Amtrak seeks partnership with Texas Central

Posted on August 12, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Hey look, a sign of life!

The largely stalled initiative to construct a high-speed railway between Houston and Dallas is up and running again.

Amtrak and Texas Central, the Dallas-based company behind the long-planned project, announced Wednesday they are exploring a potential partnership to further study and possibly advance the idea of building a 240-mile railway that could transport passengers between the state’s two largest cities in a matter of about 90 minutes. The companies said in a joint news release they have submitted applications with several federal grant programs to pay for additional analysis and design work, which has been funded by private investments since the bullet train plan was hatched a decade ago.

“This high-speed train, using advanced, proven Shinkansen technology (from Japan), has the opportunity to revolutionize rail travel in the southern U.S., and we believe Amtrak could be the perfect partner to help us achieve that,” Texas Central CEO Michael Bui said in the news release. “We appreciate Amtrak’s continued collaboration and look forward to continuing to explore how we can partner in the development of this important project.”

The project appeared to have fizzled out last year, because land acquisitions along the proposed railway reportedly slowed and previous Texas Central CEO Carlos Aguilar resigned. The plan has gotten significant pushback from rural landowners along the proposed route, but a Texas Supreme Court ruling last June gave Texas Central the legal authority to acquire land through eminent domain, offering a glimmer of hope to supporters.

The news release issued Wednesday included endorsements from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. The potential collaboration between Texas Central and Amtrak also drew praise from the Greater Houston Partnership, an economic development organization for the region.

If the bullet train comes to fruition, it is expected to create thousands of jobs while also benefitting the environment. The project would lead to the removal of 12,500 cars per day from Interstate 45 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100,000 tons per year, according to Amtrak and Texas Central.

The planned Houston station for the railway is the site of the former Northwest Mall at the convergence of U.S. 290, Loop 610 and Interstate 10.

“The Houston business community continues to believe the best way to achieve economic growth and lower the cost of transportation for consumers is to foster innovation and competition,” Bob Harvey, the president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, said in a statement. “Faster, safer and more reliable connections between our region and other parts of Texas are vital to our continued economic growth. We are hopeful this new partnership will accelerate the development of this project, and we look forward to working with all stakeholders throughout this process.”

See here and here for some background. This press release from Mayor Turner adds some details.

The City of Houston is supportive of the announcement of a landmark agreement between Amtrak, the national rail operator, and Texas Central Railway (Texas Central) a high-speed rail service, marking a significant step forward in the development of a state-of-the-art rail system between Dallas and Houston. This agreement will facilitate crucial planning and analysis associated with the implementation of the highly anticipated high-speed rail service, connecting two major economic hubs in 90 minutes, and promoting sustainable transportation solutions for the region.

This development signifies a significant commitment to advancing transportation infrastructure in our great state. By leveraging the expertise and resources of both entities, we can harness the full potential of this ambitious project, which will have far-reaching benefits for the city of Houston and the entire region.

“This collaboration between Amtrak and Texas Central is a momentous milestone for the City of Houston,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston. “Our city is committed to advancing transportation initiatives that support economic growth and enhance quality of life for our residents. This agreement will accelerate the planning and analysis necessary for the successful implementation of a modern, efficient, and environmentally sustainable rail system connecting Houston and Dallas. I commend all parties involved for their dedication to this transformative project.”

Our understanding is Texas Central and Amtrak have worked together since 2016, when the two entities entered into an agreement to provide through-ticketing and other support services for the high-rail service. They have already submitted applications to several federal programs, including the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure Safety and Improvements (CRISI) grant program, the Corridor Identification and Development program, and the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail (FSP-National) grant program.

Reading this made me realize that there was a similar Amtrak/TCR partnership announcement in 2018. Not clear to me what’s different this time around, but here we are anyway. There have also been discussions of possible expansions of existing Amtrak service in Texas, and again it’s not clear to me how any of that ties together. At this point, I’m just glad to see something that looks like forward motion. We’ll see what it means from here. The Chron, Axios, and CultureMap have more.

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Grand jury empaneled in Paxton case

Posted on August 11, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Well, well, well.

A crook any way you look

Federal prosecutors have seated a grand jury in San Antonio and called witnesses close to suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to testify, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the American-Statesman.

The purpose of the testimony is unclear, but it comes days after Paxton’s attorney confirmed last week that there is an active federal investigation of his client. Federal investigators began looking into Paxton in October 2020 following a report by top aides alleging that Paxton misused his position as the state’s top lawyer to assist a campaign donor, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, then the target of a separate FBI probe.

The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the grand jury proceedings, declined to identify the witnesses whom prosecutors have subpoenaed to testify. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment from the Statesman as of Thursday afternoon.

[…]

Paxton’s lawyer, Dan Cogdell, said Wednesday he has no confirmation that prosecutors are presenting a case to a grand jury.

“All I know is that no one from either the DOJ or the U.S. attorney’s office has been able to answer my most basic questions about any possible ongoing investigation regarding Ken,” Cogdell said.

It’s unclear when the grand jury was impaneled or for how long it will continue to meet. These proceedings are tightly guarded, with only jurors, prosecutors, court staff and witnesses allowed in the courtroom. Any indictment in this matter would be made public and allow the case to proceed to trial.

The grand jury presentation comes nearly three years after the FBI received the complaint against Paxton from the attorney general’s aides. The ensuing probe has been slowed by numerous delays involving the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Paxton’s reelection campaign in 2022, and, from this year, a change in prosecutors after the Justice Department in Washington took over the case from federal prosecutors in San Antonio.

In June, a separate federal investigation into Paul led to a grand jury in Austin handing down an eight-count indictment against the developer for mortgage fraud. Paxton is not named in Paul’s indictment. A trial is scheduled for July 2024.

The hits just keep on coming for ol’ Kenny, don’t they? It’s like he’s a career criminal or something. The last news we had on this front was in February when the existing FBI probe into Paxton’s Nate Paul activities was transferred from the US Attorney in San Antonio to the Justice Department. This is all tightly connected to the whistleblower case and thus to the impeachment trial – indeed, the news of the Justice Department taking over this case broke shortly after the settlement agreement with the whistleblowers was announced. At the time, my biggest feeling about that settlement was that it meant there wouldn’t be any testimony about the Paxton/Paul shenanigans. We sure have come a long way since then.

As with all things related to federal investigations and grand juries, we have no idea what the scope or the timeline are. Maybe we’ll get some news in a couple of weeks, and maybe we’ll all have forgotten this ever happened by the time we next hear something. All I can say is that after so many years of delays and inaction and filings and appeals, it’s amazing to see Ken Paxton going through the wringer right now. I hope it’s excruciating for him. Link via the Current.

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Jack Christie enters the Mayor’s race

Posted on August 11, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Sure, why not?

Jack Christie

Former At-Large Councilmember Jack Christie launched a campaign for Houston mayor on Wednesday, making a late entry into an increasingly crowded race to lead the city for the next four years.

Christie, a Republican, launched a website Wednesday and told supporters he would be the “sole fiscal conservative” in the race. Urban Reform, a Houston nonprofit, first shared the announcement on Twitter.

“Serving three terms as City Councilmember At-Large has prepared me to both protect our tax dollars from waste and protect our communities from crime,” Christie said in the statement. “Houston’s next mayor must be a fiscal conservative and I feel a duty to give a voice to thousands of Houstonians who know that to be true.”

Christie enters a crowded field that a recent poll found is dominated by longtime state Sen. John Whitmire and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both Democrats. Other contenders include attorney Lee Kaplan, District I Councilmember Robert Gallegos, and former Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia. The field includes 16 candidates in all, making a December runoff likely.

[…]

City elections are nonpartisan, but the leading candidates are Democrats or left-leaning contenders. Christie, 74, will seek to consolidate Republicans, who make up about a third of the city electorate, and conservative-leaning voters.

Political analysts have expected Whitmire, a moderate who is running a crime-focused campaign, to pull in most of those voters. He has many GOP donors and supporters, including Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and real estate developer Richard Weekley.

Still, Christie said he saw a conservative lane as the field took shape.

“It changed the playing field where there was a possibility of a fiscal conservative winning because the two leaders will be fighting each other,” Christie said Wednesday. “I saw a winning play.”

It will be an uphill battle, according to Bob Stein, a professor of political science at Rice University. Stein said conservatives are perfectly content with Whitmire, and he thinks Christie will have difficulty raising money or garnering support.

“All that Jack can do is siphon votes away from John Whitmire,” Stein said.

Christie said he expects to peel many of Whitmire’s conservative backers into his fold, though he faces a steep financial disadvantage. In his last campaign finance report in 2019, he reported having under $3,000 in his account. Whitmire has nearly $10 million, and Garcia — also expected to pursue conservative voters — invested $3 million of his own money.

See here for the background. Gotta say, if I’m MJ Khan right now, I’m pretty upset that I didn’t even merit an “also in the race” mention. No respect, I tell ya.

I’m no more impressed by Christie’s candidacy than I was when his name first surfaced. I’ve said all along that I expected another Republican to enter the race, but I was thinking about more of a Dan Patrick type, not someone who could delude themselves into thinking they could win but who would provide someone that someone like them would want to vote for. Jack Christie, bless his heart, was being labeled a RINO during the George W. Bush administration. I don’t see him as someone who is going to generate a bunch of excitement.

That said, I do agree with Bob Stein that he’ll take some votes away from John Whitmire. The question is how many. If you quite reasonably believe that it’s a Whitmire/Jackson Lee runoff in the making, then it only really matters if it might affect Whitmire’s place in the top two. I think Christie would have to get to at least fifteen percent to maybe have an effect, and that depends in part on there being a third place person separating themselves from the rest of the pack. If he can get enough support that could be Christie himself, but to do that he’s going to need some money to get his name out there. I’m sure he can raise a few bucks, but part of the challenge for him is that by this time a lot of the regular donors are already spoken for. My guess is he writes himself a check, at least to get himself started. We’ll see what his 30-day report says. Houston Landing, whose story did mention MJ Khan, has more.

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Dispatches from Dallas, August 11 edition

Posted on August 11, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, two big local stories: an update on the Dallas ransomware saga and a nationally-breaking saga about a federal judge’s ruling against Southwest Airlines. Also: updates on Clarence Thomas, Houston-Dallas high-speed rail (it’s not dead yet, friends); Dallas city budget; various climate change issues in Texas; ongoing problems at the jail in Fort Worth; the DMA has an architect for its expansion; and get your mouth and your arteries ready for the State Fair’s finalist food choices.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Berlin and Culture Club (tonight’s show is Culture Club/Howard Jones/Berlin).

The biggest news in town this week is the ongoing revelations about the data hackers may have gotten through the Dallas ransomware attack. Remember that this attack happened back at the beginning of May and it’s now August and this news started coming out this week. The most recent number we have for people whose data was stolen is more than 26,000 people, and come to find out this was news to City Council as well as you and me. We’ll get back to the budget later, but one item is $8.6 million for dealing with the attack including services like credit monitoring, replacement costs for equipment, recovery and restoration services, and additional security. It’s a start.

The other big story is a federal district judge’s order that Southwest Airlines needs to send its lawyers to religious liberty training from the Alliance Defending Freedom. First broken by Chris Geidner’s newsletter, which I commend to your attention if you’re into legal nerdery, this would be less of a big deal if the ADF weren’t designated a hate group by the SPLC. The details of the offense and the long-running court case leading up to it are in this AP article, which, by the way, the Dallas Morning News ran without additional investigation, which is why a newsletter broke this story instead of Southwest’s hometown paper.

Since Geidner broke this story, it’s started moving through liberal outlets like Judd Legum’s newsletter and Talking Points Memo. It’s too early to know whether Southwest is going to appeal this case or an appeal will rein in Judge Starr, but it’s another example of a Federalist Society Judge coming out of Ken Paxton’s office and making people’s life miserable.

In other news:

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On bringing DPS troopers to Houston

Posted on August 10, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I have some questions.

Sen. John Whitmire

Call in the troopers. That’s one of state Sen. John Whitmire’s plans for reducing crime in Houston, which voters consistently have rated as one of their top concerns.

A similar partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety cratered in spectacular fashion in Austin – and that was before news broke about agency brass ordering troopers to push children into the Rio Grande.

Whitmire, who formerly filed to run for mayor Friday, said he is sticking by his plan to bring in 200 state troopers to help patrol the streets of Houston.

Calling the situation at the border “a total, sad fiasco,” Whitmire said he could craft an agreement with the state to keep troopers under local oversight. Whitmire said that as the ranks of the Houston Police Department continue to thin, DPS’s help is needed to tamp down on crime.

