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…
Sometime Friday, provided he doesn’t elect to skip the meeting, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant is going to get together with team owner Jerry Jones. The news, from Bryant’s perspective, doesn’t figure to be good. Barring an unexpected turn of events, Bryant will face a pay cut, something he’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…
Activists in Austin got something Wednesday for which they’ve pushed for almost five years. The Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval to a Mexican-American studies elective for high school students, closing out a debate that began with an unsuccessful attempt in 2014. They couldn’t do so, however, without…
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…
The Mavericks accomplished what they set out to accomplish this season. As hard as it might to be explain to your 8-year-old nephew — who still thinks sports are about, you know, winning — losing more than 55 games and locking up a bottom-five record was exactly what the Mavs,…
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…
Dallas County’s black and Hispanic residents face wide gaps in income levels, educational achievement and access to health insurance, despite rapid population growth, according to a comprehensive new study from the Communities Foundation of Texas and the Center for Public Policy Priorities. The study, set to be officially released at…
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…
State health inspectors could confiscate food products that say they contain CBD oil under new procedures proposed by the Texas Department of State Health Services, raising howls from medical marijuana supporters and threatening to stifle a growing number of shops peddling products with the oil. They’ve popped up all over…
First rule: I want to talk about how human beings treat dogs sometimes. No fair talking about how human beings treat kids sometimes. I know. Bad. We’ll talk about that another day. But, OK, you brought it up, so let me ask you a question. People have an absolute right…
Three years after a man in an armored van launched a sustained attack on the Dallas Police Department’s headquarters in the Cedars, long-awaited increases in police station security are almost complete, according to new information from the city of Dallas. Improvements to the interiors of most of the department’s substations…
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…
I don’t make ’em up, folks. I just try to keep up. Sometimes I need to just tell you about a thing — just put it out there on the table and say, “Go figure.” Last week, President Donald Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, came through town as the…
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich, who incited outcry three weeks ago on social media after calling out Plano for the level of chlorine in its drinking water, questioned the accuracy of information coming from the North Texas Municipal Water District at a community meeting in Frisco on Thursday evening. Brokovich, the…
Thursday afternoon’s conversation, like a lot of things involving Betsy DeVos, teetered among the surreal, the confusing and the merely frustrating. The secretary of education and private school choice advocate was in the midst of a hostile crowd but did her best to seem engaged without out actually engaging. DeVos…
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…
For the better part of month, Plano, the North Texas Municipal Water District and one very active Facebook group have found themselves in a fight that traces its origins to a single Facebook post. If the past is any guide, however, their ordeal could soon be coming to an end…
