Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

The Galveston County Daily News. March 3, 2018.

Debate about how to respond to mass shootings has been stalled so long we’ve come to resemble a novelty device driven by magnets - the force of opposing poles spinning the thing around an axis, but taking it nowhere.

So, perhaps it’s good the debate seems to moving toward some action, although nothing we’ve heard from the right or the left seems to be a solution to this strange, particular and complicated problem.

The right says we ought to arm teachers, but there’s no reason to think that would improve the situation and plenty of evidence it might make it worse. We have an excellent local example in D’Ann Vonderau, former superintendent of High Island public schools. She was exactly who proponents of arming teachers are talking about when they talk about arming teachers.

She had been judged to have good sense and had earned a position of great responsibility in her field. She was licensed by the state of Texas to carry a handgun, which meant she had shown at least basic handgun proficiency and passed a test about relevant laws. She was certified through the state’s Guardian Program, which was designed to make children safer by arming school employees.

She might have been the poster child for arm-the-teachers except that about this time last year she left a loaded .380-caliber handgun unsecured in a school vehicle, where students found it. Fortunately, those teenagers had better sense than the superintendent did and turned the weapon in to a coach, rather than killing each other with it.

If we arm several thousand teachers, eventually, inevitably, one of them will be the perpetrator of a mass shooting at a school.

Even if arming teachers would make schools safer, it wouldn’t address the broader problem of mass shootings. What about the 58 dead at a Las Vegas concert just six months ago; the 26 shot dead at a Baptist Church near San Antonio five months ago; the 12 shot dead in a Colorado movie theater in 2012 and scores killed at their places of work over the years?

Meanwhile, the left argues we need more laws, despite the frequent failure of existing laws. It has become an invocation of sorts among gun control advocates that if we can just get down on paper some sort of restriction or ban on something, anything or everything, we’ll all be safer.

The premise is that the frequency of gun crimes rises along with the number of privately owned guns.

There are numerous problems with that reasoning, not the least of which is that the U.S. homicide rate has been falling steadily at a time when the private ownership of weapons has skyrocketed.

Here’s what James Jacobs, director of Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University School of Law, a professor of constitutional law, and the author of “Can Gun Control Work,” told Time magazine in 2015:

“We need to remember that we’ve have had a remarkable decrease in violent crime and gun crime in the United States since the early 1990s, even though the number of firearms has increased by about 10 million every year,” Jacobs said. “There’s no simple correspondence between the number of firearms in private hands and the amount of gun crime, and I often find it somewhat strange that there seems to be a perception that things are worse than ever when, in reality, things are really better than they’ve been for decades.”

Advocates for restrictive gun laws like to point to Australia, which in 1996 passed the highly restrictive National Firearms Agreement after a mass shooting at Port Arthur that killed 35 people. The argument is that in the years after that law the number of gun homicides has fallen, which it has, but, as in this country, the number already was falling and simply continued to fall at about the same rate after the government banned most firearms and confiscated more than 600,000 of them.

A comprehensive study published in 2007 in the British Journal of Criminology found that: “Based on these tests, it can be concluded that the NFA had no effect on firearm homicide in Australia.”

A 2008 study by University of Melbourne researchers made this conclusion: “The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates.”

Australia has not had a mass shooting on the scale of Port Arthur since the firearms law passed, although it has had them, and has had mass murders with numbers of victims ranging into the double digits, including a couple in which the weapon was fire by arson.

It might be coincidence, simple luck or divine providence that there haven’t been any huge mass shootings down under since the new law.

What might not be coincidence, however, is that Australia tripled its national spending on mental health care - from $2.9 billion to $9 billion - during about the same period of time.

What this country needs is for this debate to become a rational discussion and for that to happen among people willing to meet in the middle, rather than people entrenched on the extreme left or right.

We need to put real money into mental health care. We need to better enforce existing laws. We need tighter background checks, although that might be a far more difficult to achieve than many people realize.

A background check bill recently introduced by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn, for example, would not apply to firearms sales between one private person and another, which would greatly limit its potential for doing any good. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, has advocated for tighter background checks on all firearms sales, which sounds good, but it’s not at all clear how to do that effectively.

The only thing certain is that a real solution, one that makes people safer, will require more thought and compromise than either the right or left has displayed so far.

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Houston Chronicle. March 4, 2018.

Some justices, like the late Antonin Scalia, consider themselves originalists and look to the elementary meaning of laws. Other justices, like Stephen Breyer, subscribe to the doctrine of “active liberty.”

Here in Harris County, we should consider ourselves lucky that we’re able to watch State District Judge Michael McSpadden invent a totally new jurisprudential ideology in real time: cablenewsery.

