A beautiful Sunday graces Central Texas, with seasonable temperatures and bright sunshine all day long.
Shade, Tovo Face June Runoff
The race for Austin City Council Place Three is going into extra innings. Incumbent Randi Shade finished second in the four-way race to community activist Kathie Tovo in Saturday's local elections. Tovo's 47% put her just short of a simple majority and an outright win. So the two will face off in a June 18 runoff. Election day turnout was just shy of 4%, bringing overall turnout to just over 7%. KUT's Matt Largey rounds it all up here.
DWI Dismissals
The Austin American-Statesman and KVUE report that Travis County has seen a higher rate of DWI arrests, and a higher number of DWI case dismissals. From the reporting of Tony Plohetski and Tyler Sieswerda
"Travis County has dismissed a higher percentage of drunken driving cases than other major Texas counties in part because prosecutors said police filed weak charges or prosecutors let suspects plead to other crimes. "Officials in 2009 and during the first eight months of 2010 threw out about 30 percent of misdemeanor drunken driving cases, while those in Tarrant County, where the dismissal percentage is lowest among the state's biggest counties, dismissed less than 5 percent during that period."
Discrimination charge at Victoria hospital
KUT's political reporting partner, the Texas Tribune, reports today about the case of three cardiologists in Victoria who accuse Citizens Medical Center of discrimination. The heart specialists are of Indian descent. The Tribune's Emily Ramshaw writes:
"An operating room chief wrote of trying to force 'the Indians off the reservation.' Others wrote about their 'Indian troubles,' or labeled the hospital’s two rival cardiology practices as 'the Cowboys' and 'the Indians.'
The discrimination charge has led to a federal lawsuit.
