, then that Congressional race is going to be significantly crowded and a lot of people are going to start throwing their hats into the ring. And in this case, given that Edwards is announcing so early, that is going to give her an advantage that other people may not have.”

So now the race is approximately Whitemire/SJL, then Gilbert Garcia/Lee Kaplan/Robert Gallegos/MJ Khan, then the assorted no-names. And I don’t think we’re at the final form it will take yet. We’re still two months out from the filing deadline. Houston Landing has more.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

I got those “violated the spirit of the Open Meetings Act” blues

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I’m sorry, I know this makes me a terrible person, but I laughed at this headline.

The majority of the parents, teachers and community members who showed up for the Houston ISD board meeting on Thursday night were banned from entering the auditorium and instead relegated to a separate room to watch the proceedings via livestream.

The Chronicle spoke with several attorneys about whether the unusual arrangements violated the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Christopher Tritico, a local criminal defense attorney who represents the Houston Federation of Teachers, said he believes it was a troubling attempt by the new board or superintendent to “quell the public outrage.”

“They may not have technically violated the law, by allowing them to view it the way they did, but the spirit of the law is certainly violated by preventing them from going into the meeting,” he said.

The district previously limited seating in the board auditorium during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tritico said, but full access had since been restored.

In a departure from the typical seating arrangements, there were only about three dozen chairs for spectators and a dozen seats for the press at the Thursday meeting. Tables for the board members to sit facing each other took up most of the space in the room, which has the capacity to hold 310 people.

Tritico said that, while he does not want to defend HISD, it is also important for people to allow the board to conduct government business.

“I understand the public and how they feel right now about what’s happening, but they have to respect the process as well,” he said. “They cannot go in and just disrupt the meeting for the sake of disruption.”

Similarly, Martha Owen, an Austin-based attorney, said it does not appear that the district violated the Open Meetings Act but that the separate rooms may not help the board gain trust from the community.

“It may not be a violation of the Open Meetings Act, but it’s certainly a violation of the spirit of the law,” she said. “Those board members are working for the community and the taxpayers in that district. That’s who they’re supposed to be serving and they should not be isolating themselves from that.”

On the one hand, this Board is new at this, with no past members providing any institutional memory to ensure they didn’t screw up in such an obvious way. They’ll get it right going forward.

On the other hand, an alleged violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act by the HISD Board in 2019 was specifically cited by Mike Morath as one of the reasons for doing the takeover, even though all but one of those Trustees were no longer on the Board as of 2023. In other words, the TEA has a recent history of taking this sort of thing very seriously.

On the other other hand, this wasn’t an actual violation of the Open Meetings Act, more of a near miss. Stuff happens, nobody’s perfect, no harm no foul, chill out.

On the other other other hand, as this Board was entirely picked and trained by the TEA, and the TEA is responsible for enforcing the Open Meetings Act when school boards violate it, you’d think they could have had one of their experts remind the Board of their need to be above reproach and stick like glue to the letter and the spirit of this law. Surely they would have preferred for there not to be any stories like this one getting written.

I trust you can see why I found this all funny. Yes, I know, it’s also all very serious. But sometimes you just have to laugh. The Press has more.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Another neighborhood road projects/bike lanes update

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Once again, from the Woodland Heights Civic Association.

We would like to provide you with important updates regarding the road projects in our area.

Firstly, we are pleased to inform you that the construction of the 11th Street project is almost complete. However, the City is still working on fine-tuning the timing of the traffic signals. So far, the timing adjustments have only been made at Studewood, and they are still in the process of re-adjusting it. Furthermore, the City will soon commence traffic measurements on neighborhood streets to monitor any increase in cut-through traffic. You can stay updated on the latest developments and provide your valuable feedback by visiting the following link here.

Secondly, the City is preparing to gather public feedback on Phase 2 of the N. Main project. You can find detailed information and submit your feedback by visiting the provided link here. As you may recall, the City previously organized meetings for Phase 1, which extended from Cottage to Boundary (indicated in Blue on the attached picture). Phase 1 has now reached 100% design completion. Phase 2 (indicated in orange) covers the area from Cottage to Airline, where it will connect to a separate project being undertaken by Metro on Airline (indicated in purple). The City will be conducting a public meeting for Phase 2 in July, and we will inform you of the exact date once it is confirmed. They are particularly interested in receiving neighborhood feedback on two specific matters: pedestrian crossings and traffic diversions.

  • Regarding pedestrian crossings, the City plans to implement two similar crossings to those on Studewood and 11th Street at De George St. and Northwood. We would like to know your preferences regarding improved pedestrian crossings.

  • Additionally, the City proposes the inclusion of “traffic diversions” at certain intersections along N. Main, specifically at Cottage, Temple, and Melwood, where multiple streets converge. We are interested in any significant concerns you may have regarding the potential blocking of some vehicle traffic at these locations.

I first heard about this project a little over a year ago, before the West 11th Street construction began. The project page is here, and there’s an update from Public Works dated May 30 that you should review if you haven’t seen it already. The problems are real – traffic moves very fast, the weird angle of North Main makes vehicular intersections hard to navigate, there are very few places where I’d feel safe crossing the street as a pedestrian – and this seems like a solid plan to address them. Look for that public meeting and plan to attend if you have feedback.

As I’ve said before, the experience on West 11th has been very positive, as a bicyclist, pedestrian, and driver. I find it easier making left turns onto 11th now, from side streets in particular – not having four lanes of traffic coming at you really reduces the anxiety level. I don’t find it takes longer to get from Studewood to Shepherd for the most part. The one odd thing I’ve noticed is that the red light cycle on 11th at Studewood and Heights/Yale appears to be longer now than before, which makes crossing Studewood from non-controlled intersections a little more challenging. I don’t know what’s up with that, but perhaps it’s part of that fine-tuning mentioned in the article.

Finally, speaking of Shepherd, that construction project is making a lot of progress. Still has a couple of years to go, but I’m truly excited to see what it will all look like. Between all this and the White Oak Trail and the possible future projects, there’s just a lot more destinations that I feel safe biking to now. Being able to leave the car at home for all these trips makes me happy.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Interview with Janette Garza Lindner

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Janette Garza Lindner

Like you, I have many questions about the appointed Board of Managers and how they will operate, how they will oversee appointed Superintendent Mike Miles, how they’ll achieve the success they’ve been told to achieve, and more. As it happens, one of these people is a neighbor of mine, and I reached out to her to see if I could ask her these questions. Janette Garza Lindner was a candidate for the HISD Board of Trustees in 2021, losing to incumbent Elizabeth Santos. She was appointed to the Board of Managers along with eight other people and agreed to be interviewed about it. I may try to do this with some other Board members if time permits – we are, as you know, about to enter a big election season and I’ve got more candidates than I can count to try to interview for that. Regardless, here’s what we talked about:

We had a limited window in which to do this interview, so I didn’t have the time to ask all the questions I might have liked to. In particular, I didn’t ask about the Board’s plans for special education; there hasn’t been much on this so far anyway, so it may be a little premature for that. Be that as it may, please let me know what you think.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Texas to invest in microchips

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Cool.

Leaders in the semiconductor industry and their Texas allies were alarmed by supply chain disruptions to the sector during the pandemic. Now the state is seeking to turn the lessons learned in the past three years into an opportunity.

Texas is pumping $1.4 billion into microchip research and manufacturing initiatives in an effort to attract new investments, secure lucrative federal grants and create thousands of high-paying jobs over the next decade.

On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott approved the Texas CHIPS Act, which will create the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, a pot of money that will subsidize companies that manufacture chips in Texas and provide matching funds to universities and other state entities that invest in chip design or manufacturing projects.

Lawmakers this year appropriated $698.3 million for the new fund and an additional $666.4 million for the creation of advanced research and development centers at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.

The investment illustrates the state’s commitment to the national race to capture billions of dollars in federal funds for the industry.

Last August, President Joe Biden signed the federal CHIPS and Science Act, allocating $52 billion to spur semiconductor manufacturing in the country. The law seeks to encourage private investment in the sector by offering subsidies for companies that build new or expand manufacturing facilities and by helping pay for new research and development projects.

