At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, a group of Dallas day laborers and representatives from the Workers Defense Project were out in full force to advocate for local workers’ rights. Their appearance yesterday was the latest in a push over the last several months to require Dallas employers to allow water…
The issue at hand is a little wonky, but not too complicated. The Dallas City Council took bids for a contract to collect fines for the city’s municipal courts. In the next fiscal year, the contract holder is expected to resolve more than 150,000 cases. MSB Government Services submitted the…
They had one job. Last Tuesday, the one day this year most people will even think to look at the Dallas County elections website, it went down. For seven hours. Any person needing to know her polling place had to seek out other methods. The situation was laughable, but it…
Last week, we told you about an internet survey pushed out by Dallas state representative Rafael Anchia asking residents their opinion about the Trinity Toll Road. We speculated that Anchia’s sudden interest might signal forthcoming action in Austin, likely an attempt by supporters to fund the currently unfunded (and unneeded)…
Just two days after winning his unopposed re-election bid, state Representative Rafael Anchia has released a survey to gauge Dallas residents’ opinion of the proposed Trinity toll road. The survey was quickly pushed out on social media by opponents of the toll road such as City Council member Scott Griggs,…
Preliminary numbers are out for Texas’ midterm election voter turnout from the Election Project, and they are abysmal. Just 28.5 percent of Texans eligible to vote did so, either in early voting or on Tuesday, the lowest percentage in the country. The last time Texas voted for its governor in…
As in any good tragedy, Craig Watkins’ tumble from his perch as Dallas County district attorney was preceded by hubris and stupidity. After badly underperforming compared with the rest of his party in his 2010 re-election win against Republican Danny Clancy, Watkins did everything possible to ensure another close race…
So, Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez is making his twice-monthly report to the City Council Wednesday afternoon. This time, he’s going to be talking about something called the Dallas Center for Performance Excellence which, well, we’ve read the whole briefing and still have no idea what it is. Its purpose,…
In one West Dallas neighborhood, roughly 25 to 30 percent of eligible voters do not have a valid photo identification for voting. This area, along with sections near Fair Park, have the highest rates in the city. Yet speaking to voters outside C.F. Carr Elementary School, one of the central…
If you aren’t sure of where you’re supposed to vote this morning, you’re now battling more than just the rain. As of 10:00 a.m., dallascountyvotes.org, the county’s guide to all things voting, isn’t working. We called the county to see what was going on. A worker told us the site…
For all you Dallasites who skip the midterm elections in favor of the presidential races, you might reconsider that strategy: For Texans, your vote in national and even state races is all but symbolic.It’s local issues where your ballot will really count. According to financial analysts at WalletHub, Texas is…
Digging through the this year’s community survey, which you can see in full below, is like looking at one of those magic eye posters. You have to look past it to see what is really going on. On its face, the results of the survey are positive. The survey’s “major…
Dallas City Council members were treated to the Commemorative Air Force’s cinematic masterpiece “If These Planes Could Talk.” There are known knowns about Dallas Executive Airport. These are things we know that we know. One of the known knowns, courtesy of Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins, is this: “We…
As of Tuesday, Amber Vinson and Nina Pham, the two Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurses to get Ebola after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, are Ebola-free. It’s remarkable, inspiring news. Seeing the two speak at their post-release press conference was, in a way, like seeing someone back from the dead. Then…
The other day, while I was at Kroger buying laundry detergent and frozen waffles, a man came up to me, leaned in close, and said, “Come on now, baby. Let’s see a smile on that nice little face of yours.” Before I could stop myself, before I could rebuke this…
For three years, a confessed attempted murderer roamed the streets of Dallas, going on a crime spree that ended when he killed a man in July 2007. Michael Wyatt had pleaded guilty to the attempted murder in 2004, but the Dallas District Attorney’s Office wanted him to testify against his…
Every hour or so, the Save the Cabana Hotel Facebook page reminds its 900-plus followers to SAVE THE CABANA HOTEL. Dallas’ luxury Cabana Motor Hotel opened on Stemmons Freeway in 1962, and photographs on the fan page show legends like John Bonham and Robert Plant hanging out. The Beatles, Jimi…
Right now, as this story is being written, four clinics provide abortions in Dallas: Abortion Advantage, Planned Parenthood, Routh Street Women’s Clinic and Southwest Women’s Surgery Center. Two, Whole Woman’s Health and Planned Parenthood, are open in Fort Worth. But read quickly, because it’s possible some of those will be…
During a seven-year law enforcement career as a Dallas County deputy constable and Dallas City marshal, Tyler Atkins says he protected the public from fake security guards. “I used to take people to jail who used to run security companies without a license,” he says. But for the past several…
They don’t work. At least not in the way they’re intended to. Study after study shows that red light cameras are, at best, an inefficient revenue generator and, at worst, increase accidents. Dallas’ red light enforcement is especially bad. Because the city signed its contract with Xerox — the company…
As if the state needed more reason to be ashamed about the 2012 Republican Senate primary — you know, the one that ended with Ted Cruz basically being handed a national platform on a silver platter — Buddy Barfield, longtime top aid to Cruz’s runoff opponent, David Dewhurst, has admitted…
Here’s the good news: Dallas-Fort Worth ozone levels for the first this year dropped below the federal standard of 84 parts per billion. The bad news: the 84-ppb standard the area has just now met for the first time is from 1997. The current standard is 75 ppb, well below…
