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LEGISLATIVE CLIPPING SERVICE Legislative Reference Library PO Box 12488 • Austin TX 78711 M 2488. State Capitol Building. Room 2N,3

512.463.1252 phone. 512.475.4626 fax. www.lrl.state.tx.us .lrl.service@lrl.state.tx.us

Austin American-Statesman MAR 102017

State lawmakers laud Travis County for its pretrial bond system By Ryan Autullo

State lawmakers praised the fairness shown by Travis County courts in vetting defendants for quick jail release and en­couraged the rest of the state to adopt a similar tool to regulate jail population and save taxpayers millions.

Bills introduced Thursday by state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and state Rep. Andrew MUIT, R-Kerrville, aim to keep indigent people out of jail for minor crimes by increasing access to personal recognizance bonds, which come at no cost to a defendant.

To do that, they said, the state should scrap financial-based bond systems, used by most of the state, that indirectly dis­criminate against indigent defendants who can't come up with the money needed to ensure their release.

Whitmire and MUIT want to adopt a validated risk assessment tool, used by Travis County and four other Texas coun­ties, that prioritize a defendant's criminal history over their financial wherewithal.

"This will enhance public safety," Whitmire said, adding he's "guardedly optimistic" the measures - Senate Bill 1338, Senate Joint Resolution 50, House Bill 3011 and House Joint Resolution 98 - will advance to be heard by the full Legislature.

He acknowledged there will be critics but warned, "The push-backers will lose because right is on our side."

A personal bond offers jail release in exchange for a defendant agreeing to make all court appearances. If the agree­ment is broken, the defendant will be or­dered to post bail.

Travis County's pretrial services relies on a point-based system to calculate a de-

Houston Chronicle MAR 102017

fendant's flight risk and likelihood of committing another crime while out on bail. That tool, from the Ohio Risk As­sessment System, has many advantages over the financial-based system used by others, including Tarrant County, accord­ing to a study introduced by the Texas Ju­dicial Council and Texas A & M's Public Policy Research Institute.

According to the research, it cost Travis County $2,134 per defendant to re­lease defendants from jail and monitor them compared with the $3,038-per­defendant cost footed by Tarrant County. Additionally, the study shows the chance "potentially dangerous people" are re­leased is greater in Tarrant.

Of the state's 254 counties, only 25 counties use a risk-assessment tool. Of the 25, all but five use a tool that hasn't been validated by research showing it truly predicts risk. The five counties with a val­idated tool are Bexar, Ector, EI Paso, Midland and Travis. Harris County is ex­pected to join them by the end of the year.

Murr, once a county judge in Kimble County, predicted that modifying the state's bond system would save taxpayers millions. In November, the American­Statesman reported a potential annual sav­ings of $190 million after a $60 million to $70 million cost for pretrial supervision. Those figures come from data reviewed by Texas Judicial Council that says up to a quarter of the 41,000 Texas j ail inmates awaiting trials pose little threat to the pub­lic. '

In the past 25 years, the pretrial popu­lation in Texas jails has risen from just over 32 percent of the jail population to almost 75 percent of the jail population,

according to a study by the Texas Com­mission on Jail Standards.

Resistance is likely to come from lawmakers representing rural counties who might be unable or unwillingly to pay for increased pretrial supervision ser­vices. The jail commission's proposal acknowledges some small counties "might not realize enough reduced jail population to fully cover the cost of the supervision program."

Illustrating the need for reform, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht spoke sympathetically Thursday about a Dallas woman who was held on $150,000 bond for shoplifting $105 worth of goods. Hecht said the bond was unrea­sonable, as the woman posed little flight risk.

"Was it worth it? No," Hecht said. "Liberty and common sense demand re­form."

Hecht in his Feb. 1 State of the Judici­ary address also called for bail reform.

Echoing Hecht's endorsement was Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presid­ing Judge Sharon Keller, who noted blacks often are more adversely affected than whites in bond programs used in most of the state. Those programs essen­tially assign a bond figure for specific crimes, leaving little room to consider such factors as a defendant losing em­ployment by being locked up for three or four days on a minor charge.

Defendants charged in a county with a financial-based system serve eight more days in detention, on average, than in the alternative system, according to Dottie Carmichael of Texas A & M's Public Pol-icy Research Institute.

Search for new MD Anderson chief will start soon, but a few possible contenders are emerging By Jenny Deam and Andrea Zelinski

The search will start quickly to find a new president at MD Anderson Cancer Center, focusing on those with not only a

pedigree worthy of the nation's premier cancer hospital but also the financial

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savvy to stabilize an institution nearly half a billion dollars in the red.

An interim president will be named "within two weeks" and a pennanent re­placement for outgoing president Dr. Ron DePinho will be found "as soon as possi­ble," Dr. Ray Greenberg, the University of Texas System's executive vice chancel­lor for health affairs, said Thursday. A search committee expected to be fonned this month will include MD Anderson faculty, staff, UT leaders and community members.

The leading candidate to emerge from this six- to nine-month process will as­sume one of the most prestigious posi­tions in health care, supervising a vast team of world-class clinicians and re­searchers and running an institution that launched the "Moon Shots" program in search of nothing less than a cure for can­cer.

In recent months, however, financial woes have overshadowed those and other successes. Over the past 16 months MD Anderson has suffered operating losses of more than $460 million. In early January, the cancer center laid off 778 employees. Officials have blamed multiple villains, including reductions in the size of insur­ance reimbursements.

DePinho's successor will have to deal with the ongoing problems.

"Certainly the complexities of the cur­rent health care environment argue for finding someone with a proven track rec­ord of guiding an institution through new and innovative models of care delivery and (insurance) reimbursement," Green­berg said in an email.

Internal and external candidates will be considered for the job but the net will be cast widely, he said.

Few contenders emerge DePinho, only the fourth person to

lead Houston's storied cancer center, ab­ruptly resigned Wednesday after an often turbulent time at the helm. "Forgive me for my shortcomings," he told employees in a sometimes emotional video address.

It remained undetermined Thursday when DePinho will leave his position. University officials said the departure date was still being worked out.

Houston Chronicle MAR 102017

Some watching the unfolding drama said it is impossible to predict the next president so early in the game. But a few possible contenders are emerging within the small universe of top cancer leaders.

Chief among them is Dr. Steve Hahn, who was recently appointed to the No. 2 job and is considered well liked both in­side and outside the institution. He was named chief operating officer in February to run the day-to-day operations, not long after the mass layoffs.

Greenberg said internal candidates will "definitely be considered for interim" and that any local candidates will be con­sidered for the presidency alongside na­tional contenders.

"We would expect them to compete with the best in the country," he said.

Outside possibilities could include Dr. Cheryl Willman, director and CEO of the University of New Mexico Cancer Center, who was a candidate in the 2011 search. Other names being mentioned are Dr. Charles Sawyers, chair of human oncolo­gy and pathogenesis at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York; Dr. Michael Kastan, executive director of the Duke Cancer Institute in North Caro­lina; and Brian Druker, director of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University.

A more unusual but possible candidate is Dr. Roy Beveridge, an oncologist who now is the chief medical officer at Hu­mana, the insurance giant.

Balancing roles In any large prestige institution there

is always a tension between the medical and research side and the business end. With the financial missteps ofMD Ander­son fresh on the mind of any search com­mittee, it could tip that balance.

"I wouldn't be surprised if more weight is given to someone who has more management experience in addition to on­cology experience," said Dr. Janis Or­lowski, chief health-care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleg­es.

Yet care is needed not to tilt the scale too far.

"You should choose someone who understands and appreciates the need for good management, but if you go too far and get just a business guy or gal you

won't qualify to be a national cancer cen­ter," said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer at the American Cancer Society.

"The successful candidate likely will have a strong track record in cancer pa­tient care and research," Greenberg said. But he added, in apparent acknowledge­ment to current management woes, that the new president will also need "experi­ence running a large, complex organiza­tion."

DePinho was named president in 2011. At the time it was described as a bold and surprising choice. He was a re­nowned Harvard University cancer ge­neticist, but some wondered if he lacked the kind of administrative and clinical chops to run such a vast and rarefied insti­tution.

Any misgivings were outweighed by his status as a heavyweight in the quickly evolving world of personalized medicine. He was seen as the type of leader MD Anderson needed to accelerate its role in research and drug development and help turn it into a global leader.

"Ron did some very positive things which will make it very attractive for the next person," Brawley said.

Greenberg, too, had high praise for DePinho's achievements but was also real­istic about the problems that emerged in his presidency.

"He had very high ambitions and was able to accomplish many of these lofty goals during his tenure," Greenberg said just after the resignation. "He recognized that the institution is facing considerable challenges in dealing with a rapidly chal­lenging health environment. This is not his area of greatest knowledge and expe­rience, and he felt that the institution would be best served by recruiting in a new leader who drive this focus."

Brawley, who was in the running for the position the last go around, said he does not think the financial problems at MD Anderson will hamper the search for a replacement.

"It's still a very coveted job," he said. Todd Ackerman contributed to this

story.

Bill to ban texting while driving clears first hurdle in Texas House By Dug Begley

An uphill battle to make drivers put down their phones is picking up momen­tum after four tries by state Rep. Tom Craddick, as more people pile onto the message that Texas must end what some consider a road safety epidemic.

House Bill 62, authored by Craddick, R-Midland, breezed through its first House Transportation Committee hearing Thursday and unanimously sent to the full chamber for debate and, supporters hope, a vote.

"I think we need to move this forward quickly," said committee Chairwoman Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria.

In the last two legislative sessions, bills to ban texting while driving failed to get out of both the House and Senate. In 2011, Craddick's bill passed both cham­bers but was vetoed by then-Gov. Rick Perry, who cited his concerns with "a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults."

Craddick and a crowd of supporters came ready Thursday to shoot that argu­ment and others down. Data and common

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sense, he said, show texting while driving is dangerous, adding it is up to lawmakers to enact rules to make all streets safe.

"If we do not, I think we are derelict in our duty," Craddick said.

Supporters compared the lack of a law to turning a blind eye to drinking and driving, which has significantly reduced since laws were toughened three decades ago.

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Drinking and driving also can be complex to enforce and lead to monetary fines - two things critics have pointed out - but no one doubts the value of the laws, Craddick said.

No one spoke against the bill during Thursday's committee hearing.

Gov. Greg Abbott's office did not im­mediately respond to a request for com­ment. In 2014 as a candidate, Abbott said he worried about "micromanaging" driver behavior, but has softened his stance since, telling reporters he would give any bill "serious consideration."

Forty-six states ban texting while driv­ing, and 17 ban the use of all handheld devices, Craddick said, adding that Texas' lack of a ban has cost lives. In 2015, the last year for which confirmed statewide data is available, 476 people were killed in accidents in Texas in which investiga­tors said distracted driving was involved.

A texting ban has the support of busi­ness officials, the insurance industry and local law enforcement.

"It is horrific," said Houston Police Capt. Matthew May. "Unless you have gone out to a scene and literally have had to assist picking up body parts, you do not

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 102017

understand how devastating a crash can be."

As written, Craddick's bill would ban texting while driving, but allow the use of handheld phones, GPS systems and soft­ware to continue. Motorists also could send text messages via voice-activated technology, such as the systems installed in many new automobiles.

More than 90 Texas cities, including Galveston, Bellaire, Missouri City and Tomball, have handheld phone bans of their own, ranging from a prohibition on all uses to only banning texting while driving.

Craddick said in January that Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick were receptive to a statewide texting ban, citing the in­consistency in many metro areas.

A host of other bills have been filed in Austin that would take the ban the use of handheld devices for any reason or that try to find common ground short of a total ban. Rep. Chris Turner, D-Arlington, speaking after Craddick, said his own bill to ban texting while driving when a minor was in the vehicle was "a backstop" in the event Craddick's bill failed.

Safety advocates and police believe the problem of texting is growing, espe­cially in places that do not have penalties for the behavior.

"This is an epidemic especially with the younger generation being glued to their device at all times of the day includ­ing when they are driving," said Noel Johnson, representing the Texas Munici­pal Police Association.

May said in Houston, approximately 10 percent of the 86,000 crashes in 2016 involved distracted driving.

Some of the most emotional testimony during the committee session came from family members who lost loved ones in crashes that involved texting and driving.

!ly ou spend days crying on the ground or screaming up and you look for positive things to lock onto," said Denton resident James Shaffer, explaining why he became active in seeking a statewide ban.

Shaffer's wife and daughter were killed in an April 9, 2016 crash that killed another mother and young child when their cars crashed head-on in Argyle. News reports from the time cited distract­ed driving as the cause of the crash.

Shaffer rejected the claim made by some critics in the past that a texting ban took away drivers' liberties.

"It is preventing you from taking someone else's liberties," he told lawmak­ers. !ly ou are not guaranteed the right to drive in the State of Texas."

Foes say injection well would threaten area's water supply BY MAX B. BAKER

FORT WORTH A proposal to drill a saltwater injec­

tion well near Lake Arlington, which plays a major role in the water supply chain for North Texas, is drawing wide­spread opposition and may set up a show­down over state and local control over ur­ban drilling.

BlueStone Natural Resources II of Tulsa filed a permit request with the Tex­as Railroad Commission in January seek­ing to drill the well on the western edge of Lake Arlington to collect the excess gas and brackish, or salty, water produced by the company's other natural gas wells in the immediate area.

Fort Worth, Arlington and the Trinity River Authority already have filed protest letters with the commission, which regu­lates the oil and gas industry in Texas, about drilling the well so close to an "es­sential resource." The commission has scheduled a hearing before an administra­tive law judge for May 24.

But the battle over Blue-Stone's pro­ject is taking on additional meaning be­cause it raises questions about exactly how far cities can go in regulating the oil and gas industry following the passage of House Bill 40 in 2015. Part of the bill's purpose was to restate and re-energize the state's control over the energy industry.

Fort Worth, Arlington and other mu­nicipalities have banned wastewater injec­tion wells. Officials in those cities say this may be the first time their ability to take such an action has been challenged since the adoption of the law.

"There is going to be a powerful ar­gument on the part of the operator that the Legislature, with House Bill 40, took it (that authority) away from you, that they withdrew the authority the city had to ban these things," said Jim Bradbury, a Fort Worth environmental attorney who helped write the city's drilling ordinance.

Under its ban, the city of Fort Worth has already rejected BlueStone's request, said Randle Harwood, city planning and development director. Fort Worth im­posed a ban on wastewater injection wells within the city limits five years ago - but it has effectively blocked them since 2006.

"There is not a groundswell in the community that we need another wastewater injection well," he said.

Arlington also bans wastewater injec­tion wells and particularly prohibits any kind of drilling within 600 feet of Lake Arlington's reservoir area, according to the letter filed with the commission. It al­so blocks any "salt water disposal lines" under the lake or within 100 feet of ease­ment surrounding it.

The proposed injection well would be located in an area of far east Fort Worth near Loop 820 that is about 9,300 feet from Lake Arlington Dam, according to the city of Arlington. The neighborhood is a mixture of industrial and residential are­as. Not far away, on East Rosedale Street, are other oil and gas operations, including a large compression station.

In a statement, BlueStone said it is important to note that there are other oil and gas operations in the area and that the

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location meets the railroad commission's strict guidelines "aimed at ensuring that a proposed proj ect have no adverse effects on the surrounding community or envi­ronment."

In its application, BlueStone says it would drill a well that would go up to 11,600 feet underground. It says the deep­est freshwater zone is about 2,000 feet be­low the surface. In its statement, Blue­Stone said that its well will only be used for its nearby operations and that approval will actually cut down on truck traffic.

"BlueStone safely operates more than 1,000 wells in the Barnett Shale, 300 of which fall within Fort Worth City limits. BlueStone works to foster and maintain good relationships with all local govern­ments and stakeholders in areas where we operate, and that is our goal in this mat­ter," the company statement says. Blue­Stone acquired the Barnett Shale assets when it purchased bankrupt Quicksilver Resources last year.

On Tuesday, the Arlington City Coun­cil voted to hire Austin lawyers and engi­neers to help the city protest Bluestone's permit request before the commission. "If there is any potential to put that dam and our water supply in jeopardy, that is a bad idea," said Walter "Buzz" Pishkur, direc­tor of Arlington's water utilities.

Ingrid Kelly, an Arlington resident and a member of Liveable Arlington, has spoken out against Bluestone's applica­tion. "Should the integrity of the well fail, we would have another Flint, Michigan,

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crisis on our hands," Kel1y said, referring to the city where cost-cutting measures led to tainted drinking water. "Our water plant would not be capable of removing those toxins."

DENTON FRACKING BILL When House Bill 40 was passed, it

was commonly known as the "Denton fracking bill."

Lawmakers passed the bill after Den­ton became the first city in Texas to ban hydraulic fracturing. HB40 prohibits cities from imposing such a ban, giving them limited control over the oil and gas pro­cesses.

The new law includes a four-part test for allowing cities to regulate drilling op­erations above ground, such as emergency response, noise and setbacks. But the law says those controls must be "economically reasonable" and can't hinder or prohibit the work of a "prudent operator."

To provide some comfort to cities with longstanding ordinances, such as Fort Worth, the bill contains a "safe har­bor" provision that says any ordinance or other measure in effect for five years that has al10wed drilling should be considered commercially reasonable.

The oil and gas industry pushed hard not only to get rid of the Denton ban but also to prevent it from being repeated elsewhere. Industry leaders and lawmak­ers as well as the governor said they hoped it would end a patchwork of regula­tions across the state.

Wastewater injection wells are an in­tegral part of the hydraulic fracturing, 'or "fracking," process. When operators frack a well, water, sand and chemicals are in­jected deep into rock formations to free oil and gas. The process also generates large amounts of brackish water that is then pumped into injection wells.

"Saltwater disposal wells present the most interesting dividing line of what the Legislature decided to do with HB40," Bradbury said. While lawmakers clearly wanted to control what happens below the surface, a disposal well, with trucks bring­ing in the waste, for example, have a big above-ground component, he said. The Legislature recognized the ability of cities to regulate aboveground operations. Dis­posal wells like this one present both be­low- and above-surface impacts. "It's a mixed question," he said.

While there is little doubt that local agencies can regulate land usage and whether it fits into other plans for the ar­ea, there is some question if a city can just outright ban them, Bradbury said. While he supports the ban, Bradbury added that

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 10 2017

"there is that risk that the city may have exceeded HB40."

Fort Worth's ordinance was held up as a model during deliberations for HB40, Harwood said, and "if we mess with our ordinance it opens it all up." The city has a master plan for the area west of the lake that includes, among other things, open space and a trail system. Eugene McCray Park is nearby.

"If there is a saltwater injection well and industrial activity, is it compatible with everything else? That is the open question, 'Is this an appropriate use?' We don't think it is an appropriate use any­where in the city," Harwood said.

In its letter to the commission, Arling­ton emphasizes that Lake Arlington is the sale source of untreated water for its Pierce Burch Water Treatment plant, which produces up to 76 million gallons of water each day for the needs of the city's more than 380,000 residents.

It also talks about how Lake Arlington provides terminal water storage for the Tarrant Regional Water District for trans­porting water from its east Texas reser­voirs for use in Tarrant County cities. Lake Arlington is also the sale source of water for the Trinity River Authority's water treatment plant that provides water to Bedford, Colleyville, Eu-Iess, Grape­vine and North Richland Hills.

The Trinity River Authority echoed those concerns in its protest letter to the state.

"Whether we get into issues with leg­islation and the interpretation of HB40 is something that will potentially occur," Pishkur said. But he said they are focus­ing their efforts on convincing the railroad commission to not authorize the permit.

Kelly said she hopes the city is suc­cessful in fighting the permit. "I do hope that HB40 does not prevent us from pro­tecting our drinking water, our health and our property," she said.

SEISMIC ACTIVITY Beyond talking about the potential

threat to water quality, opponents to BlueStone's permit application have raised concerns about seismic activity that is often linked to wastewater injection wells. Arlington's letter states that these wells pose "different, more serious, haz­ards than hydrofracturing or drilling."

Scientists have linked an increase in seismic activity in the central United States to the oil and gas production, par­ticularly to wastewater injection wells.

"These earthquakes are typically in the deep earth and typically deeper than the injection wells, but there is a strong link where they are occurring when the pump­ing starts and stops," said Mark Petersen,

chief of the U.S. Geological Survey's Na­tional Seismic Hazard Mapping Project.

Seismometers installed by the state of Texas recorded 16 earthquakes of less than 1.5 in the Fort Worth Basin in Janu­ary, two of which were associated with the Irving-Dallas sequence, and 14 near Venus in Johnson County, the bureau re­ported. A total of 28 earthquakes were recorded in Texas.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers became so concerned last year that it an­nounced it was expanding the exclusion zone for drilling near Joe Pool Lake's dam from 3,000 feet to 4,000 feet to pro­tect its structural integrity. It also said it was seeking to limit wastewater injection wells within 5 miles of the dam because of the effects of "induced seismicity," or earthquakes triggered by human activities.

Texas Railroad Commission Execu­tive Director Kimberly Corley questioned the federal agency's actions, stating that the Railroad Commission has the authori­ty to oversee the oil and gas industry in Texas, including hydraulic fracturing and injection wells. The commission and the corps are still talking about the issue.

"We continue to consult with them (the commission) to try and come up to an understanding on what is best for mineral extraction and dam safety," said Clay Church, a corps spokesman.

After a rash of earthquakes in North Texas, the commission in 2014 approved rules requiring drillers to provide addi­tional information before sinking injection wells where there has been seismic activi­ty. Drillers also are required to provide in­formation on the history of seismic events. The state also can suspend or ter­minate a permit if seismic activity occurs near an injection well.

