Primarily Speaking, Part II

It’s a long ballot this primary season. Yesterday we only got through the statewide races. We still need to cover judicial and local/county races. And I’m ignoring for now the races with no challenger in the primary. (Technically that includes my uncontested race for precinct chair; I’m told that at the close of voting day, that makes me official. Yay me!)

By way of review, among other sources, I’ve been looking at endorsements from several sources. CCHC is the Conservative Coalition of Harris County, and is a self-funded grassroots group, including several people I know personally; they try hard to get to know the candidates and share what they find. They do a silent ballot, and offer the percentage of the vote; 70% or more means endorsement. TFR stands for Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which gives scrutiny to taxes and other fiscal issues. TCR stands for Texas Conservative Review, and HRBC stands for Houston Realty Business Coalition. These both claim conservative credentials. I vary in how much I agree with them, but they give me additional data. I also have personal resources: DA stands for a couple of friends in the DA’s office who share their inside opinions on judicial races with friends who ask. PC is a neighboring precinct chair with quite a lot of experience, so I add her endorsements to the data. 

Texas is set up with a two-part Supreme Court, consisting of the Supreme Court, which handles mainly civil cases, and the Criminal Court of Appeals, which is the “supreme court” for criminal cases. 

going through the avalanche of info

In Harris County (which includes the Greater Houston Area), the courts are divided into district courts, with numbers based on whatever number came up when the division was made. Different courts typically have a specific assignment, like criminal courts, or family courts. 

Usually when there’s a primary challenger, it’s because there’s an open seat: a judge has retired or been appointed to another court. Candidates don’t necessarily know who their challengers are prior to signing up to run. So sometimes we find a number of really good people in one race. We’ll eventually get to a couple of those.

 

Chief Justice, Texas Supreme Court:

I am struggling to make a decision here. Nathan Hecht is the incumbent, recently appointed by Governor Perry. He has been a justice on the court since 1988. Among my sources, DA, TFR, and HRBC support Hecht. His opponent is Robert Talton, whom I became aware of during his tenure as a Texas representative. He was a brave standard-bearer of conservative causes. He left the Texas House to run for US House, a race he didn’t win. Because I recognized his name, my first reaction was to lean toward him. He also gets 60% support from CCHC, as well as support from TCR and PC. However, there ought to be a good reason to take out an incumbent. Last time around, David Medina had come to our Tea Party and talked about his position on the Supreme Court. He had been appointed by the governor as well. I liked him. I thought he was the better candidate, from what I could find. But he lost—because he’d been appointed rather than elected to the position. While I don’t think appointments just need to be rubber stamped, I think judges need to be taken on their actual merits. I can’t find a significant reason for removing Hecht, who has served well as an elected Supreme Court Justice for so long. So I am inclined, right now, to vote for Nathan Hecht.

 

Supreme Court Justice, Place 6:

The two choices are Joe Pool and Jeff Brown. CCHC gives Brown 100% support. He also gets support from all of my other sources. No one gives anything positive about Pool. I can’t add any additional knowledge to this race. So I’m voting for Jeff Brown.

 

Supreme Court Justice, Place 8:

Phil Johnson gets 100% support from CCHC, plus support from TFR, HRBC, DA, and BC. Only TCR supports Sharon McCally. I am inclined to go with Phil Johnson.

 

Court of Criminal Appeals 3:

Bert Richardson gets 85% support from CCHC, plus DA, TCR, and HRBC support. PC supports Barbara Walther. I haven’t met either one, but I think I’ll go with Bert Richardson.

 

Court of Criminal Appeals 4:

This is an open seat with three people running: Richard Dean Davis, Kevin Patrick Yeary, and Jani Jo Wood. All of my sources support Yeary, with CCHC giving him 100% support. Incidentally, the Houston Chronicle thinks Yeary is a nice guy but prefers Wood. I don’t know what criteria they use, but I seldom agree with them, so an endorsement might be a point against. I think I’ll vote for Kevin Yeary.

