May 25, 2012

NEWS OF THE WEEK

Booming business: Jobs increase, towns thrive as result of oil, gas spike

The energy business is booming in the eastern Texas Panhandle, and the impact is hard to miss, from constant convoys of oil and gas trucks rumbling through Canadian to apartment buildings going up in Wheeler.

ARTICLE

Parties to ask Texas voters’ opinions on several major issues

Casino gambling, public prayer, redistricting, making college affordable. These are among the issues Texans will get to weigh in on when they head to the polls to cast ballots in the May 29 primaries. In addition to voting for candidates for office, Republicans and Democrats will be asked a series of issue questions to help party leaders gauge how to handle some high-profile subjects.

ARTICLE

Strama, Webber: Praying for rain not a water plan

Texas suffered through a record-setting drought in 2011 the worst single-year drought in Texas recorded history with record high temperatures that made a bad situation even worse. And don’t let the recent rains fool you: We’re not out of the woods yet.

ARTICLE

Texas primary campaigns turn nasty in run-up

Texas politicians and their operatives have been throwing around a four-letter word that begins with L lately, and it’s not love. Two candidates running for the U.S. Senate have called each other a liar, and that bald-faced allegation has echoed down the ballot. The name-calling reached its logical conclusion last week when incumbent Republican Sen. Jeff Wentworth sued former Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones for slander and libel for a particularly nasty, mudslinging campaign.

ARTICLE

Social conservatives face challenges in SBOE primary

Conservatives and moderates get a rare opportunity this year to try to stack the State Board of Education with members who will help shape public education in the way each side considers best for Texas school children. All 15 seats are up for re-election this year due to once-a-decade redistricting to reflect population changes.

ARTICLE

Central Texas pinched for poll workers

This month’s back-to-back elections have spawned more than just voter fatigue. Election officials in Central Texas are struggling to find workers to staff the polls with election day only a week away. A lengthy legal battle over redistricting pushed the primaries — normally held in March — back to May 29, just a few weeks after the May 12 local elections and a day after Memorial Day.

ARTICLE

It’s now a seller’s market in Central Texas, real estate experts say

The Central Texas housing market has turned in sellers’ favor, with homes going to the swift, multiple offers making a comeback and prices creeping higher, local real estate agents and housing experts say. Activity continued on an upward trend in April, with home sales increasing for the 11th straight month, the Board of Realtors said Monday.

ARTICLE

Texas puts more people in treatment and fewer people in prison

On the eve of their release, inmates in their prison whites file silently into the churchly light of the Chapel of Hope in the Texas State Penitentiary. They slide into the pews for the “Welcome Back” program conducted by the Rev. Emmett Solomon, the former chief chaplain for the Texas prisons, who, in his soft, unhurried drawl, offers a few words of wisdom.

ARTICLE

UT/TT Poll: Anti-Tax Pledges Lack Majority Support

Tax pledges don’t appeal to everyone, but they appeal strongly to the most conservative Texans, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. Just over a third of those polled — 36 percent — agreed that “candidates should pledge not to raise taxes before the primary elections.” But 47 percent went the other way, agreeing that “candidates should not make pledges before the fiscal situation is clear.

ARTICLE

Voter discrimination deep in heart of Texas

Texas has challenged the constitutionality of a key section of the Voting Rights Act, part of its efforts to get a controversial voter ID measure federally approved. In another case, a federal three-judge panel recently gave the state its answer: Texas is so, so wrong on so many levels. This involved a case from Shelby County, Alabama.

ARTICLE

More Texans enroll in boater safety course, state says

A Central Texas Republican primary contest for the State Board of Education is shaping up to become one of the races that could define the board for years to come. Each of the 15 seats on the State Board of Education is on the ballot this year, but only seven are truly competitive. All but one of those races will probably be decided by the May 29 primary.

ARTICLE

Juvenile justice officials disagree on reopening Waco-area lockup

As state officials struggle to find a solution to the spiking violence inside Texas’ state-run juvenile lockups, 32 mothballed bunks at a prisonlike facility near Waco have become the center of a policy stalemate that is being blamed for slowing a resolution for months, officials confirmed Thursday.

