Meet Bill King
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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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...
The Testimony of Major Brent Taylor on Election Day
Brent Taylor was the mayor of North Ogden, Utah. He was also a major in the Army National Guard. He was killed last week in Afghanistan on his fourth tour of duty there. He was 39 and left behind a wife and seven children. Shortly before his death, Major...
Turner’s Former Law Partner to be Paid $6.7 Million in Legal Fees from Harvey Disaster Funds
If you have not watched Ted Oberg's story on the $35 million contract for Harvey "outreach services" Sylvester Turner is asking Council to approve, please go right now and watch it (click on image below). If you are like me, you will probably feel like you...
City has Shortchanged Rebuild Fund by Nearly $250 Million
The more I study the Rebuild Houston program, the more apparent it becomes that the City’s administration of the program is a complete fraud. The most recent discovery we have made is that the City has been using a legal loophole to shortchange the amount of money...
A Hurricane Michael Would Be Houston’s Worst Nightmare
In 2006, I chaired a regional task force that made recommendations on redrawing evacuation plans after the disastrous Hurricane Rita evacuation. There was one storm scenario in the historical record that haunted our task force: a fast-moving hurricane that...
Closing Argument on Proposition A – Rebuild Houston
Early voting on the City's proposition A, which would reauthorize the failed Rebuild Houston program, begins tomorrow. Since no one at the City had the intestinal fortitude to debate Proposition A, I am left to make the closing argument directly to Houston voters. In...