The North Texas Tollway Authority has been taking an increasingly punitive approach to chasing down toll scofflaws. First came the public shaming, then the lawsuits. Now, it could start impounding cars. A bill to give the NTTA the power to block vehicle registrations and ban cars from its tollways (this…
Burton Knight didn’t set out trying to pick a fight with the city of Dallas. He just wanted a xeriscaped lawn, so he pulled up the green turf in front of his Abrams Road home and put in drought-tolerant cactus, mesquite, yucca, agave and dotted the landscape with large, roughly…
The Dallas Voice broke the news Tuesday that Councilman Scott Griggs had won the support from a majority of his colleagues for a resolution supporting marriage equality and would be putting the item on the City Council agenda for a vote. “It’s timely, and it’s relevant,” Griggs later told the…
Last night, a bill to fund water projects across the state died an ignominious death in the Texas House of Representatives. This was strange because it looked like the rails had been thoroughly greased. During his State of the State back in January, Gov. Rick Perry made the case for…
Voters didn’t mince words in 2005, when they added Article I, Section 32 to the Texas Constitution. “Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman,” it says. “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any…
When the city, AT&T and golfing legend Lee Trevino gathered at City Hall last November to announce plans for a PGA-caliber golf course in southern Dallas, they were long on such adjectives as “game changer” and “world-class” but short on details, like where the tens of millions of dollars to…
“I am pretty sure I am not a sick human being,” California comic artist Jack Ohman wrote on his blog this week. But some folks in Texas, including the governor, are pretty sure he is. Ohman published the above comic this week in the Sacramento Bee, the daily newspaper in…
Goat Island Preserve is a comma of 348 acres hugging the Trinity River as it meanders through an unincorporated portion of far southeastern Dallas County. It’s surrounded by gravel pits and crisscrossed with crude four-wheeler trails but is otherwise a rather wild and seldom visited tangle of land. County officials…
At 10 a.m. today, the tweets and media reports previewing the George W. Bush Presidential Center in increasingly granular detail will reach a crescendo as the center is dedicated. Every media outlet in the known universe is there, which explains your exploding Twitter feed. Unfair Park is the exception. The…
A couple of speakers showed up at the 1500 Marilla this morning to ask that the City Council to hold off on a fast-moving proposal to rename the Dallas Convention Center after recently retired U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Former councilwoman Sandra Crenshaw called for a public hearing before any…
The House just voted 64-82 against reauthorizing the Texas Lottery Commission.— Dave Montgomery (@daveymontgomery) April 23, 2013 Big news coming out of the Texas House this afternoon. Lawmakers there were considering HB 2197, which would tweak the structure of the Texas Lottery Commission. More importantly, the bill would allow the…
It’s no secret that Councilwoman Vonciel Jones Hill doesn’t approve of homosexuality. It’s why she’s made refusing to participate in the city’s gay pride parade an annual ritual, once explaining to the Voice that, while we are all God’s children, “there are acts that God does not bless.” Hill is…
Updated on April 23: April Reiling, the town’s marketing manager, says the Town Council defeated the logo on a vote of 3-2. Mayor Connie White was absent from the meeting but, even had she been there and voted for the new design, it wouldn’t have made a difference since a…
Last week we told you about a group of activists who were suing the City of Dallas, claiming they’re being illegally barred from participating in a protest during SMU’s dedication this week of the new George W. Bush Presidential Center. On Friday, noting a “strong public interest in the freedom…
The first tweet hurt Steve Stockman’s feelings a little. It read, in full: “YOU ARE A STUPID FAT FUCK.” “I haven’t actually put on any weight lately,” Stockman writes in an email. “And though I’m not thin, I think ‘fat’ would be an overstatement.” The next few tweets, all similarly…
If you want an idea of the near stranglehold payday lenders have on the Texas Legislature, the Senate floor was the place to be today. That’s where Senator John Carona watched as his payday lending bill was picked apart by colleagues, many of whom were taking calls from industry lobbyists…
U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert is once again contributing to the public discourse, drawing connections between the attack during the Boston Marathon and immigration reform. On CSPAN’s Washington Journal today, Gohmert, a Republican from East Texas, expressed concern over ethnicity-shifting terrorists aiming to abuse the U.S. immigration system: “We know that…
Six long-time progressive activists have filed suit against the city of Dallas, claiming they’re being illegally barred from protesting the April 25 dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The group says they were threatened with arrest if they show up at the dedication; the suit was first filed…
Mexico owes Texas water. And as the current drought presses onward, Texas politicians are trying to turn up the heat to get Mexico to pay. Last Friday, the Texas House voted unanimously on a resolution that the federal government should pressure Mexico deliver water to the United States. The same…
In the past couple of years, the city of Dallas has begun to turn away from the glorified gumball machines that have stood sentry over downtown parking for decades in favor of more modern technologies. A hundred credit card-processing meters now dot the Arts District, West End, and City Hall…
Its been almost four years since the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, in hopes of making a bit more scratch, rolled out a line of customizable license plates. Drivers can now select from a large buffet of completely legal plate designs celebrating Dr Pepper, Jesus, the late Dale Earnhardt and…
The Texas Legislative Study Group is a caucus of around 50 Democratic representatives from the Texas House, and they’re real buzzkills. The LSG keeps a full-time staff of policy analysts around, who almost every year since 2003 have released a report called “Texas on the Brink,” detailing all the most…
