From the Dallas Morning News: Judge to decide if Dallas violated Constitution by banning sex expo

Here's a fun story. Is the Dallas Convention Center a private business or a public forum? The answer will determine whether the adult entertainment industry can have an event in it.

- Click here for the article.

Also at issue here is whether the convention center is “a public forum,” as Exxxotica insists, or a private business the city can operate as it sees fit, as the state and Citizens Council maintain in an amicus brief filed at the end of last week.

Fitzwater asked Murray if the city has the right to pull Exxxotica’s permit if another convention in the Kay Bailey Hutchison takes offense at its content and threatens to cancel. Murray said no, saying that would be giving into the so-called “heckler’s veto” often at the center of so many First Amendment cases. Murray said that simply lets a private citizen dictate with whom the city does business — and where.

But the Citizens Council argues that the convention center is a commercial enterprise, not a public forum.

And “city leaders have the discretion they need to reasonably manage the convention center,” said attorney Will Thompson, representing the 80-year-old organization of business leaders. He called the convention center “an economic engine” to which only the city should have the keys. He also said it was “reasonable for city leaders to be concerned about the city’s brand.”

Exxxotica, the Citizens Council believes, will damage that brand.

Banning the sex expo is “what we believe is best for the city,” Dallas Citizens Council President Alice Murray said after the hearing. “Pornography, where it goes above and beyond the First Amendment, has a negative impact — it becomes a health hazard. We’re already in crisis when it comes to domestic violence and human trafficking.”

However, she said, the Dallas Citizens Council will “not be going after sexually oriented businesses” in Dallas. Just this one.

From the Houston Chronicle: Don't blame Mother Nature for flooding. Blame City Council. The disasters are predictable. Why aren't we preventing them?

Rain doesn't necessarily lead to flooding, unless there is nowhere for water to go due to careless development. That seems to be the point of this opinion piece.

- Click here for it.

Man-made, preventable flooding has surged dirty, sewage-ridden water through Houston living rooms three times now in seven years, yet city government fails to prevent these recurring emergencies.

Really? If losing homes, livelihoods, retirement savings, health and sanity (and at least one life) aren't reasons enough to make emergency detention and drainage improvements, what in the world does it take?

Right now, too many real-estate developments do not detain storm water run-off from their new construction, and instead allow it to flow downstream into other neighborhoods, into people's homes. This new development is responsible for unnecessary flooding of neighborhoods that previously weren't flood plains, weren't prone to flooding. That new development is also responsible for flood insurance rising 100 to 200 percent (before the Tax Day flood) in these non-flood plains.

City government is allowing this to happen. Developers use loopholes and grandfathering to avoid doing what the city's laws require them to do. Is it ethical to allow a new office building to flood an entire neighborhood even if a loophole makes it legal?

And why on earth would a developer be allowed to use tax money (yours and mine) to build the stormwater detention required by law as part of a profit-making project? New development on the north side of I-10 and Gessner is using the already-stressed Conrad Sauer detention basin for a spiffy retail/residential complex under construction. The deal is an interesting card trick: They are making a few improvements to the basin, adding a little drainage near it and — especially important — are going to make the basin look pretty with trails and landscape for their future tenants/residents. They'll get paid back $23 million (taxpayer dollars) for doing this. So they really didn't pay for anything.

For seven years Houston homeowners have begged and pleaded with the mayor (previous and present) and City Council members to treat man-made flooding as urgent, as if it were a deadly fire to put out in a hurry. Yet despite hundreds of emails, calls, meetings, petitions from homeowners' associations (at least 18), Super Neighborhoods, civic associations, and person-after-exhausted-person speaking at City Hall, there is more talk about bike trails and recycling than critical, focused action to address our flooding.

From the Houston Chronicle: Now the hard part Mayor Turner's first 100 days have been a sprint, but real challenges await.it

Some background for out look at the strong mayor form of government.

- Click here for the article.

Today marks Mayor Sylvester Turner's 100th day as mayor, and during his short stretch in office one thing has become perfectly clear: There are a lot fewer potholes on Houston streets.

Turner rushed from day one to fill the teeth-shatterers and suspension-killers that had become a hallmark of the daily commute and a chorus on the campaign.

Houston's new mayor also tore up potentially corrupt airport expansion contracts, saved curbside recycling, let a police chief retire and appointed an education czar and new leaders at Metro, the city attorney office and the Department of Neighborhoods.

We're still waiting for him to fill out the rest of his roster.

Beyond those mayoral duties that make headlines, there's a palpable change in tone at City Hall. Once icy relations between City Council and mayor have warmed, and could even be described as friendly. Fears that a partisan election season would seep into the daily work of running our city haven't come to fruition.

However, it is still too early to give anything but an incomplete on the mayoral report card - the real hurdles sit further down the line.

The city faces a $160 million budget gap that has to be closed by July 1 - Turner's 182nd day. He also needs to have a pension plan in hand before the next legislative session is gaveled in on his 375th day.

Tick-tock.

But even with those challenges months away, Turner still appears to be sprinting toward his goal. Council has been told to expect a preliminary budget plan by April 15 and a finished budget on May 10, with a vote on May 25.

The truncated timeline is supposed to send a sign of good faith to the credit rating agencies that recently downgraded Houston's debt. This rush also signals to voters that their elected officials are prioritizing the right issues.

As for that second big challenge - pensions - Turner has said that he'll have reform plans ready by the end of the year. That's an improvement on Mayor Annise Parker's strategy of going to Austin and unilaterally asking for local control. Parker was right when it came to identifying the problem of pension obligations growing faster than the city's ability to pay them, but sometimes it isn't enough merely to be right. Politics requires cooperation, as well.