Dispatches from Dallas, May 26 edition

Posted on May 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in DFW-area news, another smorgasbord, including the ongoing effects of the ransomware attacks, runoff elections, the aftermath of the Allen mall shooting, local fallout from Lege decisions, Wyatt HS in FWISD has a racism problem, Frisco ISD has civil rights problems, Harlan Crow keeps talking, an I-345 update, some great museum exhibits in the area this summer, and Tina Turner’s (RIP) connection to Dallas.

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House General Investigations Committee goes hard after Paxton

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

A crook any way you look

A Texas House committee heard stunning testimony Wednesday from investigators over allegations of a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions by Attorney General Ken Paxton, the result of a probe the committee had secretly authorized in March.

In painstaking and methodical detail in a rare public forum, four investigators for the House General Investigating Committee testified that they believe Paxton broke numerous state laws, misspent office funds and misused his power to benefit a friend and political donor.

Their inquiry focused first on a proposed $3.3 million agreement to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by four high-ranking deputies who were fired after accusing Paxton of accepting bribes and other misconduct.

Committee Chair Andrew Murr said the payout, which the Legislature would have to authorize, would also prevent a trial where evidence of Paxton’s alleged misdeeds would be presented publicly. Committee members questioned, in essence, if lawmakers were being asked to participate in a cover-up.

“It is alarming and very serious having this discussion when millions of taxpayer dollars have been asked to remedy what is alleged to be some wrongs,” Murr said. “That’s something we have to grapple with. It’s challenging.”

Many of the allegations detailed Wednesday were already known, but the public airing of them revealed the wide scope of the committee’s investigation into the state’s top lawyer and a member of the ruling Republican Party. The investigative committee has broad power to investigate state officials for wrongdoing, and three weeks ago the House expelled Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, on its recommendation.

In this case, it could recommend the House censure or impeach Paxton — a new threat to an attorney general who has for years survived scandals and been reelected twice despite securities fraud charges in 2015 and news of a federal investigation into the whistleblowers’ claims in 2020.

Erin Epley, lead counsel for the investigating committee, said the inquiry also delved into the whistleblowers’ allegations by conducting multiple interviews with employees of Paxton’s agency — many of whom expressed fears of retaliation by Paxton if their testimony were to be revealed — as well as the whistleblowers and others with pertinent information.

According to state law, Epley told the committee in a hearing at the Capitol, a government official cannot fire or retaliate against “a public employee who in good faith reports a violation of law … to an appropriate law enforcement authority.”

The four whistleblowers, however, were fired months after telling federal and state investigators about their concerns over Paxton’s actions on behalf of Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and a friend and political donor to Paxton.

“Each of these four men is a conservative Republican civil servant,” Epley said. “Interviews show that they wanted to be loyal to General Paxton and they tried to advise him well, often and strongly, and when that failed each was fired after reporting General Paxton to law enforcement.”

Epley and the other investigators then walked the committee through the whistleblowers’ allegations, including help Paxton gave Paul that went beyond the normal scope of his duties.

“I ask that you look at the pattern and the deviations from the norm, questions not just of criminal activity but of ethical impropriety and for lacking in transparency,” investigator Erin Epley told the committee. “I ask you to consider the benefits [for Paxton].”

[…]

The investigators interviewed 15 employees for the attorney general’s office, including Joshua Godby, who worked for the open records division when Paxton pressured the division’s staff to get involved in a records fight to benefit Paul in a lawsuit.

Out of the 15 people, investigators said, all except one expressed concern about retaliation from Paxton for speaking on the matter. The investigators also interviewed a special prosecutor, Brian Wice, in a separate securities fraud case that has been ongoing for eight years, as well as representatives for the Mitte Foundation, an Austin nonprofit involved in a legal dispute with Paul.

The investigators outlined the alleged favors Paxton did for Paul. In exchange, Paul helped with a “floor to ceiling renovation” of Paxton’s Austin home and employed a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly in a relationship. Paxton is married to state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, who learned of the affair in 2019, leading to a brief hiatus in the relationship before it resumed in 2020, Epley told the committee.

See here for where we started. I assume that “brief hiatus” is in the affair, which means that, um, he’s still canoodling with whoever his not-Angela inamorata is. I dunno, maybe someone should look into that a bit more? Like, maybe there’s some more potential lawbreaking or rules-violating there? Just a thought.

Wow.

Addressing the House Committee on General Investigating, the team outlined several potential criminal offenses they alleged Paxton committed including abuse of official capacity, misuse of official information, misapplication of fiduciary property and accepting an improper gift.

They said Paxton improperly used his office’s resources to help real estate developer and campaign donor Nate Paul on multiple occasions throughout 2020, raising alarm bells among his senior-most aides who viewed Paxton’s personal interventions as highly unusual and unethical. Some of the alleged crimes are felonies, the team noted.

“So is it fair to say the OAG’s office was effectively hijacked for an investigation by Nate Paul through the Attorney General Ken Paxton?” Committee Vice Chair Ann Johnson, D-Houston, asked.

Investigator Erin Epley, a former assistant US attorney, responded: “That would be my opinion.”

[…]

Earlier this year, Paxton and the whistleblowers announced a tentative settlement agreement.

The agency agreed to pay $3.3 million to the four whistleblowers, contingent on legislative approval, and Paxton would apologize for calling them “rogue employees.” Neither side admitted to “liability or fault” by agreeing to the settlement.

The request spurred the House ethics committee to look into the funding request. While the probe began in March, Murr and Phelan first confirmed the inquiry on Tuesday.

Epley said the team reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including emails, contracts, criminal complaints and lawsuit documents over months. They also interviewed the whistleblowers, other agency employees, officials in the local prosecutor’s office and more.

The team’s presentation to the committee, which lasted more than three hours, delved into years of alleged misconduct by Paxton, including the whistleblower accusations as well as active state securities fraud indictments.

They did not shed any new light on Paxton and Paul’s relationship. But the team said it found evidence to support the whistleblower’s allegations that Paul helped remodel the kitchen in Paxton’s Austin home and secured a job for a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly having an affair.

The investigators said Paxton seemed to sympathize with Paul, whose businesses and offices were raided by the FBI in 2019. Over the course of the next year, investigators say Paxton began personally steering the agency to intervene in matters benefiting Paul.

It began with public records requests, when Paxton repeatedly pushed staff to release sensitive FBI documents to Paul’s legal team, the investigators said. Paxton told an agency staffer he believed Paul was being railroaded, said investigator Terese Buess, who previously led the Harris County prosecutor’s public integrity unit.

“[Paxton] said he did not want to use his office, the OAG, to help the feds” or or [the Department of Public Safety,” she added.

Murr stopped Buess at that moment, asking, “Did you just state, I want to be very clear, that the Attorney General for the state of Texas said he didn’t not want to use his office to help law enforcement?”

Buess responded: “That is exactly what was relayed to us.”

Over the coming months, and against the advice of top staff, he directed the agency attorneys to issue a rushed legal opinion that Paul’s team used to fight a dozen foreclosures, the team noted. And Paxton ordered staff to intervene in a legal conflict between Paul’s businesses and a local charity in a way that helped the developer, investigators said.

“General Paxton, in this instance, charged with protecting Texas charitable foundations, disregarded his duty and improperly used his office, his staff, his resources to the detriment of the (charity) and to the benefit of a single person: Nate Paul,” Buess said.

[…]

The investigators also discussed in detail the active criminal fraud cases against the attorney general. Paxton was indicted for felony securities fraud eight years ago related to his involvement with a North Texas technology firm but has not yet faced trial.

An unrelated bribery investigation also came up. In 2017, the Kaufman County district attorney looked into concerns that Paxton took a $100,000 gift from a man his agency had investigated for Medicaid fraud. She closed the investigation after determining Paxton did not break state laws because he had a personal relationship with the donor.

The team spoke with at least 15 people and said all but one had concerns about retaliation inside the agency. They did not list who they interviewed. It is unclear whether they spoke with Paxton or Paul.

The four members of the investigative team all said they believe sufficient evidence supported the whistleblower’s allegations. They listed a series of crimes they believe Paxton may have committed, including abuse of official capacity and misuse of official information, both felony offenses.

“In relation to many of these crimes, there’s of course the aiding and abetting portion of it,” said investigator Mark Donnelly, another former prosecutor. “He’s acting with other individuals, and conspiracy to commit crimes that violate both the state of Texas laws and federal laws.”

“That’s alarming to hear,” Murr responded. “It curls my mustache.”

Okay first, go back to the Trib story above and look at the picture of Andrew Murr. You’ll know how serious that statement of his is. Second, those are some real greatest hits that this committee is playing. I mean, the Kaufman County bribery investigation, which ultimately went nowhere? Are they thinking about that as background material – you know, “establishing a pattern”, as they say on “Law & Order” – or do they think there was something that should have been acted upon? The mind reels. Finally, maybe the Justice Department ought to perhaps Do Something with this investigation, which is now in their laps? And maybe Texas Democrats ought to push them to take action on this? Again, just a thought.

And for the third time, wow.

The House investigators, a group of five attorneys with experience in public integrity law and white collar crime, said they reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including emails, contracts and criminal complaints, and interviewed 15 people. All but one stated they had “grave concerns” regarding Paxton showing hostility or retaliation toward them for their participation.

Paxton signed a settlement with the whistleblowers in February for $3.3 million, but the deal is effectively dead because the Legislature has declined to fund it this session, which whistleblowers have said was a condition of the agreement. The session ends May 29. The whistleblowers’ attorneys have asked the Texas Supreme Court to continue on with the suit.

Epley told committee members Wednesday that Paxton violated the state’s open records law to help Paul obtain information about the FBI’s investigation into him and a raid it had executed against his home and business office.

The attorney general’s office, which is charged with determining whether information needs to be released, had issued a “no-opinion” ruling on the matter — the first time it had done so in decades. The office receives about 30,000 requests per year.

Epley said Paul should have been denied the documents, since the open records law has a clear exception for law enforcement matters, yet Paxton pushed for its release.

According to Epley, Paxton obtained his own copy of the documents and directed an aide to hand-deliver a manila envelope to Paul at his business. After that, Paul’s attorneys stopped asking for the FBI records.

Investigator Mark Donnelly also provided new information on Wednesday that an attorney of Paul’s had recommended that Paxton’s office hire a young and inexperienced lawyer named Brandon Cammack as outside counsel to help Paxton investigate the federal officials looking into Paul. That could have been a conflict of interest, as Paul was the one who had requested the investigation in the first place.

Donnolly did not name the attorney who referred Cammack, but Hearst Newspapers has reported on the strange relationship between Cammack and an attorney who represented Paul, Michael Wynne.

Paul, who is in the middle of multiple bankruptcy proceedings and financial litigation, had wanted the attorney general’s office to uncover details about the federal law investigation into him and his businesses.

Paxton hired Cammack as a “special prosecutor” against the advice of his staff, according to the investigators. They said Cammack was able to use the unredacted FBI report from Paxton to pinpoint the targets of 39 subpoenas, which went to Paul’s business interests and law enforcement officials.

You know, this stuff has been out there for a long time. And for a long time, it’s largely been ignored despite the voluminous record. In the same way that there’s basically no such thing as an anti-Trump Republican any more, because they’ve either been corrupted or they’ve left the Republican Party, at least up until now there’s been no such thing as an anti-Ken Paxton Republican in Texas. Mad respect to the three Republicans on this committee and their investigators, and to the whistleblowers before them, but there have been multiple opportunities before now to deal with the Paxton problem. Even if the Lege ultimately moves forward with impeachment, which by the way will require at least eight of Dan Patrick’s hand-puppet GOP Senators to turn on Paxton, he’s gotten away with this shit – and done a ton of damage while doing so – for way too long. Better late than never and all that, but boy howdy is this late.

I will close with three tweets of interest.

I’ve already pre-ordered that book for my Kindle. Texas Public Radio, the Associated Press, Reform Austin, and TPM have more.

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A brief Uvalde roundup one year after the massacre

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Just a few links for you…

A year after Uvalde’s school massacre, healing remains elusive.

In the year since 19 children and two teachers were killed inside their classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the search for healing has been elusive.

Many victims’ relatives have said healing cannot begin without closure. But closure has been impossible, because 12 months later there are still many unresolved questions about what happened that day — most stemming from the failed police response. It took officers an agonizing 77 minutes to enter the classroom and kill the gunman. It was more than an hour during which some of the victims slowly bled to death.

Details about precisely what happened, which victims might have survived if police had acted faster, and why the law enforcement response failed so miserably are the subject of ongoing local, state and federal investigations. Many surviving families are pinning their hopes for closure on their findings. Others are skeptical. But in the meantime, much of the community is suspended in its grief, grasping still for a narrative of what happened on that tragic day, and searching for ways to cope.

A year after the Uvalde school shooting, officers who botched response face few consequences.

In the year since the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, much of the blame for law enforcement’s decision to wait more than an hour to confront the gunman has centered on the former chief of the school district’s small police force.

But a Washington Post investigation has found that the costly delay was also driven by the inaction of an array of senior and supervising law enforcement officers who remain on the job and had direct knowledge a shooting was taking place inside classrooms but failed to swiftly stop the gunman.

The Post’s review of dozens of hours of body camera videos, post-shooting interviews with officers, audio from dispatch communications and law enforcement licensing records identified at least seven officers who stalled even as evidence mounted that children were still in danger. Some were the first to arrive, while others were called in for their expertise.

