Crystal Mason thought she was doing the right thing. Newly out of federal prison after a three-year stint for helping people file inaccurate tax returns, Mason was pulling her life together while serving out the rest of her sentence on supervised release. She’d found a job and headed back to…
After a brief hiccup in the form of a disputed set of recommendations from Dallas city staff, all signs point to the city of Dallas getting rid of the Confederate war memorial in Pioneer Park sometime later this year. During a City Council meeting last month, Dallas Assistant City Manager…
This is how it works at City Hall. The city gives a mixture of city money and federal money to a community group to build affordable housing. The group sucks down the money. But the group barely nibbles away at the construction project — doesn’t get it done, in other…
At the end of last week, I did a Facebook Live interview with Dallas Park and Recreation Board President Bobby Abtahi in which Abtahi gave evasive answers on some key questions. I did not nail down those issues in the interview, for which I blame myself. I do think it’s…
Voters in the city of Dallas will be able to give everyone who works in the city paid sick leave when they head to the ballot box in November if a coalition of worker’s rights groups gets its way. Volunteers with the Workers Defense Project and other groups will head…
Next year, when it’s time for Dallas voters to choose a new mayor, the good old boys, the inside slicks and the Dallas Citizens Council will do whatever they can to frame the race the way they always have: Their candidate will be the fiscally sound, conservative but very nice…
This week, the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based nonprofit think tank and research bureau, released a report that powerfully confirmed a wave of data from multiple sources over the last year, all portraying Dallas as harshly segregated along ethnic and economic lines. The only question is what to…
In an 8-7 vote Wednesday, the Dallas City Council signed off on a $15.9 million development agreement with a former city employee, over the objections of council members who believed that the deal should’ve gone through the city’s bidding process. Rodney Burchfield, who worked in the city’s economic development office…
Plano, an affluent suburb of Dallas maligned decades ago by finger-wagging liberals (me) as an all-white busing flight enclave, is at the forefront of a whole new kind of struggle for diversity, inclusiveness and enlightenment. Black poverty-cursed South Dallas — the scene a half-century ago of a civil rights struggle…
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon to face questions from the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees about foreign interference in U.S. elections and the theft of millions of Americans’ personal data. Most of the senators questioning the Facebook CEO pushed him on privacy issues and the…
Plano voters will get the final say on Tom Harrison’s fate as a City Council member. Monday night, the Plano City Council voted 6-0 with two abstentions to schedule a recall election for the council member, who’s been the center of controversy since February, when a series of anti-Muslim posts…
There was a time when some viewed Texas as a model for the rest of the county. It wasn’t that long ago, either. Rightly or wrongly, as the ’00s turned to the ’10s during Rick Perry’s third full term as governor, some saw Texas as a low-regulation, pro-business paradise, one you…
If you think Weird Washington is a long way off, look again. The weirdness has come home to roost. And you know what? It might be good for us in the end. It might force us to grow up. Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins hosted a special committee meeting…
The debate about things would change a lot around here if everybody suddenly knew who’s paying for what. Dallas City Council member Lee Kleinman caught one these jarring little tells and pointed it out at a council committee meeting Monday. See if you agree with me that it’s something nobody…
Plano City Council member Tom Harrison is headed for a recall election unless city staff members deem about 1,500 petition signatures invalid. A group called Our Plano, One Plano turned in more than 4,400 signatures Wednesday afternoon calling for Harrison’s recall to be put on the ballot in November. Plano’s…
However things end up in November, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso has already made one thing clear in his challenge to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz: It isn’t going to be easy for the incumbent, not by a long shot. O’Rourke announced Tuesday that he raised $6.7 million during…
After Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in August, there was enormous shock and dismay when thousands of homeowners learned they had been flooded out not by Harvey but by Uncle Sam. We’re in for the same trauma here someday, and I am doing my best to get ahead of it for…
Dr. Michael Phillips is a historian and author of White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001. Since December 2015, America has witnessed a tale of two cities and two mayors. One mayor educated himself about the racist history of Confederate monuments in his city and led the charge…
City Council member Tennell Atkins has called a special meeting of the council’s economic development and housing committee at 9 a.m. Thursday in the first-floor auditorium at Dallas City Hall to listen to the chickens. Why? Because 9 a.m. Thursday is when the chickens come home to roost. Last week, word…
Sometimes, Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston is just flat brilliant. When? I don’t know. But sometimes he is. Yesterday, he gave me an idea that I think may be the kernel of an important national story about the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, although it starts very…
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that the 2020 census will include questions about immigration status for the first time since 1950. The policy change, supported by Texas officials including Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. Ted Cruz, could have a tremendous effect of the Texas’ already…
Late Wednesday afternoon, Dallas City Council member Kevin Felder made up his mind about the concrete batching plant planned for the old freedman’s town of Joppa, which sits squarely in his District 7 domain, five miles south of downtown Dallas. Felder, reported to be on the fence about the facility…
