State Government

The state’s top criminal judge has inspired a parody website and a complaint from a group of lawyers that’s dead serious.

Clunky as it is, “Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One” is a familiar name in election law circles.

Come March, Democratic primary voters will likely know all about U.S. Senate hopeful Rick Noriega’s ties to utility companies. What voters will make of it is still anybody’s guess.

Maybe nobody will remember this in six months, but the people who want Texans to approve $3 billion in cancer bonds are having a hard time keeping their act together.

The political air is different in sixteen legislative districts: Republicans win statewide races, but Democrats dominate in legislative contests.

Redistricting, with just a few exceptions, still has a strong hold on the makeup of the state Senate and the Texas congressional delegation. But several House members continue to confound the mapmakers, winning in districts where, on paper, they shouldn’t.

We pulled the numbers from campaign reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission and the Federal Election Commission and ranked officeholders and candidates by how much they had in their accounts at mid-year.

Nathan Hecht’s battle over Harriet Miers’ appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is lasting longer than hers did.

Legal arguments about how the Texas House should run have picked up, but it’s still too early to tell whether Attorney General Greg Abbott will weigh in and whether, if he does, it’ll make any difference in the final outcome.

The state’s biggest phone companies and their competitors are fighting over a fund that subsidizes companies that provide phone service where it would otherwise be unaffordable. AT&T;, the biggest, says the Universal Service Fund doesn’t cover its costs. Competitors say the company gets at least twice what it should.