Editorial Roundup: Texas

| November 30, 2020 7:09 AM

The Dallas Morning News. Nov. 28, 2020

Texas killed straight-ticket voting, and our state is better for it

Voters have to consider the candidate, not the party.

In this moment of political division, our mind has been turning to another moment in our political history. The moment when George Washington, after his turn in the presidency, walked away from high office at a time when he very easily could have retained power for at least another term.

It was not the first time he voluntarily gave up power and returned to his farm, thereby replacing Cincinnatus as the emblem of republican virtue. But it was the moment when, in his farewell address, he gave us his lasting warning against the entrenchment of political parties, or factions as he called them.

In the two-plus centuries since, we have seen Washington’s worries about the power of political parties realized. Anyone not now awake to the willingness of both of our major parties to put their own interests ahead of the nation’s is deeply asleep.

Republicans in Austin may well have foreseen the future. The bill was passed almost along party lines, with Republicans giving it strong support.

But it’s not important which party benefited in this go-around. In coming years, it could well be down-ballot Democrats who catch a break.

What’s important is that under the law, Texans have to consider the candidate, not the party.

traight-ticket voting disempowers individual candidates and empowers political parties in ways we hope would have made our founders cringe. We have no doubt Washington would have disapproved.

Political parties serve their purpose. They help organize people around ideas and provide a framework for what candidates generally stand for. But in the present political climate, where parties have accrued so much power and where “red” vs. “blue” is such a consuming binary, it is important to remember we are represented by people, not parties.

Whether this reform will live up to the hopes of its sponsors, we cannot yet say. Former Republican state Rep. Ron Simmons was quoted in the Texas Tribune as predicting that the bill would “give us better candidates and better elected officials. It won’t have people getting voted out just because of their party identity.”

Simmons, alas, was voted out in a Democratic surge in 2018.

A republic like ours needs people who empower representatives, not people who empower parties. So we are glad to see straight-ticket voting go away. And may it never return to Texas.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Nov. 27, 2020

COVID-19 is raging. Why are we bringing thousands of rodeo fans to Fort Worth area?

Leaders have planned carefully, but they need to seriously consider whether such events are worth it in the pandemic.

The advice comes over and over again, often with urgent, dire tones: avoid large gatherings with other people. It’s crucial to curtailing the rapidly growing pandemic.

Why, then, are Fort Worth and Arlington eagerly welcoming thousands of rodeo fans to town in early December? After all, they’re not coming here to enjoy our hotels, lovely though they may be. They’re coming, by the thousands, for public events.

It’s confusing at best to say in one moment that a family holiday dinner will spread disease while thousands of people in an arena or other venue — Globe Life Field for the 2020 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo or, say, AT&T Stadium for Dallas Cowboys games — is fine.

Though the main events for the rodeo are at the Rangers’ ballpark, Fort Worth will see a host of related activities, especially in the Stockyards. Both cities and event organizers have taken steps to make the events safe, and they vow mask requirements will be enforced.

This Editorial Board has urged adaptation to the virus, following science about how it’s spread and figuring out how activities can be altered to be safe. But part of adaptation is acknowledging reality about the current moment of the pandemic and whether a gathering that might have been safer before is too dangerous now. With Tarrant County and Texas setting COVID-19 case records, the timing is terrible.

Plans are in place for limited capacity, giving out masks and stringent cleaning, but organizers can’t control human behavior. Visitors will cluster in hotels and restaurants. Masks will slip. The virus will spread.

In this phase of the pandemic, the bar for events such as these should be high. When the deal to move the event from Las Vegas to Arlington was announced in September, perhaps it seemed the virus would remain under better control. And the area certainly needs the economic boost, particularly in the hospitality industry. But future requests for crowd permits must be closely scrutinized.

After all, if illness threatens to overwhelm our hospitals, any financial gain will be lost if businesses have to reduce their operating capacity under Gov. Greg Abbott’s standing emergency order.

It’s a high threshold: If 15% of hospital beds in a region of the state defined as a trauma service area are filled with COVID-19 patients for more than a week, businesses must ratchet back from 75% to 50%. Tarrant County and its urban/suburban neighbors are grouped with more rural counties near the Red River, so it’ll take more than just the local case surge. But the area has been close to the limit in recent days.

And make no mistake, our hospitals are in danger. A University of North Texas Health Science Center epidemiologist warned that we could quickly run out of beds, based on the explosive growth in coronavirus cases. Overwhelmed health care facilities would be a problem for anyone needing care, not just COVID-19 patients.