ARTICLE

TexMessage: Flores calls for an easing of ‘burdensome’ hydraulic fracturing regulations

Congressman Bill Flores toured an Enervest hydraulic fracturing site yesterday in Texas’ Barnett Shale region, and called for a reduction in “burdensome” regulations on the hydraulic fracturing process, saying that would help boost America’s “economic recovery and job creation.”

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Lawmakers want to curb Texas obesity

Obesity, diabetes and climbing health-care costs for treating diseases related to an unhealthy lifestyle will have renewed attention in 2013 as lawmakers try to improve Texans’ access to nutritious food.

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Senator urges funding to be restored to prevent child abuse

The epidemic of child abuse and neglect in Bexar County is embarrassing and appalling, and state funding must be restored to properly prevent it, public officials said during a news conference Wednesday.

ARTICLE

WEEKLY REPORT

May 11, 2012

Texas sales tax revenue up 10.9 percent in April, comptroller says

Texas registered another month of strong sales tax collections in April, with revenue increasing to $2.07 billion, a 10.9 percent increase over the same month last year, the state comptroller’s office said Wednesday.

 (View complete article here.)

Medicaid spending grows faster than tax revenue

Texas’ share for providing health care to poor children, impoverished elderly people and those with disabilities is growing faster than tax revenues to pay for services, creating another state budget challenge next year, top agency officials told lawmakers Monday.

(View complete article here.)

OPINION: We ought to know the price of education

The hot mess that Texas calls a school finance system clearly needs to be fixed. It’s unfair and incomprehensible. And it’s not based on hard numbers: We don’t, as a state, know what it should cost for an efficient school to do a good job of educating a student.

(View complete article here.)

State Rep Unveils Website to Talk School Accountability

Next education commissioner facing big challenges

The state’s much-criticized new standardized testing regime was suspended this year, school districts are suing the state over funding and parents are irate over school budget cuts. The new hire will also have to balance the governor’s policy of frugality with school administrators’ demands that he or she represent their needs in Austin.

Texas cities fighting back against payday loans

Thousands of Texans have been caught in a cycle of debt because they took out a payday loan, and several cities across the state are fighting back.

(View complete article here.)

Serious oil and gas regulators needed in boom times

Start with the basics in the Republican primary races for two seats on the Railroad Commission:

The 700-employee agency should be called the Oil & Gas Commission to better reflect its regulatory role. At one time, it held regulatory power over railroads, but no more.

Former hard-core juvenile offenders want to help North Texas kids from following in their footsteps

Last weekend, I was surrounded by five ex-offenders, all admittedly former “hard-core juvenile” criminals who had been locked up for a total of 70 years.

Jay Kimbrough Returns to Youth Agency in Trouble

The man who has become Gov. Rick Perry‘s problem solver, Jay Kimbrough, is going back to the state’s juvenile justice agency, which is facing a crisis again five years after the last time he helped bail the agency out of a major scandal.

Senators’ nasty emails refer to personal lives

Republican senators who are potential candidates for lieutenant governor duked it out in an email brawl sparked when Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston accused Sen. John Carona of Dallas of spreading lies about Patrick’s marriage.

(View complete article here.)

Texas PTA has entered into a partnership with Belo-owned TV stations around the state to run 30 second TV ads SBOE 30 to educate voters about the candidates for the State Board of Education (SBOE). Voters can go to Belo websites to get information about the candidates and in most cities to see interviews the stations have conducted with the candidates for the SBOE or to the Texas PTA website, www.txpta.org.

Just as with legislative and congressional districts, SBOE districts must by redrawn after every decennial census and this election cycle, starting with the primary on May 29, is likely to see changes in the membership on the SBOE.

WEEKLY REPORT

May 4, 2012

BP to begin restoration in Gulf, but Texas holding out

About $60 million worth of coastal restoration projects to be paid for by British petroleum giant BP PLC are about to begin in every Gulf Coast state except Texas.

 (View complete article here.)

With $12 million in bank, Abbott waits for higher-office dominoes to fall

Like other top Republican politicians in Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott is closely watching whether there might be openings soon for Lieutenant Governor or Governor.

