28 December 2009
Good riddance
THE END OF THE YEAR does bring news that transportation reporter Carolyn Feibel will be departing the Chronicle. We had thought her last column might offer readers yet more information about personalized license plates (covered in no fewer than three columns in the last month-and-a-half!), but she does close out by promoting (and mischaracterizing) her favorite transit advocates at the Citizens Transportation Coalition, so that's nice.
Given the most recent run, the Chron ought seriously to consider retiring this column (although a frequently updated transportation blog with more of a focus on news than editorial favs might not be a bad idea).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/28/09 09:46 AM |
Mostly continuing the holiday break...
WE'RE MOSTLY CONTINUING our holiday slowdown, but here's a question some readers might be able to help with:
Is there something in the official MSM Journalism Handbook that requires endless, tiresome, repetitive end-of-decade/looking-ahead summaries* the entire week leading up to the new year?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/28/09 09:37 AM |
24 December 2009
Give that man a raise!
ONE SLAMPO VS. FOUR CHRONNIES: Almost ten days after Slampo first highlighted the curious residency situation of District F Councilman-elect Al Hoang, and almost a week after Slampo questioned Hoang's campaign finance reports, the Chronicle's Mike Snyder tackles both topics, with the assistance of THREE Chron reporters.
How does Slampo do it?
UPDATE: Here's more on today's story from Slampo (The Chron's de facto metro editor for this story?).
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/24/09 02:29 PM |
22 December 2009
Fiscal woes everywhere, but no worries -- Oliver Luck still wants his stadium!
News coverage of interest from a public finance industry publication:
And as the board sorts out its financing plans for the three new stadiums, the authority is not even considering building a professional soccer stadium near downtown Houston that had the backing of former Mayor Bill White. To take on another stadium would represent a breach of contract with the three professional teams, [sports authority executive director Janice] Schmees said.
"Our revenues are pretty stretched right now," she said. "The three stadiums we have now are enough to deal with."
All-too-typical cheerleading from Houston's newspaper of record:
Of the MLS teams pushing for a stadium, the Dynamo appear closest to the goal. Team ownership hopes to strike a deal with the city of Houston and Harris County for a 22,000-seat, $80 million venue just east of U.S. 59 downtown.
Under a proposal backed by Houston mayor Bill White, the Dynamo would contribute nearly $60 million to the project, with the city and county each contributing $10 million in redevelopment money. The money would come from a tax increment reinvestment zone.
Meanwhile, Bill King notes that the City of Houston's budget shortfall is growing.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/22/09 11:02 PM |
Holiday slowdown
IT'S TIME FOR US TO TAKE a little break from the blog as the Christmas weekend approaches. Here's wishing everyone a Merry Whatever Holiday You Celebrate!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/22/09 04:31 AM |
20 December 2009
Slampo on Al Hoang, campaign finance scofflaw
SLAMPO notes that the campaign finance filings of newly elected District F carpetbagger councilmember Al Hoang "make a mockery of the notion of 'disclosure' and hardly conform to the spirit of the law, much less the letter."
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/09 01:50 PM |
AP: Chief Hurtt gives himself an A-
ACCORDING TO AN AP STORY, outgoing HPD Chief Harold Hurtt gives himself a grade of A- for his tenure in Houston.
We liked Marc Campos's take: "Of course, the Mayor-Elect’s grade is the only one that counts." Indeed.
Mayor-elect Parker seems inclined to promote from within, which probably rules out a William Bratton or Bratton disciple. We hope the new chief will at least be open to the proven techniques Bratton and crew have developed. With our manpower shortage and budget difficulties, we will have to police more effectively than ever.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/09 01:39 PM |
Chron finally reports on HCGOP campaign-finance irregularities
THE CHRONICLE follows up on this week-old Texas Watchdog story about the Harris County GOP's apparent campaign-finance reporting problems with... their own story. We're surprised columnist Rick Casey never ran with this one, but perhaps sifting through campaign-finance reports and making phone calls is too much original work for the lazy plagiarist.