States have a role to play in the federal government’s strategy, especially in the training and development of the workforce needed, according to industry experts. And Texas stands out on the national stage because it already has one of the most robust ecosystems in the semiconductor industry.

[…]

The federal CHIPS Act could create 100,000 new high-paying jobs in the U.S. by the end of the decade, industry experts estimate. Where investments and jobs take root depends largely on the policies of each state.

Semiconductor companies have already promised $215 billion in investments and the creation of 40,000 jobs across the country in response to the federal CHIPS Act, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Sixty billion of these investments will land in Texas, where six projects that will create 8,000 jobs in the sector have already been announced. Texas is the second state with the most planned projects, after Arizona.

Two of the Texas projects will create new semiconductor fabs, as microchip fabrication facilities are known. Samsung Electronics will build one in Taylor, representing a $17.3 billion investment that will create 2,000 jobs; and Texas Instruments will build the other in Sherman, a $30 billion project that will hire 3,000 workers between now and 2035. Another three are expansions of existing semiconductor factories: Texas Instruments in Richardson, NXP in Austin and X-FAB in Lubbock. The last project will build a Global Wafers facility in Sherman dedicated to silicon wafer manufacturing.

UT will get $440 million and A&M $200 million as part of that money. Gotta love a big investment in manufacturing. And I’m sure I speak for everyone in the state when I say “Thank you, President Biden!”

Posted in National news, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The goats are working hard for you

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I love this story.

Soon Houston residents may actually celebrate a group of city workers standing around eating lunch or lying down on the job.

Houston Public Works is poised to expand its use of goat herds to clear detention ponds and ditches, after two rounds of tests proved the grazing beasts could be cheaper and more effective than hiring landscaping crews.

“This method is eco-friendly, green and sustainable with minimal carbon footprint,” said Muhammad Umer Khan, supervising engineer for Public Works’ transportation and drainage operations division.

Renting the herd from a Rising Star-based company costs about $2,500 for a one-acre area, compared to about $8,000 for two-legged landscapers with heavy equipment, Khan said, during a presentation Thursday to City Council’s Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee. Stormwater detention areas can get thickly covered with brush and tall grasses, along sometimes steep slopes that require human crews to take precautions and use special machinery, sometimes even having to cut a path simply to get to the site. It is all in a day’s work for the goats.

Meanwhile the goats and the shepherd buy a little goodwill with neighbors, Khan added.

“The neighborhoods love them because they are cute and make almost no loud noise during construction,” he said.

[…]

Turns out they also are efficient. Based on previous uses of the goats in North Houston in late 2021, and earlier this year in two spots in southwest Houston, 150 billies and nannies were able to cover terrain landscapers usually cannot, ate all of the grasses including some toxic to people, and mowed drainage areas to the point stormwater capacity and flow was improved.

Water sampling for both of the locations this year is pending, but officials do not think the goats had any adverse effects. As a result, Public Works officials said their goal is “permanent goat use as part of vegetation management practices.”

That likely will include only wide, open areas, such as detention ponds and maybe some large ditches, officials explained. In other words, residents should not expect to see all of the city’s mowing turned over to the relentless munchers.

The use of goats for engine-free mowing and land clearing has grown in popularity in many areas. The Houston Arboretum unleashed the same goats supplied by Rent-A-Ruminant Texas into a 2.5 acre area in early May.

It’s cost-effective, environmentally friendly (no gas-powered lawn equipment), and allows for better and safer deployment of human workers. Plus, people like seeing the goats. What’s not to love?

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for June 18

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“You Can Help Prevent Forest Fires. Yes, Really.”

“Scientists have successfully demonstrated for the first time that solar power can be wirelessly transmitted in space and also beamed to Earth.”

“The seeds of today’s true-crime boom were sown 50 years ago, when a writer befriended the stranger beside her.”

“Because of the remarkably sensitive nature of the documents the former president retained, and the shockingly insecure locations where they were held and transported (“in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room”), there are also potentially grave implications for U.S. national security. It is those national security implications, as evidenced in particular by the 31 counts lodged under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. § 793(e)), which we briefly lay out here.”

“Let me suggest the Mar-a-Lago indictment might actually be a public corruption indictment wrapped up inside an Espionage Act indictment.”

“Because criminological data does not support trans-exclusionary laws or policies, advocates of anti-trans laws often resort to lies, flawed anecdotal evidence, or what fact-checkers have called “extreme cherry-picking” to support their position.”

No, really, Pat Robertson was a truly terrible person who did a lot of truly terrible things in his long, cursed life.

“I always look at these things somewhat skeptically. But if the exchange that they’re talking about Walt [Nauta] as far as taking all of these boxes out, putting some back, if that’s something that is backed up with evidence, that’s certainly a problem.”

“Pat Sajak, the longtime host of TV’s Wheel of Fortune, announced Monday that next season will be his last.”

“‘Jurassic Park’ and its prehistoric creatures look like they’ve barely aged a day. Ironically, it’s those groundbreaking visuals that heralded our current era of CGI-driven spectacles—with room for little else.”

RIP, Jim Turner, former NFL kicker whose three field goals helped the Jets upset the Colts in Super Bowl III.

Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian Prime Minister, has died. The hits just keep on coming.

“Most of my work, like millions of other fic writers, exists on the Archive of Our Own. The AO3, as it’s known, is the most-visited and largest fic archive on the web with around 350 million visitors per month, and is currently host to over 11 million fanworks. And until fairly recently, I didn’t realize that my fic hadn’t stayed on AO3. My work, alongside millions of other fics, have been used to train generative text-based AI. If you’ve played around with ChatGPT—congrats! You’ve used my work.”

RIP, Treat Williams, stage and screen actor best known for Hair and Everwood.

RIP, Cormac McCarthy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose works include “No Country For Old Men”.

“Here is a list of over 200 things Fox News personalities, guests, and writers have called ‘woke.'”

“But Trump is not any other defendant, and the Justice Department has apparently recommended several extraordinarily lenient conditions of pretrial release. Judge Goodman notes that a bond recommendation from the government was attached to the summons Trump received on the day of his indictment on June 8, 2023. The government’s recommendation, he says, is that Trump should be released on a “personal surety bond with no financial conditions.” In other words: The Justice Department wants Trump released without requiring the payment of bail.”

“Shot in 2009, the unaired Game of Thrones pilot remains up to this day unwatched by anyone not involved in the show. The closest it got to the eyes of the public was during test screenings, in which it was consistently panned. Due to how secretive HBO is about it and its existing copies, some consider the first Game of Thrones pilot to be a piece of lost media. But the fact that no one outside of HBO’s headquarters has seen it doesn’t mean that people don’t talk about it”.

“A federal judge on Tuesday granted a motion by E. Jean Carroll to file an amended defamation suit against former President Donald Trump seeking at least $10 million, based in part on recent comments Trump made on CNN.”

“The Next Republican President’s Supreme Court Picks Will Be Far Worse Than Trump’s”.

“There is no reason to only use water once. [We] now have technologies to enable us to process and reuse water over and over, at the scale of a city, a campus, and even an individual home.”

RIP, Glenda Jackson, Oscar/BAFTA/Emmy/Tony-winning actor and former Member of Parliament.

RIP, Howard Middleton, labor leader, civil rights activist, major voice for Black heritage at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

“Bernie Kerik Pitched Mark Meadows on ‘$5 to $8’ Million Plan To Reverse Trump 2020 Loss”.

RIP, Daniel Ellsberg, history-making whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

Paxton-palooza

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Tuesday is going to be a huge day in the Ken Paxton impeachment saga, as the Senate committee in charge of setting the rules for the Senate trial get around to doing that. There’s been a lot of energy towards influencing them, mostly by the defense team.

A crook any way you look

As a Texas Senate committee works in secret to devise rules for an upcoming impeachment trial, allies for suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton are lobbying hard for the ability to dismiss the allegations against Paxton without the need for a trial.