All are still employed by the same agencies they worked for that day. One was commended for his actions that day.

For many families of victims in the small Texas town, promises from top state law enforcement and government officials to hold all those responsible for the 77-minute delay in stopping the shooter today feel empty. Instead, they have learned to live alongside officers who faced no repercussions and remain in positions of authority in the community.

The officers shop at the same grocery stores as the families. They umpire weekly softball games. They live in the same neighborhoods. In some cases, they are blood relatives.

“When we see them, they put their heads down,” said Felicha Martinez, whose son was killed in the attack and whose cousin is a police officer who responded to the shooting. “They know they did wrong and wish they could go back and do it over again.”

Hearts In Turmoil: Uvalde Families’ Endless Quest For Gun Control And Answers.

A year ago, an 18-year-old kid with an assault rifle killed nineteen fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The gunman, Salvador Ramos, massacred the students while officers waited outside for more than an hour before engaging him. It’s been a year since the shooting, and families of the victims are still grieving, whilst fighting for gun control and answers.

The Robb Elementary School shooting is the third-deadliest school shooting in the U.S. after the Sandy Hook Elementary Massacre in 2012 and the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007.

In this past year, the victim’s families have fought for new restrictions and more transparency, but the government presented resistance to cooperating.

After the shooting, Governor Greg Abbott publicly condemned the massacre, but instead of addressing Texas’ mass shooting problem, he blamed the Uvalde massacre on mental health – while at the same time cutting a lot of mental health spending.

At the state Capitol in Texas, families showed up repeatedly to push a bill that would have raised the age to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, but the bill barely got a vote and never made it out of committee.

On the front lines of the fight was State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, representing the Uvalde district, who spent the last five months trying to pass bills that would restrict young adults’ access to semi-automatic rifles. Guiterrez’s final attempt -amending another gun bill to raise the minimum age – failed just days before the one-year anniversary of the Robb Elementary massacre.

Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio, activists blast lawmakers’ inaction on guns.

Gun-control advocates joined State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, at the Texas Capitol to condemn lawmakers’ inaction on a bill that would have raised the minimum age required to purchase a semi-automatic rifle to 21.

Gutierrez, whose district includes Uvalde, championed the proposal and a raft of other gun reforms. He’s argued the measures are necessary after last year’s massacre at Robb Elementary School, in which a shooter claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers.

Families of those who died at Robb repeatedly pressed the Texas Legislature to pass a proposal this session raising the purchase age for semi-automatic rifles.

“Congratulations, you just told every single Texan and every single visitor to Texas that you don’t give a damn about the families of Uvalde,” Manuel Rizo said at Tuesday’s live-streamed gathering. Rizo is loved one of Jackie Cazares, 9, who died at Robb Elementary.

Uvalde and Santa Fe families, bonded by unthinkable tragedy, unite in Texas gun reform efforts.

Uvalde and Santa Fe are about 315 miles from each other, but these residents are like family. Cross and Hart have spent long nights together trading stories, sharing meals and advocating at the Texas Capitol. They comment on each other’s social media posts and text each other memes.

They are part of a growing group of Texans touched by gun violence, connected by trauma, grief and, in some cases, a new calling to advocate for change.

“Unfortunately, we’re a part of this club that nobody wants to be a part of,” Cross said. “When you have a grief like this, the average person doesn’t understand. You can’t grasp the notion of how much pain that is.”

Santa Fe survivors don’t know everyone in Uvalde, and the same is true in reverse. There’s no “mass shooting phonebook,” Hart said — and she sometimes wishes there was a better way to connect with others across Texas who have been in their shoes: families in El Paso, Sutherland Springs, Midland-Odessa and now Allen.

It’s a network established by meeting at political events or asking around for someone’s number after seeing them in the news, Hart said.

She first connected with Cross and his wife, Nikki, over the phone last June, and they met in person for the first time in August at an Astros game in Houston. The team had invited the Uvalde families out for “Uvalde Strong Day,” so Hart bought a ticket.

Hart met some of the other Uvalde parents that day, too. She talked to Kimberly Garcia, the mother of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, and “instantly connected” with her. Amerie was a Girl Scout, just like Hart’s daughter.

1 year after the tragedy in Uvalde, the memory of the 21 victims lives on.

On May 24, 2022, a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. It was the worst school shooting in Texas history.

The children loved TikTok and baseball, Pokémon and Starbucks. They had dreams of becoming a lawyer, a veterinarian, a marine biologist, an art teacher, a cop.

The teachers died trying to save their students. One was a “diamond in the rough” who loved CrossFit, running and biking.

Another was a caregiver who supported her family and friends in everything they did. Her husband, a devoted father, died of a heart attack on May 26 after placing flowers at her memorial.

This is who they were.

I had a hard time reading the second to last story. I didn’t even try to read the last one. You can read or not read whichever ones you want. There were many more out there on Wednesday as well. I’m a small bit of hope, a large bit of rage and frustration, and a medium bit of despair about it all.

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The final 227

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Somewhere in here are your Board of Managers.

With about a week until the Texas Education Agency plans to appoint a new Houston ISD superintendent and board of managers, the state agency says it is still considering more than 200 applicants for the nine-member board.

The Chronicle obtained through a public information request the names of the 227 people — educators, business professionals, parents and others — who completed a two-day Lone Star Governance training during one of two weekends last month. All of those people remained under active consideration for placement on the board as of Tuesday, said Jake Kobersky, the state agency’s media relations director.

“We’ll be whittling down from that list,” he said, confirming that no one from outside that group of 227 will be chosen for the board.

[…]

Niti Patel, an HISD parent who completed the training, said she was not invited to conduct a virtual interview or participate in the follow-up weekend session.

Instead, she and other participants said they received an email from Lecholop on April 28 thanking them for engaging in the application and selection process.

“TEA is in the process of vetting all applicants who attended LSG training and will continue to conduct candidate evaluations between now and the placement of the board in June. All applicants who attended LSG training remain in contention for potential appointment to the Board of Managers,” Lecholop wrote in the email. “Your genuine participation and belief that all students in Houston ISD can and will be successful are emblematic of why this intervention will be successful.”

Patel said she believes she has been eliminated from the process.

“I think if I was in the process of being narrowed, they would have talked to me by now,” she said.

The weekend training was educational, she said, and included activities like role playing a scenario in which an angry parent shows up at a board meeting. Patel said she was impressed by the other participants but felt that there was a lack of clarity surrounding the criteria and qualifications needed to serve on the board. She now believes the process may be a “sham.”

“There was a lot of talk about how student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change,” she said. “It wasn’t clear to me that this was anything more than an actual training…Later on, I found out it was kind of an audition for going to the next step.”

Pamela Boveland, a community advocate and adjunct professor at the University of Houston, said Lecholop and another TEA representative were “circling like sharks” during the training sessions. She did not get a follow-up interview and also believes she has been cut from consideration, although she has not received any communication explicitly telling her so.

“I don’t think they wanted to be caught with the 30 (names),” Boveland said. “We’re not still in the process…That’s as far away from the truth as it can get.”

Daniel Gorelick, an associate professor of biology at Baylor College of Medicine and an HISD parent, said he completed the two-day training session and a Zoom interview but did not progress to the next step. He said he learned a lot about how HISD and the school board work.

“I left that two-day session thinking that if they picked all nine people from that group we’d be in good hands,” he said. “There were really a lot of good, smart, dedicated, talented folks. I was actually very impressed.”

See here and here for some background, and click over to see both the original list of 450 applicants and the 227 who made the cut by attending the sessions. One of the latter is the parent of one of my daughter’s classmates; I texted them about this and was told they did not get any further interview from the TEA but was impressed by the people in their session and felt a lot better about the whole process afterwards. I remain skeptical of the TEA and how they have handled this, but as I have said before if they pick a good Board it will help. We’ll see.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of May 22

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance isn’t emotionally ready for “Succession” to end as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Lege kneecaps Harris County elections

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

The Texas House of Representatives voted Tuesday to force Harris County to eliminate its chief election official and to give state officials more authority over elections there.

On a 81–62 party line vote, House Republicans passed Senate Bill 1750, which will abolish the Harris County elections administrator position — a nonpartisan position appointed by local elected officials — and return all election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector.

Failed amendments by Democrats would have changed the new law’s effective date to December, instead of Sept. 1, to give county officials time to conduct the November county and municipal elections and to transfer the duties. Another failed amendment would have given the authority to transfer election duties to the county commissioners. The bill is now on its way to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk — and could ultimately face Harris County’s opposition in court.

Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum said in a statement to Votebeat that when the provision takes effect in September, it’ll be 39 days from the voter registration deadline and 52 days from the first day of early voting for a countywide election that includes the Houston mayoral race.

“We fear this time frame would not be adequate for such a substantial change in administration, and that Harris County voters and election workers may be the ones to pay the price,” Tatum said.

Also approved Monday was a bill that would let the Texas secretary of state intervene in local elections. It would grant the state the authority to investigate election “irregularities” after complaints are filed and the authority to order the removal of a county election administrator or to file a petition to remove a county officer overseeing elections, such as a clerk, if “a recurring pattern of problems” isn’t resolved. The secretary’s current role in elections is only to guide and assist counties, with no oversight powers.

Senate Bill 1933 was originally written to apply to all counties but was amended on the House floor to impact only Harris County, by the House sponsor of the measure, Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress. The House’s changes to the bill now have to receive approval from the Senate this week.

[…]

Harris County leaders say the two bills would set a “dangerous precedent.” That’s why the county is now evaluating whether they can take legal action if the proposals become law.

County Attorney Christian D. Menefee in a statement said state legislators are singling out Harris County “to score cheap political points.”

“I want to be clear: this fight is not over,” Menefee said. “We cannot and will not allow the state to illegally target Harris County.”

1. It’s obnoxious and petty, but I still don’t quite understand the hate-on for the Elections Administrator office. Nothing will substantially change in terms of how elections are done in the county as a result of this, just the names and who they report to. Hell, as things stand right now the Chair of the Harris County GOP is on the oversight board of the EA. That authority disappears once the powers revert to the County Clerk and Tax Assessor. It’s a poke in the eye, but beyond that I don’t see what the Republicans think they’re getting out of this. What am I missing?

2. SB1933 is a lot easier to understand. The possibilities to screw with elections are scary enough, but I’m more worried about it being used to screw with voter registration, both to make it harder to get registrations done and to make it easier to throw voters off the rolls. There’s a reason why the voter rolls barely grew in the years that Paul Bettencourt was in charge of that.

3. There are some obvious avenues for attack in court, both state and federal. I don’t have much faith that the end result will be what we want, though. Like everything else, the only way out of this is winning more elections. And yes, the Republicans who pass these laws to make that harder for Democrats to do know that, too. The Chron, TPM, and Mother Jones have more.

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Paxton calls on Phelan to resign

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The last few days of a legislative session are always the dumbest days of the session.

A crook any way you look

Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday that state House Speaker Dade Phelan should resign, accusing him of presiding over his chamber “in a state of apparent debilitating intoxication.” Paxton also asked the House General Investigating Committee to probe Phelan, a fellow Republican.

Paxton’s call for Phelan’s resignation came days after a video clip went viral that showed Phelan slurring his words while overseeing House floor proceedings Friday night. Phelan’s office has declined to comment on the incident.

“After much consideration, it is with profound disappointment that I call on Speaker Dade Phelan to resign at the end of this legislation session,” Paxton said in a statement posted on Twitter. “His conduct has negatively impacted the legislative process and constitutes a failure to live up to his duty to the public.”

Minutes later, Paxton also posted to Twitter a screenshot of a letter he sent the chair of the General Investigating Committee, Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, asking him to open an “investigation into Speaker Phelan for violation of House rules, state law, and for conduct unbecoming his position.” The General Investigating Committee was meeting Tuesday afternoon but does not publicly comment on any pending investigations.

Phelan’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Paxton’s remarks.

Texas Republicans regularly fight among themselves, but Paxton’s comments Tuesday were striking even by that standard.

The 44-second video clip of Phelan began circulating on social media over the weekend. It was pushed by Phelan’s intraparty critics, including former state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford. It was also the subject of anonymous text messages deriding Phelan as “Drunk Dade.”

Phelan’s defenders noted he seemed to speak normally before and after the clip. They also noted that the people pushing the video, like Stickland, may be out for revenge after the House voted to expel one of their political allies, ex-state Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City.

[…]

Paxton shares political ties with Slaton, the ousted lawmaker. A top campaign contributor to both has been Defend Texas Liberty PAC, the Stickland-run group that is mostly financed by conservative megadonors Tim Dunn and the Wilks family.

You can see the video here if you’re so inclined. I have not given this any real thought, but Scott Braddock speaks for me:

I have no opinion about what condition Speaker Phelan was in, nor do I particularly care. Honestly, he was probably just as exhausted as everyone else is at this point in a session. I do care about the assholes who enabled Bryan Slaton and who are still mad that he faced consequences for his repellant actions. That’s about all the thought I care to give this. The Press and Reform Austin have more.

UPDATE: Okay, now I’m interested.

Following Attorney General Ken Paxton’s call for Speaker Dade Phelan’s resignation, Phelan’s office responded by presenting their perspective on Paxton’s motives.

The House Committee on General Investigating has issued subpoenas to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) relating to the firing of eight whistleblowers from the attorney general’s office.