“I’m not Gov. Abbott, I’m not the mayor of Austin. I have been in the Legislature long enough to know how the political scene works in Austin. I can handle the responsibility of telling the governor we’re going to do it the Houston way,” Whitmire said.

In broad strokes, Whitmire is calling for the state to send about 200 troopers to Houston to backstop the Houston Police Department, which has lost more than 300 cops from a quarter-century ago. The Houston Chronicle last month documented how the department’s 911 response times steadily have crept up over the past few years.

Troopers already do some patrols in the Houston area, but they spend most of their time on the highways and at special events, according to the Houston Police Officers’ Union.

The agency’s expanded local duties could include traffic patrols and warrant sweeps, Whitmire said. He said he would take the lead from his police chief on the specific arrangement.

Violent crime in Houston has been on a steady decline. Whitmire noted, however, that it remains elevated compared to before the pandemic.

“Law enforcement is short in Houston,” Whitmire said. “People are coming up to me in large numbers saying, ‘you’ve got to do something.’”

Not everyone is convinced that police in general and state troopers in particular are the best solution, however.

In Austin, Mayor Kirk Watson initially invited the state to send additional troopers to patrol the city. He suspended the city’s partnership with the state after an incident in which troopers pulled guns on a father in front of his 10-year-old son during a traffic stop. Gov. Greg Abbott, who noted that the agency’s jurisdiction extends statewide, responded by promising to send more troopers to Austin.

My questions:

1. What evidence do we have that bringing in a bunch of out of town cops will help reduce crime? Putting this another way, how do we know that HPD is making the best use of the resources it now has? Perhaps there should be some kind of study – audit, operational review, blue ribbon commission, pick your preferred terminology – to see how HPD is doing and make some recommendations first. Maybe one of those recommendations will be “they need more cops”. Or maybe it will be that they need to do less of this and more of that, or they need to do this better and they need to modernize this other thing. I dunno. What I do know is that in many other areas of government, whenever more resources are requested to handle some operational need, the first response I often hear is that we shouldn’t just throw money at these matters, we should make sure they’re doing more with less first. I don’t see why this would be different?

2. Why do we think Houston will get a better outcome than Austin did? Putting it another way again, what can we learn from the Austin experience so that we don’t repeat it but instead improve on it? I know, Senator John Whitmire has been a Senator for many years, he knows how things are done in state government, and he will navigate that bureaucracy in expert fashion to optimize our outcome. Okay, but Austin Mayor Kirk Watson was also a State Senator, not for as long as Sen. Whitmire, but he was there for eight years. What does Senator Whitmire think he can do that former Senator/now Mayor Watson couldn’t or didn’t do? I’m not trying to be a smartass here, I’m genuinely asking. What went wrong in Austin, and how can we avoid that in Houston? Whitmore points to a better outcome with DPS in Dallas, so let me ask it this way – what did Dallas do right, which presumably Austin did not do?

3. All of this leads to the most basic question of all: Why should any of us trust Greg Abbott in this matter? If at some point Mayor Whitmire decides that we’ve had enough of DPS in Houston, what assurance does he have – do we have – that Greg Abbott will say sure, fine, they can come on back? Because that’s not what he did with Austin. That may just be Abbott being an asshole, and it may be because Abbott lives in Austin, but the principle and the question remain. You can tell Greg Abbott we’re going to do this “the Houston way”. How do we know he’ll listen to or care about that?

UPDATE: A bit of timely reporting from the Trib on this matter.

Records obtained by the Tribune through an open records request show that DPS has made 1,253 arrests in Travis County between March and July, including 513 in April alone. That includes a seven-week period between mid-May and early July when the state pulled most of the troopers out of Austin and sent them to the Texas-Mexico border.

In 2022, state troopers made 935 arrests in Travis County during the entire year.

Data from the Travis County attorney’s office shows that from March 27, when the city announced that troopers would begin patrolling Austin’s streets, to July 12, 82% of the people charged with misdemeanors by state troopers were Black or Latino.

During that same period, 69% of misdemeanor charges filed by Austin police were against Black people or Latinos, who together make up 41% of the city’s population.

“It’s very oppressive, it’s exploitative, it’s just total harassment. This is outright racial profiling,” said Susana Almanza, president of the Montopolis neighborhood association and a local activist. “We can’t go out in the community, can’t even go to the grocery store, without feeling intimidated or fearful that we’ll be pulled over by DPS. People are very afraid to come out.”

City Council member Vanessa Fuentes, who represents Southeast Austin, said she’s heard the same thing from her constituents.

“The community saw an influx of troopers, and these are neighborhoods that are predominantly Latino, they are communities of color,” she said. “I heard directly from constituents who felt that going down Riverside was like going through a checkpoint because they were pulling people over almost every single light.”

If the next Mayor doesn’t like what HPD is doing, they can replace HPD Chief Troy Finner. If the next Mayor doesn’t like what DPS troopers are doing, they can’t do anything about DPS chief Steve McCraw. Bringing them in is a matter of trust, because the Mayor will have no control to exert over them. How much trust do we have in DPS and their leadership, which as noted ultimately means Greg Abbott? That’s the big question.

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Harris County gets another $18 million in VW settlement money

Posted on August 10, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I hadn’t realized this was still going on.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee announced Monday that the county will receive at least $18 million as part of a settlement with Volkswagen tied to the automaker’s emissions diesel scandal.

The settlement amount is part of the $85 million that Volkswagen and one of its subsidiaries, Audi, agreed in May to pay to resolve a lawsuit brought by government entities across the state.

Harris County first filed its lawsuit in 2015, accusing the German automaker of designing cars that sidestepped state and federal emission standards. The Texas Attorney General’s Office and other local governments later joined in suing Volkswagen.

“It doesn’t matter how big your company is, how many assets your company has on its balance sheet,” Menefee said at a press conference. “If you’re doing business in Harris County, we will not allow you to pollute the air that we breathe, to illegally harm our firemen or to mislead the good folks who regulate industry.”

The Harris County Commissioners Court will decide how to spend the money from the settlement, which Menefee said is comparable in size to others the county has received. County officials reached a $20 million settlement in February with JUUL as part of a national settlement in a deceptive marketing case against the e-cigarette maker.

“In the wake of the JUUL settlement, I think we’re going to continue to come in with these eight-figure settlements to help move the needle for the Harris County budget,” Menefee said.

In its lawsuit, Harris County accused the German automaker of installing software in cars manufactured between 2009 and 2015 that produced fraudulent results when tested for emissions. Harris County officials alleged the cars produced up to 40 times the allowable amount of nitrogen oxide when not being tested.

County officials estimated at least 6,000 of the affected cars were sold in Harris County.

Volkswagen recalled hundreds of thousands of vehicles across the globe, while also paying tens of billions of dollars in fines, penalties and legal settlements connected to the scandal.

As noted, the original Harris County lawsuit was filed in May 2015. The State of Texas followed suit and moved to bigfoot the action. Texas collected some settlement money in October 2018, then after the settlement of a different lawsuit, collected and distributed some more in September 2018. That was the last I heard until last July, when there was a legal kerfuffle over Greg Abbott getting to appoint a couple of temporary Justices to the Supreme Court to sit in for two who had recused themselves. The Google tells me that the settlement for that case was reached this May. Basically, the first two were federal lawsuits, one for environmental claims and one for deceptive trade practices claims. This was the state lawsuit that came after the federal ones, and this one was also for environmental claims. And this time I think it really is the end of the line.

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The PAC-ACC Conference?

Posted on August 10, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This stuff is getting weird, y’all.

The four remaining Pac-12 schools still aboard for next season — California, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State — have options if they are looking for another conference.

The Atlantic Coast Conference is exploring the possibility of adding the West Coast schools, with an emphasis on California and Stanford in the San Francisco Bay Area, a person with knowledge of the discussions told The Associated Press on Monday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the ACC was not making its internal discussion public and the conversations were still in early stages.

The person said the ACC’s presidents are expected to dig into the merits of expansion again Tuesday and that the conference does not plan to draw out making a decision.

The American Athletic Conference also has interest in expanding West and adding all four Pac-12 teams, a person with direct knowledge of that league’s internal discussion told the AP on condition of anonymity. The AAC has schools as far West as the Dallas area.

[…]

The Mountain West is the most logical spot for the Pac-12 schools to land geographically if they wanted to leave their former conference behind altogether. A person familiar with discussions in that league told the AP that its leaders have been strategizing the possibility of trying to add Pac-12 schools since last week.

The MWC and the AAC are so-called Group of Five conferences, where adding Power Five schools would be considered an upgrade in most cases.

[Washington State President Kirk] Schulz said he and athletic director Pat Chun have been in contact with multiple conferences and remain in regular contact with the remaining Pac-12 schools.

“These efforts continued through the weekend — and will continue until we find a suitable home for Washington State athletics,” Schulz wrote.

The ACC, however, is a fellow Power Five conference that seems like a strange option for the Pac-12 orphans. It has 14 members, none farther West than Louisville. But while the cross-country travel would be challenging, Stanford and Cal do fit the profile of a league that has the likes of Duke, Wake Forest and Boston College.

The ACC has been exploring ways to bring in more revenue to keep up with the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference and Florida State leaders have insisted the ACC must do something because of what they say is an unfavorable media rights contract. Adding the Northern California schools could extend the footprint of the ACC Network and possibly increase its value.

Existing ACC could also add to their coffers by bringing in new schools at less than a full share of media rights revenue, the way the Big Ten added Washington and Oregon.

As for Cal and Stanford, with the Big Ten and Big 12 seemingly done expanding, they don’t appear to have another Power Five option.

There is also the possibility that the four remaining Pac-12 schools stay together, and try to lure others to join. Six schools is the minimum required by the NCAA to operate a conference in the short-term.

See here for the background. Rice is now in the American Athletic Conference, so the idea of being in the same conference as Stanford and Cal intrigues me. The MWC makes a lot more sense, but financially it’s almost certainly better for these schools to either recruit more schools – maybe merge with the MWC – or suck it up and join the ACC as their extremely western division. Stanford and Cal may have more options than OSU and WSU do, with Stanford potentially going independent. Or maybe the ACC just takes those two, while OSU and WSU land up in the MWC or the AAC.

Like I said, this stuff is getting weird. With the 2023 season about to begin and these schools needing to figure out what they’re doing, I expect something to happen quickly. Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports have more. The second segment of this week’s Hang Up And Listen podcast, about 24 minutes in, discusses this all in some depth as well.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of August 7

Posted on August 10, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance has begun its Unindicted Co-Conspirator Watch as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Constable Precinct 1 sexual harassment lawsuit goes forward

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I’m rooting for a settlement.

A lawsuit against Harris County alleging that female Precinct 1 constable deputies were picked for undercover vice operations where they were molested and traumatized will move forward after a federal judge recently ruled against a motion to dismiss the suit.

Attorneys representing the county had filed the motion, arguing that the county was immune as constables weren’t technically countywide policymakers, said Bill Ogden, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case.

“Frankly, the law created a little bit of a legal quagmire, because constables aren’t necessarily the policymakers for the entire county,” Ogden said. “They represent their precinct in the county. But because of that, it could read as if the county is never responsible for anything done by the constables.”

Ogden Friday told the Chronicle he was happy a judge decided against that argument, and that he was optimistic about what the plaintiffs might find as the case moves forward with depositions and other motions.

Legal representatives for the county did not respond to a request for comment about the judge’s decision. A spokesperson for Precinct 1 provided a statement explaining that Constable Alan Rosen had been dismissed as a defendant in the case in August 2021 and that the facts of the case haven’t yet been litigated.

“We are hopeful the law will be applied, and the court system will see that the County is entitled to the same outcome,” according to the statement. “This civil lawsuit is now in the hands of Harris County and we will continue to work hard every day for the people of our community.”

The recent flurry of court activity stems from a lawsuit first filed in May 2021, making a host of allegations against the county’s largest precinct.

Claims included prostitution stings devolving into “booze-fueled playgrounds.” Separately, a Precinct 1 Constable Office’s employee was fired after she reported the alleged misconduct to the department’s internal affairs division.

According to the lawsuit, the supervisors of the constable’s office’s human trafficking unit decided to change operations to perform “bachelor party” stings. The plan was simple, according to the lawsuit: deputies set up surveillance in a hotel room, and male and female deputies — all undercover — pretended to be party goers, with some of the female deputies posing as prostitutes.

The initial suit named Rosen and two other office employees, but all three have since been dismissed from the case. Only the county remains as a defendant, according to court records. The alleged incidents occurred in the department’s human trafficking task force in 2019 and 2020.

