Thursday’s meeting of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board was an abominable disgrace. Most members of the board turned their backs on taxpayers and fought instead to shield their cronies at the State Fair of Texas from public scrutiny. But, remember: There’s one good thing about abominable disgraces. These are…
We knew Dallas municipal election turnout was bad. Now we know it’s among the worst in the country. A comprehensive new study from Portland State University reveals that Dallas’ 6 percent turnout for the 2015 mayoral election between incumbent Mike Rawlings and Dallas attorney Marcos Ronquillo was the worst among the…
Former three-term Dallas Mayor Robert “Bob” Folsom, the man who brought Reunion Arena and the Dallas Chaparrals to the city after serving on the Dallas ISD school board and lettering in four sports at Southern Methodist University, died Tuesday at his Dallas home. He was 89. Folsom, born on Feb. 15, 1927,…
Last fall, after the Texas Supreme Court refused to hear a case with the potential to limit the impact of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Unites States Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in June 2015. In October, Texas’ Republican leadership, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney…
The federal corruption trial of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, still scheduled to begin next month, will offer a two-month cavalcade of the city’s power elite, according to documents released Thursday by both the prosecution and the defense, but the documents disagree about which side the power elite will…
At the urging of the mayor, the Dallas City Council has abandoned efforts to save 162 lane miles of city streets now in danger of collapsing into an irredeemable condition, even though national bond rating agencies have already successively downgraded the city’s credit rating based in part on deteriorating streets…
Two weeks ago, a 9-5 straw vote by the Dallas City Council pushed back the city’s long-awaited May bond election. Thanks to a variety of factors — Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings cited the unwillingness of those who “write the big checks” to do so for a May bond election while…
In Austin, a season of gun bills has begun in the 2017 legislative session. There are 28 gun bills introduced in the House and the 12 gun bills introduced in the Senate. They appear on the heels of 2015 victories for gun rights activists, with the passage both of open carry…
Fine. Any day now Dallas is going to go hat-in-hand down to the Texas Legislature, that famous factory of therapeutic thinking, and ask it to cure the city’s police and fire pension problems. Me, I’d just as soon walk into the bus station and ask if anybody could help me…
On Friday afternoon, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings withdrew his request for a temporary restraining order barring the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System from making certain payments. Rawlings made it quite clear, however, that he has no plans to end his lawsuit against the system’s Deferred Retirement Option Program. When it was open…
Before the 85th Texas Legislative Session formally opened on Tuesday, state lawmakers had already filed a handful of bills that would curb or strike down the law enforcement practice known as civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement officials to seize assets from those suspected, not charged or convicted, of involvement…
Texas’ tourism industry is placing itself on the front lines of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s effort to regulate where people use the restroom. Fearing a similar backlash to those which have happened in Indiana and North Carolina, convention and tourism wranglers from across the state Wednesday joined together at…
Candace Evans, the Candy behind the popular Dallas real estate blog CandysDirt.com, is running against Lee Kleinman for the District 11 City Council seat Kleinman’s held for the last four years. Evans says that while Kleinman is a good neighbor and a good guy, she feels like their North Dallas…
Yesterday, Dallas Animal Services officials told the City Council there was progress in the effort to deal with the estimated 8,000 loose dogs roaming South Dallas. Still, Dallas Police Department Major Barbara Hobbs said Monday, the department needs more time to transition from enforcement to education with Dallas residents. Since Hobbs…
Texans love their sports. Football is the second most cherished religion in Texas, according to Texas Monthly, with baseball and basketball following close behind. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on sports every year, building stadiums, buying team memorabilia and watching playoff games. But imagine if the National Football…
T.C. Broadnax is starting to get a handle on what he calls the challenge ahead. On Thursday, a little less than a month before he takes over the Dallas city manager’s office from A.C. Gonzalez, the Tacoma city manager sat down with the Dallas Observer for a discussion about his approach…
The measure members of the Texas anti-abortion lobby are calling “the most important pro-life bill of the session” is officially on the books ahead of the 2017 Texas Legislative session. Late last week, state Representative Stephanie Klick and state Senator Charles Perry officially filed the Texas Right to Life-designed ban…
As I see it, I don’t just have a tendency to be paranoid. It’s my job — a nasty one sometimes, but somebody’s got to do it. I am still sort of obsessed with a completely inscrutable move last week by a majority of the City Council, pushed by the…
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is going to do this, apparently. Patrick formally announced Wednesday his plans to shepherd a so-called bathroom bill through the Texas legislature. If passed the bill would require visitors and workers at Texas’ public schools, government buildings and public universities to use the restroom consistent with the…
I don’t believe it. This story the mayor and his posse on the council handed out yesterday at a city council briefing about why they won’t support a city bond campaign in May doesn’t even begin to add up. There’s another agenda in this agenda somewhere. The nice thing about…
A controversial Texas mandate that some fetal tissue be buried or cremated after medical procedures remains on hold, at least for another three weeks. After a testy two-day hearing in Austin, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said late Wednesday afternoon that he would not issue his final ruling on the…
In the end, it seems that the only concrete solution that will come out of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ Commission on Homelessness is another committee. Acting Tuesday afternoon on the commission’s final recommendations, the Dallas City Council’s Housing Committee agreed that the best way to pursue the commissions recommendations is forming…