Cait Wittman, the spokeswoman for Phelan, highlighted the committee’s investigation into “Matter A” since March, as evidenced by committee minutes and official House records. According to Wittman, the motives and timing behind Paxton’s recent statement calling for Phelan’s resignation are abundantly clear.

She stated, “As outlined in the attached preservation letter, the Committee is conducting a thorough examination of the events tied to the firing of the whistleblowers in addition to Ken Paxton’s alleged illegal conduct.” The committee minutes further revealed the issuance of subpoenas.

Wittman characterized Paxton’s statement as a desperate attempt to salvage his reputation, stating, “Mr. Paxton’s statement today amounts to little more than a last-ditch effort to save face.”

The letter says that, “The House has been conducting an investigation related to your request for $3.3 million dollars of public money to pay a settlement resolving litigation between your agency and terminated whistleblowers.”

Nice. Do the letters FAFO mean anything to you, Kenny?

UPDATE: Color Jeremy Wallace skeptical of the video evidence.

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Another path to hockey in Houston

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

If not expansion, then relocation.

The Arizona Coyotes have taken yet another blow in their hopes of finding a long-term home in the Phoenix area.

As a result, speculation has renewed about whether the desert’s potential loss could become Houston’s long-awaited path to the NHL.

While the results are still unofficial, a Tuesday referendum for a Tempe entertainment district that would’ve included a new arena for the Coyotes appears to be headed to a resounding defeat in the Phoenix suburb.

That had hockey fans and media speculating on the next destination for the Coyotes, who’ve had relocation rumors swirl around the franchise for the better part of two-plus decades.

While a move doesn’t appear to be immediate — NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told ESPN on Wednesday that he didn’t envision the team not playing in Arizona next season — staying at Arizona State’s Mullett Arena with its league-low capacity of 4,600 is a highly unlikely long-term proposition. The Coyotes moved there this season after playing from 2003-22 in the far-flung suburb of Glendale.

Enter Houston, the largest market in the country without an NHL team, making it a popular (and logical) candidate to get an NHL team and the subject of perpetual speculation. While NHL power brokers like Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, the chairman of the league’s board of governors, have advocated for Houston before and the city has a hockey-ready arena in Toyota Center, there are some obstacles to bringing a team here.

First, events in the arena are controlled by the Rockets. When owner Tilman Fertitta bought the NBA franchise in October 2017, he said “I would put an NHL team here tomorrow” as its owner or as a co-tenant if the situation worked to his liking. However, in the years since, Fertitta has said little publicly about the NHL.

It appears price is the big sticking point according to Elliotte Friedman, a hockey insider for Canadian cable network Sportsnet.

“The one thing there is that Houston owner, when they met with him about the NHL, it wasn’t at a number that the NHL liked,” Friedman said Wednesday on his “32 Thoughts” podcast with co-host Jeff Marek.

“I don’t know if that’s changed or how it would go, but that was the one thing that I know that they were concerned about. … At a time when Ottawa’s story is incredible because of the kind of interest that’s in the team and the passion that seems to be around owning the team, you want that kind of passion around your ownership group. They didn’t sense it from Houston.”

As noted recently, expansion is not on the table at this time, so if Houston is going to get an NHL team, it would have to be an existing one looking for a new place. Even if the Coyotes did move, there’s no guarantee they’d come to Houston – multiple other cities, including two that used to house NHL franchises, are also in the running. It would be at least a year before anything happens, so much can change. But for now at least, there’s still a chance. The Press has more.

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More plaintiffs join lawsuit against Texas over abortion restrictions

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

One woman had to carry her baby, missing much of her skull, for months knowing she’d bury her daughter soon after she was born. Another started mirroring the life-threatening symptoms that her baby was displaying while in the womb. An OB-GYN found herself secretly traveling to Colorado to abort her wanted pregnancy, marred by the diagnosis of a fatal fetal anomaly.

All of the women were told they could not end their pregnancies in Texas, a state that has enacted some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws.

Now, they’re asking a Texas court to put an emergency hold on some abortion restrictions, joining a lawsuit launched earlier this year by five other women who were denied abortions in the state, despite pregnancies they say endangered their health or lives.

More than a dozen Texas women in total have joined the Center for Reproductive Rights’ lawsuit against the state’s law, which prohibits abortions unless a mother’s life is at risk — an exception that is not clearly defined. Texas doctors who perform abortions risk life in prison and fines of up to $100,000, leaving many women with providers who are unwilling to even discuss terminating a pregnancy.

“Our hope is that it will allow physicians at least a little more comfort when it comes to patients in obstetrical emergencies who really need an abortion where it’s going to effect their health, fertility or life going forward,” Molly Duane, the lead attorney on the case, told The Associated Press. “Almost all of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit tell similar stories about their doctors saying, if not for this law, I’d give you an abortion right now.”

The lawsuit serves as a nationwide model for abortion rights advocates to challenge strict new abortion laws states that have rolled out since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Sixteen states, including Texas, do not allow abortions when a fatal fetal anomaly is detected while six do not allow exceptions for the mother’s health, according to an analysis by KFF, a health research organization.

Duane said the Center for Reproductive Rights is looking at filing similar lawsuits in other states, noting that they’ve heard from women across the country. Roughly 25 Texas women have contacted the organization about their own experiences since the initial lawsuit was filed in March.

See here and here for more on the original lawsuit. A copy of the amended suit, which will be heard in Travis County, is here. The story has details about several of the new plaintiffs – as we have seen, too many times before, these were wanted pregnancies that ran into deadly complications, and the effect on these women because of the strict restrictions on what doctors can do now is harrowing – with more about them here. I haven’t seen any further coverage of this yet, which annoys me. There was a brief moment, in the 2022 campaign and at the beginning of the legislative session, when there were a few words spoken by Republicans about maybe softening the super-strict bans just a little, to include rape and incest exceptions and clarify the “life/health of the mother” situation. That got shot down by the usual suspects, and instead we get some more anti-abortion crap, this time being slipped into a bill to extend Medicaid coverage to 12 months for new mothers. So yeah, I’m very invested in this litigation. The press release from the Center for Reproductive Rights is here, and they have more in their Twitter thread.

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There will be a broadband referendum on your fall ballot

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

One more reasonable accomplishment amid the wreckage.

Rep. Trent Ashby

Texas lawmakers took another step Thursday toward expanding internet availability in the state by passing a bill that invests $5 billion for broadband development.

House Bill 9, filed by Republican state Rep. Trent Ashby of Lufkin, would create the Texas Broadband Infrastructure Fund. The money would be administered by the Texas comptroller’s office and would be the biggest state investment in broadband development to date. The bill is accompanied by House Joint Resolution 125, which proposes a constitutional amendment that would ask Texas voters to approve the historic amount and create the fund.

The legislation has cleared both chambers, and two amendments adopted Thursday will send it back to the House for final approval before going to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. One amendment, proposed by Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, said it was a recommendation from the Texas Comptroller’s office as a way to “remove legal burdens allowing for moneys to be allocated without the need for burdensome legal filings for each individual asset.”

Another amendment, proposed by Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, would direct the state’s broadband office to supplement the non-federal match on a sliding scale based on where it’s necessary to add additional state funds to make a project area economically feasible to serve. Nichols said this would allow the state to amplify the impact of federal funding and ensure providers have skin in the game.

The proposed legislation is an attempt to fill the gaps in broadband availability statewide. Nearly 7 million Texans don’t have reliable internet service. According to the Broadband Development Office’s map, released earlier this year, most urban areas of the state have broadband availability, while most rural areas have slow service or none at all.

This and another bill by Rep. Ashby and Sen. Nichols would build on legislation passed last session, and would add to the money that will come to Texas from the bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021. The House had not concurred with the Senate amendments as of when I drafted this, but it seems likely all that will be dealt with in short order. Even in terrible sessions there are decent things that get done. It’s just that the bad so outweighs the good. We know what the solution is for that.

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Vallejo to run again in CD15

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s hope for a better outcome this time.

Michelle Vallejo

Democrat Michelle Vallejo is running again for the 15th Congressional District, looking to flip back the one U.S. House seat in Texas that Republicans captured last year.

Vallejo made the announcement Tuesday morning in a video that criticized the GOP incumbent, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Edinburg, on multiple issues, including Republican efforts to cut spending for social services and curtail access to abortion.

“In South Texas, Monica De La Cruz makes a lot of promises to us, la gente, but in Congress, her record tells a different story,” Vallejo said in the video.

Vallejo ran for the 15th District in 2022, when it was an open seat, and lost to De La Cruz by 9 percentage points. Redistricting had tilted the seat in favor of the GOP, but national Democrats also declined to seriously invest in Vallejo and prioritized other races. That decision led to recriminations inside the party as it sought to fend off a well-funded GOP offensive in South Texas, which ultimately produced mixed results.

Vallejo said she’s optimistic about national Democratic investments in her race, noting that both Republicans and Democrats have singled out the district as competitive.

“I’m feeling very confident about the resources that they are gearing up for Texas 15,” Vallejo said. “Both sides have targeted this seat as a battleground, and that really points to the vulnerabilities that Monica De La Cruz, as a member of Congress, right now has shown us to have.”

[…]

Vallejo ran as an unabashed progressive when she emerged as the 2022 Democratic nominee in the 15th District. She championed proposals such as a $15-per-hour minimum wage and the single-payer health care system known as Medicare for All. Vallejo narrowly defeated centrist Ruben Ramirez in the 2022 Democratic primary by only 0.2 points.

Vallejo said she would continue running on a similar slate of policy issues, including access to health care, economic development and reproductive rights. Vallejo runs a “pulga,” or flea market, started by her family, which she said gave her a unique outlook on wide swaths of her community.

Vallejo shrugged off criticism that she’s too progressive for a district that has traditionally been represented by moderate Democrats.

“I grew up here in the district. I’m a small-business owner. I grew up serving many other small businesses, and I’ve never labeled myself one thing or the other, other than being a champion of the people,” Vallejo said.

So far, no other credible Democratic candidates have stepped forward to run for the 15th District in 2024.

As noted, the DCCC is in on CD15, the only district in Texas so far. I’m semi-optimistic about this – it should be competitive, hopefully more so than it was in 2022. The Republicans will certainly put a lot of money into defending this seat, so we’ll see how serious the DCCC is, and how well Vallejo can do raising funds when she’s a featured player. I look forward to her July finance report.

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Previewing Allred vs Gutierrez

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I have some thoughts.

Rep. Colin Allred

Since announcing his 2024 Senate campaign, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred has focused his attention on the potential bruising fight against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz.

Before Allred can get to Cruz, however, he’ll likely have to face a significant challenge in the Democratic Party primary.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio is preparing to challenge Allred for the Democratic Party nomination against Cruz, according to four people with knowledge of his deliberations. Gutierrez, 52, is considering launching his campaign after the Texas’ legislative session concludes on Memorial Day. There could be special sessions that impact the timing of that decision.

Gutierrez has gotten media attention for his gun safety crusade for the victims of the May 24 Uvalde massacre, wants to provide party voters with an alternative.

Other contenders could emerge, including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, according to numerous Democratic Party sources. Former Midland City Council member John Love is already in the field with Allred.

Let me stop you right there. I have no idea where this “Sylvester Turner” business is coming from. His name has come up before, in the “Other names mentioned” part of the story, and I assume that’s what is happening here as well. Why it is coming up, other than the fact that he’s in his last year as Houston Mayor and he’s a reasonably recognizable name, is the mystery. I’m not going to claim that I know everything there is to know about Sylvester Turner, and I know that even this kind of loose speculation is based on people talking and that never comes completely out of the blue, but I just don’t see this. Please feel free to set me straight if you know something I don’t know.

Also, kudos for the mention of John Love, the first declared Democrat in this race. Now I need to start a campaign to get Heli Rodriguez-Prilliman mentioned as well.

Sen. Roland Gutierrez

Gutierrez did not comment on his political future.

But Colin Strother, a consultant for Gutierrez, said Allred does not have the right message. His comments are an early peek at how Gutierrez could try to contrast himself with Allred.

“Based on everything that [Allred has] said and tweeted, and posted thus far, he’s trying to appeal to Republicans, and he’s citing his work across the aisle and his support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” Strother said. “The Chamber of Commerce has enough members in the Senate, and I just don’t see base Democrats getting excited to vote for Republican-light.”

Strother added: “The ground is very fertile for a progressive candidate to run.”

Allred, however, comes into a primary contest with broad support. He’s been endorsed by the political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus. Along with being backed for his congressional races by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he’s been supported by organized labor.

Allred’s campaign did not comment on Strother’s criticism, instead pointing to the congressman’s remarks that he’s focused on defeating Cruz.

Gotta say, it’s a little weird to see Colin Strother associate himself with the “progressive” candidate in a Democratic primary. Politics is a strange place. From where I sit, neither candidate is a “progressive” in the sense that that word is often used in this context. This isn’t going to be a primary about Medicare for all or a national $15 minimum wage. Both candidates have connections to business and energy interests that a Jessica Cisneros type would attack them for, but neither has any bad votes or associations on topics like abortion or LGBTQ issues or (obviously) gun control. If Gutierrez wants to define himself as the more progressive candidate because of his activism on gun control, that’s fine by me and it’s perfectly reasonable strategy. I would just like it if we all kept some perspective on this.