Throughout the pandemic, the most difficult question for leaders and policymakers is how to enforce restrictions. County leaders grappled with the question Tuesday as commissioners voted to extend the local emergency declaration and the mandate that businesses require customers to wear masks.

There’s been confusion over how far the governor’s order goes. County Judge Glen Whitley, acting on the advice of District Attorney Sharen Wilson’s office, says Abbott’s order doesn’t allow enforcement of social-distancing requirements in businesses, a key question for restaurants especially.

City leaders are adamant that the order does impose such rules. They’re the ones doing the bulk of enforcing, through code-compliance departments. And the need for distancing should be obvious.

It’s a shame if local businesses, the backbone of our economy, face tougher scrutiny than big, tourist-drawing events. Fort Worth and Arlington leaders need to tread carefully in allowing such gatherings.

This area excels at attracting events and their cash-generating crowds. But right now, we don’t need to draw more coronavirus cases, too.

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Austin American-Statesman. Nov. 27, 2020

Curbing COVID threat in prisons can start here

Texas has more than 12,000 prison inmates who have been approved for parole but are still languishing behind bars. That’s one in 10 state prisoners, green-lighted for release but still stuck. In many cases they’re simply waiting to take state-mandated programs about substance abuse, drunken driving or other issues.

This Texas practice — approving inmates for parole but then tacking on programs that can take months, even a year, to access — was wasteful enough in normal times. Inmates sat in prison longer. Taxpayers funded these needlessly extended stays.

Now, in the throes of a coronavirus pandemic that spreads like wildfire in close quarters, this practice keeps prisons fuller. And that puts inmates, prison staffers and the communities where they live at greater risk for catching and spreading this life-threatening virus.

With a new report showing Texas prisons have the highest COVID-19 death tolls of inmates and staff of any prison system in the country, Gov. Greg Abbott should consider common-sense steps to reduce the number of people housed in these facilities. A good place to start: An executive order allowing parole-approved inmates to leave prison and complete their worthwhile state-ordered programs from home.

Criminal justice reform advocates have been making this case for months in Texas, Tennessee and a few other states. “This is low-hanging fruit,” Nashville lawyer David Raybin told Statesman reporters in June.

But nothing has changed. And now we can see the cost of that stasis. Among the 190 COVID deaths of Texas state prisoners from early April through early October, nine were inmates who had been approved for parole but not yet released, according to a new study by the University of Texas’ COVID, Corrections and Oversight Project. Likely hundreds, if not thousands, of parole-approved inmates were among the 23,137 state prisoners infected with the virus in those same months. All of them were in a position to spread it to others.

It’s critically important to recognize that Texas prisons are also the workplaces for roughly 25,000 corrections officers, as well as chaplains, nurses and other front-line workers. The UT report found 27 corrections staffers in Texas had died of COVID-19 from early April to early October. Reducing the coronavirus spread in prisons means safer workplaces for all of those staffers — and the communities they go home to after each shift.

“There’s no bright line between what happens inside prisons and jails and what happens in the community,” Michele Deitch, the lead author of the UT study, told us. “If you want to stop outbreaks in the community, you have to stop the outbreaks in prisons and jails.”

To its credit, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has developed a massive COVID testing campaign to identify those carrying the virus so they can be separated from others. The system has conducted tests on more than 70,000 employees and 225,000 inmates to date. TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel told us nearly 80% of the positive cases come from asymptomatic carriers. He suggested those cases could make Texas’ numbers look higher than other states that test only those inmates showing symptoms.

Still, a disease that has killed at least 190 inmates and 27 corrections staffers must be recognized as a serious threat. Testing and isolation are useful strategies. But they must be coupled with meaningful efforts to reduce the prison population by releasing people who don’t need to be there.

In at least 39 states, officials have taken steps to release certain inmates early in order to reduce the COVID risk in prisons and jails. In Arkansas, for example, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson directed the parole board and state prison system in April to identify nonviolent inmates eligible for release in the next six months, and review them for possible early release. Abbott should have taken similar steps months ago. He could still do so now. Doing so could save the lives of inmates and staffers.

At a minimum, Abbott should enact an executive order allowing parole-approved inmates to leave prison and take their state-mandated courses from home or through community-based programs. Long-term, the governor should direct the prison system and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to coordinate efforts so inmates can receive any required programming while they’re serving their sentence, not after they’ve otherwise been cleared for release.

Ultimately it’s a matter of efficiency. But right now, with coronavirus cases climbing dangerously, it’s also a matter of life and death.

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