VOL. XXXIII • OCTOBER 24, 2019
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Dallas City Council reviews VisitDallas corrective action plan Education Pg 3
By DIANE XAVIER The Dallas Examiner
The Dallas Convention and Event Services Department provided the Dallas City Council an update on the proposed VisitDallas amended and restated contract during the City Council briefing Oct. 16. This update was in response to an audit in January that revealed too much spending and questionable standards by VisitDallas, a not-for-profit organization that promotes Dallas as a business and pleasure destination. The contract with VisitDallas ends next September and the City Council plans to vote in November on whether or not to renew the contract. Rosa Fleming, Director of Convention and Event Services for the city, said they are
From left: Sam Coats, interim president and CEO of VisitDallas; Joyce Williams, VisitDallas board chair-elect; Greg White, board member and Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District board chair; Rosa Fleming, director of Convention and Event Services; Joey Zapata, assistant city manager; and Michael A. Mendoza, Chief of Economic Development, discuss the VisitDallas Amended and Restated Contract Oct. 16. – The Dallas Examiner Screenshot taken from the City of Dallas video
focusing on the existing convention and event services contract with VisitDallas and its allocation of Hotel Occupancy Tax funds. “We fund VisitDallas to promote tourism and to promote events within Dallas that they can meet the cultural tourism meeting needs and our convention needs in a sale
structure from 18 months out up to as far out as 12 years,” Fleming said. Sam Coats, interim president and CEO of VisitDallas, explained what the organization does for the city. “Our sole purpose is to market the city of Dallas,” Coats said. “Also, to bring meetings, tourists and conventions to the
city. Today, VisitDallas and the city of Dallas are number five in the nation in regards to bringing conventions and events here. In 2019, we sponsored or brought to the city 1,578 events and 10 years ago it was about 502 events. Our budget has doubled from $10 million to $20 million in terms of HOT funds. A lot of good things have happened despite the recent failure in leadership. But since that time we have worked with the city very diligently to fix those items that needed to be corrected and we are continuing to do so.” Fleming then went over the audit and corrective actions. The Office of the City Auditor released the Audit of VisitDallas Report No. A19-006 Jan. 4, which evaluated the effectiveness of services by VisitDallas between
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U.S. Constitution – Courtesy of the National Archives. Census 2010 Sample – Courtesy of U.S. Census Bureau
Texas DPS may hand over data to Census Bureau By ALEXA URA The Texas Tribune
As the Trump administration moves forward with efforts to compile detailed citizenship information for the upcoming census, the U.S. Census Bureau has asked Texas to consider sharing parts of its driver’s license and ID database. The Texas Department of Public Safety received the request from the bureau Oct. 2 with a proposal for the state to provide a monthly dataset, including driver license or ID numbers and citizenship status for Texans who have been issued those documents. A DPS spokeswoman said the department was reviewing the request, but “no action has been taken at this time.” Similar requests went out across the country as part of the Census Bureau’s efforts to comply with a July executive order from President Donald Trump that called for compiling citizenship data from existing government records. The bureau has long used state administrative records to supplement and improve its surveys, the bureau said in a statement released earlier this week, but it recently expanded into driver’s license records for the 2020 census. “Responses to all Census Bureau surveys and administrative records obtained by the Census Bureau are safe, secure and protected by law,” the bureau’s statement read. DPS on Friday provided the communications it received from a Census Bu-
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President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, addresses his remarks Wednesday in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. – Photo by Shealah Craighead/White House
‘How dare you’ Texans in Congress respond to Trump comparing his impeachment to lynching By ALEX SAMUELS The Texas Tribune
Members of Texas’ Democratic congressional delegation overwhelmingly condemned President Donald Trump after he sent a Tuesday morning tweet comparing the U.S. House’s impeachment inquiry to a lynching. “So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. But we will WIN!” U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, a vocal Trump critic, offered the most scathing rebuke of the president, accusing him of “weaponizing hate.” Green called Trump “no better than the bigots who screamed ‘blood and soil’ in Charlottesville,” a reference to the 2017 white nationalist protest in Virginia that turned deadly when an avowed neo-Nazi plowed his car into counterprotesters, killing a 32year-old woman. Two others died in a helicopter crash linked to the rally. “Mr. President, HOW DARE YOU compare impeachment to lynching (the mob murdering and racist terrorizing of Black people)?” Green tweeted. A White House spokesman insisted that Trump’s reference
