Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

The Dallas Morning News. March 31, 2017.

If you are a 17-year-old in Texas, you can’t legally buy cigarettes or beer or even a lottery ticket. You can’t vote. You cannot marry without parental consent. But you can go to jail if you’re caught shoplifting an expensive designer handbag - because the state’s criminal laws view 17-year-olds as adults.

This legal inconsistency doesn’t promote public safety or reduce recidivism rates - and it has serious consequences for former young offenders when they start looking for jobs and housing. For all these reasons, Texas lawmakers should raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18.

Adolescent brains differ from those of adults and, reflecting that fact, most states place the age of criminal culpability at 18 or older. But that’s not true everywhere. In New York, for example, 16-year-olds are considered adults in criminal matters. When a 16-year-old is arrested in Buffalo or Manhattan, police have no duty to notify his or her parents, nor do police need to ask parental permission to question a 16-year-old suspect.

Change the age to 17, and the same is true in Texas.

Seventeen-year-olds tend to commit the same crimes as 16-year-olds - drug possession and theft - and don’t belong in the adult criminal justice system any more than younger adolescents do. The 17-year-olds are at greater risk of sexual victimization in adult systems than adolescents kept in juvenile custody. They receive fewer rehabilitative and mental health services than teens in the juvenile system, and they tend to have higher recidivism rates after release. And those 17-year-olds have adult criminal records.

Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., D-Houston, leads the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee. He wrote HB 122,which raises the age of criminal culpability from 17 to 18. (Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, filed a similar bill, SB 941.) A March hearing on the House bill produced a long list of supportive witnesses - groups ranging from the Texas NAACP to the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission to the Texas PTA - and one opponent. It was approved.

The bill does carry a fiscal note. In order to care for 17-year-olds, some counties may have to add capacity to their civil courts and increase their juvenile probation and services staff. The state should help with these costs.

But it’s hard to directly compare the costs of handling 17-year-olds in the adult system with how they would be treated in the juvenile system. Adults can be jailed for minor offenses that, in the juvenile system, would result in a sanction - a date in court or with a probation officer - and release.

Other states have raised the age of criminal responsibility without overwhelming their juvenile justice systems or blowing their budgets. Texas can do the same.

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El Paso Times. April 1, 2017.

Keitha Adams, who built the UTEP women’s basketball program into a powerful force in El Paso and college sports, is heading to Wichita State University.

While her departure is a huge loss for UTEP and El Paso, it’s a well-deserved opportunity for Adams. And it’s proof that good things happen to good people.

“Keitha has worked extremely hard and has earned everything that coaching has provided to her,” Wichita State athletic director Darron Boatright said in a statement.

Adams came to El Paso in 2001, taking over a program that had only five winning seasons in 25 years. She built a competitive program that made two trips to the NCAA tournament. Most memorably, she led the Miners to the finals of the 2014 Women’s NIT, packing the house at the Don Haskins Center several times.

“She has enjoyed unprecedented success and has graduated all of her players,” UTEP athletic director Bob Stull said. “You won’t find a more quality person anywhere. The Wichita community will fall in love with her, just like El Paso has. She is a great coach and a great friend and we wish her the best.”

Adams is from Kansas, and coaching at Wichita State is a chance to work close to home.

“UTEP took me away from my home in Kansas. El Paso became my new home for 16 years,” Adams said in a statement. “It is only for a unique and special opportunity that I would ever leave UTEP. Wichita State University is 36 miles from my hometown. It’s a special opportunity for me to share my passion for this game with my family and friends. I will always cheer for the Miners, I will always love El Paso. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless and go Miners!”

Adams leaves UTEP with a record of 284-209 over 16 seasons. Her teams won 29 games three times in this decade, one of only 10 programs nationally to accomplish that feat.

In addition to building a winning program, Adams developed a deep connection with El Paso. She and her players were among the most popular sports figures in the Borderland.

Adams and her players would stay around long after games ended, shaking hands and signing autographs until the last fan had left.

UTEP faces a big task in replacing Adams, but the next coach will have a strong tradition to build upon.

We congratulate Adams on her new position, as well as her years of success at UTEP. We wish her all the best at Wichita State.

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San Antonio Express-News. April 2, 2017.

Southside High School principal Nathaniel Session, one of the top 30 highest-paid principals in Bexar County, did the right thing by resigning. His immediate departure is in the best interest of the embattled Southside Independent School District.

Session was hired last summer despite a troubling criminal record. Had parents been saddled with such a record, it could have prevented them from volunteering in their child’s school.

Session should never have been hired. Impressionable teenagers need administrators to be their role models.

While Session’s hire was perfectly legal, it has caused a major distraction for the school district and given the beleaguered school yet another black eye.

School administrators are allowed wide discretion on how much weight is given to the findings of a criminal background check. Among the factors they consider are the type of criminal case and the time that has lapsed since the incident occurred.

In Session’s case, more attention should have been given to his baggage. He has a misdemeanor family assault conviction from Harris County. The 2012 case involved a woman he since has divorced.

He also had a hot check case, a misdemeanor theft charge, pending at the time of his hire at Southside. The case was dismissed last semester when he made good on the check.

When the news media started asking questions about his criminal record, Session submitted a letter of resignation in early March, effective June 30. On March 29 he resigned, effective immediately.

As part of a plea bargain agreement in the assault that sent his then-wife to the hospital, Session was given a one year probated sentence, assessed a $200 fine and ordered to make payments to a Houston-area women’s shelter.

As a condition of that probation, he was also ordered to complete a batterer intervention/prevention program, and undergo random drug and alcohol testing, according to Harris County court records.