Republicans have an opportunity to clean up their current local leadership team in March. They ought seriously to consider doing so.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/09 08:53 AM |
Mayor White announces new adoption facility, slams critics
THE CHRON'S MIKE SNYDER reports on Mayor Bill White's big announcement about a new $11 million pet adoption facility. Even though Snyder covered the recent mayoral race, in which then-Senate Candidate White warned the mayoral candidates of excessive promises of new spending, we find no mention in this story of any effort to square that advice with Mayor White's new spending.
The thin-skinned mayor couldn't resist taking a shot at some of his more persistent critics in what should have been a feel-good presser:
Talk is cheap and advocates come a dime a dozen. Ooh, did I just say that? I did. And there's a role for advocacy. But real advocates are those who are willing to donate both their treasure and their time to accomplishing the goal that they seek. They're not so into taking credit as they are taking individual responsibility for making sure change takes place.
Thank goodness some of our city's advocates HAVE called attention to shortcomings in the city, whether it's been the failure to address deplorable conditions at BARC over the years or defending others who have trouble defending themselves. We agree with the outgoing mayor in this sense: Advocacy SHOULD come in forms other than the affluent writing pols hefty campaign checks!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/09 08:38 AM |
Kirkendall on the Fertitta financial dealings
TOM KIRKENDALL posts that Tilman Fertitta's "wild Landry's ride continues."
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/09 08:19 AM |
Kuffner lectures on.... copyright abuse?
DEM BLOGGER CHARLES KUFFNER calls out the Texas GOP for possible copyright abuse involving a political video.
We had no idea Kuffner had become such a copyright puritan, given his own abuse of copyright laws (ripping some 8-12 grafs of news stories at a time with minimal attribution), but it's good to know he's taking it more seriously these days.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/20/09 08:16 AM |
The Chron editors' wish list
The Chron's editorial board has some suggestions, a wish list if you will, for Mayor-elect Annise Parker. Here are a couple of tidbits worth noting:
The Houston Police Department's layered command structure will allow the agency to function smoothly while she conducts that search.
The bolded part explains why HPD was relatively unaffected by Chief Hurtt's trips home to Phoenix. Except that the press conferences were less interesting when the chief wasn't there.
Of immediate concern is a continuing budget shortfall Parker pegs at about $3 million that will require an adroit juggling of ongoing spending reductions and cost-saving measures in all city departments to avoid service cuts. Making those continuous adjustments has consumed much of Mayor Bill White's time during his closing months in office.
Actually, much of Mayor White's time during his closing months in office has been consumed with running for senate, and then, with a quick swipe of the white board, for governor.
The Chron editors continue on, expressing concern about the municipal pension problem that we've all been told Senate Gubernatorial-candidate White had "reformed," when they haven't completely ignored the issue. And the editors want Mayor-elect Parker to keep her hands off METRO lest she jeopardize any of the federal funding Frank "Procurement Disaster" is hoping to get. Big surprise.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/20/09 06:18 AM |
19 December 2009
Some insight on Senate-Candidate White's mayoral prioritizing
WHAT'S THE STATUS OF THE CITY'S SORELY NEEDED NEW EMERGENCY RADIO NETWORK?
2005: "It's not a problem that's going to be solved in one day. It will be over a period of years," said Mayor Bill White.
2006: In its new monthly in-house publication, the department admits there are limitations with its police radio system, largely due to the age of the equipment.
2007: "If the public allows me to keep the job for the next three years, I do want to put in place a strategy and contracts and a financing plan to get us into a state-of-the-art public safety communications system," White said.
2008: Houston is poised to build a $107 million emergency radio system that will allow police, fire and rescue officials to communicate with one another in large-scale catastrophes.
2009: Tom Sorley, deputy director of the city's radio communication services, confirmed the new radio system linking Houston police, firefighters and the Public Works Department will not be operational until September 2012. When functioning, he said, it will allow HPD to relay calls to other large police agencies in the region.
