Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

Odessa American. Oct. 14, 2018.

The Nov. 6 election is soon, and early voting is Oct. 22-Nov. 2nd.

Voters of Ector County, whether you vote early or on Election Day, this newspaper strongly urges you to do the following:

Go to the last item on the ballot - Ector County Independent School District Proposition A - and vote FOR the measure!

This is the much-talked-about TRE (Tax Ratification Election) that would increase the district’s tax rate to $1.17 per $100 valuation, generating $16.5 million in tax revenue and another $1.5 million in state funding to pay for the following in our cash-strapped district:

1. Sorely needed pay raises for all district employees.

2. The repair of hail-damaged roofs on 27 district buildings.

3. Begin replacing the district’s aging school bus fleet with vehicles that have seatbelts.

4. Providing fencing and other stepped-up security features for a large number of campuses.

There is a tremendous amount of information to support this proposition; too much to list here. We urge voters to find out more at www.voteforecisd.com. There is also a Vote for ECISD Facebook page, and #VoteForECISD on Twitter.

But here are some points to ponder.

We have dedicated bus drivers who could be earning big bucks hauling in the Oil Patch. Instead, they drive 7,000 children every day to and from school on some of the deadliest roads in Texas. They haven’t had a pay raise in three years. Most of the buses they drive are simply worn out. And none of these buses has seatbelts.

The district currently has a shortage of 220 teachers. Potential hires can’t afford to move and live here on what ECISD pays. Proposition A would place the teacher pay scale on par with what Midland Independent School District pays its educators.

With the rash of nationwide school shootings, campus security has become top of mind everywhere. Yet five elementary campuses do not have proper fencing, and more than two dozen other schools lack secure entrances, visitor identification systems and access controls. The district simply can’t afford it.

Some of you have children who, when it rains, may find themselves trying to learn while seated next to a bucket catching rain water as it leaks through a hail-damaged classroom roof. The district has been trying to repair these roofs. But it needs $9.4 million to cover the insurance deductible to finish the job. And the district’s reserve fund has been depleted and cannot cover that price tag.

Don’t you care about any of this?

Now, the “Peanut Gallery” will grouse and bloviate that all of this is the district’s fault; that it has a spending problem. To which we say, “Bull!”

ECISD, like many other districts throughout the state, has a revenue problem. That is thanks largely to our State Legislature. It passed HB 1 in 2006 that slashed school districts’ tax rates. ECISD’s tax rate was cut from $1.28 to the current rate of $1.04. At the time, lawmakers committed to using state Business Margin Tax (ASATR) revenues to make up the difference. But that didn’t work. Taxable appraisal values in Ector County also plummeted between 2014-2017.

And our district’s budget has been bleeding out ever since. ECISD has had to slash tens of millions of dollars and has had no other choice than to deplete its reserve fund just to survive. And mind you all this has happened as the district’s rolls have exploded by 6,000 additional students.

It’s all really simple. If you want better for our teachers and other district employees and most of all for our children, paying an average of $11.96 a month more on your school tax bill is well worth it.

And if you’re aged 65 or older and have the proper homestead exemption, you won’t even be affected by this new rate. But you should support it anyway if you really care about your community’s future and children who in many cases may be your grandchildren.

And note this: Even if Proposition A is approved, the district tax rate will still be lower than what it was in 2006.

Folks, we are at a crossroads with the state of our school district. Already, a broad coalition of businesses, educators, charitable organizations and volunteers has been working hard through Odessa’s Education Partnership to try and help the district improve academic performance.

And 76 concerned volunteers from our community - not the school district - have spent 600 hours crafting Proposition A, because they realize fixing the district’s revenue crisis is also a critical part of healing public education in Odessa.

Now it is up to you, the voter. Turning down Proposition A merely means you’d rather wallow in the problem and damn a lot of children in the process.

Please vote “yes” and be a part of the solution.

___

The Eagle. Oct. 14, 2018.

We fear for our country. The level of anger has risen to almost explosive heights and no end appears in sight.

The recent confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh were ugly and only ramped up the heat bringing this country to a boil. People on both sides of his confirmation remain angry and unhappy.

Those hearings aren’t the only things that divide us. Issues such as immigration, health care, civil rights, women’s rights, LGBQT rights, police shootings, #MeToo and on and on have hardened the lines between us.

We complain about the highly partisan battles in Congress, but in reality they mirror the partisan battles in America in general.

We have seen groups furious for some reason or other pounding on doors, trapping lawmakers in halls and elevators and otherwise expressing their opinion. Of course, they have the right to protest, a freedom enshrined in the First Amendment.

What they don’t have the right to do is turn violent. That does no one any good.

The Editorial Board recently had a wide-ranging discussion with U.S. Rep. Bill Flores of Bryan. He told us he has received death threats and his family has been threatened. He has been forced to beef up security at his home and his various offices around the district.

In fact, Flores estimated half of his fellow congressmen have received similar threats.

That is unacceptable. You can like our elected officials, not like them, agree with them or not. Speak out, write letters to the editor, buy advertising and, yes, march in protest or support. That is healthy expression.