After a hearing on the merits of Blue­Stone's application, the commission will issue a proposal for a decision, to which the parties can respond, according to Ra­mona Nye, an agency spokeswoman. The commission will then take final action, putting any decision off for several months, she said.

Bradbury said it's a good sign that Bluestone's permit is going before an ad­ministrative law judge, since many of these requests previously were rubber­stamped by the commission. But he also won't be surprised if the cities of Fort Worth and Arlington end up going to court to stop it.

"The operator will say the world changed with House Bill 40 ",," Bradbury said.

Staff writer Rafael Sears contributed to this story, which includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.

Max B. Baker: 817-390-7714

With Trump on board, high-speed rail on the fast track BY LINDSAY WISE AND CURTIS TATE Star-Telegram Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON Texas is closer than ever to building

the first high-speed train in the United States, thanks to President Donald Trump's fascination with these transporta-

tion projects and a well-timed pitch to his administration.

Now developers nationwide are look­ing to the privately owned Texas Central

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Railway as a test case of what can get done with Trump in the White House.

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Fonner Houston Astros owner Dray­ton McLane Jr., a member of the compa­ny's board of directors, met recently with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in Washington. He wasn't seeking any of the taxpayer-funded grants sought by high­speed rail projects in California and the Northeast.

What the $10 billion Texas Central Railway really needs is a green light from the agency Chao oversees.

"It was an opportunity to make a first impression," said Tim Keith, president of Texas Central Railway.

The meeting clearly stuck. Soon after, Chao mentioned the Texas Central Rail­way at the National Governors Associa­tion winter conference as an example of the kind of "very impressive" project the administration is interested in.

The question now is whether private investment " coupled with regulatory re­lief" is a model the Trump administration could use to finance and expedite his promised $1 trillion infrastructure push, and not just in Texas.

The president has said his plan will in­clude both private and public funding. But there appears to be little appetite in Con­gress to spend big on infrastructure, espe­cially as Republicans are preparing to cut taxes.

Texas Central's entrepreneurial ap­proach, which neatly sidesteps the politi­cally charged appropriations process on Capitol Hill, could be a faster way.

"Texas does big things. This is a big idea," said Keith. "We're working hard to transfonn transportation in America and change the way public infrastructure is conceived, sponsored and financed."

Texas Central's plan is to build a pri­vate 205-mph bullet train that covers the 240-mile trip between Houston and Dal­las-Fort Worth using Japanese technolo­gy.

Trains would depart every 30 minutes, 18 hours a day. A one-way trip would take 90 minutes, compared with five hours to drive or about three and a half hours by air, if you include all the transit and security, Keith said.

Keith isn't ready to announce pricing, but he said tickets would be sold on a de­mand-based model similar to that used by airlines and hotels, varying by date and time.

He expects tickets will cost less than the $500 price of a business class round­trip airfare but more than the estimated $270 cost of driving the same route, which he calculates at 55 cents a mile for gas and wear and tear.

The project must overcome several regulatory hurdles at the federal level be­fore it can proceed to the construction phase. A series of environmental reviews are already underway, with the process

expected to wrap up by early next year. The company is also seeking a new safety rule that will allow its trains to operate at up to 205 mph.

"There's no rules set yet for driving a train 200 miles an hour in the United States," Keith said. "We're having those rules written for our system."

The primary regulator in charge of the environmental reviews and the new safety rule is the Federal Railroad Administra­tion, an agency within Chao's Department of Transportation.

Keith said McLane's meeting with Chao went well and that other representa­tives of the Texas Central Railway had met with her several other times.

The Texas Central Railway project al­so appeared on a draft list of 50 priority infrastructure projects compiled for the Trump transition team and obtained by McClatchy.

Even though the Texas project will not seek grants, Keith said the company might pursue federal loan programs or tax cred­its if Trump offered them.

"We're very interested to see what opportunities the Trump administration creates," he said.

Trump has expressed particular inter­est in bullet trains.

'WE DON'T HAVE ONE' At a private meeting reported by The

Wall Street Journal this week, Trump mentioned building new high-speed rail­roads as part of his infrastructure push. He also spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month about that coun­try's bullet train technology and be­moaned the lack of high-speed rail in the U.S. at a meeting with airline executives.

"You go to China, you go to Japan, they have fast trains all over the place. We don't have one. I don't want to compete with your business," Trump said to laugh­ter at the meeting with the executives on Feb. 9, "but we don't have one fast train."

The Federal Railroad Administration has standards only for trains that operate at a maximum of 150 mph, and Amtrak's Acela trains in the Northeast are the only ones that travel that fast.

California is building a 220-mph high­speed rail system, but that project has been delayed by political opposition. Its trains also have to meet more rigorous federal standards for crash protection be­cause they will share tracks with commut­er trains, Amtrak and some freight.

By building a self-contained system where trains will not intersect with street traffic or encounter slower trains, the Texas project can employ off-the-shelf technology in use in Japan for more than 50 years.

"It's going to be a lot easier than the California project," said Peter LeCody, president of Texas Rail Advocates and chainnan of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, both advocacy

5

groups that support the Texas project. "They'll have a little harder way to go in California than in Texas."

Florida is getting into the high-speed rail game, too. The Brightline is sched­uled to open this summer, connecting Mi­ami with West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. Eventually, the train will reach Orlando.

Like Texas Central, Florida's project is paid for with private funds. However, its trains have a top speed of 125 mph, well below the speeds envisioned in Cali­fornia and Texas.

High-speed rail could make sense in certain densely populated corridors in the U.S., such as between D.C. and Boston or Chicago and Detroit, or along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colora­do, said Shailen Bhatt, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transpor­tation.

"It can work, but you're not going to get high-speed rail around the country be­cause it just doesn't pencil as a deal. You've got to have a revenue stream for a long period of time" to entice investors, he said.

THE TIME HAS COME High-speed rail has been a topic in

Texas for 30 years, but Keith thinks its moment has come.

"What's happening in Texas is private entrepreneurs are saying, look there's de­mand, there's pent-up demand," he said. "We can meetthe demand."

The biggest obstacles for the railway could be back home in Texas. Some land­owners along the route want to derail the project, and they have help from allies in the state Legislature.

"You're talking about property rights. In Texas, we love our land," said LeCody with Texas Rail Advocates.

LeCody said Texas was changing and needed a transportation system that ad­dressed road congestion and population growth.

"We're such a growing state," he said. "We've got to learn how to move people from point A to point B without high­ways."

The project has held hundreds of pub­lic meetings and has acquired about 30 percent of the property it needs.

Bhatt, however, cautioned against eas­ing regulations too much in the interest of moving projects along quickly to satisfy private investors.

"People say it takes us too long to de­liver projects," Bhatt said. "The reason it takes us so long is we're preserving clean water, we're preserving clean air, we're preserving property rights. And that's why there's regulations. And yes, we can do things faster, but we're not going to build things like they do in China because we don't have a society like in China."

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 102017

Health bill clears initial hurdles in House committees From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON Republican leaders drove their long­

promised legislation to dismantle Barack Obama's healthcare law over its first big hurdles in the House on Thursday and claimed fresh momentum despite cries of protest from right, left .and center.

After grueling all-night sessions, the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees both approved their portions of the bill along party-line votes. The legislation, strongly supported by President Donald Trump, would replace the tax penalties for the uninsured under Obama's Affordable Care Act with a con­servative blueprint likely to cover far fewer people but, Republicans hope, in­crease choice.

The vote in Ways and Means came be­fore dawn, while the Energy and Com­merce meeting lasted past 27 hours as ex­hausted lawmakers groped for coffee re­fills, clean shirts and showers.

Angry Democrats protested that Re­publicans were acting in the dead of night to rip insurance coverage from poor Americans. But Republican leaders sounded increasingly confident that, after seven years of empty promises about un­doing Obama's law, they might finally be able to overcome their own deep divisions and deliver a bill to Trump to sign.

"This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obama-care," Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said at a press briefing where he arrived in shirt­sleeves to deliver a wonky power-point presentation on the GOP bill, part TED talk and part Schoolhouse Rock.

"The time is here. The time is now. This is the moment. And this is the closest this will ever happen."

Leaders are aiming for passage by the full House in the next couple of weeks, and from there the legislation would go to the Senate and, they hope, on to Trump's desk. The president has promised to sign it, declaring over Twitter on Thursday, "We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!"

Yet at the same time the president is leaving himself a political out, privately telling conservative leaders that if the whole effort fails, Democrats will ulti­mately shoulder the blame for the prob­lems that remain. That's according to a participant in the meeting Wednesday who spoke only on condition of anonymi­ty to relay the private discussion.

Democrats rej ect that notion, and the entire GOP effort.

"What we have seen is the Republi­cans' long-feared and job-killing health bill that means less coverage and more cost to the American people," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Califor­nia. "I don't think the president really knows what he's talking about."

The GOP legislation would kill Obama's requirement that everyone buy insurance by repealing the tax fines im­posed on those who don't. The bill would replace income-based subsidies Obama provided with tax credits based more on age, and insurers would charge higher premiums for customers who drop cover­age for over two months

The extra billions Washington has sent states to expand the federal-state Medi­caid program would phase out, and spend­ing on the entire program would be capped at per-patient limits. Around $600 billion in lO-year tax boosts that Obama's statute imposed on wealthy Americans and others to finance his overhaul would be repealed. Insurers could charge older customers five times more than younger ones instead of the current 3-1 limit but would still be required to include children up to age 26 in family policies, and they would be barred from imposing annual or lifetime benefit caps.

Democrats said the Republicans would yank health coverage from many of the 20 million people who gained it under Obama's statute, and drive up costs for others because the GOP tax breaks would be skimpier than existing subsidies. And they accused Republicans of hiding bad news by moving ahead without official estimates from the nonpartisan Congres­sional Budget Office on the bill's cost to taxpayers and its anticipated coverage.

And even as Republican leaders ex­pressed confidence, enormous obstacles remained. A growing coalition of interest groups has lined up in opposition, includ­ing AARP and numerous medical profes­sionals, from mental health providers to doctors, nurses, hospitals and more. Re­publican senators from politically divided states have voiced qualms about the changes to Medicaid, and opposition re­mains from conservative lawmakers and groups.

TRUMP WOOS CRUZ There were signs, though, that some of

that conservative opposition could be sof­tening amid concerted lobbying from Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials. Trump dined Wednesday night with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a skeptic of the bill, and kept up his wooing efforts Thursday, in­viting two influential House conservatives to lunch at the White House.

Kentucky's Rand Paul is leading the effort in the Senate to derail the proposal and replace it with a bill that fully repeals Obamacare, and he has Utah's Mike Lee on his side. Cruz also wants to see major changes before voting in favor of the bill.

All three senators are closely aligned with a slew of conservative activist groups that have blasted the current Re­publican proposal as a watered-down ver-

6

sion of Obama-care. The groups, includ­ing Heritage Action and FreedomWorks, are major supporters of the three senators. If the trio capitulates, Paul, Lee and Cruz run the risk of angering their conservative base.

The opposition of all three is signifi­cant because Republicans hold only a four-vote majority in the Senate. If all three vote against an Obama-care re­placement proposal, it will fail.

TEXANS REACT North Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, R­

Pilot Point, said Thursday's votes show the GOP is serious about replacing Obamacare. He's one of the key players in the Republican effort.

"Although well-intentioned, Obamac­are failed. Republicans have responded and are delivering on our promise of af­fordable care for all Americans," Burgess, a physician, said in a prepared statement.

"... We are driving down costs and giving patients more choice in their health care. We are strengthening Medicaid by prioritizing the most vulnerable Ameri­cans. And we are reducing regulations imposed on states by bureaucrats in Washington," Burgess said.

"I've devoted my professional life and my public service to health care - it is my highest priority to improve the state of health care in our nation. The time is now. Americans and Texans cannot wait any longer for relief from deductibles that cost more than their mortgage payments and leave them functionally uninsured," he added.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, noted that "this is not a perfect bill" and acknowl­edged a lot more work is needed. "Our work is far from done, but it has begun," Barton said in a statement.

Texas Democrats have only begun to fight.

"It is clear that Republicans are quick­ly trying to pass a poorly written bill without showing how many millions of Americans will be at risk of losing cover­age under their replacement plan," said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.

"The American people have made it clear that they want quality healthcare that is both affordable and available when they need it," Veasey added. "If we want to provide stability for hardworking families, gutting current health care protections and raising premiums for lower quality health care coverage cannot be the route we take."

Staff writer John Gravois contributed to this report, which includes material from Star-Telegram Washington Bureau reporter Alex Daugherty and The Associ­ated Press.

San Antonio Express-News MAR 10 2017

Harlingen woman sues state Sen. Uresti for fraud By Patrick Danner

A Harlingen woman is suing state Sen. Carlos Uresti for fraud after she lost at least $800,000 investing in a now-defunct oil field services company he introduced her to - allegedly without disclosing his involvement in the firm or the commis­sion he received on her investment.

Denise Cantu said Uresti and others "tricked" her into believing she was in­vesting with FourWinds Logistics to buy and sell frac sand, which is used in frack­ing to extract oil and gas from shale rock, according to her lawsuit filed in January in Hidalgo County.

Instead of using her money to buy sand, though, she said company officials distributed most of the money among themselves.

Cantu invested $900,000, the bulk of a legal settlement she received from a wrongful-death case involving two of her children who were killed in a 2010 vehi­cle accident. Uresti, who was part of the legal team that secured the settlement, collected a $27,000 commission on her investment with FourWinds.

McAllen lawyer Oscar Alvarez, who represents Cantu, said in an interview Thursday that Uresti never disclosed to her that he was getting paid a commission or that he was a 1 percent owner in FourWinds.

Uresti also provided legal services and acted as the firm's outside general counsel in 2014. The company went bankrupt the following year, with investors alleging they were defrauded.

"She went through a horrible loss with her family," Alvarez said of Cantu. "And then for people to take advantage of her - words can't describe what she's going through. Obviously, the loss of all that money creates complications."

Houston Chronicle MAR 102017

Petty politics How the mighty have fallen.

Uresti, in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News in August, denied any wrongdoing in regards to his in­volvement with FourWinds. He also said he disclosed he received a commission.

His attorneys didn't respond to call or email. In a court filing in Cantu's action, he issued a general denial to the allega-tions.

"We intend to prove otherwise," Alva­rez responded. "I think the evidence is go­ing to show that everybody involved knew what they were doing, and that this was a scam."

The FBI has been investigating F our­Winds and Uresti for more than a year, according to people familiar with the in­vestigation. Three company officials al­ready have pleaded guilty in the case and are scheduled to be sentenced later this year.

On Feb. 16, FBI agents raided Uresti's law offices at 924 McCullough Ave. The San Antonio Democrat said at the time the search was part of a "broad investigation" of FourWinds.

Law enforcement sources later told the Express-News that Uresti's consulting company, Turning Point Strategies, also was a target of the raid. Uresti has said it was Turning Point that received the com­mission on Cantu's investment in Four­Winds.

After about six hours at Uresti's offic­es, about 15 agents left, each carrying a box to an awaiting FBI truck.

Uresti, who holds the District 19 Tex­as Senate seat, is seeking a delay in Cantu's case because he's now in the Leg­islature in Austin. His request for a "legis­lative continuance" is scheduled to be heard Monday.

He also wants the suit transferred to Bexar County from Hidalgo County.

Also named in Cantu's January suit are JP Morgan Chase & Co and a Chase representative. FourWinds had bank ac­counts at Chase Bank.

A FourWinds official testified in bankruptcy court last year that he was threatened by CEO Stan Bates to falsify a Chase bank statement to vastly inflate how much FourWinds had in its account on April 30, 2014. Cantu alleges she was presented the statement to induce her to invest.

The lawsuit has alleged the bank was involved in the creation of the bogus bank statement and another document.

Cantu was shown the documents while visiting a Chase branch in San Antonio, Alvarez said.

Chase spokesman Greg Hassell de­clined to comment.

Investors have alleged in a bankruptcy court filing that Bates wasted their money on personal expenses, expensive gifts, ex­otic car rentals and a wild lifestyle spiced by flying women in to meet him and lav­ish vacations, a court filing states. Bates has disputed the charges.

Cantu sued Bates and FourWinds for fraud in Cameron County in 2015, but that lawsuit has been on hold as a result of the FourWinds' bankruptcy and Bates' personal bankruptcy.

In her latest lawsuit, Cantu has also sued Uresti, Chase and its representative for negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract. The suit seeks unspeci­fied economic and punitive damages.

pdanner@express-news.net Twitter: @AlamoPD

The Texas economy used to rank third in the nation. Now we're at 22nd, according to Governing magazine.

Texas faces a similar problem in Washington. Business inter­ests, especially our state's oil and gas sector, aren't used to play­ing defense against Republicans. The change came about because the Trump administration is promoting Rust Belt coal at the ex­pense of Texas natural gas.

Why? Just watch the 21-hour-Iong hearing on Senate Bill 6, the so-called bathroom bill.

More than 400 people signed up to testify, and a good majori­ty were opposed, so there was no doubt that some fireworks would eventually erupt between a witness and state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who authored the bill. The real surprise was the target of her ire: The Texas Association of Business.

"I'm tired of hearing from you," a terse Kolkhorst told TAB president Chris Wallace. ''No more talk."

It is a bad sign when the voice of business in Texas isn't wel­come in Austin. Our state has changed since the days when Gov. Rick Perry ran campaign ads touting that our state was "open for business."

Now we're just open to petty politics. The TAB, stalwart advocate of commerce and capital, can no

longer rely on our state's political leadership to promote its agen­da. Issues like avoiding discriminatory legislation, building infra­structure and investing in higher education and pre-K aren't guar­anteed a friendly ear.

7

While renewables like wind and solar have grown to meet new electricity demand, the success of natural gas comes at the expense of older, dirtier coal power plants.

"The only way gas markets can increase is by displacing coal and nuclear," said Prajit Ghosh, head of research for North America power and renewables at the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie ("Natural gas may hit a wall," Page Bl, March 2).

Texas doesn't come out on top if Trump gets to pick the win­ners and losers in that fight.

There is some hope, as Faith Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency expressed at CERA Week. She pre­dicted that the Trump administration's pro-pipeline, anti­regulation positions will provide a boost for domestic shale play.

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Cont. from "Petty politics ... "

Birol must not count trade policy as a regulation. The mood out of CERA Week, according to Politico, has the U.S. energy in­dustry wondering whether it left the Obama-era regulatory slog only to land in a Trump-era protectionist minefield.

The plan for a border tax "scares folks to death," one oil ser­vices employee told Politico's Ben Lefebvre.

The United States is on path to produce more oil and gas than we consume, as the Chronicle's Jordan Blum reported Wednes­day. Yet hopes have been dashed for the Trans-Pacific Partner­ship and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to open the Pacific Rim and European Union to natural gas exports.

Houston Chronicle MAR 10 2017

Border realities Are Americans losing their collective mind when it comes to

immigration and border security? That's how it seems when a White House proudly disdainful of facts and common sense pushes ahead on an absurd border wall costing billions, harasses immigrants in this country who are harming no one and ignores comprehensive reforms that would solve most of our immigra­tion issues.

Consider the facts: According to a 2013 report from the Migration Policy Insti­

tute, the federal government spends rrlore each year on immigra­tion enforcement than on all other federal law enforcement agen­cies combined. We're now spending more than $19 billion year­ly, and President Trump wants to increase that absurd amount to $43.8 billion for the 2018 fiscal year. To throw that amount of money at customs and border enforcement, the White House would drastically cut funding for the Coast Guard, the Transpor­tation Security Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. All three agencies have significant border and homeland security responsibilities.

The size of the Border Patrol more than doubled in the 1990s and doubled again after 9/11. Trump intends to triple the size of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and hire thousands of new Border Patrol agents. He also has talked about mobilizing 100,000 National Guard troops for border duty. The massive law-enforcement presence, plus Texas Department of Public Safety officers Gov. Greg Abbott has dispatched to the region, threatens to tum the borderlands into a militarized zone.

Already we have checkpoints, watchtowers, sensors, flood­lights, razor wire, drones, boats and all-terrain vehicles, as well as footprint-checking Border Patrol SUVs dragging tractor tires along isolated dirt roads. To upgrade to Trump's 2,000-mile, double-thick border wall would cost between $27 billion and $40 billion for a thousand miles. Those are figures from the MIT Technology Review, as quoted by the New York Times.

All these billions we'll be spending will be chasing after a problem that no longer exists. Undocumented immigration from Mexico has diminished dramatically in recent years. According to the Pew Center, the net flow across the border is less than ze­ro. And if we're going to expel those 11 million or so still here -as gung-ho ICE officers seem intent on doing - we had better be prepared to spend between $400 billion and $600 billion, and re­duce the gross domestic product by $1 trillion. If that's conserva­tism, we'll eat a bland gringo taco topped with cold sour cream.

San Antonio Express-News MAR 102017

Mexico, the largest buyer of U.S. gasoline, has been scared by Trump's rhetoric into diversifying its trading partners away from the United States.

And even those approved pipelines face the potential of new regulations on the national origins of steel.

It has been a long time since Texas had to litigate the free trade rules that allow our state to flourish. But instead of listening to our businesses and fighting on their behalf, politicians like Kolkhorst are wasting time on bills designed to rile up the parti­san extremes. Whether in Austin or Washington, Texas needs to confront the fact that an agenda driven by political expediency puts our long-term economic success at risk.