House impeachment managers are pushing back, warning the committee against adopting rules that would pave the way for a “sham trial.”

The seven-member committee is expected to issue its recommendations to the full Senate on Tuesday. Because the panel has wide latitude in crafting those rules, many observers expect its work to be critical to Paxton’s chances of saving his job in a trial that is expected to start no later than Aug. 28.

Paxton’s lead attorney, Tony Buzbee, has been on a media tour in recent days, arguing that the House impeachment process was so flawed that the Senate should create rules that allow members to effectively dismiss the case pretrial.

“We’re told this is supposed to be like a trial,” Buzbee told Dallas radio host Mark Davis on Thursday. “Well, in every court across the United States, if the case that’s brought is so terribly weak, flimsy, it shouldn’t be in court, there should be a mechanism at the beginning to throw it out. So I’m suggesting that that should exist here.”

Buzbee has called for rules that allows a summary proceeding, or a speedy procedure by which senators could decide the case based on the evidence so far. Some county Republican parties have passed resolutions that go further, saying the Senate should not even consider rules and return the 20 articles of impeachment to the House.

On Thursday, the House board of impeachment managers sent a memo to the Senate committee that served as a response to Buzbee’s comments. The memo encouraged the committee to take guidance from the “tried-and-true rules of Texas trial procedure and evidence” and offered 17 examples of rules used in past impeachment trials for District Judge O.P. Carrillo in the 1970s and Gov. James E. Ferguson in 1917.

“We fully appreciate that progress on the proposed rules is at or nearing completion; however, given Mr. Paxton’s counsel’s alarming public request for a sham trial, we wish to share with the committee the findings of our research of the rules that were used in the impeachment trials of Carrillo and Ferguson,” the memo said.

As for the county GOP resolutions, the top impeachment manager, Republican Rep. Andrew Murr of Junction, responded in a Dallas Morning News op-ed Friday, noting the resolutions “focus entirely on the process” rather than the facts of the case. He said he was perplexed by Paxton supporters calling for no trial at all, saying it was the “only way to reach a resolution that is fair to Paxton.”

One of the 17 rules that the managers’ memo suggested addresses “the issue of when a Senate member is disqualified or subject to recusal.” The memo specifically cited state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, the wife of the impeached attorney general.

Buzbee has said that decision is up to Angela Paxton. Texas GOP leaders have echoed that, but some have also nodded at the possibility of a rule addressing it.

“That will be up to her as well as the rules created by the Senate,” Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters Thursday.

[…]

Paxton’s side has been the most aggressive in trying to influence the rules. Buzbee has warned that if the committee does not create a possible pretrial off-ramp, the Senate could be in for a painstaking process featuring more than 60 witnesses, thousands of pages of documents and a time frame that could last up to a year.

Two other lawyers defending Paxton — Chris Hilton and Judd Stone — have personally appealed to Patrick as the rules were being crafted. They sent a letter to the lieutenant governor Saturday asking him to put a stop to investigative actions the House has taken post-impeachment, arguing the House “has no authority to do anything regarding the impeachment proceedings until the Senate establishes the rules.”

Hilton and Stone, who recently left positions with the attorney general’s office, also said they were available to “answer any questions or provide the attorney general’s position on the appropriate rules for these proceedings, if desired.”

Patrick apparently did not respond, according to a letter Paxton’s attorneys sent a day later that repeated their request for intervention by the lieutenant governor.

Buzbee added Thursday that Paxton’s team has “asked to appear before the rules committee.”

Also Thursday, Paxton’s team sent reporters an email highlighting a Federalist article by prominent conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon that urged the Senate to allow both sides to have input on the rules. Dhillon also suggested a number of rules herself, including the exclusion of live witnesses in favor of testimony by deposition.

Patrick has promised a fair trial but otherwise has largely declined to comment on the Senate’s preparations. He briefly waded in during a news conference Thursday in Dallas, denying that his previous campaign loans to Paxton compromised his neutrality to preside over the trial.

By now everyone knows that the historical record for impeachment in this state is sparse, as noted in the story. As such, it’s understandable and even reasonable that we look towards the civil and criminal justice system for analogs on how to conduct this thing. But if we’re going to do that, then let’s be consistent about it. There’s literally no jury in which the spouse of the defendant could serve in their judgment. Moreover, the decision of whether or not to be on the jury would not be up to them. The judge asks up front if anyone on the panel knows anyone involved in the trial and excuses anyone who says Yes. The attorneys on both sides get to strike a certain number of prospective jurors that they think might favor the other side or disfavor them. Point being, ain’t no way Angela Paxton should be allowed to serve on this jury if we’re using “every court across the United States” as a guide.

Similarly, I’m not sure whether to cast the “personal appeal” that Chris Hilton or Judd Stone sent to Dan Patrick, who is nominally the judge in these proceedings, as a motion they filed or an example of ex parte communications. Lawyers are not supposed to talk to the judge on their own, without the other lawyers present. I can’t say for sure that this “personal appeal” is sketchy or not – a letter or email sent to the Lt. Governor’s office could be seen as a motion or a brief, which would be perfectly fine. But again, if we’re going to use this analogy as something other than a rhetorical device for Tony Buzbee, then let’s be consistent about it and clear about what it means. And by the way, the one person in all this who could provide some clarity is Dan Patrick, which would also perhaps give some reassurance that the Senate will actually treat this with an appropriate amount of seriousness. But as is typical, he can’t be bothered to say anything that isn’t his usual political blather.

Now let’s talk a little more about Paxton’s defense team, which is currently on leave from their regular jobs at the AG’s office.

The Texas attorney general’s office waived its own ethics rules when allowing six employees to take extended leaves to defend their boss, Ken Paxton, in his upcoming impeachment trial, according to agency records obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

A longstanding agency policy only allows attorneys to perform outside legal work in narrow circumstances, after a rigorous vetting process and without pay in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster granted an exception for the six staff in late May, and also promised the employees their jobs back after the impeachment proceedings end, the records show.

The staffers’ absences leave key roles at the attorney general’s office unfilled ahead of the upcoming Senate trial that could drag on for months, legal experts said.

“If all these high-up assistant attorneys general are taking leave, who’s attending to their business in their absence?” said Jim McCormack, an attorney in private practice and former General Counsel and Chief Disciplinary Counsel at the State Bar of Texas.

[…]

Hilton and Stone organized a law firm — Stone Hilton PLLC — on May 31, according to formation papers filed with the Secretary of State. They have since issued written communications regarding Paxton’s impeachment trial using that firm’s letterhead.

Also on May 31, Webster sent the employees a formal letter authorizing them to represent Paxton in their “individual capacity in all matters related to impeachment proceedings.”

“You will be permitted to return to your position and assume full duties at the OAG when this matter is concluded,” he wrote.

Webster determined in the letter that the staffers’ activity poses no conflict with their employment with the agency, that they can be paid for the outside work with non-agency sources, and that their “temporary absence will not disrupt or impede ongoing OAG operations in any manner.”

“I further grant an exemption to OAG policies restricting outside legal representation to the extent any would otherwise prohibit the representation,” he wrote.

It’s not clear whether Paxton will pay the agency employees for their work. He retained Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee to lead his defense in a Senate trial that must begin by Aug. 28.

See here for the background and the unease I expressed at this development. This is another reason for concern, given that we don’t know who’s paying for any of Paxton’s defense. If it turns out that the same fat cat moneybags that have generally funded Paxton and are likely funding Buzbee are also funding these on-leave staffers, then it would be a hell of an ethical mess if they succeed in getting Paxton off and go back to their previous jobs now with a sack of billionaire cash on their personal ledgers. I’m pretty sure our already-pathetic ethics and financial disclosure laws don’t cover this. But come on, how many people in positions of power in this state do we want to be in hock to rich people? Especially if we have no clear way of finding out who they are and how much hock they’re in to them? “Mess” doesn’t begin to describe this.

Finally, here’s a look at the four whistleblowers whose lawsuit helped lead to all this. I just want to point out one salient fact about all of them:

Paxton recruited Blake Brickman to the attorney general’s office in February 2020. After a career in Republican politics and working as a lawyer in private practice, Brickman served as Paxton’s deputy attorney general for policy and strategy initiatives.