But sending death threats is wrong, wrong, wrong, even if you have no intention of carrying them out. Not only is it wrong, but it is illegal and such threats are turned over to law enforcement for investigation and possible prosecution.

And, not all threats are mere venting. Just ask House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana. On June 14, 2017, he was shot at a baseball practice for the congressional baseball team in suburban Virginia. A gunman with a rifle shot at several team members and Scalise was wounded seriously, almost losing his life. It was more than two months later before he was able to return to the House and his recovery continues today.

There is too much violence in America today and we all must work to control the anger, the vitriol. We express frustration with our elected officials and say we need to elect better people. But if the anger and the threats continue, why would good people want to run?

The fact is we do have many good elected officials. They are conscientious and hard-working. They care. They listen and they respond.

Sure, not every elected official is in the top tier, but even if they aren’t, the way to remove them is at the ballot box on Election Day. Employing violence never is the answer.

Please, express yourself. Let your officials know how you feel - but do it in a letter, in a phone call or at a public meeting. Your voice is mightier than any act of violence.

And let’s all work together to tamp down the anger that is destroying us.

___

The Dallas Morning News. Oct. 15, 2018.

Even by John Wiley Price standards, the political mailer was offensive, dangerous and vile.

On the right, a photo of President Donald Trump. On the left, a brown-shirted Adolf Hitler with his signature mustache and cruel, beady eyes.

In the middle of the two, Price placed an equal sign. Under them, he listed all the ways Trump and Hitler are supposedly alike - racism, fascism, a promise to make Germany/America great again.

Left out for the convenience of this sinister political cliche were the historical realities.

Hitler was a megalomaniacal dictator who engaged a campaign of genocide against the Jewish people so ruthless in its conception and so calculated in its implementation that it treated murder as an assembly line - mechanizing human destruction in a way history had never known.

That isn’t to mention the war Hitler waged against the free people of Europe or the cost in American lives to undo his tyranny.

For Price, Hitler represents something simpler - a chance to take a shot at a president he finds politically distasteful.

Jewish leaders in Dallas are appropriately offended. As are Republican leaders. Democratic County Judge Clay Jenkins un-courageously demurred when offered the chance to speak out against the mailer. Jenkins said he was focused on his own campaign.

We thought Price might have mellowed as he enters the later years of a career that has seen him become a senior figure in Dallas politics, an official who, without question, has the firmest hand on the operation of Dallas County government.

During the period of his indictment on bribery and corruption charges, and through his successful defense against them, Price was generally muted.

Last year, he did emerge from the valuable work he does for Dallas County to liken Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to a slave master. Jones’ offense was to insist his employees - namely players and coaches - stand during the national anthem.

But Price had not yet returned to the Price of yore, the man who tried to rip the windshield wipers off a car during a street march or who told a crowd of speakers at the Dallas County Commissioners Court, “All of you are white. Go to hell.”

With this mailer, we are back to full Price, a leader liable to sound off in ways that are as offensive and harmful as the ugly history of racism that he purports to stand against.

Republican leaders might be offended at Price’s mailer. But they perhaps will come out ahead in the short run..

Trump is quick to rally his base around his own offensive statements about Democrats - that they are “unhinged,” ’’treasonous,” ’’wacko,” ’’un-American.”

Price just handed local Republicans Exhibit A to boost their base.

Moderate Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, abound in Dallas. Plenty of them are unhappy with Trump. Some are disgusted. But none of them are going to be moved by a mailer that falsely equates an American president with history’s byword for evil.

Price is a capable politician. He knows his electorate and what stirs them. But for every person he fires up on his side, he can count on firing up another on the other side.

Everyone will be angrier. No one will be better.

And worst of all, the true meaning of what Hitler represents and what we must learn from history will be diminished. That’s the bitter cost of Price’s mailer.

___

Austin American-Statesman. Oct. 16, 2018.

As events this week in Central Texas have reminded us, few challenges bring as much anguish and loss as the floodwaters that invade low-lying homes, turn streets into rivers and imperil people’s lives. Most frustrating of all, residents and officials have known for years, even decades, where the trouble spots are.

Finding the money to fix them is another story.

In Austin, the city faces a staggering $2 billion to $4 billion price tag to address flooding problems, both from swelling creeks and undersized storm drains in older parts of the city that simply can’t handle the torrents of Central Texas rains, a 2016 flood task force report found. At the rate the city has been funding these projects, it could take 100 years to get to them all.

Voters can throw a rescue line to hundreds of their neighbors by passing Proposition D, part of the package of city bonds totaling $925 million on the Nov. 6 ballot. The $184 million Prop D includes $112 million to address flooding problems and $72 million to preserve open land in watersheds that feed the Edwards Aquifer, Barton Springs and the Colorado River. By our back-of-the-envelope math, the measure would add just over $1 a month to property taxes for the owner of a median-value home.

