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Amusingly also yesterday the 911 truther and "fluoridation is poison" candidate for Austin City Council ponied up the 13.5k deposit required for a recount. It resulted in her gaining two votes. Her opponent gained three. So she lost 64.61% to 35.39% instead of 64.62% to 35.38% She considering filing a lawsuit for... I dunno maybe mole people interference with the election or something? * Original results: Casar 2851/Pressley 1561 * Recount: Casar 2854/Pressley 1563
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Jan 7, 2015 16:16
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I know it is all just pre-session posturing because when it really comes down to it overturning the bag ordinance is very low on their priority and they'd rather the very precious space on the legislative schedule be filled with other things. Still I really do hope they don't gently caress with it because after the initial pain and accumulation of a few reusable bags everything is fine. Dan Patrick intending to keep his insane tax jut promise is much more worrying, especially in conjunction with ending the gas tax reallocation (which would be a good thing by itself). Education is gonna get walloped. On the subject of bags I think where the Dallas ordinance isn't going to work out as well as the Austin one is that it allows for you to keep using the cheap disposable bags if you pay a nickle or whatever. In Austin if you forget your bags and have to pay for them you get a reusable bag which is reasonably durable and eventually even the more forgetful person has so many of these reusable bags that they can't help but have some in their car when they go shopping. Unless Abbott does something insane like call a special session to pass a bag ban ban.
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Jan 9, 2015 05:27
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Oh goodie. The horror begins. After the comptroller's estimated budget they are already talking about the possibility of tax cuts.
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Jan 13, 2015 15:25
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zoux posted:Also if you're in Austin today there is a huge open carry rally at the Capitol and they're gonna be 3D printing guns. Is this a huge rally in relation to other rallies or a huge rally in relation to other open carry rallies (so two dozen people)?
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Jan 13, 2015 16:21
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Layoffs are starting to hit oil companies. Anecdotally my neighbor (PE who does industrial construction design contracting) said he's heard that firms specializing in oil and energy work have seen contracts dry up lately.
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Jan 15, 2015 19:58
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ReidRansom posted:The boom/bust cycle is why my older brother didn't go back into the industry after being laid off from Schlumberger. My little brother works for Shell, but doing GIS stuff, so maybe he's safe. Who knows. The majors will be fine. The main risk to his job would be Shell buying up another company and firing him because of a redundancy. The small firms and contractors are going to be hosed sideways. Especially because outputs continue to rise due to the vicious cycle companies find themselves in. They have to pump and sell oil to pay debt service, which leads to the price dropping, which leads to having to pump and sell more oil which leads to...
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Jan 15, 2015 20:36
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Xibanya posted:I used to live in Georgetown, which is also named for Mr. Glasscock. It's actually got stuff like Starbucks and cinemas and strip malls now but when I moved there in Feb 2001 it had like 20k inhabitants and gently caress all to do and only one high school serving multiple thousands of students because nobody wanted to build a new school through a combination of ARE TAX DOLLARS and ARE AAAAA FOOTBALL. It is only recently that Georgetown has grown enough as a bedroom community for Austin that residents have gotten the numbers to outvote the childless tax-dodging assholes of Sun City Georgetown (with 90% turnout) and vote in some school spending.
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Jan 19, 2015 04:06
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Or it simultaneously rolling out to the entire city limits. Nimbys didn't kill the rail initiative as much as the inner ring suburbs did. Central voted for it. Lone star rail is looking promising though.
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Jan 20, 2015 22:58
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The Texas Observer did an amazing article about how companies are using property tax appraisal appeals systematically to drop their tax burdens and as a side effect gently caress over school districts:quote:There are basically two ways to challenge a tax appraisal—on value and on unequal appraisal. The first claims that a property has been appraised above market value. The second claims that while a property may be appraised at market value, others like it are appraised for much less. Before 1997, an unequal appraisal claim required an expensive property analysis called a ratio study, and it was seldom used. It is fairly obvious that this is a recipe for tax appraisals that ratchet downward. The highest appraised company appeals, wins a reduction, the others appeal because the average appraisal has dropped (as described in the article the juries and companies are effectively using the mean, not the median), win, repeat. That's if they even wait for long enough: it seems now that everyone appeals because you can have your experts come up with myriad reasons to adjust the value of your property downward with regard to comparable properties. We really need sales price disclosure. There is no logical reason why the appraisal shouldn't reset to the sales price when a sale happens.