See here, here, and here for some background. Not sure I like the county being the sole defendant here – given that each Constable is an elected official, there’s only so much oversight a Commissioners Court can have – but if nobody else is the defendant, then I guess it’s the county by process of elimination. Maybe that will incentivize a settlement, I don’t know. On the other hand, I’ve said all along that I want to hear what these plaintiffs have to say, and a settlement won’t accomplish that. Right now I just hope that everyone has absorbed the lesson that this kind of “sting” operation was an exceptionally dumb idea.

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Lots of people were affected by that Dallas ransomware attack

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Not great.

Computer hackers accessed the personal information of at least 26,212 Texans in a ransomware attack on the city of Dallas, according to an official disclosure made public Monday, three months after the breach.

The city’s notice to the Texas Attorney General’s Office says the data breach included names, addresses, social security numbers, medical information and health insurance information. The information was published Monday. The city said the details were reported to the attorney general’s office on Thursday.

The disclosure, which is required by law, marks the most detailed information yet about the scope of the cyberattack, which has hampered city services in various ways for months. Dallas officials first told the public about the attack on May 3. They have cited a criminal investigation as a reason to provide few details in the months since.

It’s the largest data breach disclosed by a Texas city to the attorney general’s office this year, and the tally indicates that the impact reaches far beyond Dallas’ around 13,400 employees.

The notice was published 97 days after the city first disclosed the attack. Catherine Cuellar, the city’s communications director, said Tuesday that Dallas delayed reporting to the attorney general’s office because the city’s initial investigation of the breach and determining the sensitive information that was accessed didn’t end until late July.

“The investigation and data review process remain ongoing,” Cuellar told The Dallas Morning News.

State law requires organizations to disclose data breaches to the attorney general’s office no more than 60 days after discovering it happened. There are a few exceptions.

Notification can be delayed at the request of law enforcement if investigators believe notice could hamper a criminal investigation. It can also be delayed to determine the scope of the breach and “restore the reasonable integrity of the data system,” according to the law.

It wasn’t until last week that the city told the public that hackers could have been downloading personal data from city servers between April 7 and May 4. Dallas officials also say they knew by June 14 that hackers had accessed personal information stored on city servers, but city officials did not disclose that fact until July 18 when City Manager T.C. Broadnax sent an email to city employees saying some human resources department data was among information exposed during the ransomware attack.

[…]

A copy of an Aug. 3 letter sent to a city employee, obtained by The News, also says people’s birth dates and medical diagnoses may have been among the sensitive information stolen. The letter sets a Nov. 30 deadline to enroll in the credit monitoring, which would include up to $1 million in identity theft insurance coverage.

See here for my last update back in May. An earlier version of this story, before the 26,000 number had been confirmed, gave a timeline of events; there wasn’t much since that May update except for some teases that there was personal data involved in the attack. I suppose the good news is that the threat group still hasn’t published anything, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t sold what they harvested. It just means that only those within their network would have access to it at first.

None of this is good, and it’s why I’ve banged on this drum so much lately. A law passed this session would shorten the reporting time for data privacy incidents like this from 60 days to 30, but as you can see there still will be instances where that deadline goes by. The problem is that these attacks are lucrative, and as noted there are a lot of easy targets out there. If you don’t want your city or county or school board to be among them, you’ve got to raise some hell about it. You don’t know when it might be too late.

Posted in Technology, science, and math, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Travis Scott and the Apple contract

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Gotta say, this doesn’t look great.

Houston police investigating the 2021 Astroworld concert disaster determined that a contract between Travis Scott and Apple required him to finish his set in order to receive a $4.5 million payment, according to a report released last week.

The police report does not speculate whether the promise of a payout led Scott to prolong the concert, which continued for 37 minutes after officials declared it a mass casualty event.

While a grand jury declined charges against Scott last month, one expert said the contract could play a role in the swarm of lawsuits targeting the rapper, Apple and other companies.

“It could be very important,” said Steve Herman, a plaintiff’s attorney who is not involved in the case. “He’s never going to admit that that was his motivation, but if there’s other circumstantial evidence from which ultimately a jury can infer that that was a motivation in not stopping the concert, even though he knew people were getting crushed, that’s pretty powerful stuff.”

Herman, who sat on a plaintiffs’ steering committee in the BP oil spill litigation, said much will depend on the context. As early as October 2022, one law firm told detectives that more than 285,000 documents had been turned over during discovery.

Herman said lawyers will try to find out why the language was in the contract – and whether Scott knew about it.

“There’s a good chance he didn’t even read the contract,” Herman said. “It could be important evidence, but it could also be completely irrelevant. You would have to know a lot more about why that provision was in there.”

[…]

Despite denials from Scott and Apple, plaintiffs’ attorneys in the hundreds of pending Astroworld lawsuits could try to use the contract to show Scott disregarded the risk of continuing the show.

“In the end, maybe something like this could be very, very trivial and small. But the test for me is, when you bring this up at a cocktail party, how does the person respond?” said Peter Reilly, a law professor at Texas A&M University. “I think most people, their eyes would open and say, ‘Wow.’”

With a trial date set for May 2024, the litigation is at an early stage. Plaintiffs and defendants, who are under a gag order from the judge overseeing the case, have yet to reveal their arguments in written filings.

See here for the background. It’s a long story, so go read it and this Chron story as well. I absolutely believe this will be used by the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the multiple lawsuits against Scott, and I agree with Professor Reilly that it’s likely to have an effect. Read the stories and see what you think.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Travis Scott and the Apple contract

More motions to dismiss the impeachment charges

Posted on August 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Ken Paxton’s billionaire sugar daddies sure are getting their money’s worth from his attorneys.

A crook any way you look

Attorneys for suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a flurry of motions over the weekend that seek to dismiss additional articles of impeachment, arguing that the allegations are baseless or fall under the legitimate duties of the attorney general’s office.

In the documents, filed before Saturday’s deadline for pretrial motions and made public Monday, Paxton’s attorneys routinely accused House impeachment managers of using “any means necessary” to “overturn the will of voters” who elected Paxton last year.

Paxton’s team also downplayed the severity of the accusations against him — including those surrounding his firing of whistleblowers from his office who reported him to law enforcement for alleged bribery — and argued that many of the claims are without merit or do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

In addition to challenging individual articles, Paxton’s lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment dismissing all 20 articles of impeachment that were approved 121-23 by the House in May, arguing that the accusations are unsupported by evidence.

[…]

Last week, Paxton’s team filed two motions to dismiss 19 of the 20 articles of impeachment, arguing that all but one — Article 8 — ran afoul of the “prior-term doctrine,” which they said bars officials from being impeached for conduct that predates their most recent election. They argued that almost all of the allegations outlined by House investigators were known to voters when they reelected him to his third six-year term in 2022.

But while those filings attacked the impeachment articles on procedural grounds, the new flurry of motions individually addressed the merits of the allegations against Paxton. The lawyers also sought to dismiss Article 8, which deals with Paxton’s request that the Legislature finance his $3.3 million lawsuit settlement with the whistleblowers — a request that prompted the initial House investigation into him earlier this year.

In its filing, Paxton’s team framed the lawsuit settlement as a “money-saving agreement” of “ordinary employment litigation.” It also accused the House of having “done violence to our democracy” by attempting to impeach Paxton over what it described as a “routine” function of his job.

The new filings also hint at Paxton’s potential defense strategy for allegations involving Nate Paul, a political donor and Austin real estate investor who was arrested in June on federal felony charges of lying to financial institutions to secure business loans. House investigators accused Paxton of misusing his office to help Paul’s business and to interfere with criminal investigations into Paul’s activities. In return, investigators alleged, Paul paid to remodel Paxton’s Austin home and hired a woman with whom Paxton allegedly had an extramarital affair.

In the filing, Paxton’s team downplayed the relationship with Paul and argued that there was no evidence that Paxton formed “an illegal agreement” to help Paul in exchange for a benefit — a “quid pro quo” required under state bribery laws.

“As they stand, the Articles allege nothing more than that the Attorney General had a personal relationship with a constituent and that the constituent found something the Attorney General did to be agreeable in some way,” Paxton’s attorneys wrote. “If that is enough to amount to a bribe, scarcely any elected official is innocent of the House’s notion of bribery.“

See here for the background. It’s important to remember, this is what good defense attorneys do. The best case is one that gets tossed. It doesn’t cost them anything to swing for the fences – who knows, they may connect. You don’t make the big ask, you don’t get it. And we know that they are strongly incentivized to go for a clean sweep, as it will greatly affect how Paxton’s defense of the state securities fraud charges will go. As “not Buzbee” defense attorney Dan Cogdell noted last week, even one impeachment conviction is a “kill shot” to Paxton’s political career. It’s not just that they may as well go for broke. They have no choice.

Which makes this stuff all the more intriguing.

Suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton and his legal team appear to be testing the limits of a gag order from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that seeks to limit commentary on Paxton’s September impeachment trial before the Texas Senate.

Patrick, the presiding judge in the trial, issued the sweeping gag order July 17, banning all involved parties from making comments that could prejudice the trial or impair the impeachment court’s ability to be “fair and impartial.” The gag order, however, permits the parties to make statements “reciting, without comment, information contained in public records.”

Paxton’s team has leaned on that provision in recent days to issue news releases drawing attention to its latest court filings once they are publicly available on a Senate website. And on Thursday, Paxton’s lead lawyer, Tony Buzbee, went on a Dallas radio show and mostly read from the filings verbatim, including passages that disparaged the case against Paxton and expressed doubts on the quality of evidence against him.

In another instance, although the gag order prohibits “prejudicial and inflammatory statements,” a Paxton campaign fundraising appeal rallied supporters against what the email called an “illegal” impeachment. Although Buzbee defended the fundraising appeal as complying with the gag order, Paxton later removed the language from a donation link on his campaign website, according to Dallas TV station WFAA.

Paxton’s side insists it is following the gag order.

“The attorney general would not violate or go contrary to the orders of the court, and we don’t believe that he’s done so,” Buzbee told the Dallas radio host, Mark Davis.

The House impeachment managers have been quieter since the gag order was issued. But in a filing last month, they expressed some irritation with Paxton’s team and the gag order, alleging that a Paxton motion “was shared with the press even though the Senate has not posted it to the website.”

“The House Managers trust that the Senate will deal with any departure from its mandates as the Senate deems fit,” the filing said.

As they face questions about their compliance with the gag order, Paxton’s lawyers have also gone on offense over it. In one recent filing, they accused impeachment managers of using their filings to “circumvent” the gag order “by filing a ‘notice’ to make a public comment.” The impeachment managers had filed several such notices to briefly indicate their opposition to various pretrial motions and promise a more thorough response by an Aug. 15 deadline.

At the same time, Paxton’s lawyers have been using their filings to offer diatribes against the other side. One filing said the House lawyers’ promises of damning evidence — made before the gag order was issued — were “bluster and bluff” and were “aggressive, reckless, misleading.” Buzbee quoted that filing on the air Thursday.

Patrick’s office has not commented on possible conflicts with the gag order.

Some of Paxton’s supporters are plainly unhappy with the gag order. Houston conservative activist Steve Hotze has sued the Senate in state and federal court over the gag order, calling it unconstitutional.

“The Gag Order in the Senate rules infringes on the First Amendment right of Plaintiffs to hear the impressions, positions, and views of Texas senators and state representatives in connection with the impeachment trial,” the federal lawsuit said. The gag order also “infringes on the First Amendment right of Plaintiffs to communicate with Texas senators and state representatives in connection with the impeachment trial.”

See here and here for more on the gag order and Team Paxton’s response to it, and here for more on the Hotze lawsuit. I can’t tell if that’s a stunt that is entirely focused on putting pressure on Dan Patrick and any lily-livered Republican Senators, one that they expect will get tossed the minute it gets read by a judge, or if it’s for real. There is an argument to be made that Dan Patrick as Lite Guv did not have the authority to issue a gag order. Hotze’s a troll who should never be taken seriously, but even a weakling can hit a hanging curve. We’ll see if and when there’s a hearing for this lawsuit.

As for Paxton, it’s usually a bad idea to defy the judge in your trial, but so far it hasn’t cost him anything. There are three possible reasons for Team Paxton’s super aggressive behavior. One is they legitimately believe they are in compliance with the letter, if not the spirit, of the gag order. Again, they’re going for the gusto. This is in harmony with that strategy. Two, they’re idiots who are going to find out real quick. I don’t think that’s likely but it is a possibility so I list it here. And three, they know (or really believe) that Dan Patrick is (begrudgingly or not) on their side, because among many other things he doesn’t want to piss off the frothing deplorables who make up his base as well as Paxton’s. I hate to give Dan Patrick any credit, but I don’t think this is all that likely either. I’m not dismissing it by any means, but this is a huge deal. For all his ego and blinders, I think there’s a part of Dan Patrick that wants to be seen as doing this by the book. Not everyone gets to take part in a once-in-a-century event. He’s going to be remembered for this. I think he cares about that, even in spite of himself.