“The way it starts off is Allred has the advantage of probably being able to rely on the African American votes in Dallas and Houston, which is a substantial share of the Democratic primary electorate,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University who is studying the race.

“Gutierrez is more likely to be able to appeal to Latinos,” he said, “so the group that will be the decisive group would be liberal Anglos. Where do they go?”

[…]

“Last year, Rochelle Garza cleaned up against Joe Jaworski, though that was partly the male/female dynamic,” said North Texas-based consultant Jeff Dalton, who managed the 2020 Senate campaign of state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. He said Garza appealed to Latinos from the Valley and San Antonio and other parts of the state.”

But Gutierrez’s challenge is raising enough money to be able to amplify his message. If he can’t, Allred will drown him out.

“Anybody with a Latino last name in the Democratic primary comes in with a base,” [Democratic strategist Matt] Angle said. “The question is whether or not you could take that and expand upon it.”

Angle added that both candidates, largely unknown outside of their hometowns, will have to build a coalition to win. That means they will have to extend beyond their Black and Latino support.

“You have to build a coalition,” he said.

[…]

Dalton said a competitive primary could help raise the profiles of the contenders and make them better candidates.

“Primaries are not necessarily a bad thing,” Dalton said. “Sometimes a primary can raise attention about the race or help people raise money.”

Most Democrats warn against a bitter fight.

“I hope that people run for only one reason and that is to beat Ted Cruz,” Angle said. “We don’t have the luxury of symbolic campaigns.”

I think we’re all basically in agreement here. Allred started out with a big fundraising haul right after his announcement, which certainly helps him. Gutierrez is dependent on the end of the legislative session to try to reap the same benefit. He has the signature issue, which should help with activist energy. If they’re out there beating the bushes and getting people excited about taking on Ted Cruz, it’s all good.

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Some dough for downtown

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It would be nice.

Sen. John Whitmire

With just days left in this year’s regular session of the Texas Legislature, Houston-area lawmakers are fighting for a measure that would likely provide several billion dollars to expand the George R. Brown Convention Center and for other downtown projects.

“This means everything to Houston,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat from Harris County and author of the legislation. “It’s just a real infusion of economic development downtown, where we we really need to focus.”

The measure, Senate Bill 1057, would essentially cut Houston in on a deal Dallas and Fort Worth have enjoyed since similar legislation was passed in 2013. It would allow the city and Houston First, the government corporation that operates Houston’s convention venues, to receive certain downtown hotel taxes in excess of the amount collected this year for up to 30 years.

The additional revenue would be modest, perhaps $2.3 million dollars in the city’s next fiscal year beginning July 1, according to analysis from the state Legislative Budget Board. But that amount could grow each year as the revenue swells past the 2023 baseline.

A spokesperson for the state comptroller’s office says that while the agency doesn’t do economic impact projections, it expects the city could reap more than $1.8 billion over 30 years.

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Democrat who represents parts of north and east Harris County, co-authored the legislation in the Senate, and state Rep. Sam Harless, a Republican of Spring, is sponsoring the measure in the House.

The money could be used to expand and modernize the George R. Brown Convention Center as well as for projects in the downtown area, says Michael Heckman, president and CEO of Houston First.

“Houston has an outstanding convention campus, but we can always do better,” Heckman said Tuesday. “This funding, if approved, would allow us to remain a tier-one city for years to come.”

[…]

Whitmire, who is a candidate in this year’s mayoral election as well as the longest-serving member of the Texas Senate, said the additional revenue could be used on projects other than those specifically tied to the physical convention center. Related projects within a 3-mile radius of city hall would be eligible, including potential new parks and green spaces that would better connect downtown with the EaDo neighborhood.

One project backers believe could benefit would be a proposed park over the sunken freeway that is part of the planned $9.7 billion, 20-year reconstruction and relocation of I-45.

“That’s just opening up downtown to the east side,” Whitmire said.

Overall this would have a fairly modest effect on Houston’s finances, but anything that brings more revenue to the city is worth pursuing. The bill is on the House general calendar so it should have a decent shot at passing. Here’s hoping.

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River Oaks Theater renovations set to begin

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

A bit of good news.

The next step in River Oaks Theatre’s comeback starts this week. Construction on renovations to the historic movie theater will begin soon with an eye towards reopening by the end of the year.

Movie-loving Houstonians will recall the venue’s saga that played out in 2021 and 2022. Landmark Theaters closed the three-screen theater in 2021 due to unpaid lease obligations that accrued during the pandemic. Houstonians demonstrated outside the theater, calling for it to be preserved.

When it seemed like the theater might never reopen, Culinary Khancepts, a local company affiliated with Star Cinema Grill that operates State Fair and Liberty Kitchen, announced last February that it had leased the space with plans to renovate it. Now, that work is slated to begin.

Plans call for preservation of the theater’s signature Art Deco look, signage, and name while making necessary improvements to the overall interior. One of the major changes will be upgrading the kitchen to provide for in-theater dining along with cocktails and wine.

When it reopens, the theater will screen art house movies and host live performances, according to a release. Hopefully, that includes the interactive Rocky Horror Picture Show performances that had been a signature of the River Oaks Theatre. Whatever the specifics turn out to be, the company understands the significance of the space.

“We felt as Houston’s only owned and operated cinema companies that it was our duty to save this masterpiece. We look forward to serving our community with the best-in-class cinema experiences,” River Oaks Theatre president and CEO Omar Khan said in a statement. “The last year was spent working through design, city approvals, historical preservation, landlord coordination of building improvements, including a brand new roof and prepping the theater for a sprinkler system.”

See here for the background. It’s always a pleasant surprise when something iconic in Houston gets preserved and renewed, isn’t it? The Chron has more.

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Weekend link dump for May 21

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“Santos is not just a criminal in his own right; he is also a Donald Trump Mini-Me, exemplifying the intersection of the “Big Lie” form of politics and serial criminality. In his indictment, there are lessons to learn about both the degradation of politics and the limits of criminal law’s ability to resist that degradation.”

“The NFL Is on a Mission to Take Over Your Calendar“.

“It is the Same Name Stories era at the New York Times.”

“Although the basic tech supporting vocal deepfakes has been around for a few years, and early adopters like Holly Herndon have long championed their creative potential, AI-generated music has finally gone mainstream. In the bright glare of the spotlight, it’s easier than ever to see how AI software could dramatically reshape the way music is conceived and recorded, providing new automated creative tools while threatening entire job categories—and that’s just in the short term.”

“AI has to be addresses now or never. I believe this is the last time any labor action will be effective in our business. If we don’t make strong rules now, they simply won’t notice if we strike in three years, because at that point they won’t need us.”

I was a BlackBerry admin for about eight years, mostly in the Aughts. It was a great ride, and I still have fondness for those now-obsolete devices. I admit, I never thought the life and times of BlackBerry and its maker would become the subject of a movie, but I’m glad it did. Now I want a prestige podcast or TV miniseries to really go deep on what happened with Research in Motion.

The Seinfeld finale is now 25 years old.

The Durham investigation ends with a whimper and some grievances.

“But that’s not how conservatives change their minds. On the Right, humility is a sign of weakness. (Jesus must have been misquoted about the meek.) So you never admit you were wrong and you never apologize. And yet, conservative opinions do change occasionally. Sometimes they even reverse.”

“Immigration status is not relevant for treatment in an emergency room. It is not needed. It is a barrier to care. Adding truthful non-answers from people who have nothing to fear from answering honestly to the database gives a slight bit of protection to people who need it.”

My thanks to Fred for those last two links and for the shoutout, after which he segues into an introduction to Jared Wellman, who bears some resemblance to but is not at all the same as Jared Woodfill.

“Countless smartphones seized in arrests and searches by police forces across the United States are being auctioned online without first having the data on them erased, a practice that can lead to crime victims being re-victimized, a new study found. In response, the largest online marketplace for items seized in U.S. law enforcement investigations says it now ensures that all phones sold through its platform will be data-wiped prior to auction.”

“A former employee of Rudy Giuliani is suing him for $10 million over allegations of sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and “other misconduct,” including several instances that were recorded, according to a complaint filed Monday.”

“The biggest winner of the first month of the 2023 MLB season isn’t a team or player, it’s a rule: the pitch clock. Introduced this season, the rule change is making MLB fans more interested in watching ballgames, according to a new Morning Consult survey. And those who have watched say the game is now more enjoyable than it used to be.”

“Writers’ group PEN America and publisher Penguin Random House sued a Florida school district Wednesday over its removal of books about race and LGBTQ+ identities, the latest opposition to a policy central to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ agenda as he prepares to run for president.”

“At every level of education, atheists are at the very top end of political engagement.”

“Nothing screams “I’ve been canceled” more than winning a Grammy, right?”

RIP, Marlene Hagge-Vossler, golf Hall of Famer and the last surviving founder of the LPGA Tour.

RIP, Charlie Stenholm, former Democratic Congressman from Lubbock.

“I was there and I took what I took . . . . I had every right to do it. I didn’t make a secret of it. You know, the boxes were stationed outside of the White House.”

“A Massive Leak Spotlights the Extremism of an Anti-Trans Medical Group”.

RIP, Rodrigo Barnes, former NFL player, civil rights activist, and one of the first Black scholarship athletes at Rice University.

RIP, Jim Brown, all-time great running back for the Cleveland Browns and movie actor.

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Dallas data leak threatened by ransomware attackers

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Not good.

An online blog post by a group claiming responsibility for Dallas’ ransomware attack says a leak of employees’ personal information and other data stored by the municipal government will happen soon.

In the post Friday, Royal noted the city saying there was no evidence that data from residents, vendors or employees has been released from Dallas servers after the May 3 attack. The hacker group in the post replied that “the data will be leaked soon.”

“We will share here in our blog tons of personal information of employees (phones, addresses, credit cards, SSNs, passports), detailed court cases, prisoners, medical information, clients’ information and thousands and thousands of governmental documents,” the post said. As of Friday morning, no city information has appeared on the website, which lists at least several dozen other organizations the group claims to have taken data from, such as the Lake Dallas Independent School District.

Some of the posts about other organizations are accompanied by links to download files Royal claims to have stolen, but many others have no link.

The Texas Attorney General’s website lists the Lake Dallas Independent School District in its reports of data security breaches as of May 4. It says almost 22,000 Texans were impacted with names, addresses, Social Security information, driver’s license numbers, and financial and medical information among the data affected.

The AG’s office’s website said potential victims were notified by mail, but doesn’t list the name of any person or group responsible for the data breach.

The city of Dallas in a statement Friday said officials were aware of the website post and that personal information hasn’t been exposed.

“We continue to monitor the situation and maintain there is no evidence or indication that data has been compromised,” the statement said. “Measures to protect data are in place.”

See here for the most recent update. This is a bad scenario for Dallas if what the Royal group is claiming is accurate. If they really do have this kind of personal data of various people and they make it public, that’s not only a legal liability for Dallas, it’s also a terrible look for them since they’ve been saying they didn’t think any such data had been exposed. Again, if this is accurate, it means that either they didn’t have a good handle on what had been done by the attackers, or they just weren’t honest about it. Perhaps the attackers are conflating data taken from one breach with data taken from another, in which case it might not specifically be the city of Dallas’ fault, but that won’t be of much comfort to anyone whose data may be involved. We’ll just have to see when it shows up.

If this kind of data does get published, and it can be traced to the city of Dallas attack, then that raises bigger questions about how they did their business and how they responded to the attack. It also raises the stakes for every other government entity in Texas, since at this point Royal has a track record, and the locals aren’t doing enough to defend and protect themselves. I’d consider this a much bigger and more urgent problem than anything the Lege is dealing with right now, but then I don’t get the vapors at the thought of a drag queen or a kid reading “Heather Has Two Mommies”. The Dallas Observer has more.

Meanwhile, even if the personal data question turns out to be less than threatened, there are still other ongoing problems that have no end in sight.

Dallas police are struggling to access physical and digital evidence amid an ongoing ransomware attack that is disrupting trials, according to defense lawyers who are exasperated after more than three months of pervasive evidence storage issues.

The consequences played out Thursday in a murder trial, where a man was found guilty despite evidence being unavailable to jurors or lawyers. Last week, a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in another murder trial, where police were unable to produce a phone or shell casings.

“It’s the Stone Age again,” said Douglas Huff, president of the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

“This has pretty extensive implications,” he said. “Ultimately, all of this is causing horrendous delays and a clear message is that justice that is delayed is justice that is denied.”

The ransomware attack initiated by the group Royal on the city of Dallas has stretched into a third week, downing several departments. The city has said it could take weeks or months until services are fully restored.

While the county, which administers the courts, is not directly affected, some cases could be paused because electronic evidence catalogs are inoperable, communication is breaking down and internal police share drives and servers are compromised, according to attorneys.

Before the attack, the Dallas Police Department’s digital media evidence team was already sorting through hundreds of murder and capital murder cases to look for deleted digital evidence — an “incredible problem” affecting people accused of crimes, Huff said. That review is now on hold, according to police spokeswoman Kristin Lowman.

Claire Crouch, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, said Wednesday that it would be impossible to determine whether any cases would be affected by the ransomware attack.

The next day, the office sent out a news release saying prosecutors are working with Dallas police to “mitigate the impact.”

“We understand that timeliness is crucial in maintaining public safety and public trust, and we remain resolute in our dedication to upholding the law and ensuring that cases are filed and prosecuted effectively,” the statement Thursday said.