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Jan 22, 2015 17:47
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ReidRansom posted:We do however require that you relinquish your local freedoms to an all-controlling state government. Thank you. One of those bills is insanely broad 
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Jan 28, 2015 18:02
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zoux posted:I dunno, that sounds like boilerplate enacting language, are you sure that isn't bracketed to just that bill. No such luck. http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/84R/billtext/pdf/SB00343I.pdf It is a "nuke it from orbit" approach.
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Jan 28, 2015 18:39
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To briefly play devil's advocate preemption is an established legal doctrine that many cities like to play fast and loose with until they get called out on it. But it is limited to very specific parts of a law, not massive swaths of subject matter like that atrocity of a bill.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:23
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zoux posted:Yeah it's not even going to get a hearing. Yeah. Still funny to think through the potential consequences because it is so abundantly clear Huffiness didn't. Guy unironically thinks that the Boy Scouts allowing gay kids to join is an example of the Gay Agenda btw.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:29
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Typically yes, but there are situations where more stringent local laws are preempted by laxer state laws. It is pretty much limited to situations where the state laws say "you cannot do X unless the following conditions apply, then you can" and the local law just says "you can't do X. Ever." The idea being that a local government cannot override what the state law intended to permit.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:10
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zoux posted:Yeah they want to raise the sales tax. Even if they were to raise the sales tax enough to fund education (where most of the hated property tax is going) there would be nothing to stop them from raiding that funding source in the future right? We would just end up either with complete disasters of schools or property tax rates will just go right back up.
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Mar 4, 2015 23:28
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Badger of Basra posted:
Yeah their main complaint is that SA wants to actually enforce a real background check, not the lowest-bidder rubber stamp that uber and lyft currently do. San Antonio mayor's statement is a nice "go gently caress yourself" too. quote:Several days ago, the TNCs reversed course and have since stated they cannot continue to operate in San Antonio with the ten-point fingerprint background check requirements. Both Uber and Lyft believe that their corporate interests are incompatible with these basic public safety requests. However, our job as a Council is not to ensure the profitably of their business model, our job is to ensure the public’s safety.
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Mar 6, 2015 17:35
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emfive posted:Have you been out around the Y, Southwest Parkway, Bee Caves, Lakeway, Anderson Mill, or Lakeway any time recently? The SoS folks really don't give a poo poo if it is large-plot SFHs and doesn't interrupt their scenic views. The original pre-editing report on Austin's Planning department finally got released. It isn't good.     I guess decades of using zoning and permitting to stymie development have really left their mark.
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Mar 8, 2015 17:34
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Licensed open carry at least. The nuts who showed up at the Capitol and threatened legislators must be pissed because most of them have records that make them unable to get a concealed carry license.
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Mar 17, 2015 05:19
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Xibanya posted:I like how a lot of people will scream about how this is unfairly harming business but aren't willing to have smoke blasted into their living space all day. Most of the people I see complaining about the idea of the regulation don't live in the areas affected and seem to think that it is new residents moving in and complaining about long-established businesses (which provides a good indication that those people haven't been here for long if they think any of the BBQ joints being discussed are old businesses). Smoke stacks would really help and I bet be an acceptable solution for everyone directly affected but I would imagine that the usual group of people would come out of the woodwork to complain about them ruining the look of the neighborhood or something. I also wonder if the smoke stacks would be too permanent of a structure and would somehow mess with the "food trailer/truck" designation some of the places are using because of just how absurd the permitting process is and the crazy number of requirements needed to start a standard brick and mortar restaurant.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:16
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Trabisnikof posted:Glad to see the ledg taking up the critical issues: Why are they bothering? The net effect will be for insurers to have to reissue cards. Nobody looks at the things and they already have a bunch of crap on the front people don't understand like RxPCN so nobody but people who work with them will get the meaning anyway. And they won't care because insured patients beat sliding scale patients for profitability.