Under this theory, judges can dispense with so-called facts and evidence and instead rely upon the hearsay and innuendo that gets shouted at television cameras on a daily basis. Who needs the Federalist Papers or Black’s Law Dictionary when you have all the accuracy and nuance of professional political pundits, talk radio hosts and internet commenters?

McSpadden treated legal scholars to his latest insight when he told Houston Chronicle reporter Gabrielle Banks that, in violation of state rules, he insisted magistrates deny no-cash bail to all newly arrested defendants because, “Almost everybody we see here has been tainted in some way before we see them.”

How have they been tainted?

“Rag-tag organizations like Black Lives Matter, which tell you, ’Resist police,’ which is the worst thing in the world you could tell a young black man ,” the long-serving jurist said.

He reemphasized his point in a letter to the editor: “I think ’ragtag’ was too nice a term to describe a group which was built on the Ferguson, Missouri, lie of ’Hands up. Don’t shoot.’ Also encouraging everyone to ’resist police,’ and insulting them with remarks like ’pigs in a blanket,’ among others.”

McSpadden needs to turn off the television and spend some time understanding real life in Houston. The activists in our city - not the ones that get attention on Fox News - talk about issues like justice and fair representation in our courts. They express their feelings and frustration through art, such as the exhibit by Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter at Project Row Houses last year, and engagement like the recent March for Black Women that met at Emancipation Park.

We expect our judges to display a judicious temperament from the bench - one that emphasizes integrity and equality before the law. McSpadden instead talks like he’s auditioning for a guest spot with Tucker Carlson. It’s an attitude that disgraces our courts with careless and, frankly, lazy stereotyping.

The NAACP legal defense fund used other words to describe McSpadden’s comments: “bigotry and bias.”

The civil rights group has called for the judge to resign because they believe he cannot be trusted to execute the law fairly. The ACLU of Texas has joined them. They and other groups have also filed a formal complaint with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

If McSpadden refuses to leave, voters will be able to decide in November whether the Republican incumbent should be replaced by Democratic challenger Brian Warren, who promises to “dispense justice in a fair and equitable manner.”

Until then, Harris County residents can thank McSpadden for peeling back the opaque black robes and revealing the true philosophy that underpins a cash bail system federal courts have found to be unconstitutional - a system that long predates the Black Lives Matter movement.

Harris County now looks to elected officials like County Judge Ed Emmett, Commissioners Jack Cagle and Jack Morman, and the rest of the judiciary, to immediately settle an ongoing lawsuit against the county and implement a new bail system - one that’s compatible with the U.S. Constitution’s promise of justice for all.

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Victoria Advocate. March 5, 2018.

Victoria is taking a big step forward with its plan for rebuilding Crestwood Drive.

The Victoria City Council recently approved a plan to add a 5-foot sidewalk and an 8-foot hike-and-bike trail to the street when it is rebuilt during the next few years. This move indicates our historic city is, at last, moving in the right direction.

The city has to overcome decades of inattention to pedestrians and bicyclists. Most of Victoria was built at a time when all planning was focused on moving motorized vehicles from Point A to B as fast as possible.

Modern cities, however, recognize that good urban planning accommodates both vehicles and pedestrians. In fact, residents today demand this as a basic amenity, making it urgent that Victoria catch up and be able to attract newcomers and businesses along with retaining existing ones.

One way Victoria can do this is when it’s time to rebuild existing streets, like Crestwood. As part of this process, the city needs to carefully examine how the streets can be re-engineered to promote access for pedestrians and bicycles.

In the case of Crestwood, the answer was fairly simple - if the city starts with this mindset. The wide street contains a lot of unused parking that will be converted to sidewalks.

The cost for this terrific change also is remarkably small. The entire rebuild of Crestwood from Ben Jordan to Main streets will cost about $11.3 million. The portion for the sidewalks, though, is only $152,000. That’s because sidewalks require only about 4 inches of concrete - a lot less than a street engineered to handle hulking vehicles.

The answer might be more complicated when it comes to rebuilding other streets, but the city needs to keep the same mindset. North Street is badly in need of rebuilding and likely will be the next capital project after Crestwood is completed. Portions of this street, particularly near the Victoria Community Center and the Youth Sports Complex, are wide enough to accommodate both a sidewalk and a hike-and-bike trail. Other sections of North might require additional right of way, or perhaps accommodate only a sidewalk or bicycle lanes.

The city can’t let the search for the perfect solution get in the way of one better than what we have now. That happened with the rebuild of Red River Street, which the city unfortunately decided had to be repaved exactly as it was.

