This will be a fun race to watch — and we’ll be watching it.
The Houston Chronicle’s Alan Bernstein writes today that the ballot has been set in the race to replace retiring Republican Senator Kyle Janek. It’s a special election, so that means multiple candidates can get into the race instead of going though the [...]
Judges in hot water
What’s with the judges getting caught up in sexual misconduct allegations? Two are mentioned in the Houston Chronicle today.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent is charged with abusing a former case manager in 2003 and 2007. The Chronicle reports that he plans to continue hearing cases while the matter is resolved.
A Brazoria County [...]
State officials will borrow $1.5 billion for roads, aiming to pay back the money in future gas taxes, the Austin-American Statesman’s Ben Wear reports.
More from their story:
“That borrowing authority, granted on a unanimous vote of the five-member commission in a specially called meeting this morning, will allow TxDOT to issue more than $4 billion in [...]
Two enterprising veterans have smoked out nearly a dozen fellow Texans who have used fake documents to procure Legion of Merit license plates.
Dick Agnew, the commander of the North Texas Legion of Valor chapter (as well as recipient of the Army Distinguished Service Cross) and Don Mason, who heads San Antonio’s chapter (and himself received [...]
Lots of folks are buzzing about the audit released yesterday about the $1.1 billion error by the Texas Department of Transportation. Including us here and here. The error means some road projects are getting scaled back. Others are being postponed.
Essentially, the TxDOT bookkeepers counted bond proceeds at TxDOT twice. How did it happen? The Houston [...]
This ain’t Cuba.
A former editor of mine opened his talks on open government with that line, then launched seminars on public records and open meetings laws and their importance to democracy.
The sheriff in Shiawassee County, Mich., could learn a thing or two from this class. According to the Argus-Press, the sheriff has billed the paper [...]
We’re making an effort to keep an eye on government misspending here at Texas Watchdog, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t tip our hat to public officials who seem to be trying to keep the public — and family budgets — in mind.
In that regard, we wanted to make note of an item written [...]
Much has been made in the last 18 hours regarding the latest Houston City Council meeting, and Council’s reticence to approve $750,000 for online and print advertising for the Houston Police Department. The dollars were to be spent for recruiting purposes.
Last year, Council approved $300,000 in print and Internet advertising, but because [...]
The state Department of Transportation released a statement responding to an auditor’s report which found the department had overstated its funds by $1.1 billion (Here’s our blog post about the report). Executive Director Amadeo Saenz was quoted in the statement:
“I appreciate the diligence of the State Auditor’s Office in compiling their report. We’re pleased to [...]
New journalism group Texas Watchdog follows up its examination of Dallas attorney and Democratic kingmaker Fred Baron with a news analysis by former Dallas Observer political scribe Matt Pulle.
Pulle pulls in an interview with a former Dallas Observer editor who talks about her experience with Baron in the wake of the alt-weekly investigating the powerful [...]
Dallas trial attorney Fred Baron can’t get his story straight: What role did he play in defusing the simmering drama of presidential candidate John Edwards’ extramarital affair with a new age filmmaker who wound up pregnant?
If there are better columnists in Texas than Jim Schutze, I haven’t read them yet. Although the Dallas Observer writer is a bloodthirsty investigative reporter, who can jumpstart referendums on city projects while battering anyone in the Big D who tries to run things, Schutze is just as great when he simply has fun.
In his [...]
A highly anticipated audit report documenting Texas Department of Transportation accounting errors came out this week. The report documents the problems surrounding the department’s overstating of funds by $1.1 billion.
Read more about that error, which was made public in February, at Off the Kuff or at the Austin American-Statesman’s ShortCuts.
Convention Drama
The Austin American-Statesman reports on Houston state Sen. Mario Gallegos landing in a Denver hospital this week with a skin infection. Gallegos, a Clinton delegate, missed his chance to hear Senator Hillary Clinton speak.
Stuck in bed, Gallegos had to vote in the convention via paper ballot. Don’t worry, though. Sen. Gallegos knows the routine.
Fred Baron is a brilliant attorney, a savvy strategist, and, up until recently, a fun and engaging interview. But ever since the John Edwards scandal leapt from the The National Enquirer to The New York Times, he’s been unable to speak the English language without eliciting howls of laughter, if not outright disbelief. Here Texas [...]
I was reading Crystal’s post about the spending spree some Houston City Council members went on with the June 30 deadline looming to exhaust their office budgets of more than $360,000.
Some members purchased flat-panel televisions and furniture — items that produced a bit of eye-rolling here at Texas Watchdog. And Crystal highlighted the purchase of [...]
Yesterday’s Chronicle unveiling of a recent Houston City Council spending spree was an enjoyable, if not painful, read. Enjoyable for the sound bites, which I’ll share in a moment, and painful for the clear lack of regard this collective body has for governing efficiently.
Council members had until June 30 to exhaust their budgets of more [...]
Texas Watchdog got a mention last week from Lindsay Beyerstein, one of our favorite journalists on the national scene. She writes for her blog Majikthise, and is, this week, in Denver covering the Democratic National Convention for firedoglake’s Campaign Silo.
I was in Denver for five or six years as a reporter for the Denver Post, [...]
Shortly after we launched our website, the well-respected “blogHOUSTON” gave us a shout out.
We count the site among our more favorite things about Texas’s largest metropolis—in fact, we’d put it right up there with Montrose after dark and the beer can house.
Besides being a great local and statewide resource, their pithy analyses of the Houston [...]
Video: Texas Watchdog’s inaugural investigative piece detailed top Bush money-man Stephen Payne’s close relationship with the White House — a relationship the White House took pains to distance itself from. Here is the video of The Times of London sting, featuring Stephen Payne.
Dallas attorney and Democratic campaign rainmaker Fred Baron has burst into the news this month, caught in a media maelstrom after he admitted making secret payouts to a pregnant woman who was one-time Presidential hopeful John Edwards’ mistress. The call to return campaign contributions will be done through a Web site, www.givethemoneyback.com, which launched this week.
For weeks now, the White House has had a consistent message about Texas politico Stephen Payne: We don’t know him that well. He doesn’t really work for us. And we certainly didn’t tell him to do what he did — offer foreign governments access to the White House in return for contributions to President Bush’s [...]
Video: Texas Watchdog’s inaugural investigative piece detailed top Bush money-man Stephen Payne’s close relationship with the White House — a relationship the White House took pains to distance itself from. Here is the video of The Times of London sting, featuring Stephen Payne.
