Commentary roundup: What newspapers around the state are saying
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Jan. 4 editorial, "AG Paxton’s request for gender changes on driver’s licenses poses privacy issues."
It takes considerable effort to change your gender on your driver’s license. According to Travis County’s law library , an individual must first bring a court order or change the gender on their birth certificate. To do that, they need a court order. To retrieve a court order, they must have a letter from a mental health professional that states a diagnosis and that “granting a change of gender/sex marker is in your best interest” as well as additional documents.
The right to such changes could and should be debated in the public sphere, in the medical professions and courtrooms, but even if changes seem unnecessary to (Attorney General Ken) Paxton, that does not give his office the green light to go on a witch hunt.
Another troubling aspect of this search is that Paxton’s office skipped going through normal channels, such as the DPS’ general counsel, and just went right to the driver’s license division staff. Additionally, when the Washington Post tried to make a request to Paxton’s office for the records it exchanged with DPS, the attorney general’s staff said no such records existed.
“Marisol Bernal-Leon, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, later emailed that the office ‘has reviewed its files and has no information responsive to your request’ for either records,” The Post reported. It’s one of the story’s most damning lines — this clearly happened, and the attorney general is playing games to hide it.
Paxton’s not only slithering around the DPS office, aiming his search at staff members without decision-making authority, but his office is suggesting no such exchange of information occurred.
— Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board
San Antonio Express-News
Jan. 2 editorial, "New Democratic Party primary schedule is more representative."
But in a change long overdue, Iowa and New Hampshire are about to lose their status as Democratic presidential primary gatekeepers.
The party’s rules and bylaws committee has accepted a recommendation from President Joe Biden that would allow South Carolina to go first, holding its primary on Feb. 3, 2024. South Carolina would be followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on Feb. 6, 2024, Georgia on Feb. 13, 2024, and Michigan on Feb. 27, 2024. The committee will vote on the proposal in early 2023.
Republicans will continue to begin their nominating process in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Should Iowa and New Hampshire insist on being first in the nation, the Democratic Party could penalize them and candidates campaigning there by stripping delegates.
These changes are personal for Biden. As a former vice president, Biden was the early front-runner for the 2020 Democratic nomination until he finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. He then saw his campaign revitalized in South Carolina with a decisive victory on the strength of the Black vote.
Biden never looked back and was propelled to the White House from South Carolina.
In a letter to the rules committee recommending the changes, Biden wrote: “We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window. As I said in February 2020, you cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color.”
The new primary schedule is not only more representative of voters of color but also more inclusive of regions, with a mix of urban and rural areas.
— San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board
Weatherford Democrat
Dec. 31 editorial, "Keeping the 'public' in public notices."
Two lawmakers out of Plano and San Jacinto County have filed legislation that may make surprises such as that a reality. The bills, if passed would remove requirements that counties, cities and school district post public notices in local newspapers.
They would also remove an added layer of transparency, giving government entities the option to only print these public notices on their own websites. That means searching each entity’s website, one by one, on a regular basis to get the public information you’re seeking.
Aside from removing the simplicity of being able to have all that information in one basket, there are many other issues with this potential new legislation.
Newspapers and their respective websites are generally where the public goes to get news about the government — not government websites.
You may hear the argument that publishing public notices costs too much when entities could publish their own for free on their own websites. We’d be remiss if we didn’t admit that we do make money off these notices, but the reality is funds spent by these entities on publishing public notices are a very small percentage of their budgets. That’s also not taking into account that newspaper rates for government public notices are lower than standard rates for newspaper advertisements.
In putting everything into a digital format on websites, governments are also completely overlooking those with lower incomes or senior citizens, both of which may not have readily available internet access.
It also eliminates any “papertrail” or physical accountability. Government entities are bound by laws that say they must publish notices in advance to give the public enough notice about an issue.
— Weatherford Democrat
Dallas Morning News
Jan. 3 editorial, "Dallas police took 375 days to respond to a records request about record requests."
In November 2021, we called the Dallas Police Department to ask how many open records requests had been filed with the agency that year. We were told to file an open records request to get that information.
And so we did. We received the information — a year and 10 days later.
That’s unacceptable. But it’s not just about this one request. Getting a prompt response to a public information request is a gamble at City Hall, too.
The Dallas City Council must take a look at the volume of requests that city departments and Dallas police are processing and provide the resources they need to reply in a timely manner as required by law.
The number of requests filed with Dallas police has increased in the past three years. We know from a city presentation that the department received 31,281 requests between January 2020 and January 2021. Four-fifths of those requests were for incident, arrest and crash reports and 911 call sheets.
Last year, Dallas police logged 42,485 requests and completed or closed almost as many. As of Dec. 9, more than 42,400 requests had been filed this year, and about 36,190 had been completed or closed.
Open records requests at DPD have increased by roughly 30% in three years.
Under the state’s Public Information Act, government agencies must release records “promptly.” If an agency will take more than 10 business days to produce the information, it must inform the requestor and set a date and hour “within a reasonable time” when the records will be available.
In our case, DPD told us last November that it anticipated it would respond to our request within 20 business days.
— Dallas Morning News Editorial Board
Houston Chronicle
Jan. 5 editorial, "Harris County Elections report is no smoking gun. Just smoky."
On Nov. 8, across nearly 800 churches, schools and community centers, thousands of election judges and clerks helped usher more than 1 million Harris County residents through the voting process. Most voters had a smooth experience. But not all. It is fitting that one of our nation’s most cherished institutions – its elections – are ultimately in the hands of the people, including civic-minded volunteers eager to help.
It is also messy, as the Harris County election administration's highly anticipated assessment revealedthis week.
Some of that mess is understandable: pulling off elections with ever-changing technology and laws remains a formidable logistical challenge. The report notes, for example, that some volunteers simply didn’t show up on Election Day while others weren’t able to get into the building at 6 a.m.
But some problems, in fact too many of them, including reports of polling places running out of ballotpaper, are institutional failures that our vulnerable democracy can ill afford.
The report is far from the smoking gun that some Republicans were hopeful for. In her lawsuit, Erin Lunceford, who lost her race for a civil district court bench, alleged that the county “totally botched” the elections, arguing that the errors of that day represented “an inexplicable failure of epic proportions.” The lawsuit claimed that, because of the ballot paper shortage, “at least 3,135 voters were turned away from 26 polling locations.”
In its report, the elections office went looking for those voters but came up short. That’s not necessarily because people weren’t turned away but because the office apparently doesn't have the tools to confirm whether they were or not.
The smoking gun may or may not be there in the foggy findings of the county’s report. It’s too cloudy to tell. And that in itself is troubling.
— Houston Chronicle Editorial Board
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin American-Statesman Commentary Roundup: Jan. 8, 2023
