Free Republic

Former Mayor Bob Lanier has joined prominent home builders and developers campaigning to limit new development regulations they believe could threaten Houston's growth. Lanier's comments are part of a nascent effort to respond to recent city laws and policies, including a high-density development ordinance now being written, that affect the politically powerful real estate industry. A new organization, Houstonians for Responsible Growth, which has begun the process of registering as a political action committee, is coordinating the campaign, said Ken Hoagland, a political consultant working with the group. Lanier's involvement came in a letter delivered Dec. 27 to all 14...

Over the next 30 years, most of Harris County's remaining open space will succumb to subdivisions, office buildings and shopping centers where millions of new residents will live and work, projections by local planners show. The spread of development, particularly west and northwest of Houston, is among the more striking trends shown in preliminary population and job growth projections developed by the Houston-Gal- veston Area Council for the eight-county Houston region. The potential loss of open space alarms conservationists and others concerned about suburban sprawl. It is among the factors driving an effort by business and civic leaders to find...

Mayor Bill White spoke Wednesday about city integrity following the bribery indictment of a one-time aide to former Mayor Lee Brown. Oliver Spellman, who until last Friday also worked as a top aide to County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, has been charged with criminal conspiracy to obtain bribes as a public official. It stems from allegations he helped a consultant in Cleveland, Ohio win City of Houston contracts. Mayor White says all contracts handled by Spellman are under review, and corruption will not be tolerated. "I've said in public microphones for two years, public contracting should be clean and transparent, no...

Someone who operates the Houston Chronicle website must have had a terrible day on November 20. What the Chronicle described in a notice intended to cover its tracks as an "internal document" entitled "A Houston odyssey: DeLay, Lanier and light rail" appeared briefly in the editorials section on the newspaper's website beginning late in the evening on November 20. Houston's daily newspaper quickly removed the "internal document" upon its discovery and posted a brief correction to the page, though not before the document was publicly accessible for at least several hours. According to the retraction, "An internal Houston Chronicle document...

Someone who operates the Houston Chronicle website must have had a terrible day on November 20. What the Chronicle described in a notice intended to cover its tracks as an "internal document" entitled "A Houston odyssey: DeLay, Lanier and light rail" appeared briefly in the editorials section on the newspaper's website beginning late in the evening on November 20. Houston's daily newspaper quickly removed the "internal document" upon its discovery and posted a brief correction to the page, though not before the document was publicly accessible for at least several hours. According to the retraction, "An internal Houston Chronicle document...

Internal Distress To: Jeff Cohen, CC: The entire World Wide Web BY RICHARD CONNELLY Memo to the Houston Chronicle: Internal memos are not supposed to be posted on your Web site. You'd think that'd be obvious, but in an embarrassing incident that has revived memories of the Chron's bad old days of slanted journalism, just such a memo was posted publicly for a few hours November 20. Written by an unnamed member of the paper's editorial board (reportedly David Langworthy), the memo outlines suggested plans for the Chron leading up to the proposed referendum next November on expanding the light-rail...

The following memo was accidentally posted on the Houston Chronicle website last Thursday morning for a couple of hours. It is an internal memo between the editorial page writers instructing a massive year long propaganda campaign to push a light rail referendum through next november. The memo was removed upon discovery but not before many people read it. The Houston Chronicle also printed a correction stating it had been accidentally posted, but not what it was about. This document is genuine and was copied from the Chronicle website in the hour or two it was online by somebody and has...