But we’ll see. And as noted in the first story, the Senate can vote to dismiss any or all of the charges against Paxton. The House impeachment managers have until August 15 to file their response to these latest motions. We ought to know quickly if this will all be resolved in short order or not. Reform Austin has more.

Posted in Scandalized!, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Judge Hidalgo takes leave of absence for depression

Posted on August 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I wish her well.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has taken a temporary leave of absence to receive in-patient medical treatment for clinical depression, according to a statement from her office Monday.

The statement notes she has been at an out-of-state treatment facility since late July, and hopes to be able to resume her normal schedule by early September.

Commissioner Rodney Ellis, the longest serving county commissioner, will preside over official proceedings in Hidalgo’s absence, per commissioners court rules. During Hidalgo’s absence, however, she “will remain in communication with key county staff and available to discharge her duties as County Judge.”

In a statement addressed to county residents, Hidalgo noted she is among 21 million American adults who suffer from depression.

“For some time, I have been coping with this challenge, and it was undiagnosed until last month,” the statement says. “Based on my doctor’s recommendation, I checked myself into an out-of-state facility to receive inpatient treatment in late July. It is important for me personally and professionally to confront this issue swiftly, so I will be taking temporary leave from the office while I am receiving treatment. My medical care team and I are hopeful that I will be able to resume my normal schedule by early September.”

The Chron adds on.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, the longest standing member of Commissioners Court, will take over Hidalgo’s duties at meetings while she is away.

Ellis was quick to dispel the stigma surrounding mental healthcare and applauded Hidalgo for getting treatment.

“Depression is not personal weakness,” Ellis said. “It’s a medical diagnosis and it requires treatment the same way that a stroke, cancer or heart disease requires treatment.”

Hidalgo, an emerging and high-profile Democrat, has become a favorite target of conservative activists. Ellis urged critics on both sides to suspend their attacks while she is receiving care.

“There’s a time when all of us ought to be big enough to rise above petty politics,” Ellis said. “This is one of those times.”

While people are typically reluctant to see a psychiatrist or mental health provider because of stigma, they’re far more hesitant to be admitted to an inpatient treatment program, according to Dr. Asim Shah, professor and executive vice chair in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine.

“Admission is 10 times, 20 times, 30 times more reluctance,” Shah said.

On average, recovery after inpatient treatment can be successful.

“Usually the outcome we expect is complete recovery, but that requires people to continue to take medication,” Shah said.

Hidalgo’s chief of staff will continue managing office operations in her absence, she said.

A statement from Judge Hidalgo is beneath the fold, and a statement from Mayor Turner is here. Not much to say other than I wish her a full and speedy recovery and I look forward to seeing her back at Commissioners Court in September.
Continue reading →

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

How to confuse a driverless car

Posted on August 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Hilarious.

Self-driving cars have met their match in the form of the humble traffic cone.

If you’re on TikTok, you may have seen what I’m talking about: a viral video of San Francisco activists disabling autonomous Cruise and Waymo vehicles by placing bright orange traffic cones on their hoods.

The cones immobilize the autonomous vehicles by forcing them into “shutdown mode” with their hazard lights on, “until the cone is removed or a company technician comes to reset the car’s system,” the San Francisco Standard reported. Safe Street Rebel, the group behind the stunt, unleashed the cones last week ahead of a vote scheduled for Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission that could allow Cruise and Waymo robotaxis unimpeded access to public streets in the city as the next phase of their development. Right now, Cruise (which is owned by General Motors) and Waymo (part of Alphabet, né Google) are offering limited service in San Francisco—a trial rollout that has caused enough actual chaos in the city to justify locals’ mistrust. “We want to either have [autonomous vehicles] not on the city streets at all or very limited,” one Rebel told the Standard. “It’s like the state has decided that these things are going to be deployed in San Francisco without the consent of the city or the people in it.”

Speaking to the Standard, an unnamed Waymo spokesperson called the coning “vandalism” that “encourages unsafe and disrespectful behavior on our roadways.” Hannah Lindow, a Cruise spokesperson who at least attached her name to her statement, told the publication that “intentionally obstructing vehicles gets in the way of those efforts and risks creating traffic congestion for local residents.” The SFMTA, San Francisco’s municipal transportation agency, said on Twitter on Friday that it “does not endorse ANY actions that may increase the number of disabled AVs on San Francisco streets,” and encouraged people to attend this week’s CPUC meeting.

[…]

There is a long tradition in urbanism of residents taking matters into their own hands when they feel abandoned by local authorities. It is known variously as tactical, do-it-yourself, pop-up, and even guerrilla urbanism. Examples of tactical urbanism include turning dumpsters into swimming pools, reclaiming parking spots as tiny parks, and painting crosswalks on neglected intersections. These interventions have been described as playful, innovative, and spontaneous. They are typically low-budget and executed by volunteers or activists. All are by definition unsanctioned.

Using traffic cones to disarm a driverless car is textbook tactical urbanism: an intervention by concerned local activists in response to perceived neglect and inaction by local authorities. It’s also brilliant. I challenge you to find a more powerful image of people protesting technology in the recent past than that of the humble orange traffic cone perched atop an inert driverless car. There is the obvious metaphor (a Silicon Valley unicorn, rendered literal and impotent), the terrific color and contrast, the clear juxtaposition of power and wealth with human ingenuity. The financials, should you pause to consider them, are mind-blowing. You can buy a dozen heavy-duty traffic cones on Amazon for about $250, or about $21 per cone. You can use that $21 object to incapacitate a machine that has so far cost many billions of dollars to develop, and will surely consume many billions more.

As noted before, these cars got onto the streets in San Francisco without a lot of regulatory oversight, which has caused some amount of chaos. Cruise cars are now in Austin and Houston, though I’ve only seen them at public charging stations. They’re just now being deployed to carry passengers in Austin, so we’re likely still a bit out from seeing them in production here. The point of the stunt in San Francisco was to raise awareness of a state regulator meeting at which these cars would be discussed. I wish these activists well in their pursuit of having their concerns heeded. Whether anyone will try something similar here, that remains to be seen.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to confuse a driverless car

Once again with the non-filers

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Same story in July as in January.

A dozen candidates running for elected positions at Houston City Hall failed to file required campaign finance reports in July, continuing a sloppy reporting period for the slate of candidates hoping to lead the city.

The omissions account for nearly one in five of candidates running in the November elections, after about 25 percent failed to file the mandatory reports in January as well.

[…]

The candidates who did not file a report include Richard Nguyen, who served as the District F council member and now is running for an at-large seat. Orlando Sanchez, who is running in second place for controller, according to a recent poll, did not file a report with the city, but he did file one with the state. Election officials say candidates who have announced a bid for city office — as Sanchez did in April — should file their reports with the city.

Others who skipped the report entirely include Theodis Daniel and Gaylon Caldwell, both of whom are running for mayor; Koffey El-Bey, District B; Ralph Garcia, District I; Bernardo Amadi, At-Large 3; Chad Cossey, At-Large 5; and Charles Onwuche, undeclared. Another three candidates failed to file the report in the correct format, according to the city secretary’s office.

The city lacks the power to enforce the reporting requirements, which are enshrined in state law. It could send reminders to candidates to ensure they know about the mandate, but it does not.

[…]

The result leaves enforcement up to the Texas Ethics Commission and opposing candidates or residents, who can file complaints with the state agency. That commission sends reminders to candidates running for state and county offices, but not city races.

“The TEC is able to send notices to all candidates for state office because state candidates must provide their contact information to the TEC and create an account in the TEC’s filing system,” said J.R. Johnson, the commission’s executive director. “The same is not true for local elected offices. There are an estimated 22,000 elected offices of local governments in Texas. With current funding, it would be impossible for the TEC to identify and notify every candidate for those offices of their filing requirements.”

Sanchez, the candidate for controller, said his legal advisors told him it was acceptable to continue reporting to the state for now. His report shows he raised $4,500 and spent $3,000 in the first six months of the year, with about $2,700 in the bank, trailing his competitors.

“Orlando had not even begun actively fundraising for Controller before the end of the last reporting period, and thus had not triggered the requirement to file a treasurer appointment for Controller,” said Jerad Wayne Najvar, Sanchez’s attorney.

Both [City Attorney Arturo] Michel and the TEC, though, said candidates who have announced campaigns for a city office must file reports with the city.

“Section 252.010 of the Texas Election Code says that if someone who already files reports with one authority (e.g., the TEC) decides to seek a different office that would require filing with a different authority (e.g., a political subdivision), that person must file a campaign treasurer appointment with the new filing authority and begin filing reports there,” said Johnson, from the TEC.

See here for the story on the January report non-filers. All of the candidates named above except for Richard Nguyen and Orlando Sanchez fall into the non-serious candidates bucket as far as I’m concerned. I like Richard Nguyen. I thought he was a good Council member when he served. He has absolutely no excuse for his failure. I’d like to file him in the “serious candidates who for some reason just can’t get their act together with these reports” bucket, but if this continues and he continues being non-responsive to questions about it, he’s joining the others in the non-serious bucket. Which would be a shame, but if the shoe fits and all that.

I do not like Orlando Sanchez. He also has absolutely no excuse for not filing his report properly. This dude has been running for city offices for thirty years. He knows that TEC stuff is baloney. You want to be the city’s financial overseer but you can’t handle the paperwork for your own campaign’s finances? Get out of here with that weak shit.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Once again with the non-filers

So what exactly is the role of the Board of Managers?

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It’s getting hard to tell.

Two months into the job, HISD’s new state-appointed school board has largely avoided the limelight since replacing the district’s elected trustees, making few extended comments in public and betraying no animosity within the group.

The harmony is a welcome contrast for some community members who had grown tired of the elected board’s in-fighting, which was sometimes aired in heated public arguments and grievances posted on social media.

But the collective silence has also prompted complaints about a lack of transparency and frustrated families pleading for board members to resist drastic changes pushed by Mike Miles, the district’s new, state-appointed superintendent. Miles is overhauling dozens of campuses, removing decision-making power from some principals and replacing employee evaluation tools, among numerous other plans.

“I know that there’s individuals that may want us to fight the superintendent at every instance, but that’s not what this board is about,” appointed board member Rolando Martinez said Wednesday.

“We know there’s gonna be moments where we disagree, but we’re going to disagree amicably. And so I think it’ll be different, in contrast to the previous board.”

[…]

Appointed board member Ric Campo said the low-profile approach through two months is strategic, allowing Miles to serve as the face of the district’s overhaul. Campo added that board members will ramp up their public appearances in the coming weeks, with “community listening session” dates throughout August and September soon to be announced.

But even when board members step more into the public eye, Campo expects a contrast in communication between the new board and elected trustees, who often opined freely about issues throughout the district. Campo said he makes clear to parents that he’s not their “advocate.”

“I get very granular in conversations I have with people, but I also make sure they understand that I’m not the conduit to get anything done at their school, ever,” Campo said. “I can’t listen to what a parent has to say and then intervene in the system on behalf of that parent. If I do that, then I’m totally under-treading the authority of the superintendent and his team.”

That approach, however, has led to criticism about openness and responsiveness.

[…]

Former HISD trustee Anne Sung, who served on the board from 2016 to 2022, pressed appointed board members Tuesday at a community meeting with Miles on why they aren’t using feedback to oppose several of the superintendent’s controversial plans — including the conversion of some libraries into discipline centers.

“So my question to you all is, when are you going to step up and represent the vision and the values of the community?” Sung said. “You come to these community meetings to tell your stories, they’re lovely stories, you sound like very nice people, but when are you gonna do the job of representing us?”

HISD families and advocates expecting strong pushback on Miles’ plans — at least in public — likely will be left disappointed.

Every board member has expressed support for Miles’ approach, with some describing their role as clearing the way for the superintendent. (Board members who obstruct Miles’ vision for HISD could get replaced by Morath.)

I don’t expect the Board to be oppositional or confrontational. I do think former Trustee Anne Sung has it right – they do need to represent the community, and they do need to, like, ask a question every now and then. If nobody ever pushes back on anything, then what’s even the point of having them? Plus, maybe if the members of the community who are showing up to voice their disagreement and concerns occasionally heard some of that from members of the Board, they might feel like those concerns are at least being listened to.

