In the June 7 episode, former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said businesses have lost confidence in elected leaders at Dallas City Hall. He also proposes remaking Dallas' municipal government to make the mayor more accountable to voters. Corpus Christi Council Member Kaylynn Paxson explains why her city has again postponed a vote on a new desalination plant, and state Rep. Ramon Romero questions why the state revoked more than 6,000 driver's licenses of immigrants in the country legally.
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Straight ahead. A devastating week for Dallas, the Mavs, the stars and Neiman Marcus flagship store all leaving downtown. It comes as AT&T moves its headquarters north. Comerica is gone. So what happened to downtown Dallas and how does the city bounce back? Former mayor Mike Rawlings in studio with some ideas.
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Plus, they are here legally. So why is Texas taking away their driver's licenses? State Rep Ramon Romero on the impact of new state rules delayed again as Corpus Christi faces mounting water shortages. Leaders are once again putting off a vote on a brand new desalination plant. Corpus Christi Councilwoman Caitlin Paxton joins us from the Coastal Bend.
And Jane Nelson stepping down as secretary of state, who might replace her and who will oversee Texas elections heading into 2027.
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Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely starts now. Thank you for being here. I'm Jason Whitely. Let's start the program, as always with the top political headlines across the state. National Democrats, they are energized about Texas and say they think they can flip a dozen seats in the Texas legislature.
If they do. Republicans would be left just with a couple seat majority. Democrats did pull off a 12 seat gain in the 2018 midterms, but most of the districts they're targeting this year voted for President Trump. Democrats, though, say that's less important now because Trump is not going to be on the ballot this fall.
A divorce trial is the last thing that any Senate campaign wants. So Ken and Angela Paxton have canceled theirs. Paxton's attorney says they are working towards an amicable resolution. Angela Paxton filed for divorce after 38 years of marriage, citing biblical grounds, and she accused Ken Paxton of adultery.
And we are now just days away from a divisive decision about Dallas City Hall. On Wednesday, City Council will decide whether to renovate its iconic city hall or move out and tear it down. Right now, there appears to be more votes to relocate somewhere else. Moving out would also open up this large plot of land for redevelopment that will be adjacent to the city's brand new convention center when it's finished.
And let's begin right now, though, with what is next for Dallas. This week will be a big one there for its City Hall, but last week was a devastating one. Both pro sports teams, the Mavericks and the stars moving north to the suburbs. The Neiman Marcus flagship store closing for good. This comes as AT&T moves its headquarters north and Comerica Bank is gone.
What's going on here? Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson did not return our messages, but his predecessor, former mayor Mike Rawlings, says turning around the city center should start with a brand new form of government. Mayor, good to see you in here. Great to see you. Jason, it's been a heck of a week in Dallas.
Yeah. How did Dallas, how did Dallas end up like this? Downtown Dallas? Yeah, it's been a tough week. I mean, uh, for me, uh, sports lovers, uh, retail lovers, but also taxpayers. You know, downtown Dallas makes up 50% of our tax base. It's huge. And so we've got to make sure we kind of turn it around and grow it.
How did it happen? Um, I think there's a crisis of confidence right now. Jason, what is that amongst the business community? Uh, investors, sports teams, business people have got to make sure that everything is consistent and their services are delivered to them. If they can't, they've got to vote with their feet and leave.
And that's what happened here. So no surprise to see these teams walk away. I was deeply saddened. Okay, but I would be naive if I be surprised. I guess what what struck me about it is I know the city manager's office had been talking to the teams, trying to maybe figure out how to keep the teams in Dallas. To have both of them leave downtown Dallas.
So I'm thinking, wow, there is nothing that Dallas could offer to keep them in the central business district, or at least close to it there in Uptown. You got to come back to the root cause it's like, do they want to put their hundreds of millions of dollars into developing something where they're not sure how the council feels about everything?
The Mavericks didn't want to be blamed for City Hall, and they they never were a part of that. I mean, they were part of a discussion, but they were not generating that issue. So it's easier for them to back out and say, we'll take a pass on that. The other question I've been asking is, how does Dallas get out of this funk that it's in?
How does Dallas bounce back? Because it's taken a heck of a half dozen hits here. Heck of a hit. Well, first of all, the the the first step you've got to take is the right one. And that is to make sure we vote the right way in regards to City Hall, so we can to move out, to move out of move out of city hall. So we don't reinvest all that money in City Hall.
