The latest state government news from The Texas Tribune.
As chairman of the Select Committee of Public Education in the '80s, Ross Perot took on high school athletics hammer and tongs: “If the people of Texas want Friday night entertainment instead of education," he said, "let’s find out about it." An excerpt from the forthcoming How Things Really Work: Lessons from a Life in Politics. Full Story
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Nothing has helped Texas "close the gaps" of higher education achievement more than financial aid for low-income students. But with coming budget cuts, tens of thousands of students could lose out on the state's largest and most generous financial aid program. Full Story
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David Swinford's seat in the Texas House will apparently remain empty for the next four months. Full Story
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The Environmental Protection Agency is considering new regulations for coal ash — the waste left over from coal-fired power plants. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, those new rules could have a big impact in Texas, the nation’s number one coal consumer. Full Story
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The rules of the Texas Senate are designed to create an orderly process that respects the rights of individual members. They have lasted this long because they do the job well and consider the need for compromise in the legislative operation. Trampling the rights of the minority is never a good idea — and yet it has happened over and over again. An excerpt from the forthcoming How Things Really Work: Lessons from a Life in Politics. Full Story
Taking a page out of the Kay Bailey Hutchison handbook, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White called for gubernatorial term limits today. Full Story
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Harris County — home to the largest city in Texas — will be without all 10,000 of its voting machines on Election Day after they were destroyed in a fire. County commissioners held an emergency meeting this week to figure out how to move forward. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune has this report. Full Story
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President Obama is in El Paso today, visiting Fort Bliss before tonight's White House address on the draw-down in Iraq. Against that backdrop, about 800 men and women of 36th Infantry Division of the Texas Army National Guard will ship out for Fort Lewis, Washington, to prepare for a nine-month tour in Iraq and the role they'll play in bringing the U.S. presence there to a close by December 2011. Erika Aguilar of KUT News reports. Full Story
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The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has people thinking about whether the state and coastal cities are prepared for another big storm — especially with peak storm season again upon us. As Texas Public Radio’s David Martin Davies reports, there’s concern in particular over the sturdiness of dams. Full Story
The governor depicted by Democrats as a coward in statewide newspaper ads last week doesn't seem nervous. In fact, as he traveled from Killeen to Temple and on to Texarkana last week accompanied by a reporter from The Texas Tribune, Republican Rick Perry looked comfortable, though he says he's taking his Democratic challenger, Bill White, seriously. Full Story
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Five years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana exiles have fundamentally changed Houston, and vice-versa. The uneasy arrangement was a shotgun marriage: Many evacuees had no choice in whether or where they went, and Houstonians had no choice, for humanity's sake, but to take them in. Full Story
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For the 11th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the attorney general of Texas on the politics and constitutionality of gay marriage, why he's suing the feds over health care and why he filed a brief in support of the Arizona immigration law. Full Story
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While Texas' coastal residents know that a potential disaster is just a hurricane away, a federal grant could help the state do a better job to stave off the devastation. David Martin Davies of Texas Public Radio has this report. Full Story
The full interview and audience Q&A with the Texas Attorney General. Full Story
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Hu compares and contrasts the official schedules of four big-state governors (including Rick Perry) and picks the 21 Texas House races to watch, Ramshaw on a 19-year-old with an IQ of 47 sentenced to 100 years in prison, Stiles on Perry's regent-donors, Galbraith on a plan to curb the independence of the state's electricity grid, Thevenot on the turf war over mental health, Grissom on whether the Texas Youth Commission should be abolished, Aguilar on a crucial immigration-related case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Ramsey's interview with GOP provocateur Debra Medina and M. Smith on how changes to campaign finance law will affect judicial elections in Texas: The best of our best from August 23 to 27, 2010. Full Story
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Do two recent U.S. Supreme Court opinions have the far-reaching effects on Texas judicial elections that some in our legal community fear? Or do the state's current campaign finance laws adequately address the issues presented by both cases? Full Story
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Only 10 days out from Labor Day — the unofficial start of the campaign season — we bring you a scouting report on the 21 Texas House races to watch. We based our picks on dozens of interviews with politicos and our own analysis of district voting patterns, campaign coffers, the relative strength of the candidates and issues that could turn each contest. Most of the vulnerable incumbents are Democrats, which is no surprise in a Republican year. But a few veteran R's are at risk, thanks to alleged ethical lapses that could swing voters against the national mood. Full Story
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The first female district attorney of Harris County on the massive scope of her job, softening her office's tough-on-crime reputation, the link between mental health care and criminal justice, why she set up a Post-Conviction Review Section and what she's learned from innocence cases so far. Full Story
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He can't read or write, struggles to speak, and at age 19 has an IQ of 47. Yet a judge in the northeast Texas town of Paris still sentenced Aaron Hart to 100 years in prison for performing sexual acts on a 6-year-old neighbor. An appeals court overturned Aaron's conviction this spring. Now he sits in jail facing the same charges a second time, and his family is praying for a different outcome. Full Story
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Texas has always operated its own electricity grid, separate from the two other grids that span the rest of the nation. But a project quietly emerging in eastern New Mexico could curb that independence — and affect energy prices here in ways that remain much in dispute. Full Story
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