From 2015-19, Brickman was chief of staff to Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, considered one of the most conservative governors in the country. Earlier in his career, Brickman was chief of staff for Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning and a campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, also a Republican.

John Hodgson, a staunchly conservative Kentucky state representative who served with Brickman in Bevin’s administration, lauded Brickman for his conservative principles.

[…]

Ryan Vassar worked for Paxton for five years, rising to be the agency’s chief legal officer before he was fired in November 2020.

When Paxton personally promoted him to deputy attorney general for legal counsel at age 35, Vassar was the youngest person Paxton had appointed to the position, which involved supervising 60 lawyers and 30 professional staff across five divisions.

Prior to the attorney general’s office, Vassar had worked for other top Texas Republicans, including former Gov. Rick Perry as a fellow in the office of general counsel and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett as a law clerk.

[…]

Mark Penley was fired in November 2020 after a little more than a year as deputy attorney general for criminal justice, supervising about 220 employees.

Penley is a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas and has almost 40 years of legal experience. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Penley served for five years, reaching the rank of captain.

[…]

David Maxwell worked in the attorney general’s office for almost 10 years, rising to director of law enforcement, supervising 350 employees. He came to the agency under then-Attorney General Greg Abbott and stayed after Paxton took over in 2015.

Before joining the attorney general’s office, Maxwell was with the Texas Department of Public Safety for 38 years, attaining the rank of sergeant and working as a Texas Ranger for 24 years. He has nearly 50 years of law enforcement experience investigating crimes, including public corruption.

Penley is later noted to be a “lifelong Republican”. Only Maxwell doesn’t have such a designation in his mini-profile. As we have seen, whenever there is an attempt to hold any Republican accountable for their actions, the first page of the playbook is to decry the whole thing as a partisan witch hunt dreamed up by radical leftists to destroy good conservatives. I would invite anyone to read about these four gentlemen and then contemplate where exactly they fit into that narrative.

Posted in Scandalized!, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Tarrant County picks a new elections administrator

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It could have been worse

Tarrant County picked a new elections administrator Friday to replace Heider Garcia, who resigned earlier this year after he said he faced political pressure from Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare.

The Tarrant County Election Commission voted unanimously to hire Clint Ludwig, the chief deputy of the Tarrant County Clerk’s Office, on Friday morning. His start date is Aug. 1.

“I am extremely honored to have been selected as the Tarrant County Elections Administrator,” Ludwig said in a statement. “I will approach this opportunity with great enthusiasm, tenacity, and a commitment to excellence. You can trust that I will further Tarrant County’s legacy of conducting free and fair elections that express the will of the people.”

The elections administrator is in charge of running Tarrant County’s elections process. The previous administrator, Heider Garcia, submitted his resignation in April, because he said he couldn’t run a fair, unbiased election alongside Republican Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare.

O’Hare denied that he pressured Garcia to quit.

Garcia’s resignation led U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, alongside other local Democrats, to request a federal investigation into O’Hare’s actions and the county’s Election Integrity Unit.

See here and here for some background. How much worse could it have been? This much.

Tarrant County officials are considering hiring as election chief a prominent Republican donor and activist who has baselessly criticized the security of the county’s elections and appears to have no previous experience running an election.

Karen Wiseman and two other applicants — Clinton Ludwig, the county clerk’s chief deputy since 2017, and Fred Crosley, the former chief financial officer of the county’s public transit service, Trinity Metro — are finalists for the job. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram first reported the finalists’ names Tuesday.

The county received at least 20 applications for the position through its online recruitment portal after elections administrator Heider Garcia submitted his resignation in April.

Garcia, known as one of the most respected elections directors in the state, said in his letter of resignation he was leaving due to political pressure from his new boss, conservative Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare. Since former President Donald Trump began to make baseless allegations of fraud in connection with the outcome of the 2020 election, Tarrant County — the state’s largest swing county — has been at the center of unfounded election fraud conspiracies.

In a text message to Votebeat, Garcia said county officials’ selection of a heavily partisan finalist for the job such as Wiseman — who, like O’Hare, has been a top Tarrant County GOP donor — did not surprise him.

Garcia said such politically motivated decisions are what drove him to resign. There’s “an expectation that the [elections administrator] will play politics,” he said and added that he hopes there are “enough reasonable members of the Elections Commission that will not vote” for a partisan candidate, given that the job is meant to be nonpartisan.

[…]

The group Wiseman has been associated with, Citizens for Election Integrity, has since 2021 publicly questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Tarrant County and, without evidence, accused Garcia of “rigging” elections since he took the position in 2018.

Led by Fort Worth lawyers Dan Bates and Bill Fearer, the group has spread election conspiracy theories, including false claims that the county’s voting machines are connected to the internet and that people’s votes can be manipulated. The group, along with others across the country that have spread falsehoods about election administration, opposes the use of modern technology to run elections.

A day after Garcia’s resignation in April, during a Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting, Wiseman spoke against the county’s vote to renew a contract with the vendor of software the elections department uses to run its electronic poll books. The electronic poll books have voter registration information and help poll workers quickly check in voters at polling locations, which also prevents them from voting at more than one location. The electronic poll books are not used to count votes. The software has been certified by the Texas secretary of state, but Wiseman alleged it was “easily hackable” and had “plug-ins that can manipulate election data.” Wiseman did not offer evidence to back up her claims.

And since Garcia resigned, she said, “should the new elections administrator be allowed to review and select their own program?”

Citizens for Election Integrity has also questioned residents at addresses pulled from voter rolls. Wiseman herself sent letters to voters asking them why they voted outside of their neighborhood. Voters in Tarrant County can legally vote at any polling site. Last year, Wiseman was also involved in the group’s review of thousands of physical ballots of the 2020 primary election in search of unspecified irregularities.

Bates, the group’s head counsel, also represented Wiseman in a lawsuit she filed last summer against Tarrant County and Garcia in an effort to obtain election records related to several past elections, which were at the time not yet public by law. Wiseman sought a long list of things, including “all early voting, absentee, provisional, and day-of-election paper ballots; all cast vote record (CVR) electronic data for all voting methods (absentee, early, and day of voting); all provisional ballots/votes, regardless of whether they were included in final vote counts or not; absentee ballot envelopes; and all paper ballots that were re-created by the ballot board of election workers for any reason.”

I have no idea how good an elections administrator Clint Ludwig will be – he has some very big shoes to fill – but this would have been a total disaster. Honestly, just the fact that a malefactor like Karen Wiseman was on the short list is enough for the Justice Department to give Tarrant County a thorough trip through the wringer. And yes, it would be very nice if Tarrant County Dems could break through at the countywide level next year; the quickest answer to this kind of threat is to win power. At least now maybe that can be done without a boulder being tied to every voting rights activist in the county.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Syphilis

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I had no idea.

The number of babies born with syphilis in the U.S. continued its upward climb in 2021, new data shows, worrying doctors and public health investigators in Texas who have been trying to draw attention to what they say is a largely hidden crisis.

Nationally, congenital syphilis cases rose by an “alarming” 32 percent from the previous year, according to a report published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas accounted for the largest share of cases, 680, and tied Mississippi for the fourth-highest rate of congenital syphilis in the nation with 182 cases per 100,000 live births.

“This has been a big deal,” said Cynthia Deverson, who serves on the regional body that reviews congenital syphilis cases in the greater Houston region. “It’s just that now we have the technology and the staffing and the education to understand that it’s a big deal.”

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that can cause small, usually painless sores that heal on their own, regardless of whether a person is still infected. If left untreated, the disease can progress to later stages in which it remains hidden, with no visible signs or symptoms. It might take years for complications to arise. Long-term damage can extend to the brain, nerves, eyes, heart, blood vessels, liver, bones and joints.

In a pregnant person, syphilis may pass to the unborn child with potentially devastating consequences. Congenital syphilis led to 220 stillbirths and infant deaths nationally in 2021. Babies who survive can experience severe symptoms like deformed bones, an enlarged liver and spleen, meningitis, skin rashes and nerve damage that can affect their sight and hearing.