That's a critical first step. The second step is to redo our form of government. This is broken. It's antiquated, as I said. And we've got to have a better a government that's accountable to citizens. And you talk about a strong mayor form of government. Somehow we've got to make the mayor more accountable to the citizens, because right now, I was mayor for eight years.
It's very hard for me to do the things I wanted to do in southern Dallas, because everybody had to divide the budget 14 ways. Everybody had to be equal, or someone would get their feelings hurt. Is there a move afoot right now to change the city charter, to get rid of the city manager, to have a strong mayor form of government.
Well, you're getting specific about what the form of government would be. There's a move afoot to reexamine what we're doing, and I think the public needs to be engaged in this. This is the sort of thing you do need a lot of opinions. What are the options, though? I mean, well, you have a strong mayor. You could you could, um, there's a rheostat of how much power you can give the mayor.
Okay. You can go to a place where there's no city manager, and everybody reports. You can keep the city manager. You can create a situation where they've got a lot of power. Plus there's a veto override by the council. You can do it at large seats the way we once did. You can do a combination of all those things.
So there's a lot of better form of government than what we've got right now. Mayor, good to see you again. Thank you.
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There is actually a plan in the works for downtown Dallas, that effort already underway before last week's cascade of departures. And there are some wacky ideas to reinvigorate the central business district. Jennifer Scripps is the CEO of Downtown Dallas, Inc.. She shared some of those early ideas.
This episode of y'all is available right now wherever you get your podcasts. Let's bring in the roundtable now to talk about the politics of all of this. And it does stretch out much wider than just in downtown Dallas here. But Kennedy is with us from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Natalie Hadad, political reporter at WFAA in Dallas, and Ashley Goudeau, the political director at Kvue in Austin.
Ashley, good to see you back here with us. But let's start with you, though. You mentioned that the cities across North Texas for a long time had a handshake deal. The regionalism was better than just, you know, picking off cities, picking off businesses from each city here. What's going on with Dallas?
Well, of course, what's happened is that this mayor has a Dallas first philosophy, and we saw it come out this week. You know, the one of the sports teams just moved to the LBJ freeway. And he talks about that the the wolf is up north and stealing things from Dallas. They had this whole woe was us message. You know, the Mavericks are staying in Dallas, building a gigantic project in Dallas.
You know, I don't understand the doom and gloom and the, you know, even the stars pay in Plano. They'll still be Dallas team. Everybody in the world will know them as Dallas team. The World Cup games, they're coming here next week. Those people are coming from all around the world because they heard the name Dallas.
But. But at the end of the day, Bud, I mean, I guess cities would be concerned about the hit for for tax revenue if you have, you know, big generators of revenue like the sports teams leaving that that's going to hurt the bottom line and affect city budgets. So wouldn't it. You have sales tax revenue and visitors, you know.
Sure that makes a dent. But you know, that's I think that might be one of the reasons they want to redevelop that giant campus at City Hall. As to, you know, get some of that back on the tax rolls. That really was a big chunk of land down there that's all devoted to public government property. And some of that needs to go back on the tax roll for some sort of private project.
And, Natalie, if people weren't paying attention to downtown before, they probably are right now, and I would bet there are a lot of opportunity people would probably see right now. With so many people fleeing, would they see opportunity with people fleeing? Because I would imagine at least if I were a business owner, I feel like I would be scared.
If everyone else is leaving, why would I want to come in? What are they saying that I don't know about yet? I, you know, I don't know that I agree with with my dear friend Bud Kennedy. I think if anyone is now paying attention, it's definitely those who are fans and have a lot of pride in having the Mavs downtown, having the stars downtown.
And they may not be anymore. And I think other businesses are going to see this and also pay attention to downtown, but not in a good light. I think those who needed to pay attention to downtown did so a little too late. And Ashley, you know, Houston has a strong mayor form of government. Lots of accountability there.
Austin and Dallas have the city manager forms of government. People have talked about maybe putting term limits in or getting rid of term limits, rather because they are in right now that that might be a problem that, you know, city managers stay a lot longer sometimes than council members do. I know Austin went through not long ago an effort to change municipal government there that went nowhere,
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right? It went nowhere. And I think you have to remember, city managers are in place because the council and the mayor put them in place. City managers don't hire themselves. So when you talk about accountability, I mean, look, the reason why we have Dallas's former city manager, right, is because the one here got fired because of a disaster that happened during the winter storm.
And so I don't think the problem is necessarily looking at, oh, well, we need the mayor to be stronger. But just told you, you have a mayor who's not shaking hands and kissing babies with nearby cities. And is he doing that with industry and business? Mayors have to be relational, right? They have to be in conversation with people.
