Category Archives: News – Houston Local

Fulbright’s tough week

Posted on by
Reply

FJlogo.gifIt has not been a week to remember for the venerable Houston law firm, Fulbright & Jaworski.
First, the firm’s expected public relations coup in hiring Harris County Judge Robert Eckels as a lobbyist with the firm was met with more than a little grumbling locally, forcing Eckels to address the question of why on earth he didn’t resign before last November’s election so that the voters could elect his successor? Eckels proceeded to sound oddly out of sorts in his subsequent public attempts to answer that quite reasonable question.
But that letdown was peanuts compared to the potential public relations disaster reported in this AboveTheLaw post:

Breaking: Fulbright & Jaworski Partner Drops the N-Bomb During A Recruiting Interview!
The email reprinted below, from Dean Katharine T. Bartlett, just went out to everyone at Duke Law School. It was forwarded to us by a source at the school.
Yes, we know: the partner who pulled a Michael Richards used “the n word” in the context of telling a story, in which the racial epithet was uttered by a character in the story. He didn’t use “the n word” to refer to any student or interviewee.
We don’t know the nature of the story being told by the partner. But unless the story was about, say, the partner’s pro bono representation, in a civil action for damages, of a hate crime or police brutality victim who was attacked and called “the n word,” it was hugely inappropriate for the partner to use a racial slur in this context (or, for that matter, any other context).

The post goes on to quote the Duke Law Dean’s entire email about the incident in its humiliating entirety, which is now all over the blogosphere. And the extensive comments to the post are interesting, to say the least.
But wait a minute. It turns out that there is more than a little context to the story. The above post was followed by this explanation from the Fulbright executive committee:

Dear Colleagues:
Because you may hear about or be asked about a recent situation at a law school where attorneys participated in training interviews of students, we want to bring it to your attention. One of our lawyers recounted a story about Leon Jaworskiís defense of an African-American man in a murder trial in Waco, Texas in the 1920s. During the retelling, in an effort to display the depth of racial hostility that Jaworski and his client faced, the attorney used a racial term that characterized what the district attorney in the case said about the defendant. After review of the situation, all involved concluded that such terms, although recounted without ill intentions, are inappropriate for our firm, which values diversity and strives for inclusiveness.
We are addressing the situation, and Steve Pfeiffer and other senior partners are en route to meet with the students. One of the other attorneys who participated in the training session acted immediately when the incident was called to his attention and responded with an electronic letter of explanation and appropriate apology. Any inquiries should be directed to the firm’s Hiring Partner, Gerry Lowry.
Executive Committee

And to make matters even more interesting, it appears that some members of the Duke Law School Faculty were stoking the fires. AboveTheLaw.com received the following email from a current law student at Duke:

This partner was relating what another person said in the context of telling a story. Now everyone is piling on him. The student [who voiced the complaint] has been goaded on by some super liberal professors.

H’mm. I wonder if any of those Duke law professors were the same ones who also supported the lynch mob in the Duke lacrosse team case?
My sense is that this all blows over quickly for Fulbright because, in the end, the Duke Law School Dean made a mountain out of molehill. But man, what a way to end a week that I’m sure the firm expected to be a public relations bonanza. Such is life in the big city.
Update: The Texas Lawyer ($) posted this online article on the incident today.

More on the outrage that is the Harris County Jail

Posted on by
3

Harris_County_Jail_Large.jpgEven as things change in Harris County government, the chronic problems of the Harris County Jail remain the same.