The investment would produce tangible results. The project list includes buying and bulldozing 50-60 flood-prone homes, likely from willing sellers near the Onion Creek Club golf course in Southeast Austin; shoring up the eroding banks of the Jamestown Tributary to Little Walnut Creek in North Austin; and replacing a washed-out bicycle and pedestrian bridge at Roy G. Guerrero Metropolitan Park in Southeast Austin.

City officials caution the project list could change if an unforeseen emergency takes priority. But the plans at this point include overhauling the unfit drainage system around Avenue A in Hyde Park, where city officials suspect builders in the 1920s diverted an entire creek into the stormwater drainage system and built roads and buildings over the waterway. Parts of Avenue A were at least two feet under water in the May 2015 storms.

Funding could also revamp the Meredith Street drainage system in a flood-prone pocket of Tarrytown, where undersized pipes from the 1950s send untreated stormwater to a cave. Not only does that bring runoff carrying bacteria and other pollutants to the springs near Lake Austin, but the drainage is eroding the cave itself, which sits about 40 feet underneath some homes.

The project list, which includes drainage improvements in every city council district around the city, would address nine trouble spots where waterways sometimes block roads, prevent flooding of at least 450 buildings that have flooded before, and shore up more than 12,000 feet of severely eroded creek banks.

The $72 million sought for land preservation would pay for buying land or conservation easements on about 4,300 acres in Austin’s southern watersheds. Keeping those lands free of development can help prevent flooding as well as protect the quality of Austin’s beloved waterways like Barton Springs.

If Austin voters approve all seven city bond propositions totaling $925 million, the city says, the owner of the median-value home of $332,366 after homestead exemptions would pay an additional $65 per year in city property taxes. We estimate about $13 of that would come from Prop D, which is nearly 20 percent of the overall package. Calculating a firm bottom line is an inexact science, however. The city does the borrowing in pieces over several years, while at the same time earlier bonds are getting paid off. The city estimates it can borrow $425 million in bonds without raising the tax rate, but that still means a higher bill for anyone whose property is increasing in value, as most Austin homes are.

We’re sensitive to the rising tide of property taxes. But we can’t ignore the facts around Austin’s flooding problems.

The city hasn’t put a bond for building stormwater drainage improvements before voters in 12 years.

New data show Austin is prone to even more severe storms than previously thought, putting about 3,000 more properties in high-risk flood plains.

And land isn’t getting any cheaper.

We’re all in this boat together: Voters should support Prop D.

___

Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Oct. 16, 2018.

Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott exercised more power than Texans probably assumed he had. Abbott, on his own authority, not needing anyone else’s permission, suspended a section of the Texas Insurance Code. His decision will be a big help to coastal homeowners.

WHY IT’S GOOD FOR THE COAST

Thousands of coastal homeowners were facing a 10 percent hike in their windstorm insurance as of Jan. 1. They already have large insurance bills because of hurricane risk. Abbott’s gubernatorial decree blocks the increase for six months, if not longer, depending on what the Legislature decides. And, according to state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, who had been organizing opposition to the increase, the Legislature might be more inclined to see things through the eyes of coastal residents than just about any time since Hurricane Celia in 1970. More on that in a minute.

WHY HIKE RATES?

The purpose of the increase is to rebuild the reserves of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association. Hurricane Harvey depleted those reserves. The need to rebuild them is real.

The problem is that the ratepayers also have been depleted by Harvey. They, too, are in recovery.

Abbott acted in their interest. He bought them time. But it’s only a delay, not a solution.

HOW IT CAME TO THIS

TWIA exists because, after Celia, our state government allowed a separation of windstorm coverage from standard insurance and created what’s now known as TWIA, the windstorm insurer of last resort. And TWIA evolved into very nearly the windstorm insurer of only resort.

It’s fair to say that the rest of the state ganged up on coastal counties to protect inland counties from paying for hurricane risk. Harris County’s success in exempting itself from being part of the TWIA territory underscores how political power was used to throw coastal counties under the bus.

A PERMANENT SOLUTION?

Coastal counties have fought a losing battle for nearly 50 years to undo their special-risk status. But inland natural disasters in recent years have increased awareness that bad things can happen a hundred miles inland - or hundreds of miles. Hail, tornadoes, forest fires and the Wimberley floods were not hurricane events and were far from the coast.

Abbott, in his order last week, informed the insurance commissioner that he wanted to give the Legislature the opportunity to take meaningful action. Abbott also said he wanted “to ensure that state law is not an unnecessary barrier to the continued disaster recovery efforts.”

Hunter, one of the Legislature’s most experienced members, says he senses a mood change that could work in coastal residents’ favor.

BOTTOM LINE

Abbott did a huge favor for coastal residents, some of whom were pretty much wiped out financially by the hurricane.

Abbott also demonstrated that the office of governor is a lot more powerful than Texans are raised to believe. We’re taught in school that Texas deliberately made the office of governor weak to protect Texans’ individual rights, and that lieutenant governor is where the real power lies. But a governor who understands the position and how to use it can put those notions to rest mighty quick. Abbott did that, and for that, we thank him.