How much further does our state need to fall in the ranking

Earlier this week, a hard-nosed businessman named Dennis E. Nixon visited the Chronicle editorial board. A Laredo banker with more than 40 years of experience, he offices in a building less than a thousand yards from the border. He's an ardent Trump supporter whose visceral hatred for Hillary Clinton is exceeded only by his simmering rage at the Dodd-Frank Act, the federal law regulating the financial industry.

On border-security and immigration, however, Nixon departs from Republican orthodoxy. He considers a multi-billion-dollar border wall a colossal waste and more border agents unneces­sary. What we need, he maintains, are more asylum officers and immigration judges, as well as drastically upgraded border cross­ings, some of which date back to the Eisenhower administration. More smuggled goods, including drugs, come through official border crossings than are floated across the Rio Grande or over a border fence.

Businessman Nixon takes a blustery pride in his common sense, whether applied to the business of banking or border is­sues. Immigration figures compiled by the Texas Public Policy Foundation buttress his approach. According to the conservative, Austin-based think tank, unauthorized immigrants are more like­ly to be in the labor force in Texas and performing ajob than ei­ther legal immigrants or U.S. natives. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has pointed out, they are not "stealing" American jobs; they complement the labor of natives by fulfilling different specialties. The undocumented also pay sales taxes and property taxes and contribute to Social Security and Medicare, with no practical way of ever reclaiming that money. They come for jobs, not welfare.

The infuriating thing, as our banker from Laredo emphasized during his editorial-board visit, is that solutions to most of our immigration-law and border-security headaches are readily avail­able. Whether it's a sensible guest-worker program for agricul­ture or a path to legal status for the undocumented living settled and peaceful lives among us, we can fix our broken system with­out scapegoating immigrants.

A bipartisan U.S. Senate offered up a comprehensive plan four years ago, but ideologues in the House blocked it. It gathers dust in Washington, while a shameless, ill-informed president demonizes an entire population and unleashes holy hell on men and women who pose no threat to this nation. What sense does that make?

Miller's 'Hog Apocalypse' is latest half-baked idea Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is the cupcake king of

attention-grabbing half-baked ideas. But his latest, the so-called feral hog apocalypse, stands out.

First, he gave us cupcakes in schools, which was unnecessary but sweet. Then came deep fryers in schools, which was unfortunate but savory. But his call for a feral hog apocalypse ruins perfectly good bacon.

Miller wants to administer rat poison to kill off Texas' feral hog population.

8

What's remarkable about the idea is it has roused widespread concern for the scourge of feral hogs. There are roughly 2 million of them snorting around Texas, creating all kinds of problems.

This is not a sympathetic bunch. The wild hogs cause an es­timated $52 million in damage each year.

The population needs to be managed, but preferably through a plan that involves thought.

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Cont. from "Miller's ... n

As of this writing, at least, an Austin judge has put Miller's "hog apocalypse" on hold after a North Texas hog processor sued. Wild Boar Meats has said it's unclear what the poison does to hog meat and how Miller's actions would affect business.

Hunters are not so wild about this idea, expressing concern the poison will be released throughout 'the food chain, tainting

San Antonio Express-News MAR 10 2017

A disappointing end It is disappointing to see Ricardo Romo's 18 year tenure as

president of the University of Texas at San Antonio come to such an abrupt and unceremonious end. Given the circumstances, his resignation offers the best resolution to a troubling situation.

It allows UTSA, one of the fastest growing campuses in the UT System, to move forward with the search for a new president. It lets the school continue its pursuit of top tier status without the distraction of an investigation into its top administrator.

The downside is that the public will not get real answers on what occurred unless the matter ends up in court.

A native of the city's West Side and graduate of Fox Tech, Romo, 73, was a hometown hero whose name had become close­ly tied to the university he helped nurture and develop. He had planned to retire in August and stay on at the university as a his­torian at the school's Institute of Texan Cultures.

With his immediate resignation, Romo is severing all ties with the university, where his compensation package, including salary, bonus pay and other deferred pay was $530,704 in 2014-2015, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The public may never be privy to the circumstances that prompted UT System Chancellor William McRaven to place Romo on paid leave last month. Personnel issues are not subject to open records and disclosure laws.

Houston Chronicle MAR 102017

hog meat used for pets, poisoning other wild animals and harm­ing animals that prey on carcasses.

Miller is now rooting around to find special feeders to protect wildlife such as deer. .

Miller has a knack for cute rhetoric and making problems worse. Hog apocalypse is a catchy phrase, but it's still a bad idea.

Details of such investigations become public only if lawsuits are filed, and there are no indications there will be any.

UT System officials would only say Romo was placed on leave on Feb. 14 "pending a review of allegation related to his conduct" and refused to provide any additional information.

In days after the leave was announced, sources told the Ex­press-News the investigation was related to sexual harassment al­legations and the firing of two employees in the president's of­fice that could be viewed as retaliatory.

Romo's lawyer acknowledged Romo was the subject of a complaint field against him by an employee.

In a statement announcing his resignation, Romo said, "I have been made aware that the manner in which 1 embraced women made them uncomfortable and was inappropriate."

That statement in itself raised more questions than it an­swered in a community where an "abrazo" or light embrace is a common greeting in social and professional settings. More clarity is needed also on the retaliation allegation.

The UT System's general counsel has formally closed the in­vestigation and the chancellor's office is not commenting further. A public statement given the high profile nature of the case would have been in order. Transparency, especially about the highest paid employee on the public payroll, goes a long way to­ward maintaining the public trust.

For fairness and innovation, apply same rules to taxis, ride-shares By Michael Farren

Texas lawmakers are considering legislation that would pre­empt local regulations on taxis, limos and "Transportation Net­work Companies" (INCs) like Uber and Lyft. This would end the local conflicts between taxis, city leaders, and TNCs that led to Uber and Lyft leaving Austin and San Antonio, and nearly leaving Houston just before the Super Bowl. It's critical, though, that policymakers learn from other states' mistakes and treat the whole industry equally under the law.

The arrival of TNCs prompted a number of Texas cities to update their for-hire vehicle regulations. Yet despite the revi­sions, many perpetuate the deep-rooted government favoritism in the taxi industry.

While many cities around the country have ended their taxi quotas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio still limit the number of taxi licenses available.

In Houston, this allows just two companies to control 75 per­cent of taxicabs.

Austin's franchise requirement allows the city to subjectively pick and choose which companies can do business, giving exist­ing companies the chance to protest new competitors. These reg­ulations wall out entrepreneurs, creating a monopoly-like ad­vantage for established firms.

Austin, Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth further limit compe­tition by setting taxi fares, keeping companies from lowering prices to attract customers. And Houston's requirements on driv­ers' uniforms and Dallas' micromanagement of vehicles' appear­ances don't solve any real social problems.

Michigan charted a new course last December by regulating all for-hire transportation services at the state level. Texas legis­lators could follow Michigan's lead in creating a single state­wide standard to restore sanity. Here are three principles that can help guide this approach:

9

First, all regulations must apply equally to every company of­fering the same service. If special-interest groups can lobby for different standards based on arbitrary factors - like whether you hail a car with a wave or with a smartphone - businesses will naturally be drawn to use regulations to gain an advantage over their competitors. This "unproductive entrepreneurship" leads businesses to focus more on securing government favors than on earning customers' loyalty.

Second, regulations should be "competitively neutral." All too often regulations protect established businesses by making it more difficult for their smaller competitors to comply. Whether intentional or not, this gives established companies a measure of monopoly power.

Similarly, regulations should not mandate exactly how to achieve a goal (like keeping passengers safe). Instead, they should simply set clear accountability for meeting the goal - this allows innovators to find new and perhaps even better methods of compliance.

Third, regulations must only address systematic social prob­lems. Some regulations are motivated instead by political expe­diency - the sense that someone should "do something" in a time of uncertainty. But uncertainty is a natural part of progress. Pro­gress can be awkward, and even painful, but without it nothing ever gets better.

For guidance, Tyler appears to have the best for-hire vehicle regulations in the state. The East Texas city's regulations treat taxis, limos and TNCs the same. The licensing fees are low, the regulations don't mandate the minutia of business operations and only one license is required, rather than three separate licenses for companies, drivers and vehicles.

Continued on Next Page

Cont. from "For fairness ... "

Texans can opt out of the tiresome taxi-TNC battles being waged in most major cities. In the process, the state can get regu­lations right and abandon the dysfunctional system of govern­ment privileges and anticompetitive rules that have existed since the origin of taxi regulations.

But the answer isn't to regulate TNCs like taxis, nor is it to create separate rules for each type of company. The best answer is to allow taxis the same freedom to innovate, and to challenge TNCs to be even better.

Farren is a research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and coauthor of the recent study "Re­thinking Taxi Regulations."

Taxis do face a serious challenge from TNCs, much like the horse-and-buggy industry was challenged by the rise of the au­tomobile.

Dallas Morning News MAR 10 2017

Help teens sidestep obstacles Janet Morrison-Lane

Running a college-readiness program in a low-income neighborhood with the goal of college admission can be chal­lenging. If you've had a teenager, you can surely identify with the struggle to help them understand time management and finances, and to focus on reality. Earlier this school year I learned of another struggle: the fear of being mediocre.

Alberto has been with our program since seventh grade; he's now a senior. Over the years, I've formed a good rela­tionship with his family. Alberto is shy and introverted, but he has started coming out of his shell. I stay on his case about schoolwork, college applications and oth­er things I think he can do to do better. And he listens to me. Most of the time.

One day, as his mom arrived at school to pick him up, I exposed one of these shortcomings, hoping to get her help: "He didn't complete his scholarship!" She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

Speaking Spanish, she started explain­ing some possible reasons. He jumped in, "That's not it! I was going through some things," he insisted.

Curious, I probed, "What things?" "I'll tell you tomorrow," he deflected. Knowing his motives, I responded, "I

won't see you tomorrow." "I'm coming to the program," he

promised. "I'll be busy," I argued. Exasperated, he gave in. "I was plan­

ning to drop out of school last week."

Houston Chronicle MAR 10 2017

Seeing me stunned, he quickly reassured me, "It's fine now! I'm not going to."

Drop out? That was the last thing I expected to hear. For the last year, he has been super-involved in our college­readiness program. He's become quite the leader, although he's still fairly introvert­ed.

My frustrated, irritated, hold-him­accountable self went out the window and my empathetic, encouraging self stepped in. "Why were you dropping out of high school?" I asked.

Knowing his chances of getting out of this conversation were slim, he responded, "In college I'll just be mediocre. I figured if I dropped out I could work by myself and invent or build something."

A senior in high school about to grad­uate at the top of his class, with a 1200 on his SAT, Alberto fears being mediocre. I'm thankful he felt comfortable enough to tell me. If he's feeling this way, I'm sure there are many others feeling the same.

The possibility of college truly excites our kids. They look forward to having a career but, mostly, they want to help their famiHes. Too many of them believe col­lege isn't a possibility. The reality of fi­nances, of acceptance into the "right" col­lege, of meeting new people frightens and immobilizes them.

Getting kids to college isn't easy. Sys­tems work against them: poorly funded schools, parents' low-wage jobs, inade­quate school systems. On top of that, they

have other anxieties and hear that nagging voice in their heads: You're not good enough, other kids are more equipped for college than you, your parents didn't even go to college, you're not like other people who get to college.

Not everyone can take on the chal­lenge of working directly with kids to al­leviate these fears, but there are things you can do to help: Watch for state school board elections and federal appointments. Ensure the people we elect or appoint re­flect the families whose kids are in the public schools and seek out people whose kids also attend public schools. Vote for those who respect and honor a diversity of cultures, religions and schools of thought. Challenge our Texas Legislature to stop shortchanging public education and fix the state's school funding system. Learn more about how the state school board works.

Kids in low-income communities need us. Not because their families don't care, but because they do care. The families and the kids need us to speak out with them. At the very least, we can help in that way. In the long tenn it benefits them, and ultimately it benefits us as well.

The next election for DISD trustees is May 6.

Janet Morrison-Lane is the director of a college-readiness program in the Vick­ery Meadow neighborhood in Dallas and a Community Voices columnist. Email: dr j. morrison@gmaiLcom

Lawmaker files bills targeting Harris County Department of Education By Shelby Webb

A Houston-area legislator has filed two bills targeting the Harris County Department of Education, renewing his assault on the agency that provides special education therapy services to hundreds of students.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican whose district co­vers much of northwest Harris County, said he was upset that the HCDE board last week rejected a proposed "sunset review" to evaluate the need for the continued existence of the department.

Bettencourt has introduced three separate bills that would study closure, or alternatively prevent it from collecting property taxes or eliminate it outright.

"I'm going to keep filing bills until we get what I think is an adult response from trustees," said Bettencourt, who has con-

10

cerns about the agency's financial accountability. "It's very dis­appointing that the board wouldn't vote for a sunset review."

James Colbert Sr., the superintendent of the HCDE, said that although bills that would hamper or close the department have been proposed before, he's perplexed by the multiple bills filed by Bettencourt.

"One calls for a sunset review, one calls for abolishment. It seems odd to ask for two different things, especially as you're asking for it to be abolished," Colbert said. "It makes you wonder what is going on."

Bettencourt said he would prefer to see the department un­dergo a sunset review to study its closure than close it outright.

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Cont. from "Lawmaker ... "

The bills are the latest in a nearly decade-long battle waged by conservative lawmakers in an effort to shutter the agency.

Those who want to see the department close often say it's the epitome of bureaucratic waste, where most money is spent on reaching out to businesses for its cooperative purchasing program or on administrators' salaries. But department officials and its supporters say it provides 53 percent of all special education therapies in Harris County, runs multiple alternative schools and provides preschool to 1,300 students in Northeast Houston for the federal Head Start program.

A similar bill was filed in late February by Dallas-area law­makers that would abolish Dallas County Schools, the only other county-wide department of education in the state.

But even HCDE's popular programs, such as Head Start, are on the chopping block.

The HCDE board voted last week to continue operating its 15 Head Start preschool centers after Trustee Mike Wolfe com­plained that too much in the way of local tax dollars was spent subsidizing the program and that another agency could run the centers more efficiently.

Some of the critics' concerns lie with the department's school choice partners. The department partners with businesses to offer school districts a bulk deal on goods and services such as com­puters, food, furniture and consulting. The program also prevents districts from having to go through bidding processes in obtain­ing such items.

Houston Chronicle MAR 10 2017

Fiscal conservatives, including Bettencourt, argue that a gov­ernment agency should not be subsidizing private businesses. At the beginning of public comment at last Tuesday's meeting, for example, some who spoke bemoaned the fact that several busi.~ ness owners stood up and thanked the HCDE for operating the program and helping their businesses grow. '

Last year the program netted the department $3 million iri profit, which Colbert said was used to subsidize local programs.

"Any profit we bring in helps draw down the fee structure for Harris County ISDs," Colbert said. "Why use (the program) to justify 1 ,000 people losing their jobs or students losing ser­vices?"

Bettencourt said there are more problems at the department than just the purchasing program. He said HCDE duplicates ser­vices provided by groups such as the Region 4 Education Ser­vices Center and is not transparent, allegations Colbert denies.

Colbert said calls to close HCDE seem tied to political at­tacks on public education.

"Truth be told, isn't all of public ed in that place right now? Every legislative session is about accountability and funding," Colbert said. "I find it odd (we) don't hear more stories or more people stepping up and advocating for public education, it's al­ways about finding ways to tear it down, pick it apart and find what's wrong with it."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article mistakenly re­ported the status of legislation dealing with Dallas County Schools.

Conclusion of Pasadena voting rights case could be anticlimactic By Mike Snyder

The biggest upheaval in Pasadena politics in years has been driven largely by the decisions and actions of one man: Mayor Johnny Isbell.

It was Isbell who, immediately after a U.S. Supreme Court decision made it possible, proposed the 2013 charter change cre­ating a City Council election system of six district seats and two at-large seats, replacing an all-district seat system. Isbell said adding at-large positions would provide residents with better rep­resentation.

It was Isbell who emptied his political account to fund a campaign urging support for the charter change and to oppose a council candidate seen as a potential threat. Isbell was the second named defendant, after the city itself, in a 2014 lawsuit claiming the new council structure intentionally diluted Latino voting strength.

And after a federal judge in January rejected the 6-2 system in a resounding victory for the plaintiffs, it was Isbell who in­structed the city's attorneys to appeal.

It's fair to say that Johnny Isbell owns this episode. His fin­gerprints are even on the colorful details, such as police officers escorting council members out of the meeting chamber, a gun clattering to the floor from a pile of the mayor's belongings dur­ing a council session, and city employees doing campaign work on city time.

But when the four-year-Iong drama finally reaches its conclu­sion, Isbell may be watching from the sidelines.

Attorneys in the case say the city's appeal is likely to be unre­solved when Pasadena voters choose a new mayor on May 6. Seven candidates are seeking to replace Isbell, who has led the

11

city off and on over 26 years but can't run this year because of term limits. And at least three of the candidates say they'll drop the appeal if they win.

U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal "spent a week and a half hearing from many witnesses, looking at a lot of infor­mation, and made a decision," Councilwoman Pat Van Houte, a candidate for mayor, told my colleague Kristi Nix. "The city has spent almost $2 million on the lawsuit already, and I don't think it is in our best interest to spend more public money on this."

Another candidate, former state Rep. Gilbert Pefia, agreed: "If elected, I definitely would stop the appeal process," he said. "There's a lot of other things we could do with this money other than give it to lawyers."

Candidate David Flores, a former city employee who runs a construction company, told Nix that the city's money would be better spent on infrastructure than on additional legal fees.

Fresh leadership style Councilman Jeff Wagner, a retired Houston police officer,

told me he would ask the City Council to vote on whether to con­tinue the appeal if his bid for the mayor's office is successful. Pasadena, like Houston, has a strong-mayor form of government, and Isbell has exercised his authority on this issue without con­sulting the council. But Wagner said he has a different leadership style.

"I'll put this in front of the council, we'll have a discussion and we'll make a decision," said Wagner, who was one of four council members who voted with Isbell to put the new council structure on the ballot in 2013. (Van Houte cast one of the four votes against the plan.)

Houston Chronicle MAR 10 2017

Lawmakers renew debate on long-sought change for when youths become adults in criminal cases By Mike Ward

AUSTIN - It started with teasing over Christmas. Lexus'Kiyra Cubero, then 17, remembers being made fun of by the other youths in the Northeast Texas wilderness camp where she lived in foster care.

"They were all going home for the holidays with their family," she recalled Wednesday. "I had no family. I had no place to go ... They made me feel so hor­rible."

So, she threatened to "hit someone with a stick." For that, she spent 96 days in jail after pleading guilty to misdemean­or charges of making a terroristic threat and criminal mischief. Eight years later, the Dallas native has been unable to shake that criminal record.

"I wanted to be a nurse practitioner, and I would be working in a hospital right now except for that charge," she said Wednesday as the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee debated a bill that would raise the age at which Tex­as youths become adults - at least under the state's criminal codes - from 17 to 18. "I'm now 25. I can never be a nurse or the flight attendant that I wanted to be when people see 'terroristic threat' on my rec­ord."

Proposed or discussed every two years for the past two decades, the change long has been sought by youth advocates and criminal justice experts as a way to bring Texas in line with most other states that already have made 18 the age of adult­hood in criminal justice.

"This would move Texas forward," said committee Chairman Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat and the bill's author. Raising the age to 18, he said, would help reduce costly commitments and allow the state to provide the services to youths that they need instead of sending them to jail or prison.

Prosecutors would still be able to cer­tify youths charged with serious violent crimes as adults, if a judge agreed.

Following a lengthy hearing on Wednesday, the House committee left House Bill 122 pending for now.

Over in the Senate, John Whitmire, the powerful Houston Democrat who chairs the criminal justice committee and whose opinion carries considerable clout on such matters, rates the proposal's cur­rent chances of approval at close to zero.

"When I have juvenile probation di­rectors saying it would inundate their ex­isting programs, and when I look at a ju­venile system in this state that is absolute­ly broken and overwhelmed, and when I

see that it costs the state tens of millions of dollars more in a year when we already are short billions of dollars in key pro­grams, I can't see this going anywhere," he said. "If someone had a plan to fix the problems in our juvenile system, and to come up with the money to pay for this change, I might have another opinion."

The cost estimate on Dutton's bill is $35 million, most of it from additional costs to Texas' juvenile justice system due to additional services that would be re­quired for the youths, according to a Leg­islative Budget Board report issued in January.

Advocates for the change disagree. As Dutton's bill got its first public

hearing Wednesday, a national study showed that other states that thought they would be overwhelmed by raising the adult age to 18 found their concerns over costs were unfounded.

Advocates' push Since 2007, Connecticut, Illinois, Lou­

isiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have raised the age of adulthood to 18. This year, as part of a coordinated national campaign called Raise the Age, the seven remaining states - Texas, Georgia, Michi­gan, Missouri, New York and North Caro­lina - are being lobbied to join them.

"The seven states ... can move youth from the adult court, jails and prisons into the youth justice system, safe in the knowledge that they can make the change without significantly increasing costs, and keep youth and communities safer," said Marc Schindler, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a national clearing house on incarceration and its effects.

According to the group's report, states that changed their laws during the past 1 0 years to absorb 16- and 17-year-olds into their juvenile justice system, did so with­out significantly increasing taxpayer costs. During those years, the number of youths in the adult corrections system na­tionwide dropped by nearly half.

Despite the predictions from naysay­ers, Dutton said those states kept young people safe, enhanced public safety and conserved taxpayer dollars.

"Seventeen-year-olds belong in the ju­venile justice system as opposed to the adult criminal justice system," Dutton said. "Texas recognizes in other areas of the law that 17-year-olds are different."