They have to be likable to people to keep their downtowns thriving. And you need to question whether or not that's happening. Yep. Go ahead bud. Oh, Jason, I just want to point out, you know, Dallas sided with the Mavericks. Dallas tried to keep the Mavericks, put all its effort in keeping the Mavericks.
You know, made no effort to keep the stars whatsoever. You might say Dallas bet on the losing horse. All right guys we will wait to see what happens with. Back to you all in just a moment. A lot more ahead here. Including this.
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When we come back. Facing a water shortage. Why does Corpus Christi keep delaying a desalination plant? Councilwoman Kayla Paxson joins us in a moment. And why is Texas revoking more than 6000 driver's licenses? State Rep Ramon Romero on the impact of new state rules when inside Texas politics returns.
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Welcome back to Inside Texas Politics. Now to Corpus Christi and the critical water shortage it faces. The city needs more water, and it's sitting right beside an ocean. For years, leaders have pushed a plan to remove salt from seawater and turn that into drinking water. This is called the Inner Harbor Desalination Plant, but after years of debate, this still has not been built.
And just last week, City Council delayed it again. So what is going on with it? Corpus Council Member Kaitlyn Paxton is our next guest and tells me the project is important, but not as critical as many think.
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Councilwoman, welcome to the program here. More studies now underway. I've followed this for quite a while now. Why is Corpus Christi continuing to postpone this kick this can down the road? Well, that's a great question, but I would of course ask to disagree. So I don't perceive this as, um, Tuesday's action as continuing to kick a can down the road.
Um, what we did when we got elected, uh, this last year was we were faced with the Inner Harbor Marine Desalination Project. That was really the only project at the time that the city had chosen to put all of its focus and efforts in in securing an additional water supply. What we determined at that time was there really wasn't, um, a satisfactory ecological study on the project.
The next steps, of course, is to include our marine and, um, biology scientists on this study to see what that actual impact is now that we have the physical parameters delivered. So we increased the amount of water that we were bringing from our eastern reservoirs. And we have taken very decisive action on securing immediate water supplies to the tune of about 76 million gallons a day.
That's about the amount of projects that we have, um, taken action on. We are we are bringing those online. We're already seeing some of that water hitting our system, and we'll continue to see that coming online in the next 12, 24 months. All of that to say. That's that's something that I think has kind of become a misconception, is that the Inner Harbor Marine Desal project is the project that's going to rescue the water supply issue in Corpus Christi, and that's simply not true because it cannot come online in time.
It does not furnish the volume that we need. And so therefore we've had to take action on other supplies. We've seen the headlines from the coastal Bend. We've seen what the governor's office has said about, you know, corpus needing to kind of get on the stick here, put this in context for us. How critical is the water situation right now?
Water is very important. Water is very important. I'm not going to sit here and say that. It is not because corpus is about to run out, though. I mean, in winter of 2026. So our new projections between the projects that we've taken action on and the rain water that has improved the condition of our surface level, our surface water supplies, we're estimating now to push that back to December, if not further into 2027.
So that has all got us a lot more time on this curtailment issue. That does not mean that we can stop moving full steam ahead, but it does mean that it's working. The system is working. And so all of those projects that we've invested in are starting to we're starting to reap benefit from that. Councilwoman, thank you for the time.
We appreciate the insight here. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Texas revoked more than 6000 commercial driver's licenses last fall. These belong to foreigners who were living and working legally in this country. Well, last week, the Department of Public Safety quietly reinstated some of those, but only for agricultural workers.
State Rep Ramon Romero is a Democrat from Fort Worth, who says that leaves many more legal migrants out of work, and it could end up raising prices even higher at a time when inflation continues to rise. Representative, welcome back here. Non-citizens who are here legally with federal work authorization.
These are people who are legal immigrants, as the Republicans say, these people who are here legally can no longer get driver's licenses, and the ones who had it have had theirs revoke these commercial driver's licenses to drive products to the market. Zoom out for us and tell us how big of a deal this is.
How many people are we talking about? What does this mean to the Texas economy, to your point? They have been here for decades. They have been serving our community, and they are an integral part of our economy, certainly here in DFW. And I would argue all over our state, these are the people that are moving goods, moving, filling those grocery shelves.
Remember in Covid when we feared like there's not going to be enough groceries around toilet paper, toilet paper, or even now, let's say, for example, we're about to get into the spring. We've been seeing these storms all around and there's going to be hailstorms. Who's going to move those roofing materials in?
