It took 20 years to kill the plan for a high-speed toll road on top of the river that runs through the center of the city. The reward for that long divisive struggle is a moment of relative calm when we can think about what actually should happen with the…
Last week I got an important fact wrong in a story about a troubled apartment complex in far West Dallas. I said the agency responsible for enforcing basic standards there over a period of years was the Dallas Housing Authority. That was not true. In fact, an entity in Austin…
The picture at City Hall is coming into focus. Almost two years ago the old city manager got kicked out. It had become too obvious that he was subverting the public interest in favor of a small cabal of private interests. We got a new guy. His job was to…
Monday The Dallas Morning News made some great points in an editorial about racial segregation in the city and the Trump administration’s troubling initiative to de-emphasize desegregation in national housing policy. The defect in the editorial — the thing always left unsaid in Dallas — is that segregation is what…
Everybody always says the schools should be the No. 1 issue in the city. I wonder how we’ll take it when that idea suddenly comes true? Maybe well, maybe not very well at all. Gov. Greg Abbott has been giving off strong signals in recent weeks that he thinks the…
We are easy talking about shootings according to the law. We all jump in. The one thing nobody ever seems to talk about is shooting according to the heart and soul.
This is from way out in the boondocks here in Dallas, Texas, so far from the nation’s capital we have to take its existence on faith, but we’ve got feelings, too, you know. In fact I feel a very strong need to tell somebody how I’m feeling about the anonymous…
In a speech to the Dallas City Council on Wednesday, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, the longest serving and most influential black elected leader in the city, warned that the most serious threat to racial amity in the city comes from white liberals. It was vintage Price. The 68-year-old…
Here it comes, the 2019 Dallas mayor’s race, and it is going to be a filthy replay of the 2005 “strong mayor” election in which the business oligarchy jammed its thumb down hard on the race button. The preview is playing now on social media. It’s a corny video with…
You are forgiven if you think it’s too early to talk about the May 2019 mayoral election in Dallas. In fact, I would forgive you if you still felt the same way in May 2019, because maybe you have other fish to fry. Is the next mayoral election going to…
At the very core of the Hurricane Harvey story is a writing problem that has bedeviled me ever since Harvey hit Houston a year ago. When Harvey struck Houston in August 2017, it tied with Katrina in New Orleans a dozen years earlier: Together, they are the two costliest tropical…
OK, this just in, we’ve got the playbook now for the next Dallas mayor’s race, and it falls somewhere on a line between, “Oh, no, not again,” “Tell me you’re kidding,” “Wait, wait, this might be cool” and “Bring it!” Monday, The Dallas Morning News fired the opening salvo with…
Practice forgetfulness. Forget about the bitterness over the new statewide grading system for schools and school districts. Forget the whole debate over school reform in Dallas. For two seconds, do the good kind of forgetfulness. Now ponder this: The overwhelming objective evidence is that the Dallas public school system has…
Put yourself in John Carney’s shoes. He’s got to wonder if he and his clients have some special thundercloud or mark following them around. Two years ago the mayor of Dallas named and listed several of Carney’s clients as “high impact landlords” whom the mayor was targeting in a special…
Gov. Greg Abbott and Dallas School board member Miguel Solis held dueling press conferences Tuesday at public school campuses barely a mile apart in East Dallas, Abbott calling for higher pay for teachers and Solis asking where the money is. Unspoken was a startling new theme shared by both sides:…
I’m from Dallas. I was late to see the 2015 movie Spotlight, about a sex scandal involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. I saw it last January in a suburban theater in the San Francisco Bay Area with my sister and brother-in-law, who are from Chicago. For me, it…
One moment please while I adjust my tinfoil hat. I hate it when the antenna tilts sideways like this. OK, got it. I am coming to you from my special broadcast booth high atop Mount Paranoia. And let me tell you something: Paranoia is a tough job, but somebody’s got…
This is not a column predicting that the two cable-stayed bridges jointly called the Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River near downtown Dallas are going to collapse like the catastrophic bridge failure in Genoa, Italy, Tuesday. But it is a column noting disturbing parallels. First is bridge design. A…
This is too spooky. They erased Dwaine Caraway. The very recently former Dallas City Council member’s name and image were expunged from City Hall the night after he pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges last week. Name plaque on the horseshoe dais in the council chamber: SCRAPE! Gone! Portrait in…
This is a letter from Jim Schutze to: 42 Deep Ellum, LP, Al Rousan & Wared Corp, Clarence & Gina Anderson, Apartment Association of Greater Dallas, Mr. & Mrs. Richard Ashton, Victor Ballas, Jackie Bewley, Mason Brown III, Comerica Inc. Political Action, Louis Corna, Trammell Crow, Dallas Citizen Council, Dallas…
There must be some ancient instinct buried somewhere in our Cro-Magnon genetic roots that makes people start squealing and whining like they’re going to die if you dare suggest there might be something wrong with their kids. And not just their own kids but kids who are in their care…
Today the Dallas City Council goes into closed-door executive session, away from the eyes and ears of the taxpayers, to decide if the taxpayers should pick up the tab for the legal defense of City Council member Dwaine Caraway, who has been accused in a lawsuit of racketeering. Get out…
