Month: August 2011

Battle brewing over Texas public pensions – Kate Alexander, Austin American-Statesman A group of high-powered Houston business leaders is starting a statewide campaign to overhaul retirement for future teachers, firefighters, police officers, judges and other

Note: The following report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. Click here to view the story on the Texas Watchdog website. BY MIKE CRONIN AND JENNIFER PEEBLES There’s trouble at the

Metro abandoning bid to payoff general mobility carry-over in fiscal 2012 – Mike Reed, Your Houston News Metro has abandoned plans to complete its carry-over general-mobility payments to the city of Houston and Harris County

ATS offers last-minute settlement – Chris Moran, Chron Houston Politics A top executive of the city’s red-light camera vendor publicly offered not to pursue damages for the eight months the city had the cameras dark

Last week, City Council took up Mayor Parker’s Hire Houston First initiative. The item was tagged, and returns to Council this week (item #33). We have not previously discussed the initiative, but here is an

Houston critics see red over traffic cams – Chris Moran, Houston Chronicle A little over a month ago, Houston Mayor Annise Parker announced she was turning the red-light cameras back on and declared she did

Assistant MPD Chief Makes Dream Team – Write On METRO With his new assistant chief in place, Rodriguez said they’re a “dream team on par with any agency. I’m pretty happy. I’ve got the man

Houston red-light cameras may be turned off again – Chris Moran, Houston Chronicle (08/12/2011) Houston’s red-light camera vendor said on Friday that Mayor Annise Parker is trying to turn the cameras off again, and it

HPD rape case backlog is far worse than feared – Anita Hassan, Houston Chronicle According to department officials and figures compiled for a grant awarded to HPD from the National Institute of Justice this year,

Houston expects mandatory water restrictions next week – Matt Schwartz, Houston Chronicle Mayor Annise Parker this morning said that the city is moving toward enacting mandatory water restrictions and a simultaneous draw-down of water from