The reason for the increase is complex. Cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis all went up in the first year of the pandemic. The change might reflect an increase in patients who sought care at clinics after stay-home orders were lifted, the CDC said. It also could mean greater disease spread, as those with an STD may have had their infection longer and more opportunities to transmit the infection to sexual partners. Additionally, the frequency of new sexual partners may have changed as people re-emerged from quarantine.

The pandemic only partially explains the surge, as cases had been increasing for years before COVID-19 arrived. Experts say social barriers to health care access, coupled with a general lack of awareness of the importance of testing and treatment, has allowed the disease to spread in Texas.

Many patients and health care providers “don’t even understand syphilis is still a thing, as it has been for centuries,” Deverson said. “As someone who is reviewing actual cases and speaks to actual (patients), it has been astounding.”

There’s a lot more, so read the rest. The rate of syphilis dropped in the 80s following all of the safe-sex advocacy that came with the AIDS epidemic, but it has been creeping back up in recent years. The state of Texas has taken some proactive steps to fight back, including enhanced syphilis surveillance, more funds to train health workers on syphilis testing, and launching a podcast about syphilis awareness and prevention. Here’s a fact I didn’t know, which apparently a lot of doctors don’t know as well: In the state of Texas, three syphilis tests are required during pregnancy. Anyway, read the rest and learn more about this.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Syphilis

An HISD roundup

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

So much news, sometimes all you can do is link ’em up…

The HISD Board of Managers had its second meeting on Thursday.

It was mostly calm and quiet in the auditorium as new Houston ISD board members listened to a presentation about the budget, reviewed an agenda for their next meeting and peppered new Superintendent Mike Miles with questions about his vision for the state’s largest school district.

Occasional shouting could be heard from outside the room, meanwhile, as the majority of parents, teachers and community members who attended the public meeting were sequestered in a separate room to watch the proceedings via a screen. Several people were barred from stepping into the auditorium by HISD police officers.

One man who was registered to speak during public comment was detained in handcuffs and taken to the Harris County Joint Processing Center, according to witnesses. Others, assigned upon entry to the overflow room, crowded around the auditorium doors shouting, “Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!”

Inside the auditorium, roughly 35 chairs were set up for spectators and a dozen seats were reserved for the press, while several large tables dominated the room for the board members, who opted to sit facing each other during the workshop instead taking their places at the dais per usual.

“The dais is a little bit restrictive, and being able to sit together as a group on the floor with the superintendent speaking directly to us and answering our questions really was the most effective manner,” said board president Audrey Momanaee. “We really did have a very productive session today.”

Meanwhile, more than two dozen people spoke out during public comment in opposition to the takeover and the new governance body. Miles was not in the auditorium during public comment, but said later that he watched it from afar because “the focus is on the board.”

Many of the elected trustees who have been stripped of their power attended the meeting, including Kathy Blueford-Daniels, who said she was extremely disappointed by the limited public access to the auditorium.

“You will not be able to bridge any relationships with people in the community by these actions,” she said. “I cannot accept the way this is being done.”

[…]

During the meeting, Miles laid out his proposal for the 2023-2024 budget, which the board is scheduled to vote on next week.

The new administration’s proposal is largely similar to the $2.2 billion budget crafted by the previous district leaders but includes small changes to accommodate Miles’ new vision for HISD, which focuses on meeting the needs at long-struggling schools without subtracting resources from high-performing schools, he said.

“The foundation of it is equity,” Miles said. “You’ll see more resources going to under-served communities.”

Miles said he wants to reduce expenditures by cutting $50 million in various third-party contracts for services, $30 million from the central office and $25 million in positions funded by pandemic relief dollars, which would soon be eliminated regardless since those funds will expire by September 2024.

The contracts on the chopping block are likely those for services that can instead be provided in-house, such as principal leadership training, but not those that serve student needs, Miles said.

“We can’t get rid of all contracted services or vendors…but we can cut down on the things that we can do ourselves, and do it better,” he said.

The central office cuts will likely impact the chief academic office, professional development and school leadership, Miles said, while transportation, nutrition, custodial and finance offices will be left untouched. Miles did not provide a figure for exactly how many central office jobs will be eliminated, but said some are already vacant positions.

Those budget cuts would free up roughly enough money to cover the $106.7 million that Miles estimates is needed to fund his top priorities, which include creating the New Education System that aims to reconstitute low-performing schools, improving instruction quality and bolstering special education services.

We’ll need to talk more about the budget, but in the meantime it would be nice if we could get the meetings to be better.

HISD officials allowed all registered public speakers to address the board, though a majority had to give their one-minute remarks in the separate overflow room. Their comments were broadcast live to the board members.

Attendee Kendra Yarbrough-Camarena, who gave her comments from the overflow room, said she was disappointed and felt “isolated.”

“Unfortunately, I had this whole great thing to say, and then I got put in this room where I can’t look at you in the face and actually say the things that I need to say,” Yarbrough-Camarena said during her public comment.

Board President Audrey Momanaee called their typical seating arrangement “restrictive” and said sitting as a group on the floor of the boardroom was the “most effective manner” to conduct the workshop. The board typically sits on an elevated platform with all nine members facing the crowd.

Board members will continually consider different options to have productive meetings, Momanaee said.

Yeah, I don’t think that was right. The people attending the meeting should be in the same room as the Board members.

On the subject of the budget, the cuts that have been proposed are in the service of funding Miles’ “New Education System” (NES). How’s that supposed to work?

NES includes every elementary, middle and high school in three feeder patterns: Kashmere, North Forest and Wheatley. Three other campuses Miles deemed “high-need” — Highland Heights Elementary School, Henry Middle School and Sugar Grove Academy — will be part of the NES.

Miles’ plans to make educators re-apply for their jobs have been well-publicized, but his ideas go much further than that.

To start, Miles plans to pay teachers in NES schools much more than before, in an effort to attract and retain top talent.

Miles has only released salaries for middle school NES teachers to date — he’s expected to announce pay plans for elementary and high school teachers in the coming weeks — but the available data shows the commitment to higher pay.

Middle school reading, English Language Arts, math and science teachers will earn minimum salaries of $81,000 to $86,000, with the maximum ranging from $99,000 to $111,000. Social studies and electives teachers will start at $74,000 and $65,000 respectively.

Teacher salaries typically began at $61,500 last school year and maxed out near $80,000, according to HISD’s compensation manual. Educators teaching core subjects, such as math and reading, did not make significantly more than their peers.

Teachers placed inside NES classrooms also will receive various financial incentives, including a $10,000 bonus and $2,000 stipend for summer professional development.

“The money will be good, but there’s another side of that,” Miles said. “That is high-performance culture, high quality of instruction and accountability. Not all teachers will want to do that and not all teachers can do that. So that’s why we’re interviewing everybody. We’re going to have a performance interview, and those we think can do it are the ones we’ll hire.”

Obvious questions: How are you going to fund that beyond those schools? What happens if these high-quality teachers are coming from other HISD schools? What happens if you don’t get enough of those teachers? What metrics are you going to use?

All questions for another day, I guess. In the meantime, we have not one but two Chron op-eds urging us all to give Miles and the Board of Managers a chance. First, from four of the sidelined Trustees.

We expect the new board and superintendent to be transparent. We expect them to engage effectively with families and students — not just the loudest voices but, most importantly, with the ones who have been marginalized. We expect them to demonstrate results in key areas such as literacy and in college and career readiness, especially for our populations of students who are furthest behind, regardless of which schools the students attend and without ignoring the needs of the whole child.

The community is skeptical and has concerns, and those are natural components of significant and misunderstood change. However, we also encourage the community to give the new leadership a chance. We believe that no one chooses to sit at that dais who doesn’t have the best intentions for students in their heart, and these ten new leaders are no different than we are in that value.