A Houston Chronicle review of state and county records reveals that from January 2001 through December 2006, at least 101 inmates ó an average of about 17 a year ó have died while in the custody of the Harris County Jail. In 2006 alone, after three consecutive years of failing to be in compliance with state standards, the jail recorded 22 in-custody deaths.
At the time of their deaths, at least 72 of the inmates ó more than 70 percent ó were awaiting court hearings and had yet to be convicted of the crimes that led to their incarceration.
Records and interviews show that almost one-third of the deaths involve questions of inadequate responses from guards and staff, failure by jail officials to provide inmates with essential medical and psychiatric care and medications, unsanitary conditions, and two allegations of physical abuse by guards.
In at least 13 cases, relatives or documents raise questions over whether inmates received needed medications prior to their deaths. Additionally, 11 of the deaths involve infections and illnesses suggesting sanitation problems. In 10 other cases, death reports suggest possible neglect, . . . [ . . .]
Prisoners also claim they have been forced to sleep on mattresses on cellblock floors ó sometimes next to toilets. They maintain that the crowded living conditions at the jail are ripe for disease and bacteria, particularly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, a potentially lethal blood infection.
As a result, numerous inmates contend they have contracted staph infections while incarcerated. Jail records show that between January 2001 and April 2005, there were 60 medical quarantines at the jail. The records show at least two of the quarantines were related to staph infections. The causes of 11 other quarantines are not listed.

Apparently with the exception of the Harris County Commissioners, most everyone agrees that something needs to be done about the Harris County Jail. Yet, as has been the case for the almost 30 years now that I’ve been practicing law in Houston, while most everyone agrees, nothing ever gets done.
Government generally — and Harris County government in particular — is responsive to those constituencies that wield political power. Prisoners have no political power and are generally unpopular with those who do. Inasmuch as most voters never set foot in a jail and have no first-hand experience of the abysmal conditions, it is easy to understand why nothing is ever done about this outrage, at least from a political standpoint.
But that doesn’t make the condition of the Harris County Jail any easier to stomach. At a time when Governor Perry is bowing to the powerful political forces that want to build even more prisons, it’s high time that voters realize the scam that state and local politicians have foisted on them in bowing to the powerful political forces that support the endless cycle of building more and more prisons. The problem with the Harris County Jail is largely the result of too many non-violent or petty criminals being locked up there for too long. Until the politicians do the hard work necessary to reform the barbaric policies that have caused that condition, the jail problem is unlikely to change. Kudos to the Chronicle for keeping this problem on the frontburner. Charles Kuffner and Burnt Orange Report have more.

The fading allure of the “Superstar Cities”

Posted on by
Reply

night%20Houston%20skyline.jpgUrban economics expert Joel Kotkin (previous posts here) reports on the myth of the “superstar cities” in this WSJ ($) article and he sums up the bullish prospects of cities such as Houston in comparison to supposed superstar cities such as New York, San Francisco and Boston:

Economic and demographic trends suggest that the future of American urbanism lies not in the elite cities but in younger, more affordable and less self-regarding places.
Over the past 15 years, it has been opportunistic newcomers — Houston, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Riverside — that have created the most new jobs and gained the most net domestic migration. In contrast there has been virtually negligible long-term net growth in jobs or positive domestic migration to places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or the San Francisco Bay Area.
What as much as anything distinguishes elite places — what Wharton real-estate professor Joe Gyourko calls “the superstar cities” — are their absurdly high real-estate prices. New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles have long been more expensive than, say, Dallas, Houston or Phoenix — but in recent years the difference in price, he calculates, has increased beyond all reason. San Francisco prices since 1950, for example, have grown at twice the national rate for the 50 largest metropolitan areas.[. . .]
This perhaps explains why the largest companies — with the notable exception of Silicon Valley — have continued to move toward the more opportunistic cities. New York and its environs, for example, had 140 such firms in 1960; in 2006 the number had dropped to less than half that, some of those running with only skeleton top management. Houston, in contrast, had only one Fortune 500 company in 1960; today it is home to over 20. Houston companies tend to staff heavily locally; this is one reason the city was able to replace New York and other high-cost locales as the nation’s unchallenged energy capital. Another example of this trend is Charlotte’s rise as the nation’s second-ranked banking center in terms of assets, surpassing San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles, indeed all superstar cities except New York.

Houston’s own urban policy wonk, Tory Gattis, has more of the Kotkin article and provides his own series of posts on why young cities such as Houston are well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities that are not rich enough for the superstar cities. Not a bad position to be in, folks.

