So far today we’ve heard from Ron Natinsky, David Kunkle, City Auditor Craig Kinton and even Mayor Dwaine Caraway about last night’s Channel 8 story, which alleged that mayoral candidate Mike Rawlings used his influence as Park Board president to get city officials to hire his friend and former TracyLocke…
Speaking of getting city officials’ responses to WFAA-Channel 8 stories …Maybe you saw the story last night about 15-year-old Ashley Donaldson, who found $2,000 stuffed into an envelope and, though her family sure could use the bread, did the right thing and turned it in. According to Ashley, she took…
I promise: Unfair Park won’t be clogged with piece after piece about that Happy Trails safety campaign contract. But this one merits its own item: City Auditor Craig Kinton, who functions as an independent investigator inside the hallways of City Hall, returned my call moments ago and said his office…
I’ve left messages and sent emails all over Dallas City Hall — to City Manager Mary Suhm, Assistant City Manager Forest Turner (who oversees Park and Recreation), City Auditor Craig Kinton, city spokesman Frank Librio and Chris Heinbaugh in Mayor-For-Now Dwaine Caraway’s office. I’ve been told they are all presently…
No doubt you’re well aware that President Barack Obama was in El Paso yesterday, where he said that “genuine, comprehensive reform” was the only way to repair a “broken immigration system.” In his speech, posted in its entirety to the White House website, Obama insisted his administration’s doing what it…
Speaking of ethics at City Hall…So happens that Patrick stopped by Dallas City Hall Thursday, just as ad man Jake Schroepfer was giving his Happy Trails Dallas safety campaign presentation, which included that star-studded Junior Brown music video. Those photos come in handy this morning: WFAA’s Brett Shipp had a…
While I was on the phone with Chris Heinbaugh about the item just below this one, he mentioned that Mayor-Not-For-Long Dwaine Caraway informed his council colleagues today that he’s ready to go with that whole ad hoc ethics committee mentioned at the end of last week’s rather tense back-and-forth over…
Last June, we took a look at some moneymaking brainstorms Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm presented to the city council, which Suhm hoped would offset some of the $131-million budget shortfall with which she was faced at the time. Among them was one in particular that didn’t get very far,…
Ed Oakley, who once sat in the District 3 seat at the Dallas City Hall horseshoe, is already listed among Scott Griggs’s supporters, alongside, of course, Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia, former Dallas ISD school board trustee Jose Plata, former Dallas City Manager Jan Hart Black and a host of…
As the Texas Tribune notes today, in the wee small hours of the morning, the state House passed Carrollton state Rep. Burt Solomons’s HB 12, the so-called “sanctuary cities” legislation deemed an emergency item by Gov. Rick Perry. As the Trib’s Julian Aguilar sums it up, those who are for…
I’ve been trying, with no luck, to talk to Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia about why she’s endorsing Scott Griggs over Dave Neumann in the race for District 3’s seat at the City Hall horseshoe. Garcia served on several committees with Neumann during her tenure on the council — among…
After council member Angela Hunt pushed the city council to form the gas drilling task force Dave Neumann only talked about, it’s time to assemble the dream team: Moments ago, Dallas City Hall sent word that it’s taking applications from those interested in serving on the task force. For those…
Earlier this week, the White House announced that it’s looking to sell off excess federal properties — chief among them, the million-square-foot, 75-acre Fort Worth Federal Center. Says the Obama administration, “Billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted each year on government properties that are no longer needed.” Which sounded familiar:…
The folks at City Hall aren’t the only ones trying to slip looser ethics rules into places they don’t belong. A bill that cruised through the state House this week would force lawmakers to disclose more information about how money moves between their campaign accounts and their personal ones, shedding…
Really. Who knew?Who knew that Ron Natinsky’s early-morning jab at Mike Rawlings over his union endorsements would become The Issue of the Day? Surely not Tom Leppert, who wound up having his spokesman comment on the matter once Rawlings made it clear that, hey, he didn’t do nothing Leppert didn’t…
Many thanks to the great Rudolph Mantooth Bush, head scorekeeper at The News’s City Hall Blog, who has shared Mayor Dwaine Caraway’s sequel to his Payday Loan King ad slamming Mike Rawlings for his six-year stint on the board of directors of Ace Cash Express. But it’s so much more.Because,…
Remember that item last week about how the city was going to use code enforcement to collect and toss election signs planted on public property, “including parks, recreation centers and libraries”? No, neither do we. (Actually, they’re on a sliver of private property, owned by Fifty Seven Royal, that’s right…
Really, it’ll be like the day after Christmas when this mayoral campaign ends — that sad, empty what-now. Who knew this morning’s email from Dallas mayoral candidate Ron Natinsky would provide a small handful of highlights from an otherwise ho-hum campaign season.There was, of course, the initial email itself, in…
Happy Trails 2:00 from Jake Ferguson on Vimeo.Like I wrote Tuesday, the city’s about to officially unveil its “Happy Trails” campaign intended to make those 104 miles’ worth of hike-n-bike paths safer following the death of Lauren Huddleston on the Katy Trail in October and another car-on-cyclist collision two weeks…
It’ll be a shame to see this mayoral campaign season come to an end a week from Saturday now that it’s getting so…campaigny. Take, for instance, this email that just arrived in the in-box with the all-caps subject header: “RAWLINGS PLEDGES TO SUPPORT THE RIGHTS OF WORKERS TO JOIN UNIONS…
The state Senate Committee on Health and Human Services voted yesterday in favor of a bill that would renew the Women’s Health Program, a Medicaid-funded program that provides basic women’s health care. It was set to expire this year unless the Lege took action, but now that it has the…
City council members Angela Hunt and Vonciel Jones Hill are kicking ass at today’s contentious hearing on the city council’s recent unethics reform, which is about to wrap up. (Or not.) The council voted last April 13 to gut its ethics policy and allow political contributions from representatives and employees…
