The Week in the Rearview Mirror

The deadline for registering to vote in the upcoming election was marked this week by a flood of applications. While the Bexar County elections administrator said this year’s registrations won’t reach the level seen in 2008, the office was still working overtime to process the applications. Other counties also reported dramatic increases in their workloads as the cutoff approached. 

Tom DeLay got yet another day in court this week, appealing his convictions on conspiracy and money-laundering charges to three judges on Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals. Both sides think that'll go up another step — to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals — when this court rules. That case started with DeLay's efforts to finance what turned out to be a big Republican election year in 2002. If the conviction sticks, he's already been sentenced to three years in prison. 

Recent rains have eased drought conditions in Texas, but two years of trouble have planners in parts of West Texas pondering their future. Several towns in the Permian Basin area had come within months of running out of water completely before the latest rain replenished the reservoirs they count on. Counties were confronting the necessity of trucking in water. Now they face a reprieve and are planning new ways to get their water that aren’t so dependent on surface reservoirs that tend to experience extreme evaporation.

New Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams is speaking out about the cheating scandal in the El Paso Independent School District. Former Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia was recently sentenced to three-and-a-half years in federal prison for overseeing the manipulation of students and their test scores to inflate the district’s ratings. Williams called the actions of school administrators a civil rights violation, citing instances in which students were not admitted to struggling schools or were encouraged to leave so the schools’ test scores wouldn’t suffer. The FBI is still investigating, and has given the district the green light now to do its own investigation.

Some Texas schools are using radio frequency identification tags embedded in ID cards that students wear on lanyards around their necks. The cards can track record students' whereabouts on campus or off, giving schools more accurate attendance records to present to the state for reimbursement. Schools are also requiring that students use the nametags to check out library books, pay for their lunches and even to register. Some students and parents have raised privacy concerns. 

When David Michael Hartley was shot to death on Falcon Lake two years ago, authorities were unable to recover his body or charge anyone with the killing. But the Mexican government announced this week that it has arrested and charged a 31-year-old, high-ranking member of the Zeta drug cartel with the murder. Alfonso Martinez Escobedo is accused of numerous killings in northern Mexico and had a $1 million bounty on his head. 

San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro’s pre-K initiative is racking up some major contributions in the San Antonio business and philanthropic community. The campaign’s latest finance report shows it has collected more than $363,000 since July 1. The proposal will be on November’s ballot, and the group promoting it plans to spend the money on a TV ad campaign blitz. If the initiative passes, it will be funded by a one-eighth-cent sales tax increase, and opposition to the measure has mainly come from conservative and Tea Party affiliated groups.

September revenues from sales taxes were up 11.5 percent from the same month last year, according to the comptroller's office, a promising signal that lawmakers may have more to work with as they try to craft a budget next year. It was the 30th straight month of sales tax collection growth.