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April 25, 2018 5:21 PM
Abbott creates unfunded mandate for counties by suspending state law to call special election; demands Farenthold pay for it
Demanding a response by
the beginning of May, Gov. Greg Abbott
on Wednesday told former Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, that he should have to
pay for the special election now on track for September to elect a replacement.
It's an election that could
easily cost at least $200,000.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 25, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 25, 2018 5:18 PM
Click the Press Releases button above for the latest
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Copyright April 25, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 25, 2018 4:52 PM
Latest figures show African-Americans trailed whites by almost 20 percent in obtaining a degree or certificate; Higher Ed Chairman Seliger raises no objections to West’s request
Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, has given the leaders
at three agencies two weeks to produce a plan to significantly raise the
achievement of the state’s minority males.
The lagging achievement of African-American and Hispanic
students is a typical component of the updates Commissioners Raymund Paredes and Mike Morath
present to lawmakers.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright April 25, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 24, 2018 5:05 PM
Justices on the U.S.
Supreme Court appeared more preoccupied this morning with the mechanics
of the Texas redistricting appeal than the merits of a three-judge panel
opinion that labeled 11 Texas House and Congressional districts “intentionally
racially discriminatory.”
A three-judge panel last August declared districts in
Central Texas, North Texas and Nueces county to be illegal. A letter from the
panel gave Gov. Greg Abbott 72 hours
to decide whether to call lawmakers back into session or defer to the court. Instead,
Abbott appealed to the Supreme Court, completely bypassing the three-judge
panel before it issued a final
judgment.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright April 24, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 24, 2018 3:50 PM
The numbers show a competitive race shaping up in the battleground of Dallas County
A
poll obtained by Quorum Report shows Sen. Don
Huffines and his Democratic Challenger Nathan
Johnson in a dead heat in Senate District 16 in Dallas County.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 24, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 24, 2018 3:46 PM
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Copyright April 24, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 23, 2018 4:58 PM
Citing special disaster authority after Hurricane Harvey, Paxton wrote “you possess express authority to "suspend the provisions of any regulatory statute”
Attorney
General Ken Paxton on Monday told Gov.
Greg Abbott that the courts would
likely side with him if he suspends state laws to call a special election quickly
to fill the seat in Congress being vacated by scandal-plagued Blake Farenthold.
Former
Texas Water Development Board Chairman Bech Brunn and former Victoria County GOP chairman Michael Cloud have been campaigning for
the seat.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 23, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 23, 2018 4:55 PM
Click the Press Releases button above for the latest
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Copyright April 23, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 23, 2018 1:49 PM
Republicans had argued Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Donovan failed to sign candidate applications of 127 Democrats before they were forwarded to the Texas Secretary of State's office.
A
state district court judge in Dallas County on Monday dismissed a
Republican-filed lawsuit aimed at removing more than 80 Democratic candidates
from the fall ballot.
Judge
Eric Moyé
ruled that Dallas County Republican Party Chair Missy Shorey did not have standing to
bring her suit against Dallas County Democratic Party Chair
Carol Donovan. Shorey's
attorneys had argued Donovan failed to sign the filing applications of candidates
prior to forwarding those to the Secretary of State.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 23, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 21, 2018 1:18 PM
Staffers making moves, new leadership in big organizations, a cool new app, and even a move from lobbying to poetry
Thanks
for all the calls and emails this week about what you and your friends – or sometimes
your adversaries – are up to. The Buzz Central team loves hearing all
the gossip, as you know. Reach out anytime at ksbraddock@gmail.com
Here’s
the Texas
Capitol’s weekly roundup of movers and shakers: It’s People
on the Move:
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 21, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 21, 2018 1:14 PM
Good returns are likely to come to an end in the future; as one board member put it: TRS has spent too long paying rent with a credit card…but to lower the rate to 7.5 percent or 7.25 percent would blow a big hole in the contribution side of the equation
The Teacher Retirement System board was deadlocked
on Friday over a vote to decrease the rate of return on pension fund investments,
pushing a decision off to a July board meeting.
A growing number of new teachers and better-than-average
returns on the pension fund has made it easy for TRS to maintain an 8 percent
rate of return.
A recent actuarial study indicates 7.25 percent, or even
7 percent might be better options for long-term solvency.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright April 21, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 20, 2018 1:03 PM
QR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith writes that if our faith in democracy is shaken, maybe we should return together to the lessons of high school civics
Remember
Texas high school civics classes? I do. They weren’t easy, at least mine at Bellaire
High School in Houston weren’t easy.