Our students need this new board and superintendent to be successful. We have high expectations and plan to hold them accountable to outcomes, but we also plan to give them a chance. We hope you will do the same. Anything less, and children suffer. Our students have already had enough lost years. We need to work together for a better future for all our students. HISD students are capable of reaching their potential, and we should cooperate as a community to do everything we can to ensure they live out their dreams.

We are very much in agreement that it would be best if this Board and this Superintendent are successful at achieving better student outcomes across the district and especially in the parts of it that need it most. It remains to be seen how transparent they will be in doing so. This cannot be separated from the skepticism and concerns.

And one from longtime Dallas journalist Jim Schutze.

I think I’m a fairly predictable ex-hippie liberal. I found myself across a table at Starbucks from a person who did not meet any of my expectations. Calm, funny, suave, self-deprecating and decidedly intellectual, Miles was not my picture of Col. Blimp.

And yes, he did have a successful military career as an Army Ranger and infantry company commander. But there’s a lot more. After the military, Miles had a second career as a Russia expert in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and after that another career — before Dallas — as a school superintendent in Colorado.

All I really want to say here, with keen awareness of my lack of standing, is that I hope Houston will keep its eyes, mind and heart open about Miles and the regime he will impose. And he will definitely impose a regime. That’s where the ex-military part comes in.

Miles is not, as his detractors never fail to claim, a my-way-or-the-highway guy. But he is a take-the-hill person. He will not bring with him any Austin politics, any of the terrible gender persecution or other maliciousness that people in the statehouse truck in, because none of that is his hill. He has one hill. It was his hill in Dallas. It will be his hill in Houston.

Miles will demonstrate in his first year in Houston that much of the common belief about education is false. Demographics are not destiny. He will show that the dearly held conviction of liberals like myself — that we must somehow solve or eradicate poverty and racism in order to rescue poor urban minority children — is mistaken at many levels.

Poor kids can save themselves. But to save themselves they must first be taught to read fluently by the end of the third grade. Literacy is their salvation, and literacy is Mike Miles’ hill.

Again, we all want that to happen. I’ll be delighted if my skepticism proves to have been overblown. Until then, I’ll be holding on to it.

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

There were actually a couple of pro-voting rights bills this session

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Believe it or not.

“This was a nail-biter all the way to the end. But we’re excited about all the people that will benefit from this. We’re still hopeful that the governor will sign them,” said Chase Bearden, deputy executive director of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, a nonprofit that has been advocating for these voting access policies since 2017. “This is a substantial change. Our next steps are now educating the election workers and election judges, counties, also letting all of the people know who are eligible and then explaining how it all works.”

The bills stand in stark contrast to other legislation Republican lawmakers have pushed since the 2020 election that have made it more difficult for Texans to vote.

Under current law, people who vote by mail do so by marking their choices on a paper ballot. But some voters, such as those who are blind or paralyzed, require help from others to mark their mail ballots and read their answers back to them.

House Bill 3159, authored by state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican, and co-authored by Rep. John Bucy, a Democrat, would allow voters who need assistance casting ballots by mail to do so “privately and securely” by using an electronic system to make their choices. Bucy has filed similar proposals three times since taking office in 2019, all without success.

Senate Bill 477 improves in-person voting for those with disabilities or mobility problems. Written by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat, the bill will allow voters to skip the line at their polling location. The law now requires election workers to grant that type of access only when requested, and the change would allow these individuals to move to the front without permission.

Each polling location will also be required to designate a parking space to be used for curbside voting, in addition to the already required wheelchair-accessible parking space. Signage directing voters to these options would have to be placed at the entrance of the polling place, as well as public notices bearing information about the accommodations. The bill received support from the Republican-led Senate. Only two conservative senators voted against it: Bryan Hughes and Drew Springer, both known for supporting more restrictive voting measures.

The story goes into some detail about the provisions of each bill and how they got to this point in the process, so go read the rest. They’re small-bore – which, let’s be honest, is probably why they had a chance, that and the fact that they were entirely under the radar to anyone not in those communities – and they can’t come close to making up for the disaster of the last two sessions. But they’re still a step in the right direction, and we should celebrate them. Well done to all involved.

UPDATE: And Greg Abbott vetoed the bill by Rep. Leach as part of his effort to target voucher opponents ahead of the next special session. It probably won’t work, because Greg Abbott is a bad governor and a weak leader.

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Pearland ISD data breach

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t mean for this sort of thing to become my beat, but it is very much of interest to me, and should be of interest to you.

Pearland ISD has notified current and former students that their private information may have been stolen during a data security breach last year, which may have affected as many as 55,000 students from as far back as 2014.

Pearland ISD officials have verified that private information, including birth dates, addresses, medical information, and social security numbers, may have been accessed by unauthorized individuals through a breach of its online security.

At this time, the school district has no evidence that the information itself has been misused.

The district began investigating the incident when unusual activity was detected within its computer network on Nov. 8, 2022.

The breach was confirmed April 18, and the district finished reviewing the accessed data and identified the affected parties on May 18. Those individuals were notified via the mail early last week.

In letters sent to impacted individuals, the district offered to provide 12 months of credit and identity protection services as well as indicated it is taking steps to improve its cybersecurity.

Nice. Here’s some more info on what happened.

Pearland ISD is alerting parents and others associated with the district that parties responsible for a recent breach of its computer system may try to contact them.

In a video statement released on the district’s website, Superintendent Larry Berger said that an ongoing investigation shows no evidence so far that any sensitive information had been accessed by anyone outside of the district.

However, he said the district is alerting the community that “unauthorized actors” who caused the problem may try to contact residents regarding the matter.

[…]

The breach was detected Nov. 8 when the district noticed what it described as “unusual activity” within its computer network that were affecting operations including Skyward, a system that provides communication access to families and students.

Through an investigation by an independent cybersecurity firm, the district confirmed that parties had gained access into its system to disrupt daily operations.

OK, not really a whole lot more info. I can infer a couple of things. This was an intrusion, the result of attackers getting access to one or more accounts on the Pearland ISD network, and then likely exploring from there, maybe gaining access to other accounts and systems, and in the end stealing a bunch of data. The point of entry could be the result of someone clicking on a link or attachment in a phishing email, or it could be a credential stuffing attack like what DPS suffered a couple of months ago. The “unusual activity” could have been the attackers running hacker tools like password crackers, or perhaps this was the data exfiltration, in which the large amount of data taken tripped the alarms. It’s almost a 100% bet that the first account that was compromised used one-factor authentication – that is, just a password with no token or smart card or other second logon item.

The fact that the attackers were able to get data going back to 2014 means that data was available on the Pearland ISD network. This may be because the state mandates a data retention policy of at least ten years, or it may be that there aren’t any data retention policies (or that Pearland ISD was bad at following them) and so that was what they had. As with the one-factor authentication, that’s a risk that the Pearland ISD and other government agencies really ought to take into account. There can be valid reasons why they keep data like that around for that long – as noted, it may be required by law – but it still needs to be taken into account.

Everything I’ve written here is my speculation, and I could be off base in a number of ways. What I know I’m right about is that all kinds of state and local government entities are not up to speed on cyber security, and that it’s going to take a lot of resources we’re currently not budgeting for to deal with it. Until then, this will be a recurring story.

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That’s a lot of impeachment-related subpoenas

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Some great stuff from the DMN.

A crook any way you look

The day after the Texas House voted overwhelmingly to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, the ethics panel investigating his alleged misdeeds issued a dozen new subpoenas that indicate their inquiry is far from over.

The list of subpoenaed entities, which was read aloud at the May 28 public meeting of the House Committee on General Investigating, included trusts, banks, two individuals and ride-hailing company Uber. The panel members did not say at the time what information they were after or how the entities were tied to Paxton’s impeachment.

But a Dallas Morning News analysis of years of campaign reports, personal financial disclosures and real estate documents found that many of the subpoenaed entities are inextricably linked to the personal and political finances of Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.

They include the Paxton family’s blind trust, a bank that lent Angela Paxton’s campaign $2 million, two apartments they once appear to have leased and one of their mortgage lenders, the records show.

[…]

The House Committee on General Investigating continues to gather information. Two of the 12 subpoenas the panel issued at its last public meeting went to the Esther Blind Trust and a man named Charles Loper.

