September 14, 2021 Covid Update: Collin County has 117,706 confirmed Covid cases. This is 4,482 more cases than I reported last week and 94 of our Collin residents have died. That’s 25 people who’ve died since my last column. Not good. Given this bad news, you’d think the Collin County commissioners might want people paying attention to negative local trends and taking more precautions. But that would presuppose they care about anything more than their own political fortunes. In 2020, the commissioners voted against using any data other than hospitalizations on their dashboard. They claimed to be concerned about the …
Collin County Politics: Welcome to Gilead
September 7, 2021 While my focus is usually on Collin County, the outcome of this state legislative session is going to greatly affect local entities. With 666 bills passed, our “leaders” have been busy little bees. This is not to say they care about bees though. They had the opportunity to pass a bill protecting them but declined. I mean, bees only affect our food supply. What could go wrong? Instead of focusing on critical problems like our electrical grid and Covid, the legislature instead passed a racist voter suppression bill (SB1), a deeply restrictive anti-abortion bill (SB8), a censorious …
Collin County Politics: School Boards are the New Battleground
August 30, 2021 This is the longest post I’ve written since starting this column and I won’t blame you if you don’t want to wade all the way through. But you should. There’s a lot going on across the county, most of it bad. However, we must remember there are more of us than we think and, if we all show up, we can overwhelm the bad actors with our passion, integrity, compassion, intelligence, and creative solutions. Our country is at a crossroads. Pick a direction. Covid Update: I don’t have to tell you that we’re in desperate straits. Hospitals …
Collin County Politics: Contaminated Water Stinks
August 24, 2021 Covid Update: We have a new entry in our fun game of what lawsuit is next. Last week, 14 children and their families filed the first federal lawsuit against Greg Abbott and Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Mike Morath. The suit claims Abbott’s executive order (EO) prohibiting school districts from enforcing mask mandates discriminates against students with disabilities and their rights to public education. If the EO doesn’t go away, I suspect there will be a lot more. That’s wonderful because the lawsuits are working! The TEA updated their Covid stance to say they won’t punish school …
Collin County Politics: Covid, Covid Everywhere
August 17, 2021 Covid Update: I don’t usually cover politics at the state level but what’s going on across Texas affects us here. The legal action brought by Dallas County Commissioner Judge Clay Jenkins continues. He won the ability to enforce a mask mandate before a civil district court judge, Democrat Tonya Parker, and again at the Fifth Court of Appeals, composed mainly of Democrats (elections matter, people!). However, the Texas Supreme Court (mostly Republicans) halted him temporarily. They didn’t strike down the face mask order but removed the stay on Governor Abbott’s Executive Order. Thankfully, Jenkins isn’t backing down. …
Collin County Politics: Mask Up!
August 10, 2021 We had yet another big week in Collin County as Covid overwhelmed hospitals and school boards are besieged by angry and worried parents. While our vaccination rate in Collin County of 66% (those receiving one dose) is better than the overall Texas average (53%), that’s small comfort as Texas and Florida lead the country in new Covid cases. Our idiot governor has even put out a plea for healthcare professionals from other states to help us. I wouldn’t blame them at all for saying, “You first!” Collin County currently has 99,147 confirmed cases, which is an increase …
Collin County Politics: It’s Getting Ugly
August 3, 2021 Commissioners Court: I hope you all ate your Wheaties! Last week was the annual budget workshop for the commissioners and it was eye-opening. I haven’t even gotten all the information from most of the budget talks and there’s already so much to discuss that I won’t get to it all. I’ll try to hit the highlights though. Before I get started, I have to respond to something that happened in the regular meeting on the 26th. During public comments, Susan Fletcher reacted to a complaint about Collin County not providing adequate healthcare for our indigent population (which …
Collin County Politics: Issues in Policing
July 28, 2021 Commissioners Court: As the commissioners prepare for their upcoming budget discussions, this meeting was taken up by the Lifepath Budget Report (which was brief) and by a presentation on law enforcement compensation (which took over 3 hours). While law enforcement is essential, it should not be vastly more important than our mental health entity. Yet this seems to be the case. I shouldn’t be surprised – after all, every single commissioner is a Republican and we all know how little they value mental health – but you’d think they’d at least try for a little balance. The …
Collin County Politics: Governments Serve People
July 20, 2021 Commissioners Court: Duncan Webb was absent and this was the second consecutive meeting Chris Hill missed. Given his high salary, he should at least show up for these short meetings. The last few meetings have been under 30 minutes, with most of the time taken up by public speakers. The commissioners just received the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds in June, are presenting on the budget in August, and are dealing with ongoing situations at the jail yet their last several meetings have been brief. This seems unwise. The commissioners also should be (but probably aren’t) …
Collin County Politics: Education Under Attack
July 13, 2021 Commissioners Court: The Sheriff’s department released 41 minutes of the 5-hour long video of the time Marvin Scott III spent in the Collin County Detention Center. The parts of the video I saw were deeply disturbing, not only because I knew I was watching a man being killed but also because of how unnecessary it all was. Plenty of us in the mental health profession deal with people suffering from schizophrenic episodes and no one gets hurt or killed. There are ways to handle such occurrences but those aren’t what’s seen on the video. As a psychologist, …