State senate passes TERP bill
BY ERIKA MCDONALD
..... The state Senate Monday passed a bill that raises funding for the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan or TERP. Clean air advocates say Senate bill 1365 is stronger than its House companion, but the bill faces serious Republican-led opposition.
.....The House environmental regulations committee chair Dennis Bonnen of Angleton vowed to sideline the bill, unless Senators agreed to water it down to more closely resemble the House version. Bonnen wants the bill to specifically ban the decrease of speed limits for environmental purposes.
....."If in conference the Senate does not agree to adopt that language, I will not let that bill out of the conference committee," Bonnen said.
More.
Homeland Dept. stops trying to deport Calero
BY SHANNON YOUNG
.....As previously reported by KPFT News, Roger Calero is a New York based, Nicaraguan born, bilingual journalist and magazine editor who was detained by the INS upon his arrival to Houston's Intercontinental airport Dec. 3 of last year. After a brief period in a detention facility in Houston, Mr. Calero was released pending his appearance at an exclusion hearing, originally scheduled for March 25. Just days before this hearing, he received confirmation regarding a change of venue requested by his legal team, effectively moving his trial from Houston to New Jersey, where Mr. Calero resides.
.....On May 1, Calero received a fax from his attorney, Claudia Slovinksy, stating that the government has moved to terminate its effort to exclude him from the country.
.....In a brief motion, Assistant District Counsel Alan Wolf of the Department of Homeland Security requests that the Immigration Court in Newark terminate the instant Removal Proceedings predicated on the Notice to Appear dated Dec. 3, 2002, issued in Houston, Texas. More.
State may handle all environmental crimes
BY ERIKA MCDONALD
.....Also on Monday, the state House approved a Senate bill that would wrest jurisdiction over environmental crimes from local district attorneys and hand it over to the state.
.....Senate Bill 1265 was amended in the House to allow district attorneys to bypass the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality if the accused party did not hold a permit with the state. In other words, local law enforcers could go after individuals without state oversight, but must rely on the state to pursue criminal charges on polluting corporations.
.....Mike Sizemore, chief of staff for Senator Ken Armbrister who wrote the original bill said they don't mind the House amendment, as long as the bill makes it to the Governor's desk.
....."Basically the point of this bill is to make sure real criminal cases are prosecuted, instead of prosecuting accidents as crimes," Sizemore said. More.
Urban League, Rockets' disagree about order
BY MIKE REED
.....A district judge's temporary restraining order concerning the Houston Rockets signing of new operations contracts is apparently open to even broader interpretation [than the various definitions of the word - participation - which prompted the disagreement originally].
..... Lawyers for the Houston Area Urban League - emerged from a closed session Tuesday with Judge John Coselli and opposition lawyers - claiming new agreements in such diverse areas as food and beverage concessions, advertising, suite rentals, security and ticket sales - had been prohibited until at least the temporary injunction hearing of May 15.
..... Not true, countered Rockets' spokesman Bill Miller, who said the judge's only restrictions concern food concession contracts, which can still be signed with the judge's approval. More.
Rainbow-Push(es) for more executive minorities
BY JACKSON ALLERS
.....Coinciding with this week's oil industry Offshore Technology Conference, Jesse Jackson is in Houston promoting his Rainbow-Push Coalition's bid to get more minorities and women into the corporate sector.
.....Called Wall Street Project, Jackson founded the organization in 1996 as a way to "influence corporate America through research and education to embrace inclusion as a means of growth."
.....In a press conference this morning, Jackson focused his comments on Houston's energy sector, saying that minorities represented "value added" to corporate environments. But, he also added, he was surprised by who was not present at the Offshore Technology Conference:
....."Well almost no African-American and Latinos from Houston are at the conference. It's as if it is another world. Because there is a cultural disconnect between the energy industry and Houstonians who live in the energy capital." More.
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State kills Vaughan while some protest
BY ERIC THOMPSON
..... Last night the State of Texas executed Roger Dale Vaughn for the 1991 robbery and slaying of Dora Watkins. Vaughn was the 14th Texas inmate executed in the first four months of this year and the 303rd person to receive a lethal injection since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1984. Eric Thompson has more:
.....Roger Vaughn declined to make a statement before the death warrant was executed as did all witness' directly following the execution.
.....However on hand, was a dozen people protesting and calling for a moratorium on state sponsored killings. Such a moratorium would allow time to study why the Lone Star State leads the free world in sentencing and carrying out executions.
.....Spokesperson of the Washington D.C.-based National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; Randall Elliot puts it in perspective:
....."You know Texas has carried out more than one third of the 852 executions that we have seen in the past quarter-century. Even Harris County, if Harris County was a state, it would actually rank second behind Texas and ahead of Virginia in terms of the number of people it sent to Death Row."
