Trinity Chairman Sees “Many, Many Obstacles” With Turnpike Project

As Schutze mentioned earlier, the council’s Trinity River Corridor Project Committee met this morning to get an update on the Trinity Turnpike, with reps from the North Texas Tollway Authority and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on hand to walk everyone through the PowerPoint presentation. Of most interest was how…

Ann Margolin Leads the Pack As City’s Finance Report Deadline Looms

As we mentioned a while back, District 13 city council candidate Ann Margolin appeared to be the heir apparent to Mitchell Rasansky with a long list of notable supporters and a strong résumé. And as the 5 p.m. deadline approaches for candidates and committees to file their finance reports, Margolin’s…

Al Lipscomb’s grandson LeVar “LD” Thomas seeks council seat

Nearly nine years after he was tried before a federal jury on 65 counts of alleged bribery and conspiracy, 84-year-old civil rights leader Al Lipscomb remains a prominent political icon in southern Dallas. He’s a fixture at Dallas City Council meetings, where he served as District 8’s council member from…

Yeah, But How Much Will the Convention Center Hotel Cost Us in Legal Fees?

The council won’t be voting today on final arrangements for the convention center hotel project, which includes approval of the development agreement and Guaranteed Maximum Price with Matthews Southwest and the operator agreement with Omni Hotels, leading us to believe the final vote on this boondoggle will take place January…

West Banks $3.8 Million From DISD

As addressed in our March 2007 cover story, Senator Royce West is a powerful guy who makes a lot of dough collecting legal fees from the Dallas Independent School District. At the time, former Observer staff writer Matt Pulle reported payments of nearly $2.5 million from DISD to West in…

Prodigious Passer

Despite a solid 51-31 record last year, the Mavs barely made the playoffs, earning the seventh seed in the Western Conference. They proceeded to get their asses handed to them as the New Orleans Hornets won by double digits in three of the first four games on their way to…

Inside the DMN’s Pro-Hotel Editorial

Batty: Three days before Christmas, The Dallas Morning News gave its former parent company, Belo Corp., an early gift by editorializing on behalf of building a publicly owned $525 million convention center hotel. (We say “former parent” because last year Belo spun off its newspaper biz to a new company…

Is Mayor Tom Leppert the Second Coming of Joe McCarthy?

With the exception of strolling over to Schutze’s office, it’s hard to find anyone in the media willing to criticize Mayor Tom, but Advocate publisher Rick Wamre is quickly rising up Leppert’s naughty list, and his blog yesterday on Back Talk might vault him up to the top spot. While…

Top 10 Schutze Columns of ’08

For those looking for some year-end reading during the slow news cycle, consider my personal favorites of the year from Observer columnist Jim Schutze. I refuse to play favorites, so the list is chronological. And since any commentary from me can’t compare to the work itself, a memorable excerpt from…

Who’d Be Mayor If Leppert Left Early? And, Why Would Leppert Do It?

While speaking with one of Mayor Tom Leppert’s consultants last month, I asked if Leppert was considering running for U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat. At that point, I heard he was contemplating the political leap from a few sources, but the response was something along the lines of: “Right…

Grading Rangers GM Jon Daniels’ Third Year

As we mentioned yesterday, Jon Daniels is entering his fourth year as Texas Rangers general manager. He started off with a bang in year one, trading Alfonso Soriano in his first move and dealing Chris Young and Adrian Gonzalez less than two weeks later. Unfortunately, he received very little in…

Leppert “Always Enjoyed” Jennifer Gale

Earlier today, we posted the comment from former mayoral candidate (and current candidate for Dallas County judge) Sam Coats regarding the death of Jennifer Gale. Gale didn’t do as well as Coats in the 2007 battle for Dallas mayor, but she was able to finish ahead of John Cappello and…

A Christmas List for Jon Daniels

Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels, who spent most of last week his colleagues in Las Vegas for baseball’s Winter Meetings, has been relatively quiet as the offseason reaches the halfway point. Thus far, he has dealt Gerald Laird to the Detroit Tigers and Wes Littleton to the Boston Red…