From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, “Point Austin.” We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.

The Texas prison system continues to kill off the prisoners who came to death row in the 1990s, at the height of the death penalty’s popularity among juries. Officials plan to execute 60-year-old Garcia White on Oct. 1. He has been on the row since 1996.

Everyone loves Enchanted Rock, but have you ever wished there was more of it? Well, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department will be making that a reality soon, thanks to an acquisition of 630 acres adjacent to the park, announced today.

Not all efforts to spare death row inmates are equal.

Austin ISD is finishing up a complex project that the board of trustees will be glad to be done with – the revision of the district’s “scorecard.”

Global demand for oil, though projected to increase in the next few years, is showing a long-term trend of flatlining, and coal jobs are at an all-time low.

More than a year after voters approved the Austin Police Oversight Act and supporters sued to force the city of Austin and the Austin Police Department to fully implement it, officials are taking steps to fulfill one of the Oversight Act’s key mandates – elimination of a secret file where some police misconduct records had been kept.

When I tell my friends I’m going to a cannabis conference this weekend, they’re probably imagining an expo center with booths giving away free grinders and B-Real From Cypress Hill is signing autographs, but I’m guaranteed to see zero guys in beanies at this event.

Jonathan Kringen, a former leader at the Austin Police Department tasked with studying crime data, will not be getting his old job back following a daylong hearing at the Municipal Civil Service Commission on Sept. 9.