Texans must be 18 to vote, serve on a jury, marry without parental consent and

12

consent to sex - and even older to buy al­cohol or get a handgun license.

In Texas, 17-year-olds are considered adults for most criminal charges under a law that has been in place since 1913, when the age was raised from 13 to 17.

In 2015, statistics show that 15,476 17-year-olds were arrested, most for property and drug crimes. Most paid their debts to society in local probation or treatment programs, but some were sent to Texas Juvenile Justice Department lock­ups.

In all, 271 were in those lockups in 2015, and another 970 were doing time in adult prisons and jails. Most were there for violent or aggravated crimes.

Brett Merfish, a staff attorney for Tex­as Appleseed, a justice-advocacy group that supports raising the age in Texas, said statistics show that 17-year-olds stand a much better chance of turning their lives around if they are in juvenile programs.

"Raising the Age helps reduce costly commitments, makes communities safer by providing youth with age-appropriate services that gets them back on track, and promotes fairness by helping states and localities develop more effective justice systems," said Marcy Mistrett, CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice, a group ad­vocating the change.

'Comes down to cost' Witnesses during Wednesday's House

hearing made much the same point. Bexar County District Judge Daphne Previti Austin, who handles juvenile-court cases, said her county supports the bill "so long as it's fully funded." Other judges and county officials present at the hearing echoed that sentiment.

"It really comes down to cost," said state Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R­Fredericksburg, noting the high projected cost of the measure.

For Cubero, the questions about cost were little comfort. In state foster care from the time she was a baby until she tdrned 18, through more than 20 place­ments that partly resulted from an array of emotional and behavioral issues, she im­plored lawmakers to make sure no one else goes to jail as an adult when they are 17.

"They see terroristic threat on my rec­ord and assume I tried to blow up the White House," she said, explaining she now works at a delivery service handling packages. "It was something I did when I was 17. I can never get past that. "

Houston Chronicle MAR 102017

Prosecutors push to delay Paxton's criminal case, say they need to get paid By Andrea Zelinski

AUSTIN - Special prosecutors trying Attorney General Ken Paxton on charges he committed securities fraud and failed to register as an investment advisor filed a motion Thursday to put the trial on hold until they get paid, throwing into question when Paxton will see his day in court.

In a court filing with the District Court of Collin County, prosecutors assigned to the case said they have not been paid for more than a year due to a Paxton ally's lawsuits tying up payment to the three lawyers. They propose setting a court date for 60 days after the 5th Court of Appeals orders payment of prosecu­tors or no later than Sept. 1.

"They are owed significant amounts of money for the work they have performed and expenses they have incurred, and it would be manifestly unfair, unjust, and unconscionable for the Court to expect, let alone, order them to work for free," the pros­ecutors said in the filing.

Paid in excess? Paxton is due in court May 1 to face a criminal third-degree

charge he failed to register as an investment advisor. He also fac­es two charges of first degree criminal securities fraud for failing to tell investors he would make a commission by agreeing to in­vest in a north Texas tech company, which would be taken up in a later trial.

The motion to Judge George Gallagher follows more than a year of lawsuits from Jeffory Blackard, a real estate developer, political donor and friend of Paxton who has filed two lawsuits arguing the three special prosecutors assigned to the case are be­ing paid in excess of a cap on attorneys' fees.

Blackard's first lawsuit to cut payments to the prosecutors was rejected by a trial judge, a decision affirmed by the Firth Court of Appeals. In a second lawsuit, the appeals court issued a stay on a court order by Gallagher to pay the prosecutors, alt-

Houston Chronicle MAR 10 2017

hough it is unclear when the court of appeals will make a final judgement.

In January, the prosecutors filed an invoice for $205,000 worth of work preparing for Paxton's trial.

The case would normally be handled by a local prosecutor, but District Attorney Greg Willis recused himself from the case because he is a friend of the attorney general's. The special pros­ecutors assigned to the case are Houston attorneys Kent Schaffer, Brian Wice and Nicole DeBord.

Paxton's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. The prosecutors argue the lawsuit pausing pay could effec­

tively shut down their prosecution against Paxton by cutting off funding.

"No one in a democratic society should be expected to work for free, and it would be fundamentally unfair for this Court, or, for that matter, the defense, to require the Special Prosecutors to work for free," read the filing.

Venue change requested Paxton was indicted in 2015 on two counts of felony criminal

securities fraud for failing to disclose to investors he would make a commission by convincing them to buy stock in Servergy, a technology company that paid him 100,000 shares of stock val­ued at $1 per share. He was a state legislator at the time. He also is charged with one count of failing to register as an investment advisor with the state.

A federal judge this month dismissed similar civil charges against Paxton. The attorney general maintains his innocence.

The prosecutors have also argued for a change in venue in the case, arguing Paxton and his team of supporters, including Blackard, had tainted the jury pool in Collin County through a media blitz to discredit Paxton's accusers and attack prosecutors. The judge said he will try to seat a jury in Collin County before considering a change in venue.

For first time, HISD trustees given firm numbers on recapture issue By Shelby Webb

Houston ISD voters will face a choice of either paying the state's $77.5 million recapture fee, or risk losing $98.4 million in tax revenue over the next fiscal year, according to new dollar figures given to trustees.

Those were the options presented to HISD trustees Thursday when for the first time school district officials gave finn numbers on both scenarios since voters last November told district offi­cials to not pay the state's recapture fee. Recapture involves the state's mandate that the district pay millions to help subsidize poor districts.

Houston ISD faces recapture because, according to the state's funding formula, the district is deemed property wealthy even though most of its student population is economically disadvan­taged.

Glenn Reed, general manager of HISD's Budgeting and Fi­nancial Planning, said the district would end up with less money over time if the state detaches property than if it pays the state's recapture fee. That's largely because Houston commercial real estate values are expected to grow in the next five years. If the state takes away some of those properties, Reed said the district will lose out on both those property taxes and any increases in taxes realized through higher property values.

"For HISD, our investment is our properties," Reed said. "As our properties' (values) continue to grow, that helps us build schools and fix costs and so on."

Trustee Jolanda Jones, who spearheaded the first referendum that saw more than 60 percent of voters say they did not want the district to pay the state's recapture fee, said Reed's presentation was "not at all neutral."

13

"It was vel)' biased in terms of 'please pay recapture because detachment is worse,'" Jones said. "Investments don't always grow. I had more money in my stock accounts in 90's than have now, that premise is not true. (And) this scenario presumes the law will remain the same. You're trying to make decisions based on a bad law when the whole point of the election was to change the law."

The Houston ISD Board of Education voted in February to hold a second referendum on the matter after the state lessened the amount HISD would pay in recapture fee and has threatened to "detach" commercial properties. The TEA originally told the district it must pay $162 million in recapture, but lessened that amount to $77.5 million.

The elections stem from complaints about the state's compli­cated school finance system, which sees so-called property rich school districts pay the state millions each year to buoy school districts in more rural or property-poor areas.

Reed used a water bottle to describe how it works. Some dis­tricts only have enough taxable property values to fill the bottle halfway. In those cases, the state pours more water in that dis­trict's bottle until it's closer to full.

"HISD has not just gotten to the top, but we are now flowing over," Reed said.

That means the extra money must be paid back to the state which gives the money to poorer school districts.

Continued on Next Page

Coot. from "For first time ... " "against" would mean the state would detach some local personal property.

All of this is new territory for HISD, because for the first time the district has been flagged for recapture. Trustees and dis­trict officials have bemoaned giving up the money, especially as nearly 80 percent of HISD students meet federal poverty guide­lines to be eligible for free or reduced-priced meals. Another 30 percent of HISD students are English language learners, who of­ten need more teacher supports and resources.

If HISD keeps all its commercial properties and benefits from increased property values, Reed estimated the district could see its budget continue to grow over the next five years by $66.8 mil­lion after the recapture payment is made. If the commercial prop­erties are detached, he said the district could see a loss of $98.4 million in 2017-2018 and would lose any future property value growth.

During the meeting, Reed also reviewed the language that would appear in May's referendum. It would ask: "Authorizing the board of trustees of Houston Independent School District to purchase attendance credits from the state with local tax reve­nues." A vote "for" purchasing attendance credits would mean the district would willingly pay the state's recapture fee. A vote

"A vote for detachment will see us lose some of our biggest revenue streams in the district, II said Trustee Anna Eastman. "If we don't go back and vote yes it will begin to force us to dip into our budget or raise taxes to break even. If the law stays the same as it is now, payments will increase but our local budget will in­crease as well."

San Antonio Express-News MAR 10 2017

San Antonio beefs up SXSW presence to court techies, foodies and hipsters By Joshua Fechter

City officials want hipsters and techies at this year's South by Southwest Festival in Austin to sip on cocktails, munch on tacos and listen to bands - then pack their bags for San Antonio.

For the second year in a row, the non­profit Choose San Antonio will use the 10-day film, music and tech showcase to pitch the Alamo City as an up-and­coming hot spot with a lively culinary and cultural scene, burgeoning tech industry and cheap real estate.

The organization will hold court for three days starting Friday at Half Step Bar in Austin's Rainey Street bar district -dubbed Casa San Antonio for the week­end - with panels touting San Antonio's startup community and growing down­town along with more informal events showcasing the city's bands, films, food trucks, tacos and, of course, the Spurs.

San Antonio will also staff an exhibit at the festival's trade show and job mar­ket, hoping to attract resumes of top talent and match them with potential jobs.

"I want to meet a company and get a business card; I want to meet an individu­al and get direct contact information that I can connect them to," said Meghan Gar­za-Oswald, Choose San Antonio's execu­tive director.

SXSW has blossomed in recent years from a low-key music and film festival to a sprawling international event that en­gulfs downtown Austin each year, en­snares traffic and draws thousands of at­tendees - including prominent figures such as former President Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" director J.J. Abrams. This year, former Vice Pres­ident Joe Biden will take the stage to speak about the White House Cancer Moonshot initiative, undertaken after his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.

The 10-day festival creates a huge windfall for Austin. A study published in September by Grey h ill Advi­sors estimated the 2016 festival injected $325.3 million into the local economy, in­cluding more than 59,000 hotel-room nights that generated $1.8 million in tax revenue for the city of Austin.

In the past, San Antonio's involve­ment in the festival has been relegated solely to "spillover" status, holding festi­vals comprised of musical acts booked for SXS W gigs that also take time to swing down Interstate 35.

But in recent years San Antonio offi­cials and businesses, including Geekdom, Rackspace and USAA, have grown savvy to the festival's recruitment potential.

San Antonio won't be the only city vying for eyeballs and taste buds. Denton, Houston, EI Paso, Fort Worth and San Marcos, as well as Albuquerque, Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia, will be hosting networking events and showing off their cities' film, music and food scenes. Those cities, in tum, will be competing for at­tendees' attention with Mexico, Germany, Poland, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Can­ada, Spain, Indonesia, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

City and Bexar County officials have backed Choose San Antonio's efforts, kicking in $65,000 of the $300,000 need­ed for Casa San Antonio, Garza-Oswald said. The organization made up the re­maining costs with private fundraising.

Choose San Antonio is aiming for higher attendance and increased individu­al contact with attendees. Roughly 3,600 people passed through Casa San Antonio when it set up shop at a bar on Sixth Street last year, she said.

Attendees from New York, California and other states told organizers during last year's events they want to get married and start families but can't afford housing where they currently live, making San Antonio an attractive option, Garza­Oswald said.

"They want to start moving forward in their life, and they can't afford to," Garza­Oswald said. "They can't afford real es­tate where they are so they're looking for a place that both has job opportunity, growth opportunity but also has the op­portunity to have personal development whether that's buying a home, building a home, renting a home, whatever it might be."

Garza-Oswald said Choose San Anto­nio plans to use data collected via the the

14

organization's SXSW mobile app, SA TX Next, to build connections between pro­spective residents and local companies.

Casa San Antonio will kick off the weekend with a breakfast taco showcase Friday. Choose San Antonio staged a "ta­co battle" between La Gloria owner John­ny Hernandez and an Austin chef during last year's event, resulting from the "taco war" that erupted on social media be­tween the two cities over whether Austin invented the breakfast taco. But Austin was a no-show.

"We're not reigniting the taco wars at all," Garza-Oswald said. "More im­portantly, we're just continuing to show off how we are the best."

San Antonio Sound Garden, a non­profit intended to support local musical acts, will cap Friday's events with a showcase of bands from the Alamo City. The next night, Casa San Antonio will host a watch party as the Spurs take on the Golden State Warriors.

The film industry will take over Casa San Antonio on Sunday night with a hap­py hour with film professionals hosted by San Antonio-based movie theater chain Santikos Entertainment, followed by a se­ries of films made in San Antonio.

The city has sought to make itself more friendly to the film industry in re­cent months. City Council green lighted a five-year strategic plan in October to boost film and television production here by beefing up incentives, updating the San Antonio Film Commission's duties, ag­gressively marketing the city to filmmak­ers, and assessing the city's film and tele­vision workforce needs.

"Is it a long-term problem? I would call it a challenge, but it's a very sur­mountable problem," Santikos Entertain­ment CEO David Holmes said of the city's underdeveloped film infrastructure.

Potentially making San Antonio less attractive to potential newcomers is Sen­ate Bill 6, a controversial bill in the Texas Legislature that would require individuals to use restrooms and other facilities in government buildings based on the gender

Continued on Next Page

Cont. from "San Antonio ... " economic prosperity," SA2020 President and CEO Molly Cox said.

already made it," said Bria Woods, founder and CEO ofGLO, a San Antonio­based safety app. "But, what's so great about San Antonio is it's an ideal place for someone who is making it, who is still maybe trying to find their way, educate themselves, network and still do what they want to do."

on their birth certificate, rather than gen­der identity. Business and civil rights groups have warned state lawmakers that the law is discriminatory and would make the state less business-friendly.

"I think it would be detrimental for the state and especially for a city who has said that we believe in nondiscrimination, we believe in equity, that we believe in

But Cox said figures tracked by SA2020 - a long-term effort to reshape the city launched by former Mayor Julian Castro - show San Antonio is chugging along when it comes to entrepreneurship, in part because of tech initiatives like Geekdom and TechBLOC. j fechter@express-news.net

Twitter: @JFreports "Some other places in the country are maybe ideal for entrepreneurs who have

San Antonio Express-News MAR 102017

San Antonio City Council approves joint annexation plan with Converse By Vianna Davila

San Antonio City Council unanimously agreed Thursday to enter into a complex annexation agreement with Converse in an effort to bring municipal services to an unincorporated part of Northeast Bexar County that's lacked them for decades.

Now it's up to council members in Converse, a suburban city of about 22,000 people, to decide whether to annex this 12-square-mile, unincorporated area - a part of the county just north of Interstate 10 East that San Antonio officials once con­sidered annexing, but scrapped because of the financial losses the city would incur.

The area, an island wedged between San Antonio and Con­verse, has historically suffered from a lack of basic services and investment, though it also includes many new neighborhoods and undeveloped land.

To sweeten the deal for Converse, San Antonio officials agreed to cede several commercial corridors to the suburban city and some additional areas, including the Northampton neighbor­hood currently in District 2. That's about 3.6 square miles the city is giving up, eventually resulting in a loss of almost $4 mil­lion a year in various revenues for San Antonio.

As part of San Antonio's vote Thursday, the city released the first 600 acres of the total area it eventually will relinquish to Converse.

If Converse approves the agreement, the annexation plan would be phased in over 17 years. By its conclusion in 2033, Converse's population would be more than 68,000 and the city would grow to more than 22 square miles, greater than triple its current size. The projected population increase doesn't take into account the effects of any new residential development in these areas.

Converse will add 85 police officers and 57 firefighter and EMS positions over a 20-year period to accommodate the new growth, said San Antonio Deputy City Manager Peter Zanoni.

Converse Police Chief Fidel Villegas said his department is looking at working out of storefronts or adding substations as new areas are added into the city, with a goal of making sure of­ficers can still make emergency calls in less than 10 minutes. At its current 7-square mile size, Converse police make emergency calls in about 3 minutes and non-emergency calls in 7 minutes.

The Converse vote is tentatively scheduled for March 21. Converse Councilwoman Deborah James, who attended

Thursday's meeting, currently doesn't support the proposed deal because she thinks officials in her city have rushed the agreement to a vote. She was one of three new people elected to council in November, and James believes they haven't had enough time to study annexation's implications. Public meetings to discuss the proposal, scheduled for this week and next, are being held too close to the council vote, she said.

15

"I'm not against expanding out," James said. "What I'm against is it was done too fast." She added that some residents in the unincorporated areas have expressed concerns their taxes will go up if they are annexed. James fears the city may struggle to provide services for the areas once they are absorbed.

Converse could triple in size Through a series of annexations over the next 17 years, the

suburban city of Converse east of San Antonio could triple in size. The annexations are part of an agreement with San Antonio, in which Converse will annex chronically-underserved parts of unincorporated Bexar County. In yellow are the areas San Anto­nio is ceding to Converse. Areas in lighter blue are parts of the unincorporated county that Converse will annex. Play the video below to see the series of moves evolve. Be sure to move your cursor off the screen to see the years for each phase at the bottom of each slide.

Zanoni said Converse will gain a net of $8.6 million at the end of 20 years, if the annexations are executed.

The deal could prove a political win for San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor, following the city's decision last summer to drop this area from its annexation plan. Taylor, who is running for re­election, said she wanted to find another way to address resi­dents' problems in the area.

"This agreement really does underscore the importance of developing regional solutions to the challenges that face us," Taylor said. "We are all neighbors."

District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg, one of Taylor's chal­lengers in the mayor's race, and District 5 Shirley Gonzales have previously opposed San Antonio's decision to annex other parts of the county. While both briefly referenced their concerns Thursday, they supported the Converse plan.

Several annexation bills pending in the state Legislature could render most of the San Antonio-Converse plan moot. Two annexation bills filed this session by state Rep. Lyle Larson, R­San Antonio, and state Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, would mean residents in an area being considered for an annexa­tion must vote yes or no before they could be absorbed into a city.

Should these bills pass, the new laws would go into effect in September. That means Converse would have to go to the voters in the unincorporated area every time they wanted to annex a new part of the county.

Zanoni, with San Antonio, said both cities have agreed to try to work together to implement the annexation plan even if the legislation passes.

vdavila@express-news.net

San Antonio Express-News MAR 102017

Bexar's smelly trash woes on the cusp of cleanup By Josh Brodesky

At long last, Bexar County's trash problem is on the cusp of a real cleanup.

Will the latest legislative effort move the mounds of garbage that have (unfairly) defined some Bexar County neighborhoods for years?

We should all hope so. State Sen. Jose Menendez's "Clean up Bexar County" legis­

lation hasn't received the attention it deserves - trash sure isn't sexy - but it's arguably one of the most important local bills this legislative session. Why? Because San Antonio shouldn't have neighborhoods where children walk through piles of gar­bage to get to school.

Such basic decency is worth cheering for, right? Senate Bill 1229, and its companion, House Bi1l2763, would

empower Bexar County's Commissioner's Court to require trash service in unincorporated areas. Think of neighborhoods on the Northeast Side such as Camelot II and the Glen where numerous landlords have refused to require trash service at their properties, creating a festering public health crisis.

Those two neighborhoods have received considerable public attention, but sadly, the issue is county-wide. Maybe it's not quite as extreme in other parts of the county, but there are plenty of trash hotspots out there.

Trash woes are particularly prevalent in unincorporated areas that also fall in the city of San Antonio's extraterritorial jurisdic­tion (ETJ), a 5-mile buffer that extends beyond city limits where it's unclear if the county can mandate trash service.

This would change if Menendez's bill becomes law. Bexar County could mandate trash service in the ETJ. So, if a given neighborhood spins out of sanitary control, the county can inter­vene. Also, landlords that own two or more rental properties in the ETJ would be required to have trash service. They also would have to register their properties with the county.

But the bill is also nimble in its approach. It affects just Bexar County, so residents in other counties are not affected.

Property owners and neighborhoods can keep their existing trash service, so no one is going to be forced to change service. And as for competition, Bexar County can contract with either public or private service providers, which means those private companies are not at risk of losing business. If anything, they stand to gain customers.

San Antonio Express-News MAR 10 2017

.. I think people from Bexar County who have seen how bad this is definitely agree and see (the need for legislative action)," Menendez said. "There are a lot of people who just see this as a basic issue."

I ran the bill by Mark Hurley, president of Water Meadow Inc., which owns numerous rental houses in the Camelot II area, and the lone concern he raised surprised me.

"'It simply does not go far enough," he said. "It should be all the landlords and the owners in that area."

Hurley thought focusing on landlords with at least two prop­erties created an unnecessary loophole since there are plenty of out-of-town landlords who only own one property. From his per­spective, one trashy house fuels another.

But the general point of the legislation is to crack down on slumlords while not micromanaging individual property owners. Menendez has to thread a certain needle here - respecting rural property rights, ensuring trash service companies don't lose cus­tomers, honoring existing service - so the bill becomes law.

For years, fonner State Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon has championed legislation such as this, and for years that effort has come up short. If Menendez can break this cycle, it will be a great benefit to the community. It will also be a fabulous way to honor McClendon's service, and a feather in the cap of rookie state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, who is championing this bill in the House.

Anyone who has followed the trash saga in Camelot II knows the pilot program between the city of San Antonio and Bexar County has been a smashing success. Streets and alleys are sig­nificantly cleaner, and bills are being paid. It's worked so well, the city will likely extend the pilot program to the Glen neigh­borhood. But it's just a pilot program. Temporary and limited.

