Texas is in a weird place when it comes to transportation. It is a state utterly dependent on the automobile and yet policy makers have proven unable — or, more precisely, unwilling — to properly fund the roads and infrastructure that makes car travel feasible. The gas tax has been…
In early 2011 then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott moved to bring down the hammer on Midland Funding, one of the country’s more rapacious debt-collection outfits. Every year the company would buy billions of dollars in debt from banks and credit card companies for pennies on the dollar (in 2010 those…
(This story replaces a version published this morning.) This just in: What the city has said for 20 years about flood safety and a proposed toll road along the Trinity River very possibly is not true. In a major flood that road may be underwater and threatened. Yesterday after I filed…
You have a big coal plant in Texas and you want to make sure the states says you’re following the Clean Air Act, so you don’t get in trouble. How can you ensure that Texas regulators will give you the clearance you need? By telling them what to do. Correspondence…
Two weeks ago, Eric Williams and Subrina Brenham, two losing candidates who got less than 200 votes each in running for the Dallas City Council District 8 seat soon to be vacated by Tennell Atkins, filed a lawsuit. Williams and Brenham alleged that Dianne Gibson and Erik Williams, the two…
Joe Gonzalez tried to out-OJ OJ Simpson Wednesday afternoon. Driving a white vehicle, Gonzalez, 42, led Fort Worth police on a low-speed chase that included his heading the wrong way down an exit ramp, onlookers stalled in traffic getting out of their cars and taking photos and, finally, a SWAT…
This was bound to happen, Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston says. Kingston has described the runoff for the council’s District 10 seat as a twist on the prisoner’s dilemma — a well worn example of game theory about how people decide whether to cooperate or screw one another over. In fact,…
Connect-a-Jet was going to do for private aircraft what Expedia.com and its competitors did for commercial air travel. No longer would luxury-minded fliers be forced to dispatch their indentured servants to personally charter that flight to the Caymans — which, we’re told, is how private jet reservations typically work. Instead,…
In attempting to save the vital right of Texas college students to attend classes with a concealed firearm, the Texas House of Representatives may have killed it. Facing a midnight deadline that would have stopped the campus carry bill from proceeding further, House Republicans forced a vote, which they won…
Dallas traffic lights are so long neglected that “it is not practical to upgrade all obsolete signals in a short time,” city staff said Tuesday. Half of all stoplights in the city were installed before 1970, Auro Majumdar, Dallas’ assistant director of street services said; 70 percent were installed before 1980…
Throughout the regular legislative session, which will finally end this weekend, Texas lawmakers have dreamed up all sorts of creative ways to stop women from getting abortions. Following the abortion bills in Texas is like playing a game of choose-your-own-adventure. What kind of pregnancy would you least want to go…
All that separates Texas and mandatory in-person visits for most of the state’s county jail inmates is Governor Greg Abbott’s signature. Working through the Memorial Day weekend, the Texas Senate approved a bill requiring county jails in the state to offer inmates at least two 20-minute, in-person visitation opportunities a…
Slowly but surely, the Dallas Police Department is developing a comprehensive policy for the 1,000 body cameras it intends to introduce into the field in the next five years. Tuesday morning, the Dallas City Council Public Safety committee will get its latest peek at new department standards before the full…
Yes, we know. Your dog is a pretty thing. Whoza pretty doggie? Heeza a pretty doggie, isn’t he? Not only that, your best friend’s face is also unique, which means he or she is a perfect subject for facial recognition software. So, next week, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Dallas…
Jonathan Paul died in March, his family says, because officers at Arlington City Jail put him in a chokehold and then failed to act when Paul could no longer breathe. Paul was picked up by Arlington police for outstanding warrants after he created a disturbance at his home in an…
We’re trying. That’s the gist of a letter sent by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch regarding Texas’ compliance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) last week. “I cannot yet certify that the state is in full compliance with Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”),…
During what was otherwise a typically boring briefing on the city’s budget process, a mildly interesting discussion about a subject many of us care about actually broke out: What to do about Dallas’ increasingly bad streets. For a brief moment Wednesday, it seemed as if a few members of the…
Dallas renters rate the city as one of the worst in Texas in which to live, according to a new survey from Apartment List. Among Texas cities, only Houston ranks lower among the 100 cities surveyed. Apartment List talked to a bunch of renters — more than 18,000 nationwide —…
When Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, last visited Dallas in October, local law enforcement seemed damn near progressive in its approach to dealing with citizen photographers. Dallas police and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office didn’t just encourage officers to attend the seminar he’d helped organize,…
Corey Knowlton, the Royce City man who paid $350,000 for the right to kill a Namibian rhino at a January 2014 Dallas Safari Club auction, has bagged his rhino. As documented by CNN, Knowlton killed the rhino Monday. Presumably, he will now bring his trophy back to the Dallas area…
This is a thing: The Observer has ended its relationship with LiveFyre, the commenting platform our readers have been dutifully using and bitching about for a while now. We’re searching for a new platform to spark and support the debate that occurs beneath many of our stories, which is great news…
Allen High School’s $60 million shrine to high school football, shuttered by a structural failure less than two years after it opened, will reopen next month. Despite the recent rain, Eagle Stadium will reopen for June 5’s Allen High School graduation, AISD officials said at Monday’s school board meeting. All…
