Prop. 1: Pay with my money for railroads owned privately to move around and be developed.
I’m all for railroads, except the one Houston Metro built. But why should I pay for moving railroads? I’m assuming someone wants them moved for something. But I don’t know what.
Prop. 2: Marriage is one man and one woman only. No civil unions allowed.
Prop. 3: Local economic development loans don’t equal debt. We’ve got a cap on debt.
So they want to make this not debt. Exactly what is it? It’s debt. They just want to break the cap. Forget that.
Prop. 4: Criminal defendants who’ve broken their bail before can’t get bail again.
You mean this isn’t already a law? Obviously we have to make it a law. Otherwise our judges, with their discretion, let bail jumping defendants have another opportunity to bail jump. I would have thought common sense would have been sufficient in these cases, but I guess not.
Prop. 5: Commercial loans can charge as much interest as they want.
Obviously a libertarian would be for this. Unfortunately, I’m not a libertarian. I think we’d see some inflated commercial loans.
Prop. 6: Another public member and a constitutional county court judge would be added to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
It looks like they want to add a county court judge and so have to add a public member to get an odd number. There are already four public members on the SCJC.
The original commission was composed of 9 members: 2 appeals judges and 2 district judges (named by the Texas Supreme Court), 2 members of the State Bar (named by the State Bar), and 3 citizen members (named by the Governor). In 1977, the name was changed to the Commission on Judicial Conduct, which was now enlarged to 11 members: 5 judges (one appellate judge, one district judge, one county court-at-law judge, one justice of the peace, and one municipal court judge), all named by the Supreme Court; 2 lawyers (who must each have ten consecutive years of practice in Texas) named by the State Bar; and 4 public members (who must be at least 30 years old and not licensed to practice law) named by the Governor.
from TX State Library and Archives Commission
Prop. 7: Allow a line-of-credit advance for a reverse mortgage.
I have no sense of whether this is good or bad, except Texas history. Until recently you couldn’t get a line of credit on your house, because that would put your homestead at risk. They’ve changed that in the last few years.
Prop. 8: This appears to be relinquishing state ownership of 5,500 acres of land.
I don’t know why we would do that or want to do that. Does someone want to buy it that we can’t sell it to? Or are we giving it away? What’s going on with this?
I would say that this is not a topic that will get a lot of hype and we may end up with something a special interest group wants that no one else does, if we don’t watch it. Not that I’m saying that is true of this, but it could be.
Prop. 9: Staggering the 6-year terms of service for those on the regional mobility authority.
I’d guess that’s a good idea. Keeps it from totally turning over. But who the heck are they and what do they do?
This is there official website. Apparently they’re in charge of our roads, in a different way than the Highway Department. So they’re the people in charge of getting us moving on evacuation routes. Which would mean they’re the people who don’t consider 59 an important route. It isn’t even an evac route. I vote we hang them all. (Oh wait, that’s not what we’re voting on.)
You can read it for yourself.
If you’re in Texas, October 11 is the voter registration deadline. Register. Vote.