 

Court of Criminal Appeals 9:

David Newell and W. C. “Bud” Kirkendall are running for this position. I met David Newell at a judicial candidate forum recently and found him quite impressive. I haven’t met his opponent. David Newell gets 90% support from CCHC, plus support from DA, HRBC, and TCR. PC goes for Kirkendall. I think I’ll go with my personal opinion and go for David Newell.

 

That finishes the statewide races. Now we’ll go to more local/regional.

 

State Senate District 7:

This position opened up when Dan Patrick decided to run for Lieutenant Governor. Paul Bettencourt and James Wilson are running for the position. Paul Bettencourt, former Harris County Tax Assessor, was nicknamed the Tax Man, and was known for going out of his way to inform people on how to get their property assessments lowered. Locally, we’ve liked him a long time, and he has name recognition. James Wilson used to work with the legendary Phil Gramm. He seems like a nice guy. But he doesn’t have the fire to overcome Bettencourt’s name. I hope he’ll do some other good work in the future. But I’m voting for Paul Bettencourt—who also got 100% support from CCHC, plus HRBC, PC, and TCR.

 

State Representative District 150:

I’m not in this district, and wouldn’t comment, except that I want to give a good word for Representative Debbie Riddle, who has been a treasure. It’s hard to overstate how hard-working she has been, and responsive to the very issues important to us grassroots conservatives. Her opponent, Tony Noun, was scheduled to speak at a recent Tea Party meeting and didn’t show. I can’t figure out why he’s running.

 

State Representative District 132:

I’m not in this district either, but it’s close to mine. I have a lot of friends in this district. It’s an open seat, because of the retirement of Bill Callegari. Of the four candidates, I think I like Michael Franks best, a lawyer, very logical and well spoken. However, I think the leading candidates are Justin Perryman and Mike Schofield. People feel strongly positive about both; Schofield is new to the district, but has been active nearby for a long time. Perryman has a resume that looks like a character on NCIS—varied and talented, with some military, some business, some out-of-country experience. There may be some family challenges going on there, however. All I can say is, good luck deciding.

 

County Treasurer:

The incumbent is Orlando Sanchez. He has been quietly effective as a conservative in liberal-run Houston for many years. I know very little about his opponent, Arnold Hinojosa. Sanchez gets the support of all my sources (100% CCHC), and my support as well.

 

District Clerk:

Chris Daniel came from among us in the grassroots. I think he was a law student his first time as a state delegate, the same time I was. I think he’s done a good job as District Clerk. I like his opponent, Court Koenning, who offers suggestions for technological improvements. However, most of those improvements are already underway, within the constraints of the actual budget, but making what looks to me like real progress. So I’m going to stay with Chris Daniel. All of my sources agree (82% from CCHC), except PC, who likes both and won’t endorse.

 

OK, we’ve gotten through the statewide judicial races and most of the local non-judicial races. But the interesting races, the ones, I’ve wanted to write about in order to think through them fully, are still to come. There are some additional county judicial races as well, but I need one more post to cover the 247^th Family Court, the 311^th Family Court, and the Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 Place 2 race. And after all those, I’ll render my decision about the County Republican Chair. I don’t usually post on Saturdays (or Fridays either, this year), but it’s a long ballot, and now is the time, if it’s going to be useful to people getting ready to vote. So stay tuned for Part III.

A Small Reprieve

August 14th I wrote about a challenge in our (very large) county, trying to prevent a Common Core-type infiltration through daycares. The week after that post, I attended the Harris County Department of Education meeting, and spoke, among several others, who addressed the HCDE board on this issue.

There’s a good summary of the meeting, if you’re interested, at Big Jolly Politics. I am the one referred to in the article this way: “I missed the name of one of the citizens, I apologize for that.” I’m apparently easy to miss, with a name that’s hard to hear. Nevertheless, I felt good about my short speech, and got approval from those near me after I sat down.

Earlier in the day was a workshop in which proponents of the program, called Early to Rise, were able to present more details about their program, and answer direct questions from the trustees. But there was no community input at the workshop. Big Jolly also summarized the workshop.

There’s good news. This past Monday, August 26, was the deadline for deciding what would appear on the November ballot. County Judge Ed Emmett decided not to accept the proposition for the ballot. HCDE didn’t have to make the decision, at least at this time, after all. Whew! Thank you, Judge Emmett.

