Category Archives: local news

legal news, local news, State news

Judge will marry gays, if duty calls

Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner is on record already on an issue that well could generate a good bit of controversy.

Back when she was running for the office to which she was elected, Tanner — along with her four Republican primary opponents — took part in a candidate forum sponsored by Panhandle PBS. I was privileged to be one of the journalists questioning the candidates.

One of the panelists asked all the candidates a most probing question: Given that Texas law gives county judges the authority to perform marriage ceremonies, would you — as county judge — be willing to perform a ceremony uniting a same-sex couple in matrimony?

Some of the candidates hemmed and hawed. One of them said “no,” he wouldn’t do it.

Tanner’s response? She was unequivocal. If the courts rule that gay marriage is legal in Texas, then she would follow the law. She would marry anyone with a valid marriage license. That would be her responsibility as county judge and she would perform it.

Her answer was straightforward as it could have been. It didn’t harm her at the polls, as she won the GOP primary outright and went on to be elected county judge in November 2014.

As of this morning, the issue hasn’t yet presented itself to Judge Tanner. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said county clerks can refuse to issue marriage licenses if they have a religious objection to the Supreme Court’s ruling that legalized gay marriage.

There’s been no word that I’ve heard about whether Potter County Clerk Julie Smith is going to follow the law or ignore it, per Paxton’s decision.

Tanner’s take on the issue is clear. What’s cloudy and muddled is whether another countywide elected official, Smith, is going to follow the law.

Stay tuned. This could get dicey.

local news

Social Security makes my head spin

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

This morning my wife and I had a conversation with a woman who manages our retirement account. She is as sharp as they come and she works for one of the financial services giants.

It involved Social Security. I’m about to become fully eligible for SSI benefits. That will happen near the end of the year when I turn 66 years of age.

So, what’s the issue? Easy to do. Just sign up and start collecting the benefit into which I paid for my entire working life. No sweat, right?

Oh, no. Not even close.

I’m likely going to have to jettison one or more of the part-time jobs I’ve been working at since the fall of 2012, shortly after my full-time job as a print journalist came to a screeching halt.

Why is that? I’d make too much money … possibly. If I earn too much income in addition to what Social Security benefits I’d start collecting, the federal government could start taxing me heavily on the SSI income.

Don’t want to do that.

Do I want to wait until I’m 70, at which time the monthly benefit would increase? Probably not. I’m still working those part-time jobs, and by the time I turn 70 1/2 years of age, I need to start withdrawing money annually from the retirement fund my wife and I have built over many years of hard work.

That money becomes part of our taxable income.

So that money also is factored into what the feds can tax us.

At this point, as I listened to our financial adviser explain all this, I could feel the veins in my neck start to throb.

My wife and I had gone downtown to get some answers to a simple question: When is the best time to collect Social Security; do we do it now or do we wait?

It turns out there’s no simple answer to the question. It’s complicated. Highly complicated.

The more I listened to all of these explanations of what happens if we do this or that, or don’t do any of it, the more I began to think that perhaps the tax-simplification advocates out there may be on to something.

Our adviser’s final recommendation: Come back and see me just about the time of your 66th birthday and we’ll see where we stand.

I want to collect the benefit to which I’m entitled. However, these jobs I’m working are providing me with too much fun to give any of them up.

Little did I realize that retirement could be so complicated.

 

 

local news

Drought broken in South Texas?

You meet the most interesting people at RV parks.

We made an acquaintance the other evening. An elderly couple is traveling toward Calgary, Alberta to attend the Calgary Stampede. They were parked a few yards from us at an RV park in Dodge City, Kan. I noticed the Texas license plate on their fifth wheel.

“Where in Texas are you from?” I asked. He said he lives in McAllen.

We chatted a little bit. Then he told me the “drought is broken” in South Texas.

“Wow!” I thought. That was news to me.

He said they got about 7 inches of rain in a single day. The Rio Grande River is flowing nicely, he said.

I mentioned to him that we’ve nearly achieved our annual precipitation total so far — and the year isn’t quite halfway done.

Their drought is broken? But not ours?

I’m not going to challenge the gentleman’s assertion directly. Heck, for all I know the National Weather Service’s drought declarations for South Texas haven’t been as severe as they’ve been for much of the rest of the state.

But the drought surely is far from broken way up yonder, in the Texas Panhandle or all along the High Plains.

I will say this, however, about what we saw on our four-day excursion to Dodge City: The range land is remarkably green and lush. We didn’t see many playas on our travel north of Amarillo, through the Oklahoma Panhandle and into western Kansas.

But the ground looked gorgeous.

Is our drought broken? Hardly.

I hope our acquaintance from McAllen is correct about the drought condition in his part of the state. I’m a bit skeptical, but only because the drought hung for so long and it might take a bit longer for it to be declared a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, we could use some more rain to keep our grassland so green.

 

local news

This beats ‘free hot breakfast’ any time

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

DODGE CITY, Kan. — My wife just said something that tickled my funny bone.