 (View complete article here.)

Education Commissioner Scott to resign

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott will resign in July after five years on the front lines of the state’s public education battles, the agency announced Tuesday.

(View complete article here.)

Editorial: Next education chief should aim high

Planned Parenthood funding in limbo again, thanks to latest court ruling

In an abrupt shift in fortunes for Planned Parenthood, a late-night order from a federal appeals court judge allowed Texas to drop the organization from the Women’s Health Program on Tuesday.

Help foster care kids stay in school, achieve more

Many of our foster youths change schools so often that community and family relationships are lost, school records disappear, and course credits don’t transfer.

 (View complete article here.)

Arlington to consider banning smoking at workplaces

A City Council committee will soon explore whether Arlington should join a growing list of Texas cities — including Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — that ban all smoking at workplaces.

(View complete article here.)

At UT, disgraced lobbyist Abramoff lectures on ethics

When an ethical case study concerns one of the most notorious lobbyists in U.S history, one might expect to hear about Jack Abramoff, not from him.

Texas Association of Business throws support behind group of charter school supporters in school finance litigation

The Texas Association of Business has joined the ongoing school finance litigation and thrown its political heft behind a group of charter school supporters involved in the case.

Hang up the phone and drive safely

The statistics on distracted driving are ominous. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2009 — the last year for which such statistics are available — 5,474 people were killed in crashes involving driver distraction, accounting for 16 percent of fatal crashes reported that year.

Summer will be hotter, drier than normal, forecast says

Though hotter-than-normal temperatures are forecast for most of Texas this summer, including Dallas-Fort Worth, the region probably won’t face the drought conditions confronting West Texas, the Panhandle and the Rio Grande Valley.

(View complete article here.)

Judge halts state rule requiring parents to go with kids to Medicaid appointments

State health officials must stop, at least temporarily, requiring that a parent or guardian accompany children on Medicaid appointments, a Travis County judge ruled Thursday. Health officials responded that the order could endanger children and hamper fraud-prevention efforts.

Editorial: Texas gets tough, and smart, on crime

You may not expect Texas to be scoring points for progressive reform on criminal justice issues, but when the national board of directors for the American Civil Liberties Union met in Houston last month, the organization’s executive director, Anthony Romero, came with words of praise.

Conservatives urge state to abolish property taxes

Conservative groups urged Texas lawmakers Thursday to do away with property taxes — a major source of funding for school districts and cities — and make up the loss through the sales tax and other means.

(View complete article here.)

Reports of Violence Spur Call for Change at Youth Jails

Five years after instituting a sweeping overhaul in the wake of sexual and physical abuse scandals at Texas youth lockups, a senior lawmaker is again calling the situation at the facilities a crisis that jeopardizes the safety of youths.

(View complete article here.)

Editorial: Juvenile justice reform pays off

Several years ago, Texas’ youth corrections system was in a state of disrepair, holding thousands of kids and entangled in a massive sex abuse scandal. Since then, Texas has implemented sweeping reform, shifting the burden of handling juvenile nonviolent offenders from the state to counties.

Studies show the number of young licensed drivers is on the decline

Late-night bike rides have become the norm for Anthony Phung, a University of Texas at Dallas freshman who is among a growing number of young people choosing not to get a driver’s license.

(View complete article here.)

WEEKLY REPORT

April 27, 2012

Let’s raise loan limits at credit unions

The No 1 issue for small businesses is having access to capital. It’s the difference between success and failure, job growth and unemployment and a successful start-up or a going-out-of-business sign.

 (View complete article here.)

Back restrictions on payday lenders

Businesses that deal in small dollar amount, high-interest loans that have been successful in beating back attempts to regulate them in the Texas Legislature will be squaring off with the Austin City Council today.

Money is available to restore public school funding

Recently, public school students began taking the new, more rigorous STAAR exam. In light of the new exam, a pop quiz seems appropriate: How much did the leadership of this state cut from the public education budget during the 82nd Legislative Session? A) No money was cut; B) Schools actually received a funding increase; or C) $5.4 billion.

