On Tuesday afternoon, an unsatisfied Texas Gov. Greg Abbott elected to call Texas’ House and Senate back for a special legislative session. In doing so, Abbott exercised one of his greatest gubernatorial powers for the first time, illustrating the priorities he has for the remainder of his first term as…
It has taken a while — half a year — but it looks like we are finally about to get our first good rubber-meets-the-road test of Dallas’ new city manager and new city attorney. Until now, they’ve been all about pretty talk and deck chairs. Both the new manager, T.C…
Irving state Rep. Matt Rinaldi picked either the worst time or the best time to put himself in the center of the Texas political universe. On Memorial Day, the last day of the 2017 Texas Legislature’s regular session, Rinaldi, a Republican, picked a fight with some of his Democratic colleagues,…
I can tell you exactly what the vote fraud is in West Dallas, where a Dallas City Council runoff election will be decided Saturday. It’s terrible. The fraud is the turnout. And to the extent that any other narrative serves to keep people away from the polls, that narrative is…
The Dallas City Council’s Housing Committee made it clear Monday that it doesn’t want the city to face a crisis like the one in West Dallas over the fates of occupants of rental homes owned by the Khraish family. Rather than hoping that another landlord will offer to finance and…
And then there were three. Following the first round of voting May 6, 11 of Dallas’ 14 City Council races ended with one candidate getting more than 50 percent of the vote and, in doing so, avoiding a runoff. But the three races that remain on the board are the council’s…
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t get what Dallas’ aversion to most government-subsidized affordable housing is really all about? The best answer is in the two kinds of government-subsidized housing Dallas does like. One is government-subsidized housing for seniors. The second, as we are about to see downtown, is…
It’s a free country, so just say it: If Dallas wants to use legal means to push poor people into the suburbs – assuming no cattle prods – then Dallas can do it. It’s just too bad our city leaders have to be so smarmy-two-faced about it. We’re hearing a…
Dallas’ city officials, the city’s representatives in Austin, representatives for the pension and Dallas’ police and fire associations have been praised for coming together and hammering out a plan to kick the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System toward financial stability. Less has been said about the compromise’s costs to…
For a preview of what Democrats will face in 2018 – here, anyway – take a close look at the District 2 Dallas school board runoff election. The Texas and Dallas Democratic Party organizations think they are reproducing the early Tea Party grassroots successes of 15 years ago by providing…
As the 2017 Texas legislative session winds down, the way Texans will vote remains in flux. There’s a new voter identification law headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, but it’s unclear whether it will pass muster in federal court. A bigger voting rights issue, which threatens the state’s entire congressional…
Irving’s Matt Rinaldi celebrated being named one of the Observer’s worst representatives of the 2017 session with a bang Monday, when he called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a group of people protesting Texas’ new anti-sanctuary city law at the state capitol. During an ensuing skirmish on the Texas floor,…
In addition to being Memorial Day, Monday is also the 140th — and last — day of official business for Texas’ 85th Legislature. As the session wound down, the Observer evaluated the performances of representatives throughout North Texas. Here’s our list of the best and worst DFW had to offer this…
The Federal Elections Committee, like many in Washington, is a pretty partisan body, and usually the way it rules reflects this. But FEC issued a unanimous decision Thursday that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas failed to properly disclose the source of four loans given to his 2012 Senate campaign. In…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings doesn’t usually cast that long of a shadow on social media. He’s content to let his staff run his Facebook and Twitter feeds, which usually stick to general news posts about city business or mayoral appearances. Thursday afternoon, however, Rawlings decided to mix things up on…
I know politics is politics, and the game goes on. But sometimes a foul ball has to be called foul. I’m not accusing anybody of lying. I just want to make sure we set the record straight. On Tuesday night at a speech celebrating the fifth year of his campaign…
Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs, a careful student of structures, has been keeping track of the City Hall organization chart since the January departures of former City Manager A.C. Gonzalez and former City Attorney Warren Ernst. Their retirements were followed a month later by the arrival of new City…
The whole thing, Jose Barrientos says, comes down to his running his mouth. If he hadn’t shot off about how someone could go about stealing the election for Dallas City Council District 6, he says, he wouldn’t be in the trouble he is now. But he did tell Sidney Williams,…
News reached me when I was out of town that the Dallas City Council will approve a cheaper partial removal of a failed concrete recreational feature in the Trinity River, opting to scrape out the guts of the Standing Wave but leave its ugly bones in place to save $5…
On one hand, you could argue that Monday’s development in West Dallas was a topsy-turvy turning of the tables. The person the mayor has repeatedly slimed as a slumlord turns out to be the knight in shining armor, the only one with a plan to protect a deep-rooted but embattled…
The 3.2-acre lot bracketed by Pacific Avenue and St. Paul and Harwood streets has become an eyesore. To say it’s poorly maintained is an understatement. The uneven layer of asphalt is littered with freshly broken glass and shards from an earlier generation of destroyed beer bottles. Walking the perimeter on…
On Monday afternoon, after two more days of debate, the Texas House of Representatives passed a “bathroom bill.” Reps tacked an amendment requiring that public schools ban transgender kids from using multi-occupancy restrooms of their choice onto another public school bill, one that requires schools to draw up plans for…
