Council Looks to Multimodal Future
In the next few months, City Council will decide whether an ambitious transportation bond package – including urban rail – goes to voters this November. At its Feb. 25 meeting, council received a presentation on mobility issues. As a response, council is considering a bond package – an idea promoted last spring by then-mayoral candidate Lee Leffingwell. While Mayor Leffingwell and others have pointed out that the proposal is multimodal – entailing street, trail, sidewalk, and rail projects (“You’d probably never guess that from reading the daily newspaper,” Leffingwell quipped) – urban rail has captured the most attention. As proposed, the rail line would have two north-south corridors Downtown, on opposite sides of the Capitol, and two east-west corridors at Fourth and 17th/18th. North of Downtown, it would run through UT, then along Manor Road to Mueller; south, it would run along Riverside to the airport (for more on the Riverside segment, see “Developing Stories“). While a November election doesn’t have to be set until August, many questions about cost and additional funding need to be answered. On April 29, council will receive its first briefing on a funding plan. And the clock is ticking. “We’re not going to put forth a proposal that is not completely cooked,” said Leffingwell. – Wells Dunbar
Perry and the Long-Awaited Pardon
On March 1, 25 years after Timothy Cole was wrongly named the “Texas Tech rapist” – and just more than 10 years after he died in prison – Gov. Rick Perry finally signed a posthumous pardon clearing Cole of any responsibility for the 1985 rape of Michelle Mallin. “I have been looking forward to the day I could tell Tim Cole’s mother that her son’s name has been cleared for a crime he did not commit,” Perry said. “The State of Texas cannot give back the time he spent in prison away from his loved ones, but today I was finally able to tell her we have cleared his name, and hope this brings a measure of peace to his family.” Cole was posthumously exonerated in 2009 (the first such exoneration in Texas) after a hearing in the Travis County court of Judge Charlie Baird, during which Mallin testified on behalf of Cole, saying in part that detailed information about her attacker that she’d given police was apparently ignored. Nonetheless, it took Perry nearly a year after the in-court exoneration to pardon Cole. The pardon comes after the state’s Attorney General’s Office said the law would allow such a move. – Jordan Smith
Texas’ Gun Score
Texas is doing nothing to curb illegal firearm trafficking, says the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, which released its annual state report cards earlier this month. Texas earned a total of 9 points out of a possible 100, scoring high only for restricting juvenile access to firearms and for not forcing private employers or college campuses to allow concealed handguns on their properties. (Although Texas scored among the lowest, each of our immediate neighbors scored far worse. Oklahoma and Louisiana scored just 2 points, while New Mexico and Arkansas each scored 4.) All 50 report cards can be found online at www.bradycampaign.org. – J.S.
This article appears in March 5 • 2010.