The city still should revisit that decision as the rest of Red River gets rebuilt. The street could be a gateway leading University of Houston-Victoria and Victoria College students to Riverside Park. The traffic count on Red River is low enough to allow for a lane reduction to accommodate either a 5-foot sidewalk or bike lanes.

For some, this change in mindset is a work in progress. People and planners need to quit thinking of pedestrians and bicyclists as nuisances or less important than vehicles. They need to quit using the argument that the city should remain inaccessible because not enough people dare to walk or bike on the streets as they are designed now.

The plan for Crestwood indicates real progress. If Victoria is to realize the promise of its 2035 comprehensive plan, then this will be only a first step.

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Denton Record Chronicle. March 5, 2018.

We are doing the happy dance here at the Denton Record-Chronicle. Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced that he has appointed two Denton women to the Texas Woman’s University board of regents.

The new regents are Bernadette Coleman, occupational therapist for the Denton County Special Education Cooperative, and Jill Jester, a Denton attorney who is active in civic affairs.

The Record-Chronicle has been editorializing for three years to get the governor to appoint Denton residents to TWU and University of North Texas boards of regents.

The town-and-gown relationship between Denton and the universities is critical, and we found it ludicrous and nonsensical that no one from Denton served on either board.

Now, through these two women, the city of Denton will have a voice in the room when TWU regents meet to make policy. It never made sense to us that gubernatorial appointees from every other part of the state were part of TWU’s decision-making process while Denton was shut out.

Now, the next target is University of North Texas. As a matter of principle, UNT administration should actively recruit Denton residents to serve on the board of regents. How does it make sense, for example, that two of nine UNT regents live in San Antonio and none live in Denton?

Congratulations to Coleman and Jester on their appointments. Now is the time to ratchet up the pressure on Abbott to put at least one Denton voice on the UNT board.

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The Dallas Morning News. March 5, 2018.

It’s understandable that residents throughout Dallas are unsettled by the possibility that steel pipelines running under their neighborhoods could lead to deadly natural gas explosions.

Last month, 12-year-old Linda “Michellita” Rogers died when her home, near Love Field, was blown off its foundation. A federal inquiry into the accident has found at least one gas leak on that property.

Atmos Energy subsequently shut off gas service to more than 2,800 customers in the northwest Dallas neighborhood while it replaces the steel pipes with more flexible plastic lines.

This is not a problem confined to a single neighborhood. Steel pipelines were commonly used at the time of residential construction in the M Streets, Lakewood, Lake Highlands, Swiss Avenue and parts of Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove.

On behalf of Dallas residents, we are calling for answers to these questions:

1. How worried should residents be about the safety of their natural gas service?

After last month’s fatal explosion, Atmos officials hired a geotechnical engineer who found irregular formations in the northwest Dallas neighborhood.

“With the extended rain that we’ve had, the amount of rain, runoff and how that flows underground, certain (parts) of those formations expand up and put pressure on our system thus causing leakage,” Atmos Senior Vice President Kevin Akers said.

The most recent interaction of heavy rain and clay soil wasn’t confined to northwest Dallas. So while Atmos says it will continue to survey for natural gas issues elsewhere, more details are needed.

…

2. What percentage of Dallas homes are still served by steel pipes?

Even if you live in an area of homes built in the 1950s or before, that doesn’t mean the pipes are old. They may have already been replaced. But even knowing what percentage of homes is vulnerable would be useful context.

…

3. How has Atmos handled pipeline replacement since the Texas Railroad Commission adopted its 2011 comprehensive pipeline safety rule?

Rather than order the removal of all steel pipes, the commission required natural gas distribution companies to survey their systems for the greatest potential threats and come up with a replacement plan.

Since that ruling, Atmos says, it has switched out 1,700 miles of distribution main and 250,000 steel service lines in North Texas. Now it says it will spend $1 billion on infrastructure.

What’s missing is a methodical assessment of how Atmos managed the pipeline switch-outs each year since 2011.

…

4. Even if Atmos won’t publicly provide info on which areas of Dallas still have steel pipes, will it share info with individual homeowners?

Atmos claims that publicly providing details about which neighborhoods still employ the steel lines would pose a “security risk.” But the company would be well-served to provide the easiest possible way for customers to learn more about their own equipment as well as that in the surrounding neighborhood.

…

5. Should the Texas Railroad Commission order a blanket replacement for all steel pipelines?

At the very least, a reassessment needs to be made about whether it’s time to do more - even if that inconveniences residents or even necessitates a fair rate hike.

…

As all parties with a stake in the pipeline replacement investigation move forward, the focus must be on the consumer. And transparency is a big piece of that. The best course of action now is to be upfront about the problems we face so we can all steel ourselves for the work that needs to be done.