Paxton set up the blind trust in 2015 after he was elected attorney general to assume control of the companies and properties he accumulated in recent years.

Under such an arrangement commonly used by politicians, an outside party typically handles the trust’s investments without input from the trust owner in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest. The formation of the trust has also meant less transparency into the Paxtons’ business portfolio because they do not name the entities or investments included in it on their personal financial disclosures.

Through public deed records, The News found that in recent years the Paxtons shifted many of their properties into the blind trust, including a home in Austin, a condo in Austin, a house in College Station and two properties in Ocala, Florida.

Charles Loper III manages the blind trust, which lists a Frisco address. He and his father, Charles Loper Jr., have contributed a combined $50,250 to Paxton’s campaign and a legal defense fund he set up to fight securities fraud charges dating back to 2015, according to personal financial disclosures and campaign records.

The House committee also subpoenaed Bank of the Ozarks, which lent Angela Paxton’s campaign $2 million during her first bid for state Senate in 2018. The loan was backed by Ken Paxton’s campaign and appears not to have been fully paid off, according to the most recent campaign finance records filed in January. Her campaign ledger shows an existing $1.2 million balance in outstanding loans.

Another subpoena went to Benchmark Mortgage, a lender for the Austin condo the Paxtons purchased in 2015, according to Travis County real estate records and personal financial disclosures.

Texas ethics laws mandate barebones reporting for most financial transactions. Several of the subpoenaed entities show up on Paxton’s filings under a section that requires the disclosure of personal notes and lease agreements but the reports offer few other details.

The apartment complexes Marquis at Treetops in Austin and Marquis on Gaston in Dallas, which are listed on Paxton’s personal financial disclosures covering 2015 and 2016, were subpoenaed. So were First Financial Bank and Alliance Bank Central Texas. Paxton reported liabilities at both banks of at least $25,000 across multiple years.

According to The News’ analysis, the other subpoena recipients have no clear link to the Paxtons, including Uber, F&M Bank and Trust and the Madison G. Dean Trust.

The final subpoena went to Mindy Montford, former first assistant Travis County District Attorney who was hired as senior counsel for a cold case unit at the attorney general’s office in 2021. She did not respond to a request to comment.

On the one hand, this could just be the impeachment team being thorough and casting a wide net, not having anything specific in mind but chasing down loose threads because hey, you never know. Or, given who we’re talking about here, it could mean there’s more dirt to come when the Senate gets around to its part of the process. The rules committee will be meeting on Tuesday, which might give us some preliminary clues about what to expect. Paxton’s team is likely to challenge these subpoenas and any evidence they may uncover on procedural grounds, and there’s not a lot of precedent to go by. Next week is going to be fun.

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Endorsement watch: Hidalgo for SJL

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t usually pay much attention to “elected official endorses candidate” news, mostly because most of the time it makes little difference, but in this Mayor’s race I’m more interested than usual, so I will note this for the record.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo endorsed U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in Houston’s mayoral contest on Thursday, saying the congresswoman has the tenacity and experience for the job.

“If there’s someone that can take the heat on behalf of the communities in Houston and Harris County, it is Sheila Jackson Lee,” Hidalgo said at the announcement in Mickey Leland Memorial Park, where the heat index reached 108 degrees. “Houston will have the best of both worlds, an experienced leader and a creative thinker.”

Jackson Lee is among the front-runners in the November election, along with longtime state Sen. John Whitmire. The crowded field of contenders includes former City Councilmember Amanda Edwards, attorney Lee Kaplan, Councilmember Robert Gallegos and former Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia.

Hidalgo is not the first local politico to pick sides. U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia and state Sen. Carol Alvarado, both Democrats, are supporting Whitmire, among others. Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis endorsed Jackson Lee at the congresswoman’s launch party in April.

The endorsement did not come as a surprise. Hidalgo said Thursday that Jackson Lee was among the earliest supporters of her 2018 campaign for county judge, which she won in an upset. At the ceremony, Jackson Lee said she looks forward to collaborating with Hidalgo, touting her own work collaborating with partners across government while in Congress.

“We should have collaboration and coordination, that’s what government is all about,” Jackson Lee said.

Most of the time, in a tossup-type race between candidates who are ideologically similar, most elected officials stay on the sidelines for as long as they can. No point making someone you might have to work with unhappy with you if you don’t have to. The main exceptions are ones where there was a previously existing relationship, as is the case here. It’s also a little unusual for elected officials to jump into races with a large number of credible candidates. Often the strategy is to wait for the runoff; this applies to various endorsing groups, too. This Mayor’s race, it’s something else. I expect there to be more surprises as we go forward.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Coliving

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I’m fascinated by this.

In one of Montrose’s newest residential projects opening next year, renters will be able to walk into fully furnished spaces stocked with basic supplies, paying rents below market rate in one of Houston’s trendiest neighborhoods.

Rent will include professional cleaning and utilities, and they’ll have access to happy hours and group outings. The only catch: They could be living with strangers.

That’s because the 238-unit development, UNITi Montrose, will offer coliving, a style of communal living growing in Houston involving professionally managed roommate housing. Think of it as a version of college dorms for working adults.

The nine-story UNITi Montrose at 701 Richmond will be operated by Common, one of the largest providers of coliving in North America, in partnership with Dallas-based developer the Shelter Cos. Meanwhile in the Museum District, Chicago-based the X Co. is building a 33-story, 646-bed story coliving community. And across the area in multiple smaller rentals, Atlanta-based affordable housing startup, PadSplit, has 585 coliving units and nearly 1,200 planned. Across Houston, that could total at least 2,000 units pitched as some variation of coliving, including apartments and single-family rentals, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis.

In a coliving community, residents can often find cheaper rent, more flexible lease terms and more social interaction while avoiding the pitfalls of typical shared housing, like finding roommates and bickering over bills.

Coliving emerged several years as an affordable alternative for renters in New York and Los Angeles. But in recent years, as more people moved to the Sun Belt, coliving providers followed, offering a solution to rising rents and inflation. There are at least 70,000 professionally managed coliving units planned in the U.S., real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield estimates.

“The industry started with converting brownstones in New York to coliving situations, but now we find many of our clients have seen the value in building coliving from ground up,” said Karlene Holloman, CEO of Common, which has raised $110 million in venture capital and expects to have at least 8,000 coliving beds by the end of 2023. “It’s a growing industry.”

[…]

“A group of roommates sharing an apartment to save money is not a novel concept, but this idea as a business plan has not been institutionalized or scaled in a way that we could do,” said Andrew Kerr, director of acquisitions at the X Co. The firm has 5,300 coliving beds in the pipeline.

Coliving can still come with the headaches of potential roommate disagreements, personality clashes or complaints about noise, security and cleanliness. But coliving providers say they can give residents a more “frictionless” experience by handling background checks, vetting roommates and verifying their income. If a resident misses rent, the other roommates aren’t left to foot the bill, said Mark Drumm, principal at The Shelter Cos. And if needed, some coliving providers allow residents to transfer to different properties without breaking their lease.

And while landlords juggle multiple leases per home, coliving spaces typically fill up about 50 percent faster than standard apartments, according to Cushman and Wakefield. Across Common’s portfolio, for example, after a renter moves out of a coliving bedroom, they’re typically replaced within three days, said Holloman of Common.

I like this for a couple of reasons. One is simply that it’s an affordable living option that will be appealing to mostly younger and single folks who want to be in the urban centers. Thirty years ago when that included me, there were tons of cheap rental houses that you and a buddy or two could get in Montrose and thereabouts. That’s long gone now, but this sounds like a perfectly decent alternative. It’s also good for people who have more temporary housing needs – folks who are here for the short term on a work gig, for example – because shorter leases and furnished units are available. On a broader point, it’s just a good and healthy thing for the local ecosystem to have a variety of housing options, catering to different groups of people. As a former Montrose resident and now longtime Heights person, it’s the trend towards every lot having a 4000+ square foot carbon-copy mansion-wannabe that I lament. It’s aesthetically boring, and I say that as someone who knows nothing about architecture. Variety is good, in many forms. I’m rooting for this to succeed.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Paxton’s securities trial will be in Harris County

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Hey, remember all those years ago when Ken Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges, and how he’s been able to avoid seeing the inside of a courtroom because of a barrage of appeals and other legal maneuvers? Well, we may be at the end of the road for all that, and that means it may be trial time.