This legislation, combined with Converse's likely annexation of 12 miles in Northeast Bexar County, would end the region's trash problems. No more emergency cleanups that change noth­ing. No more garbage oozing and seeping down the street. The legislation deserves bipartisan support from the Bexar delegation.

May we never again have another neighborhood blanketed in trash.

jbrodesky@express-news.net

Fire-displaced horses in Texas need hay ASSOCIATED PRESS

AMARILLO - Texas agriculture officials and ranchers are scrambling to secure feed and other supplies for approximately 10,000 cattle and horses that fled this week from wildfires in the Panhandle.

The Texas A&M Agri-Life Extension said Thursday about 4,200 large bales of hay are needed to feed displaced animals over the next two weeks.

Trucks to shuttle animals from one location to another and fencing are among the needs as ranchers recover from the fires,

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which killed four people and about 1,500 heads of cattle, and burned about 750 square miles in the state. Wildfires also rav­aged parts of Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday suspended some penn it re­quirements and transportation restrictions so supplies of hay could more quickly get to ranchers in the eight Panhandle coun­ties hit by the wildfires.

San Antonio Express-News MAR 10 2017

State launches accreditation investigation into San Antonio charter district By Alia Malik

The Texas Education Agency on Wednesday launched a spe­cial accreditation investigation into the San Antonio School for Inquiry and Creativity, the same day it suspended operations at the local charter school district.

Commissioner of Education Mike Morath authorized the in­vestigation in response to a referral by the TEA's Fingerprinting Audit Unit and an initial review by the agency's Special Investi­gations Unit, according to the letter sent to SASIC's superinten­dent and board president.

"I think the whole thing is very unfortunate," Superintendent Tonja D. Nelson said. "We are definitely working on resolving this issue to ensure that it won't happen again and open up the communication channels a little better."

Investigators will look into the same allegations that got SASIC suspended: possible lack of compliance with state re­quirements governing the criminal history of employees and pro­tection of the health, safety and welfare of students. At board meetings last month, parents and employees complained that stu­dents were served undercooked, spoiled cafeteria food that made them ill, and that the district was not conducting criminal back­ground checks on employees.

TEA investigators will also look into allegations of nepotism and failure to comply with state data reporting requirements, ac­cording to the letter.

The TEA also cited allegations that SASIC is operating at least two unapproved sites, including Monticello High School at 5300 Heath Road and SASIC Preparatory Academy, a middle school at 2507 Fredericksburg Road. The district is approved to operate three sites, but any charter district wishing to open a new campus must notify the TEA and provide a certificate of occu­pancy, said DeEtta Culbertson, TEA spokeswoman. Based on those requirements, SASIC currendy has two TEA-approved lo­cations on San Pedro Avenue.

The district enrolls a total of about 550 students. Nelson applied Aug. 12 to relocate a campus from the Asbury

United Methodist Church at 4601 San Pedro Avenue to 5300 Heath Road. The Heath Road building housed the Academy of Careers and Technologies, which Nelson ran until it lost its char-

Austin American-Statesman MAR 10 2017

ter after failing to meet state accountability requirements. In the relocation application, Nelson told the TEA that SASIC had more than 100 high-schoolers at the Methodist church campus and would serve 180 students from grades 6 to 12 at the Heath Road campus upon approval of the charter amendment. On Dec. 7, Morath denied the request.

"Considerations include the performance of the charter holder in carrying out its current public school obligations, including, but not limited to, student performance and the financial position of the charter," said Heather Mauze, director of the TEA's divi­sion of charter school administration, in a letter to Nelson.

On Thursday, Nelson said SASIC only operates two schools and students at the Heath Road and Fredericksburg Road cam­puses are enrolled as students of the approved schools. She said she had applied for a "waiver" for the Heath Road location but declined to provide the application, citing the ongoing investiga­tion.

The TEA is conducting a hearing Friday on its mandate that SASIC suspend all operations, effective until the district can prove compliance with the criminal history record and health and safety requirements of the Texas Education Code. Nelson said some employees' fingerprinting records were not properly up­loaded to a state database and the district fell a few points short of a perfect score the last time its central kitchen was inspected.

Democratic Schools Research Institute holds SASIC's char­ter. It expires July 31, 2018. The district receives more than $4,000 per month in Foundation School Program payments from the state.

In Bexar County, the TEA has conducted special accredita­tion investigations in the past two years of the South San Anto­nio, Edgewood and Southside Independent School Districts. If investigators find wrongdoing, possible sanctions include lower­ing the district's accreditation status, appointing a monitor or conservator and replacing the superintendent and governing board.

amalik@express-news.net Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN

Land Commissioner George P. Bush seeks to cut warbler off species list By Asher Price

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, determined to remove special habi­tat protections for an endangered songbird that nests in Central Texas, said Thursday that he is preparing to sue the federal gov­ernment on the matter.

The step would be the latest in the long, rancorous history over protections for the golden-cheeked warbler, which have been a driving force for preserving open space in western Travis County since the 1990s.

It also promises to be a test case for the Trump administration's approach to endangered species protections.

"The golden-cheeked warbler is a suc­cess story and now that its population is up, we can remove it from the list and fo­cus on the species needing our protection and attention," Bush said. "Working to­gether we are returning common sense to federal government."

But birders and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service disagree with Bush's premise that the warbler has fully recov­ered from the circumstances that landed the bird on the endangered species in the first place.

Last year, in response to a 2015 peti­tion to take the species off the endangered list led by former state Comptroller Susan Combs and groups with ties to business and landowner interests, and supported by the General Land Office, the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the species "has not been recovered, and due to ongoing, widespread destruction of its habitat, the species continues to be in danger of ex­tinction throughout its range."

The petition, said U.S. Fish and Wild­life Service officials, "did not present sub­stantial information that deli sting is war­ranted."

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The land commissioner has been em­broiled in golden-cheeked warbler issues before.

The American-Statesman revealed in 2015 that Combs and a high-ranking offi­cial in Bush's office had pressed military officials at Fort Hood, prime warbler habitat, to play up the impact of the bird protections on military training as part of their delisting effort.

The cornerstone of the effort to re­move the bird's federal protections has been a 2015 study by Texas A & M re­searchers. Overseen by an ecologist who served as a board member of a property rights group that supports the warbler delisting effort, the study concluded Cen­tral Texas' warbler population was much greater than previously thought, calling into question the need for the warbler's endangered species protection.

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Cont. from "Land Commissioner ... "

In a letter Thursday to the U.S. Interi­or Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Robert Henneke, the general counsel of the conservative-minded Texas Public Policy Foundation, acting on be­half of the Texas General Land Office, cited the A & M research in announcing the state agency's intent to sue.

But the Statesman found that the A & M research has encountered a series of criticisms from other biologists. Federal biologists, for example, noted that, ac­cording to the A&M population model, warblers could be found in a wide ex­panse of asphalt at Port Hood. Citing such glitches, the agency concluded the paper's

Austin

methodology overpredicted the number of warblers by as much as tenfold.

The Aggie researchers have stood by their conclusions and criticized the meth­ods of other scientists.

"I see this as a success story," Henneke said in an interview, "of how conservation can work. In no way should this (deli sting suit) be construed as attack­ing a species."

He said the warbler is a "recovered species" and should "no longer be regu­lated," with a popUlation as many as 19 times greater than when it was listed.

The Endangered Species Act "is not perpetual regulation of private property."

Henneke's letter points, as an example of landowner costs, to a 2,316-acre Gen-

American-Statesman MAR 10 2017

eral Land Office-owned tract in Bexar and Kendall counties, approximately 85 per­cent of which contains warbler habitat. The letter says the presence of warbler habitat has decreased the property's value by nearly half.

General Land Office spokeswoman Brittany Eck said the state was partnering with the private foundation because it "has extensive experience in delisting liti­gation." She said the foundation is repre­senting the General Land Office pro bono.

Joan Marshall, director of Travis Audubon, which oversees some warbler preserve land, said a delisting of the spe­cies "would be premature."

"The underlying condition of habitat loss continues," she said.

Mexico's top diplomat for North America: 'Texas is the NAFTA state' By Sean Collins Walsh

Mexico's top diplomat for North American affairs said Thursday in Austin that he hopes Texas politicians will take a leading role in highlighting the benefits of the U.S.-Mexico trade relationship as President Donald Trump prepares to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"Texas is the NAPT A state by definition," Carlos Sada Sola­na, the Mexican foreign affairs undersecretary for North Ameri­ca, told the American-Statesman. "When negotiations start ... we want to start with a position that is happening in reality, not with any misinformation."

On the campaign trail, Trump called NAFT A "the worst trade deal in history" and vowed to pull out or renegotiate terms to make them more favorable to U.S. workers.

While many economists agree with Trump's assessment that NAPTA led to a loss in U.S. manufacturing jobs, especially in the Rust Belt, there is a wide consensus that Texas has benefited from the 25-year-old pact, which eliminated tariffs among the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

In 2015, $381 billion worth of trade between the U.S. and Mexico passed through Texas, accounting for 65 percent of total trade between the two countries, according to the Census Bureau. About 4.9 million American jobs depend on trade with Mexico, including 382,000 in Texas, according to the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank chartered by Congress that studies global affairs.

Sada Solana, an engineer from Oaxaca, is a longtime diplo­mat, having previously served as Mexico's consul general in San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto. He's in Austin to visit the Casa Mexico at South by Southwest, which is organized by the Mexican Consulate in Austin and aims to showcase the country's technology sector and entrepreneurship.

Austin American-Statesman MAR 10 2017

While in Austin, Sada Solana said he also has met with Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, and other state law­makers. Gov. Greg Abbott, he said, might visit Mexico soon.

Straus on Thursday echoed Sada Solana's sentiments about the cross-border relationship.

"Our trading relationship with Mexico has created considera­ble economic opportunity in Texas, and our work together on is­sues like counterterrorism has made our state safer," Straus said in a statement. "It would be a mistake to weaken cooperation be­tween our two countries."

As Trump made policy goals dealing with Mexico - includ­ing amending NAFTA, curbing illegal immigration and building a border wall - central to his campaign and administration, Mexico's Foreign Affairs Secretariat, the equivalent of the U.S. State Department, has taken a more outspoken approach to its northern neighbor.

Sada Solana's appointment as ambassador to the U.S. in April was interpreted as a sign of that new strategy. (He was re­placed in that role in January by Ger6nimo Gutierrez Fernandez.)

On Thursday, Sada Solana reiterated Mexican President En­rique Pefia Nieto's previous statements about Trump's plan to build a wall along the length of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico bor­der and have Mexico pay for it: "We do not like the wall, no mat­ter what."

"It is a hostile approach against a country that is not only a friend and neighbor but is a strategic partner ... but we under­stand that it is a decision of the autonomous government of the United States and we cannot do anything about it," he said. "Re­garding who's paying for the wall, we are not paying for the wall. That's a fact."

How do dentists, doctors defend serving alcohol to patients? By Ken Herman

I went to the Capitol on Thursday in search of an answer to one of the bigger questions on my mind this legislative ses­sion.

Oh sure, I'm curious about how our best and brightest handle the major issues of our time: writing a state budget, decid­ing who goes to which bathroom, how to stop the president from tweeting and what to do about school finance. (That last one can't be too hard to solve. I've seen them solve it three or four times in the past few decades.)

To get an answer to my question I first had to sit through discussions of several other topics at Thursday'S 8 a.m. session of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee that dealt with business and commerce and - Surprise! - foreign poli­cy.

Before getting to the vexing question on my mind, which came about than two hours into the meeting, I got to enjoy a prolonged discussion about rural phone companies and an even more prolonged discussion about Texas-Israel relations.

18

On the phone bill, Senate Bill 586, we heard about how the universal service fund affects the state's 45 small and rural phone companies.

The testimony began with this from rural phone company guy Joey Anderson of Muenster (they've heard all the cheese jokes, so don't go there): "I was glad to survive another trip down 1-35."

And then everybody talked about tele­phone stuff for a while, including rural telephone co-ops, which I used to think

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Cont. from "How do dentists ... "

are where you crank something on the side of the phone and ask Mabel to con­nect you with the feed store. No action was taken on the bill, and I was encour­aged that we were progressing to an an­swer to my pressing question, one I knew would be conclusively dealt with at the meeting.

But I wasn't counting on the foreign policy debate ignited by state Sen. Bran­don Creighton's Senate Bill 29. Creighton, R-Conroe, wants the Texas government to boycott companies that boycott Israel. That debate - short ver­sion: Israel good, Israel bad - went for about an hour and no action was taken on the bill.

As that discussion wound down, state Sen. Lois Kolkborst, R-Brenham, sponsor of the bill that would answer my question, twisted and stretched in her chair as she knew she was on deck. Back in February, I told you about Kolkhorst's Senate Bill 404, the one that would bar all health care professionals from doing something you can't believe any health care professionals actually do: serve alcoholic beverages in the waiting room to patients and parents of patients.

Austin

This might be funny if it wasn't. Kol­khorst told the committee it happens, sometimes with what docs like to call bad outcomes. (Docs talk funny. They never say, "pain." They say, "discomfort.")

Kolkhorst, a dentist's daughter, said the measure is part of her continuing ef­fort regarding "struggles we have in pro­tecting children in dental offices, and the general public as well."

"A variety of medical providers, espe­cially dentists, have begun offering free alcoholic beverages at their practices," she said, adding, "These beverages are al­so offered to parents of patients both be­fore and after procedures, which we know often involve sedation or other pharma­ceuticals."

She cited a League City dentist who provided alcoholic beverages to a parent who was required to sign loan agreement forms for the treatment for the parent's son. The child suffered severe injuries as a result of the treatment.

The legislative analysis of the bill re­ported "several incidents where alcoholic beverages have been offered by medical providers who later go on to inflict severe and permanent damage, often during the course of procedures later found to be un­necessary."

American-Statesman MAR 10 2017

So here's the question I took to the Capitol on Thursday: Would any health care professional have the temerity to show up to extol the benefits of offering alcoholic beverages in the waiting room for patients and parents of young patients about to make medical and financial deci­sions?

Kolkhorst's bill was left pending. She told the committee she's reworking it in response to concerns she's heard. One tweak will make it clear that massage therapists and funeral home operators won't be barred from offering alcoholic beverages to their clients. She said she al­so had heard from medical folks who complained her bill was an attempt at overregulation.

"In the course of the conversation, they admitted that they are serving alco­hol in their dental offices," Kolkhorst said.

These were the folks I was interested in hearing from at the hearing. None showed up. So there's the answer to my question.

"It saddens me in a way that I have to carry a bill that prohibits serving alcohol in medical offices," Kolkborst told the committee.

Ruling voids court fee used for brain, spinal cord patients By Chuck Lindell

Under a ruling from the state's highest criminal court, de­fendants convicted of most crimes will save money while mil­lions of dollars will be cut from a rehabilitation program for peo­ple with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the state to stop collecting court fees designated for two programs - reha­bilitation services and child-abuse counseling - because the money is diverted into efforts that don't have a "legitimate crim­inal justice purpose" as required by the state law that created the fee program.

The 5-3 ruling, released Wednesday, said using the courts to collect fees - typically an executive branch function - violates the Texas Constitution's separation of powers provision unless a law grants that authority.

Losing the child abuse fee will have little impact because it was meant to fund a program that no longer exists, so the $15,000 collected in 2015 was diverted to the state budget.

But the court fees raised $16.7 million for a rehabilitation program meant to help people with brain and spine injuries func­tion at home and in the community. That program, which also re­ceives state money, served 811 patients last year, and state health officials said Thursday that they were still evaluating the ruling and its potential impact on patients.

The ruling will go into effect when the court issues its man­date on April 3. Until then, lawmakers have a fleeting opportuni­ty to save the two fees, the court noted.

"If the Legislature redirects the funds to a legitimate criminal justice purpose (before the mandate is issued), the entire consoli­dated court cost may be collected," said the opinion, written by Presiding Judge Sharon Keller.

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That timetable, however, will be extremely difficult to meet. The bill-filing deadline is Friday, and legislation would need to go through committees and floor votes in the House and Senate at an unusually rapid pace.

In Texas, most people convicted of a crime pay one court fee that is diverted into 14 programs, including victims compensa­tion, court training and criminal justice planning funds.

Felony convictions carry a $133 fee, dropping to $83 for Class A and B misdemeanor and $40 for misdemeanors that do not include jail time, excluding pedestrian and parking violations.

The consolidated fee was challenged by Orlando Salinas, a Harris County man who was convicted of injury to an elderly person, his 80-year-old father, and sentenced to five years in prison.

Salinas argued that the entire fee was unconstitutional be­cause it funds two programs that don't have the necessary crimi­nal justice purpose. The Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed, al­lowing the fee to continue minus the two improper programs.

The ruling will cut the consolidated fee by 9.83 percent, sav­ing future felons $13.07. Misdemeanor fees will drop by $8.16, and nonjail offenses will cost almost $4 less.

The ruling isn't retroactive, meaning previously paid fees won't have to be refunded, the court said.

A dissenting opinion by Judge Kevin Yeary, joined by Judges Bert Richardson and David Newell, said Salinas' challenge should have been rejected because he failed to prove that the di­verted money isn't used for any criminal justice purpose.

Judge Mary Lou Keel didn't participate in the decision.

Austin American-Statesman MAR 102017

Unpaid, prosecutors seek to postpone Ken Paxton trial By Chuck Lindell

Prosecutors on Thursday asked a state judge to postpone At­torney General Ken Paxton's criminal trial, set to begin in less than two months, because a ruling from another court has blocked them from getting paid for more than a year.

"No one in a democratic society should be expected to work for free, and it would be fundamentally unfair for this court, or, for that matter, the defense, to require the special prosecutors to work for free," the prosecutors told state District Judge George Gallagher in a motion.

The court-appointed prosecutors blamed Jeffory Blackard -"a vocal supporter, good friend and political donor" of Paxton -for blocking the payments.

Blackard sued after the prosecutors submitted a $205,191 bill for 13 months of work, including all of2016, prompting the Dal­las-based 5th Court of Appeals to issue a late-January order that stopped Collin County from making payment.

"Blackard hopes that he will be able to ultimately derail this prosecution by defunding it," the motion for a continuance said.

Austin American-Statesman MAR 10 2017

"Blackard is now one appellate court ruling away from doing what the state believes no one before him has ever done: shutting down a lawfully constituted criminal prosecution by cutting off funding to the special prosecutors."

Noting that it will take hundreds of hours to meet court­determined pretrial deadlines, prosecutors Kent Schaffer, Brian Wice and Nicole Deborde asked Gallagher to set Paxton's trial for 60 days after the appeals court decides whether they can be paid for past and future work on the case.

Based on previous actions by the appeals court, the prosecu­tors estimated that Paxton's trial could be held "no later than" Sept. 1.

Paxton's lawyers said Thursday that they will oppose the re­quest for a delay.

Prosecutors said they will first try Paxton for failing to regis­ter with state securities regulators, a third-degree felony. Paxton also was charged with two counts of securities fraud related to private business deals in 2011.

Paxton joins opposition to inmates' immigration lawsuit By Chuck Lindell

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has moved to oppose a federal lawsuit that accuses the Dallas County sheriff of violating the rights of 23 people who had been detained for immigration agents.

Paxton said he wants to preserve the ability of county offi­cials to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforce­ment requests to hold an inmate so federal officials can verify immigration status.

The inmates sued two years ago, arguing that Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez violated their rights by refusing to grant immediate release on bond and by detaining them based on im­migration holds after they were otherwise eligible for release.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater ruled in January that the lawsuit could go forward to determine whether Valdez violated the inmates' civil rights by complying with the requests, com­monly known as "detainers."

In a court filing late Wednesday, Paxton asked the judge to allow Texas to join the lawsuit to protect "the ongoing coopera­tion between federal, state and local law enforcement."

Austin American-Statesman MAR 102017

"Governments throughout Texas have a duty under Texas law, and cooperative agreements with the federal government, to hold undocumented and suspected criminal aliens pursuant to ICE detainers," Paxton said in a statement. "This is a public safe­ty issue. If a Texas sheriff cannot lawfully honor an ICE detainer dangerous people may slip through the cracks of the justice sys­tem and back into the community."

A similar issue has played out in Travis County, where re­cently elected Sheriff Sally Hernandez said she only will hold inmates for federal agents if they have been charged with mur­der, capital murder, aggravated sexual assault or continuous hu­man smuggling.

Gov. Greg Abbott responded to the policy by cutting $1.5 million in state grants to the county. State lawmakers also filed bills that would require Texas sheriffs and county officials to comply with ICE or risk civil penalties and criminal charges.

Bill scales back contentious system that grades Texas schools with A-F By Julie Chang

A bill filed Thursday would scale back a new state grading system for school districts and campuses.

House Bill 22 filed by state Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston and the chairman of the House Public Education Committee, would change the A-F accountability system that school districts have criticized since it was proposed in 2015. The A-F system hasn't gone into effect yet, but the state assigned letter grades to school districts and campuses in January that showed how they would have performed if the A-F accountability system were in use.

School district officials were unhappy, saying that the system - which will be implemented in August 2018 - unfairly penal­izes schools with large numbers of low-income students. They also said that assigning letter grades stigmatizes public schools while providing little useful information to the public. Propo­nents said the system is a more transparent and comprehensive way of grading schools.

Among the changes the bill would make is push back imple­mentation of the A-F system a year.

"TASA appreciates that Chairman Huberty is willing to work on the A-F accountability system and improve its flaws. We also

20

applaud that HB 22 pushes back the implementation of A-F to 2019 to allow more time to develop a better accountability sys­tem," said Casey McCreary with the Texas Association of School Administrators.