“We anticipate that the longer this goes on, the greater chance for obligations on the DA’s part will be affected.”

Lowman said city officials are working to bring the police evidence cataloging software back online. Without elaborating, she said police are manually accepting, inventorying and retrieving evidence, and the property unit is locating evidence.

The department did not immediately respond to a request late Thursday afternoon for comment about specific cases cited by defense attorneys as having inaccessible evidence.

Additionally, the city’s municipal courts have slowed to a crawl. According to a notice posted on the Dallas Municipal Court’s website, there will be no court hearings, trials or jury duty for the duration of the outage.

My previous inclinations had been to say that Dallas must be confident in its ability to recover from the attack without paying the ransom. I’m less sure of that now, but even if that is still the case, it’s not so good if the recovery in question takes that long. Degraded services aren’t much better than unavailable services.

Posted in Technology, science, and math, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Meet Mike Miles

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Houston Landing profiles the man who seems poised to be the imposed Superintendent of the taken-over HISD.

A hard-charging education leader devoted to shaking up the status quo in struggling school districts appears poised to become the superintendent of Houston ISD.

Mike Miles, the former superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District and current CEO of a charter school network, has emerged in recent days as the likely incoming leader of HISD following comments by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner; U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston; and the president of HISD’s largest teachers union.

The decision ultimately will be made in the coming weeks by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who is installing a new board and superintendent in HISD. The state intervention largely stems from chronically low performance at one HISD campus, Wheatley High School, which triggered a Texas law requiring action by Morath.

State education officials say no decision has been made about HISD’s superintendent, and no appointments will be announced before June 1. Texas Education Agency officials did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on speculation about Miles. Efforts to reach Miles were unsuccessful.

The potential appointment of Miles, however, makes too much sense to ignore: Morath served as a Dallas board member during Miles’ tenure; the two share a strikingly similar outlook on education policy; and Miles has spoken at length about the need for significant reforms in large, urban school district operations.

If Miles is Morath’s choice, the selection portends dramatic, swift changes in HISD.

The former Army Ranger, State Department diplomat and school district leader is known for aggressively upending bureaucracies and reshaping classrooms. His no-excuses approach to management and preferred policies — sidelining low-performing administrators, instituting accountability-related measures and reorienting teachers’ responsibilities, among others — have endeared him to those frustrated with underwhelming student achievement in urban school districts.

“Unfortunately, most district leaders are way too worried about their careers and future job prospects to really break the status quo; board members are way too worried about any noise from their constituents,” Miles wrote in a blog last month for Third Future Schools, a Colorado-based charter school operator where he serves as CEO.

“There is little vision and little appetite for true systemic reform, the effects of which might not be noticed for a couple of years.”

Yet Miles has left behind a trail of disgruntled community leaders, former employees and union champions at previous stops in Dallas and Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he served as superintendent for six years. Miles’ opponents often bristle at his top-down leadership tactics, along with his distaste for more union-aligned approaches to education.

“The attitude, the atmosphere, in most of the worksites and campuses was one of fear and intimidation,” said Rena Honea, the longtime president of the Alliance-AFT teachers association in Dallas. “That’s how his rule was. Not a lot of collaborative input, which is what education should be: people working together.”

Miles undoubtedly would encounter similar resistance in Houston, where voters and political leaders have generally opposed Morath’s move to replace HISD’s school board and superintendent.

The potential selection of Miles also would stand in sharp contrast to the elected board’s preference in recent years for superintendents who aimed to build consensus and moved slower on major overhauls to the district. Miles’ appointment would harken back to the era of former HISD superintendent Terry Grier, whose management style and education policy outlook mirror Miles’ approach. Grier resigned from HISD in 2015 after 6 ½ years at the helm.

Miles, however, ultimately would answer to a board handpicked by Morath — who can remove any appointed member for any reason.

“He’ll have everything he needs to do what he wants to get done,” said former Dallas trustee Lew Blackburn, whose 18-year tenure on the board overlapped with Miles’ reign. “The board members here, we asked a lot of questions, pushed back on a few things. In Houston, there might not be as much pushback from the board of managers.”

See here for the background. There’s a lot more, so read the rest. The story notes that Miles succeeded in raising standardized test score while at DISD, and that is what we want and need here. How painful it will be to get there remains to be seen. Miles may not be the guy, of course – the TEA typically hasn’t said a word and presumably won’t until after June 1 – but it’s highly probable that the selection has been made, and I’m sure that Mayor Turner and Rep. Jackson Lee have good sources. We’ll find out soon enough.

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First official contender for CD32 announces

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Meet Dr. Brian Williams, the first hopeful to succeed Rep. Colin Allred in CD32.

Dr. Brian Williams

Dr. Brian Williams, the trauma surgeon whose profile grew in 2016 after treating Dallas police officers ambushed by a sniper, has launched his campaign to replace Colin Allred in Congress.

“I’ve always responded during times of crisis,” Williams said in an interview Tuesday with The Dallas Morning News.

“I did as a veteran. I did as a trauma surgeon, and, now, with all the intersecting crises occurring, I feel that it’s time for me to take my experience and expertise to Congress.”

Williams, a Democrat, said, if elected, he would seek solutions to curb mass shootings and promote gun safety. He said he’s also concerned with protecting reproductive rights for women and healing an environment affected by climate change.

“There is a real need for leaders who have frontline experience with the issues that we’re trying to solve,” he said.

Williams will be part of what could be a crowded field to replace Allred, who is not seeking reelection and is instead running for Senate against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz.

State Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, is expected to announce her campaign after the Texas legislative session concludes on Memorial Day. Dallas City Council member Adam Bazaldua, who represents the South Dallas-anchored District 7, also has been mentioned as a possible contender.

[…]

Formerly a Dallas trauma surgeon, Williams has had an unlikely path to politics.

In July 2016, he was in charge of Parkland Memorial Hospital’s trauma room when victims of the shooting in downtown Dallas arrived. Seven of the 14 wounded officers were treated at his hospital, and three of them died. Five officers died as a result of the ambush.

Days after treating the fallen police officers, Williams discussed how issues of race and policing that evolved from the ambush were “much more complicated” for him.

“I understand the anger and frustration with law enforcement. But they are not the problem,” said Williams, who is Black, at a news conference.

“I want the Dallas police officers to see me, a Black man. I support you. I will defend you. I will care for you. That doesn’t mean I do not fear you,” he added.

His remarks put him at the center of a national debate on the relationship between police and Black men. And it fueled his desire to promote gun safety policies.

Then-Mayor Mike Rawlings asked Williams to be the chair of a city board that provides oversight to the Police Department.

After that, Williams pushed for gun safety on Capitol Hill, including working as an adviser for Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. His last job in Washington was as an adviser on such issues for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the former House speaker.

“There are too many young people dead on arrival from gun violence, and I’ve talked to too many parents, watching them in anguish when I tell them the news,” he said. “I realize that the solutions to the problems that I was dealing with in the operating room exist outside of the hospital, so I sought service in the community.”

See here for some background. I’ve said before that I’m a fan of Rep. Johnson, but at the time of Allred’s announcement she was the only one of the named competitors (not counting the “maybe/could be” names) I knew anything about. I’m still a big fan, but I also like what I’m hearing from and about Brian Williams. If what we get is a contest between good choices, that’s okay. As is always the case with a newly-announced Congressional candidate, I look forward to seeing what his first finance report looks like, which we will get to see in July.

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The last HISD Board of Trustees meeting

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Next up is takeover time.

The Texas Education Agency is still aiming to appoint a new Houston ISD superintendent and a board of managers as planned on or around June 1, according to an agency representative.

The new leaders will assume their roles immediately and will likely meet for the first time on June 8, said Steve Lecholop, the agency’s deputy commissioner of governance, during a presentation at the last meeting of the HISD elected trustees.

“We’re still on track to name the new members of the board of managers on or around June 1 — it’s our great hope that June 1 is the day,” he said. “In addition to the board announcement that day, the commissioner will also announce the name of the new superintendent.”

The board of managers will be sworn in the same day as the announcement, Lecholop said. Meanwhile, the superintendent will begin working under a 21-day interim contract until he or she gets formal approval by the board of managers.

The state-appointed superintendent and board of managers will begin by launching a 90-day community engagement strategy with assistance from elected board members, Lecholop said.

The TEA representative said he expects and encourages the elected trustees, after they are stripped of their voting power, to engage with the new district leaders by serving as a liaison to the community, providing institutional knowledge and helping the board of managers develop its goals, vision and values.

“You guys know your communities,” he said. “And that is incredibly valuable.”

Continued engagement, involvement and training, Lecholop said, is important to ensure a smooth transition back to elected control, which will happen over a three-year period after the district meets the TEA exit criteria.

Nice to know that the TEA considers the existing Board members to have some value. I’ve been mulling this over, because the outgoing Trustees are basically in the position of being asked by the management that just laid them off to train their replacements. (Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve been in a similar position before.) The case for doing so if that you’re a professional, you care about the mission and the people you’re leaving behind, and you have pride in what you’ve done. The argument against is basically “Fuck you, I want nothing to do with this bullshit, this mess is all on you”. Not exactly dignified, and your reputation will take a hit, but for pure selfish emotional satisfaction it’s hard to beat.

I do think the outgoing (in power and responsibility, if not in position) Trustees should work with the incoming Board of Managers, because they are still elected officials and made a promise to serve the district and its stakeholders, but if they want to do so on something resembling their own terms, I will understand. I think it’s okay to approach this with the mindset that the appointees have something to prove before they can be trusted. I think it’s okay to make it clear to your constituents that what happens next is entirely the responsibility of the state of Texas, that if things go well it’s because they built on the solid foundation that you and your colleagues left for them and if things go badly it’s because they came in and wrecked it all. I think it’s not only okay but a requirement to talk to the press and anyone who will listen if the new guys are about to do something you don’t like and don’t think the public will like. You still have your voice, go ahead and keep using it. And hope for the best, because the sooner these guys are out of here, the better. Campos and the Press have more.

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The 2023 Kinder Houston Area Survey

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

One of the great things about Houston.

Housing costs and the economy topped Houstonians’ concerns this year in the 42nd annual Kinder Houston Area Survey, which also showed a coalescing desire to close the income gap as residents reported widening disparities in their financial outlooks.

While some issues remain nationally divisive, that isn’t always the case in Houston. Ruth López Turley, director of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, said she is hopeful as locals have increasingly reached consensus on a variety of economic and social issues.

“On the one hand, the inequalities are persistent. On the other hand, I find it very hopeful that now a majority, a large majority, want that to change,” López Turley said. “We haven’t seen any action taken, really, but the fact that more people want to see action taken, that’s the first step.”

[…]

The Houston area is also becoming more socially liberal, with younger population driving the direction of public opinion, researchers said.

The number of people who support the right to abortion has remained largely unchanged over the years – 56 percent in 1988 and 59 percent in 2023 – but beliefs on morality are changing. Houstonians felt abortion was “morally wrong” through the 2010s, but the answer split evenly in 2021.

This year, 58 percent said abortion was morally right and 42 percent said it was morally wrong, with older people were more likely to feel it was wrong.

Around 90 percent of the panel’s respondents supported abortion in cases where woman’s health at risk, and 80 percent supported the right to abortion when a serious birth defect is detected, according to the survey results.

People also support gun rights with restrictions – 76 percent said it is very important or somewhat important to protect the Second Amendment, but more than 81 percent favored federal laws requiring handgun registration. Another 93 percent supported universal background checks regardless of where a firearm is purchased. And two-thirds said they find it “very important” to control gun ownership.

Houstonians who were surveyed also overwhelmingly support providing pathways toward legal citizenship for individuals living in the U.S. without documentation, at 80 percent. About 70 percent say immigrants strengthen American culture rather than threaten it, and the share reporting that immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take out has grown from 42 percent in 1994 to 71 percent in 2023.

There’s more, so read the rest of the story and read the survey itself. The Kinder Houston Area Survey is a huge asset to Houston and we should be really grateful to have it. The Press has more.

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Lege approves parkland money

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I feel compelled to note the rare good thing emerging from this Legislature.

The Texas House on Monday gave preliminary approval to two bills, Senate Bill 1648 and Senate Joint Resolution 74, that would, with voter approval, create a Centennial Parks Conservation Fund to invest up to $1 billion to buy more land for the state parks system.

Advocates are calling it a “historic” and an “unprecedented” level of investment in the state’s park system, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

“This would create a new golden age for our state parks,” said Luke Metzger, the executive director of Environment Texas. “We have a lot to celebrate. What a great birthday present to give all Texans for the state parks system’s 100th.”

The bill and resolution by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, already have received an OK from the Senate and need a final vote in the House before heading to the governor’s desk for final approval. The governor has called for an increase in the budget for state parks, and advocates are optimistic that he will approve the bills.

If he does, the issue will go before voters as a constitutional amendment in November, and the state could begin spending the money as early as Jan. 1.

According to a report by Environment Texas last year, Texas lags behind most others states in state parkland: The state ranks 35th in the nation for state park acreage per capita, with about 636,000 acres of parkland for a population of over 29 million as of 2019. The report suggests that Texas needs to add 1.4 million acres of state parks by 2030 to meet the needs of its residents.

[…]

Parks became a hot political topic at the Capitol after Fairfield Lake State Park, about 100 miles south of Dallas, announced it was closing because it’s on leased land and the owner was selling the land. It is one of 14 state parks that sit on leased land.