One of the Chron’s good guys retires

Posted on by
1

doggett.gifI don’t fish much and hunt even less, but I have enjoyed enjoyed the writing of Houston Chronicle Outdoors columnist Joe Doggett for the past 35 years. Over that time, Doggett has cogently addressed a wide variety of subjects and issues that impact hunting and fishing in a manner that made them equally interesting to the avid and casual outdoorsman alike. This past Sunday, Doggett wrote his final column for the Chronicle before heading toward a retirement for which his occupation prepared him particularly well. He will be missed.
By the way, Doggett’s last column gave me an excuse to pass along the specially-made YouTube commercial below with a hilarious hunting theme. Enjoy.

Does New Orleans really need this?

Posted on by
Reply

Lee%20Brown.JPGA week or so ago, this post noted that the local and state governments of Louisiana have to date failed to do what is necessary to jump-start the revitalization of New Orleans.
So, faced with such a record of failure, what does the local government of New Orleans do?
Hire former Houston mayor Lee P. Brown as a consultant.
As with Anne Linehan, this development left me speechless. But thankfully, Richard Connelly over at the Houston Press was able to pull himself together to place the hiring of Brown in perspective:

If you’ve ever asked yourself, as you’ve watched the post-Katrina morass of incompetence and violence that has engulfed New Orleans, whether that city has suffered enough, you have your answer. And that answer is “no.”
N’awlins, get ready for…the magical world of Lee P. Brown!
Brown, who was Atlanta’s public-safety commissioner during a famously inept serial-murder investigation, who was New York’s police commissioner during the ineptly handled Crown Heights riots, who was Houston mayor while the HPD crime lab was run…eptly? Guess again!…has been hired to solve New Orleans’ massive violent-crime problem.
If his time here is any indication, Brown will implement a two-pronged attack. He will a) bore everyone to death, using content-less, clichÈ-filled, charisma-free speeches to put criminals into a stupor; and b) take a lot of taxpayer-funded out-of-town trips. We’re sure Rome and London need to be studied closely for tips on how to stop Ninth Ward gangbangers.
Brown told the Louisiana Weekly that “there is no silver bullet that is going to say that this is going to be done tomorrow…Working together, you can get the job done.”
We’re kind of surprised Brown didn’t mention making New Orleans “a world-class city,” but it’s still early.

Connelly goes on to report that even residents of New Orleans are scratching their heads over what Brown is supposed to do.
Meanwhile, the prescription for government to revive New Orleans remains simple — ensure law and order, provide basic services, create an environment where entreprenuers will take the risk of starting businesses that will create jobs that will attract residents to the area, and then get out of the way. If Brown passes that advice along to Mayor Nagin, then he actually might be worth whatever New Orleans is paying him.
But don’t count on it.

What to do about TSU?

Posted on by
Reply

TSU.gifEarlier this week, the discussion in Texas education circles was the University of Houston’s proposal to establish a third medical school in the Texas Medical School in conjunction with The Methodist Hospital and Cornell University. Today, the discussion turns toward one of chronic problems of the Texas system of public universities — what to do about Texas Southern University?
Turns out that former TSU president Priscilla Slade’s spending habits are the least of TSU’s problems. TSU cannot come close to paying its current and projected liabilities, which include the following:

Deferred maintenance on buildings — including daily pumping of water out of the school’s administration building — totaling $54 million over the next 10 years;
Missing purchase orders and outstanding payables from past years to vendors of $1.7 million owed without purchase orders and another $900,000 owed with purchase orders that were not budgeted;
Shuttle service and parking garages do not collect enough fees to support debt service on $34 million in construction projects. Who thought that they would?;
The athletics department has a $2 million operating deficit even though it is subsidized primarily with student fees;
The institution’s computer and information technology is obsolescent and needs to be overhauled at a short term cost of more than $500,000, which is also not budgeted; and
There is a $1.2 million debt service shortfall on two new dorms that are not even fully occupied.

