Let me ask you a hypothetical question. Imagine your neighbor has a burned-out VW van, six broken, badly stained toilets and part of a rotten skateboard ramp in his front yard. You call the city on him. How would you like it if the city inspector told the guy he…

Now we know. We can predict future local elections. Based on the outcomes in the just-concluded Dallas City Council elections, we have a reliable yardstick by which to know in advance who’s going to lose, who’s going to win and what the real issue is. To know who’s going to…

Let’s make sure we don’t lose sight of one extremely interesting aspect of the big local political turnover that just happened. One of the most surprising outcomes in last Saturday’s City Council runoff elections, the victory of challenger Omar Narvaez over incumbent Monica Alonzo in District 6 in West Dallas,…

Tenants, the landlord and the judge in the HMK mass-evictions case in West Dallas cobbled together an 11th-hour deal Thursday afternoon, hours after a protective court order expired, with some help from Catholic Charities of Dallas. It should mean that even some tenants eight months in arrears on rent will…

Dallas is changing because the ground is shifting. The arrival of new, young players and their gradual ascent into elective office is altering the city’s dreams of itself. The new city has visions that the old city fears. Handing big assets such as Fair Park and the Trinity River off…

It has taken a while — half a year — but it looks like we are finally about to get our first good rubber-meets-the-road test of Dallas’ new city manager and new city attorney. Until now, they’ve been all about pretty talk and deck chairs. Both the new manager, T.C…

I can tell you exactly what the vote fraud is in West Dallas, where a Dallas City Council runoff election will be decided Saturday. It’s terrible. The fraud is the turnout. And to the extent that any other narrative serves to keep people away from the polls, that narrative is…

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t get what Dallas’ aversion to most government-subsidized affordable housing is really all about? The best answer is in the two kinds of government-subsidized housing Dallas does like. One is government-subsidized housing for seniors. The second, as we are about to see downtown, is…

It’s a free country, so just say it: If Dallas wants to use legal means to push poor people into the suburbs – assuming no cattle prods – then Dallas can do it. It’s just too bad our city leaders have to be so smarmy-two-faced about it. We’re hearing a…

For a preview of what Democrats will face in 2018 – here, anyway – take a close look at the District 2 Dallas school board runoff election. The Texas and Dallas Democratic Party organizations think they are reproducing the early Tea Party grassroots successes of 15 years ago by providing…

I know politics is politics, and the game goes on. But sometimes a foul ball has to be called foul. I’m not accusing anybody of lying. I just want to make sure we set the record straight. On Tuesday night at a speech celebrating the fifth year of his campaign…

Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs, a careful student of structures, has been keeping track of the City Hall organization chart since the January departures of former City Manager A.C. Gonzalez and former City Attorney Warren Ernst. Their retirements were followed a month later by the arrival of new City…

News reached me when I was out of town that the Dallas City Council will approve a cheaper partial removal of a failed concrete recreational feature in the Trinity River, opting to scrape out the guts of the Standing Wave but leave its ugly bones in place to save $5…

On one hand, you could argue that Monday’s development in West Dallas was a topsy-turvy turning of the tables. The person the mayor has repeatedly slimed as a slumlord turns out to be the knight in shining armor, the only one with a plan to protect a deep-rooted but embattled…

In a startling turnabout in the deadlocked West Dallas war over low-income housing and gentrification, Khraish Khraish, a landlord locked in a battle with the mayor over hundreds of low-rent houses, turned the tables Monday by announcing he will sell 130 of his properties to the current tenants. Mayor Mike…

Dallas City Council member Jennifer Gates has a great idea. Really. She’s right. The city should strongly consider pulling its elections out from under the aegis of the county elections department and run them itself. The county elections department as constituted was born in sin. Its structure is the result…