Category Archives: State news

national news, State news, Uncategorized

Private prisons taking needed heat

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Columbia University has ended its investment program with privately run prisons.

Why? Too many reports of abuse by prison officials.

The report of Columbia ending this particular relationship brings to mind an issue that’s stuck in my craw for years. I’ve never liked the principle of turning over corrections to private businesses.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/23/3672903/columbia-divest-private-prisons/

My belief is that corrections completes a public obligation circle that ought to remain part of the public’s responsibility.

I’m likely to take heat for thinking this, but that’s what I believe.

I look at this in a straightforward way, in my view.

The public pays law enforcement to catch criminals, to arrest them, book them into jail and file detailed reports on what the suspect allegedly did.

Then the public pays the salaries of prosecutors to make the case for the state or the county that the individual is guilty of the crime for which he or she has been accused of committing.

The public also conceivably might pay the salary of the defendant’s lawyer if he or she cannot afford private counsel. It’s part of the Miranda rights text that all criminal suspects are supposed to hear while they’re being arrested.

The judge who presides over a criminal trial is paid from the public trough. The public also pays the jurors — admittedly not much — to determine the suspect’s guilt or innocence.

If jurors convict the defendant, then in my mind it falls on the public to pay for the incarceration of that individual for as long as the publicly paid jury determines he or she should spend in prison.

I’ve long been suspicious of private firms running correctional institutions because the public needs to have ironclad guarantees of its oversight responsibility. The public needs full, complete and unfettered access to everything that goes on behind those walls.

We’ve marched a long way down the road already toward turning over much of our corrections operations over to private firms. I wish we could reverse course.

I didn’t have a particular problem when Texas went on a prison-building boom in the early 1990s to make more room for prisoners. A federal judge had ruled the state had violated inmates’ constitutional rights against “cruel and unusual punishment” by cramming them into prison cells. So, it fell on the state to make it right.

Would a private prison firm be compelled to respond in such a manner?

The public pays for suspects’ arrest, prosecution and sentencing.

The public has a responsibility, therefore, to complete its duty by housing these individuals.

 

State news

Ethics reform gets a little kick from Abbott

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that the 2015 Legislature would reform the state’s ethics policy.

Lawmakers tried to torpedo Abbott’s call. But the governor struck back with his veto pen on one element that he didn’t like coming out of the Legislature.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/20/abbott-vetoes-spousal-loophole-davis-says/

Abbott vetoed a bill that would have allowed married elected officials to hide their spouses’ financial holdings. The governor said the bill did the opposite of what he wanted and he vowed to take up the matter of ethics reform when the 2017 Legislature convenes.

He said, according to the Texas Tribune: “At the beginning of this legislative session, I called for meaningful ethics reform. This legislation does not accomplish that goal. Provisions in this bill would reduce Texans’ trust in their elected officials, and I will not be a part of weakening our ethics laws,” he wrote. “Serious ethics reform must be addressed next session — the right way. Texans deserve better.”

Good for you, Gov. Abbott.

For as long as I can remember — and I’ve lived in Texas for 31 years, nearly half my life — “ethics” and “government” been mutually exclusive terms.

Abbott didn’t whiff completely on his effort to get some ethics reform enacted. One victory came as a result of a Democratic lawmaker’s effort to end the pension double-dipping that existed in Texas. As the Tribune reported: “State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, won passage of a bill that will close a loophole that allowed longtime elected officials to double-dip their salary and pension. Former Gov. Rick Perry had famously taken advantage of the provision toward the end of his 14-year reign.”

The state has much more ground to cover if it is going to restore a belief among many Texans that their elected officials’ behavior shouldn’t be questioned with such regularity.

But as Gov. Abbott has displayed, he retains veto power. In this instance, he used it wisely.

 

 

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.

State news

UT to examine student-athletes’ record

It is entirely possible that a planned examination of alleged cheating by University of Texas student-athletes could mushroom into something much broader.

UT is looking into whether three basketball players cheated in the classroom. But officials say they intend to broaden the investigation, to look more deeply into the conduct of students — and their instructors.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/ut-launches-broad-inquiry-athletes-academics/

This ought to be a welcome development if we’re going to continue to refer to these young men and women as student-athletes, putting the word “student” first.

UT-Austin President Greg Fenves said “no improprieties” have been found … so far.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

If, however, the university determines that “improprieties” do exist in the classroom, there must be serious consequences delivered to all offending parties.

Some of us — me included — like the term “student-athlete” and all that it implies.

Chief among the implications is that the young men and women should be enrolled in our public universities to obtain an education, that they aren’t in school just to play whatever sport in which they excelled in high school, earning them a fully paid publicly funded post-secondary education.