Governor Perry’s office issued the usual strong words about TSU needing to fix its problems immediately. But, really. What the heck is the TSU board of regents to do in the short term? Hold bake sales to raise money?
Texas Southern’s financial problems are chronic and are not going away absent a re-evaluation of its place among Texas public universities in general and the Houston area’s need for multiple open admission institutions, in particular. Although it provided an important service to Texas in the days of segregation, TSU has been largely overtaken in providing the open admissions service to the Houston area by the University of Houston-Downtown, which does a better job of educating its students and, over the past decade or so, has grown into a larger institution than TSU. Of course, it helps that UH-D has access to the University of Houston system’s relatively modest endowment, a distinct advantage that TSU has never enjoyed.
So, what to do with TSU? Well, it’s clear that providing minimal emergency funding for its short-term financial problems — the usual response — is akin to throwing money on a dormant campfire. TSU needs to be merged into one of the major university systems — the UH system probably makes the most sense at this point — and then the legislature needs to provide realistic short-term and long-term funding while UH absorbs TSU, probably into a second UH-D campus. But however TSU is reorganized, one thing is clear — providing funding for its current financial problems without a long-term plan for reorganizing the institution and redefining its purpose would be a failure of leadership, something that Texans have endured for far too long in the funding and administration of their public universities.

Thinking beyond the UH Medical School

Posted on by
1

TMC-arial.gifBlogHouston.net’s Kevin Whited notes this Chronicle/Todd Ackerman article about the University of Houston floating a proposed new Texas Medical Center-based medical school in a collaborative project with The Methodist Hospital and Cornell University’s Weill Medical School.
Unfortunately for UH, the proposal has zilch chance of floating for much more than a few minutes amidst the shark-infested waters of Texas educational politics. Heck, the political forces in Texas cannot even agree to provide adequate funding of UH’s uncriticizable goal of becoming the state’s third tier I research university. The University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and Baylor College of Medicine — Methodist’s former longtime partner — are just a few of the powerful political forces that would almost certainly line up against the UH-Methodist proposal.
Yet, the UH-Methodist proposal has merit, so here’s a proposed modification. Rather than start another medical school from scratch, let’s merge the University of Houston system with the Texas A&M system and have A&M expand its fledgling medical school into the Texas Medical Center from its current central Texas outpost. From a broader standpoint, the merger makes sense because it gives the A&M system something that it desperately needs — a major urban presence — while also giving UH something that it has always lacked — that is, access to adequate endowed capital. Such a merger would also provide A&M with the law school that it has always coveted and would greatly facilitate UH’s elevation into a tier I research institution, which is something that would substantially benefit the Houston area.
While the University of Texas would almost certainly oppose such a merger, perhaps a deal could be struck at the same time to merge the Texas Tech University system into the UT system while organizing the remainder of Texas’ non-affiliated public universities into a third university system for funding and administrative purposes. Such a structure would give Texas a similar structure to that of the reasonably successful California model, which has generated far more first rate, tier I research universities (10) than the current dysfunctional Texas system (2). Indeed, almost anything would be a huge improvement over the current Texas system, which allocates a disproportionate amount of endowed capital to the UT and A&M systems while starving the remainder of Texas’ public universities.
Make sense? You bet. Chances of happening? Probably not much. But just as UCLA and Cal-Berkeley co-exist productively in the same university system in California, UH and A&M could do the same in Texas. And just as two major university systems work side-by-side together to educate Californians, a similar structure would be a substantial improvement in the educational system of Texas.

Where to sit at Cafe Annie

Posted on by
Reply

Cafe%20Annie%20seating2.gifCafe Annie has been one of Houston’s finest restaurants for over a decade, so it tends to attract an interesting mix of local personalities.
This recent Wall Street Journal ($) article presents the restaurant’s floor plan and notes who sits where among a number of well-known regulars.
My wife and I prefer a table in the area of tables 54-66, which are away from most of the traffic and provide a decent amount of privacy.
And, yes, that deep-fried quail is quite good.

The Todd Graham Affair

Posted on by
2

todd-grahamMy, the risk of managing a minor league professional football team certainly is not pleasant at times, is it?

As this John Lopez column relates, Conference USA Coach of the Year Todd Graham — who in his first season at Rice University led the Owls to their first bowl game since the early 1960’s — stunned the Rice community last week by announcing that he was leaving after only one season to replace his former boss, Steve Kragthorpe, as head coach at the University of Tulsa.