Session completed the terms of this probation in March 2014. His employer at the time reported the assault case to Texas Education Agency, which has the option to sanction certified educators in such cases. None was issued in this case.

Session was one of Southside Superintendent Mark Eads’ first hires after he came onboard in May 2016. Session’s $112,000 annual salary ranked among the top 30 for high school principals in Bexar County, according to a list compiled by mySA.com last fall.

It’s clear that Southside routinely conducts criminal background checks on prospective employees. So the district should have known of Session’s criminal record.

What’s unclear, then, is why the district weighted the criteria the way it did to hire him anyway. The district won’t say.

Southside ISD has been in turmoil for years, and much change is afoot. Optimism was growing that things were finally moving in the right direction after Eads arrived.

Earlier this year, the community welcomed the TEA’s assignment of a conservator in Southside ISD and has been anxiously awaiting the replacement of the elected board with appointed members.

Rebuilding this troubled district is going to take a team effort and community support.

Recruiting community members to serve on the appointed board and educators to work in what has been a dysfunctional district are difficult enough under normal circumstance. Administrative missteps like the one that resulted in the hiring of Session only undermine the process.

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Houston Chronicle. April 2, 2017.

There’s so much bickering and backbiting at the Capitol in Austin that it’s a relief to find a cause where Republicans and Democrats are on the same side. Cancer is everyone’s enemy. To defeat it, all Texas women deserve access to 3-D, or three-dimensional, mammography.

There are two types of mammography used to detect breast cancer: 2-D, or two-dimensional, and 3-D. All of us want the best breast cancer-screening technology available for our mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. Despite the fact that 3-D mammography is to 2-D what the telephone is to the telegram, cost prevents some women from accessing the better technology.

Texas insurers are required to provide coverage of breast cancer screening, but some plans cover only 2-D mammography. The out-of-pocket cost of 3-D mammography, $50-$100, is prohibitive for some women. Let that sink in: For some women and their families, this small amount of funding can mean the difference between earlier and later detection, or a cure and death.

HB 1036, sponsored by Democratic Reps. Senfronia Thompson and Ana Hernandez of Houston, and Nicole Collier of Fort Worth, and Republican Reps. J.D. Sheffield of Gatesville and Jodie Laubenberg of Parker, would remedy this omission. Their bill would require Texas health insurance companies to cover 3-D mammography for breast cancer screenings.

To explain how the technology works, researchers use the metaphor of a book. 2-D mammography allows radiologists to see the front and back covers, while 3-D gives them the ability to open up the book and go through it page by page.

Radiologists using 3-D mammography can spot tumors much earlier and be more certain of what they’re seeing. 3-D mammography identifies up to 53 percent more breast cancers compared to traditional 2-D mammogram while at the same time reducing the number of false positives by up to 37 percent, according to a Dr. Ethan Cohen, an assistant professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Early detection results in more cures, and saves money, too. It decreases the likelihood that patients will need to undergo expensive treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. It means that breast cancer patients will miss less work for medical treatment.

“If 3-D imaging had been available when I had mine, then they would have caught it sooner,” Thompson, a sponsor of the bill and breast cancer survivor told the Austin-American Statesman.

Cancer has no friends at the state Capitol or anywhere else. This bill deserves unanimous legislative support.

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The Eagle. April 2, 2017.

Those of us who breathe in clean air, eat safe foods and drink clean water every day should cherish what we have. Not everyone around the world - or even around the country - is so blessed.

Over the years, presidents from both major parties have promoted cleaner air and water for all Americans. Through a series of regulations, this nation is well on its way to reaching that goal.

We also are on the way to reducing humankind’s effect on our changing climate, although we have a long way to go. Yes, the climate constantly is changing, but every reputable scientist says the denizens of earth are increasing that change rapidly - and not to the benefits of everyone who calls this planet home.

There are those good people who, while enjoying the fruits of the environmentalists’ labors, continue to deny that climate change is serious or even exists - and if it does, there is no reason to believe humans are responsible in large part for the degradation of our atmosphere and our planet. To them, many environmental protections are unnecessary and, often, overly burdensome.

Perhaps some of the regulations are not as clear or as necessary as they were intended. Every government regulation, whether involving the environment or some other aspect of life, should undergo review periodically.

But to throw out a regulation simply because it was put in place by a different party or because it inconveniences your fat cat buddies is wrong. That is exactly what President Donald Trump is doing. To be sure, he is doing exactly what he promised when running for the office last year.

The president certainly telegraphed his intentions by appointing climate-denier Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run the Department of Energy, a department he has said he wants to dismantle. Many of Trump’s supporters cheered those and other appointments, while the rest of America - and the world - cringed. Yet, they are there and we must demand they not undo all the good that has been done under presidents of both parties over the past 50 years.

Simply put, regulations exist because a potential problem was identified and some well-intentioned people came up with what they believed to be a solution. For the most part, those regulations have benefited most Americans, who enjoy safe foods, refreshingly clean water, breathable air. Yes, some of the regulations come with a financial cost, one that is passed on to consumers.

The president shouldn’t overturn rules wholesale without considering the reason for those rules, options for change, and a long-term understanding of what happens if the rules remain in place or if they are negated. Perhaps some of the regulations do need to be modified, and maybe even some tossed out, but we won’t know if we don’t look at each one individually.

President Trump recently issued an executive order to overturn some of the climate and energy initiatives put in place during the administration of Barack Obama. The EPA is tasked with deciding whether the regulations should be repealed, modified or replaced. The decisions reached should be made without pressure from the White House. Get scientists involved, people who actually understand the climate and the future of energy in America.

And remember, whatever is undone by this Republican administration is likely to be returned by a Democratic administration. Decisions on energy and climate and a myriad of other issues should not be political Ping-Pong balls.