Despite
their thoroughness and demands on critical thinking, my civics classes offered
welcome, patriotic signs of hope in a troubled time of political division and
racist-driven strife, an unpopular war, and, in the very year of my senior
class, 1972, troubling portents of a coming constitutional crisis.
I
was reminded of those classes not too long ago when I was lucky enough to sit
at dinner with former national Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele. I’d talked to
conservative radio host Charlie Sykes,
a critic of President Trump, at the
same affair. Anti-Trump Republican Rick
Wilson was there, too.
The complete column
by Glenn W. Smith is in the R&D Department.
By Glenn W. Smith
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Copyright April 20, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 19, 2018 5:38 PM
Challenger Cindy Crocker Asche says this “disqualifies him to represent RPT to donors and investors”; Dickey’s attorney says Asche is “grossly misrepresenting”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include
comments from Dickey and his attorney. The legal documentation is available to
subscribers at the bottom of this story – SB
The GOP woman running
against Republican Party of Texas Chairman Jim Dickey on Thursday morning said the incumbent cannot be trusted
with the party’s finances because of his history of alleged securities fraud in
a case brought against him back in 2004 by the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Cindy Crocker Asche of Frisco is challenging Dickey for his chairmanship at the upcoming
RPT convention. Dickey was installed by the State Republican Executive
Committee last year after a brief race against a Brenham businessman following
the resignation of former Chair Tom Mechler.
In a speech in Lubbock,
Asche told a group of Republican activists that her campaign uncovered the fact
that Dickey settled with the SEC in 2006 amid allegations he repeatedly and
knowingly misrepresented the value of hedge fund investments – resulting in the
loss of tens of millions of dollars – and then falsely blamed the losses on the
terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
“This disqualifies him to
represent RPT to donors and investors,” Asche said in her speech as tweeted by
Lubbock radio host Jay Leeson. In
her speech, Asche said Dickey's investors including the Art Institute of Chicago
were defrauded to the tune of roughly $63 million.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 19, 2018 5:34 PM
Commissioner Morath tries to assure members that schools with low-income students will have a chance to get to the top of the accountability system…but it’s a tall order to say the least
The Texas
Education Agency appears to have nested a new scaled system within the
state’s new and controversial A-F accountability for public school campuses in order to continue meeting federal requirements.
Lawmakers
finalized the three-domain A-F accountability system last session with the
passage of House Bill 22. It’s something that every member
has gotten an earful about from their superintendents and school board members.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright April 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 19, 2018 3:35 PM
"I am grateful for the voters who have supported me through the years, and now we need you to vote for Steve Allison," Straus said
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Copyright April 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 19, 2018 9:04 AM
41% of voters are undecided, per the poll by Public Policy Polling
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Copyright April 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2018 5:30 PM
Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke with 47 to 44, respectively
Of course, one should
never read too much into one set of numbers, but a new poll from Quinnipiac
shows Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep.
Beto O'Rourke in essentially a dead heat.
Cruz is at 47 and his
Democratic challenger is at 44, per the Quinnipiac poll.
"There are wide
party, gender, age and racial gaps, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll
finds," per the pollsters.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 18, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2018 3:29 PM
This comes a day after Ken Paxton announced he's with Bunni Pounds. “Lance Gooden has a thorough understanding of complex policy issues as a result of his work representing East Texas in the statehouse and we have full confidence he will continue to stand up for Realtors, homeowners and private-property
rights while serving in Congress," said TREPAC Chairman David Alan Cox.
The
full endorsement of Rep. Lance Gooden
for Congress by the National
Rifle Association is here.
The Texas
Association of Realtors announcement is here.
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Copyright April 18, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2018 11:42 AM
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Copyright April 18, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2018 10:20 AM
Rep. Simmons asks the agency “If you’re going to be doing it internally, how will we know whether or not you’re going to have a system that does some evaluation…How can we be assured that you’re going to implement something that is rigorous and puts a critical eye to the process?”
The Texas Department of Transportation has ditched a
contract with a key vendor tasked with merging the agency’s disparate legacy
project management systems.
The goal of Modernize Portfolio and Project Management,
or MPPM,
is to take the data of 12,000 road and bridge projects and make it accessible
to both internal and external stakeholders.
That’s harder than it might seem because TxDOT has 40 different
legacy systems, many of them launched on mainframes back in the 1980s.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright April 18, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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