Assessed home values in Dallas County were up by 12.2 percent across the board in 2016, thanks to the region’s robust housing market. While the state caps any increase in taxable value at 10 percent a year, the rise still means pain for homeowners, especially those in the middle of…
Somebody slipped me a copy of a 2-inch-deep, loose-leaf binder being circulated to members of Dallas’ park board, who are stalled on what to do with Fair Park, the city’s 277-acre post-apocalyptic exposition park two miles south of downtown. No wonder they’re stalled. This week was supposed to be the…
This year, DART is celebrating 20 years of the agency’s yellow and white light-rail trains moving people around North Texas in one form or another. DART’s system traverses more than 90 miles of track, making it the longest light rail system in the country, and claims more than $8 billion…
There’s nothing funny about the affluenza defense. I’m not trying to be funny. I’m serious. A light bulb came on over my head this morning when I read a letter to the editor. In all seriousness, is there not some sense in which the affluenza theory could be applied legitimately…
On the one hand, naming a linear park on an old bridge for a former mayor seems like something that would fall somewhere between a nice thing to do at best and at the very worst harmless. But it’s the misdirection that counts. When you look at what some city…
Immigration and civil rights groups have stepped in the middle of the fight over immigration between Texas and the Obama administration, appealing a lower court decision they say threatens their clients’ privacy. The National Immigration Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project and the ACLU of Texas aim to…
Uh-oh. Grab your wallet. The Dallas Morning News editorial page wants you to know about a very exciting City-Hall-run real estate development on Lancaster Road across from the Veterans Administration hospital, six miles south of downtown: “This is an important project,” the paper said this week. “It’s prime property on…
Oh, man, sometimes I think I’m walking into a serious conversation about Dallas City Hall. Then I hear what people down there are saying. I just want to stop and say, “Oh, excuse me, wrong venue, I guess. I thought I was walking into City Hall. Obviously I took a wrong…
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, as one parent of a transgender teen described it at the Texas State Capitol Wednesday, has gotten himself into a “literal pissing contest.” Still defiant over a White House directive that schools receiving federal funding must allow students to use the restroom consistent with their…
In a move that should go in the news dump hall of fame, Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez announced on Memorial Day afternoon that he would be stepping down at the end of January 2017, ending a three-year reign as the un-elected CEO of the city. While Dallas Mayor Mike…
Standing in a small Lake Dallas City Council room, Julie Mathews raised her right hand to take the oath of office as the newly elected mayor of the growing city on the shores of Lewisville Lake. It’s a familiar scene for the 40 residents gathered on this Thursday evening in…
Bernie lovers, I love you. But some of you are now officially out over your skis. You probably don’t get what just happened in Waco — the public humiliation of Ken Starr at Baylor University. But you need to figure this one out. The arc of Starr’s public career provides…
The city of Dallas might become Texas’ second major city to “ban the box” and require private employers to delay asking applicants about their criminal backgrounds until they have been given a conditional offer of employment. The policy change would bring private employers in line with the city itself, Dallas…
The family of Antoinette Brown, the woman mauled and killed by a pack of loose dogs in South Dallas earlier this month, is demanding $5,000 from the city of Dallas in order for the city to avoid a lawsuit, interim City Attorney Chris Bowers said Thursday. Bowers told the city’s…
Ken Paxton is taking his potty problem to the feds. Wednesday afternoon, Texas’ attorney general announced that he, along with a cadre of other states and school districts, was suing the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor and the…
Leave it to local Democrats to play the Susan Hawk mentally ill district attorney story exactly wrong. I swear the local Dallas County Democratic Party could turn the second coming into a debate about immigration. Hawk, as you know, is our recently elected Republican DA who went on a covered-up…
Robert Jeffress might be the most powerful pastor in Dallas. This is a list of 10 things he actually believes.
A picture is emerging — very slowly from the fog of local politics — of the way Dallas probably is going to address its desegregation problems with the federal government. The city is under major pressure to redress decades of bad behavior by putting more “affordable housing” (code for racially…
Don’t tell Dallas it hasn’t done anything for racial desegregation. Since 2004 a $22 million trust fund that grew out of a Dallas housing desegregation case has been used to bankroll an aggressive campaign to push integrated housing into highly resistant affluent white majority areas. Didn’t know that? Maybe you…
One of the most cherished lines in American movies – “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown” – may take on new and bitter meaning here in Dallas, where backers of a proposed new six-lane toll road along the Trinity River through the center of the city are about to get the…
During a contentious debate last week over handing $3 million to Costco for the retail giant to build a North Dallas store, opponents argued it would get built somewhere in Dallas with or without the money. They lost, but not before wringing a crucial concession. Costco gets its — actually,…
Quick! Somebody tell the mayor! The homeless are being unacceptable again! A month ago Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings toured the “Tent City” homeless encampment beneath a cat’s cradle of freeway overpasses at the intersection of Interstate 30 and I-45, one mile due east from City Hall. He told people living…