Of course, as that last paragraph notes, speaking up could mean that one is on the fast track to becoming an ex-Board member. Every other ISD has a Board of Trustees that has oversight for their Superintendent. In HISD, the Superintendent has that power over the Board, in that all he has to do is tell Mike Morath he doesn’t like what that one is saying. Again, I’m not saying anyone on the Board has to be reflexively disagreeable. I’m not even saying they have to disagree with any individual thing. I’m just saying they should have questions, even for things they approve of, and they should provide a voice for the parents and children and teachers and other stakeholders. Maybe that is still to come, I don’t know. It would be nice to see some evidence of it sooner rather than later.

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

RIP, PAC 12

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

The landscape of college sports continues its drastic change.

The Pac-12 Conference is down to only four schools remaining as the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and the University of Utah announced Friday they are leaving to join the Big 12 Conference.

“We are thrilled to welcome Arizona, Arizona State and Utah to the Big 12,” conference commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement on Friday. “The Conference is gaining three premier institutions both academically and athletically, and the entire Big 12 looks forward to working alongside their presidents, athletic directors, student-athletes and administrators.”

The University of Oregon and the University of Washington will officially leave the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten Conference starting in 2024, both schools announced earlier Friday.

The decision by the schools to change conferences coincides with the end of the Pac 12’s media rights deal with ESPN and FOX, and marks the latest shift in the collegiate sports landscape jumpstarted by UCLA and USC announcing last year they would be leaving for the Big Ten at the start of the 2024-25 season.

The decision to leave after the conclusion of the Pac-12’s media rights deal saves the schools from having to pay any exit fee.

“Today’s news is incredibly disappointing for our student-athletes, fans, alumni and staff of the Pac-12 who cherish the over 100-year history, tradition and rivalries of the Conference of Champions,” the Pac-12 said in a statement. “We remain focused on securing the best possible future for each of our member universities.”

I figured something would happen after Colorado announced its departure for the Big XII a week ago, but I wasn’t expecting this momentous, this fast. Like the old Southwest Conference in 1995, this almost certainly signals the end of a historic college sports organization, one with tons of history and culture, not to mention the death of a couple of longstanding in-state rivalries, though the Universities of Oregon and Washington say they will ensure they continue. Whether you’re a sports fan or not, and whether you’re on board with the total makeover of the NCAA or not, this is a huge deal. ESPN, Slate, and CBS Sports have more.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for August 6

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The worst possible ending that a fan could dream up for Stranger Things is pretty damn dark.

“About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.”

“Instead of following Tesla’s lead and getting into a battery-size arms race that will make the future of cars even more expensive, oversized, dangerous, and wasteful than they already are, we simply need to accept that the market must change. Instead of giving the biggest incentives to the biggest batteries, government policy should focus on electrifying the vast majority of daily trips, which start and end at home and could easily be handled by vehicles with 100 miles of range or less. That means incentivizing home charging, not the roadtrips that make up a tiny percentage of trips, and nudging consumers toward using the smallest battery possible for those regular trips. That means incentivizing e-bikes, plug-in hybrids, and other small battery electric vehicles, not holding fleet electrification hostage to the 5 percent use cases.”

“A small study showed that feeding deer a type of ivermectin reduced the number of ticks drinking their blood. (Yes, it’s that ivermectin. No, you shouldn’t eat it.)”

“The sky is blue and Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic Party’s nominee.”

RIP, Inga Swenson, Emmy- and Tony-nominated actor and singer best known for her role on Benson.

RIP, Paul Reubens, actor best known as Pee-Wee Herman. The Alamo made a fitting tribute.

“I’ve said we gotta figure out, we got to find some judge in Florida that’ll indict DeSantis quick, to close this indictment gap. It’s a truism that anytime someone is being persecuted, their camp rallies to their defense.”

Possibly the only good thing about older Republicans is that they have a proper assessment of Russia. Their younger cohort, not so much.

“In the name of protecting women and children, the mob set fire to a building housing dozens of women and children without any apparent concern for whether or not those women and children were still inside.”

RIP, Betty Ann Bruno, who as a child played a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz and went on to be a TV producer and longtime reporter in the Bay Area.

“A super PAC supporting Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long shot presidential bid has been boosted in large part by a GOP megadonor, according to new campaign finance reports.”

“Beast Quake (Taylor’s Version)”. I should note that I showed that to my Swiftie 16-year-old on Tuesday and she rolled her eyes and said “we’ve known about that for days, Dad”.

“The attempted destruction of the video recordings was not just a coverup of the underlying crime of having unlawfully retained national defense information. Properly understood, it was also a means to continue that underlying conduct. Put another way, the attempt to delete the footage would not simply have served to hide past wrongdoing. It also could have prevented the FBI and other federal authorities from knowing that Trump continued to hold onto dozens of more highly classified materials – e.g., the boxes of materials that were never returned to the storage room, including the materials recovered during the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.”

Please don’t drink borax. Seriously.

“The attorney general behind the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade is up for reelection in deep-red Mississippi. One Democrat wants to give her a real fight for a second term.”

“People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment”.

“Bottom line: It’s not just Trump. We have an entire political party that went along with the coup attempt. There were just enough non-corrupt Republicans to stop it, but it was a close run thing.”

“All The Republicans Who Told Donald Trump He Was Lying About Election Fraud”.

Lock him up.

Lock them all up.

“On Tuesday, at roughly the same time that Donald Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in as a new member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving progressives their first majority on the court since 2008. The new composition of the court has major ramifications for American democracy—the previous conservative majority came one vote shy of ruling in favor of Trump’s effort to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin and upheld the gerrymandered maps that locked in huge GOP legislative majorities and a series of laws that made it harder to vote. The new liberal majority could now unwind that, restoring democracy and majority rule in the state.”

Congratulations, Gabby.

Apparently, no one ever told Mike Huckabee that lying is a sin.

Speaking of which, here are “All The Republicans Who Told Donald Trump He Was Lying About Election Fraud”.

RIP, Allison, an Atlantic Green sea turtle with one flipper who had lived at Sea Turtle Inc. in South Padre Island, Texas, since being found in 2005. In 2009, an intern at Sea Turtle Inc. engineered a prosthetic flipper for her that better enabled her to swim.

Hey, UT-Austin, maybe do something about this guy?

RIP, Tony Mandola, legendary Houston retauranteur.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | Comments Off on Weekend link dump for August 6

Judge grants order allowing exemptions to anti-abortion laws

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Some late Friday breaking news.

A Texas judge on Friday issued a temporary exemption to the state’s abortion ban that would allow women with complicated pregnancies to obtain the procedure and keep doctors free from prosecution if they determined the fetus will not survive after birth.

State District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum of Austin wrote that the state’s attorney general cannot prosecute doctors who, in their “good faith judgment,” terminate a complicated pregnancy. Mangrum outlined those conditions as a pregnancy that presents a risk of infection; a fetal condition in which the fetus will not survive after birth; or when the pregnant person has a condition that requires regular, invasive treatment.

In her ruling, Mangrum wrote that Senate Bill 8, the law restricting abortion access, was unconstitutional. She said that enforcement of the abortion ban was beyond the legal powers of Texas officials tasked with prosecuting physicians under this law.

In a statement celebrating the injunction, the legal group representing the plaintiffs, the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that the ruling gives clarity to doctors as to when they can provide abortions, allowing them to use their own medical judgment.

[…]

The state is likely to appeal, which could cause the injunction to be blocked while the case makes its way through the courts. The ruling suggests patients with complicated pregnancies can seek abortions in the state without prosecution of those who aid in and perform the procedure. A trial to determine the issue, clarifying when a medical emergency justifies an abortion, has been scheduled for March 25.

See here and here for the previous updates. I would say the state is certain to appeal and that this ruling is very likely to be put on hold pending the resolution of the lawsuit, but we’ll put that aside until it happens. I will note that SB8 had previously been ruled unconstitutional in a different state lawsuit, but that was in a more limited context, and as far as I know that has not been tested in any way. I don’t know what the odds are of that aspect of the ruling surviving, but again it will take some time to work its way through the process. It’s also a lead pipe cinch that as long as the state is in Republican control, further laws will be passed to re-illegalize abortion if somehow SB8 manages to fall. I don’t mean to be Debbie Downer, but let’s maintain some perspective here.

The Chron adds some details.

In an injunction, state District Judge Jessica Mangrum also shielded doctors from being prosecuted for performing abortions if they determine using “their good faith judgment” that a pregnancy poses “a risk to a patient’s life.”

The physical medical conditions that are exempted from the abortion ban, Mangrum ruled, include “at a minimum”:

  • a physical medical condition or complication of pregnancy that poses a risk of infection, or otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe for the pregnant person
  • a physical medical condition that is exacerbated by pregnancy, cannot be effectively treated during pregnancy, or requires recurrent invasive intervention
  • and/or a fetal condition where the fetus is unlikely to survive the pregnancy and sustain life after birth.

[…]

The Texas abortion ban’s exception allows the procedure only when there is a “substantial” risk to a mother or if a fetus has a fatal diagnosis.

But given the state’s stiff penalties for anyone who violates the ban — they face potential prison sentences of up to 99 years, tens of thousands in fines and the loss of their medical licenses — many doctors and hospitals have been fearful of immediately intervening even when there is a clear danger.

Unlike other litigation, the lawsuit is not trying to overturn the Texas ban or others like it, but instead clarify when exactly physicians can provide abortions during dangerous or unviable pregnancies.

Since the suit was filed, Texas lawmakers passed a bill that protects health care providers and pharmacists from criminal, civil and professional liability if they perform an abortion on a patient with two particular life-threatening conditions.

Those are ectopic pregnancies, in which the egg implants outside the uterus, and previable premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM, in which a patient’s water breaks before the pregnancy reaches viability.

See here for more on that new law, which as I noted wouldn’t have helped any of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Those were important exemptions to add, and they further show just how cruel and inappropriate the original anti-abortion laws were, but they were extremely limited. This lawsuit, if it does ultimately succeed, would be more expansive. It would still not make abortion legal in general – while there continues to be other litigation, I really don’t see a path to this in the near term that doesn’t include either federal law or a wholesale change in our state government – but it would make things better than they are now. One step at a time. A statement from the Center for Reproductive Rights is here, with full information about the lawsuit here, and The 19th has more.

UPDATE: The state has already appealed, and so the ruling is on hold. I’m sure there will be more reporting on this during the week.

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Yeah, COVID’s on the rise again

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

We’re in a much better place overall now, but do exercise caution and get your damn shots if you haven’t already.

COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere.

Infections are rising in Texas and Houston for the fourth summer in a row, with many hospitals reporting an uptick in admissions and wastewater data showing increasing viral load in all but five of the city’s 39 wastewater treatment plants. Texas Children’s Hospital also continues to see an elevated number of pediatric COVID patients.

While the virus may have receded to the back of Houstonians’ minds, and case increases no longer prompt calls for widespread behavior changes, COVID still threatens elderly people or those with underlying health conditions.

“I think for the general healthy population, this is not necessarily any cause for alarm,” said Dr. James McDeavitt, executive vice president and dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine. However, people in active cancer treatment, people living with HIV and other patients with compromised immune systems still should be more cautious as numbers rise, he said.

Like past summers, experts point to a combination of travel and gatherings as key factors in the current rise. This year, however, unrelenting heat could be another explanation as more people are staying indoors, McDeavitt said.

The most recent data from the Texas Department of State Health Services for the week ending July 22 shows a nearly 70 percent increase in COVID cases statewide compared to the previous week. In that same time frame, hospitalizations rose 7 percent from 589 to 635.

Notably, COVID fatalities continue to drop statewide. Most Americans have some level of immunity, and therapies have improved. The number of weekly COVID deaths fell from 39 on June 3 to 11 on July 22, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Weekly COVID fatalities have not been this low in Texas since March 2020, according to the CDC.

[…]

Meanwhile, the amount of virus circulating in the city’s wastewater continues to rise. As of July 17, the viral load increased 105 percent over the previous three weeks.

In a statement, the Houston Health Department said that while wastewater levels are well below previous peaks, the agency is concerned about people who haven’t received the latest COVID vaccinations. The updated shots are tailored to the omicron variant lineages BA.4 and BA.5. Those strains are no longer in circulation, but the latest shot still offers better protection from hospitalization and death than the previous iterations, according to the CDC.

“Unfortunately, every month, we continue to see a small number of deaths in older people with underlying health conditions,” the health department said.

The Food and Drug Administration has advised drugmakers to update the COVID shots to target the predominant strain in the country, XBB.1.5, for a potential fall rollout.

Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a UTHealth Houston infectious disease expert affiliated with Memorial Hermann, anticipates an updated shot to become available in the fall every year, similar to the way flu shots are updated each year.

