The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - May 7, 2025

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

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Howdy folks, today is Wednesday, May 7th, and you're listening to the Texans Daily Rundown. I'm the Texans Assistant Editor Rob Lauschus, and here is the rundown of today's news in Texas politics. First up, Texas issued indictments and arrests for six people in Frio County, four of whom were elected officials, due to alleged involvement in an illegal vote harvesting scheme following Attorney General Ken Paxton's launch of a multi-county election integrity investigation. Among the indicted individuals is Friro County Judge

Rochelle Camacho, who is charged with three counts of vote harvesting. Two members of the Perosol City Council, Ramiro Trevino and Rachel Garza, were each charged with one count of vote harvesting. Similarly, Perosol ISD Trustee Adrian Ramirez was charged with three counts of vote harvesting, while, quote, alleged Frio County vote harvester Rosa Rodriguez was charged with two counts of the same.

The only indictment that was not confined to vote harvesting was doled out to former Friar County Elections Administrator Carlos Segura. Segura was charged with one count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. Next, Paxton is alleging that Austin Independent School District is, quote, teaching woke critical race theory and now seeks to depose its superintendents and board of trustees. According to a press release from the Office of the Attorney General, the move comes after Paxton was apprised of comments from Austin ISD officials who were allegedly, quote, using curricula and teaching material linked to the 1619 project. The comments, according to the

court filing, were revealed by Accuracy in Media, which filmed an undercover video of Austin ISD staff. Paxton is now seeking to depose district leaders in an effort to investigate the claims of violation of Texas law. In other news, it's been a fairly quiet legislative session for the power grid, at least in comparison to the last two sessions, but one energy-related item is drawing most of the attention, coping with the influx of data centers and other large electricity loads. The Texas House State Affairs Committee

will field testimony on Senate Bill 6, a proposal that aims to establish guidelines for the interconnection of operations that exceed 75 megawatts of power usage. The face of that category is data centers, an industry pivotal to an economy that is increasingly reliant on the internet to operate. And as artificial intelligence becomes more and more ubiquitous, the need for data centers only grows with it.

But that comes at a cost. SB6 by State Senator Phil King is divisive in the industry. The bill places a number of requirements on these facilities, including disclosing to the state their intention to build operations in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region, prove to the state that it is committed to that proposed project and will not pull the rug out from under the state, and pay an upfront interconnection fee to the state so that cost isn't uplifted to ratepayers. Also, the Texas Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth upheld the lower court's dismissal of a taxpayer lawsuit

against the Denton Central Appraisal District and its chief appraiser. Mitch and Katherine Wexler and Jim and Gloria Solinsky filed the lawsuit in October, 2023, claiming that, quote, DCAD has been brazenly and recklessly inflating the value of Denton County properties for years, unchecked and without any accountability. Their lawsuit argued that DCAD has not been operating its mass appraisal system according to the tax code and the uniform standards of professional appraisal practice, which

require the appraisal to be, quote, based upon the individual characteristics that affect the property's market value and all available evidence that is specific to the value of the property shall be taken into account in determining the property's market value. Last but not least, over $6 billion in bond propositions were on the ballot in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex during the May 3 local elections,

with 13 school districts and several cities putting proposals before voters. 29 propositions passed with a monetary value of nearly $5.8 billion. 9 propositions were rejected with a monetary value of $360.5 million. Salina ISD had a historically large bond package considering its size at 2.3 billion dollars split across two propositions. Proposition A was the largest bond in the election and is the fourth largest school district bond to ever be approved in Texas. Thanks for listening. To support the Texan please be sure to visit thetexan.news and subscribe to get full access to all of our articles, newsletters, and podcasts. Please be sure to visit thetexan.news and subscribe to get full access to all of our

articles, newsletters, and podcasts.