It was not an easy position for Judge Emmett. He expected to be sued either way. He didn’t get an answer from the Attorney General on the legitimacy of an additional tax to be filtered through a more-or-less government entity to private entities. County Judge Vince Ryan had been in favor of putting the measure on the ballot and dealing with lawsuits from objectors. Emmett didn’t like that answer and hired a private attorney, whose advice he followed. I believe keeping it off the ballot was a better decision than putting it on possibly illegally, leaving the public at the mercy of someone willing to fight through the legal system after tax money is already spent. The proponents can always (and certainly will) look at alternative ways to seek what they want.

But it was never right to take tax money intended for improving school districts and give it, without oversight, to a private entity, for the purpose of training daycare providers (who have access to training in community colleges and many other places), entering homes and directing parents, and doing something indefinite about healthcare for very young children. Particularly disturbing—and the point over which the proposition was turned down—was making this an additional tax through HCDE. To review, HCDE gets 2/3 cent per $100 property value, and by law can never assess more than 1 cent. This new tax, a full additional 1 cent assessment, over and above everything HCDE already gets, would be a 150% increase, with all of the increase going only to a private entity for this one project. One would think that a public school entity such as HCDE would need more for actual public school child education than for something that isn’t even under the purview of public schools.

I wanted to share a couple of things from the meeting, mainly related to Rep. Debbie Riddle. She gave an analogy about the proposal, so we could see it in a new light. First she reminded us of how the money would be spent, which was not on actually doing childcare improvement: $400,000 on grant writing, $500,000 on evaluation services, $800,000 on best practices research, $12.6 Million for professional development and outdoor resources (I don’t know what that means, but that’s about half the annual amount), $750,000 for PR, $250,000 for tech support.

Now here’s her comparison (from my notes, so not an exact quote): “Suppose you come to me and say, ‘If you pay me $100, I’ll go out and find someone to mow your yard. And I’ll even consider letting you mow your own lawn, and I’ll pay you $25 to do it.’ That’s what this deal looks like.”

If there was a need for early childhood intervention (assuming, which I don’t, that HCDE should have its public school fingers in that arena), then why would HCDE need some outside entity to do it, rather than do their duty and find the solution themselves? This Early to Rise program was brought to them, placed on their agenda, and then attempted to be placed on the ballot, all prior to HCDE researching whether early childhood intervention needed any additional attention, let alone this huge influx of additional tax.

The trustees responded to the citizen testimony (particularly mine) by attempting to make it clear things were not settled, which seemed puzzling, because why would we have been encouraging them to turn down the proposal if we’d thought it was too late for public input? The chairman pointed out that she only learned of a proposed contract the Saturday morning previous to the meeting. The contract, which specified that if the voters approved the ballot proposition, all the money would be turned over to HCSRC, for ten years or more, indeed was made public that Saturday. But there have been discussions of the issue at least since June, so that was disingenuous. Also on the agenda was a private meeting with the lawyer the trustees hired specifically to deal with finding a way to work with the HCSRC, the nonprofit intending to manage the Early to Rise program. [The contract with the legal team was in evidence on page 453 of the full public agenda, dated August 2, 2013, well ahead of the Saturday of the public announcement of the proposal from HCSRC. It begins that the law firm in the contract “will represent Harris County Department of Education…in connection with the negotiation of an Early Childhood Services Agreement between the Department and the Harris County School Readiness Corporation.”]

So it is my suspicion that if there hadn’t been so much outcry against the program, the HCDE trustees might have moved ahead as though the taxpayers opinion mattered not at all. And we are relieved that Judge Emmett took it out of their hands, just in case.

I wanted to share this photo of Rep. Riddle, from the hallway outside the meeting. She was teaching this 9-year-old boy how to give a firm handshake. She also spent time telling us stories, and giving encouragement. I think she does that everywhere she goes. Rep. Riddle is the one who put forth the bill to get rid of the two remaining redundant county boards of education. It didn’t get out of committee this legislative session, but we can try again in a year and a half.

In the meantime, the moral or the story is: constant vigilance.