In a startling turnabout in the deadlocked West Dallas war over low-income housing and gentrification, Khraish Khraish, a landlord locked in a battle with the mayor over hundreds of low-rent houses, turned the tables Monday by announcing he will sell 130 of his properties to the current tenants. Mayor Mike…
One thing is clear two weeks after the 2017 Dallas City Council election: Something went wrong with absentee voting in West Dallas. While rumor and innuendo have been plentiful, very little has emerged in the way of fact, especially since many key players in the drama have clammed up because…
Dallas City Council member Jennifer Gates has a great idea. Really. She’s right. The city should strongly consider pulling its elections out from under the aegis of the county elections department and run them itself. The county elections department as constituted was born in sin. Its structure is the result…
Reform to the Dallas Police and Fire Pension system is taking shape after a day of negotiations, mutual agreement and statehouse votes. On Thursday afternoon, Dallas police and fire associations agreed to a deal with the system and the city of Dallas. After that, the Texas Senate’s State Affairs Committee…
On Thursday, the Texas Senate joined the Texas House of Representatives in voting to ban straight-ticket voting in the state. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus identified dumping the straight-ticket option as a session priority this winter. “Too often, good men and women are swept out of down-ballot offices due to…
The Trinity River’s infamous Standing Wave feature, installed by the city of Dallas at a cost of more than $4 million in 2011, has never worked as planned. Six years later, it seems it will take at least $2 million more to remove the envisioned whitewater park.
Wednesday afternoon’s Dallas police memorial ceremony downtown, despite the contentious debates currently embroiling the Dallas Police Department and the city, wasn’t about politics, pensions or retention. Instead, the services held in front of the city’s monument to officers killed in the line of duty focused on the past the 84 Dallas…
When it comes to pivotal figures in Dallas, Robert Decherd is both iconic and unknown. He served as the president and CEO of A.H. Belo Corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News, from 1987 to 2013, devoting himself to philanthropic public park projects after he left the company. This has led…
The Dallas City Council will decide next week whether the city of Dallas should join with the city of Austin in its legal battle with the state of Texas over the state legislature’s recently signed “sanctuary cities” bill. The bill, set to go into effect Sept. 1, threatens sheriffs, constables and…
Over the last four years, Atmos Energy, the company that provides natural gas to residents of the city of Dallas, has come to the city for more than $18 million in rate increases. On Monday they aske for another $7.8 million from the city, an amount they say represents a…
Former Dallas City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill died Saturday at 65. Federal authorities released Hill from prison Friday, commuting his 18 year sentence on bribery charges, due to his terminal prostate cancer. Hill is survived by two daughters, Erika and Kristin, and his wife Sheila Farrington-Hill…
On Thursday, after four days of waiting, the Dallas County Elections office updated the totals in last Saturday’s District 6 city council race to include 387 of the 426 that were sequestered on election day. The new ballots changed some totals but not the outcome: Incumbent Monica Alonzo, credited with…
Don Hill is getting out of prison more than eight years early. Federal prosecutors moved this week to commute Hill’s 18-year sentence on bribery charges, allowing the subject of Dallas’ largest successful corruption case to live out what prosecutors say could be the last 18 months of his life in…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton preemptively filed suit Monday afternoon to protect Senate Bill 4, the state’s controversial “sanctuary cities” legislation. Paxton filed the suit under the federal Declaratory Judgment Act “so that the constitutionality of SB 4 may be resolved throughout Texas in a single court.” The state leadership…
The ballots in Saturday’s city election had barely been counted when The Dallas Morning News weighed in with a finger-wagging editorial scolding East Dallas, the city’s most politically active realm, for voting for the wrong person. In repeated endorsement editorials before the election, the city’s only daily newspaper had given…
An important piece of the story is missing, a kind of key, in the bleak saga of 130 or more families facing mass eviction in West Dallas on June 3. Is there any reason it has to happen? The answer is yes. If an agreement cannot be reached, the families…
While there is still a bit to be decided after Saturday’s Dallas City Council election — namely, the fate of 671 disputed mail-in ballots and three runoff elections — there are plenty of lessons to be learned. Now that the dust has settled, let’s take a look at some of the…
Nothing that happened during Saturday’s Dallas City Council election can really be called a surprise. There was certainly some intrigue, some 671 mail-in ballots remain sequestered under court order in Districts 2 and 6 after fraud concerns and several at least one incumbent, Carolyn Arnold will lose her seat on…
The unanimous Texas House approval yesterday of a bail-out bill for the Dallas Police and Fire Pension fund sets up, among other things, the lowest point so far in the political career of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. Every single thing he wanted in the bill he did not get, and…
Saturday’s Dallas City Council election is an undeniably big one. At least six council races look to be reasonably competitive and voters seem to be taking notice. As of the end of early voting Tuesday night, 23,355 Dallas residents have voted in their city council race, up more than 4,000…
Hey, got kind of side-tracked by my hobby yesterday, hope you don’t mind. I’ll get back in the saddle tomorrow. Kind of frittered away the day on my pastime – trying to guess exactly how screwed up City Hall is. I mean, we know it’s screwed up. Sure. But how…
The Texas Legislature moved one step closer to passing its fix for Dallas’ struggling police and fire pension system Wednesday night, giving initial approval to Van Republican Dan Flynn’s raft of pension fixes. Pending potential amendments during the bill’s final reading today, Flynn’s plan, which would increase the city of…
