I know Rowdy is gone and we haven’t lifted a sports championship trophy this millennium, but it could’ve been much, much worse. As in, we almost had a sleezeball for a mayor and – more ominous – we were almost all blown to smithereens. While we were busy diagramming a…
Council member Angela Hunt has nominated Dr. Bill Peterson, a professor of biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center, to replace term-limited Neil Emmons on the city plan commission. Peterson’s term as Hunt’s appointee to the city’s senior affairs commission expired Wednesday, and Hunt expects the city council to approve the…
Some time today, the Dallas City Council will approve City Manager Mary Suhm’s FY2009-2010 budget. And as a sort of preview, District 14 rep Angela Hunt last night posted a flashback to last year’s budget vote, when she warned on September 24, 2008, that “this budget is overly optimistic …..
Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison are sure to grab most of the headlines between now and the March 2 primary elections as they trade insults while seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination, but Kinky Friedman spices up an otherwise bland field of Democratic candidates. The author and…
It took Mayor Tom Leppert approximately two years to accomplish what no one else in Dallas could: begin building a convention center hotel. And hundreds of assorted politicos, city officials, business leaders and supporters were on hand Tuesday afternoon at the site of the Omni Dallas Convention Center Hotel to…
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison criticized Governor Rick Perry in a speech to the local Republican Jewish Coalition this afternoon, claiming Texas has the country’s highest property taxes, an education system with the worst dropout rate in the nation and a government growing faster than the federal government with more than…
So, let’s see … we’ve got those Victory Park shirts. That Leppert poster. Maybe a Schutze tee or two. Guess it’s time to open up an Unfair Park store, now that our very own Alexander Flores has taken our Friend Heywood U. Buzzoff’s suggestion and turned Angela Hunt’s “hell of…
Dunno how we missed this one, but on her blog yesterday Angela Hunt took a long, hard look at City Manager Mary Suhm’s proposed FY 2009-2010 budget and wrote at great length about her most major concern: the pile of debt that would result from bond projects proposed in the…
Don’t know how we missed word of the Whole Foods “buycott,” which kicked off Tuesday night in St. Louis and at the Preston Forest location. Read about it in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, where author Meghan Daum brings word of the National Tea Party’s response to the response to…
In this week’s paper version of Unfair Park, Schutze uses two of Mayor Tom Leppert’s top political consultants — Carol Reed and Mari Woodlief — to explain why the mayor is hardly the “Angel of Ethics” despite the new lobbying rules presented (per some council members’ requests, behind closed doors)…
Tuesday morning, Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka took note of Schutze’s column from July, in which Jim got a no-nuthin’ from the mayor and his peoples concerning his interest in running for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s could-come-open Senate seat. Wrote Burka, he’s never taken the idea seriously, as big-city mayors haven’t done…
In case you missed it, over the weekend the Texas Nationalist Movement — whose motto is “Independence. In Our Lifetime.” — held a rally in Austin demanding secession now or else goddamnit. And tomorrow is the TNM’s “National Day of Action,” during which organizers want folks to call Governor Rick…
Kinky Friedman’s been running for Texas governor ever since, oh, March, far as I can figure; that’s when he told folks at the Texas Film Hall of Fame dinner in Austin he was running as a Democrat this go-round, rather than the indie he ran as in ’06. He’s already…
With the role of consultants in the city under the microscope because of what we’ve learned in the Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial, it seemed like a good time to check in on newbie Tanya Watkins, who started Grassroots Strategies in March, seeing how she’s the wife of the…
At last, another council member with a blog: Ann Margolin, who’s penned a little sumpin-sumpin about the budget by way of an invite to one her town hall meetings. Specifically, Margolin writes, she’s opposed to the increase in water and stormwater fees as proposed by City Manager Mary Suhm. The…
Jerry Killingsworth had lots to say while on the stand as a witness in the City Hall corruption trial — including how distrustful he was of FBI informant Bill Fisher — but his uneasy demeanor made us wonder what the city’s housing department director was trying to keep secret. Turns…
Its been more than a month since word broke that the United States Postal Service was considering — or, rather, planning on — moving some operations out of the Dallas Main Post Office on I-30 to a facility in Coppell. Since then, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and Mayor Tom Leppert…
Representatives from Preservation Dallas and the Landmark Commission met yesterday morning with the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee and first assistant city attorney Chris Bowers to hammer out the details of a proposed ordinance aimed at expediting the demolition of historic structures, but once again, the committee voted to delay the…
Rick Perry came to Dallas yesterday for a bill-signing — two months after he’d signed the bill.Then he swung by Opening Bell on South Lamar for some coffee-talk with campaign workers, which was closed to the media but open to YouTube. Drink up…
“Did Kay Bailey Hutchison cross an ethical line by supporting a rail line that is a payday for her husband?” That’s the question addressed in this morning’s Texas Watchdog piece written by former Observer-er Matt Pulle, who examines the Texas gubernatorial candidate’s involvement in procuring funds for Dallas Area Rapid…
Texas Workforce Commission chairman and Dallas resident Tom Pauken has informed the offices of Governor Rick Perry and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst of his interest in running for U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat. “I’m taking a look at it, but I’m a long way from making a decision to…
Haven’t yet seen those Obama-Joker posters — then again, I clearly haven’t been downtown in a few days. At least some members of the Alex Jones street team have been posting black-and-white copies of University of Illinois senior history major Firas Alkhateeb’s Photoshop project ’round Dallas; after the jump, “2…