A crook any way you look

Texas’ highest criminal court ruled Wednesday that the securities fraud case against now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton’s should remain in Houston, settling a key issue in the 8-year-old case as Paxton faces an impeachment trial in the Texas Senate this summer.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in a 6-3 ruling, overturned lower-court decisions that said Paxton’s trial had been improperly moved from Collin County, where he lives, to Harris County because the trial judge had lost jurisdiction over the matter.

However, the Texas Constitution and state law protected the judge’s authority over the case, the court ruled.

“We’re gratified but not surprised that the Court recognized that this defendant must stand trial before a Harris County jury and a judge who will follow the law,” prosecutor Brian Wice said.

[…]

Prosecutors were able to remove the case from Collin County in 2017, arguing that they could not get a fair trial in a county that Paxton had represented during his 10 years in the Texas House and two years in the state Senate.

Paxton’s lawyers, arguing that the judge who ordered the case to Harris County had lost jurisdiction over the case, succeeded in sending the case back to Collin County in 2020, leading to appeals from prosecutors that resulted in Wednesday’s ruling.

Where a trial is held could have implications for the jury pool in a criminal trial. Collin County leans Republican, and 51% of voters supported Donald Trump, compared with 47% for Democrat Joe Biden, in 2020. In contrast, Harris County voted 56% to 43% for Biden over Trump.

The delay over the venue change was one of multiple holdups in the long-delayed securities fraud case. Paxton’s defense team had also tried to get the charges dismissed, citing problems with the grand jury process. Another dispute arose over six-figure payments to the appointed prosecutors, also leading to extended appeals.

The latest issue involved orders that assigned state District Judge George Gallagher to the Paxton case after another judge had stepped aside. One of those orders allowing him to serve as a traveling judge expired on Jan. 1, 2017.

Paxton’s lawyers argued that because Gallagher moved the case to Harris County in March 2017, he no longer had authority over the matter, voiding his order. A Harris County trial judge and an intermediate appeals court agreed.

On Wednesday, the Court of Criminal Appeals said Gallagher, as an active district judge, “had constitutional authority to sit in any district court across the state” after he was properly appointed to handle the case in July 2015.

“Judge Gallagher had authority to sit in the 416th District Court to preside over [Paxton’s] case when he issued the venue transfer order on April 11, 2017,” Judge Bert Richardson wrote for the majority. “To hold otherwise, would erroneously limit the constitutional statewide authority vested in duly elected district court judges by the Texas Constitution.”

See here for the previous update, which was last March, and here for a copy of the ruling. (There are two dissents and one concurring opinion, all of which you can find here.) Paxton’s new fancy lawyer Tony Buzbee was quoted in the article complaining about the timing of this ruling, as there’s been so much Paxton impeachment news lately. To which I say one, if he wants there to be less bad news about Ken Paxton out there maybe he should tell Paxton to stop criming so much, and two, the many lengthy delays resulting from the many filings and appeals and whatnot had served Paxton’s interests pretty damn well up till now. Live by the wheels of justice grinding slowly, get run over by those wheels when you least expect it.

One of the ironies of this case, as I’ve noted before, is that both Collin County and Harris County are considerably bluer now than they were in 2015, when Paxton was first charged, or in 2017, when the prosecution first got the venue changed. Now, with the case likely to be set for trial, perhaps later this year or next year, Paxton will face a more Democratic jury pool than before, and would have faced at best a fifty-fifty mix in Collin County if he had prevailed. One could look back on all this and quite reasonably conclude that he should have taken his lumps in 2017 and gone to trial then in Harris County. Any way you look at it, he’s worse off now and would have been worse off no matter what. Really breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Reform Austin and the Chron have more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What might come after ERIC

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

An interesting report from TPM.

The Alan Vera Memorial Act both forces the state to leave ERIC, and also to find a replacement vendor — one that can do what ERIC does with a start-up cost of $100,000 or less, and at a cost of $1 per voter status change identified.

Texas’ departure from ERIC comes after a slew of other red states left the network earlier this year amid a pressure campaign from right-wing media and voter fraud conspiracy theorists who alleged that the network, in theory a voter fraud proponent’s best friend, was in fact an activist group funded by George Soros.

But the Texas law comes with a unique twist: it forces the Texas Secretary of State to hire a “private sector data system” to replace ERIC, opening the state up to jostling for that position from some of the same people who helped paint ERIC as a failure to begin with.

“There are a lot of state and federal laws that prevent private vendors from getting that kind of matching criteria,” Daniel Griffith, a Senior Policy Director at Secure Democracy USA, told TPM, saying that it would be “theoretically very difficult.”

[…]

Valentine is one of several people who claim that ERIC is fraudulent and are offering up solutions. These people all make versions of the same claim: their systems keep voter rolls cleaner than ERIC does, do it more cheaply, and from the outside. In addition to Valentine, Arizona election denier Mark Finchem is reportedly working on his own ERIC alternative, while a mysterious platform called “Eagle AI” has also been mentioned among right-wingers.

Experts say that none of these efforts have a real chance at success.

The key to ERIC, experts said, is that it relies on data from multiple state governments, which are only available to those governments, to scan for duplicate voters. Without that shared data, it would be virtually impossible for an outside vendor to do what the system does.

Valentine isn’t without connections to the broader Trump universe. John Eastman, the Trump attorney who articulated legal theories in service of the former President’s effort to reverse his 2020 loss, tapped Valentine for a deposition in his upcoming effort to convince the state of California not to disbar him. Valentine told TPM he’s already sat for the interview. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and voter fraud showman, paid for Valentine’s project, called Omega4America, to analyze two state’s voter rolls, he said.

Alan Vera, the namesake of the Texas anti-ERIC bill, also worked with Valentine, he told TPM. At a February meeting of a Texas task force designed to tackle ERIC, Vera suggested that the group consider using Valentine’s software as a replacement.

Valentine offered in the call with TPM to set up his “fractal programming” system for free for Texas.

“I could implement our system for the entire state of Texas in about two weeks,” he said.

The Texas Secretary of State has other options. The agency said in March that it was appointing an official to develop its own, in-house version of ERIC.

See here for the most recent post, and here for all of my ERIC blogging. The story notes that what will likely happen is more lawsuits against the state for doing a shoddy and almost certainly discriminatory job “cleaning up” the voter rolls, a subject with which we are very well acquainted. I would just add that it is also likely the Lege will have to grapple with this failure and sheepishly take some action to mitigate it, which as my first link shows is also something we are familiar with. One way or another, it’s going to be a mess.

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Justice Department follows up with Tarrant County

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Justice have committed to meeting with Tarrant County’s top Democrats to discuss the letter they sent requesting an investigation into voting rights.

The Democrats, under the lead of U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, penned a letter in May asking for an investigation into whether the actions of GOP leaders like county judge Tim O’Hare violated the rights of minority voters.

The six Democrats who signed the letter, including Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roy Charles Brooks, cited the recent resignation of elections administrator Heider Garcia and the creation of the election integrity task force.

“I’m pleased to have the commitment of officials with U. S. Department of Justice to meet with me, Commissioner Roy Brooks, and other Tarrant County leaders to directly address the grave concerns we have regarding voter suppression in Tarrant as expressed in our letter to the Department of Justice last month,” Veasey wrote in an emailed statement early Tuesday.

See here for the background; a copy of the letter is embedded in the story. This is just an acknowledgement and a promise to follow up, no date has been set yet, so there’s not much else to say. I’m just glad that it’s happening and that we have a Justice Department that takes this sort of thing seriously. We’ll see where it goes next.

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Texa blog roundup for the week of June 12

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is still highlighting passages in a certain federal indictment document as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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