“You know,” she said, “this is great. If we were staying at a hotel, we’d be fighting with others waiting to eat a ‘free hot breakfast,’ which of course really isn’t free; it’s just part of the room rate. I love doing this.”

“This” happened to be eating a light breakfast in our fifth wheel, which has been parked for the past four nights at an RV park.

We’re about to pack it up and head back home.

But her point about traveling this way, avoiding the occasional hassle of waiting in line to serve up overcooked — or undercooked — scrambled eggs, greasy sausage or bacon and lumpy oatmeal, is the way to go.

Not only that, and this remains one of life’s unsolved mysteries: The food tastes better in an RV than it does in a hotel. It’s like eating a hot dog at a baseball game. As the late singer/talk show host Mike Douglas once said, “A hot dog tastes like a filet mignon at a baseball game.”

The same can be said of a lemon muffin, yogurt and frozen fruit, and a cup of coffee — which is what my wife and I consumed this morning.

Well, the fun’s about to end. Got to get ready to go.

Knock yourselves out, hotel guests.

 

local news, Uncategorized

Dads get smarter the older we become

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
— Mark Twain

How true is that?

Of course, it’s not really the “old man” who learned all those thing. It’s the individual he brought into the world who’s climbed the learning hill.

Most of us have had similar experiences with our parents. Dad and Mom were dumber than dirt when we were kids. Then at some point, a miracle occurred. For me, it came around the time of my 25th year.

I was a new parent at the time myself. The younger of my two sons had just been born. My wife and I were seeking our way in the world. We couldn’t really know, of course, where our journey would take us. It’s taken us to plenty of places. We’ve been able to see and do many things we never dreamed of doing when we both were kids.

But right about the time I started my own on-the-job parental training, I began to realize the difficulty that my parents went through to rear my sisters and me. And I began to realize they weren’t so dumb after all.

This wising up happens to most of us. When it does, benefits are spread all around.

Mom and Dad seem smarter than they were. You definitely are smarter than you were. The shared wisdom accrues to everyone.

The greatest payoff of all is when you realize on these days when we honor our parents — such as Mothers and Fathers Day — that you’ve done your job well.

The journey my wife and I have taken together for the past nearly 44 years has included watching our own sons grow into fine men. Did they think of us the way ol’ Sam Clemens and I thought of our parents? Sure they did … and although neither of them ever articulated as such to either of us, it’s part of growing up.

That’s OK. We’re all past that now.

They’ve made us proud every step of the way.

All of us have gotten smarter, too.

legal news, local news, State news

Grand jury reform arrives in Texas

Way back when I arrived in Texas, in 1984, the newspaper where I started working had just begun an editorial campaign to change the way the state impaneled grand juries.

The Jefferson County criminal justice system had come under fire over suspicions that a grand jury might have been seated to get back at political foes of a district judge. Our newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, disliked the jury commissioner system and we called for a change to select grand juries the way the state seats trial juries — using the voter registration rolls.

We finally persuaded the county’s two criminal district judges to adopt a random selection method.

Well, this week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that makes it a requirement to seat grand juries in a random method.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/19/abbott-signs-grand-jury-reform-legislation/

It’s a good day for the state’s criminal justice system.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “Under House Bill 2150, the state will no longer use the outdated system that lets judge-appointed commissioners pick jurors, a nationally uncommon practice that critics say is rife with potential for conflicts of interest.”

The old system allowed judges to pick jury commissioners, usually friends, to find grand jurors. It’s been called a “pick a pal” system. Friends pick friends, who then might be friends with the judge whose court has jurisdiction.

The “potential for conflicts of interest” surely did exist.

I once served on a grand jury, in Randall County, that was picked by the old method. We had an uneventful term, meeting every other week for several months. I learned a lot about my community.

My participation as a grand juror, though, all but eliminated me from consideration for a trial jury, District Attorney James Farren told us, as we then would be seen as “pro-prosecution” by defense counsel.

That’s fine.

But I’m still quite glad to see the Texas Legislature enact this long-needed reform, which follows the model used in the vast majority of other states.

If a randomly selected trial jury is qualified to sentence someone to death, then a randomly selected grand jury ought to be qualified to determine whether the crime should be prosecuted in the first place.

local news

Amarillo has a project worth emulating

DODGE CITY, Kan. — The people who run the city where I’ve lived for the past 20 years have taken plenty of hits of late.

Some of it is deserved. Some of it is not.

But as my wife and I have visited Dodge City for the past few days, we’ve noticed a project that could do some good here. It reminds us of a project that’s been done in Amarillo.

Rails to Trails in Amarillo was developed some years ago by converting an abandoned railroad right-of-way into a hiking and biking park complex.

We’ve discovered an abandoned rail line in Dodge City, just a few hundred yards from the RV park where we’ve stayed. It looks for all the world like the Rails to Trails park used to look as it coursed through Amarillo for slightly less than 4 miles.