The owner, Vistra Corp., sold the 5,000-acre property, which includes the park, to Dallas-based real estate developer Shawn Todd and his firm, Todd Interests, which planned to build a private golf course and gated community on the property. Lawmakers have been in negotiations with the park’s new owners to keep the park open to the public, and advocates have been pushing for funding to buy more parkland so there won’t be a repeat of the Fairfield debacle.

“Our local parks all the way to our state parks were one of the few places that were safe for people to gather and enjoy time with each other and enjoy time in nature during the worst of the COVID pandemic,” said Robert Kent, Texas state director for The Trust For Public Land.

As lawmakers make big investments in Texas parks, Kent said he hopes they will find a way not only to buy land for new parks but to preserve existing ones, too.

He pointed to another set of bills, House Bill 3165 and House Joint Resolution 138 by Rep. Justin Holland, R-Rockwall, that might do just that. The bill would create a conservation fund that would provide grants to preserve water resources as well as local and state parks. The resolution would put the fund on the November ballot for voter approval.

The Texas House approved the bill and resolution earlier this month. The Senate hasn’t yet voted on them.

I’ll vote for those two resolutions if they both make it onto the ballot. I’m not a big parks guy myself but I absolutely agree they are a necessary and vital public resource. As for the Fairfield situation, the House passed a bill in late April that would require the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission to approve any application for new or amended water rights related to Fairfield Lake, which would likely scuttle the development process. That bill is still in committee in the Senate, so time is running out. I’ll circle back to that one after the session is over, if I haven’t seen any news on it before then.

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Bill to ban gender-affirming care sent to Abbott, lawsuit to follow

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The next fight will begin immediately.

Texas is on the brink of banning transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies, treatments that leading medical groups say are important to supporting their mental health.

The Senate has voted 19-12 Wednesday to accept Senate Bill 14’s House version and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, two days after the lower chamber passed the legislation. Legal groups opposing the bill — including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, Lambda Legal and the Transgender Law Center — said Thursday they will launch a legal challenge to try and block the legislation from becoming law.

SB 14 is a legislative priority for the Republican Party of Texas, which opposes any efforts to validate transgender identities. It’s also a key proposal among a slate of GOP bills that would restrict the rights and representation of LGBTQ Texans this session, amid a growing acceptance of Christian nationalism on the right.

[…]

“This legislation is vicious, it’s cruel and it’s blatantly unconstitutional,” Ash Hall, policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas, said following the first House vote. “The bigotry and discrimination in this bill will not stand up in court and it will not stand the test of time.”

And already, the prospect of losing access to these treatments has prompted many parents of trans kids — including Randell’s — to consider traveling out of state for care or flee Texas altogether, costly options that are not available to all. Others have also spoken publicly about not wanting to abandon the community that they love or that their families have been in for generations.

“We’re not going to be able to know how many children will be ‘saved,’ as it’s been called, from this lifestyle, but we will definitely be able to track what harm it may cause,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, on Wednesday. “It is my hope that every child affected by this bill can have a chance to grow up and see that things will get better.”

See here for the previous update. From the inbox, here’s what is coming next:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and the Transgender Law Center pledged Thursday to file a lawsuit against a sweeping new law banning transgender youth from accessing medically necessary health care that the Texas Legislature just sent to the governor’s desk.

Texas Senate Bill 14 bans the only evidence-based care for gender dysphoria for transgender people under 18 and aims to strip doctors of their medical licenses for providing their patients with the care they know to be medically necessary. Texas lawmakers have ignored the warnings of transgender youth, their families, and the medical establishment about the harms of this law.

Similar restrictions in Alabama and Arkansas have been enjoined by federal courts, and legal advocates have filed challenges in federal court to bans enacted in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Montana. A state court judge in Missouri recently blocked enforcement of the Missouri attorney general’s emergency order blocking provision of gender-affirming care.

The aforementioned organizations issue the following joint statement:

“We will be filing a lawsuit to protect transgender youth in Texas from being stripped of access to health care that keeps them healthy and alive. Coming on top of the effort last year to classify providing medically necessary and scientifically proven care to transgender youth as child abuse and threatening to tear Texas families with transgender children apart, an effort currently blocked in state court, Texas lawmakers have seen fit to double down.

“They are hellbent on joining the growing roster of states determined to jeopardize the health and lives of transgender youth, in direct opposition to the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as appropriate and necessary. Transgender youth in Texas deserve the support and care necessary to give them the same chance to thrive as their peers. Medically necessary health care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed in school, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, and live authentically as themselves. We will defend the rights of transgender youth in court, just as we have done in other states engaging in this anti-science and discriminatory fear-mongering.”

Bans like S.B. 14 are opposed by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources or support, please visit:
—Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 or https://www.translifeline.org
—Trevor Project at 866-488-7386 or https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

I will obviously keep an eye on that. Lambda Legal has more.

Posted in Legal matters, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

A look at how the TEA trains Board of Managers wannabes

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

From the Observer:

Since mid-March this year, when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced it would be taking over the Houston Independent School District, the state agency has demurred when asked about the district’s future, saying decisions will be made by a 9-member board of managers to be selected from the local community by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

But interviews with and contemporaneous notes from participants in TEA’s April 22-23 board of managers applicants training, as well as an audio recording of the sessions obtained by the Texas Observer, reveal the state plans to limit the board’s role to enforcing high-stakes testing in schools and rubber-stamping financial and operational decisions made by the new superintendent, also to be selected by Morath.

In what seemed like a 16-hour indoctrination session, TEA’s “Lone Star Governance” program trainers had the 230 applicants who attended repeat self-flagellating mantras about their lack of integrity and lack of concern for student success to get them ready for what they called the “Lone Star Governance mindset.”

Lindsey Pollock, a former Houston ISD elementary school principal of 13 years and a current professor teaching in Sarasota University’s educational leadership graduate program, who participated in the training sessions, told the Observer: “I spent two days being demeaned by a presenter who had purposeful intentions to mislead and misrepresent the reasons we were all there. … They were only looking for people who were going to be agreeable.”

[…]

During the sessions, TEA trainers also told applicants that the board’s sole focus was to set the “student outcome” goals and the “goals and values of the community.” But when Pollock, the ex-principal, said community members value other measures of learning apart from the state’s standardized test, called STAAR, TEA’s training facilitator Ashley Paz backtracked and said student outcome goals have to start with standardized test scores.

Another participant raised concerns that other subjects would be overlooked with the state’s emphasis on standardized testing, to which Paz replied, “You don’t think reading and math are important?”

When participant Pamela Boveland, a retired director of research and technology at the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department, asked Crabill, one of the trainers, if students in vulnerable communities would be provided with more resources to succeed, [A.J.] Crabill seemed to dismiss her question by citing his own upbringing: “As a child who … was in foster care and aged out, I have absolutely no sympathy for the idea that I could not be taught.”

Crabill also suggested that teachers are only as good as their students’ standardized test scores: “We might choose to increase teacher retention if we feel like that’s going to help us improve student outcomes. But if we do that and those outcomes don’t improve, we need to figure something else out. The only reason the whole system exists is to improve student outcomes.”

As a parent with a child in the school district, [Anne] Sung, the ex-board member, expressed concern that if the new board’s primary focus is standardized test scores, it would disempower the board to address the community’s diverse concerns.

“If they’re being told that the only thing that matters is STAAR scores, then you can’t weigh in when the community is concerned about other matters. I want my child to learn. But I also want my child to be happy at school,” Sung said. “It seems like we’ll be too busy staring at student outcomes or test scores to wonder why can’t we teach our kids about the real history of America, or why we are not allowed to vote for our own leaders here, or run our own elections? All of those things are connected.”

Hold that thought for a minute while we read this from Campos:

Brad Wray is a teacher and a District Advisory Committee Member with HISD. I have known Brad for years now. He sent this out this morning:

Yesterday, DAC representatives were invited to a Q&A with TEA Commissioner Mike Morath regarding the takeover of HISD. Below are answers to some of the questions that were asked. These are not direct quotes from Commissioner Morath, but I tried to capture the main point of what he was saying.

  • If the District has brought our district grade up to a B+ (Wheatley HS is up to a C), then why are you all here?
  • Answer: The law (HB 1842) says Morath shall either close a school or appoint a board of managers. Improved scores are irrelevant. 
  • What is the process for choosing a superintendent? 
  • Answer: Morath makes the decision. He can’t confirm or deny that it will be Mike Miles. (Houston Chronicle: Who is Mike Miles?) 
  • Any planned changes to pay scale? Will teachers get a pay increase due to inflation?  
  • Answer: Doesn’t expect any this coming year. Believes that teachers should make six figures. How resources are used is up to the Board of Managers. 
  • Will anyone who has been in the district be consulted with decisions you all are going to make? (You all are not from this area, so how will you be able to make the right decisions for a district of children and staff you know nothing about.)  
  • Answer: The Board will be made up of people who live in the district. Morath will strive to have a geographically representative Board of Managers. Existing “gerrymandered” district boundaries will not necessarily be adhered to. 
  • Do you plan to close schools? 
  • Answer: I have not closed any schools. It’s up to the Board. 
  • How will you address inequities? 
  • Answer: This is up to the Board. 
  • How will you alleviate uneasiness that we have about the takeover? 
  • Answer: Communicating what is happening. This won’t be any more extreme than what happens when a superintendent change happens. 
  • Will retention stipends be affected? 
  • Answer: I don’t foresee this changing, but this is up to the Board. 
  • Can you assure us that our schools will not be turned into charter schools? 
  • Answer: I could have chartered schools after year 5 but I have not. It’s up to the Board how schools are managed. 
  • How do you plan to manage the budget deficit? 
  • Answer: How resources are used is up to the Board. 

“It’s not the people in this room that are the problems, it’s the district leadership.” 

-Mike Morath 

Thanks for the info, Brad.

Yeah, none of this is alleviating my concern that the TEA will be completely unaccountable and the Board won’t be in much of a position to fight back, if they were so inclined. It’s going to be a long two-to-however-many years.

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Dispatches from Dallas, May 19 edition

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week in DFW-area news, we have a smorgasbord: follow-up on the Allen mall shooting, election cleanup, more on Thomas and Crow, MUD shenanigans, and computer snafus and more. Plus, Dallas gets lots of good sports news, art, music, and HEB BBQ.

The first few items in this roundup are about mass shooting/gun violence and intimate partner violence and murder. Please read and click through with care.

More on the Allen mall shooting: responses from local media are mostly about whether or not the shooting was a hate crime and what the political implications were. Typical of the former is Machismo, misogyny, misinformation: Why some Hispanic people become white supremacists (Archive link with a slightly different headline archived a few days ago) and Was the Allen Mass Shooting a Hate Crime? Authorities Still Haven’t Said. The question of whether it’s a hate crime is tied to several acknowledged anti-Asian hate crimes, including shootings in Dallas’s Koreatown, in the last few years.

Typical of the latter is Can politicians opposing gun reforms rely on Collin County voters after a mass shooting? The most important thing about this shooting is not whether or not Democrats can make hay out of it, but at the same time, if we want more than thoughts and prayers issued after this shooting the way we got after Uvalde and El Paso and … (here’s a timeline of the last 14 years in mass shootings here in Texas), we are going to have to vote the bastards out. And in Texas, they’re Republicans.

One last story that I was personally pretty bothered by is the Allen PD’s callout of one first-person account of the shooting as false. The story was gruesome and you hate to think that someone would make those details up for social media clout. You also hate to think that the cops would harass someone who helped at the scene of a mass shooting. Yet, here we are.

In other news:

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Texas blog roundup for the week of May 15

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance can almost taste the “sine die” as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Fifth Circuit hears mifepristone appeal

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It went more or less as you’d expect from this dumpster fire of a court. I’ll link to a bunch of straight news coverage in a bit, but what you need is the news with some analysis and snark, so here you go. First, from TPM.

A panel of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges — all Republican appointees — unapologetically carried water for the anti-abortion litigants Wednesday during oral arguments in a case where those litigants are trying to get an abortion pill, mifepristone, yanked from the market.

“When we celebrated Mother’s Day, did we celebrate an illness?” Judge James Ho, a Donald Trump appointee, snarked, regurgitating a false argument by the anti-abortion doctor plaintiffs that the Food and Drug Administration classified pregnancy as an illness to rush mifepristone through the approval process.

But perhaps the comedic peak of the arguments came when George W. Bush appointee Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod took time out to scold the lawyer for Danco, a manufacturer of mifepristone, for criticizing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the anti-abortion district court judge that handed down the first ruling in the case. Kacsmaryk’s ruling has been widely panned, including by his fellow judges, as the latest in a series of nakedly partisan decisions.

“Your filings have been excellent, however I am concerned about some rather unusual remarks in the filings — these are remarks we don’t normally see in briefing from very esteemed counsel that talk about the district court,” Elrod said, affecting a dramatic tone to read phrases including that the district court “defied long-standing precedent” and that the court’s injunction was “an unprecedented judicial assault.”

“I’m wondering if you would have had more time and not been under a rush and probably exhausted from this whole process, would those have been statements that would have been included in your brief?” she asked.

When Danco’s lawyer pushed back, saying that the language reflected the unprecedented nature of the case, Elrod took an incredulous tone: “So you think it’s appropriate to attack the district court personally in the case in that way.” Ho soon jumped in to continue the beratement.

