We knew Dallas municipal election turnout was bad. Now we know it’s among the worst in the country. A comprehensive new study from Portland State University reveals that Dallas’ 6 percent turnout for the 2015 mayoral election between incumbent Mike Rawlings and Dallas attorney Marcos Ronquillo was the worst among the…
Why does everybody in the Texas school reform debate think the most important thing to do is lie about it? It’s the great consensus of untruth. No matter what they do, they all want to make sure nobody can guess what they’re really up to. Nothing is more emblematic of…
Former three-term Dallas Mayor Robert “Bob” Folsom, the man who brought Reunion Arena and the Dallas Chaparrals to the city after serving on the Dallas ISD school board and lettering in four sports at Southern Methodist University, died Tuesday at his Dallas home. He was 89. Folsom, born on Feb. 15, 1927,…
Tuesday, the state of Texas’ heaviest hitters, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, put their weight firmly behind an issue both have identified as a priority for the 2017 legislative session, school choice. Both leaders are pushing for the legislature to pass a bill that would create education…
Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump made things a lot easier for Dallas’ Energy Transfer Partners Tuesday, signing an executive order streamlining the process by which the Kelcy Warren-owned company’s Dakota Access Pipeline will be built. Trump’s order is intended to help Energy Transfer Partners, based in Dallas, with a regulatory…
The bitter joke at both the national level and here in Texas is the way our so-called populist, Tea Party-era politicians behave when their own oxen are in danger of taking a scratch. Then, watch out! Forget tea. The people be damned. Immediate case in point: feverish last-minute maneuvering in…
Just after 1:30 a.m. Monday, Dallas police responded to a stabbing in the 12800 block of Jupiter Road in Northeast Dallas. Two people, Susan Pinkney, 41, and Shamille Pinkney, 18, had been stabbed. Both victims were taken to Dallas’ Presbyterian Hospital. Shamille Pinkney, Susan’s daughter, died from her injuries. Monday afternoon Dallas police…
A federal corruption trial still slated for late February may finally deliver the answer to a question that has eluded Dallas for decades. Who loves and who hates Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price? Lawyers for Price, who is often considered to be the county’s most influential and controversial black…
A 32-year-old mother of five kids faces a felony child endangerment charge for testing positive for marijuana use while breast-feeding. Erica Tucker says she was using cannabis to control her grand mal epileptic seizures after she could no longer afford her prescription drugs. If convicted she could face up to…
New data from the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project reveals just how drastically Texas’ anti-abortion law, House Bill 2, has limited access to abortion in the state, despite the United States Supreme Court striking down two of the law’s three major components. Because the law prompted closure of 24…
Last fall, after the Texas Supreme Court refused to hear a case with the potential to limit the impact of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Unites States Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in June 2015. In October, Texas’ Republican leadership, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney…
We know you’re busy, so here’s a roundup of the week’s news from the Dallas Observer. Medical Examiner: Brian Loncar Died of a Cocaine Overdose The high profile attorney died days after burying his daughter. City Council Learns of Consequences to Streets When They Delayed Bond Vote The city budget…
The federal corruption trial of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, still scheduled to begin next month, will offer a two-month cavalcade of the city’s power elite, according to documents released Thursday by both the prosecution and the defense, but the documents disagree about which side the power elite will…
Wednesday night, the Baseball Writers Association of America announced that Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez is going to be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, following a single year on the ballot. Rodriguez, a catcher, spent most of his career with the Texas Rangers. He’ll be the second player ever to…
At the urging of the mayor, the Dallas City Council has abandoned efforts to save 162 lane miles of city streets now in danger of collapsing into an irredeemable condition, even though national bond rating agencies have already successively downgraded the city’s credit rating based in part on deteriorating streets…
Dallas police are still looking for the killer of 28-year-old Grady Dunn Jr., who was murdered after a traffic accident in southeast Dallas in early January. Late Thursday afternoon, the department sought to restart the case by releasing a video of a vehicle they say was involved in the crime, a…
Two weeks ago, a 9-5 straw vote by the Dallas City Council pushed back the city’s long-awaited May bond election. Thanks to a variety of factors — Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings cited the unwillingness of those who “write the big checks” to do so for a May bond election while…
The Dallas County Medical Examiner has determined that attorney Brian Loncar died form the “toxic effects” of cocaine, officials told the Dallas Observer Thursday. Loncar suffered from cardio vascular disease that contributed to his fatal overdose, officials said. The American Heart Association calls cocaine “the perfect heart attack drug.” “Even so-called…
The sequence of events that led to police detective Jerry Walker’s death on Tuesday began just after 3 a.m. when police received a call of an armed man, still unnamed, pacing his backyard on Turtle Cove Drive. The man, still unnamed by officials, was holding a rifle. Neighbors called the…
The Dallas Morning News has been doing some good stories lately about the need to clean up a low-income housing program that operates on surplus city-owned lots. I wrote some pieces myself not long ago about ideas for cleaning up poor neighborhoods in West Dallas. But, wait. We’re not going…
Two Dallas Police officers responded to a suspicious person call Wednesday morning at the apartment complex at 4700 Eastside Ave., identified by Google Maps as the Five Trees, and ended up fatally shooting a woman as she tried to flee the scene in a stolen vehicle.
This may be something you don’t even want to know about, but it’s about you, so I thought I should mention it to you. James M. Moroney III, publisher and CEO of A.H. Belo Corp., the company that publishes The Dallas Morning News, has been talking about you. In an…
