TXU Corp. has confirmed it's suspending the applications for eight of its proposed coal power plants. It contacted the State Office of Administrative Hearings yesterday and asked for a stay on the paperwork for seven plants and has also pulled the plug on an eighth.

However, pay close attention to the wording of the press release: "The stay request is for a period of up to six months upon approval. Upon closing of the merger agreement with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and Texas Pacific Group (TPG) announced earlier this week, TXU plans to formally withdraw the eight pending air permit applications."

Which translates as, "Hey, Texas, if you don't let us go through with the merger, we reserve the right to keep building the coal plants."

This comes after yesterday's decision by the U.S. District Court that TXU can continue to build the 581-megawatt coal-fired Sandow Unit 5.

Omigod – turn to cable Channel 6 right now for an installment of "Tech Talk," a city-produced quasi-infomercial on the city's new development tracking software for the "one stop shop" at City Hall (so named as the all-in-one location developers hit to pull permits to rape the city).

The Statesman's got a write-up on the program here.

The actual site itself isn't online yet, though.

Touching on my column today about bargaining rights for rank-and-file city employees, there's a pretty funny comment buried in the otherwise trollish Talk of Austin archives. (A note on that to Chron commenters: If you haven't figured it out already - and some of you dunderheads haven't - engaging the troll is no better than being the troll. C'mon people.)

Where were we? Oh yes:

"I recently retired from the Fire Department as a non civil service dispatcher - I earned $13 AN HOUR LESS than my civil service counterpart for doing the same job!!!!! When I asked the Chief, why? He told me “we don’t have anything to say about your pay.” I retired - got tired of being shafted by the city - and I knew the difference between bar-b-q and burning building smoke…"

In a story straight from the "only in Texas" files, the Texas Animal Health Commission is requesting that it be allowed to pay its inspectors $50 per day if they use their own horse for work.

Hey, you get your travel allowance, they get theirs.

Texas Youth Commission (a happy, skippy euphemism for the juvie people) is in trouble, and the Legislature is leading the charge to burn it to the ground. It's all over allegations of sexual abuse, cover-ups, and incompetence. TYC is built on the idea of taking young offenders, often from the big cities, and dumping them in what are (again, euphemistically called) schools in the furthest corners of West Texas. It's supposed to keep them away from bad influences, but what it also means is a lack of state oversight of the people into whose tender mercies they have been delivered.

The worst of all possible outcomes came with allegations of serious sexual abuse of inmates at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg and the West Texas State School in Pyote by ranking staff, and the almost complete failure of the state to do anything about it. (visit The Texas Observer for overviews of the allegations in Pyote and Evins.) Two years after the original allegations, 18 months after reports landed on prosecuting attorneys' desks, and almost a year after the Observer ran a major story on them, the Lege has finally rumbled into action.

Feb 1 - A Senate Finance Committee meeting turns ugly when Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, sternly questions TYC Executive Director Dwight Harris over the events on Pyote. Harris gives answers that have been seen as, well, less than forthcoming.

If we may direct you to one of two brief features this week - coinciding nicely with our South by Southwest Interactive coverage - here's Austin blogger Amanda Marcotte on her two weeks under assault from the right-wing noise machine. After successfully steering the popular lefty blog Pandagon, she was asked to run the campaign blog for John Edwards, but ... well, you can read the rest for yourself. Just be glad the mighty Wurlitzer doesn't sound for you.

Once you're done with that, check out this longer piece Marcotte wrote for Salon. For a sympathetic but contrary view on Marcotte's hiring, there's more here.

Fascinating stuff to be sure. Our thanks again to Marcotte for her words and participation.

The city's Small and Minority Business Resources Department is operating with bad information, at a loss to certify how many businesses in its files are truly minority-owned, women-owned, or disadvantaged businesses, according to a report by the Office of the City Auditor. "In our audit we found problems in the area of certification, specifically as it relates to the accuracy of data on certified firms maintained by the certification agency that processes certification of Minority-Owned Business Enterprise (MBE) and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) for the City of Austin," says the report, released at yesterday's meeting of the Audit and Finance Committee. "We also found that SMBR’s oversight of the contract with the certification agency was weak."

In 2004, the agency outsourced its MBE, WBE, and DBE certification to South Central Texas Regional Certification Agency for $50,000 a year. It's there the auditor's office found problems with the "accuracy of data on certified firms maintained by the certification agency that processes certification of MBE and WBE for the City of Austin," and that "SMBR’s oversight of the contract with the certification agency was weak."

Most shockingly, the information in the city's own database is wildly out-of-sync with its contractor. "As of October 2006, the SCTRCA database showed 761 firms certified as MBE, WBE, or DBE for the City of Austin, and the City vendor database showed 1,401 firms as being certified. … SMBR’s monitoring of the contract with SCTRCA does not provide sufficient assurance that the desired goals of the certification activity are achieved and that accurate information is provided to the City."

Download the report here.

I suppose we'd be remiss not to mention this: Over in this Austinist post about SXSW wristband sales, there's plenty of complaints and bellyaching about the festival, to which our humble editor and SXSW co-creator Louis Black chimes in:

"You guys really do nail me. Every ugly word is true. Nick Barbaro and I live in a multimillion dollar Westlake mansion where we wander around all day in our slippers thinking how we can screw Austinites out of even more money. The house is all white – white walls, white furniture, white art – but our slippers are red. There is no music because we hate music!

Sometimes we sit by the pool drowning locals who passed out while waiting on line for wristbands. I wish I was as tough and smart as you guys, but you are all so right, I'm just a juvenile smug egocentric asshole paying slave wages – fat and happy, smug and stupid, neurotic and narcissistic. In fact Nick's only complaint about our quite perfect life together, outside of our lack of house servants (only a couple of dozen) and his routine but unfair accusation that hogging the bodies of the poor and passed out I'm drowning more than my share, is that I read him my column each week over and over and over again, using different voices as well as parts of my body to make sound effects.

For those of y'all keeping track, the controversial Crossing at Bouldin Creek received final approval at PC last night. Neighbors sought to fight the development, planned on more than 50 lots, as they've maintained the area it will be built around floods dramatically when it rains, despite recently revised FEMA flood maps claiming it doesn't. However, going up after other controversial requests meant the neighbors didn't present until 1am, when a sleepy commission approved the case – but with two no votes, and one abstention.

The Star Riverside waterfront variance request at 1300 E. Riverside may have nearly died the death of a thousand cuts, but we won't count it out yet. As the decision came down around 1am, we missed it, but we've put in a few calls. Bottom line: Doesn't look dead yet.

The Lakeshore PUD request along Riverside was similarly cut back, with its 2,500 condos and apartments (!) cut back to 1,800.

Over at the Parks Commission, more Riverside drama. The 222 and 300 E. Riverside tracts were postponed for a month in order to hammer out details on the waterfront variance request (and give attorney Richard Suttle time to think about what he did).