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May 13, 2015 22:27
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Badger of Basra posted:Agreed it's definitely a good thing that people with Section 8 vouchers can now be rejected by a landlord again just because they're paying with Section 8. To be fair: by all accounts the city voucher program is an absolute clusterfuck to deal with and this was a way to force participation without having to actually fix all the problems with it. It evidently takes a week or two to get approval and that's a big ask when the landlord could otherwise have a tenant take possession and start paying rent right away. Still a huge loss to have it overturned. I didn't shed many tears over the landlords complaining about having to get the units inspected, etc.
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May 13, 2015 23:28
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zoux posted:Don't worry, that's the bill that's currently being chubbed to death. Right now TMF is holding forth on the history of VRA litigation against Texas. also now in the age of televised debate which is being actively followed it doesn't seem like they are able to use the old trick of unplugging the clock at 11:58 and working until 3AM while pretending it isn't midnight yet.
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May 14, 2015 20:04
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Campus carry and some additional "gently caress you" abortion restrictions have to pass the house tonight or they are dead. The Democrats are attempting to talk them to death by delaying bills earlier in the queue after they got some Republicans on board to block an attempt to move the bills up in the schedule.
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May 27, 2015 02:28
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zoux posted:That was actually a Real Bad amendment that would've effectively instituted constitutional carry. Open carry was pretty much a given this session but it is delightful that those demanding constitutional carry (because they are barred from a CHL) were sure complete assholes that the Lege made sure to include the CHL requirement.
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May 30, 2015 13:56
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zoux posted:The House "liberty caucus" mustered 19 votes for their speaker candidate in January, which was not only a mandate for the centrist style of Strauss but indicating that the media handwringing over the New Tea Party Era in Texas was a bit overexaggerated. My friend who follows the lege a hell of a lot closer than I do because of her job was saying that a lot of the trouble was the Tea Party freshmen were obsessed with getting speaking time in so they could preen themselves in front of the chambers, committees, or press. Meanwhile the experienced legislators were going around talking/meeting with each other and getting poo poo they cared about done.
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May 30, 2015 18:02
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Sheng-ji Yang posted:lmao Guilty plea for a Class A misdemeanor. When he was 18 he was caught with burglary tools (a container of broken bits of spark plugs used to quickly break car windows and a bunch of screw drivers) and speakers and cds which had been recently taken from a truck which had its window busted in (by the burglary tools). Texas CHL criteria are really rather strict.
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May 30, 2015 20:48
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The solution to police not uniformly applying the laws to all races is not to make the laws unenforceable. It is akin to saying we shouldn't let police pull people over for stop sign violations because that is often used as a reason to pull someone over for driving while black. Without the ability for an officer who sees someone carrying to ask for their CHL the law requiring a CHL to carry becomes useless and only those stopped for some other who are incidentally illegally open carrying will be caught. And guess what group of people get disproportionately stopped and checked for ID and outstanding warrants... So a no-stop rule won't stop police from picking on minorities open carrying as police intent on stopping and harassing have plenty of reasons for stopping someone and asking who they are already. Add in that Texas also has a requirement to ID yourself to a law enforcement officer and you have a situation where the Officer "saw him stumble and had reason to believe he might be PI" and calls in the ID which would pull up the CHL. What is needed is thorough reporting and constant monitoring of records of every police interaction including reasons given for it, actions taken, and the apparent ethnicity of the person(s) involved. That would let us know where the trouble is and start working to correct it.
