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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.
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570 Days after Harvey, City has Yet to File for a Permit to Dredge the Kingwood Mouth Bar
For those of you not familiar with the flooding problems in Kingwood, there is a widespread consensus among flood experts and that community that a large sand bar which has accumulated where the West Fork of the San Jacinto River enters Lake Houston is one of...
Turner Should Disclose $400 Million in Contracts Not Approved by Council before a Single Employee is Laid Off
Sylvester Turner told City Council members last week that he intends to lay off 400 firefighters and trigger the layoff of another 100 employees in other departments to pay for the increased cost of Proposition B.[i] Turner claims there is no other way to fund...
Turner Spent $400 Million without City Council approval . . . And Look for Your Water Rates to Go Up Even More
Stunning information released at this week's Budget & Fiscal Affairs Committee of the Houston City Council raises new questions about how Sylvester Turner is spending your money and plans to get more of it. According to a review by the city controller's...
The Fire Fighter Pay Debacle: How Did We Get into this Mess?
Last Friday, Sylvester Turner issued a rambling, three-page letter in which he blamed Houston voters and Houston fire fighters for the Proposition B debacle in which the City now finds itself. There is one person who is 100% to blame for this fiasco:...
Turner’s Pothole Misinformation Campaign
Sylvester Turner’s press conference on potholes this week was masterful misdirection. Most of the media headlines were that Turner claimed the City was repairing 100% of its potholes. But if you read the fine print, the City is only repairing 100% of the...
Just in Case You Thought the City Had Solved its Pension Problems
We now have audits for the City and its three pension plans for the first full year of operation under the pension changes made in 2017. The results clearly show that, other than making a one-time reduction in the pension liability by cutting benefits and...
City Continues to Skimp on Street Spending
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 in street...
City’s Net Assets Plunge by over $1 Billion
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...
Rapes in Houston Up 121% in Last Four Years
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 1,366 rapes. ...
George & Barbara Bush: The Definition of Authenticity and Decency
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 down the seating area. Because it was...
Turner Attempts to Blackmail Kingwood TIRZ: “Give Me a Third of Your Revenue or Sit in Traffic Forever”
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 are...
City Council Approves Paying $6.7 Million to Turner’s Former Law Partner
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...