The bill would reduce the number of categories in which each campus and school district would be graded. The categories elim­inated are ones that grade how well districts and campuses pre­pare students for careers and college and how well they reduce the performance gap between between low-income and higher­income students. Campuses and school districts would still be graded on overall student performance and progress and their "school climate" - how well they engage with students and the community.

Some parts of the eliminated categories would be integrated into existing ones.

Based on a preliminary review of the bill, Clay Robison with the Texas State Teachers Association said the bill still weighs heavily on standardized tests and will disproportionately hurt campuses with high numbers of poor kids.

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Cont. from "Bill scales back ••. "

"If Chainnan Huberty is attempting to make A-F more ac­ceptable to educators, I'm not sure he gets there," Robison said.

ter grades in each of the three categories. Currently, school dis­tricts and campuses receive an overall label that indicates wheth­er they met state requirements for the year or if they need im·, provement.

The bill also would eliminate assigning an overall letter grade to each school district and campus. The bill would only give let-

Austin American-Statesman MAR 102017

Should "made in Texas" mean 100 percent Texas grapes? Texas grape growers split on wine bill by Cassandra Pollock/The Texas Tribune

BYE - Chris Brundrett sat in a bam surrounded by barrels of wine he helped curate and swirled a glass of water in his hand, perhaps imagining it was something else.

Brundrett, accompanied by others from the state's wine industry, drove home his pitch: "If we can just pump out wine from California and slap a picture of the Alamo or a longhorn on it and sell it," he said, should wineries be able to put a "made in Texas" label on it?

A co-owner and winemaker at Wil­liam Chris Vineyards between Freder­icksburg and Johnson City, Brundrett was explaining why he backed House Bill 1514 by state Rep. Jason Isaac, R­Dripping Springs, which would require that wines with a Texas label be made on­ly with Texas-grown grapes.

Under federal law, wine can have an appellation of origin from a state if a min­imum 75 percent of its grapes are grown in that state. The other 25 percent can come from anywhere.

"I believe having something labeled as Texas should be from Texas," Isaac told the Tribune, adding that his bill would en­courage more Texas grape production.

Last year Texas produced about 3.8 million gallons of wine, according to the

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 102017

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and the state had more than 400 active pennits to bottle, produce and sell wine. A separate study in 2015 found the wine industry contributed more than $2 billion to the state's economy.

Grape growers and vineyard owners are scattered on the labeling issue. Paul Bonarrigo, co-owner of Messina Hof Winery, the state's third-largest wine pro­ducer in 2016, said he was opposed to the measure, and the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association said they don't back Isaac's bill, either.

Brian Heath, owner of Grape Creek Vineyards in Fredericksburg, said the bill could help the industry down the road, but if it passed now, he said it would limit winemakers' options during unexpected events - like when strong Texas stonns ruin grape crops. "You can't predict what you can't predict," he said.

Others in the industry believe Isaac's proposal would increase transparency and accountability and improve the authentici­ty ofthe state's wines.

"We're not the wine police," said Brundrett, adding that regardless of whether HB 1514 passed, wineries would still have the right to produce and

blend wine however they wished - as long as they were accurately labeled.

"But it's an uphill battle because there are already other wineries who have come through and tried to pull wool over peo­ple's eyes," he said.

Back at the Capitol, Isaac said that while 100 percent Texas wine was the goal, some in the industry contend that it might be too challenging to use only Tex­as grapes by September when the bill would go into effect ifpassed.

Isaac said he would look into offering an amended version of HB 1514 that would phase in the change, with benchmarks at 80 or 90 percent before re­quiring 100 percent Texas grapes. Isaac also said his bill would allow the Texas Department of Agriculture to allow ex­ceptions to the threshold if severe weather or drought damaged state grape crops.

Regardless, Brundrett said he was happy to see discussion on the issue.

"This bill is getting the conversation rolling," he said. "It's an idea that's been presented, and I hope in the next couple of months we see some greater participation from the consumers, growers and wine­makers."

Texas asks to join lawsuit over Dallas county ice holds - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DALLAS Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked a judge to al­

low the state to join Dallas County officials in a federal lawsuit brought by immigrants alleging that their civil rights were violat­ed when they were held in the county jail on immigration holds.

The 2015 lawsuit alleges that the immigrants were wrongful­ly incarcerated. They say they were held on U.S. Immigration

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 10 2017

and Customs Enforcement requests when others charged with the same offenses were allowed to pay bond and leave.

Paxton's office wrote in its request to intervene as a defend­ant in the case that Texas has a substantial interest in law en­forcement continuing to cooperate with ICE.

Lawyers for the immigrants say some were held for months, even though ICE requests typically ask to hold people up to 48 hours

University of North Texas System chancellor retiring BY CASSANDRA POLLOCK The Texas Tribune

University of North Texas System Chancellor Lee Jackson will retire at the end of 20 17 after 15 years on the job.

Jackson, a fonner Dallas County judge, was appointed in 2002 by the university system's board of regents after then­Chancellor Alfred Hurley announced he was stepping down.

During Jackson's tenure, the UNT system expanded from two campuses to four, and as of last fall, more than 40,000 students were enrolled there.

"It has been a great privilege to lead the UNT System team, our board and our three campuses in service to the North Texas

21

region," Jackson said in a statement Thursday announcing his re­tirement. "I have especially enjoyed the energy and excitement that come from a constant flow of students striving for success in a growing region."

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings congratulated Jackson and thanked him for his service in a statement Thursday, saying Jack­son has been a "thoughtful and respected elected official and

Continued on Next Page

Cont. from "University ... " public administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

university leader" in the North Texas community for more than 40 years.

The search for Jackson's successor will begin immediately, and a new chancellor will be announced in the coming months, the system said. Jackson's contract with UNT ends at the end of August, but he will continue serving until his replacement is named.

Prior to becoming the system's chancellor, Jackson was a Dallas County judge for 15 years, with stints in the Texas House of Representatives and the Dallas city manager's office before that.

Born in Austin, Jackson graduated from Duke University with a bachelor's in political science. He earned a master's in

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organi­zation that iriforms Texans - and engages with them - about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 102017

Activists urge House committee to make abortion a felony crime BY BUD KENNEDY

Not to slight the White House, but Texas Republicans in Austin deserve their own reality TV show.

Call it the search for "The Biggest Conservative." Every session of the Leg­islature, lawmakers wallow all over each other rushing to the political right, just so one can waggle a scorecard and declare himself or herself the conservative big dog.

But no matter how far lawmakers go - and they've shifted further to the right since the 2016 election - there's always someone calling them squishes.

"If Republicans really want to save the life of the unborn child, just do it," lawyer Bradley Pierce of Abolish Abortion Texas said Thursday.

That group turned a Texas House committee hearing on the care of fetal re­mains into an anti-abortion event Wednesday. Forty speakers called for punishing abortion as a felony crime, to heck with the Supreme Court.

"When legislators call themselves pro­life, but they're not for bills that go fur-

Fort Worth Star-Telegram MAR 10 2017

ther, that looks like hypocrisy," said Pierce, 34, of Liberty Hill.

"Republicans talk a lot about the fetus being a life. But when they have a chance, they don't do anything about it."

The House State Affairs Committee was gathered to hear a bill by Chairman Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, requiring a burial for miscarriage and abortion re­mains, a rewrite of a 2015 law thrown out in court.

Abolish Abortion Texas, an affiliate of Abolish Human Abortion protesters, sup­ports House Bill 948 by state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, making abortion an assault and jailing patients and doctors.

State Reps. Mike Lang, R-Granbury, and Jonathan Stick-land, R-Bedford, are among 10 House co-authors in support.

Cook, honored in 2013 for presiding over long hearings on Texas' abortion re­strictions, pleaded with speakers to stick to the fetal remains bill and "the dignity of the deceased."

Pierce's comment: "Why are we spending all this time testifying if the ba­by is dead?"

Senate votes to scrap school accountability rule BY EMMA BROWN The Washington Post

The way he sees it, if Texas made abortion a crime, then President Donald J. Trump's Justice Department might not send marshals to enforce Supreme Court decisions.

"States have ignored federal law on marijuana," Pierce said.

"If they can do it for a plant, we can do it for human life."

Tinderholt's spokesman, Luke Macias, told the Austin Chronicle that Texas "shouldn't have to ask permission from any court system."

Oh - by the way, Pierce said Repub­licans are "disingenuous" to claim abor­tion restrictions are meant to guard wom­en's health.

"I don't think passing bills that regu­late abortion really go all that far to help women's health," he said. "It's a pretext."

Did I mention this reality show only lasts 80 more days?

Bud Kennedy: 817-390-7538, bud@Star-telegram.com, @BudKennedy. His column appears Sun­days, Wednesdays and Fridays.

WASHINGTON The Senate narrowly approved a measure Thursday to scrap

Obama-era regulations outlining how states must carry out a fed­eral law meant to hold schools accountable for their students' performance.

The vote was 50 to 49, nearly along party lines: Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, split with the GOP to vote against the measure. The House approved the measure last month with almost all Re­publicans in favor and all members of the Democratic caucus against. It now goes to President Trump, who is expected to sign it.

Democrats also argued that repealing the rules would em­power Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's advocacy for private­school vouchers. "It will give Secretary DeVos a blank check to promote her anti-public-school agenda," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The GOP majority in Congress argued that the rules, written by President Barack Obama's Education Department, contradict­ed congressional intent and amounted to executive overreach. Democrats said that repealing the rules would remove important guardrails meant to ensure that schools are serving poor children, minorities, English-language learners and students with disabili­ties.

22

The chairman of that committee, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R­Tenn., dismissed that argument as a baseless scare tactic. He said that repealing the rules "does not in any way" give DeVos a pathway to creating a national voucher program, arguing that it in fact restrains her authority by asserting that the executive branch cannot stretch the law to fit its own philosophy.

The regulations were meant to give states details about how they must meet their obligations under the bipartisan Every Stu­dent Succeeds Act, which 85 senators voted to approve in 2015 as the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act.

Dallas Morning News MAR 10 2017

Voluntary certification for storm-chasing roofers marks at least a start DAVE LIEBER

Sigh of relief. We have a roofers' bill introduced in the Legislature. The Watch­dog is grateful. It's weak enough that it could pass. And I say that in a compli­mentary way.

The plan calls for a voluntary certifi­cation for storm-chasing roofers who could register with the state. It wouldn't apply to new home construction or planned remodeling jobs, only to those roofers who swoop in during emergency situations, like after hail or high winds.

Homeowners would use the state­created certification list as a starting point to find an honest company.

It's not licensing. It's not mandatory for everyone in the trade. It doesn't apply to builders and contractors. All that was part of The Watchdog's dream. But this is the real world. This Legislature won't give us that. But a voluntary list is some­thing we can work with. It's a start.

House Bill 3293 was introduced by state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R­South-lake, who understands a fix is

Dallas Morning News MAR 10 2017

needed to stop the crime spree in our communities with take-the-money-and­run "roofers."

Dallas lawyer Steve Badger, who has become an expert on bad roofers who don't deliver, said "This is an important first step in recognizing there is a problem and working toward a solution. Some­thing must be done for the protection of Texas property owners getting ripped off by these shady contractors."

Watchdog's mailbag Dear Watchdog: Is there a way NOT to pay property

taxes? I retired last year at age 70, so pay­ing taxes on my house until I die is going to be hard financially. I worked hard to payoff my mortgage before I retired. -M.L.

DearM.L.: Of course, The Watchdog advocates

paying your taxes, but there's a remarka­ble way for you to avoid paying property taxes ever again. I'm not talking about the over-65 ceiling freeze on your property

Lump-sum withdrawals are on hold By TRISTAN HALLMAN

The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System board decided Thursday that it's too risky to payout lump-sum withdraw­als this month.

Executive Director Kelly Gottschalk told board members that pension officials were unable to renegotiate a debt agree­ment that could trigger a call on a $174 million loan this spring if the $2.2 billion fund dipped below $2 billion. Dipping be­low that to pay lump-sum withdrawals would harm the entire fund, she said.

The board agreed, in an 11-1 vote, with Gottschalk's assessment that it should keep large sums of money in the system for now.

Gottschalk had kept her recommenda­tion private in recent days. She had previ­ously written in a lawsuit filing that she intended to recommend a payout this month of $100 million to $280 million to retirees who have amassed money in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, known as DROP.

That declaration caused alarm among City Council member trustees, who

threatened legal action if the fund paid out the large sums while they worked with the Legislature to fix the failing system.

Council members Scott Griggs and Philip Kingston lauded the vote Thursday.

They said they will confer with their attorneys but would probably hold off on pursuing any legal action for now.

"This is an encouraging develop­ment," Kingston said. "I mean, it's not encouraging to DROP account holders. We understand we're putting them under a lot of stress ... but the system can't sus­tain complying with their DROP requests at this point."

DROP effectively served as a high­yield savings account for veteran police and firefighters and retirees. Last year, DROP account holders withdrew more than $500 million after the pension board proposed changes to save the system from insolvency.

The run on the bank accelerated the fund's projected demise. Now, the system could go broke within 10 years without a legislative fix.

23

offered by school districts and some cities and counties.

I'm referring to a tax deferral. You go to your county appraisal district and file for one. Dallas County Tax Asses­sor/Collector John Ames shows how it works:

A deferral doesn't remove the taxes and penalties, but it allows a homeowner to defer the payment of property taxes un­til the home is sold or the homeowner dies.

What happens then? About this column The Watchdog Desk at The Dallas

Morning News works for you to shine light on questionable practices in business and government. We welcome your story ideas and tips. Follow The Watchdog col­umn on Fridays and Sundays.

Contact The Watchdog Email: watchdog@dallasnews.com C

all: 214-977-2952 Write: Dave Lieber P.O. Box 655237 Dallas, TX 75265

Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, has filed a bill that would pare benefits significantly and allow the city to make potentially larger payments into the pension system. Dallas taxpayers currently pay more than $120 million a year into the fund.

Many retirees want taxpayers to pony up more to save the fund and have pushed back against attempts to restrict DROP withdrawals or take back the generous guaranteed interest that DROP paid out over the years.

But with a possible legislative remedy in sight, only a few active and retired po­lice and firefighters voiced their objec­tions to the board's decision Thursday. Others said they understood why the board only agreed to payout a few mil­lion dollars a month in minimum annual distributions.

"It's a sticky situation," said Armando Garza, a firefighter. "The board is trying to do the right thing. They're trying to protect the fund at a very critical time."

Twitter: @TristanHallman

Dallas Morning News MAR 10 2017

Paxton to help fight immigrants' lawsuit James Barragan, Naomi Martin

AUSTIN ~ Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to join Dal­las County in its fight against a lawsuit in which immigrants al­lege jail officials violated their civil rights by holding them in custody for federal immigration officials.

"Governments throughout Texas have a duty under Texas law, and cooperative agreements with the federal government, to hold undocumented and suspected criminal aliens," Paxton said in a prepared statement Thursday.

In 2015, several arrestees sued Dallas County, alleging they were wrongfully incarcerated and not allowed to post bond be­cause U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had asked the county to hold them on detainer requests.

Eric Puente, the plaintiffs' lawyer, argued that it's unconstitu­tional to jail someone based only on an ICE detainer ~ and without suspicion that the person committed a crime ~ because immigration violations are civil matters, not criminal. The Fourth Amendment requires authorities to have probable cause that a person committed a crime in order to detain them.

Dallas Morning News MAR 10 2017

In January, a district court judge ruled that the lawsuit could move forward and found that the arrestees could "plausibly al­lege a violation ofthe Fourth Amendment."

The Dallas County Sheriffs Office did not immediately re­spond to a request for comment on Paxton's motion to join the lawsuit. Puente, the plaintiffs' attorney, and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declined to comment.

Dallas County officials were not sure if Paxton's intervention meant he would share the county's financial cost of legal defense and potential monetary damages. Paxton's spokeswoman didn't immediately answer that question.

The lawsuit has been a key concern of local officials during debates over the sanctuary cities bill, which is working its way through the Legislature. If the bill is passed as approved by the Senate, it could make counties like Dallas have to choose be­tween violating state law or a person's constitutional rights, ex­perts have said.

UPDATE Paxton trial delay requested Lauren McGaughy

AUSTIN ~ Prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Attorney General Ken Paxton have asked to delay his trial until they are paid more than a year's worth of back wages. The pros­ecutors haven't been paid for hundreds of hours of work on the case they performed in 2016. In January, they submitted a $205,000 invoice for that effort. But Jeffory Blackard, a local taxpayer and past donor to Paxton, sued to block them from get-

Dallas Morning News MAR 102017

Putting a cork in drinks at dentist By SABRIY A RICE

Offering alcoholic beverages to patients as they wait to un­dergo procedures or while learning about a serious health prob­lem is "appalling" and "irresponsible," Texas legislators said Thursday.

The comments were made before the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce as state representatives reviewed SB 404, a bill introduced by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham. It would prohibit health care providers from offering alcoholic bev­erages and penalize them if they do so.

Kolkhorst pointed to a trend in dentistry of offering wine, beer and other alcoholic drinks to help calm anxious patients.

"There's nothing in the code that prevents you from doing this, but I think it's a line that we can't cross," said Kolkhorst. This is not a "stunt bill," she added, saying that the unregulated practice can lead to troubling outcomes.

No representatives from dental clinics that offer alcohol to patients showed up at the public hearing.

24

ting that money, claiming their hourly fees violated a local cap on prosecutors' pay. The 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas will make the final call, and judges have previously ruled in the pros­ecutors' favor. But it's unclear when the judges might issue their ruling, and the prosecutors are asking to possibly delay Paxton's first trial, scheduled for May 1, until they do.

In an email, the Texas Dental Association said it supports the proposal.

"Patient safety must always be first and foremost," said Dr. Matthew Roberts, chairman of the group's council on legislative and regulatory affairs.

Drinking alcohol before a dental procedure can cause compli­cations and impair the patient's ability to consent to treatment, he said.

SB 404's passage would mean no health care facility regulat­ed by the state could provide or make available alcoholic bever­ages to patients or the people accompanying them in a practition­er's office. It would not apply to alcohol used as, or contained in, a drug to diagnose or treat an illness, injury or disease.

The bill remained pending at the end of the hearing. Kol­khorst plans to update the language that specifies the types of fa­cilities that would be affected and address concerns about "too much regulation."

Twitter: @sabriyarice

CNN MAR 10 2017

Houston drivers are commuting to Austin rather than work for Uber by Matt McFarland

Some Houston drivers are enduring marathon commutes ra­ther than work for Uber.

Their commutes to Austin are two or three hours each way. They go days without seeing their children. But these drivers de­scribe the decision as life-changing. They're happier, less stressed and, for some, finances have been saved.

"I thank god that Ride Austin and Fasten came aboard," said Yerica Garcia, who resorted to driving for the Austin ridesharing services last summer after one of her vehicles was repossessed. "If it was Uber, I would lose my house too."

Garcia fell thousands of dollars behind on her mortgage last year. She blamed Uber for lowering prices and changing its commission split in Houston, which made it difficult to provide for her three children under the age of 10.

As Garcia's troubles in Houston mounted, a battle was play­ing out in Austin. The city wanted drivers to be fingerprinted as a security measure. Uber and Lyft, unhappy with the decision, shut down their services in the Texas capital on May 9.

As quickly as Uber and Lyft left, new apps like Ride Austin and Fasten blossomed, providing alternatives for drivers and pas­sengers. One of the apps, Get Me, tried to recruit Garcia as she waited to pick up an Uber passenger at Houston's airport.

Meanwhile, Garcia feared losing her home, so she rolled the dice. One day in June, she left her children with her mother and trekked the nearly three hours to Austin.

She quickly found that the rates charged in Austin, and the portion that the ridesharing service withheld, were far more fa­vorable to her as a driver.

She has since driven mostly for Ride Austin. It does not take a cut of driver's earnings with standard vehicles, instead keeping a $2 booking fee that it charges passengers. But drivers of SUVs and luxury vehicles -- which are paid more per mile and minute -- pay a 20% cut to Ride Austin. In Houston, Uber takes nearly 30% of most rides. Uber drivers in Houston receive 87 cents per mile today, a figure that's dropped in recent years.

Longview News-Journal MAR 09 2017

Dems have high hopes for 2018 Dave McNeely

Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After that first day in Austin, Garcia began a new ritual. She'd

leave Houston at the crack of dawn on Thursday, and return home on Sunday. With money so tight, Garcia would park in an Austin Wal-Mart or apartment complex and sleep in her Nissan Pathfinder.

Today, Garcia has nearly caught up on her mortgage pay­ments. She says she makes $1,200 a week in Austin. There's no need to sleep in her car now. She splits an apartment with three other drivers who travel to Austin because of the better pay.

One of them is Cesar Gomes. He heard from Garcia last summer how she made $350 in a single day. He was stunned. He was used to making maybe $200 driving for Uber in Houston.

Gomes shared the news with a buddy, Vitor Lopes, and they made a plan.

So one morning last September they caravanned from Hou­ston to Austin. They drove in the city all day, raking in money. Afterward, they celebrated with burgers at a local food truck. Gomes talked of splurging on a gift for his children.

"We were so happy," Gomes said. The next month, Gomes and Lopes, flush with cash, both

bought new SUVs to use on the Austin ridesharing services. Today, Gomes spends Thursday through Sunday working in

Austin. He said he no longer stresses about whether his Uber rat­ing is high enough, or if he'll have enough money for his three kids. He likes the nonprofit aspect of Ride Austin, the service he spends most of his time driving for.

Lopes has gone a step further -- he moved to Austin in Febru­ary.

Pending legislation is expected to open the door for Uber and Lyft to return to Austin in the months ahead. But drivers like Lopes and Gomez aren't interested.