Who's going to move those roofing materials to your home? The state of Texas just got 6400 less truck drivers on the road. And put that in perspective, though, how many do we have and how big of a group are these 6400 who are here legally? Who can no longer drive? It's about 5%. It's about 5% of total. Total population of drivers.
So if you pull 5% of these trucks off the road, what is that going to mean to how much you and I pay for things at the store? It'd be hard to tell. Depends on it, depends on the goods. But I would say that every single person out here right now is they're experiencing high cost, right? This effort is going to do.
The only thing it's going to do is continue to increase your cost. I'm a small business owner. You know this, Jason. All of these are people that are working. These are not unemployed people. This is a part of our economy. He's figuring out a way to make things more expensive for Texans, not less expensive.
Republicans watching their son say, listen, Jason, your own TV station has done plenty of stories about non-English speaking truck drivers who either can't communicate with DPS troopers or law enforcement, or who can't read signs. And these people have caused fatal accidents. Is this not a good idea?
Do they not have a point on some of this? I think they would have you believe that. But the reality is, so many of these drivers that have been here for decades are taking the test in English, and they're passing it in English. They can remove the Spanish test. That's fine if you ask me if they want to take it in Spanish.
Okay. They're going to understand it better, but they still have to take it in English. It's not a problem. This is false that these folks don't understand. I mean, my Uber driver can barely understand English, and he's following following directions by way of whatever the, you know, Siri or whatever is telling him it's false.
So many of these drivers have status. They're here legally. They've been here for decades. They're taking the test in English. Don't believe the hype. This is just about politics. This is about we're making roads safer, but they're not going to make them any safer by this act. Representative. Good to see you.
Thank you. Jason. The roundtable is ready when we come back here on Inside Texas Politics.
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All right. Back now with the roundtable. But Natalie and Ashley all back with us here. But let's start with you Republicans going to Houston this week for their annual state convention. A lot of division in the party, especially after that runoff primary that we just watched. Well, of course it's going to be a messy convention.
A lot of disagreement, a lot of debate. You know, some of the people there who come from the business side of the party and the Cornyn delegates are going to still be pretty sore about what's going on. The main thing is that Republicans are going to get a big dose of high prices. The World Cup game is the day after the end of the convention.
Republicans are having to pay $1,000 a night for some hotel rooms. At least 500 Uber and Lyft will be on triple charge. Everything in Houston is going to be very expensive. We'll see if they get the 8000 people they usually get. We shall see. And you know what, Ashley? Let me ask you about Jane Nelson stepping down as secretary of state.
What is it? Maybe not surprising she's leaving, but it's interesting the timing here, because we're five months away from the November election. The timing is wild, Jason. Do you think that you've been the secretary of State for three and a half years, and then you're going to step down, effective four months out from the election, and it'll actually be a little less than a four full months out from the election, which gives the governor the opportunity to put someone in whomever he wants, um, who will have to oversee what is shaping up to be an incredibly significant election for the state of Texas.
And I just, you know, the fact that there's no reason, obviously, it's her business. I'm not saying it's anything nefarious, but it's very suspicious. Did the governor push her to step aside? You know, are there going to be some things that we want to see done with the voter rolls before the November election?
It leads to a lot of questions. And I think Governor Abbott is going to have to be very careful about who he puts in that position to oversee that election. Yeah, Natalie, it does lead to a lot of questions. Yeah. That one. I wish Ashley could have seen me just now. I'm like, yes, that's the point. Because I think the biggest question is not exactly who you know, Governor Abbott is going to appoint, but what message that sends because like what Ashley was saying, you know, this is someone who has a lot of influence on how election laws are interpreted, the state's legal posture, if there are election disputes.
I think it's going to send a really big message who he chooses, and he will have to be careful. And. But about 30s left here, what do you make of this? Well, you know, she said, Greg Abbott, we have to be very careful. I think that over 16, 20 years we've seen Greg Abbott is very cautious about everything he does.
It'll have some sort of political purpose. He'll put somebody in place. Yeah. And some of the people, you know, over the years have have done well and some have not been disastrous as S.O.S. here. He has to leave some place. He'll get confirmed. Yeah. Ashley. Yeah. Disastrous. Is that what you said? I mean, it's been disastrous.
Look at the David Willey situation. I remember it was awful. It was. It was indeed an issue. Guys, thanks so much. We were out of time for this week. Ashley Natalie and Bud, thank you guys so much. We appreciate it. Thank you for watching as well. We're back next Sunday to take you inside Texas politics. We hope to see you then.
Have a great week.
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Thank you.