Featured Stories

Tyrant’s Foe: Helping Homeless Kids

LifeWorks is an Austin nonprofit that provides needy families and individuals with support services like affordable housing, education and counseling.

House Endorses Prison Closures, Re-Entry Programs

On Saturday morning, the House showed just how far the criminal justice debate in Texas has come.

The House passed SB 213, the sunset bill for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The measure reauthorizes the agency with a few major changes, including an amendment to prioritize closure of certain private prisons.

Water, MUD and Beer: Recipe for an Explosive Hill Country Development Fight

In hindsight, perhaps Greg LaMantia, a scion of a South Texas family who made its fortune as a regional Budweiser distributor, shouldn’t have named his 5,000-acre spread near Wimberley “Needmore Ranch.”

El Paso Becomes Second City to Indict Employer for Wage Theft

In 2011, Austin-based Workers Defense Project successfully lobbied for the wage theft code amendment, authored by Senator Jose Rodriguez (D-El Paso), that made it harder for employers to get away with stealing workers’ wages. The amendment to the Texas criminal code closed a loophole which allowed employers to get away with paying employees only partially for their work without facing criminal charges. El Paso has become the first city outside of Austin to indict an employer for stealing wages.

Texas Senate Passes Surprisingly Tough Payday Loan Reform

After a dramatic false start on Thursday, the big payday loan reform bill—tediously-negotiated by Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas)—easily cleared the Senate. But not before senators agreed to changes that would more or less kill the payday and auto-title industry in Texas.