Hopefully, this story won’t matter. Hopefully, figuring out who’s on the hook should Dallas’ massively underfunded Police and Firefighters Pension Fund go broke won’t matter because the fund never goes broke. It’s something that would be good to know though, considering the fund is currently sitting on an unfunded liability…
I was sitting in the gallery at a City Council session last week where they were talking about the city’s deteriorating credit rating, and I felt kind of like Widda Shoots, like a little old white-haired, black-dressed, sensibly shod lady on her cane-bottomed chair with her Social Security check folded…
It’s taken some time — either a little over a year or a little over eight years, depending on how you count it — but the city of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department finally appear ready to arrest fewer people for marijuana possession. Since 2007, Texas law has allowed…
Everybody not familiar with efforts to resolve chronic homelessness, myself included, is shocked to learn what it costs to do anything effective. Part of what I have been learning this week is that it just does. Like it or lump it. Or we can do nothing, which would make us…
Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez wasn’t kidding around when she announced a change in the way her office deals with requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold some undocumented immigrants in jail until ICE can come collect them. Those charged with certain minor offenses could make bond and…
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was very upset about the New York Daily News’ Thursday cover. Released after the shooting deaths of 14 people in San Bernadino, California, the cover took issue with the claims of prominent Republicans, including Texas’ Ted Cruz, who said they were praying for the victims…
The Dallas Police and Fire Pension system is in bad shape, really bad shape. So bad, in fact, that it has affected the city’s bond rating, with both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s bumping the city’s creditworthiness down one notch in recent months. It isn’t hopeless, though, and changes are…
This should not be hard. There is no reason the city of Dallas shouldn’t or can’t pass an ordinance that would ensure construction workers in the city get to take a break. Ten minutes every four hours, that’s all that advocates have pushed for, and that’s all that’s been in…
Gazing south from the upper floors of City Hall, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the shell of the old Plaza Hotel rising 12 stories just across Interstate 30. The second thing you notice is how ugly it is. The beige monolith was charmless when it opened as a…
We spoke here yesterday about really big really tough issues – education, mostly — and whether anybody has the stomach or the stamina to keep working on them. My own personal fallback position usually is to hope somebody else does. So today another one: the chronically homeless mentally ill. Between…
The biggest problem facing the city of Dallas isn’t Tony Romo’s left clavicle. It’s not the Trinity toll road. It might not even be, despite a compelling case that can be made for it, the city’s crumbling infrastructure. The biggest problem facing the city is a massive looming shortfall in…
For the briefest of moments over the weekend, it seemed that Ted Cruz might show a little humanity when it came to assessing the shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead. “We don’t know … what those motives were, but whatever they were, it’s unacceptable,…
The hardest thing about talking to Roger Stone about his latest book, The Clintons’ War on Women, is figuring out how to write about anything that’s in the book. The stuff that the ex-Richard Nixon aide and all purpose Republican campaign operative has come up with is so inflammatory and insubstantially…
Oops. Caught myself again. Hate that. Just yesterday I wrote about brave people who face down mobs, reaching all the way back to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for a case study (Colonel Sherburn, Chapter 22.) But then I’m sitting at my desk counting dust motes, and I think, “Wait, before…
Late Sunday night, The Dallas Morning News posted a banal piece announcing that Mayor Mike Rawlings had raised $30.5 million for a southern Dallas investment fund, a cornerstone of his GrowSouth initiative. The most controversial thing in the article was that the fund — which doesn’t involve tax money, just the…
Lawyers for the family of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old kid who made the clock, have notified the school district and city government in suburban Irving (see below) that the family intends to file civil rights lawsuits if they don’t get $15 million in damages. Hold your breath for one second…
Eleven weeks later, the Oak Lawn community is getting the police attention it’s been demanding. Since September 1, the area immediately surrounding the gay friendly Cedar Springs strip has seen at least 12 people attacked. Some victims were robbed and many ended up in the hospital. Geoffrey Hubbard, a bartender at…
Two weeks ago, Ben Sandifer took off from his job as an accountant and headed down to City Hall to plead with the City Plan Commission to vote against rezoning a portion of the Texas Horse Park. He didn’t have a problem with the zoning change per se, which was…
Texas Governor Greg Abbott came out punching hard and fast after last week’s terrorist assault on Paris, making it clear Monday he would be doing everything he can to keep refugees from the humanitarian crisis in Syria, or at least not in Texas. “Given the tragic attacks in Paris and…
Kept my mouth shut until it was said and done. Best I can do for you, conflict of interest-wise. Now I have to blurt it out. I am so glad that damned house near me on Live Oak Street, the “wedding venue,” is down and reduced to rubble at long…
Who in Dallas could better express the way Dallas worships things — football and otherwise — than members of the Staubach clan? What they have to say about woman-beating and the Dallas Cowboys football team, specifically player Greg Hardy, is doubly interesting. It tells us something about ourselves. It tells…
Dallas City Attorney Warren Ernst insists his sudden retirement at age 61 after two years on the job isn’t being driven by anything special going on at City Hall at the moment. OK, fine. But I think it has to do with everything happening at City Hall these days. Every…