Hightailing it after only one season, switching jobs between conference members and leaving Rice without a head coach and most of its football coaching staff during the middle of recruiting season — Graham pretty well handled this job change about as shabbily as possible (Whew! Just wait until the Marching Owl Band gets ahold of that material for its halftime show at the next Rice-Tulsa game). And as Lopez’s column and Rice alum Charles Kuffner report, supporters of the Rice football program are certainly not happy with Coach Graham.

Of course, many of those disgruntled Rice supporters overlook the fact that they ran off Ken Hatfield, a loyal and good football coach who had served the Rice program honorably and effectively for many years in order to hire Coach Graham in the first place. Oh well, chalk it up to the dysfunctional marriage of university management and minor league professional football.

By the way, Coach Graham better hope that his career choices are better than the last Rice football coach who elected to take another job after just one season on South Main.

The Houston connection to the Alabama-Saban deal

Posted on by
Reply

airliner6.jpgThe college football world is abuzz this week with the lucrative deal that the University of Alabama rolled out to attract Miami Dolphins head coach Nick Saban to Tuscaloosa, which is yet another example of the market distortions that result from the NCAA’s excessive regulation of big-time college football. But that’s an issue for another day. Turns out that, as usual, there is a Houston business connection to the Saban hiring at Alabama.
You see, Alabama fans were highly interested in the University’s behind-the-scenes courtship of Saban, so Houston-based FlightAware.com — a web-based company that allows users to track flight activity — became one of the favorite sources of information for Alabama fans following the Saban saga:

Before Nick Saban announced Wednesday that he was leaving the Miami Dolphins to take over at Alabama, fans had flocked to FlightAware.com, a Web site that allows users to track flight activity. Was South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier flying into Tuscaloosa Regional Airport? Was a plane owned by the University of Alabama departing for Norman, Okla., perhaps with university officials on their way to court Sooners Coach Bob Stoops?
ìWhen you set out a vision for how you can help people, you can envision a whole lot of things,î said Daniel Baker, the founder and chief executive of FlightAware.com. ìWeíd like to claim we had unlimited foresight into how our service would be used, but this certainly is an unusual use for FlightAware.î
Coaching searches at other prominent college programs have also sent fans scurrying to glean information from online flight data. Internet message boards revealed that fans from Michigan State, Cincinnati and North Carolina State turned to the Web site. [. . .]
Baker and his staff could not have anticipated those uses by fans. Neither could Wayne Cameron, manager of the Tuscaloosa airport. He said that after Mike Shula was fired, he fielded dozens of inquiries about activity at the airport.
ìEverybody in the country has been tracking the universityís plane and Paul Bryant Jr.ís plane,î Cameron said. Bryant, the son of the renowned Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, is a member of Alabamaís Board of Trustees and the boardís athletics committee.
ìThey would ask who Iíd seen get off planes, or if Iíd seen Spurrier, or if I knew where the university plane was going,î Cameron added. ìIt was kind of like a feeding frenzy there for a few days.î
John Howard, a 25-year-old Crimson Tide fan, created the blog hirebobstoops.blogspot.com after he determined that flight activity he traced on FlightAware.com indicated that Alabama may be interested in hiring Stoops from Oklahoma.
ìYou have a lot of activity between Norman and Tuscaloosa,î Howard said in an interview in early December. ìI have no clue if itís all connected, and Iím not saying it is.
ìI just think itís real interesting that all these planes and these cities are connecting.î
By this week, however, signals were pointing elsewhere. Flight data turned Alabama fansí attention to Saban when reports emerged that Mal Moore, the athletic director, had flown to Miami.
Doug Walker, the universityís associate athletic director for media relations, said Moore and others involved in the search knew that flights were being tracked.
ìWeíre aware of it, but itís not affecting the way weíre conducting our business,î Walker said. ìWeíre not trying to conduct a world war here, weíre just trying to hire a football coach.î
And Baker is only trying to operate a flight-tracking service. If fans visit his site, so be it.
ìIf itís all in good fun and everyoneís happy, itís always a good thing,î Baker said.
ìBut I wouldnít be surprised if people are losing sleep by hitting refresh on the page.î