The three-judge panel, rounded out by Trump appointee Judge Cory Wilson, left little mystery as to how it will ultimately rule. The judges asked questions premised on the myth that mifepristone is sending floods of women to the emergency room, prompting the Department of Justice lawyer to frequently remind the judges that the drug is incredibly safe. Ho railed against the FDA, listing a series of supposed errors it made unrelated to the abortion case, seemingly to make the case that judges should overturn its experts’ decisions.

And here’s Slate.

Nothing these intellectual Lilliputians do will even matter. The Supreme Court has already decided that the 5th Circuit cannot be trusted with this case: In April, it froze the court’s previous decision stringently limiting access to mifepristone, expressly maintaining the freeze until the justices themselves take further action. Elrod, Ho, and Wilson are howling into the wind; they have no power to change a thing about federal regulation of medication abortion. The adults in the room have already put them in time-out. And rather than demonstrate that they can judge responsibly, they seized on Wednesday’s hearing to throw a combination temper tantrum/gaslight party. No lessons have been learned, no maturity acquired. This time-out probably isn’t ending anytime soon.

[…]

Sarah Harrington (for the FDA) and Jessica Ellsworth (for Danco) did an amazing job handling a comically hostile bench. But what was the point? Nobody seriously expects these robed ideologues to do their job with a modicum of integrity. Here are a few lowlights of the hearing:

•Ho credulously repeated the plaintiffs’ false claim that the FDA smuggled through mifepristone by calling pregnancy a “life-threatening illness.” (This argument rests on the lie that mifepristone went through “expedited review,” which Ho also parroted.) He asked Harrington angrily: “When we celebrated Mother’s Day, did we celebrate an illness?”

•Elrod, with evident exasperation, castigated the FDA for failing to produce a complete administrative record for the case—which, as Harrington explained, would require lawyers to compile for the court “hundreds of thousands of pages” going back to the 1990s. In response, Elrod suggested that the government was unscrupulously keeping it “a secret.”

•Wilson asserted that, by allowing medical professionals other than doctors to prescribe mifepristone, the FDA made it “much more likely” that patients will need emergency care, including surgery. (He literally just made this up.)

•Elrod suggested that Danco Laboratories should spend countless hours and resources to prepare for a judicial imposition of draconian restrictions on mifepristone just in case the court chose to do so, dismissing any costs as a minor “inconvenience.” (This, of course, completely ignored the Supreme Court’s order, which freed the defendants from this very obligation.) She also suggested, without evidence, that Danco may be complicit in smuggling the pills into states where they are banned.

•Ho read aloud random people’s criticisms of the FDA and made Ellsworth respond to them, then declared that federal courts should override the FDA’s scientific determinations because the agency isn’t trustworthy.

•Elrod chastised Ellsworth for calling Kascmaryk’s decision an “unprecedented judicial assault” in her brief, calling the rhetoric “far outside the bounds of established [criticism]” and a “personal attack” on Kacsmaryk. She then asked Ellsworth to retract the statements and apologize.

These are not serious people. This is not how real judges conduct themselves. This was barely a judicial proceeding. It was a struggle session in which three anti-abortion zealots yelled at attorneys who have already prevailed in this case once at the Supreme Court. Their rage should have been aimed at SCOTUS, but it’s not a good look for lower courts to trash-talk their superiors, so they redirected it to Harrington and Ellsworth instead.

We’ll find out soon enough, I guess. It’s going to be yet another bumpy ride. The Trib, the NYT, CNN, and Courthouse News have more, with a nice bit of live tweeting from Raffin Melkonian if you still need more.

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Mayor Turner’s final budget

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This is what he’s handing off.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Mayor Sylvester Turner will unveil a $6.2 billion budget proposal this week, the final spending plan of his tenure and one he predicts will have enough savings to cover his successor’s first budget gap.

The budget plan includes previously announced pay raises for all city workers, continues the mayor’s plans to address crime and illegal dumping, and adds another $11.3 million toward the city’s backlog of deferred maintenance. It also includes a stark increase in tax dollars for “Build Houston Forward,” the city’s streets and drainage program, jumping from $77 million this year to $123 million next fiscal year.

Perhaps most notably, though, it would sock away $401 million in savings, $220 million above the required reserve of 7.5 percent of the general fund’s expenditures. That, essentially, matches the latest estimate for what the city will have saved at the end of this fiscal year, and it marks the largest reserve in decades at City Hall.

“This represents the strongest fund balance in recent history for a proposed budget,” Turner wrote in his message accompanying the budget. “Additionally, the budget fully funds the Budget Stabilization Fund representing more than $20 million and does not include any deferrals, one-time land sales, or fund balance drawdown.”

[…]

Houston typically operates at a structural deficit with expenses growing faster than revenues, and it must close annual budget gaps with stop-gap measures. As in the last three years, this year’s spending plan would rely heavily on federal COVID-19 relief money to avoid that fate.

The Fiscal 2024 budget, which would take effect July 1, would use $160 million in funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. The city received more than $1 billion in aid from the federal government during the last three years, money that has helped it avoid “significant” service cuts and layoffs, Turner wrote.

The city’s financial outlook likely will be a hot topic during this year’s mayoral race. Previous forecasts have called for deficits of between $114 million and $268 million during the next mayor’s first term, as the city weans itself off federal assistance. The city has spent $344 million of the $607 million it received from the American Rescue Plan Act, as of March 31.

That would leave the city with roughly $263 million left before the adoption of this year’s budget, and about $103 million if the fiscal 2024 budget is adopted as drafted. Cities must obligate the relief money by the end of 2024 and spend it by the end of 2026.

As part of his message, Turner argued the strong fund balance would give his successor breathing room when crafting next year’s budget.

“As we look ahead, strong financial management will need to continue,” Turner wrote. “The city of Houston operates under one of the country’s most restrictive property revenue caps — in addition to complying with the State of Texas revenue cap, and the pressure of inflation. Despite those challenges, the financial health of the city is much stronger than existed on January 1, 2016. Any gap that may exist in FY2025 can be full covered by the fund balance.”

Turner was referring to Houston’s voter-approved revenue cap, which limits yearly growth in property tax receipts to a combination of population and inflation growth or 4.5 percent, whichever is lower. The city has cut its tax rate eight of the last nine years to comply with that restriction, foregoing about $1.5 billion in revenue since Fiscal Year 2015 through last year. In that time, it has saved the median homeowner roughly $946.

You can see more details and video from the press conference on Tuesday here. You know my opinion of the idiotic budget cap already, so I won’t belabor that except to say the next opportunity to have a referendum to amend or repeal it will likely be 2026. Hope the next Mayor can hold out till then. I expect we’ll hear a lot about the city’s current and future financial position as the campaign progresses. There will be budget hearings in the coming weeks, and vote on the budget by Council in June.

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No Paxton settlement money in the budget

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Lege takes a stand.

A crook any way you look

Texas budget negotiators want to ban Attorney General Ken Paxton from using state funds to pay a $3.3 million whistleblower settlement.

This week, they adopted a provision that would bar the Office of the Attorney General from using state money to pay for any whistleblower lawsuits or claims, according to budget documents and a spokesperson with the Legislative Budget Board. The language could still change and ultimately needs sign-off from the Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott to become law.

The settlement is a hot topic this session as some GOP leaders balked at using taxpayer dollars to foot the bill. A rejection of the funds could send Paxton’s agency back to court with four former staffers who sued, alleging they were fired after accusing the Republican of bribery and abuse of office.

Paxton’s agency did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, and Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, who chair the legislative budget committees. The legislative session ends on Memorial Day.

Late Tuesday, attorneys for the whistleblowers wrote to the budget negotiators calling the proposal “disastrous public policy” that would “unfairly punish our clients.”

The state whistleblower act gives public employees who report corruption a safety net, and barring funding of the settlement would “give office holders a license to break the law,” the lawyers wrote on behalf of former top agency employees James “Blake” Brickman, Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar.

The attorneys added that other government workers would not “risk their financial livelihood to report corruption if the Legislature hangs our clients out to dry.”

[…]

The budget provision’s consequences could be far more sweeping than this one case if they are adopted, an expert said.

Blocking the ability of a state agency to pay whistleblower lawsuits could discourage its employees from reporting alleged wrongdoing, said Michael P. Maslanka, an associate professor at the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law.

And by limiting the restriction to just one agency, the whistleblowers’ attorneys might even be able to sue the Legislature for infringing on their constitutional right to equal protection under the law, he added.

See here, here, here, and here for the backgound. Gotta say, I thought the Lege would fold on this, because when have any Republicans ever held Ken Paxton accountable for anything? Yet here we are, and I’m glad to see it. I will say again, for the umpteenth time, the fact that the budget doesn’t have money specifically earmarked for this settlement doesn’t mean Ken Paxton and the AG’s office can’t pay it. He can just take it out of the amount that has been appropriated for that office, and deal with whatever shortfalls it creates. I get the whistleblowers’ frustration, I really do. I just see this as the way to inflict some actual pain on Paxton. He deserves it. Reform Austin has more.

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

Does the TEA already have a new Superintendent in mind?

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Mayor Turner thinks so, and wants the TEA to be more up front about its intentions.

Pressure is mounting on the Texas Education Agency to name the superintendent who will soon oversee the Houston Independent School District as the nearing takeover prompts growing speculation and calls for transparency.

Mayor Sylvester Turner took to social media over the weekend to call on the TEA to confirm or deny a widespread rumor circulating since March that the agency plans to appoint former Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles to replace Millard House II at the helm of HISD.

“I am hearing from people in Houston and Dallas that Mike Miles is the person,” he said in a statement. “The TEA Commissioner should confirm or deny. People within the district are making decisions based on what they are hearing. This process has been plagued by rumors from the beginning.”

A TEA spokesperson reiterated that the agency has made no decisions and plans to appoint a superintendent and board of managers no earlier than June 1.

Miles, who served as superintendent in Dallas from 2012 to 2015, is now the founder and CEO of Third Future Schools, a network of public charter schools serving 4,500 students in Colorado, Texas and Louisiana. He previously worked as superintendent at Harrison School District in Colorado Springs.

In recent blog posts and media appearances, Miles has spoken about the need for systemic change to the education system and a desire to prepare kids for the future workforce. His company believes in high expectations for children and educators, according to the website, along with accountability.

During his tenure in Dallas, Miles introduced several reform measures, including a new performance-based payment system for teachers and principals, and stirred some disruption and controversy due in part to his management style, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Miles did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment on Monday.

Meanwhile, Turner said he has had no conversations with the TEA since March when it first announced state intervention in the district, a move that followed years of litigation and came in response to schools beset by chronic low academic achievement.

The mayor said the process has been “flawed and anti-democratic,” criticizing the state for providing little transparency to parents, school personnel and the press.

“The sole decision-making is in Austin and the stakeholders in HISD are being disregarded,” he said. “The state’s move to take over the largest school district in Texas comes with very little local input, no additional resources and no benchmarks by which it, the state, can be assessed and held accountable.”

If the TEA really does intend to name a new Superintendent on or just after June 1, then of course they’ve been talking to people and almost certainly have a final candidate in mind. HISD is a big district, this is a massive job that will come with a lot of scrutiny and even more skepticism (at best) from the community, and whoever it is will have to make arrangements in their lives to take the job. You know, like leave their current job and relocate to Houston. If they don’t have a finalist, then it’s understandable that they’d keep quiet about their search – it’s what HISD itself would do if they were the ones searching for a new Super – but once there is a single name, there’s no reason not to make it public. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the choice of Mike Miles, if that’s who it is, given how tumultuous his tenure was at DISD, but the process and the lack of transparency is at least as big a concern.

It’s important to remember here that none of the original conditions for the takeover still exist now, with the possible exception of the state of special education at HISD, which is something that the state doesn’t exactly shine at either. As such, any argument that what HISD needs is a clear-the-decks, change-everything visionary is at best debatable. One could say that this was Millard House’s remit when he was hired, but he won’t be allowed to follow through on it. Miles may have been the right person for DISD. I’m not really in a position to know. At least he was hired by the duly elected DISD trustees, who had to face the voters after they made that choice. There are some yellow flags here even without his current gig as a charter school guy, and we the stakeholders of HISD have no control over it. That’s a scary situation. And the TEA won’t even bother to tell us whether this is what we should be worrying about.

Meanwhile, another senior leader departs HISD ahead of the takeover.

Deputy Superintendent Rick Cruz will be leaving Houston ISD this summer for a new role in North Carolina, marking the latest departure among district Cabinet members as the state takeover nears.

Asheville City Schools has named Cruz as its new superintendent to oversee the 4,300-student school district, according to the district.

In his 15-year career at HISD, Cruz said he has been through many changes and worked under different leaders while climbing his way up from a teacher to a senior administrator. His departure is “not about the takeover,” he said. Rather, he decided earlier this year to pursue a superintendent role and was selected in January for a leadership program called Chiefs for Change that works to develop superintendents and state education leaders.

“My decision to start down that path started before the takeover announcement,” Cruz said. “It’s bittersweet because I love Houston, I love the Houston community… I’m proud of the progress that has been made. I will always have a very special place in my heart for Houston, but it is time for me to grow as a leader.”

