Bitterness continues to surge through the Senate District 25 race, as defeated candidate Elizabeth Ames Jones endorsed her former target’s opponent in the upcoming July 31 runoff. The rivalry between Ames Jones and incumbent Sen. Jeff Wentworth was rancorous, and her endorsement of Donna Campbell didn’t surprise observers of the race. Wentworth’s team dismissed it, and Wentworth has contended that both of his challengers are not as invested in the district's voters as he is. 

Drilling trucks have done at least $2 billion in road damage, according to a task force reporting to the Texas Department of Transportation. The boom in drilling around the Barnett and Eagle Ford shales has taken a toll on the roads around the state, and with the price of natural gas down, big producers aren’t willing to kick in money for repairs as they’ve done in the past. County and farm-to-market roads are the hardest hit, as they aren’t built to withstand the millions of pounds of drilling equipment being hauled. 

Galveston’s struggle to rebuild after Hurricane Ike took another twist after the city’s latest mayoral election. Newly elected Mayor Lewis Rosen ran on an anti-public-housing platform, and after being sworn into office, shook up the Galveston Housing Authority by replacing three of its members and asking for the resignation of a fourth. The city remains divided on the rebuilding of public housing, and there have been accusations of racial bias in Rosen’s backing of a voucher program. It’s also unclear how this will affect state and federal funds dedicated to the recovery effort; outgoing Mayor Joe Jaworski claims it will violate agreements between the city and the funding groups and will lead to lawsuits to enforce terms of the agreements.

While many business leaders and economists agree with education experts that pre-K programs greatly aid students, the programs are easy to cut because they have less stringent requirements on class size and duration. The state had taken steps to establish a program encouraging the expansion of pre-K from half day to full day, but the $200 million grant program was eliminated in the last budget. Districts around the state report that they’ve reduced their pre-K teaching staff by more than 1,100 teachers.

South Padre Island made it on to the Natural Resources Defense Council's list of cleanest beaches in the nation, but environmental groups claim that the rating is an anomaly. Because of the record drought last year, they said the beaches didn’t get the typical pollution-containing runoff that causes health problems for people swimming in that water. A nonprofit group based in Austin, Environment Texas, predicts that with the return of normal rainfall, the beaches will again be a concern to anyone sensitive to pollutants that cause infections and skin rashes.

An El Paso businessman accused of bribing a county judge will plead guilty in federal court to one of 11 counts of fraud and embezzlement, according to the El Paso Times. Ruben “Sonny” Garcia is facing charges of bribing Judge Dolores Briones in his effort to win a lucrative contract evaluating children with severe mental illness for a federal program. His company, LKG Enterprises, was awarded the $600,000 contract but failed to provide any required reporting on its evaluations, and he will plead guilty to the charge of committing theft or embezzlement of federal program funds. The indictment demands that Garcia and his co-defendant, Cirilo “Chilo” Madrid, repay the Border Children’s Mental Health Collective $550,000.

With the recent establishment of a program designed to reduce the number of premature births, state health officials hope to save millions of dollars in neonatal intensive care. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission announced the program, which establishes a hotline for at-risk women, and projects that the state can save $32.5 million over the next two years. Preventing premature births would be a big cost-saver for the state’s Medicaid fund, as care for premature babies costs 18 times that of regular births.