So, nearly 10 years after the city learned that its emergency radio network was seriously out-of-date, the city hopes to have a new system in place. And just in the nick of time, too, because, according to HPD, "By 2013, our current system, with wide band frequencies, will most likely be discontinued."
As an aside, Harris County upgraded its radio system years ago.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/19/09 07:03 AM |
Mayor White signs property tax collection agreement
CITY OF HOUSTON TO HARRIS COUNTY: Never mind, we'll sign the property tax collection contract.
Thuggish behavior doesn't play well when one is running for higher office.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/19/09 05:58 AM |
17 December 2009
Drayton fibs to local PR outlet, MLB gets the story instead
THE BIG SPORTS NEWS IN RECENT DAYS is that Drayton McLane recently nearly sold the Astros. The Chron's Drayton PR (er, baseball) section didn't break that big story, as John Royal notes:
Oh, and EPIC FAIL on part of the Chron. This story was broken by MLB.com which mentioned that Crane's bid for the Rangers was in doubt because MLB didn't trust him after he backed out of the deal with Drayton last year. Maybe if the Chron wouldn't have dumped all of those reporters earlier this year, they might have been able to get this story.
Probably not. The sports section prefers to play cheerleader and cozy up to its favorite sources, preferences that seem unrelated to manpower issues.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/17/09 07:59 AM |
Slampo: District F Residents Prepare to Welcome Their New Out-of-District Overlord
SLAMPO welcomes new carpetbagger councilmember Al Hoang to District F.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/17/09 07:49 AM |
Is he upset the other PR guy is competing for Drayton's favor?
CHRON BASEBALL WRITER JESUS ORTIZ had this odd graf in a recent blog post:
A lot has happened since my last blog, and I have even been told by a loyal reader that somebody spread some wrong information about what actually happened when I broke the story about the Astros firing Jose Cruz as first base coach and demoting him. I checked with Ed Wade at the time to ask if he was the one giving the misleading information to the communications department's blogger, and he said he didn't and that I should check with the public relations department to get that corrected. When I got that text back, I felt vindicated and decided against pushing the issue because I would never blame a public relations or spokesman for blogging something. Their job is to make the club look good, and there's no shame in doing that.
It's sometimes difficult to discern all that much difference in Ortiz's reporting and Astros PR.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/17/09 07:47 AM |
16 December 2009
More of Mayor White's "running the city like a business" acumen
CITY OF HOUSTON TO HARRIS COUNTY: We are not signing a tax collection agreement until you agree to withhold vehicle registrations for people who don't pay their red light camera tickets.
EYEWITNESS NEWS notes that Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez says the city does not carry its own weight when compared to the 65 other jurisdictions that pay the county for the tax collecting service.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/16/09 04:36 AM |
15 December 2009
Texas Watchdog on HAS champagne and lobster party
TEXAS WATCHDOG posts about a lovely sounding champagne and lobster party being hosted by the Houston Airport System and a vendor for local media.
Sadly, blogHOUSTON did not receive an invitation to the event (we could have gone for some lobster). Neither did Texas Watchdog, probably because they ask too many questions:
[S]hould a public concessionaire be holding the party at all? What if the company that hauls away the garbage threw a party in the council chambers at City Hall? Or a vendor supplying security cameras to state patrol cars had its Christmas event at the Capitol?
Actually, an end-of-election-year garbage-removal/transition party might not be such a horrible idea!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/15/09 10:17 PM |
Bye Bye, Chief Hurtt
VARIOUS MEDIA OUTLETS are reporting that Chief Hurtt has informed his command staff he'll be resigning effective 30 December.
Mayor-elect Parker made clear during the campaign that the bumbling police chief would be out if she won, so this is merely a formality. Given our colder-than-usual December, Hurtt is no doubt looking forward to Arizona (and maybe wondering if he can get a refund on that Locke campaign donation).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/15/09 06:20 PM |
[Previous 20 Entries] [Next 20 Entries]