I don’t want the UT brass to find widespread cheating. If they do, however, then I’m prepared to support some serious punishment.

 

 

State news

Guns soon will be going to college

It’s tough to write about this in the aftermath of that hideous shooting rampage in Charleston, S.C., but I’ll try anyway.

Campus carry legislation has become law in Texas, meaning that before long it’ll be all right for students to carry guns to public college and university classrooms.

I’m going to try my best to keep a wide open mind on this issue, even though I join University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven in harboring serious concerns about it.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/new-law-campus-carry-debate-begins-anew/

The Charleston carnage will take time to sort out. Dylann Roof is in custody and it’s likely he’ll be charged with a hate crime, meaning the feds will try him. As hideous as that crime is and the pain it has brought to an entire nation, it shouldn’t reflect on what has transpired here in Texas.

Our sincerest hope is that nothing does happen in Texas’s public universities that can be traced directly to the campus-carry law that Gov. Greg Abbott signed.

Concealed-carry legislation brought many concerns to Texans. I was one of them. Our concern about concealed-carry did not materialize, meaning that it didn’t result in street-intersection shootouts caused by fender-bender accidents.

Only people with concealed-carry permits will be allowed to pack heat into the western civilization lecture halls, which means they’ll at least have some training on how to use a handgun.

The question remaining for McRaven and other university administrators is how they’re going to implement the law, allowing students and faculty members to bring guns onto campuses.

I wish them all well.

And yes, I truly am hoping for the best.

 

State news

Texas Senate to lose a voice of reason

The Texas Senate already is low on reasonable voices.

It is going to lose another one at the end of next year when Republican Kevin Eltife of Tyler leaves that chamber.

Eltife has decided 23 years of public service — in his East Texas home town and then in the Senate — is enough for now. He told the Tyler Morning Telegraph he wants to spend more time enjoying the company of his family.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/eltife-not-seeking-re-election

I respect his desire to take a breather, or perhaps step away forever. However, his absence in the 2017 Legislature will be felt in a body governed aggressively by the TEA party wing of the GOP, and that includes Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the 31-member body.

Republicans hold a commanding majority. One of the other more reasonable members happens to be Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, who was elected to the Senate the same year as Eltife.

Seliger often speaks kindly of his colleague, as he should.

Eltife resisted efforts to cut taxes in the 2015 Legislature without dedicating some public money to improving infrastructure and some other obligations to the public.

I’ve been concerned that the Legislature might be hijacked by the TEA party. Both chambers need reasonable men and women to keep the zealots from running amok.

The Senate is about to lose one of its voices of reason.

Will there be more? I’m hoping the answer is a resounding “no!”

 

 

political news, State news

Texas Democrats take a punch in the gut

You want to know how Texas Democrats are feeling today?

Like pure dookey, based on what happened way down yonder in San Antonio over the weekend.

Get a load of this: A veteran former Democratic state senator, Leticia Van de Putte, who’s lived in the Alamo City for virtually her entire life, got beat in the race for mayor by Ivy Taylor, who was born in New York City and who’d never run for a partisan office before..

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/14/taylors-triumph-new-day-or-another-fluke/

Van de Putte was supposed to win, although she was far from a shoo-in. Let’s be clear as well: Taylor also is a Democrat, so the mayor’s office is remaining in Democratic hands.

But the former state senator, who got thumped in her bid for Texas lieutenant governor last year by Republican Dan Patrick, figured to remain in the public eye and the state’s Democrats figured to count on her to remain one of its key voices on issues across the state.

Texas Democrats keep offering up brave talk about coming back from the political wilderness. They vow to make the state competitive in the next presidential campaign. They vow to take some of those statewide offices all held exclusively by Republicans since I can’t remember when.

Even here, in the Panhandle — the heart and soul of the Texas Republican Party — this kind of bravery can be heard.

I hope one day for a return to a competitive two-party state.

With two major parties fighting on equal footing against each other, there’s bound to be some semblance of moderation from the GOP, which has been running roughshod over the opposition. The same thing happened when Democrats owned all the political power in Texas.

Leticia Van de Putte might have symbolized a return to that competitive posture.

Instead, she becomes just another political casualty.

 

State news

Is Austin a ‘thorn’ in the Republicans’ side?

An interesting back story is profiled by an Associated Press story about how Texas Republicans are trying — finally — to remove what some have called a “thorn” in the GOP side.

The city of Austin is just a pain in the Republicans’ rear end.

This liberal bastion — nicknamed by some as The People’s Republic of Austin — keeps electing progressive politicians, which of course is the city’s prerogative. Why not? The Texas capital city is thriving. Its population is booming with high-tech employees, educators and learned professionals moving there.