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to lynching was not Trump “comparing what happened to him with one of our darkest moments in American history.” House Democrats began impeachment proceedings in late September after news broke of a summer phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump and his allies have called the probe a political “witch hunt” for weeks, but the president’s use of the racially insensitive term most associated with the hangings of African Americans elicited immediate blowback on Capitol Hill. Most of Trump’s 2020 rivals – including Texan presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro – also issued statements of reproof. The Congressional Black Caucus called Trump’s use of the word “unacceptable.” “What is happening to you, Mr. President, is the Constitutional duty of the Congress. Mr. President you have no moral right to compare or make light of an American tragedy,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, who is authoring a resolution on reparations for African Americans over slavery. “Do not use the word lynching that will reignite the pain and fear that permeated the community of African Americans in a dastardly and violent period in
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America’s history. I am prayerful that these families will someday have justice and peace.” Throughout his campaign and into his presidential term, Trump has been accused of deepening racial divides with his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. He was recently denounced as racist for encouraging a chant of “send her back” about a Somali-American congresswoman. He infamously said there was blame “on both sides” for the Charlottesville rally, putting little onus on the white nationalists. In the hours after Tuesday’s tweet, most Texas Republicans remained silent or dodged questions about Trump’s latest comment, while U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn appeared to defend the president. It’s “obviously a word with significant historical freight,” Cruz told a Politico Capitol Hill reporter. “The connotation the president is carrying forward is a political mob seeking an outcome regardless of facts. And that I think is an objectively true description of what is happening in the House right now.” Cornyn, meanwhile, said “obviously” Trump’s choice of wording was “hyperbole and some people might find it offensive.” He implied that he wasn’t offended by the remark. “I’ve got a pretty high threshold when it comes to being offended around here,” Cornyn said. “Otherwise it would be all day, every day.”
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Governor: TxDOT can remove homeless camps
Homeless people have set up camp under Highway 290 in South Austin.– Photo by Marjorie Kamys Cotera/The Texas Tribune
By DAVIS RICH The Texas Tribune
Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said Friday the Texas Department of Transportation could force homeless Austin residents out from under bridges and overpasses where some of them live or camp if recent changes to city ordinances don’t result in less feces and fewer needles by Nov. 1. Abbott plans to work with homeless shelters in Austin, according to a statement from a spokesman, who said they are currently working out details about when or how the camps will be cleared if such a plan is implemented. The announcement comes less than a day after the Austin City Council changed its ordinances regarding camping, sitting and lying in public spaces. Camping is now banned on city sidewalks, near homeless shelters in and around downtown, and in high wildfire risk areas. Sitting and lying are no longer permitted within 15 feet of the entrance or exit to a business or residence. “By reforming its homelessness policy, the city of Austin has taken a meaningful step to address the safety and health of Texans – including the homeless,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in a statement Friday afternoon. “The state will monitor how well the new policy actually reduces the skyrocketing complaints about attacks by the homeless and other public safety concerns. The state will also continue to monitor water quality for E. coli and other bacteria.” The city’s change will go into effect Oct. 27, four days before a deadline Abbott gave Austin officials to make a “consequential improvement” with what he called a homelessness crisis in the state’s capital. That deadline and this week’s changes follow the council’s controversial decision earlier this year to relax some ordinances that critics said criminalized homelessness. News of TxDOT’s potential plans, which the Austin American-Statesman first reported, broke as Austin Mayor Steve Adler met with the media. Adler said he had not communicated with the governor, but that it had been suggested to him that Abbott would move people out of encampments under overpasses near state roads. “I hope he doesn’t do that unless he has somewhere for those people to go,” Adler said, adding that he doesn’t want people living under overpasses, but he doesn’t want them moved into less public spaces like the woods, either. Adler also said that he hopes the governor provides people experiencing homelessness with “a housing exit” should Abbott choose to move people into shelters. Forcing homeless residents from encampments can be tricky, experts say. The Center
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Editorial . . . . . . . 4
Reducing Premature Birth Rates Health Pg 6
Perspectives . . . 5
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