Grass has overgrown the railroad ties and the rails themselves. Indeed, the neighborhood surrounding the Dodge City rail line looks a lot like the San Jacinto neighborhood that borders much of what once was a crappy old rail line running through Amarillo.

Rails to Trails remains a work in progress. I visited recently with the city parks department administrator about plans to finish a long-standing project connecting neighborhoods with hiking and biking paths; Rails to Trails is part of the unfinished work.

The park, though, gives the neighborhood along its route a much better look than it had before it was developed — and for that the city deserves high praise.

Dodge City isn’t nearly the size of Amarillo, but it has precisely the same kind of potential staring it down.

It runs along an old rail line that ought to be turned into park.

 

 

local news

Times have changed in public schools

TX_AGN

I saw this front page today and was struck at a couple of levels by the picture of the 16 school administrators about whom the story is written.

The story is about the reassignment of school principals throughout the Amarillo Independent School District. The widespread shuffling appears to have caused some anxiety among parents, who want their children to continue at their schools led by the principals with whom the kids and their parents have grown accustomed.

AISD, though, is proceeding with the shuffling.

The other point is this: Look at the genders of the principals who are moving around. Of the 16 school administrators pictured, 15 of them are women.

I realize I’m old. I also realize that changing times bring changes at all levels of public institutions.

When I was a kid, the principal at Harvey W. Scott Elementary School in Portland, Ore., my hometown, was — to my eyes — a grouchy old man. I long thought that one of the requirements for principals was that they had to be grouchy.

I never saw a female principal at any level of public education back in the 1960s. I went on to junior high school. The principal? Another grouchy guy. On to high school. The principal there? An old man, but one who wasn’t so grumpy; in fact, he and my dad became friends … not that it made a difference in my relationship with the principal, Mr. Anderson.

But I am struck today by the large number of women who are leading this community’s public schools.

Yes, indeed. Times change.

 

local news, Uncategorized

Harpole stays the course on graffiti battle

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Paul Harpole has had a difficult past few weeks.

The Amarillo mayor has seen two of his City Council allies lose their seats to challengers; then another ally, a non-incumbent, got beat in a runoff. The result has been a majority of council members who are new to the job and who have promised to bring “change” to the city.

All the while, the mayor has kept plugging away at a campaign promise he made four years ago when he first ran for the office to which he was re-elected.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/29326507/for-harpole-the-graffiti-fight-goes-on-and-on

He’s still battling graffiti “artists” who keep scarring buildings all over the city. He calls them vandals and says what they’re doing to people’s property is no different from someone smashing out car windows.

I’m glad to know he’s staying the course.

However, Harpole knows better than most that the fight likely will never end.

I don’t want to be melodramatic here, but it kind of reminds me of the war on terror. We kill one terrorist leader and another one pops up to take his place. You get rid of one vandal and, by golly, another one jumps out of the tall grass to continue “tagging.”

The mayor’s cause is a worthwhile one. He intends to dissuade enough of these individuals to stop blemishing people’s private property. Over time, Harpole says, he thinks he can put a serious enough dent in this graffiti problem.

Will he eliminate it? Likely not. That doesn’t mean he — and those who’ll follow him in the mayor’s office — should stop trying.

 

local news

City Hall ‘change’ beginning to take shape

nair

Mark Nair may becoming a sort of “swing vote” on the Amarillo City Council.

Just as Justice Anthony Kennedy helps determine which direction the Supreme Court tilts on key rulings, so might City Councilman-elect Nair be — in the words of a former president of the United States — a “decider.”

He’s one of three new guys to join the five-member council. He won a runoff election this past Saturday to win his spot on Place 4.

And he’s sounding like someone intent on changing the way business has been done at City Hall.

I remain a bit confused, though, regarding his intentions.

A lengthy newspaper interview published Monday noted a couple of things.

Nair said he doesn’t want to “undo” downtown redevelopments that already are under “contractual obligation.” He does, though, want to rethink the multipurpose event venue and plans to argue that it go before the voters for their approval.

Suppose, then, that voters say “no” to the MPEV. What happens next? Nair referenced the “catalyst projects” that already are under contract: the convention hotel and the parking garage. If the MPEV is torpedoed, does the hotel get built anyway? It’s always been my understanding that the hotel developer’s plans for the Embassy Suites complex is predicated on the MPEV and without the event venue, there’s no need for a parking garage.

It’s all tied together, correct?

Nair deserves congratulations for winning his initial elected office. He presents himself as a thoughtful young man. He said he wants to talk with City Manager Jarrett Atkinson — who he said he doesn’t know — about the problems that have beset the city. Things have to change, Nair said. The water bill SNAFU cannot go uncorrected, he said and he asserts that the manager, as the city’s CEO, is responsible for ensuring the place runs smoothly.

But the folks in charge of it all — the policy team — sit on the City Council. They have to operate as a team, along with the senior city administration. That was the mantra prior to the election.

We now shall see if the new guys can play well with each other — and those who do their bidding.

Mark Nair, the newest of the new fellows, vows to “work for the common good.”

Get busy, gentlemen.

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