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Bill King News
OPINION: Houston Chronicle’s campaign to unseat Kim Ogg
By Bill King | Feb 9, 2024
In the run-up to next month’s primary, the Houston Chronicle has published over two dozen derogatory stories about Kim Ogg. These stories have regularly given Ogg’s adversaries and her opponent a platform to voice their criticisms with the imprimatur of being objective news stories. Their coverage of Ogg dovetails with the its campaign to convince Houstonians that their concern about violent crime is overblown, notwithstanding that in poll after poll Houstonians across every demographic have identified violent crime as their top concern.
OPINION: 2023 Harris County crime stats
By Bill King | Jan 22, 2024
The Texas Department of Public Safety receives reports from all law enforcement agencies in the state of reported crimes. Those reports are summarized in a database that is available to the public and updated on a daily basis as reports are received from the agencies. A few days ago, the database showed that it had received the December reports from all law enforcement agencies in Harris County, giving us the first look at the incidence of crime in Harris County for 2023.
OPINION: Transit has a negligible effect on traffic congestion
By Bill King | Jan 8, 2024
In 2019, I attended a community meeting where a Houston Metro representative spoke to campaign for its 2019 referendum to approve an additional $3.5 billion of debt to expand Metro’s footprint. The representative began her presentation by asking, “Who here enjoys sitting in traffic?” Most in the crowd moaned or shook their heads. She continued, “That’s right. None of us do. That is why we need to make sure the referendum is passed.” Most in the crowd nodded in agreement.
Transit carries less than 1% of daily trips in Houston
By Bill King | Nov 20, 2023
In my recent survey on transit, I asked respondents to estimate the percentage of daily trips made by Americans and Houstonians on some form of transit. The average estimate for the U.S. and Houston were 7.3% and 4.3%, respectively. As we will see, these estimates are significantly higher than the actual ridership.
Turner is pressuring Houston first to pay $124,000 for his book
By Bill King | Nov 17, 2023
If you attended the City of Houston’s State of the City luncheon in September, you were given a copy of Mayor Sylvester Turner’s new book, A Winning Legacy – The Power of Vision, Collaboration, Resilience and Transformation. Its ninety pages narrate Turner’s life story and what a great job he has done as mayor over the last eight years.
Houston Metro’s Purple Line: A case study of the insanity of building light rail
By Bill King | Nov 5, 2023
In 2015, Houston Metro opened its Purple Line (aka Southeast Line). The Purple Line is a light rail facility that snakes 6.5 miles from downtown by Texas Southern and the University of Houston, ultimately terminating at Palm Center on Griggs Road.
Recording shows Congresswoman Lee is ill-suited to be mayor
By Bill King | Oct 24, 2023
Unlike many cities with a city-manager form of government, the City of Houston mayor is the chief executive officer of the City. In addition to the mayor’s role presiding at Council meetings, the mayor also is the day-to-day manager of the city’s twenty-two departments with over 20,000 employees. The ability of the mayor to lead and manage the city workforce is crucial to the success of any administration.
City of Houston sales tax receipts up significantly in the last two years
By Bill King | Oct 24, 2023
After seven years of mostly flattish sales tax receipts, the City of Houston saw double digit increases over the last two years. However, the sales tax receipts have begun to cool and appear to be returning to historical patterns.
Day of forgiveness
By Bill King | Oct 24, 2023
Forgiveness is not a word that we hear very often on social media. The Forgiveness Project on Twitter has 8,700 followers, while all manner of hate groups garner followers in the millions. According to Google’s Ngram tracker, the word “revenge” was used ten times as frequently in books in 2019 as “forgiveness.”
Ballot measures
By Bill King | Oct 23, 2023
In the upcoming elections, voters will be asked to decide on a number of ballot measures. The specific referendums on the ballot will depend on where you live.
Results of transit survey
By Bill King | Oct 11, 2023
A little over 800 readers took the transit survey I sent out last week. Let’s start with a bit about who answered the survey because this certainly was not a scientifically selected sample. The two largest partisan groups were Independents at 35% and “mostly Republican” at 30%. Another 22% identified as “strong Republican” with 12% either “mostly Democrat” or “strong Democrat.” 73% live in the City of Houston and 93% in the Houston region. Virtually all of those living in the City plan to vote in the November election.
U.S. population and immigration
By Bill King | Oct 9, 2023
I regularly see on social media and some pundits on the mainstream media make fantastic claims about the number of immigrates coming to our country. While there is no doubt that the cartels have devised a scheme to manipulate our asylum laws resulting in a surge in immigrants over the last two years, in the longer term, the effect of immigration has been remarkably stable.
Houston Metro riders pay 4% of the cost of their rides
By Bill King | Sep 13, 2023
I think most people understand that taxpayers hugely subsidize those who ride transit. But with the collapse of ridership since the pandemic and Metro’s burgeoning expenses, the subsidy has reached an unprecedented level. In FY 2021-2022, Metro’s total expenses were $1.34 billion.
China's flagging economy
By Bill King | Sep 7, 2023
For most of the last decade, there has been a ubiquitous media narrative that it was just a matter of time before China’s economy surpassed the U.S. economy.
Fed policy is exacerbating housing inflation
By Bill King | Jun 8, 2023
It is often said the Federal Reserve’s policy tools, raising and lowering interest rates and adding or withdrawing liquidity to the financial system, are blunt tools.
The city of Houston is not starved for revenue
By Bill King | May 30, 2023
The Houston Chronicle editorial board has once again called for a referendum to end to what it and many others mischaracterize as a “revenue cap” on the City of Houston.
US Census shows that city of Houston population continues to flat line
By Bill King | May 21, 2023
The US Census just released its estimates of the population of cities and counties.
Double digit water rate increase for Houstonians
By Bill King | Apr 25, 2023
Many Houstonians recently received a letter from the City of Houston informing them that there would be an automatic increase of 9.2% to water and sewer rates, effective April 1. However, if you read the fine print carefully, the actual increase will be substantially more than that.
Metro has fewer passengers now than 25 years ago
By Bill King | Apr 5, 2023
Recently, I have been asking people if they think Metro is carrying more or fewer riders than it did 25 years ago.
2022 Harris County crime stats
By Bill King | Feb 27, 2023
During the last election, the severity of crime in Harris County was hotly debated.