6 February 1 - 7, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents penses were incurred as part of the state’s casino gambling, in terms of public safety and addiction issues among the population. Fitzgerald said the revenue has pretty much matched what was expected. He said public safety budgets did not increase in any significant way as a result of the state’s casino gambling. “I’m not going to say there weren’t problems,” he said. “If they’re out there, they haven’t been very well publicized.” Mendelsohn, who is chair of the city’s Ad Hoc Committee on Legislative Affairs, also asked how casino locations were picked, and Fitzgerald said that was mostly decided by state lawmakers. Dallas City Council member Jesse Moreno said that Dallas, as the ninth-largest city in the country, should have a thriving nightlife with- out adding a burden to public safety. Dallas’ nightlife is a big selling point for the city, Davis said. “The city is known as a sophisticated city,” he added. “It’s a place you’d bring somebody to have a great night out. … A casino would be a wonderful thing for us to help sell as another amenity. The devil would be in the details.” He said after casino gambling was legal- ized in Pennsylvania, there was an increase in the number of hotel stays in Pittsburgh. Davis also said he didn’t see any negative ef- fects after bringing casinos to Pennsylvania. Moreno said that going forward, the pos- sible location of Texas casinos will be impor- tant. He’d bet if casino gambling were brought to Dallas, it would be set up either in his District 2 or in District 14, both of which contain parts of the city’s central business district. He said he’d like to ensure that casinos won’t be built near single-fam- ily neighborhoods. Overall, Moreno said he’s open to exploring the possibility of casino gambling in the state, and he supports mak- ing it a priority for Dallas at the Legislature. Mendelsohn told the Observer if gambling were legalized at the state level, she’d hope the legislation would include very specific lo- cations for it, like downtown Dallas or with connections to the convention center. She said she opposes gambling, including poker rooms, in areas outside of Dallas’ central busi- ness district. However, if gambling were le- galized in the state, she said associated fees and ongoing revenue should go to host cities to offset public safety and addiction concerns. As to why the city is considering this now, West told the Observer: “I think it’s a ques- tion we need to address as a council because the state Legislature has already looked at this in the last session. It’s logical to assume they will do so again in 2025. So, for us to take a position on this one way or the other is the responsible thing to do.” West, too, said the location of the casinos would be an important part of the discussion. He said if the Legislature does legalize casino gambling, the city needs to be pre- pared for it. He said Dallas needs to plan for how it might regulate and tax casinos, if leg- islation allows the city to do so. There also needs to be a plan for how the city’s casino revenue should be spent. “I don’t think it’s fiscally responsible or prudent for us to wait until everything’s passed to begin these discussions and plan- ning,” West said. ▼ ELECTIONS BALLOT LICENSE ADVOCATES DECRY PROGRAM THAT COST TEXANS THEIR DRIVER’S LICENSES. BY SIMONE CARTER M ore than 600,000 Texans with un- paid traffic tickets have reportedly been stripped of their driver’s li- censes thanks to a controversial state pro- gram. That’s bad news for would-be commuters, of course, but it also has voting rights advocates concerned. The “Failure to Appear/Failure to Pay Pro- gram” by the company OmniBase Services is how hundreds of thousands of drivers find themselves in this spot. Those who neglect to pay their fees or fines or are no-shows in court may experience a hold on their licenses — something that’s especially screwing over low-income folks and people of color. Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the pro-democracy organization Common Cause Texas, said the research is clear: This program is disproportionately hurting Black and Latino Texans. In addition, the state Legislature in recent years has passed “voter-suppression laws” that primarily harm these same communities. Texas does “an exceptionally poor job” of educating residents about which forms of identification they can use to vote, Gutierrez said. “So, it’s not a huge leap to think that there are going to be people who just don’t know that they’re able to vote with an expired li- cense or a suspended license, and may decide that they’re just not going to go this election,” he said. “There’s any number of things the state could do to remedy that or to prevent that, and the state’s just not doing that.” Texas is already (in)famous for the way that it handles elections. The state scored a big fat “F” on its 2022 democracy report card issued by the End Citizens United political action committee, ranking No. 45 out of 50. Gerrymandering in the state helps to en- sure that it stays reliably Republican, and political observers may note that those most affected by the OmniBase program — Black, Latino and low-income voters — tend to lean more progressive. In the comments section for a recent NBC News segment about the