Someone is doing something right there. About the most serious gripe one hears about Austin is the traffic, worsened by the fact that it’s the largest city in the country with just a single interstate highway coursing through it.

Texas Republicans, though — who control every statewide office in Texas and comprise a super-majority in the Legislature — have had enough of those liberals who populate public offices in Austin and Travis County.

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-gop-tries-pluck-liberal-thorn-side-182836892.html

As the story notes, the “last straw” was the Travis County grand jury’s indictment of then-Gov. Rick Perry on two felony counts: abuse of power and coercion of a public official.

Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg’s office runs the Public Integrity Unit, which investigates allegations of wrong doing by state officials. Lehmberg, though, got herself into a jam in 2013 when she pleaded guilty to drunken driving. She should have quit, but didn’t. Perry then insisted that she quit. Still, she didn’t. Then he threatened to withhold money appropriated by the Legislature for the Public Integrity Unit if she didn’t step down. She stayed. Then he vetoed the money.

The grand jury said he shouldn’t have done it that way. Thus, the indictment.

The 2015 Legislature has taken action against Austin. The Public Integrity Unit has been moved out of the DA’s office and put under the authority of the Texas Rangers, an arm of the Department of Public Safety, whose head is appointed by, um, the governor, who now happens to be Republican Greg Abbott.

Oh, but hey. They’re going to take politics out of it, isn’t that right?

Sure thing.

Meanwhile, Austin and Travis County voters will get to continue electing politicians more to their liking.

Keep it up, folks.

 

State news

Texas GOP wins, but some Republicans remain angry

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Some Texas Republicans can’t seem to win enough.

The Legislature approved two key bills near and dear to gun owners: open carry and campus carry. Gov. Greg Abbott just signed them both into law, which now means that Texans licensed to carry concealed weapons can do so openly; they’ll also be able now to pack heat on college campuses.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/13/texas-gop-scuttles-legislative/

If you’re a gun owner rights advocate, you’d be happy. Correct?

I guess not entirely.

The state GOP was unable to approve a resolution that slapped around four Republican lawmakers for “standing in the way” of Texans’ gun ownership rights.

Good grief, folks. You won! You got what you wanted! But as the Texas Tribune reported, the notion of such a resolution made some GOP officials uneasy: “But the very prospect of it riled some party leaders, sparking heated debate about the committee’s role in the Capitol and seriously complicating party fundraising in at least one instance.”

The party lost a vendor who’d been a major fundraiser and who had been uneasy about the resolution rebuking some lawmakers.

However, some members of the State Republican Executive Committee wanted to single out House Speaker Joe Straus, Rep. Dennis Bonnen, Rep. Larry Phillips and Sen. Joan Huffman for their opposition to a “Constitutional Carry” amendment, which translates into allowing unlicensed Texans to carry firearms.

Some members of the Texas GOP need to settle down. Take a breath. You won the contest over these two key gun-related issues.

 

State news

Castro’s VP stakes on the rise

Julian Castro has the chops to be vice president of the United States.

I’ll lay that out right now. He’s as qualified to be VP as, say, Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew. Heck, even Richard Nixon was considered a young buck when Dwight Eisenhower selected him to run as vice president in 1952; then again, Ike could have run with a trained chimpanzee and still been elected in a landslide that year.

Castro’s stock as a potential running mate on a Democratic ticket led by Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be rising.

The Big Question: Does Castro’s presence on a Democratic presidential ticket deliver Texas to the Democrats? It’s not going to happen.

However, it could make Texas more competitive than it otherwise would be.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/12/houston-castro-avoids-veep-chatter/

Castro is the highly charismatic former mayor of San Antonio who now serves as housing secretary. He’s had his federal job for less than a year and wasn’t mayor of Texas’s second-largest city all that long before moving to Washington.

He did light up the Democratic National Convention in 2012 with a stirring keynote speech.

Castro’s ties to the Hispanic community are quite obvious, given his name. What’s more, the name “Castro” doesn’t carry quite the negative political baggage it once did in this country, given that Fidel Castro is now out of power in Cuba and the United States is on the verge of establishing normal diplomatic relations with its former enemy. Sure, it’s still a commie state, but it poses no threat to the United States of America.

These things occasionally have a way of reversing themselves. Someone else could emerge from nowhere to become the next favorite to join Hillary Clinton. Heck, someone else also could emerge — from the same nowhere — to bump Clinton out of her shoo-in status to become the Democrats’ next presidential nominee. Do I think either event will occur? Umm, no — definitely not the latter.

For now, it’s fun to watch Julian Castro navigate his way through the treacherous world of political punditry and speculation.

The young man already is adept at dodging the obvious questions that keep coming at him.