The Dallas City Council sealed the deal today with newly minted City Manager A.C. Gonzalez, approving his employment contract. The main thing you need to know about the deal is that it’s a big one: $400,000 per year in base salary, plus benefits not enumerated in City Attorney Warren Ernst’s…
Conservative agent provocateur James O’Keefe’s latest undercover video sting seemed to feed the narrative that Democrats just go around constantly making fun of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s wheelchair. This is what O’Keefe is good at: Using hidden cameras to film targets, then editing the hell out of the footage…
Sohail Raza Khan would rather die than go back to Pakistan. He’s made this abundantly clear to U.S. immigration officials, begging them to send him to federal prison, or just let him rot in the ICE detention facility where he’s spent the past several years. Anything but deportation. According to…
If there was ever any doubt that the debate over the fudged details in Wendy Davis’ bio had completely jumped the shark, confirmation came this week in the form of unsolicited parenting advice the Democratic gubernatorial candidate was offered by Bristol Palin. Yet the story continues, feeding on itself in…
Even though the new, techie transportation services can often be cheaper than cabs, city officials like to accuse the apps of discriminating against people who live in poor areas. Most recently, Councilwoman Vonciel Jones Hill concluded yesterday’s transportation meeting by sharing a story about a person who tried to get…
The lawsuit filed last year by Bush Library protesters alleging that Dallas’ ordinance banning hand-held signs from within 75 feet of highways violated the First Amendment has been in a holding pattern for several months while the city worked to revise its rule. That process wrapped up last week when…
Yesterday, with the state’s attention still glued to Wendy Davis’ Trailergate, competing groups attempted to roll Greg Abbott’s wheelchair into the gubernatorial debate. First came James O’Keefe’s latest undercover video showing a Battleground Texas volunteer identified as attorney Lisa Wortham (the “Lewisville Team Leader”) saying “I’m really wondering how this…
Just how strict is Yellow Cab about putting safe, responsible cab drivers on the road? That answer depends on which day you’re talking to Yellow Cab. On Tuesday, for instance, Yellow Cab’s owner Jack Bewley gave a long speech at City Hall’s special transportation meeting touting how safe and responsible…
For those who think free speech is an absolute right that shouldn’t be lightly trifled with, this morning’s City Council meeting offered an unpleasant spectacle. It wasn’t so much that the council voted 10-4 to pass an ordinance outlawing “conduct that is intended to distract the attention of motorists” (i.e…
This morning, the Dallas City Council unanimously approved a $3.3 million contract, mostly for pulling tires from the Trinity River. Everyone agreed that the thousands of abandoned tires that litter the greenbelt (3,000 were recovered during a minor city-led cleanup last summer) need to be removed. The discussion, then, turned…
The Dallas Morning News’ Wayne Slater may have suggested that Wendy Davis owes her success to her ex-husband, but he did so subtly and in the context of an article that outlines small but significant discrepancies in the rags-to-riches autobiography she’s been peddling on the campaign trail. The Internet and…
The Dallas Morning News clearly wanted to publish a story reporting that Wendy Davis exaggerated about growing up poor while raising kids on her own. That’s plain by the title of its big feature on the Sunday front page: “As Wendy Davis touts life story in race for governor, key…
In the end, it was unanimous. Each member of the Dallas City Council voted this morning to hire A.C. Gonzalez as city manager. Gonzalez, a 15-year veteran at City Hall, has been serving as interim city manager since Mary Suhm stepped down last year. His role in the Uber scandal…
This week, The Dallas Morning News is profiling the three finalists to become Dallas’ next city manager. Yesterday, it was interim City Manger/Uber crusher A.C. Gonzalez. Tomorrow, it’s Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana’s turn. But today? Today belonged to David Cooke, who recently retired as the head bureaucrat in Wake…
Duncanville has a new interim city manager, and barely into her new job, Lynda Humble is already trying to shake up the way City Council formats its meeting agenda packet, a proposal that has proved to be surprisingly controversial. “A new agenda format has been created to establish a more…
Nothing gets the cash flowing into a Texas Republican’s re-election campaign quite like a plot by coastal liberal elites to turn Texas into a dystopian failed state that will probably be powered by aborted fetuses. So the fundraising email Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst sent on Wednesday urging supporters to “stand…
This past legislative session, a schism emerged in Texas’ pro-life movement. Suddenly, some of the state’s staunchest abortion opponents, including many who helped shepherd Texas’ sweeping crackdown on the procedure into law, found themselves tarred as anti-life. The reason? They supported a bill to reform end-of-life care. The measure, which…
March. That’s when the Dallas City Council will finally decide whether to ban single-use plastic (and paper) bags. That was the takeaway from today’s council briefing on the subject, the umpteenth since Councilman Dwaine Caraway launched his crusade last March. For the first hour of the meeting, it looked as…
When campaign fundraising totals for the Texas governor’s race were announced on Tuesday, Wendy Davis’ team celebrated that their $12.2 million haul bested Greg Abbott’s $11.5 million. Abbott’s team accused her of “fuzzy math” for counting $3.5 million donated to the Texas Victory Committee, which splits its funds between the…
State Senator Wendy Davis’ campaign has experienced a couple of hiccups in recent weeks. Her attack on rival Greg Abbott for being in the pocket of payday lenders backfired after her campaign grossly miscalculated the industry’s contributions and neglected to mention that she had previously voted for the payday lending…
Today, in the first of three public forums on taxi and limo regulations, City Council members learned what has been clear since Dallas began its crackdown on Uber: The system, particularly for taxis, is completely rigged. That’s partly by design. Historically, because cabs fill an important gap in the local…
When Texas passed its version of the castle doctrine in 2007, allowing homeowners to shoot burglars without fear of repercussions, support in the Texas Legislature was nearly unanimous; of 180 lawmakers, only 13 voted nay. Almost as many legislators (136) co-authored or sponsored the bill, as Democrats and Republicans alike…