program, some naysayers argued that the Texans who’ve lost their licenses deserved that fate. They didn’t pay off their tickets, so what did they expect? While there is something to be said for paying fines on time, Gutierrez said, the problem lies in the overpolicing of marginal- ized groups. If tickets were issued more evenly across all communities, then that would perhaps be a fair argument. The real- ity, though, is quite different. “It is Black and Latino citizens in low-in- come communities who are more often given these tickets,” he said, “and then find them- selves in the situation where they’re having unfair fines just piled on and piled on.” Texas could do a lot more to improve voter education, Gutierrez said. Around $4 million per budget cycle is allocated toward such efforts, but considering the state’s enormous size, it would need tens of mil- lions of dollars to reach the entire electorate. There’s bipartisan support to amend the OmniBase program or end it altogether, with lawmakers having introduced four bills to do just that, KXAN reported last April. A 40-year-old construction worker testi- fied before lawmakers at the time that he’d been slapped with a traffic ticket when he was 19. He couldn’t cover the cost back then, putting him in a never-ending cycle of fees and fines. “I was not making any money when I started off my adult life, and I ended up getting a suspended license for not paying my first ticket and didn’t realize it became suspended,” the worker said. “When I got pulled over, that opened up a whole can of worms. Taking peo- ple’s license away from them is taking their ability to provide for their family.” The Lone Star State is already home to harsh voter ID rules, said Miguel Rivera, se- nior advocacy manager for the Voting Rights Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project. Add to that the fact that the “Failure to Ap- pear/Failure to Pay Program” program can deprive low-income Texans of their ability to prove who they are when they try to vote. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Texas wasted no time instituting one of the country’s most re- strictive voter ID laws, Rivera said. Ballot- casters today must bring one of seven forms of photo identification to the polling place. People without driver’s licenses or an- other form of photo ID can apply for an Election Identification Certificate through the Department of Public Safety, Rivera noted. But therein lies a major problem. Many low-income voters can’t afford to take time off in the middle of the workday to go sign up for the certificate, he said. Rivera also mentioned that Texas is one of the few states in the U.S. without online or same-day voter registration, leading to even more stumbling blocks that an average voter may not know how to overcome. Texas voters can learn their eligibility and ask election-related questions by calling the free, nonpartisan hotline 866-OUR- VOTE, he added. “Your economic status should not and does not affect your ability to vote. There are other parameters that make one eligible,” Rivera said. “This right here is just creating economic disenfranchisement.” Monday, Feb. 5, is the final day to register to vote ahead of Texas’ primary elections. ▼ HOUSONG AFFORDABLE PROTEST HOW MUCH BOND MONEY SHOULD DALLAS USE TO FUND AFFORDABLE HOUSING? BY JACOB VAUGHN A bout 10 people met up at St. Francis Park in East Dallas on a cold Janu- ary Sunday. All members of the group Sunrise Movement Dallas, they held bright yellow signs with messages like “Green New Deal for Dallas” and “Dallas Green Homes Now.” They later marched to a house they say is owned by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson to chant, speak and advocate for more affordable housing money in the city’s 2024 bond package. Emaan Majed, one of the rally organizers, said the Dallas City Council is deciding this year how to allocate money in the 2024 bond package. “They made a decision in No- vember to cut funding that they were plan- ning to give to affordable housing,” Majed said. “Instead, they’re giving huge amounts of funding to parks, the police academy and different things. I’m not saying those things aren’t important, but the most fundamental need that citizens have is to actually have a home.” In November, the community bond task force proposed spending $25 million of the bond proceeds on housing. Advocates with a group called the Dallas Housing Coalition have been pressing for an amount closer to $200 million. In December, the bond task force dropped the housing allocation down to $15 million. The latest recommendation from city staff, not the bond task force, is to spend closer to $60 million on housing. During a special meeting on Jan. 19, Dal- las City Council considered increasing the overall bond and discussed how much should be spent on building homes. Through a non-binding straw vote, the council decided to increase the overall bond package from $1.1 billion to $1.25 billion, but members did not settle on specific alloca- tions for the money. Dallas City Council member Chad West said at the meeting that he’s heard concerns about the housing allo- cation because there aren’t specific Elliott Stallion on Unsplash Texas is one of the few states in the country that doesn’t offer online or same-day voter registration. Unfair Park from p4 >> p8
