Bill King has been writing about public policy issues, politics and economics for decades. This blog is a compilation of his previous posts, editorials and columns and a continuation of that tradition.
The recently issued annual financial report (“CAFR”) for the City once again shows that it is continuing to cut back on street reconstruction and repair, a fact that is of no surprise to Houston drivers. The CAFR shows that the amount of asphalt used......
A few days before Christmas, the City of Houston released its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for FY2017-2018. In recent years, the City’s standard operating procedure has been to release the CAFR over the holidays to minimize the attention it will receive because the......
The Texas Department of Public Safety recently released its annual report for crime in Texas for 2017.[i] There are several troubling results for Houston but the number that jumps off the page is that rape was up by 13% in 2017, increasing from 1,210 to......
A few years ago, I was at the Hobby Center for a play. Just before the play, as the house lights were being lowered and the crowd was settling in for the performance, a door opened on the left side of the theater about halfway......
Not all TIRZs are created equal. Nor are they operated in the same manner. There are ones, like Uptown, that are totally controlled by the commercial real estate interests in the area, resulting in debacles like the Post Oak bus lanes project. But there......
Yesterday, on an 11-4 vote, Houston City Council approved a $35 million contract for outreach to Harvey victims that included $6.7 million set aside for legal fees to Barnes & Associates, formerly Barnes & Turner. To put that number in some perspective, it is a......