"We don't need Uber," Lopes said. We don't want Uber." CNNMoney (Washington) First published March 8, 2017:

5:13 PMET

After two decades of being shut out in statewide races, Texas Democrats hope energy from distaste for Republican Pres­ident Donald Trump, plus the ultra­conservative actions of statewide Repub­lican leaders, can bring victory in 2018.

They hope those factors have turned on enough Democratic-leaning non-voters to actually vote - and turned off enough Republican voters to switch parties, or stay home, for Democrats to win.

"We need a lieutenant governor that brings Texans together, not an ideologue that chases headlines and drives us apart," Collier said. "Texans want someone to fix our broken politics. It starts with sending Dan Patrick back to the radio entertain­ment business and putting someone seri­ous in charge of the Senate."

The Texas Association of Business and dozens of its member businesses are outspoken opponents to Patrick's pet "bathroom bill."

Senate Bill 6, carried by Sen. Lois Kolkborst, R-Brenham, would require transgender people to use restrooms asso­ciated with their sex at birth, rather than the sex with which they identify.

They are beginning to attract Demo­cratic candidates.

Two Democratic congressmen are eyeing a U.S. Senate race - more about that shortly - and there's already an an­nounced candidate seeking support for a race for lieutenant governor.

Mike Collier, a Houston accountant, announced March 2 he'll tour Texas to gauge support for a run against Republi­can Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a fonner con­servative radio talk show host and tea par­ty favorite ..

As presiding officer of the Texas Sen­ate, with a 20-11 Republican edge over Democrats in that 31-member body, Pat­rick has largely had his way on an agenda aimed at the evangelical far right of the GOP.

Collier was the unopposed Democratic nominee in 2014 for state comptroller.

He lost by 20 points to Republican state Sen. Glenn Hegar, a deficit like that seen by other statewide Democrats on the ballot that year.

But Collier, who considers himself fiscally conservative and more progres­sive on social issues, could have some ap­peal to the state's business community.

A Certified Public Accountant and au­ditor, he analyzes budgets and anticipated revenues for large corporations. Years ago, after a 10-year stint at the accounting finn PricewaterhouseCoopers, he helped establish a petroleum company and be­came its chief financial officer. After his 2014 race, he became Texas Democratic Party finance chainnan - a post he left for this exploratory run.

Democrats hope Texas businesses, usually reliable Republican supporters, may be rethinking their political attitudes.

25

Businesses say passage would bring boycotts of Texas by pro and collegiate athletic playoffs, entertainers, conven­tions, tourism, and business expansions, costing billions of dollars.

Patrick calls those fears "bogus." But already, Visit San Antonio, that city's convention and visitors bureau, says just the fact the Legislature is considering the transgender bill has caused cancellation of events by three groups, costing the city's economy more than $3 million. Another eight conventions already booked threat­ened to cancel if the bill passes, a loss of almost $20 million.

As for the Senate race, freshman Re­publican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz will be up for his first re-election.

Continued on Next Page

Cont. from "Dems ... "

Cruz early in his Senate career did manage to unify the Senate - almost eve­ryone on both sides of the aisle hated his arrogant, self-serving behavior. But he went on to be the runner-up to Trump for the Republican nomination and is recently trying to build some camaraderie with his Senate colleagues.

it's not that much of a problem for him. Castro, by contrast, probably isn't keen on risking his congressional career unless he sees a fairly clear path to victory.

Also toying with running as an inde­pendent is Matthew Dowd of Austin, who has been a political operative both for Democrats and RepUblicans. He is the chief political commentator for ABC News.

Though they might wind up running against each other, O'Rourke and Castro are friends and each says good things about the other.

The question facing the Democrats is whether they can maintain their enthusias­tic fervor after Trump's inauguration to organize for the 2018 elections well enough to build a bench of officeholders up and down the ballot - and tum Texas blue again.

Two Democratic congressmen have indicated they might be interested in run­ning: Beto O'Rourke of El Paso and Joaquin Castro of San Antonio. Both are in their third two-year term.

O'Rourke had previously said he would serve no more than four terms so

On the Republican side, Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin has been encouraged to contest Cruz in the GOP primary. But McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Secu­rity Committee, may be reluctant to risk his congressional career in an up-or-out contest against an established incumbent Republican.

- Dave McNeely, an Austin-based columnist who covers Texas politics, ap­pears Thursday.

McAllen Monitor MAR 09 2017

Calling out Lucio on Bathroom Bill James Lee

On Monday, state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, an­nounced his support for Senate Bill 6, known as the Texas Bath­room Bill.

But you wouldn't know it if you talked to party leaders. This is not the first time Lucio has gone against the party's

core values and gone unchecked. On multiple occasions the sena­tor has gone against LGBT equality and issues of women's health, and each time our party's leaders have let him slide. Lucio's decision to support this jobs-killing bill is not re­flective of the Texas Democrats I know and love. The Texas Democratic Party that I know is the party of liberty, freedom and equality for all. We owe it to the people of Texas to ensure we stay true to those values and fight for all our communities.

At the end of the day, this bill is about discrimination against transgender Texans, plain and simple.

Texas business leaders know this to be true. That is why the state's top business officials, led by the Texas Association of Business, have come out strongly against this bill.

Lucio and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick claim boogeymen in bath­rooms are the problem, but in recent years we've seen the real

Corpus Christi Caller-Times MAR 09 2017

predators hide online and pose as teachers in our schools. Over the last year alone, law enforcement across the state have caught hundreds of online predators pretending to be teenagers in Hou­ston and North Texas, and the number of reports of indecent stu­dent-teacher relationships have been on the rise. If predators are the real concern, Lucio and Patrick need not look any further.

Far too many Texas Democrats are willing to excuse Lucio's actions because of his faith and his background. I was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley. The values and beliefs I carry with me today are strongly rooted in the good nature and neigh­borly ways of communities on the border, like my hometown of Brownsville. The Texas bathroom bill is not reflective of those values and Lucio's support of this bill does not reflect the people of South Texas.

We have an obligation to speak up when our leaders stray. No matter party affiliation. Growing up in a conservative Catholic household I was taught that all people are created equal in God's sight. That rings true for transgender Texans too.

James Lee is the Hispanic Caucus state committeeman of the Texas Democratic Party.

Bathroom bill clears first hurdle, awaits Senate vote John C. Moritz

AUSTIN - The high-profile bill that underscores the sharp divide between the two chambers of the Texas Legislature ad­vanced to the Senate floor early Wednesday when the State Af­fairs Committee approved the so-called bathroom bill after 13 hours of often emotional testimony.

The measure, Senate Bill 6, passed on a 8-1 vote with Demo­crat Eddie Lucio of Brownsville joining the panel's Republicans. Laredo Democrat Judith Zaffiirini cast the lone "no" vote,

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate's presiding officer and most vocal champion of the measure that would limit multi-stall re­strooms in buildings operated by government and public schools to use according to a person's gender listed on the official

26

birth certificate, said the bill will be debated by the full Senate next week and he expects it to pass.

Speaker Joe Straus has been saying since last year, and he re­inforced it Tuesday, that the bill is not a priority and that he be­lieves it would drive business and tourism out of Texas.

"They have their agenda, we have ours," Straus, a San Anto­nio Republican, said of the House-Senate divide.

During testimony, many witnesses who talked about transi­tioning from their gender at birth to the gender they identify with, said the measure would marginalize them when it comes to basic bodily functions. Others said they favored the bill because they worried about voyeurs and predators in public restrooms.

Galveston County Daily News MAR 092017

Bush: Consensus is behind TAMUG's coastal spine By JOHN WAYNE FERGUSON

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush said there was consensus behind a Texas A&M University at Galveston pro­posal to build a barrier along the coast of Galveston and across the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel.

In a speech to the Texas Chapter of the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association, Bush endorsed the proposal that has become known as the Ike Dike, and said he would present it to White House officials during a meeting in Washington D.C.

"We're forging a consensus behind the A&M Galveston study," Bush said. "Rice has done a good job of modeling, but we are supporting the A&M design."

Bush's reference was to Rice University and another coastal protection plan that has variously proposed barriers within Gal­veston Bay, leaving the island without protection, or with a smaller ring levee around the island.

Texas A&M and Rice have tried since 2014 to present a uni­fied plan on coastal protection, at the urging of state legislators who said the competing plans were undermining their ability to pitch projects to Congress.

A study published by the Gulf Coast Community Protection and Recovery District contrasted the two plans during public hearings in 2016, and recommended a coastal spine running par­allel to state Highways 87 and FM 3005 - from High Island on the Bolivar Peninsula to the San Luis Pass on the far west end of Galveston Island.

The recommendation was made despite an earlier report from the recovery district that building in-bay levee systems would be more cost-effective than building a coastal spine.

It remains to be seen how much Bush's endorsement means to the future of the project.

Earlier this year, Bush told the Texas Senate Finance Com­mittee that coastal protection should be the state's top infrastruc­ture priority, and that he planned to pitch coastal protection as a project to the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump has pitched a $1 trillion national in­frastructure spending package as one of his top priorities, but has offered few other details about the plan so it's unknown whether a coastal barrier - estimated cost of $10 billion - would quali-fy.

Galveston County Daily News MAR 092017

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is still conducting its own study of coastal protection measures, which officially must be completed in order for the project to be submitted for federal funding.

In his speech, Bush argued that a barrier would protect bil­lions of dollars of infrastructure from the type of storm surge that occurred during Hurricane Ike.

"This matters to all Texans and to all Americans," Bush said. He later added that he wanted to "manage expectations."

"I think we're in a good position to highlight this," he said. A General Land Office spokeswoman said no exact meeting

date between Bush and the White House had been scheduled. The day before Bush's speech, the Texas General Land Of­

fice posted a video on its Facebook page saying that a coastal barrier system would have prevented 87 percent of the damage caused by Hurricane Ike.

Bush's endorsement was welcomed by Texas A&M officials, who have argued for years that a coastal spine was the best solu­tion to protect Galveston and areas inland from future storm surge.

Texas A&M marine scientist Bill Merrell, the originator of the coastal spine idea, said consensus had been growing behind the idea in recent months, including an endorsement from Hou­ston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

He also noted that there are some differences between pro­posed coastal spine ideas. The official Texas A&M proposal, for instance, calls for gates across both Bolivar Roads and the San Luis Pass. The spine proposed by the recovery district includes only the Bolivar gate.

The consensus behind one idea would make working out de­tails easier, Merrell said.

"I think if we can all come behind a strategy of a coastal spine, we can work on a coastal spine that makes it the very best," he said.

Contact reporter John Wayne Ferguson at 409-683-5226 or john.ferguson@galvnews.com. Follow him on Twitter, @johnwferguson.

Legislation of local ability to raise taxes gaining momentum By MARISSA BARNETT

Measures to curb city and county offi­cials' ability to raise tax rates without an election are gaining momentum in the state legislature with one bill slated for a hearing next week and another likely to be fast-tracked through committee.

Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, un­veiled a property-tax reform bill Friday that would cut the amount city and county officials can raise property tax rates with­out holding an election from 8 percent to 4 percent. Any tax rate increase of more than 4 percent would trigger an election. Bonnen heads the House Ways and Means committee where the bill has been referred.

Similar legislation in the Texas Senate filed by Sen. Paul Bettencourt. R­Houston, to limit the tax increase to 4 per­cent unless approved by voters in an elec­tion is slated for a hearing Tuesday.

Galveston County elected officials, Galveston City Manager Brian Maxwell, and groups representing cities and coun­ties have raised concerns about such legis-

lation, calling it an unfunded state man­date that could harm local services.

"It's a little hypocritical that they want to impose the cap on the cities and not the state," Maxwell said. "I pay more in state sales tax every year than I pay in city property tax, but I don't see them reduc­ing the sales tax, instead they're focused on the one way cities raise revenue" for services.

"If there's a taxation problem, it's much broader than property tax."

In a visit to Austin last week, Maxwell said his sole purpose was trying to negoti­ate an exemption for the Senate legisla­tion that would allow cities like Galveston after a natural disaster flexibility in setting a tax rate in order to recover.

"My sole purpose and the only thing I talked about was the revenue cap" and two exemptions the city is seeking for Galveston, Maxwell said.

"We're not getting hung up on a num­ber - whether it's 4 percent or 8 percent that's not the city's beef - we're con­cerned about after another disaster."

27

Had the city not been able to raise revenue to pre-disaster levels many ser­vices would not be available, Maxwell said. Debris cleanup alone cost more than $70 million, he said.

"It would have been financially devas­tating," Maxwell said.

The city is asking for an exemption that would allow it to go over the cap until the values reach the amount they were be­fore the disaster, Maxwell said. It's not yet clear whether lawmakers will make such exemptions or adjustments to the proposal.

Bonnen and Bettencourt have heralded the legislation as an effort to increase transparency of property tax rates and lower those rates.

"Texans who are tired of ever­increasing property taxes must take a more active role at the local level, where appraisals and tax rates are set," Bonnen said. "The Property Taxpayer Empower­ment Act will give them the transparency

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Cont. from "Legislation ... "

and the tools they need to hold local offi­cials accountable."

The House bill would create a search­able state database with information about county, city and other local property tax rates for jurisdictions around the state and how much a homeowner's tax bill would be.

vote to restrict the source of funding that pays for salaries, equipment, vehicles, technology, health insurance and pensions of the men and women who protect our citizens," a talking points memo by Texas Municipal League said.

Rep. Wayne Faircloth, R-Galveston, was not immediately available for com­ment Wednesday.

In Galveston County, no city has pro­posed a tax rate exceeding its 8 percent rollback rate in the past five years, ac­cording to the Galveston County Tax As­sessors/Collectors Office.

The House legislation as proposed would reduce the maximum increase in tax rate increases from 8 percent to 4 per­cent. As proposed, the Senate bill would also trigger a rollback election if a gov­ernment proposed to increase taxes by more than 8 percent in a year.

Galveston County Judge Mark Henry said in an earlier interview he thought Bettencourt's bill was something being proposed because "it sounds good to the constituency," but would actually hurt lo­cal government by limiting its ability to pay for unfunded state mandates.

But there have been 24 times where an entity has proposed an 8 percent or more increase in the tax rate. Twenty of those rates were proposed by municipal utility districts, water control and improvement districts and school districts. "The state would like to limit our abil­

ity to have tax revenues, while they rou­tinely require the county to do things they don't want to pay for," Henry said.

In only one case did a tax rate fail to pass. In 2012, the La Marque Independent School District proposed a tax increase higher than 8 percent. It was not approved by voters.

Before Tuesday's hearing in the Sen­ate Finance Committee, the Texas Munic­ipal League was encouraging city and council officials to make a case against revenue caps, arguing it would damage public safety, economic development and transportation.

Another coastal county has come out against the legislation as well. The Nueces County Commissioners Court voted unan­imously this week for a resolution oppos­ing those proposed changes to the re­strictions on county taxes, according to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Texas laws treat school tax rates dif­ferently than city and county rates, requir­ing an election automatically and without a petition.

Contact reporter Marissa Barnett at "Legislators can't proclaim that they

support law enforcement officers if they

Laredo Morning-Times MAR 09 2017

409-683-5257 or maris M

sa. barnett@galvnews.com.

Zaffirini votes against 'bathroom bill' By Julia Wallace

Texas Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, was the only member of the Senate Committee on State Affairs to vote against the highly contentious, socalled "bathroom bill," which is now head­ed for a vote in the full Senate.

The "bathroom bill," Senate Bill 6, would mandate that transgender people use public restrooms in accordance with the sex on their birth certificate, rather than their gender identity.

Zaffrrini said she does not believe this bill will make Texans safer.

"Generally, SB 6 would create a public safety hazard for transgender men and women without enhancing the safety of other Texans," she said. The legislation is modeled off a law passed in North Carolina last March, which famously led the NBA and NCAA to move games out of the state, and cost the state thousands of jobs and about $500 million, according to Politifact.

Supporters say the bill keeps women and children safe by le­gally barring men from their restrooms.

Texas' bill has garnered steady attention from both sides of the aisle.

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on State Affairs heard about 13 hours of public testimony from about 230 people, ac­cording to the Texas Tribune.

"Transgender witnesses of all ages were persuasive as they explained how they suffered for hours by avoiding using re-

Longview News-Journal MAR 092017

strooms associated with the gender markers on their birth certifi­cates and how they shunned food and drink so they wouldn't have to do so.

These practices endangered their physical and mental health," Zaffirini said in an email to LMT.

The senator said she also heard from mental health experts and religious leaders, who relayed the statistic that the suicide at­tempt rate among transgender people is 40 percent.

"Descriptions about the beatings, humiliations, bullying and insults endured by transgender men, women, and children were difficult to endure. It broke my heart to realize the extent to which so many have suffered, and I did not want to add to their burden,"

Zafirrini said. The bill's potential economic impact played into the senator's

decision as well. "Business, civic, and religious leaders also opposed the bill

because of its economic impact, including lost revenue from can­celled sports and entertainment events," she said.

The seven other members of the Committee on State Affairs, six Republicans and one Democrat, voted "yes" on SB 6. Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or

jwallace@lmtonline.com

GOV. Abbott coming to Longview for Boy Scout Troop 201 centennial celebration By Staff Reports

A long-awaited Longview celebration will bring Gov. Greg Abbott to his boyhood home on Election Day this spring to help his old Boy Scout troop uncover treasures they buried a half­century ago.

Abbott was a member of Longview'S Troop 201 when then­Gov. John Connally came to town on May 6, 1967, to honor the troop's 50th birthday.

As part of that benchmark, the Scout troop buried a time cap­sule at the base of the flagpole beside their Scout Hut at Teague Park.

28

"We put the time capsule down, and all of a sudden it's 50 years later," said 188th District Judge David Brabham, a Troop 201 member a few years ahead of the future governor. "And here we are with a wonderful coincidence that we have a governor coming."

Abbott plans to be on hand on May 6 when the troop unearths the capsule and launches its second century.

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Cont. from "Gov. Abbott ... "

The occasion will include several Eagle Scout awards with the governor doing the honors. A new time capsule also will be buried.

Abbott is the third Texas governor to have called Longview home.

Gov. James Hogg, who founded Longview's first newspaper in 1871, held the governor's office from 1891 to 1895. And one­time Gregg County Clerk Thomas Campbell was governor from 1907 to 1911.

"It's been too long since we've had somebody from Longview, Texas, in the governor's mansion," Abbott said dur­ing a visit here after winning the race. "And it's about time."

Troop 201 participated in Abbott's 2015 inauguration parade. Abbott wrote a personal column for the News-Journal last

summer at the passing of his Longview Scoutmaster, V.G. Rol­lins, whom he had seen during the 2015 stop.

"Character, integrity and service to others," the governor wrote. "Those are leadership traits I learned from the late V.G.

29

Rollins, former Scoutmaster of the oldest Boy Scout troop in East Texas, which was founded just seven years after the Boy Scouts of America was established."

Brabham turned 15 the year Gov. Connally helped bury the 50-year capsule. He said there was an event at Teague Park and a separate banquet that night.

He also indicated some things just don't seem to change. "He was upset, or prodding the legislature to spend more

money on education," the judge recalled. May 6 also is Election Day for city councils and most school

boards in Texas. "It will be a busy day," Brabham said. "And we're trying like

mad to find former Boy Scouts. We're hoping this will not only be a celebration of the event but to have as many fonner 201 Scouts as we can."

Anyone who was in Troop 201 or knows of former members is asked to contact Troop 201 100th Anniversary by mail at 1725 FM 2751, Longview, Texas 75605, or by email at 201 secretary@gmail.com.

OUT OF STATE

New York Times MAR 10 2017

After Halting Start, Trump Plunges Into Effort to Repeal Health Law By MAGGIE HABERMAN and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON - President Trump, after a halting start, is now marshaling the full power of his office to win over hold­out conservatives and waffling senators to support the House Republicans' replace­ment for the Affordable Care Act.

There are East Room meetings, even­ing dinners and sumptuous lunches -even a White House bowling soiree. Mr. Trump is deploying the salesman tactics he sharpened over several decades in New York real estate. His pitch: He is fully be­hind the bill to scotch President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement, but he is open to negotiations on the de­tails.

In so doing, Mr. Trump is plunging personally into his first major legislative fight, getting behind a bilI that has been denounced by many health care providers and scorned by his base on the right. If it fails, Mr. Trump will find it difficult not to shoulder some of the blame.

"He understands the power he has as president to drive the legislative process," said Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina and a top House vote counter, who was part of a meeting with Mr. Trump in the East Room on Tuesday.

"He made it clear that this is his pri­ority, that it has to get done, and he made clear that he has to get it through before he moves on tax reform," Mr. McHenry added.

The bill represents an opening for an administration that has been mired in in­fighting and controversy over an early ex­ecutive action on immigration. And it will allow Mr. Trump to make good on a pledge he made in rally after rally in 2016 to replace Mr. Obama's law, which he called a "disaster."

And it has momentum. On Thursday, two key House committees approved the legislation, which would undo the Afford­able Care Act and replace it with a more modest system of tax credits and a roll­back of Mr. Obama's Medicaid expan­sion. Party-line votes by the House Ener­gy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees sent the measure to the House Budget Committee for considera­tion next week before a final House vote that Speaker Paul D. Ryan plans for later this month.

"Today marks the beginning of the end of Obamacare," Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip, declared after the votes.

The risks for Mr. Trump are high. His initial foray into the debate was a declara­tion that nobody should lose insurance coverage with a replacement bilI - a standard that is likely to be impossible to meet. When House Republicans finally unveiled the legislation Monday night, he declared on Twitter, "Our wonderful new

Healthcare Bill is now out for review and negotiation" - hardly a hard line.

