Tennell Atkins Ticketed for Assault on City Hall Security Guard

Update: 12:54 p.m.: Atkins has issued a statement about the incident. He admits that he was “a little upset” but denies touching Hultquist. “I regret that the two ladies feel I was too aggressive in my comments and that I ‘shook’ one of them,” he says. (You can check out…

City to Pay $250,000 Settlement to Homeless Support Groups

Bringing an end to almost an eight-year legal battle, the Dallas City Council will vote Wednesday on whether to pay two charity groups $250,000. Big Heart Ministries and Rip Parker Memorial Homeless Ministry sued the city in March 2007, challenging a city ordinance that restricted the ways groups could provide…

Greg Abbott Leads Texas into Immigration Lawsuit Fight With Feds

Just over a week ago, on November 24, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the “odds were in favor” of the state suing the federal government to stop President Obama’s executive action on immigration. Wednesday afternoon, the governor-elect cashed that bet, announcing that he’d been joined by 16 other states…

Bentley the Ebola Dog’s Monitoring Cost $27,000

Of the just more than $155,000 the city of Dallas spent responding to Ebola, almost $27,000 — just more than 17 percent of the total — went to caring for Bentley, Nina Pham’s King Charles Spaniel. The majority of the Bentley cash, $17,057.46, was spent on getting Grand Prairie Armed…

New City of Dallas Media Plan Is All About Message Control

Sana Syed had a baptism by fire. Just after she took the city of Dallas’ public information officer job, Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola. Syed did an admirable job filtering and distributing the torrent of information that would come out over the succeeding weeks. She would also show…

Surprise, Surprise. Mike Rawlings Is Running for Re-election

Put aside any thoughts you had about the 2015 Dallas mayoral election being competitive. Mike Rawlings is running again. Just before his annual “State of the City” speech Tuesday, Rawlings formally revealed to The Dallas Morning News the poorly kept secret that he’ll be on the ballot in May. He…

Texas Likely to Sue Obama Over Immigration

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, soon to make his home in the governor’s mansion, says the “odds are in favor” of Texas suing the federal government to prevent the implementation of President Obama’s proposed executive or to stop the deportation of certain undocumented immigrant who have been in the country…

Federal Judge Sanctions Dallas in Protest Lawsuit

The Dallas City Council’s decision last week to repeal its anti-protest ordinance — the one that has irked both the far left and far right, from the peaceniks railing against the Bush Presidential Library to the Obama-hating patriots — was a tacit admission that banning people from protesting next to…

Anchia Survey Finds That Everybody Hates the Damn Trinity Toll Road

The results are in from state Representative Rafael Anchia’s survey of Dallas residents’ feelings about the Trinity toll road. They are exactly what you’d expect. Of 1,014 respondents who reported Dallas ZIP codes, only 42 said they supported the toll road, and 955 were against the toll road and. Somewhat…

Dallas City Employees Are Fat, Some Are Fatter Than Others

As we’ve mentioned before, City Manager A.C. Gonzalez’s presentations at the end of City Council briefings are frequently excruciating and uninformative. Tuesday, though, there was an interesting tidbit in the midst of Gonzalez’s promotion of the city’s wellness initiative for city employees. After singling out City Council member Dwaine Caraway’s…

New Rules for Taxis, Uber, Lyft, Etc. Up for December 10 Vote

A debate that began more than a year ago when City Manager A.C. Gonzalez tried to slip an ordinance that would have banned car services like Uber and Lyft in Dallas will likely end December 10, when the council takes up new regulations for transportation-for-hire businesses. The new regulations that…

Unaccompanied Immigrant Kids Are Still Coming into Texas

It’s been a few months since Clay Jenkins ceremoniously announced that, because rates of unaccompanied immigrant children coming into Texas had ebbed, there was no longer a need for a local shelter. Has the influx remained low? See also: Dallas County Will Not Shelter Thousands of Central American Kids After…

Dallas Unveils World’s Saddest Bike Sharing Program

On Thursday afternoon, a dozen or so journalists stood in an awkward semi-circle near the Women’s Museum at Fair Park, gazing at Dallas’ first bike-share station. They had been promised that Mayor Mike Rawlings would be there at 3:30 p.m. to take the inaugural ride on one of the gleaming…