Houston businessman Charles Miller announced today that he has submitted his resignation as chairman of The University of Texas System Board of Regents to Governor Perry.
Miller has served five years of a six-year appointment and will continue to serve as chairman until the regents elect a replacement to fill his unexpired term. Then Governor George W. Bush appointed Miller to the board in February 1999, and he was elected chairman in February 2001. Miller was re-elected chairman in 2003, and his term as a regent would have ended in February 2005.
In his announcement, Miller stated that he wanted to resign at this time so that the board had plenty of time to choose his successor ahead of the 2005 session of the Texas Legislature.
The UT System has 15 campuses, including nine academic and six health institutions and an enrollment of approximately 180,000 students. The system’s current annual operating budget is $7.8 billion. UT System institutions in the Houston are include UT Health Science Center at Houston, UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the UT Medical Branch at Galveston.

A running joke among Houstonians for the past several years is that Houston’s downtown streets have resembled those of Beirut during the civil war there. This is due to a horrendously managed and coordinated street rebuilding project that has been going on in downtown Houston ever since early in the administration of former Mayor Lee Brown. Consequently, this announcement comes as no surprise to any Houstonian.

Houston’s outstanding medical community comes through again.

Read about one of Houston’s most remarkable men, Dr. Michael DeBakey.

Former Houston Rocket and NBA Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy made his initial court appearance yesterday in the child molestation criminal case that was filed against him earlier this week. Murphy’s criminal case landed in the court of District Judge Mike McSpadden, one of the most well-thought of criminal district judges in Houston.
Virtually since the charges arose earlier this week, Murphy and his attorney, Rusty Hardin, have been making the rounds of local radio and television talk shows proclaiming Murphy’s innocence and alleging that his daughters’ accusations against him amount to extortion. Accordingly, I found the following part of today’s Chronicle article rather, might we say, interesting:

Murphy and Hardin have suggested the daughters may have fabricated the charges because of greed.
Hardin has said three of the daughters claim Murphy took about $60,000 in retirement money left by their mother after she died in a car accident.

“They certainly told Calvin that if he didn’t give them that money, he would be sorry,” Hardin said earlier this week.

On Wednesday, he declined to comment on the possibility of extortion.

“This case puts (Murphy) in the untenable position of having to be publicly critical of his own family,” Hardin said. “He doesn’t want to participate in bashing the children publicly.”

But he hinted that some of Murphy’s other children would do just that. He said those who support their father will come forward soon to denounce the accusers.

Let’s get this straight. Murphy and Hardin first publicly accuse Murphy’s accusing daughters of being greedy extortionists. Then, Hardin states that they are not going to do so because the “case puts (Murphy) in the untenable position of having to be publicly critical of his own family.” But then he follows up that statement with another one suggesting that Murphy’s other children will soon make public statements critical of the accusers.
H’mm. Something tells me that Murphy’s public relations campaign is not particularly well-thought out.

As this Chronicle article reports, the public relations campaigns in the Calvin Murphy sexual molestation case are in full swing.
Murphy was interviewed live on Monday on KILT Radio’s afternoon drive time sports talk show, in which he claimed that the charges are false and financially motivated. Meanwhile, Assistant Harris County District Attorney Lance Long weighed in with a public statement that the accusers were not attempting to shake Murphy down, and that many of Murphy’s 14 children (from three different mothers) did not even know each other very well, confirming that Murphy’s extended family will never be compared the Brady Bunch.
Finally, in this Chronicle piece, Murphy’s attire while posting bond (a baggy, double-breasted white suit) is compared to the fashion displayed by other recent high-profile criminal defendants during their trials. Best line comes from long-time Houston defense attorney David Berg, who made the following comment on the clothes that Murphy wore while beeing booked:

“He looked like he was selling ice cream or more like an ice cream cone himself.”

In a stunning development on the local Houston scene, former Houston Rocket and Basketball Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy was charged today with sexually molesting five of his own children in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Murphy, who is 55 and has been the T.V. color commentator for the Rockets for many years, was charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and three counts of indecency with a child. The charges involve five daughters of Murphy’s (from three different women) who were under 17 at the time of the alleged assaults, but are now adults. Murphy has a total of 14 children!
Houston criminal defense attorney Rusty Hardin, who defended Arthur Anderson in the criminal trial arising from the Anderson’s involvement in the Enron scandal, is Murphy’s attorney and claims that the charges against Murphy are false. Murphy had no comment when he surrendered to authorities earlier today, where he posted a $90,000 bond and was released. The Rockets later granted his request for a leave of absence from his broadcasting duties.
Murphy was the subject of a criminal investigation several years ago in connection with allegations that he falsified payment records in connection with a position that he held with the City of Houston. The grand jury that investigated that matter elected not to issue an indictment against Murphy.

It was noted in this earlier post that it is allergy season in Houston. As this Chronicle story relates, that means everything outside is covered with the green film of pollen. For some, though, there is a silver lining:

For Bill Lawrence, the green film on your hood is the color of money.
“We like to be people-friendly,” said the president and chief executive of Bubbles Car Wash. “But I’ll be honest. We love pollen. Nothing makes your car look worse than being covered in green and yellow dust.”

This Chronicle article from yesterday reports on the deplorable grade the Port of Houston was given recently in a review released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nationwide environmental advocacy group. It was the lowest grade given to any of the nation’s 10 largest ports. Here is a copy of the full report.
For as long as I can remember, the Port of Houston has had a lousy relationship with its neighbors in the eastern part of Harris County, and this report reflects one of the reasons why. “We are up against an opponent that not only has a bad local reputation but at this point also a bad national reputation,” said Nancy Edmonson, mayor of Shoreacres. Public officials in Galena Park, another suburban community near the Port, have made similar public statements over the years.
Here’s hoping that elected officials take notice of the mess that the Port of Houston has become and do something about it, like appointing some real reformers to the Port’s Board. However, I will not hold my breath waiting for that to occur. As we have seen recently with several compliant corporate boards that have overseen disastrous judgment by management, it’s easier to appoint friends and political hacks to these boards than people who will really roll up their sleeves and perform the hard work that is the duty of a board member.

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo announced a new attendance record was set this year as the Rodeo closed Sunday. If you missed my earlier post about the Houston cultural phenomenom known as “the Rodeo,” you can read it here.