Today we should learn something more about Yigal Lelah, a real estate developer to whom the city granted $4.5 million five years ago to create a high-end mixed-use development across from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Lancaster Road in a poor part of southern Dallas. That development never happened…

Put yourself in Robert Pitre’s shoes. He owns 120 acres right next to the new University of North Texas campus in southern Dallas in an area of the city that is more rural than urban. For one thing, it has no city sewer service. Houses and businesses in the area…

I am still trying to reach Yigal Lelah, the developer on Lancaster Road I wrote about yesterday who seems to have spent $13 a square foot in money the city gave him for a bunch of land the tax appraisal district says is worth $1 to $5 a square foot…

OK, I’d like to fill you in on what I’ve just found out here, but I’m exhausted from the investigative effort. It would help if you were here to fan me. But, no, you’re not, as usual, so I will have to do my best on my own. Last week…

Right after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development accused Dallas last month of massive racial segregation and housing fraud, Mayor Mike Rawlings was all for making nice. That lasted all of two weeks. Now he and the city attorney are telling HUD to go screw itself. Last month,…

One more selfie here: This week I have a story in the print newspaper about City Hall’s efforts to shut down a car wash in a poor neighborhood. It’s actually the second time in a year that photographer Mark Graham and I have worked on a story about Jim’s (no…

This week I have a story in the actual newspaper about Jim’s Car Wash at the corner of MLK Boulevard and Myrtle Street in South Dallas — the business that is the object of an eight-year running battle at City Hall. One important point in that story may get short…

Yesterday The Dallas Morning News carried a really tough, plain-talking editorial condemning City Hall policies that have produced deliberate racial segregation in Dallas. It was the kind of editorial that should be applauded and really doesn’t deserve to be nitpicked. But when did that ever stop me? In a clear…

If I’m blushing — just the slightest tint of rose upon my gray and whiskery cheeks — it’s because my I was back in federal court again yesterday. Sort of. There was mention of me. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor handed down a ruling in the Lockey and MacKenzie (Dallas…

An editor around here once suggested I could probably blackmail people by threatening to lend them my support. I wonder if acting City Manager A.C. Gonzalez ever thinks about that. Last month I wrote a column saying the so-called search for a new Dallas city manager was a sham because…

A reader who is a better student of Mexican history than me (not hard to be, frankly) called with a caveat about plans for a community farm in Mexican-American West Dallas. The idea, cheerfully trumpeted yesterday in a Dallas Morning News editorial, is for some kind of communal farm to…

Brantley Hargrove did a fine job Monday recounting the career of Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who died last Saturday at 82. But before the ground hardens over him, I just want to make sure we take note of the one and only thing anybody may remember about Mr. Simmons 50…

The arrival of a New Year always brings about in me a strange and unaccustomed desire to be un-depressing. And I don’t even drink. I don’t know what does it. This year I’m blaming it on Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston. He and I had an interesting chat about…

Hey, I think I have waited about long enough for The Dallas Morning News to weigh in on the racial segregation complaint lodged against Dallas by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development in early December. A month. Even allowing for Santa Claus and all, a month seems a…

Apparently if you really want to get one of your neighbors to open up about herself, you need to send somebody over to interview her for The New York Times. I learned more about my neighbor Virginia Savage Talkington (lotta names) McAlester from the pages of the Times yesterday than…

Had an interesting chat a while back with Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston about downtown office vacancy rates. Hey! What? It’s what people like us talk about. Just be glad you didn’t get stuck between us on an airplane. It’s interesting. Really. According to the Dallas Business Journal, Dallas…

Not that you asked, but here’s what it’s like to be me. I’m walking my dogs, Penny and Dorothy, up and down alleys in East Dallas, and I’ve got my little cell phone ear-bug deal going so I can talk to people and keep my hands free for clean-ups. And…

We spoke last week about the way city staff is dealing behind the scenes with a recent accusation of racial segregation by the federal government. Maybe we should talk, too, about the way they’re dealing with it in court. Late last month the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development…

The city of Dallas went to federal court earlier this week to stop a federal judge from expressing his opinion about a recent federal investigative report accusing Dallas of practicing racial segregation (the city’s brief is below). Plaintiffs in a whistle-blower lawsuit will come back today with their argument urging…

James Ragland is back writing a metro column for the city’s only daily newspaper, and that’s a good thing. But Ragland, who took a sabbatical from columnizing to do actual journalism, may need to give himself some catch-up time before launching too many more opinion epistles. He wrote a piece…

Normally I don’t do this. I don’t suggest solutions. But in this case, I cannot resist. Last week I met with Mayor Mike Rawlings and his spokesperson, Sam Merten, to discuss an issue I had been writing about a lot — a car wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard…