Statewide disability group ADAPT of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project commemorated the 20th anniversity of the Americans with Disabilities Act today by filing more than 20 lawsuits across the state — targeting inaccessibility in restaurants and municipal buildings.
Austin
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Not Who, But What?
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst made some new committee assignments last week to cover the resignation of state Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco. But the rejiggering created as many questions as it answered: Not about who went where, but about what went where. For instance: What committee will have legislative oversight of electric utility companies?
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Demographics
Courting Hispanics: The Future
For the final part of his three-part series, Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune sat down with Hispanic student leaders to find out whether Texas Democrats and Republicans can attract first-time voters in November.
Posted in
Energy
Electric Avenue
Plug-in cars — which are touted as green because they use little if any gasoline and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 49 percent and 75 percent compared with a conventional vehicle — will soon be a viable option in Texas. By the end of this year, Austinites should be able to buy the new electric car from Chevrolet, called the Volt. By next February, hundreds of Leafs, Nissan’s plug-in car, will be on the roads around Houston. The new influx, fueled by government subsidies, should more than double the number of plug-in vehicles in the state.
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Higher Education
TribBlog: Storming the Tower
A group of environmental advocates is planning a protest on the UT campus tomorrow afternoon to express their displeasure with new tower-shaped plastic bottles.
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Public Education
TribBlog: SBOE Votes Down Charter Allocation
The State Board of Education won’t be investing any money in properties to lease to charter schools, at least for now.
Posted in
Demographics
Courting Hispanics: The Dems
The Hispanic vote in Texas is often referred to as a “sleeping giant” because of historically low turnout. If Hispanics were to show up at the ballot box in record numbers, they could easily influence elections of all kinds. In part two of his three-part series, Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports on the efforts of state Democrats to sound the alarm.
Posted inState Government
Courting Hispanics: The GOP
In the first installment of a three-part series, Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune looks at a new Republican effort to recruit, train and fund Hispanic candidates.
Posted in
Higher Education
Hopwood 2.0
A court case involving two University of Texas applicants who believe they were denied admission because they’re white threatens to reinvigorate an ideological skirmish that peaked in the late 1990s. The first lawsuit of its kind brought against a university since a pair of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2003, Fisher v. Texas has observers everywhere wondering if the state’s troubled history with race-based admissions makes it the ideal incubator for the next round of affirmative action battles.
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Public Education
TribBlog: Merit Pay and the “Black Box”
In the latest clash between the Houston Independent School District and those who question its use of “value-added data” to grade and sometimes fire teachers, state Sen. Mario Gallegos Jr., D-Houston, grilled an HSID representative at Tuesday’s Senate Education Committee hearing over what he decried as a transparency issue for the district.