I’m just waiting for the word that it’s time for another shot. I’m not as consistent about it as I should be, but I’m back in the habit of masking when doing things like shopping or (as I did recently) jury duty. A little risk mitigation never hurts. Your Local Epidemiologist has more.

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Houston is a finalist for the 2028 RNC

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Whoopie.

Houston is a finalist to host the 2028 Republican National Convention and a decision is expected to be made later this month, officials with Houston First Corp. said Thursday.

The local government corporation, which markets and operates the city’s performing arts and convention centers, plans to bring a framework agreement before the City Council on Wednesday for approval, according to a statement from Houston First Corporation President and CEO Michael Heckman.

“Houston First hopes to have the opportunity to host this major, national event in our city which will bring tens of thousands of guests and considerable economic impact to our city,” Heckman wrote.

Miami and Nashville are the other two finalists, according to a Houston First spokeswoman.

If Houston is selected, the convention will take place in July or August 2028, and could attract as many as 50,000 people to the city, according to a 2022 letter supporting the bid by Heckman.

The convention primarily would be held at the Toyota Center and the George R. Brown Convention Center, according to Houston First.

See here, here, and here for some background. As I’ve said before, I don’t have any problem with Houston pursuing this, but that doesn’t mean I’m rooting for them to succeed. And if they do, I will make plans to be somewhere else when this goes down.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston, The making of the President | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Checking in on the sore loser election contest lawsuit

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a lot of the same old song.

Attorneys pored over Harris County voter records in a downtown courtroom Tuesday afternoon, arguing over the validity of thousands of ballots cast nearly nine months ago.

It was the first day in a high stakes election contest trial of GOP judicial candidate Erin Lunceford, who is challenging the race she lost in November to incumbent 189th District Judge Tamika Craft by 2,743 votes, an outcome she is aiming to overturn in court. Twenty other lawsuits filed by failed GOP candidates could hinge on whether Lunceford is successful.

In their bid to convince a judge to order a new election, Lunceford’s team has sifted through thousands of ballots looking for errors in which required information such as a signature, date or address is missing. Some ballots they are trying to throw out were cast by voters who filled out a statement of residence form because their current address does not match their voter registration address, such as those who recently moved.

[…]

The second half of Taylor’s strategy relies on thousands of votes he has argued should have been counted but weren’t — in other words, jelly beans that should be in the jar, but aren’t. The Lunceford team has claimed at least 29 polls turned away nearly 3,000 voters on Election Day due to either a lack of ballot paper or technical issues.

Victoria Williams, an election worker who ran the polling place at Spring First Church, told the court nearly 200 voters were turned away at her location when they ran out of paper. Those voters could have voted at any other precinct in the county, but it is not known how many went to another polling place or just went home.

“Just lack of ballot paper is enough evidence legally to support a new election,” Taylor argued.

Taylor offered the judge another reason why Lunceford is entitled to a new election: a judge extended voting by one additional hour on Election Day, at a time when some of the 782 polling locations did not have ballot paper.

In response, Haynes slammed Taylor for changing his focus over the past several months away from the ballot paper shortage to the thousands of votes Taylor says were cast illegally, accusing Taylor of including “everything but the kitchen sink in their pleadings.”

Craft’s attorneys used emails from the Harris County GOP to portray party leadership as a group of “so-called election experts” who were looking for “ammo” before the election even happened.

One of those emails promising “ammo” was sent by Alan Vera, a longtime GOP activist who died in May at the Texas Capitol before testifying on election legislation.

The defense also pointed to an email sent by Sartaj Bal, another GOP judicial candidate contesting his election, when Bal was questioning whether they would have enough evidence to justify filing the lawsuits.

“It’s game over unless and until we have admissible evidence in our possession — going to need more than affidavits for proving up a case at trial,” Bal wrote. “As of right now we have mere allegations and a lawsuit.”

“Again, we have zero admissible evidence in our possession at this time and in my opinion it’s game over until we do — if we ever do,” Bal added.

Ultimately, the defense argued Tuesday that Lunceford’s team plans to overwhelm the court with numerous theories and alleged experts, opening the door for future lawsuits from candidates who lose by nearly 3,000 votes.

See here for the background. It’s the usual bullshit from professional bullshitter Andy Taylor who would like you to think that because some people had a different address on their drivers license than on their voter registration – a situation that can be easily remedied, as noted above – the entire election must be thrown out and redone. Never mind that he has no idea how any of those voters may have voted. He’s just throwing up chaff. And those of you who might have thought that the mattress salesman was going swoop in with thousands of affidavits from vote-denied Republicans, well, you have the words of one of the losing candidates right there. There’s also this, from reporter Jen Rice:

I remain hopeful that there will be a favorable verdict in this trial, and then the rest will go away because they were far less close than this race. And then may we never hear the name of that loser in the Harris County Judge race again.

UPDATE: Here’s the Chron story by Jen Rice that the Twitter thread is based on. When all of your “experts” are admitting on the stand that they have no actual qualifications and are often wrong…that’s bad, right?

Posted in Election 2022, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Special ed is part of the HISD takeover, too

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Just a reminder that fixing special education was also part of the TEA takeover mandate for HISD. How’s that going so far? Well, the parents of the special ed kids say they’re not seeing much of anything as yet.

For years, HISD families have struggled with persistent dysfunction in the district’s special education department. Multiple outside reviews over the past 15 years, including a state investigation in 2020, have documented extensive issues with HISD’s process of identifying, testing and serving students with disabilities.

Now, parents like Ramón are anxiously following along as new HISD Superintendent Mike Miles outlines his plans for the state’s largest school district, awaiting word on how his strategy might improve a special education system they see as broken.

In his first two months on the job, Miles has unveiled broad strokes of a strategy for better serving students with disabilities: raising some special education teachers’ pay, adding more aides to classrooms, tying principal evaluations to special education-related results and putting central office administrators closer to classrooms.

“Special education teachers have too much to do,” Miles said. “We’re not waving a wand and fixing special education, but we’re going to move in the right direction.”

But with the first day of school less than a month away, some parents and advocates say they’re still in the dark on details — and worried about what little they have heard.

Angelica Medrano, who spent 12 years as a special education teacher and administrator in HISD and runs a business advocating for families, said none of her roughly 50 clients in the district have a clear picture of how Miles’ plans will affect their children. The same goes for teachers she knows in HISD.

“Everything that I’ve heard from other parents, and even teachers, (is) there really has been no communication about what the plan is with special education,” Medrano said.

Meanwhile, the district’s plan to send students who disrupt class or disrespect adults to learn virtually on laptops in a separate space, commonly known as “Zoom rooms,” has alarmed families. They argue the punitive approach to discipline is ableist and out-of-touch.

“There’s just no understanding of disability,” Ramón said.

[…]

For now, Miles’ special education plans largely focus on teacher pay and staffing.

Special education teachers at 28 lower- and middle-income schools will see raises bringing their salaries to $85,000 to $92,000. Most of those educators made about $60,000 to $70,000 last year.

In addition, Miles plans to add assistants to special education classrooms at those 28 campuses and another 57 schools that have opted into the superintendent’s plans for changes. The aides will help handle paperwork and oversee compliance with students’ learning plans, Miles has said.

Miles added that he’s also shuffling around central office positions and placing special education directors at regional offices, closer to the campuses they oversee.

“We are pushing the special ed services oversight … closer to the schools,” Miles said. “Supports will be able to focus on the schools in their feeder patterns.”

For some parents, however, communication with the community has been poor.

Miles typically devotes one PowerPoint slide to special education during his 10-stop “family events” tour of the district, which wraps up this week.

During a community meeting Saturday at West Briar Middle School, Prather asked Miles a question about special education programs at magnet schools. In what some parents say has become a familiar pattern, the inquiry “wasn’t answered, period,” Prather said.

Prather said she’s concerned none of the changes Miles has specified include additional training for educators on individualized education programs, or IEP, the legally mandated plan for every student in special education. In Prather’s experience, some HISD educators “don’t even know how to read an IEP,” she said.

To Ramón, the Arabic Immersion Magnet School parent, it’s exasperating to see Miles rolling out drastic changes without allowing families to give meaningful feedback.

“Historically, the district has made sweeping changes to (special education) without parental input and that’s what’s gotten them into hot water,” Ramón said. “And this seems to be happening again.”

Miles acknowledged that he has not yet met directly with special education families in HISD, but said he would be “happy to do that.”

See here for some background. As I said before, I have no personal experience here, but HISD’s problems with special ed are well known and longstanding. The TEA has also struggled for a long time to adequately provide special ed services, so there’s a certain amount of skepticism here going in. Be that as it may, while it’s too early to evaluate what Mike Miles may have in mind, there are two themes we can see: the continued poor communication with stakeholders, and a non-political community that does not like the plan for libraries, for their own reasons. Maybe now would be a good time for Mike Miles to fulfill his promise to meet with these parents and their children and hear what they have to say. I look forward to the followup story after that happens.

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More requests for DOJ asked to investigate shady migrant flights

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Massachusetts gets aboard.

Cape and Islands District Attorney Rob Galibois is officially joining hands with California and Texas officials who have asked US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to help  investigate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s scheme to transport immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard “by means of fraud, deceit, and/or inveiglement.”

In a letter to the Justice Department Monday — less than 48 hours after DeSantis was met on Cape Cod with a public protest during a day of fund-raising — Galibois said because of the “interstate transportation of these migrants, this alleged scheme remains available for federal prosecution.”

“Therefore, I stand behind and support a request made to you on July 6… to open federal criminal and civil investigations into these incidents,” Galibois wrote.

In September, DeSantis — who has since launched a bid for president and attended two campaign events last weekend in New England — sent two planeloads of migrants from Texas to the Vineyard in what was widely considered a surprise political stunt. Last month, similar flights landed in Sacramento, with the DeSantis administration also ultimately taking credit.

In July, a Texas sheriff and California officials asked the Justice Department to investigate the transport of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard and Sacramento in the past nine months as part of DeSantis’s migrant “relocation” program.

In his letter, Galibois said he plans to begin his own investigation by reviewing the interviews conducted by first responders shortly after the migrants deplaned on Martha’s Vineyard. Galibois asked federal law enforcement for help obtaining “certified translations and transcriptions of these interviews.”

“These interviews, coupled with other obtained evidence, would provide crucial support for my initial assessment as to whether further investigation is warranted,” he wrote. “As elected law enforcement and public officials from California to Texas have noted, it is unconscionable to use people as political props by persuading them to travel to another state based on false or deceptive representations.”

DeSantis is already facing a federal suit from September brought by Massachusetts group Lawyers for Civil Rights. However, the group’s executive director, Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, said there is room for law enforcement at the county, state, and federal levels to further investigate.

“In rounding up the migrants, putting them on planes and shipping them to Martha’s Vineyard, a panoply of civil and criminal regulations have been violated,” he said, adding that the attorney general and Justice Department have both been “noticeably quiet” on their response to the issue.

State Attorney General Andrea Campbell told the Globe Friday her office will continue to work in partnership with federal, state, and local officials “to hold accountable those who violate the rights of our residents and visitors.” A spokesman confirmed her office has already met with Galibois to discuss the migrant crisis.

While Galibois has the authority to bring criminal charges against DeSantis and his administration, attorneys say both Campbell and the Justice Department also have the authority to investigate the Florida politician for both civil and criminal violations.

“As an issue that crosses state lines, the radar should turn on for the Department of Justice,” immigration attorney Giselle Rodriguez told the Globe, adding that the potential criminal charges are also severe enough to warrant the state attorney general’s involvement.

See here for the background. Hey, people are saying that ol’ Meatball Ron could stand to rack up a few indictments to help his flailing Presidential campaign. I’m not normally one to favor anything that helps Republican candidates, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Politico and the Current have more.

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Ken Paxton’s long-awaited first day in court

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Literally years in the making.

A crook any way you look

Impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton moved a small step closer to trial Thursday on long-delayed felony securities fraud charges, though both sides agreed his Senate impeachment trial looms large as a factor.

Meeting briefly in a Houston courtroom with a new judge in the case, defense lawyers and prosecutors agreed Thursday to return Oct. 6 to deal with pending motions and set a trial date for the 2015 charges alleging that Paxton violated state securities laws in private business deals earlier in the decade.

“At some point it has to come to an end,” special prosecutor Brian Wice told reporters afterward. “I think today was the first step in a journey of a thousand miles to make sure that justice ultimately comes to be.”

Paxton attended the short pretrial setting before state District Judge Andrea Beall. He sat in the front row but did not speak.

Another special prosecutor, Kent Schaffer, said he anticipated a trial date “probably early in the winter, probably around February.” But both sides agreed they needed to first see the result of Paxton’s impeachment trial before the state Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said he expects the trial, set to begin Sept. 5, will take up to three weeks.

