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November 21, 2018 9:20 AM
The prosecutors have said they'd step down if they're not going to be paid, forcing the state to find new lawyers. Hat tip to reporter Lauren McGaughy of the DMN who broke to the news.
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Copyright November 21, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 20, 2018 5:50 PM
220 vote spread now in Meyer's favor; Dallas County has 7 days to recount
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Copyright November 20, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 20, 2018 5:09 PM
“I think in our mind it’s oh, we don’t have enough money. I’m not sold on that any more. There’s just a lack of political will. There’s just a reticence to dive in and do something bold and drastic.”
Rep. Diego Bernal,
D-San Antonio, is not surprised by numbers that put Texas this year in the
bottom 10 states when it comes to child welfare. No, he says what surprises him
is “lack of political will” among members of the Texas legislature to
address it.
The annual State of Texas Children
breakfast, hosted by Methodist Healthcare Ministries and
the Center
for Public Policy Priorities in San Antonio this past week outlined
some key facts: About one in five children in Texas live in poverty. Federal
cash assistance for needy families in Texas is at an all-time low. And of the
21,600 students who dropped out of the Class of 2016, two-thirds were
economically disadvantaged.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright November 20, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 20, 2018 5:06 PM
In this guest column, Dr. John Coppedge argues “we are entering a new but familiar phase in Texas electoral politics...the same kind of phase occurred in the late 1980's and early 1990's when the dominance of the Texas Democrats faded and the Republican era of the last three decades began."
The 2018 General Election
will go down as a pivotal election for Texas, especially for the Texas
judiciary. Just as 1988 began the quantum shift to the Republican column, now
some 30 years later the pendulum is swinging back the other way.
Long predicted because of
demographic trends, Democrat dominance in the major Court of Appeals this
cycle is the forerunner of what will come next. While Republicans continued to
win all the statewide races, the margins are getting thinner.
And buoyed by the 2018
results, Democrats will come out breathing fire in 2020.
The complete column by Dr. John Coppedge is in the R&D Department.
By Dr. John Coppedge
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Copyright November 20, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 19, 2018 5:34 PM
With new leader at the helm of the Facilities Commission, the general contractor lays out progress of the first phase of the Capitol Complex Master Plan
The Texas Facilities Commission took
less than an hour to finalize an offer to one of its own to lead the agency
almost a year after former Rep. Harvey
Hilderbran was ousted as executive director amid reports of difficulties
and dysfunction.
Mike Novak, a
former Bexar County Commissioner and long-time San Antonio contractor,
thanked the commission for the honor, saying he was humbled. “It has been an
honor and a privilege to serve with you for seven years now,” Novak told his
colleagues. “I look forward to this challenge.”
Novak is a construction executive who will be at the helm of
the $581 million Capitol
Complex Project after the stormy tenures of Terry
Keel and Hilderbran
– both former lawmakers. Hilderbran had no prior experience overseeing construction projects but Keel did oversee the expansion of the jail in Del Valle when he was Travis County Sheriff.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright November 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 19, 2018 12:10 PM
"While we came up short this time, we ran a race of which we can be proud." - Gina Ortiz Jones
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Copyright November 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 19, 2018 12:08 PM
In this guest column, TAB President and CEO Jeff Moseley lays out what the largest group representing employers in the state wants to see accomplished next spring
January
marks the beginning of the 86th Texas Legislature and a fresh start for Texas.
Each session, thousands of bills are filed, and a significant portion of this
legislation will have an impact on business within the state.
By
supporting initiatives that encourage economic growth and provide good paying
jobs for more Texans, the Texas Association of Business has
always been at the forefront of making sure Texas is the best place to work,
run a business, and raise a family.
The complete guest column by
TAB CEO Jeff Moseley is in the R&D Department.
By Jeff Moseley
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Copyright November 19, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 16, 2018 5:05 PM
Speaker Straus tells QR there are too many variables right now including school finance, the price of oil, and Hurricane Harvey relief. "Why make a decision now that we could regret later?"
The
Legislative
Budget Board took a pass on setting a Constitutional spending limit
this afternoon, a move Speaker Joe
Straus said was, at least in part, to give the next Speaker of the House a
chance to weigh in on the final budget limits.