Congrats to Rick Cruz on the promotion, which sounds like a great opportunity. I take him at his word when he says that decision wasn’t about the takeover, but I’m sure it was there in the background – how could it not be? However you look at it, even if we get the most status quo-focused appointed Superintendent and the most community-focused appointed Board, we’re still going to come back to a very different HISD than the one we started with. There’s no getting around that.

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

Tarrant County Dems seek Justice Department investigation of voting rights issues

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Elected officials who represent Tarrant County’s minority communities have asked the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate County Judge Tim O’Hare and other county officials over concerns that their actions will diminish voting rights.

The letter, signed by Democratic U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth and six other Democrats, cited the recent resignation of Elections Administrator Heider Garcia and the creation of an election integrity task force.

Veasey signed the letter with Tarrant County commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roy Brooks and state Reps. Nicole Collier, Ramon Romero, Chris Turner and Salman Bohjani.

They ask that the Justice Department review the actions and give them a written response about how the Civil Rights Division can end a pattern of “voter intimidation and harassment” in Tarrant County.

“As elected officials representing districts that are predominantly communities of color in Tarrant County, we are deeply concerned that recent actions by Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare and other county officials will further diminish the voting rights of those we represent and undermine their ability to freely and effectively participate in elections,” the letter states.

The rhetoric around voter fraud is eerily similar to the rhetoric used in the 1880s to justify laws meant to disenfranchise people of color, Veasey said in a phone call Tuesday afternoon.

He pointed to persistent rumors of Black voters engaging in so-called “voter fraud” at the Charles F. Griffin Subcourthouse on Miller Avenue in East Fort Worth. He said this is an old pattern of thought that seeks to demonize voters of color.

In Parker County, where a majority of voters typically support the Republican Party, it would be crazy to claim voter fraud because Democrats didn’t get more votes, Veasey said.

“Why is it acceptable to make those same outlandish claims about Black and Brown people in southeast Fort Worth?” Veasey said.

There’s a copy of the letter embedded in the story. Ginger ably covered the Heider Garcia situation in the April 21 Dispatches. Obviously I support this and I strongly suspect there will be much for the Justice Department to find, but let’s be clear about a few things. One, we really need a new federal Voting Rights Act to truly discourage racist local and state governments from this kind of chicanery. Two, we need to either rein in the rogue Supreme Court or put a fence around voting rights legislation so they can’t screw with it; both would be fine, too. And three, we need to elect better governments here in Texas, and there in Tarrant County. Of the three members of that “Election Integrity Commission”, the Sheriff is up for election in 2024; he ran a bit ahead of the pack in 2020, so he won’t be easy to dislodge unless Tarrant goes full-bore blue next year, but it’s doable. We’ll have to wait till 2026 for the other two, but knocking one of this unholy threesome out would surely send a message. Anyway, kudos to all for the initiative. I’ll keep an eye on this. The Fort Worth Report has more.

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Houston’s violent crime rate drops in 2023

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

Mayor Sylvester Turner on Wednesday touted his crime initiative as the reason behind a double-digit year-to-year reduction in violent crime in the first quarter of 2023, but experts say the figures mirror wider national trends and warned it is premature to predict whether the downtrend will continue.

In a report to City Council, Police Chief Troy Finner said Houston experienced a 12 percent decrease in violent crime during the first three months of 2023, compared to the same period last year. The data continue the downward trend highlighted in the Houston Police Department’s January report, which showed a decline in violent crimes between 2021 and 2022.

From January to March, murders saw the largest year-to-year decline at 28 percent, dropping from 152 to 109. Other categories of violent crime also experienced decreases: reported rape by 6 percent, robbery by 10 percent, aggravated assault by 12 percent, kidnapping by 19 percent and human trafficking by 23 percent, according to HPD’s latest figures.

Turner attributed the improvements to the introduction of One Safe Houston, a $44 million initiative launched in early 2022 to tackle crime when the city’s murder rate was on the rise. The plan included additional funds for crime prevention activities, overtime for police patrols, as well as programs to assist domestic violence survivors and individuals experiencing mental health crises.

“I think what’s important to note is that this trend started after we instituted One Safe Houston,” Turner said. “One Safe Houston is working. And it’s now been in effect for more than one year, and the numbers are reflective (of its success). But we still have a lot of work to do.”

Finner said improved coordination with Harris County’s criminal justice system in recent months and more aggressive efforts by prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office also have contributed to the reduced crime rates.

New Orleans-based criminologist Jeff Asher said Houston’s numbers appear to align with broader national trends. The co-founder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that analyzes criminal justice data, Asher said a majority of the nearly 70 U.S. cities his company tracks have reported decreases in violent crime so far in 2023.

“The national trend has been a decline in murders and gun violence, so seeing the same thing in Houston is both encouraging and not surprising,” Asher said. “The likelihood is that it’s not small local things that are driving it, but, rather, national changes. But what those changes are exactly is challenging to ascertain at this point.”

1. The national trends are absolutely the main drivers of the drop in crime, just as they were the main drivers of the increase of the past couple of years. There are things that local governments can do to affect their crime rate, both positively and negatively. There are definitely ways in which we could improve how we collect and update and disburse and react to the national data, to help cities and states be more proactive and less reactive. Finally allowing the CDC to collect gun violence data so as to study it as the epidemic it is would help. But whatever we’ve been doing here, the national trends almost certainly have outweighed it.

2. It’s also important to remember that while the citywide trend is positive, the commission of crime is not uniform throughout the city, and so some areas may not only have crime rates that are higher than other parts of the city, they may also still be experiencing increases, or at least not experiencing decreases. A couple of Council members made this point in the story. How we deploy our resources is one way that we can bend the curve further.

3. Remember all those breathless Republican ads from the 2022 campaign about the unrelenting crimeapocalypse in Houston and how only they could do something about it? Yeah. ‘Nuff said.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Abbott threatens special session if he doesn’t get his voucher bill passed

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It’s not the Lege these days without a special session threat.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said he would veto a toned-down version of a bill to offer school vouchers in Texas, and threatened to call legislators back for special sessions if they don’t “expand the scope of school choice” this month.

“Parents and their children deserve no less,” he said in a statement. His dramatic declaration came the night before the House Public Education Committee was scheduled to hold a public hearing on Senate Bill 8, the school voucher bill. That measure passed the Senate more than a month ago, but has so far been stalled in lower chamber as it lacks sufficient support.

The committee is set to vote Monday on the latest version of SB 8, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, which would significantly roll back voucher eligibility to only students with disabilities or those that attended an F-rated campus. This would mean that fewer than a million students would be eligible to enter the program.

Abbott doesn’t believe the revised version does enough to provide the state with a meaningful “school choice” program. Since the start of the legislative session, Abbott has signaled his support to earlier proposals that would be open to most students. The governor also said he has had complaints over the new funding for the bill, saying it gives less money to special education students. It also doesn’t give priority to low-income students, who “may desperately need expanded education options for their children,” he said.

The centerpiece of the original Senate bill was “education savings accounts,” which work like vouchers and direct state funds to help Texas families pay for private schooling.

The version approved by the Senate would be open to most K-12 students in Texas and would give parents who opt out of the public school system up to $8,000 in taxpayer money per student each year. Those funds could be used to pay for a child’s private schooling and other educational expenses, such as textbooks or tutoring. But that idea has faced an uphill climb in the House, where lawmakers signaled last month their support for banning school vouchers in the state.

I haven’t followed the ups and downs of this latest version to suck money out of the public school system and use it to subsidize private schools. I will note that as in previous sessions, there was a budget amendment passed in the House to block any money being spent on vouchers, and in last week’s “get stuff done before the legislative calendar deadlines”-palooza, a motion to suspend the rules for an amended version of SB8 was shot down. Neither of those things happen without Republican support, and that’s been the key thing about the voucher fight all along – at least in the House, the votes for it aren’t there.

Abbott, like Rick Perry before him, has successfully used special sessions to pass Republican bills that Democrats have blocked via parliamentary means in regular sessions, like the omnibus voter suppression bill in 2021 and the bill aimed at shutting down abortion clinics that Wendy Davis filibustered in 2013. The extra time was what Republicans needed to overcome these procedural obstacles. Here, though, the resistance is coming from other Republicans. When special sessions have been called to overcome that kind of friction – see, for example, 2017 and the efforts then to pass a bathroom bill (who would have thought those would be the good old days) – they have generally ended in failure.

That could happen here. As Scott Braddock has noted on Twitter, there’s nothing to stop Speaker Phelan from taking a motion to adjourn sine die right after gaveling in the special session. I doubt that would happen, but it may be the case that there’s nothing Abbott and/or Dan Patrick can do to cajole or coerce the reluctant Republicans to change their minds. We’ll just have to see, if it comes down to it. The two people in Austin right now that I bet are rooting against that the hardest are probably Sens. John Whitmire and Roland Gutierrez, both of whom have other things to pursue as soon as they’re able to start fundraising again. Stay tuned.

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WaPo says Gutierrez going to challenge Cruz

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This is from last week and I don’t see any other stories to this effect, but it’s what we have.

Sen. Roland Gutierrez

Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D), a longtime lawmaker whose district includes Uvalde, Tex., intends to join the U.S. Senate race to challenge Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in 2024, according to three people familiar with Gutierrez’s plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a formal announcement has not yet been made.

Gutierrez, 52, has served in the Texas state legislature since 2008 and represents the district where a gunman fatally shot 17 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School nearly a year ago. The mass shooting was the second-deadliest to take place at a school in the United States since 2012, when 20 children and six adult staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

The shooting — and Gutierrez’s work with the families of the Uvalde victims afterward to try to enact gun legislation — galvanized the state lawmaker to seriously consider running for higher office, according to a person close to Gutierrez who has been familiar with his thinking over the past year.

“It changes you,” the person said. “Seeing all of that failure, knowing all of that stuff, knowing what the state has purportedly done or not done … and then going into a session and talking to your colleagues and realizing that they still don’t [care]. They are just going to be cowards. And they will sit there and they will cry with the families, but then they won’t do anything.”

Gutierrez would become the second Democrat to join the race, after Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) announced his campaign last week. Texas state law prohibits sitting state lawmakers and other statewide officeholders from accepting campaign contributions during the regular legislative session. This year, the first day Texas lawmakers could accept political contributions would be June 19.

When reached Tuesday, Gutierrez declined to confirm whether he was running.

“The only thing that matters for the next three weeks is fighting for these families,” Gutierrez told The Washington Post. “That’s what I’m focused on right now.”

He added that he would make “decisions on other things” after the Texas legislative session was done.

I noted this story in my earlier post about Rep. Allred getting the “round of introductions” treatment. Sen. Gutierrez himself isn’t saying anything he hadn’t said in a report from late April, but this time we have the “three people familiar with Gutierrez’s plans” speaking for him. As I was saying before the Allred announcement, one does not expect that this sort of thing happens without the full knowledge and approval of the subject, so we have to take it seriously. I don’t see any similar stories out there – I’m a little surprised that the Trib or the Express News hasn’t done something to confirm or deny this – so this is what we have. And we also now have that special session threat from Greg Abbott, which might delay this announcement further. No point in announcing the candidacy if he can’t fundraise off of it. Anyway, this is where we are. Maybe we’ll know more in two weeks, maybe we won’t.

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And another Dallas ransomware update

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Recovery is a long and painful process.

In the immediate aftermath, the attack forced the city to take offline the police and fire department’s computer-aided dispatch system, the police department’s website and the city’s website. The city also closed its municipal court’s system. The city’s development services, public works, permitting and zoning couldn’t take applications or payments, nor could permits be issued.

“Unfortunately, mistakes have been made,” said Jim McDade, president of the Dallas Fire Fighters Association. “Some people have had difficulty getting in through 911, getting their calls answered in a timely manner, and then getting the proper equipment dispatched to them to take care of their emergencies. It’s impossible to know exactly how many mistakes were made.”

As of now, the computer-aided dispatch system is partially back online. The websites have been restored. Development services can accept payments, issue permits and receive plans electronically.

The municipal courts still cannot take payments in person, online or by phone, according to the court’s website. It also says there are “no court hearings, trials or jury duty until further notice.”

The situation’s far from normal for the police and fire departments.

Officers continue to handwrite reports. They still can’t use their in-car computers to check license plates or check for warrants, and instead they have to rely on dispatchers to do it for them.

“If you’re running a tag on a car, there may be a five or 10-minute delay,” said Sgt. Sheldon Smith, chapter president of National Black Police Association.

“If you run a person, you get that same type delay. Nothing is coming fast. Nothing,” he said.

[…]

Technicians are painstakingly checking every computer. As of Wednesday afternoon, for example, about 30 fire department devices had been found to be infected with the virus, so now they’re having to be wiped and reimaged.

See here for the previous update. There’s a lot of work still being done via analog means; Sergeant Smith is quoted elsewhere saying they’re “working like it’s 1965”. As I said before, my inference from this is that they are not going to pay a ransom but are instead trying to rebuild and restore from backup. This has clearly hit a few snags, not unexpected for a network that likely has a broad range of devices and systems, but it is progressing.

The most important thing at this point is to really understand the lessons of this attack, both in terms of how it happened and what needs to be done to prevent future occurrences, and how the recovery process can be improved for the future. As we well know in Houston, catastrophic outages can be caused by things other than hacker attacks. I hope local governments around the state are paying attention to this and taking their own lessons from it. This threat isn’t going away, we all need to be ready for its next appearance.

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