“I think the consensus was we figure out what happens at the impeachment trial and we go from there,” Paxton lawyer Dan Cogdell told reporters afterward. “Either way, we’ll be back here in early October.”

If Paxton loses the impeachment trial — and is permanently removed as attorney general — he is more likely to seek a quicker resolution in the securities case, both sides agreed.

[…]

The judge, Beall, required Paxton to appear for Thursday’s hearing. Cogdell said he was fine with that, noting Paxton’s “not special.” But Paxton used a special entrance to access the courtroom, which Cogdell said he advised Paxton to do because of the gag order barring comments on the impeachment trial.

Speaking with reporters after the minutes-long hearing, both sides agreed that the outcome of the impeachment trial could affect the securities fraud case.

“Logically, if Ken prevails, we’ll go forward,” Cogdell said. “If Ken loses, that’s a kill shot to his political career, so it opens the door to a resolution that’s not open right now.”

Asked what that resolution could be, Cogdell replied, “Dismissal, settlement, resolution — who knows.”

Another wrinkle could be the U.S. Department of Justice investigation into whether Paxton abused his power to help Paul. Cogdell told the judge he understands the investigation is “ongoing” but told reporters afterward he thinks it “will go nowhere at the end of the day because I’m familiar with the facts.”

Regardless, both sides were pleased the case appeared to be finally moving again — and the courtroom appearance was full of playful reminders. When Beall noted this was the oldest case on her docket, one of the lawyers feigned surprise. And while discussing discovery, one of the prosecutors said the case is so old that when they previously turned over evidence, it was on CDs.

See here for the background. As a reminder, in between the impeachment trial and the next hearing in the securities fraud trial, Paxton will also be dealing with his State Bar disciplinary lawsuit, for which there will be a hearing. Sleep well these next few weeks, asshole.

The Chron adds on.

The hearing Thursday was mostly procedural, and both sides agreed to return Oct. 6 to discuss pre-trial matters, including an ongoing dispute over how much special prosecutors are being paid. Special prosecutors Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer predicted the case could finally go to trial in the winter, though one of Paxton’s defense attorneys said a removal vote could prompt them to agree to a settlement.

[…]

The prosecutor pay issue will still need to be resolved before the case can get going in earnest. The debate centers on how much they ought to be paid and whether Harris County or Collin County taxpayers will be on the hook.

In another sign of how a Harris County setting could make a difference, Beall made clear Thursday that she believed Collin County taxpayers are responsible. She also said she would settle that matter in a private meeting with prosecutors, cutting defense attorneys out of the discussion entirely despite their pleas for “transparency” around the issue.

And back to the Trib on this matter, which was as much a cause for delay as the venue question was:

It dates back to the early months of the case in 2015, when Paxton lawyers challenged the $300-an-hour fee — approved by the judge in the case — as excessive but were unsuccessful. A Paxton supporter, Jeff Blackard, followed with a lawsuit arguing that Collin County was paying the prosecutors too much, and county commissioners balked at the fee arrangement and voted against paying the prosectors.

The issue eventually reached the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which in 2018 struck down the fee agreement, ruling that it violated state law and Collin County rules — but the court also ordered a new payment schedule to be adopted that complies with the law.

In 2019, the prosecutors filed a motion asking the Harris County court to set a payment plan in accordance with the ruling, but that motion has languished without resolution.

On Thursday, Wice noted that the prosecutors had not been paid since January 2016. He said they were “cautiously optimistic” that the issue would be resolved at the Oct. 6 hearing.

I genuinely look forward to the day when Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer present a ginormous bill for their services to Collin County. My only regret is that Rep. Keith Self, the former Collin County Judge who abetted this scheme to defund the special prosecutors, won’t be there to take his share of responsibility for it. It will still be sweet. Texas Monthly and the Press have more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Lawsuit filed against anti-drag bill

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The lawsuit count increases again.

Obviously a pervert

LGBTQ+ Texans and advocates filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block a new state law that criminalizes some drag shows — and other performances — if they occur in front of children.

Senate Bill 12, which goes into effect on Sept. 1, originally sought to classify all drag shows as sexual performances, but it was dramatically altered throughout the regular legislative session. The version the Legislature eventually approved criminalizes performers that put on sexually explicit shows in front of children as well as any businesses that host those shows.

But it’s how the law defines sexually explicit behavior that spurred the lawsuit.

The complaint argues that SB 12’s language is overly broad, allowing for too much discretion for police, prosecutors and municipalities to decide what is or is not illegal.

“In its zeal to target drag, the Legislature passed a bill so yawning in scope that it criminalizes and restricts an enormous swath of constitutionally protected activity,” says the lawsuit, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “The State has threatened the livelihood and free expression of many Texans.”

Under the law, business owners would face a $10,000 fine for hosting sexually explicit performances in which someone is nude or appeals to the “prurient interest in sex.” Performers caught violating the proposed restriction could be slapped with a Class A misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU of Texas, argue that SB 12 violates the First and 14th Amendments because the law “discriminates against the content and viewpoints of performances and imposes prior restraint on free expression.”

According to The Dallas Morning News, attorneys who have reviewed the bill say it could end up criminalizing behavior common at everything from Pride parades to bachelorette parties.

The bill classifies the use of “accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics,” accompanied with sexual gesticulations as sexual conduct.

[…]

Other plaintiffs are The Woodlands Pride, Abilene PRIDE Alliance, Extragrams LLC and 360 Queen Entertainment LLC.

They are suing the interim Attorney General of Texas, the district attorneys of Travis, Montgomery, and Bexar counties, The City of Abilene, Woodland Township, Montgomery County and Taylor County.

See here for some background and here for the ACLU’s statement. This one was on my list; as noted in that post, a similar law in Tennessee was ruled unconstitutional a few weeks ago. As is pretty much always the case with these bills, they are broad, vague, and harsh, which are three conditions not often compatible with the First Amendment. And also as always, we await to see what the courts, including the depraved Fifth Circuit, makes of this. PBS has more.

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Dispatches from Dallas, August 4 edition

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have another grab bag: Texans, and specifically North Texans, with J6 arrests and convictions; the return of Matt Krause; legislative business about “street takeovers” and period product tax; are Dallas ordinances dealing with prostitution and panhandling constitutional?; how we’re doing in Dallas with scooters; Pee-Wee Herman’s Alamo connection (RIP); Dallas Mavericks Barbie; and a new breed of avocados is working its way to our grocery stores.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Culture Club and Howard Jones, whom I will be seeing next week, and you should too if you’re in a town where they’re playing.

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July 2023 campaign finance reports: HISD

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Previously:
Congress
SD15
City of Houston, part 1
Harris County
City of Houston, part 2
City of Houston, part 3
City of Houston, part 4
City of Houston, part 5

January finance reports for HISD trustees are here. There is now a 2023 Trustee Elections page, which contains links to the finance reports for challengers to the incumbents, but not the incumbents themselves. You have to search the site for each incumbent’s name to find their individual finance reports. There’s no longer an index page that contains all of the elected Trustees’ names and bios and links to past finance reports – the “Board” page is a blank and the “Meet the School Board” page is all about the appointed Managers. That’s fine, but I object to the elected Trustees being memory-holed like this. They’re still elected officials, they’re still required to file finance reports, which we now have to go hunting for to find, and the fact that their opponents’ reports are in plain view while theirs aren’t is Not Cool. I expect this is somewhere between an oversight and a lack of interest on the part of whoever is maintaining this website right now – are we sure they didn’t get purged in the admin office firings? – and all I can say is that we deserve better.

I’m just going with the Trustees who are up for election and the opponents that are listed on that 2023 Election page.

Kathy Blueford-Daniels – Dist II
Dani Hernandez – Dist III
Fe Bencosme – Dist III
Patricia Allen – Dist IV
Meg Seff – Dist IV
Judith Cruz – Dist VIII
Plácido Gomez – Dist VIII


Dist  Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
==========================================================
II    B-Daniels        700        700    2,000       1,689
III   Hernandez      2,000          5        0       4,160
III   Bencosme       5,583      4,230        0       1,353
IV    Allen              0          0        0           0
IV    Seff             225      3,144    4,000           ?
VIII  Cruz               0        199        0         946
VIII  Gomez          8,685        342        0       8,342

Kathy Blueford-Daniels’ report listed $700 in contributions on the cover sheet, but no money taken in on the subtotals page. Of the $700 she spent, $250 was from contributions and the rest was from personal funds.

Fe Bencosme is the challenger to Dani Hernandez, and I have more than a little side-eye for her. On a practical level, her finance report does not list the address or occupation of any of her donors, which is a violation of campaign finance law. She has an expenditure of $164 for car magnets to an outfit called “Country Gone Crazy”, which again is a side-eye moment. Her website lists “Parental Rights” as one of its top priorities, and we all know what that means in this context. Three strikes, you’re out. If you’re in HISD District III, please remember to vote for Dani Hernandez.

Also, and I only noticed this on a second look, the $5,583 she lists as contributions are monetary contributions. On her subtotal page she lists another $1,105 in in-kind contributions. That should have been added into the total on her cover page. The Chron did its story on candidates who didn’t file finance reports before, and that’s all well and good, but we need someone to take a more comprehensive look at candidates who just fill out the damn form all wrong.

Meg Seff is a white lady running in a predominantly Black district. Her photo on her website, which appears twice, shows her in front of a “KHOU11 Stands For Houston” image. I’m going to assume that KHOU has not endorsed her campaign and probably is not aware that she is using their advertising imagery on her website in that fashion. She also has “Parental Rights” as an issue, so, you know. The cover page of her finance report says she took in $225, spent $3,144, has $225 cash on hand, and $3,144 in loans. Her Subtotals page shows that she has a $4,000 loan, spent the $3,144 out of personal funds – there’s a category for “Expenditures made by credit card” ($721 for her) and “Political expenditures made from personal funds” ($2,288). The distinction here is not clear to me, and I’ll bet it’s not clear to her as well – the “expenditures made by credit card” slot is one I rarely see filled in and it has the feel of a legacy category to me. If you know better, please feel free to enlighten us. In any event, if I am reading this correctly, she has $4K in loans and spent another $3,144 from her own money. Be that as it may, vote for Patricia Allen.

Like the other two challengers to incumbents, Plácido Gomez is a teacher (the other two are former teachers), but that’s where the similarities end. Gomez talks about the HISD takeover and how the election of The Former Guy affected his mostly-immigrant students; this in turn led him to be a volunteer for the Beto campaign in 2018, and there’s a picture of him with Beto on his bio page. The first contribution listed for his campaign came from Karthik Soora. I like Judith Cruz and think she’s done a fine job, but Plácido Gomez also gets a thumbs-up from me, and if for whatever the reason Cruz decides not to run again, he’s exactly the kind of person you’d want to step in.

I have one more set of reports to go through, for HCC candidates. Please use this as a reminder that we are still voting for HISD Trustees this November. They may not have any real power for the next two to six years, but they still matter. And we damn sure want to return good Trustees back to power when their time comes, and not any “parental rights” puppets. Do not forget about these elections.

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Ken Paxton has a day in court today

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Now he gets to deal with those almost-decade-old state securities fraud charges against him. And we may even get a trial date!

A crook any way you look

All eyes will be on the Harris County Criminal Courthouse when impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears before a judge in Houston. Paxton ordered to show up in person at a hearing in the long-delayed felony securities fraud case against him.

The criminal case against Paxton has been going on for eight years. The three-county felony indictment came down in 2015 in north Texas. Now, eight years later and after many delays about venue, the case is moving forward exactly where Paxton didn’t want it to.

“There’s nothing about this case that’s normal,” KHOU legal analyst Carmen Roe said. “This will be the first time Kenneth Paxton has ever shown up on a regular docket at 9 a.m. with every other criminal defendant in the building.”

With an impeachment trial in Austin looming, Paxton is now ordered to appear in person before Harris County Judge Andrea Beall. Roe says the judge is sending a message.

“The fact this newly elected Democratic judge is insisting on his presence in person on Thursday means that this case is going to move forward at a much higher rate of speed than in the past,” Roe said.

Paxton is facing three felony counts for failing to register as a securities adviser and allegedly persuading two investors to buy at least $100,000 worth of stock in the tech company Severgy without disclosing he would be paid for it.

He turned himself in in 2015.

“There’s no question that this criminal trial will be much more serious for Kenneth Paxton in regards to consequences,” Roe said. “The idea of losing his job is one thing. The idea of going to state prison is quite a different thing.”

[…]

“He’s going to be facing a trial date here in Harris County,” said Roe. “Whether or not he’s impeached will be a gamechanger for this trial.”

