The state Senate Committee on Health and Human Services voted yesterday in favor of a bill that would renew the Women’s Health Program, a Medicaid-funded program that provides basic women’s health care. It was set to expire this year unless the Lege took action, but now that it has the…
City council members Angela Hunt and Vonciel Jones Hill are kicking ass at today’s contentious hearing on the city council’s recent unethics reform, which is about to wrap up. (Or not.) The council voted last April 13 to gut its ethics policy and allow political contributions from representatives and employees…
No need to recap at this late date the messy process that led to city officials finally looking for new concessionaires at city-owned Love Field Airport, presently undergoing that extreme makeover expected to wrap in 2013. But the bidding process isn’t going too smoothly either: Last month we noted that…
The city’s having a press conference Thursday morning during which Mayor Dwaine Caraway, Park and Rec officials and others will unveil the city’s new “Happy Trails” campaign designed to make the 104 miles of the city’s Dallas Trail Network jes’ a little bit safer. You recall this campaign: We sneak…
If Mike Rawlings is serious, the political consultants running his campaign will have a hard time making a living with him in office. At last night’s GLBT Chamber mayoral forum, candidates David Kunkle and Mike Rawlings agreed that political consultants who run campaigns and raise campaign money should be barred…
Speaking of vacant downtown landmarks …Two weeks ago, a City Hall employee asked if we knew what was up with 500 South Ervay, which sits in ruin right next door to City Hall and but a block away from 508 Park Avenue. It came up again last week when, during…
The marble-and-concrete building at 508 Park Avenue, once the Warner Bros. Film Exchange and Brunswick Records’s regional office, will get a much needed face lift after all, now that the Landmark Commission unanimously approved First Presbyterian Church’s plans for that address and the property next door at 1900 Young Street.”We…
On Wednesday, the full council will get that economic development update that never made it to committee two weeks ago (time was not on its side). Which is just as well: When we spoke two weeks ago, I’d completely forgotten to ask Karl Zavitkovsky, head of the Office of Economic…
Terry Southern — novelist, screenwriter, journalist, provocateur — would have turned 87 yesterday, had he not died of a heart attack in October 1995. And so, last night, council member Delia Jasson proclaimed May 1, 2011, Terry Southern Day — thanks to filmmaker Kirby Warnock, who has partnered with the…
Schutze and I have a date tonight: the North Texas GLBT Chamber’s mayoral forum at the Cityplace Conference Center on Haskell, where he and I have been asked to serve as moderators. (Because asking us to serve on the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Dallas Candidate Forum would have…
The timing, if nothing else, is remarkable. May 8 marks the 100th birthday of Robert Johnson, the Mississippi bluesman who cut half his influential body of work — perhaps the most influential in all of popular music — at 508 Park Avenue downtown in June 1937. The building, once the…
The NCAA’s Postseason Bowl Licensing Subcommittee met today in New Orleans, where it okee-doke’d bowl licenses through 2013-’14 for 32 out of the 35 game played during college football’s postseason. (Really? Only 35? Coulda swore it was more like 98.) Anyway. Two of the no-go’s were already fo-sho’s: the Fiesta…
I was on the City Secretary Office’s website looking for something the other day when I noticed a new addition in bright red letters: “NOTICE: PROHIBITION OF ADVERTISING ON PUBLIC PROPERTY.” It goes on to quote Section 3-1(a) of the Dallas City Code, which says that it’s … “… unlawful…
Like Sam said: Mike Rawlings has raised more than $1 million in his quest to become the next mayor of Dallas — or “nearly three times the combined haul of Ron Natinksy and David Kunkle.” And he’s determined to spend that dough: Moments ago his campaign posted Rawlings’s latest ad…
In recent weeks, the YouPlusDallas gang has been out recording some of the more intriguing mayoral debates and forums, like the arts-and-crafts showdown at the Nasher last week and the Faith and Public Policy Forum held Monday at the Gospel Lighthouse Church on W. Illinois. That event was sponsored by…
I’d intended to spend, oh, maybe half an hour in front of Dallas City Hall today, where, decades after William H. Whyte first proposed the idea of making that expanse of concrete habitable for humans, Brent Brown and Jason Roberts and Andrew Howard and many more breathed life into what…
By now you’re likely well aware of Ralph Isenberg’s ongoing efforts to bring Saad Nabeel back to North Texas, after the the 20-year-old Frisco Liberty High grad was sent to Bangladesh last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials — after Saad’s parents’ application for political asylum was denied and…
So. David Leininger, Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s chief financial officer, and council member Linda Koop just called to talk — what else? — streetcars, on both the DART board and city council’s to-do lists tonight and tomorrow. And Leininger made it very clear: While rider revenues for the next few…
Wade Emmert’s no longer on the fence about attempting to succeed Jonathan Neerman as Dallas County Republican Party chair. After telling us last week that he was interested in the position, he’s now committed to running against current vice chair Debbie Georgatos (pronounced Jor-jah-tos). Precinct chairs will choose between the…
Two weeks ago, Schutze noted that the city council — very quietly, very nonchalantly, very consent-agenda-y — loosened up its own restrictions governing when and how developers with zoning cases at City Hall could slide council members some dough-re-mi.When the original ordinance passed two long years ago, it prohibited “applicants…
During our 90-mintute interview with Mike Rawlings at CIC Partners inside Crescent Court for last week’s piece about the mayor’s race, Rawlings repeated a statement about the campaign that he’s made at countless debates: “It’s not about personalities.” We argued the opposite in our story. Since all four candidates agree…
Last week, we revisited the Trinity River toll road and convention center hotel referendums with mayoral candidate Ron Natinsky because, well, there just wasn’t enough space to explain it all in last week’s cover story. Much like we quickly glossed over those issues, there was also a brief mention in…