Already, debate on the measure is tak­ing far longer than Mr. Trump had hoped, delaying his push to cut taxes, rewrite the tax code and secure a sizable new infra­structure program. If his health care push fails, the reverberations will affect those other measures.

For all of Mr. Trump's characteristic bluster, the self-described king of the deal is treading gingerly on the actual policies in the bill. Since members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus complained that they were not being listened to by the House Republican leadership, Mr. Trump has sought to bring them along by listen­ing to their concerns before dictating his desires, his advisers say.

For now, those advisers say, Mr. Trump is in listening mode. He had dinner on Wednesday with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is leery of the House bill. He got an earful from conservative opponents of the bill when he met at the White House with representatives of the Herit­age Foundation and Americans for Pros­perity on Wednesday night.

On Thursday afternoon, the White House director of social media, Dan Scavino Jr., posted a photo on Twitter of the president sitting around a table at a meeting that Mr. Scavino said was budg­et-related. But among those at the table with the president were Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, two of the biggest obstacles to any health care bill deemed insufficiently thorough in obliterating the Affordable Care Act.

The president has not spent enormous time negotiating specific aspects of the bill, people who have spoken with him say. But some of his advisers have been critical of the House Republican Confer­ence, led by Mr. Ryan, for not doing more to bring along conservative members. The meeting at the White House with leaders of conservative groups was an effort to remedy that, Mr. Trump's aides said.

And in a sign of the White House still grappling with how tightly it wants to embrace the current bill, Vice President Mike Pence will appear instead of Mr. Trump on a trip to Louisville, Ky., this weekend. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump will hold a campaign rally in Nashville, where he is also expected to barnstorm for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

"The president will be visiting several cities over the next coming weeks to en­gage the American people on the need to repeal and replace," Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday.

Last week, Mr. Trump's aides grew frustrated when the House Republican leadership bluntly told them that the pres-

30

ident would need to use his political capi­tal to bring people along. The tensions fall squarely in the purview ofReince Priebus, Mr. Trump's chief of staff, who is close to Mr. Ryan and who some of the presi­dent's advisers fear has divided loyalties. Mr. Trump vented his frustrations with Mr. Priebus last Friday over how much work remained toward preparing for the health bill rollout.

Mr. Trump's advisers mostly wel­comed the discussion of the bill as a re­prieve from the controversy over Mr. Trump's post on Twitter saying, without evidence, that he had information that Mr. Obama had "tapped" Mr. Trump's phones at Trump Tower during the campaign.

Those advisers are also aware that the rollout of the plan has been bumpy, with only deeply limited spade work done by the House Republican Conference to shore up outside support beforehand. Nudged by frustrations from the West Wing, Mr. Ryan on Thursday conducted a PowerPoint presentation with members of the news media to explain the three phas­es planned for repealing and replacing the A.C.A.

But White House advisers are well aware that they are saddled with the bill now. At the same time, they describe Mr. Trump as walking lightly - by his stand­ards, at least.

The vice president's trip to Kentucky will bring Mr. Pence to a state that is be­ing treated as ground zero in the repeal fight. Kentucky'S junior senator, Rand Paul, is the bill's most prominent Repub­lican critic. Its former governor, Steve Beshear, became a Democratic hero for successfully implementing the health care law in the deep red state, but Republicans took full control of its statehouse in elec­tions last year despite the Democrats' strong support for the Affordable Care Act.

There is some day light between the House Republican leaders and the White House on how much change the bill can absorb. Representative Joe L. Barton, Re­publican of Texas, offered an amendment on Thursday that would have moved the health care bill in a conservative direction, reducing federal funds for the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid at the end of 2017, two years earlier than under the legislation drafted by House Republi­can leaders.

Mr. Barton withdrew the amendment but hinted that it could reappear when the bill hits the House floor. The proposal was supported by two influential con­servative groups, the Republican Study Committee and the House Freedom Cau­cus - and, he said, "the Trump admin­istration is open to it." Indeed, the White House has begun pushing for a 2017 end

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Cont. from "After halting .•. "

to the Medicaid expansion, a senior Trump adviser confirmed - a move that risks pushing away moderates across Congress.

Mr. Trump also wants the Republi­cans' health care bill to inject more con­sumer choice into the process of selecting plans, said someone familiar with the president's thinking, as well as the elimi­nation of state-by-state insurance options. Such changes are impossible under the budget rules that Republicans are using to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Sen­ate.

New York Times MAR 10 2017

OUT OF STATE Representative McHenry said Mr.

Trump talked in the meeting this week about how he had performed in the dis­tricts of lawmakers whose votes will be necessary.

The criticism of the bill from con­servative groups grew so hostile so quick­ly that it surprised even Mr. Trump. So Mr. Trump moved to use the trappings of the presidency to woo them.

Initially, the group was told it would see the president in the Roosevelt Room. But after the group's members waited there for a short while, an aide entered and said, "The president would like to see you in the Oval Office."

Even so, it quickly became evident that the objections the activists had with the bill could not be washed away with the awe of the Oval Office. The president told them he did not appreciate the attacks on the proposal as "Obamacare lite" or something that fell short of a repeal. That kind of talk, he warned them, could be detrimental to their shared cause of gut­ting the Affordable Care Act.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed report­ing from Washington, and Kate Kelly from New York.

In Fight Over Bail's Fairness, a Sheriff Joins the Critics By MICHAEL HARDY

HOUSTON - It was an awkward scene for officials of Harris County, Tex­as, who are defending themselves in fed­eral court against a claim that they keep poor defendants locked up just because they cannot afford bail.

On Wednesday a judge and the county sheriff testified for the other side.

"When most of the people in my jail are there because they can't afford to bond out, and when those people are dis­proportionately black and Hispanic, that's not a rational system," said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who was elected after the case was filed.

Both the judge and the sheriff are de­fendants in the suit. Their defections were yet another sign of the growing skepti­cism over the fairness of the long-used system of money bail, especially when it is applied to those who cannot afford it.

The class-action lawsuit contends that on any given night, several hundred peo­ple are in the Harris County jail on mis­demeanor charges solely because they cannot make bail. If defendants with bail bond amounts of $500 or less had simply been released, the county would have saved $20 million over six years, accord­ing to a "very conservative" estimate by scholars at the University of Pennsylva­nia.

Videos played in court this week showed hearing officers imposing bonds on mentally disturbed detainees, or telling homeless defendants they could be re­leased without paying if only they had an address. In one video, an officer sets a $5,000 bond for a man arrested on charg­es of illegally sleeping under a freeway overpass.

The lawsuit names the county, the sheriff, five hearing officers who make in­itial bail decisions and 16 criminal court judges as defendants.

The practice of setting money bail, particularly for low-level offenses, has come under heavy criticism, and states like New Jerseyand Maryland have sharply curtailed its use in recent months. A growing body of evidence shows that even a brief detention before trial can dis-

rupt lives and livelihoods, make case out­comes worse and increase the likelihood that the defendant will commit future crimes. Putting a price on pretrial liberty can allow those with money to go free even if they are dangerous, and keep the poor in jail even if they are not.

Civil rights lawyers have mounted a series of lawsuits against bail practices like those in Harris County, where people without ready money can spend up to four days in jail before getting a chance to even contest their bond amount. Almost a dozen similar cases across the country have been settled with significant changes to the local bail system.

But two of the biggest challenges, in Houston and San Francisco, are still in play. And in both places, key officials have sided with the bail critics.

In San Francisco, the city attorney, Dennis Herrera, and the state attorney general at the time, Kamala Harris, de­clined to defend against the lawsuit, say­ing the bail system was unfair. In Houston the district attorney, Kim Ogg, weighed in with an impassioned friend-of-the-court brief, writing, "It makes no sense to spend public funds to house misdemeanor of­fenders in a high-security penal facility when the crimes themselves may not mer­it jail time." Like Sheriff Gonzalez, Ms. Ogg is newly elected.

Those left to defend the system have had a lonely uphil1 fight. James Munisteri, a private lawyer hired by Harris County, faced calls for his removal after he told the court at an earlier hearing that misde­meanor defendants might be in jail not because they couldn't afford to post bond, but because they "want" to be there. "If it's a cold week," he added.

The judge, Lee H. Rosenthal of Feder­al District Court, was skeptical of that contention, calling it "uncomfortably rem­iniscent of the historical argument that used to be made that people enjoyed slav­ery, because they were afraid of the alter­native."

The case was filed last May on behalf of Maranda Lynn ODonnell, who was ar­rested on charges of driving with an inva-

31

lid license. She spent over two days in jail because she couldn't afford to pay her $2,500 bond. Civil Rights Corps, the or­ganization whose director, Alec Kara­katsanis, has led the legal attacks on unaf­fordable bail across the country, joined with the Texas Fair Defense Project, a nonprofit legal defense organization, and Susman Godfrey, a law firm, to bring the case.

So far, the county has spent $1.2 mil­lion on outside lawyers to defend itself.

The Supreme Court has held that lib­erty before trial should be the norm, and that bail conditions must be set based on the individual's circumstances. Bail is not meant to be punitive; it is intended simply to ensure that defendants return to court. Texas law requires consideration of "the ability to make bail."

But the videos made it clear that bail was routinely set with no inquiry into de­fendants' ability to pay - or with the full knowledge that they could not. When sus­pects are first booked, their bail is set us­ing a fee schedule based on the charge and on criminal history. At the probable cause hearing, where typically no lawyer is present, the hearing officer can raise or lower the bond, or grant a personal bond, which allows the defendant to go without an upfront payment.

The county argued that it began re­forming its pretrial release system before the lawsuit was filed. It recently issued guidelines recommending the use of per­sonal bonds for people accused of 12 low­level misdemeanors. Beginning on July I, it plans to make public defenders availa­ble at the probable cause hearing. The bail fee schedule will disappear, to be replaced by a risk assessment, a more sophisticated method of determining an arrestee's like­lihood of fleeing or of committing a new crime.

Any injunction striking down parts of its pretrial release system would hamper these ongoing reforms, county lawyers argued. They also contended that a court order would tie judges' hands, reducing

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Cont. from "In fight ... "

their discretion and potentially allowing dangerous detainees back onto the streets. "There are a category of high-risk detain­ees who should not be released," Melissa Lynn Spinks, a lawyer representing the county, said.

Besides the sheriff, another star wit­ness for the plaintiffs was Darrell Jordan, elected as a Harris County criminal court

Wall Street Journal MAR 10 2017

OUT OF STATE judge last November. At first, Mr. Jordan said, he followed the bail practices of his 15 fellow judges. But he radically changed his approach after learning of re­search showing that locking people up makes them more likely to be repeat of­fenders.

Mr. Jordan began releasing nearly all defendants, either on a personal bond or on one they could afford ..

A homeless man who recently came before Mr. Jordan was prepared to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge just to gain release, but changed his mind when he realized that the judge was willing to let him out of jail immediately.

"He had never heard of a personal bond," the judge remembered. "He started crying when I told him he could go home."

GOP Health Plan Advances After Clearing Two House Committees By Siobhan Hughes, Stephanie Armour and Kristina Peterson

WASHINGTON-Republicans ad-vanced legislation through two House committees on Thursday as part of their goal to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, but signs of discord spread around the capital as conservative lawmakers warned this version of the health-law overhaul won't pass.

On party-line votes, the committees on Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means approved measures repealing ma­jor parts of the 2010 health law, known as Obamacare, with the goal of holding a floor vote later this month.

Conservatives fired warning shots at Republican leaders in an open challenge to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who said Republicans could either line up behind the House bill or renege on their promise to repeal the law.

"It really comes down to a binary choice," Mr. Ryan said. "This is the chance, and the best and only chance we're gonna get."

Conservatives disputed that assess­ment, going public with concerns that their leaders' approach would create a new entitlement program centered on re­fundable tax credits and saying the bill should instead aim at reducing premiums and other costs. The first warning flare of the day was sent up Thursday morning by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who wrote on Twitter that the current House bill wouldn't pass the Senate.

"To my friends in House: pause, start over. Get it right, don't get it fast," Mr. Cotton tweeted. "What matters in long run is better, more affordable health care for Americans, NOT House leaders' arbitrary legislative calendar."

Among the House bill's biggest changes is to begin reduce funding for Medicaid after the end of 2019, reversing an expansion under the ACA. Beginning in January 2020, the federal government would transition to a system in which a set amount of Medicaid funding would be sent to states each year.

Democrats have railed against the House proposal, saying it would hurt peo­ple's ability to maintain and afford health insurance.

"Republicans are racing to force young and old Americans to pay more for less in their health care," Rep. Nancy

Pelosi of California, the House Democrat­ic leader, tweeted Thursday.

At the White House, President Donald Trump, a Republican, sought to tamp down any notion of discord.

"Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. Weare talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!" he tweeted.

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) reintroduced late Wednesday a bill to repeal most of the 2010 health law without replacing it, a measure that cleared the last Congress when President Barack Obama, a Demo­crat, was in office. Conservative groups view that bill, which Mr. Obama vetoed, as a gold standard. GOP leaders' decision to back away from that bill now that Mr. Trump is president is causing friction.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) amplified the message when he left a Thursday af­ternoon meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and a handful of other Republicans and said the House bill couldn't pass the Senate and needed to be changed.

"The voters expect us to fix this mess," said Mr. Cruz, who had dinner with Mr. Trump on Wednesday. "What 1 think is critical is we implement reforms to drive down premiums."

At the White House on Thursday, Mr. Trump included a handful of House con­servatives-including Rep. Mark Mead­ows (R., N.C.), who leads the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus-in a lunch that also included moderates like Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.).

It was unclear whether Mr. Trump would make headway with the conserva­ti'ves, or whether it was they who would end up bringing Mr. Trump around to their position. Republican leaders who support the bill and conservatives who oppose it both see Mr. Trump as an ally, a situation that has left a confusing picture of the role the president would ultimately play.

Conservatives agree with Mr. Trump on a key policy goal: lowering insurance premiums. At a Wednesday meeting with leaders of six conservative groups, Mr. Trump was "clearly pushing and selling," said one person in the room. He was par­ticularly focused on enacting a measure that would allow an insurance company to offer policies in all 50 states if it is quali-

32

fied to do so in anyone state, multiple participants said.

"I am going to make the insurance in­dustry compete, and that will drive down prices," is how one person described Mr. Trump's message.

But Republican unity on such issues is weakened by conservatives' distrust of GOP leaders' three-part strategy for re­pealing and replacing the law.

The leaders plan to first pass the cur­rent bill repealing much of the law and of­fering some Republican-backed elements in their place. Since the bill generally fo­cuses on budget-related matters, it would require only 51 votes to pass the Senate under congressional rules.

The second phase would have Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price use his administrative power to undo oth­er ACA provisions. The third step would be the hardest-persuading enough Dem­ocrats to go along with a set of non­budget health-care bills that would take 60 votes to pass the Senate.

Mr. Trump has said letting insurers sell policies in every state would be part of the third phase. But conservatives insist that proposal should be included in the current legislation, since they doubt the likelihood of winning over enough Demo­crats to pass it.

This debate could thrust the Senate's chief parliamentarian, Elizabeth Mac­Donough, into a crucial role, since she is the official who determines whether a measure is sufficiently budget-related to use the reconciliation process requiring just 51 votes.

Some conservatives are now arguing that Ms. MacDonough merely advises on the rules, and that the ultimate decision is up to the Senate's presiding officer, who likely would be Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Pence is expected to be on hand to break any ties in the narrowly di­vided Senate, where Republicans have 52 votes and the Democrats have 48.

"The presiding officer makes the deci­sion," Mr. Cruz said. "The parliamentari­an advises on that question."

That fight was only one of several skirmishes Thursday, each drawing sup­port and opposition from across the GOP

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Cont. from "GOP Health .•. If

spectrum. The Republican Study Commit­tee, another group of conservative House members, formally endorsed a measure to block some low-income people who would currently qualify for Medicaid in states that expanded the program under the ACA from enrolling in 2018. The change would only affect new beneficiar­ies, while those already enrolled would be permitted to stay in the program.

The Republican Study Committee proposal would essentially speed up the Medicaid freeze in the current bill by two years.

At Wednesday's White House meet­ing, conservatives proposed the idea to Mr. Trump of speeding up the date of the

Wall Street Journal MAR 10 2017

OUT OF STATE

Medicaid freeze. "I have heard they are leaning that way," said Rep. Mark Walker (R., N.C.), referring to the White House.

Republican leaders were also bracing for a potentially significant new prob­lem-the release early next week of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Of­fice's estimate of the bill's cost and its impact on insurance coverage.

The office is likely to estimate that at least 15 million fewer people would have coverage over a decade under the House GOP health-care plan, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington­based think tank, in an analysis posted Thursday.

That is largely because the plan ends the requirement that most Americans have health coverage or pay a penalty, as well

Let's Make a (Conservative) Deal By Kimberley A. Strassel

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, conservative pressure groups exist­ed to make legislation better. We're about to see if-in this new Republican Wash­ington-the activists still know how to operate in that galaxy.

On Monday, Speaker Paul Ryan de­buted his ObamaCare replacement bill, only to be met with scathing disdain from an array of grass-roots groups and con­servative congressmen. Heritage Action slammed the plan for building on the "flawed progressive premises of ObamaCare." The Club for Growth dubbed it "RyanCare." Freedom Partners called it "ObamaCare 2.0." Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian from Kentucky, out­did them all, writing it off as a "stinking pile of garbage."

The reaction recalled the conservative politics of the Obama era. For much ofthe past eight years, these groups lived to kill things. They did it in all-or-nothing style. Give us everything we want, or we will shut down the government. Vote for a bill that is 90% good-l0% bad-and we'll see you in a primary.

That's the lens through which the press is viewing this week's ruckus. By Tuesday morning, the media had declared that the conservative right was out to tank the Ryan bill. Meanwhile, President Trump was warning Republicans that failure to replace ObamaCare would bring a ~'bloodbath" in the 2018 midterms.

But conversations with conservative leaders suggest they are pursuing a very different strate gy--on e reminiscent of that long-lost galaxy. They appear to un­derstand that the GOP has to fix health care, and this bill is the vehicle to do it. Rather than opposing it outright, they seem focused on a specific list of policy complaints.

Their message to GOP leaders: Work with us to make the legislation better.

"Right now, they don't have the votes," David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, tells me. "We will help deliv­er those votes if we get the changes we need, and get this to the president."

Mr. McIntosh is talking about deliver­ing conservative votes. His view is that the Republican leadership has made a tac­tical error in catering the bill too much toward party moderates. One biggie is its long delay in getting rid of ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion, which would hang on until 2020. Another is its continuation of the nasty "Cadillac tax" on high-end employer health plans.

The Medicaid generosity was de­manded by a few Senate Republicans whose states opted into ObamaCare's ex­pansion. Folks like Ohio's Sen. Rob Portman and Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkow­ski flat-out said they wouldn't support a bill that didn't include "stability for Med­icaid expansion populations."

But these indulgences for a few have alienated movement conservatives, in par­ticular senators from the 19 states that bravely resisted Medicaid expansion. They resent being asked now to foot the taxes to continue it. The revolt threatens to put President Trump (who is backing the Ryan bill) at war with much of his own base. It makes far more strategic sense, say conservative activists, to unite the GOP around sound changes to the bill on the House floor, and then to pressure Senate holdouts to get on board with those free-market reforms.

That appears to be the direction things are moving. Mr. Trump met this week with a delegation of conservative activ­ists. The president signaled openness to revising the bill-in particular by speed­ing up Medicaid reform and giving insur­ers more freedom to craft creative plans. His budget director, Mick Mulvaney, also sojourned to Capitol Hill to encourage

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as the proposal's gradual curtailing of federal Medicaid funding.

Meanwhile, conservatives showed nd sign of backing away from a fight with Mr. Ryan and the other GOP leaders, re­jecting Mr. Ryan's message that the cur­rent bill is essentially a take-it-or-Ieave-it proposition.

~"Binary choice' fallacy is a tool parti­sans on both sides use to quash policy de­bate and avoid difficult job of persuading and legislating," Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.) wrote on Twitter.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at si­obhan.hughes@wsj.com, Stephanie Ar­mour at stephanie.armour@wsj.com and Kristina Peterson at kristi­na.peterson@wsj.com

conservatives to make changes to the leg­islation. The message, Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) told Po­litico, is that "the White House is willing to negotiate."

The trillion-dollar question is whether the conservative groups and congressmen are truly willing to make a deal. On an­other of their complaints, the legislation's tax credits for people who buy individual health coverage, the White House and GOP leaders seem unwilling to budge. The credits are designed to minimize dis­ruption in the market and to equalize tax treatment between individuals and corpo­rations. They are subsidies, yes, but many previous conservative reform bills includ­ed credits and only now are folks like Mr. Meadows making an issue.

Will the activist groups embrace the bill if they get some changes, but not eve­rything? And if so, how hard will they then work to bring along those among the conservative caucus who remain skepti­cal? Or will they give in to the fiction that it would be better to do nothing and let ObamaCare implode, or to try to pass a stand-alone reform bill (which will never, ever get 60 votes in the Senate)?

Soon we'll know if we've returned to that galaxy where outside conservative operations play the critical and inspiring role of achieving the best legislation pos­sible. If they fail, the activists will be part­ly responsible for blowing Republicans' best chance in a decade to prove they can govern. But if they succeed, they'll have not only notched a free-market victory for health care, but also re-established a mod­el for constructive activism that they can roll out for coming tax reform, infrastruc­ture talks and budget fights. Conservative groups used to be quite good at doing this. Let's see if they remember how.

Write to kim@wsj.com.