In June, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Paxton’s trial would be here in Harris County, ending a multi-year journey of claims and appeals that began with the original change of venue from Collin County. Paxton himself did all the initial fighting in this, with the special prosecutors picking it up later to keep the trial here. There was a quote in a non-paywalled early version of a Statesman story about this from one of his defense attorneys that grumbled about how long this whole process has taken, and it was a good thing I wasn’t consuming any food or drink when I read that because I would have choked. I feel pretty confident at this point that the prosecutors are ready anytime now.

Anyway. This hearing will be short, my guess is most likely to just set the agenda for what is to come. I’m so ready for something to happen here. Reform Austin has more.

UPDATE: Here’s the Trib story about this.

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Gag order? What gag order?

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It doesn’t count if I’m fundraising, right?

A crook any way you look

Suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton is fundraising off his upcoming impeachment trial and characterizing the rare political event in a way that appears to be a direct violation of the gag order established by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick last month.

In a fundraising email sent late Tuesday afternoon, Paxton is asking for contributions while framing next month’s trial as “illegal”.

“By preceding [sic] with this illegal impeachment scheme to overturn a decision from Texas voters just a few short months ago, the corrupt politicians in the Texas House [of Representatives] are demonstrating that blind loyalty to Speaker Dade Phelan is more important that upholding their oath of office,” the fundraising email states.

It was sent from Ken Paxton’s website – kenpaxton.com.

But Lt. Gov. Patrick has condemned Paxton’s own attorneys for using such language to describe the impeachment trial.

According to Patrick’s gag order established on July 17, anyone who is “party to the trial of impeachment… shall not furnish any statement or information… [that] will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the trial of impeachment.”

[…]

Paxton’s attorney for the upcoming impeachment trial said his client is doing nothing wrong.

“Attorney General Paxton and his campaign committee are in full compliance with all orders from the senate,” Tony Buzbee, a Paxton attorney, said in a statement to WFAA.

Patrick’s office did not immediately respond to questions about whether Paxton’s characterization of the impeachment as “illegal” and “a kangaroo court” violates the gag order for prejudicial and inflammatory language.

See here for more on the gag order. I dunno, I’m just a simple country blogger, but that all sure sounds “inflammatory” to me. The one person who can say for sure is Dan Patrick. Anytime you want to fill us in, Danno, we’re ready to hear it.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Scandalized!, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 31

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance stands with Professor Joy Alonzo as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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July 2023 campaign finance reports: City of Houston, part 5

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Previously:
Congress
SD15
City of Houston, part 1
Harris County
City of Houston, part 2
City of Houston, part 3
City of Houston, part 4

January finance reports for city of Houston candidates are here. This is at long last the end of the city of Houston finance reports. This post looks at the outgoing incumbents, the former candidates, and a couple of PACs of interest.


Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
======================================================
Turner           23,207    110,223        0    760,761
Brown                 0      4,624   75,000     24,691
Kubosh           45,350     60,607  161,815     48,724
Cisneros              0      1,577        0     29,551
Knox              1,200      6,480        0      8,468
Robinson            500     20,785        0    249,362

Edwards         187,710    982,396        0    245,769
GarzaLindner      5,010      9,464        0          0
Laster                0      1,254        0    147,138

HGAC Area PAC    94,697    102,972        0     18,808
ProtectServePAC 157,808    168,398        0     60,017

As a reminder, the Erik Manning spreadsheet has your candidate listings. All of the files I’ve reviewed can be found in this Google folder.

For the outgoing incumbents, the main question is what will they do with their remaining cash. For most of them, I expect they’ll gradually spend it down – they have several years to disburse all those funds – and at some point will disappear from the system. Mike Laster, whose term ended in 2019, is the longest-lasting person on this list. As for Mayor Turner and CM David Robinson, one might reasonably wonder if they have another campaign for something else in them. I don’t think it will be anything in 2024 – and I swear, if I see one more article speculating about Mayor Turner running for US Senate next year I’ll scream – but it’s not out of the question. They wouldn’t have to resign at this point in their term in order to run. I don’t see it happening, but it’s not impossible.

Mike Knox is of course running for Sheriff next year. He hasn’t raised much money for it, and doesn’t have much to give from his existing account. He didn’t have much in his January report. I dunno, maybe this suggests his decision to run for Sheriff was a very recent one.

One way that a soon-to-be-former officeholder can dispense of unneeded campaign funds can be seen in Janette Garza Lindner’s report; she is now on the HISD Board of Managers and abandoned her campaign for District H when she was appointed. After paying her remaining expenses, the leftover cash was split into three equal donations, to Kids Meals, Inc; BARC Houston; and the United Way. Charitable or non-profit donations are allowed for campaign funds.

Amanda Edwards spent most of that total you see on refunds to donors to her Mayoral campaign. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. I assume the rest of that cash will go the same way – these things can take time. She’s doing fine without those prior donations.

The Houston-Galveston Area PAC was and is the campaign to put the Fair for Houston proposition on the ballot. I presume it will continue to exist to raise and spend money to get that passed as well. I’m not aware of any organized opposition at this time. We’ll see what the 30 day reports tell us.

The Protect and Serve PAC says it is in support of the John Whitmire campaign. You can draw your own conclusions from there.

That’s a wrap on the city campaign finance reports for July. Let me know what you think.

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Is impeachment criminal or civil?

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It makes a difference.

A crook any way you look

As we move close to the historic impeachment trial of the state’s top prosecutor, a major question for those involved is whether the proceedings Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faces are criminal or civil.

A criminal designation would have major impact on Paxton’s trial and a legal filing made public Friday indicated Paxton and the House managers prosecuting him are at odds over the issue. Declaring it a criminal trial would afford Paxton the same legal protections of a defendant facing jail time.

The fundamental nature of the impeachment trial has emerged as possibly the most important legal contention between Paxton and House managers leading up to his Sept. 5 impeachment trial.

Paxton, the first statewide elected official impeached in Texas in more than 100 years, has filed multiple motions arguing his upcoming impeachment trial is a criminal proceeding, a designation that would prevent prosecutors from calling him to the stand and could lead to several articles of impeachment against him being quashed.

In pretrial court documents published Friday, the House managers representing the chamber that voted overwhelmingly to impeach the attorney general gave a terse reply: “Mr. Paxton is wrong.

[…]

Paxton’s filings show he has some legal precedent on his side. They include references to the 1917 impeachment trial of Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson, the last statewide official impeached.

“In Texas, an impeachment trial is legally considered a criminal proceeding,” Paxton argues in a motion to prevent prosecutors from calling him to the stand.

“Although it may proceed in part on allegations broader than those recognized under Texas’s criminal laws, our Constitution recognizes that an impeachment does not seek civil redress on behalf of a plaintiff; it is an action by the State to punish an alleged wrongdoer.”

However, some impeachment experts disagree with Paxton’s characterization of an impeachment trial as a criminal proceeding.

“It plainly is not a criminal proceeding,” said Frank O. Bowman III, a law professor at the University of Missouri who studies American impeachment.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Michael Gerhardt said the crux of the issue is whether a conviction would result in imprisonment. In Texas law, like federal law, the penalty for being convicted under articles of impeachment is removal from office and a possible disqualification from serving in the future.

“The sanctions that result from a conviction in Texas do not include imprisonment or execution,” said Gerhardt, an impeachment expert and law professor. “No criminal punishments, therefore, it’s not a criminal proceeding.”

Gerhardt said impeachment trials fall in a gray area outside of criminal and civil trials. He characterized them as political.

“This is really a political proceeding in which political authorities are exercising this unique power to punish other political figures,” he said.

“It’s not meant to be pejorative, it’s meant to be descriptive of the unique aspects of the proceeding,” he added.

[…]

Patrick likely will not make a ruling until Sept. 5, when the trial begins. A committee that created rules for the trial will also review the issue and make a recommendation by Aug. 28. Patrick could also choose to ask for a Senate vote on the issue.

It is unclear how any would rule, but the Senate has shown in at least one instance its intention to treat Paxton’s impeachment as a criminal matter. In impeachment rules adopted in June, the Senate set the criminal standard for the burden of proof for conviction to “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The University of Missouri’s Bowman said the threshold for conviction does not necessarily make it a criminal trial. The bar for conviction will remain a decision each senator will make on their own, he said.

“The real truth of it is that every senator is the judge of what the burden of proof should be,” he said.

I guess I must have some lawyerly instincts, because the “not really criminal or civil” notion occurred to me as well. The key question here is whether Paxton can be made to testify. Of course, Paxton via his attorneys have been screaming about how he was silenced and never given a chance to speak while the House was doing its thing, and here he is now saying “you can’t make me talk”. How much of that cake do you have left after scarfing it all down? Lawyers gotta do what lawyers gotta do, and I for one would not want to put a guy like that on the stand. It doesn’t mean we can’t mock him for it.

The House prosecutors’ response is here. As with motion-to-dismiss-a-thon, the real main character here is Dan Patrick. He has a huge impact on these proceedings, and I’m sure he knows it. Like I said before, we’ll know quickly if this is going to be drawn out or over before we know it. Until then, speculate away.

Posted in Legal matters, Scandalized!, That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The bookstores’ view of the book rating lawsuit

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Some useful context from one of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit challenging a new “book rating” law.

When Valerie Koehler bought Blue Willow Bookshop, she wanted to offer an expansive selection of children’s books.

“We made it our mission to have a robust children’s section, so we’re half kids, half adults,” Koehler said. “Not a very common business model for most bookstores, but it works for us.”

Her children were in grade school when she started running the roughly 1,200-square-foot bookstore in 1996. Over the years, she realized that to be profitable, she would have to sell to more than in-store customers. She worked with area school districts — now numbering 21 — to sell books to them, help organize author visits and provide book giveaways to students.

But a Texas law set to take effect Sept. 1 could jeopardize her ability to serve school districts, Koehler said. It will require school library booksellers to identify books, including those written for teens, that are “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” and those books rated “sexually explicit” would be banned from schools. The law also requires booksellers to identify such books sold to school districts in the past.

[…]

Independent booksellers say the law will require them to allocate employees, money and time to reading and rating every one of their books potentially sold to school districts. Booksellers also say they may not have records showing the contents of every book sold over several decades.

“It’s just overwhelming,” Koehler said. “It is untenable. It’s not something a small business, even a large business, could do.”

See here for the background. This story had a link to an earlier Chron story from when the bill would pass that said it would affect some 300 independent bookstores around the state. Where’s the Texas Association of Business when you really need them?

The Austin Chronicle had a story of its own from the day the lawsuit was filed.

On BookPeople’s HB 900 FAQ page, CEO Charley Rejsek writes, “Setting aside for the moment the fact that this law is clearly unconstitutional, booksellers do not see a clear path forward to rating the content of the thousands of titles sold to schools in the past, nor the thousands of titles that are published each year that could be requested by a school for purchase, neither do we have the training nor funding needed to do so.” Rejsek told the Statesman that the workload created by the law is “bad for small business”: Small independent bookstores simply don’t have the resources to review every book a school orders, which she fears would affect the business they could do with local schools.

Furthermore, the definitions of “sexually relevant” and “sexually explicit” are so vague as to be impossible for booksellers to determine. The plaintiffs point out that the definition of “sexual conduct” in the penal code seemingly encompasses any sexual-related topic, which they fundamentally oppose, as the subjective standards restrict students’ access to knowledge. The book ban does exempt material “related to the curriculum,” but there is no statewide standard for curriculum, so “it would be unclear what is ‘related to’ it,” the plaintiffs write.

The law defines “sexually explicit material” as anything “sexually relevant” presented “in a way that is patently offensive,” as defined by the penal code, which requires plaintiffs to determine whether a book is “so offensive on its face as to affront current community standards of decency.” Plaintiffs ask, which community’s standards? Is it “based on Austin, Texas, or Onalaska, Texas – or any of the more than 1,200 incorporated municipalities across Texas”? The law would also require booksellers to recall all “sexually explicit” or “relevant” books they have already sold to schools, placing additional administrative burden on them.

[…]

Ultimately, writes Rejsek, “booksellers should not be put in the position of broadly determining what best serves all Texan communities. Each community is individual and has different needs. Setting local guidelines is not the government’s job either. It is the local librarian’s and teacher’s job, in conjunction with the community they serve.”

Just a note here that the two authors of this bill were Sen. Angela Paxton, who is up for election next year in a moderately competitive district and who also believes that there should be absolutely no exceptions to Texas’ abortion law, and Rep. Jared Patterson, who is also in a moderately competitive district and who filed a ton of obnoxious bills like this one this past session. You want to channel some energy into electoral activism, there are two good avenues for you right there. In the meantime, let’s hope for a good ruling in the courts.

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