.....Just last week in the state capitol, Travis County commissioner's court took an unprecedented step in passing a resolution calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty.
.....The vote was passed 4 to 1 with 1 member abstaining.
.....Travis County judge Sam Biscoe expressed his concerns at the flaws in the criminal justice system and like 80 other civic bodies throughout the country, Biscoe feels the death penalty system in the state of Texas is in need of serious review.
....."Many people conclude that whether or not you execute someone is one question, but how you make that decision is another. Clearly mistakes are being made, and I don't know if the matter has ever been systematically studied." More.
Alabama bike lane a thing of the past
BY RICHARD HANNA
.....May is national Bike Month, but some Houston bicyclists are having a difficult time celebrating... and in some cases just getting around. Richard Hannah has more:
.....What was once a bike lane on West Alabama is now paved over with new black asphalt - and a new stripe of paint that no longer marks a bike lane.
.....The change follows the reconstruction on highway 59 and spur 527 into downtown. Texas Department of Transportation is involved in the project, but it's the city that is managing traffic re-direction.
.....And... it was the city's decision to remove the bike lanes from West Alabama. Public Information Officer with the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering Department, Gary Norman, explains.
....."The bike lane is being removed and the bikeway is being relocated to Fairview. That's in response to our mitigation work that we're going to be doing on West Alabama to handle the increased traffic loads we're expecting when Spur 527 goes under construction in February." More.
Bill could give more powers to media providers
BY RENEE FELTZ
.....Concerned about piracy and theft of services, the Motion Picture Association of America and the cable industry lobbyists have assisted in introducing a bill that would dramatically expand the power of entertainment companies, ISPs and cable companies to control what consumers can and can't connect to services they purchase.
.....President of the Austin Electronic Frontiers Foundation, David Robertson says the bill has good intentions of cracking down on music and video piracy:
....."The purpose of the bill is to protect the owners of material from having that material bootlegged and copied and taken without paying for it. That's not a bad thing. However, the bill was apparently written by a three year old on crack."
.....Critics like Robertson say the bill is written too broadly. As written, Senate Bill 1116 would restrict what consumers can do legally with consumer electronic devices in their own homes. Traditionally, control ends at one's modem, this bill would extend control to what a user does with their computer. Chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's policy committee, Adina Levin:
....."It extends the internet service provider's control very broadly. It's like the electric company being able to tell you what brand of toaster or what brand of microwave you're allowed to buy." More.
Spotty DNA labs becomes an issue in lege'
BY JACKSON ALLERS
.....Last week, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill requiring crime laboratories in Texas to meet accredited standards if involved in DNA testing. And according to Texas State Representative Kevin Bailey, author of the bill, the Houston Police Department scandal prompted the legislation.
..... Houston's crime lab has been shut down since December after it was determined by an independent audit that the lab and its scientists were negligent.
..... But Houston is not alone. Fort Worth's labs were closed in October after a DNA analyst was fired for negligence.
..... Neither crime lab had accredited DNA testing procedures.
..... Asked whether the 22 Republican Criminal District Court judges in Harris County will actually hold someone accountable for the foul-ups, Joanne Gavin of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, says she doubts it.
..... Gavin sees the criminal justice system as flawed from top to bottom:
..... "You know they have a tendency to cover each other's tracks. And they, you know, decide in advance that people are going to be convicted. If you sit through a few trials in this town, you see that. And of course, jurors go with the expectation that the authorities wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to indict somebody if they weren't guilty anyway."
..... Meanwhile, groups like the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement are also targeting the Ballistics division of the Houston Police Department's crime lab. They are asking for accountability in all of the Houston Police Department crime lab divisions, citing two particular cases where ballistics evidence has proven suspect in capital murder convictions. More.
Conference focuses on women, war
BY KENYA JOHNSON
.....Leading up the national rally in Austin this weekend called the Showdown in Texas, women gathered together on a nearby ranch in San Marcos to discuss issues related to the protest. Called the Women & War Conference, speakers at the event called for taking a stronger look at what they called the war at home. Tonight we bring you thought shared during one of the conference panels by Fulani Sunni Ali:
..... "In our homes, in our streets, in our neighborhoods, in our backyards: There is a war going on. And that might be the place where many of us need to focus our energy.
..... "Shortly after I moved to Austin in 1990, the city was gripped by a quadruple homicide, that came to be called 'The Yogurt Shop Murders.' In a predominately white part of town, four young white women - most of whom worked at the yogurt shop - were killed near the end of their work shift. Everyday for months, it seemed, every television newscaster would review the horrific details and lament the lack of leads regarding the case. The young men, white men, accused of the crime only recently came to trial, so the case remains very much a part of Austin's consciousness. More.
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