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Jun 1, 2015 01:33
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ReidRansom posted:Leave it in place as a symbolic thing? Challenge the state law? Iunno. They were being sued over the ban, even after it was invalidated by the Lege. Repealing renders the lawsuits moot (and prevents having to pay for legal/lawyer fees). Also (as noted at the end of the article) the unenforceable ban would have given the drillers a foot in the door to try and strip out other safety provisions Denton has with regard to buffer zones around drilling.
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Jun 17, 2015 23:06
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This is just feel good nonsense for some conservatives who want to stick it to Michelle Obama. Schools already removed their friers and even if they were willing to spend the money to put them back in there isn't much you can use them for and still meet the nutritional guidelines of the USDA's school lunch program.
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Jun 19, 2015 20:56
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Trabisnikof posted:Soda machines however, are often profit centers. School soda machines are also regulated by the USDA. See page 2 of this for the requirements
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Jun 19, 2015 21:49
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The Travis County Clerk's office has started issuing licenses. They will issue to anyone in line as of 6:30PM and will be open all next week including the weekend.
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Jun 26, 2015 15:59
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Paxton might be in some very serious trouble quote:The criminal investigation against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken a more serious turn, with special prosecutors now planning to present a first-degree felony securities fraud case against him to a Collin County grand jury, News 8 has learned. 
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Jul 2, 2015 04:33
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Also as of Saturday an Austin state representative have filed to have him disbarred for encouraging clerks to violate the law. A bunch of lawyers from around the state are threatening to file their own complaint. However the Texas Bar is coming up for consideration by the Sunset Commission so I'm hesitant to get excited about the prospects of the complaints.
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Jul 5, 2015 13:40
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Ken Paxton is getting indicted on Monday.quote:McKINNEY — A grand jury has indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on multiple felony charges, according to several sources who are familiar with the complaints. I wonder if he'll step down or ride the bomb down the the ground.
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Aug 1, 2015 20:41
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blue squares posted:Hey guys I know this happened a while back, but I just turned 26 and had to buy my own insurance. Were any reasonable arguments advanced by Perry and his team for rejecting the Medicaid expansion? Because it sucks. Nope! And IIRC all of the silver level plans on the TX exchange are lovely high deductable plans which present major obstacles to getting proper care.
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Aug 14, 2015 17:38
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Paxton just isn't having a great time of thisquote:After attorney Joe Kendall told state District Judge George Gallagher that he was stepping down from Paxton's defense team, Paxton told Gallagher he didn't currently have a lead defense lawyer. Pretty strange for a lead attorney to quit right before the first hearing and when there is a ticking clock to get the indictments thrown out.
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Aug 29, 2015 13:35
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zoux posted:I think you guys are overlooking the biggest difference between the two states, which is the industrial base. High tech and entertainment rich people donate cash to Dems, oil and gas barons donate to the GOP. This dovetails with Texas's incredibly low pay for legislators and short lawmaking calendar to essentially guarantee that corruption is the name of the game. The money from business has definitely been the power player in Texas politics for a long while and right now nobody grovels at their feet and attends to their every whim quite like the Texas GOP. Hell we had a chemical plant take out half a town and the GOP response was to prevent journalists from seeing the records of where similar explodey chemicals were made or stored.
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Sep 4, 2015 13:16
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karlor posted:Hispanic =/= immigrant The trouble is that authorities and racist white people will use "brown = illegal immigrant until proven otherwise" there is no way to tell who is here illegally vs a legal immigrant, kids of legal immigrants, or even are a tejano who were here first. That makes the lives of those legally here hell and only those most blinded by their anger would take that deal.
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Oct 22, 2015 17:26
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It also covers trans* folks as well which is what has the bigots losing their minds.
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Nov 3, 2015 01:26
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I don't much care for prop 1 because the shortfall in school funds the raised exemption will cause is supposedly to be allocated from the general fund by the legislature. They don't have the best of record when it comes to properly funding schools.
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Nov 3, 2015 19:06
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