Depending on whom you ask, anywhere between 100,000 to half a million Juarenses have left Mexico since drug violence exploded in 2008. In a tragic irony, neighboring El Paso is flourishing economically as Juárez descends further into terror.
Economy
Get the latest on jobs, business, growth, and policy shaping the state’s economy with in-depth reporting from The Texas Tribune.
TribBlog: Another Roll of the Dice
It was more like a bidding auction today than a meeting of the Texas House Committee on Licensing and Regulation. Gambling advocates packed into three Capitol hearing rooms, and threw out number after number as they asked legislators — yet again — to consider the benefits of more gaming in Texas.
Ads Infinitum: Education PAC’s Anti-Perry Ad [Updated]
A new political action committee is attacking Gov. Rick Perry with a television ad playing on a familiar theme: Perry’s high-class living. The ad starts airing tonight in markets across Texas.
Face-Off: The Shortfall
While the right and left don’t agree on much, both sides stipulate that the state’s budget mess is a multibillion-dollar problem. In the debut of our new video series, the executive director of the progressive Center for Public Policy Priorities, former state district judge Scott McCown, and the director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, former state Rep. Talmadge Heflin, debate the best way to dig us out of the hole — and how we got into it in the first place.
Scott McCown vs. Talmadge Heflin
The executive director of the progressive Center for Public Policy Priorities and the director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, debate the best way to dig out of Texas’ multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall.
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Ramshaw and the Houston Chronicle’s Terri Langford on incidents of abuse and mistreatment at residential treatment centers, M. Smith on the state Republican Party platform and 10th Amendment embracers, Galbraith on a pipeline project raising crude concerns and the most important word in water law, Ramsey on former officeholders who are now lobbyists and the possibility of a speaker’s race, Grissom on a fight over solar power in Marfa, Hamilton and Aguilar on the TxDOT audit, Philpott on budget cuts affecting school districts and my conversation with Dallas County D.A. Craig Watkins: The best of our best from June 7-11, 2010.
TribBlog: Holding Out for a TxDOT Hero
Lawmakers have said it before, and today they said it again: Sweeping top-down change is needed within the Texas Department of Transportation.
TribBlog: Immigrant Application Fees Could Rise
Citing budget cuts and a decline is revenue, the USCIS is proposing fee increases for more than two dozen immigration-related documents.
TribBlog: A Taxing Problem
The state’s tax on corporations could end up half a billion dollars shy of Comptroller Susan Combs’ predictions, officials with her office say.
TribBlog: The 10 Percent Solution
Fresh off of asking for five percent cuts from state agencies and actually approving $1.2 billion of what was proposed, the state’s top three leaders are asking for ten percent cuts in the amounts the agencies will be seeking next time the Legislature meets.

