If you put aside the issue of bribery in the ongoing federal corruption trial of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price — the jury will decide that one — and just look at what he did, his behavior may look mild next to the way public business gets done in…
A month ago civic leader Walt Humann posted an essay on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News saying it would be a terrible mistake for the city to take sales tax money away from DART, our regional mass transit agency, and use it to save the Dallas Police…
Wednesday morning, the Dallas City Council passed its long-gestating ethics reform package. The vote was unanimous,but it comes at the end of months of arguing over the grievances that serve as the basis for many of the new rules. In the end, some members griping that the new regulations aren’t…
The approach of a June 3 court-imposed deadline — when more than 100 poor families are to be tossed out of their homes in West Dallas — is creating a political pressure-cooker. None of the parties to this dispute wants to be blamed when the TV cameras show up to…
Here’s a scary thing, and please don’t think I’m trying to make a joke. A child died. A man died. And those are just the ones we know about. So I’m not trying to be funny about the ongoing crisis in the Dallas 911 emergency service. But “ghost calls”? Before…
Once every two years, the nonpartisan U.S. Elections Project releases a data package updating the current state of voter turnout in the United States. For the state of Texas, the news contained within the most recent report is abysmal. Texas, according to data released last week, had the 49th worst…
There are two big questions to which Dallas police and fire officers need to demand answers quickly, as negotiations in the legislature on a bill to reconstitute their pension fund near an end. These questions are about the two main issues looming over the debate. The first issue, clawback, may…
First, very serious caveats about the ongoing federal corruption trial of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. He’s innocent until proven guilty. The jury is weeks, maybe months from deliberations. OK, that’s out of the way. Now let me ask the obvious question — the one I hear whispered every…
Last week, a 6-month-old infant died after his babysitter used her cellular phone to call 911 three times without getting an answer. When someone picked up, the babysitter languished on hold for a half hour before getting assistance. The City of Dallas labeled the issue as “ghost calls” from phones on the…
Great news this afternoon from Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has shot down the city’s request to have the Trinity River legally downgraded to a non-navigable river rather than fix a fake kayaking rapids built by the city. “This I will not do,”…
An ugly bit of street theater is being prepared for us by certain people at City Hall. When it gets here, I want you to know the real story. In the first week of June, as many as 200 poor families will be tossed out on the street in West…
On Wednesday afternoon, the state Senate signed off on the bill that one of the region’s biggest anti-abortion organizations, Texas Right to Life, has identified as a key building block to ending legal abortion Texas. Senate Bill 415, which passed its initial Senate test with a 22-8 vote, would ban…
This week in the federal corruption trial of one of Dallas’ most powerful and long-tenured elected officials, an important behind-the-scenes truth has been told about how this city really operates. It raises a question about who and what we are. For at least a half century, Dallas city and county…
Over vociferous objections from the chamber’s Democratic minority, the Texas Senate voted 21-10 late Tuesday afternoon in favor of state Senator Lois Kolkhorst’s so-called “bathroom bill.” The bill requires patrons of the state of Texas’ publicly owned facilities to use the bathroom designated for the sex listed on their birth…
Hey, here’s an idea. If we have to do some kind of claw-back because the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund is in trouble — you know, send out the guys with the baseball bats and have them repossess those overpaid pension benefits — how about we start with the…
Last week architect and land planner Kevin Sloan told an audience to go home and Google “Bobcat City.” So I did. It’s us. If you Google Bobcat City, the first thing that pops up is an extremely cool YouTube video produced by Texas Parks and Wildlife about a study of…
For a while longer at least, the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System board of directors is going to hold off the elephant in the room. On Thursday afternoon, by an 11-1 vote, the board agreed to continue restricting lump-sum withdrawals from deferred retirement option program (DROP) accounts. DROP accounts…
Like Dallas, Houston is in Austin right now trying to get the Legislature to sign off on a much needed fix for its police and fire pension funds. Houston cops, firefighters and the mayor are not in total agreement on what they want, but at least they have somebody in…
Almost all of the homeless camps the city has scraped away for the TV cameras over the past year are back up, rebuilt close to their original locations or maybe half a mile away. If the city’s tent-scraping program was intended to resolve homelessness, promote health and safety or reduce…
Pretend you’re some private company. You dump an enormous load of concrete into the Trinity River creating an obstruction so massive that boats can no longer even get up and down the river. Say you get caught. Don’t you think you’d have to fix it? Or go to the pen?…
A truly new idea, immense in scope, revolutionary in purpose but also wonderfully simple, cheap, pragmatic and real, is suddenly on the table in the city’s most ancient and intractable unsolved problem — the damned Trinity River. It’s this: Stop. Just stop. Stop trying to stick stuff on it, spray…
On Tuesday afternoon Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings filed a notice of non-suit in his lawsuit against the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund. That means that the mayor, who’d sued the fund as a private citizen in order to stop to fund from making payments he believes could bankrupt the…