It
was Straus who moved to take a pass on the decision, as his heir apparent Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, sat to his
right. Barring any serious changes in fortune, it will be Bonnen who will
assume the speaker’s dais on the first day of the 86th session.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright November 16, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 16, 2018 3:24 PM
Report raises new questions including “what happened to more than $670,000 in tax-deductible donations made to APF and attempt to alert those who may have been cheated”
Editor’s note: The full report
is available to subscribers at the end of this story – SB
Years
after a group of political operatives secretly surveilled members of the Texas
Legislature in the Capitol building and around Austin, veteran
lobbyist Steve Bresnen is hand delivering
to lawmakers his preliminary report on the group’s finances.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright November 16, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 16, 2018 9:32 AM
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Copyright November 16, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 16, 2018 9:28 AM
A huge promotion, new companies forming ahead of session, a notable retirement, and some damn good barbecue
Yes, I was that reporter in the Bonnen press conference. You can stop
asking. This really is the best audience in the world, with many of you saying the
journalist got Trumped while the
question went unanswered.
We’ll come back to that.
Thanks to the Texas Association of Business
for the chance to speak in Dallas at City Club this week. It was a very
informative event where Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said with some glee that Empower Texan’s Chairman Tim Dunn lost a senator in the Fort Worth
area in last week’s elections. It’s really just too
bad.
Great to see so many of you last night at the Sine
Die Smokers BBQ Party. POTM is coming out a little early this morning
so that I can remind you the cookers are out there again today
and you should go get some for lunch. The meat is good, y'all
and they're “cookin' for a cause” – raising money for
the Central
Texas Food Bank. Stop by from 11:30am to 2:30 this afternoon at
1111 Guadalupe. It's in the alley across from the Westgate. You know where it
is. They’ll also be there for happy hour from 4 to 7 and I think you can get sausage
wraps all day. That’s what I heard. Go ask Gavin.
A lot of big news, meantime, in the lobby world.
Plenty of new hires and several new companies forming ahead of the session. Good
luck in your new ventures. By the way, I’m taking the week off from this column
for Thanksgiving. But if you’ve got career news to share please send it along and
we’ll be sure to get to it the following week. ksbraddock@gmail.com is the email
address and please use POTM in the subject line.
That would make this the Thanksgiving edition
of People
on the Move:
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright November 16, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 15, 2018 5:18 PM
As laid out, it appears to upend equity as required by the Texas Constitution; if tax rates are reduced district by district, rather than compressed equally across the state, tax rates could vary wildly and widely
This week’s meeting of Sen. Paul Bettencourt’s work group on school finance should shed light
on whether Republicans intend to put new money into the system next session,
but that’s not the biggest question the Commission on Public School Finance
needs to answer.
Instead, the central question – the one that keeps surfacing
among a small group of people who closely follow school finance – is whether
Gov. Greg Abbott’s school finance
plan flouts the equity set out in three decades of Supreme
Court rulings.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright November 15, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 15, 2018 5:15 PM
In this guest column, Democratic strategist Jeff Crosby says new voters who helped push Beto to the brink of victory have more to be proud of than they may realize
Democrats
in Texas have suffered through a political drought for decades. Every election,
we’ve searched the horizon for a gathering storm that would end our misery. Finally,
a pretty damn big storm arrived November 7, 2018, and
it swept away Republicans thunderstruck by change.
To be
clear, we didn’t turn Texas blue, but it would be hard to argue it’s not purple
now. Bexar, Dallas, Harris and Travis counties were solidly blue. Tarrant is
the only holdout among the big urban counties, but Republicans dramatically
underperformed there in comparison to recent elections.
But just consider
this: Democrats didn’t lose a single congressional or legislative incumbent in
the general election. Not one. I am too lazy to look it up, but I’d imagine the
last time that happened was a long, long time ago.
The full column by Jeff Crosby is in the R&D Department.
By Jeff Crosby
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Copyright November 15, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 14, 2018 7:43 PM
Final tally was 24,222 to 24,175, per Harris County
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Copyright November 14, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 14, 2018 4:26 PM
"Not only is unity my utmost goal in the Texas House but also my guiding force in working with the Texas Senate,” Chairman Bonnen said, echoing Patrick
Following
what his office called their first "official phone call," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's office on Wednesday
released a joint statement from him and Rep. Dennis Bonnen, the presumptive speaker at this point, pledging unity
between the Texas House and Senate.
The
two “affirmed their commitment to working together in the upcoming legislative
session to continue to move Texas forward,” per Patrick’s office.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright November 14, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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November 14, 2018 12:30 PM
“Gavin brings a wealth of experience and a valued perspective to my office,” said Rep. Bonnen. “In addition to his years of experience as a legislative staffer, Gavin has a deep passion for the institution of the House and the ability to work across party lines to achieve the best results for Texas.”
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Copyright November 14, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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