(View complete article here.)

1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed

The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work. A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.

(View complete article here.)

Report: Texas Medical Residency Slots Not Keeping Up

Responding to calls to meet the state’s physician shortage, Texas medical schools have increased their enrollment by roughly 30 percent in the last decade. But the slots available for students to complete their medical residencies in Texas are not keeping pace, according to a new report from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

HBO Obesity Series Showing Texas Schools Debuts

The four-part series, The Weight of the Nation, is part of a public health campaign aimed at reducing obesity. Part three of the series, “Children in Crisis,” was shown Monday at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

(View complete article here.)

Conflicts mar decision on stem cells

The Texas Medical Board, like other official state boards and commissions, is a political entity. Its 12 physician members and seven public members are all appointed by the governor.

Editorial: When new math goes old school in Texas

The State Board of Education, which oversees curriculum in Texas public schools, is talking about taking elementary school math back to the basics — as in requiring students to use paper and pencil to figure out math problems instead of plugging numbers into a calculator then hitting =.

 (View complete article here.)

Clock Ticking on $2B Sales Tax Refund for Oil Companies

The Travis County District Court ruling held that machinery used to extract oil and gas is exempt from Texas sales tax. The Texas Comptroller’s office, defendant in the suit, estimated that approximately $2 billion in potential refund claims could be affected by the decision.

U.S. gasoline prices now cheaper than a year ago

After dropping for most of the month, gasoline is now cheaper in much of the U.S. than it was a year ago. That hasn’t happened in more than two years, and it could be part of a larger decline in gasoline prices that could lift consumer confidence ahead of the summer driving season.

(View complete article here.)

OPINION: Why are oil prices falling?

Last week I paid 10-cents-a-gallon less for gasoline than I did the week before, at the same service station. While $3.79 seemed a bargain, it did cause me to wonder.

(View complete article here.)

Judge reconsiders multibillion-dollar question: Should sales tax be paid on oil equipment?

State District Judge John Dietz said Thursday that he is reconsidering his decision two weeks ago to exempt oil and gas extraction equipment from the state sales tax.

Justice Department moves to postpone state’s voter ID case

A motion by the federal government in the fight over Texas’s voter identification statute could jeopardize chances that the law would be in place for November’s elections.

Political activists disagree on conservatism

Voters hear candidates claim they are the true conservative in a race, while they paint their competitors with the dreaded “moderate” label. Political action committees and activists create elaborate score cards to quantify a candidate’s conservatism.

(View complete article here.)

Editorial: We recommend Crownover in state House 64 GOP race

Republican voters in Texas House District 64 have a choice between a seasoned, reasonable incumbent and an enthusiastic newcomer. Our recommendation goes to Rep. Myra Crownover, 64, who is completing her sixth term representing Denton County. She has spent that time learning the ropes in Austin, building key relationships at home and advancing to a position of influence.

(View complete article here.)

OPINION: Hart: Texas leaders with balanced approach need to step up

 Last Friday, I wrote a column questioning why no Texas business leaders are challenging Gov. Rick Perry‘s recent “no new taxes” compact – even though it means the state will delay badly needed investment in infrastructure like roads and water, or in educating a sufficient health care workforce.

Understand uncertainties to ready for water future

Tribune Fest: The Impact of the Eagle Ford Shale

 As part of our day-long symposium on energy and the environment at the University of Houston on April 13, UH Law Center Assistant Professor Tracy Hester led a discussion of the economic and environmental impact of the Eagle Ford Shale.

Lawmakers say reforms may not be working at state’s youth lockups

As the former superintendent of the Giddings State School claimed in a lawsuit that he was fired in March for reporting violations of state law and growing safety issues at the troubled lockup, a legislative inquiry was expanded Wednesday to focus on whether 5-year-old reforms to the troubled system are still working.

ATF: Two-Thirds of Guns Recovered in Mexico From U.S.

About two-thirds of the weapons recovered by Mexican authorities since 2007 and submitted to U.S. law enforcement for tracing had origins in the United States, according to data released today by the U.S. Department of Justice.