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Recycling, Once Embraced by Businesses and Environmentalists, Now Under Siege

The U.S. recycling industry is breaking down.

Prices for scrap paper and plastic have collapsed, leading local officials across the country to charge residents more to collect recyclables and send some to landfills. Used newspapers, cardboard boxes and plastic bottles are piling up at plants that can’t make a profit processing them for export or domestic markets.

“Recycling as we know it isn’t working,” said James Warner, chief executive of the Solid Waste Management Authority in Lancaster County, Pa. “There’s always been ups and downs in the market, but this is the biggest disruption that I can recall.”

Paper Loss Prices for scrap paper and cardboard have plunged as China buys less recyclables from the U.S.

Sources: Paper Stock Report (scrap); Cal Waste (recyclables)

U.S. recycling programs took off in the 1990s as calls to bury less trash in landfills coincided with China’s demand for materials such as corrugated cardboard to feed its economic boom. Shipping lines eagerly filled containers that had brought manufactured goods to the U.S. with paper, scrap metal and plastic bottles for the return trip to China.

As cities aggressively expanded recycling programs to keep more discarded household items out of landfills, the purity of U.S. scrap deteriorated as more trash infiltrated the recyclables. Discarded food, liquid-soaked paper and other contaminants recently accounted for as much as 20% of the material shipped to China, according to Waste Management Inc.’s estimates, double from five years ago.

The tedious and sometimes dangerous work of separating out that detritus at processing plants in China prompted officials there to slash the contaminants limit this year to 0.5%. China early this month suspended all imports of U.S. recycled materials until June 4, regardless of the quality. The recycling industry interpreted the move as part of the growing rift between the U.S. and China over trade policies and tariffs.

The changes have effectively cut off exports from the U.S., the world’s largest generator of scrap paper and plastic. Collectors, processors and the municipal governments that hire them are reconsidering what they will accept to recycle and how much homeowners will pay for that service. Many trash haulers and city agencies that paid for curbside collection by selling scrap said they are now losing money on almost every ton they handle.

The upended economics are likely to permanently change the U.S. recycling business, said William Moore, president of Moore & Associates, a recycled-paper consultancy in Atlanta.

Cal-Waste Recovery Systems plans to invest more than $6 million on new sorting equipment to produce cleaner bales of recyclables. Photo: Max Whittaker for The Wall Street Journal

“It’s going to take domestic demand to replace what China was buying,” he said. “It’s not going to be a quick turnaround. It’s going to be a long-term issue.”

The waste-management authority in Lancaster County this spring more than doubled the charge per ton that residential trash collectors must pay to deposit recyclables at its transfer station, starting June 1. The higher cost is expected to be passed on to residents though a 3% increase in the fees that haulers charge households for trash collection and disposal.

The additional transfer-station proceeds will help offset a $40-a-ton fee that the authority will start paying this summer to a company to process the county’s recyclables. Before China raised its quality standards at the beginning of this year, that company was paying Lancaster County $4 for every ton of recyclables.

Mr. Warner may limit the recyclable items collected from Lancaster County’s 500,000 residents to those that have retained some value, such as cans and corrugated cardboard. He said mixed plastic isn’t worth processing.

“You might as well put it in the trash from the get-go,” he said.

Environmentalists are hoping landfills are only a stopgap fix for the glut of recyclables while the industry finds new markets and reduces contaminants.

“Stuff is definitely getting thrown away in landfills. Nobody is happy about it,” said Dylan de Thomas, vice president of industry collaboration for the Recycling Partnership in Virginia. “There are very few landfill owners that don’t operate recycling facilities, too. They’d much rather be paid for those materials.”

Pacific Rim Recycling in Benicia, Calif., slowed operations at its plant early this year to meet China’s new standard. But company President Steve Moore said the more intensive sorting process takes too long to process scrap profitably. Pacific Rim idled its processing plant in February and furloughed 40 of its 45 employees.

“The cost is impossible. We can’t make money at it,” Steve Moore said. “We quit accepting stuff.”

China stopped taking shipments of U.S. mixed paper and mixed plastic in January. Steve Moore said mixed-paper shipments to other Asian countries now fetch $5 a ton, down from as much as $150 last year. Other buyers such as Vietnam and India have been flooded with scrap paper and plastic that would have been sold to China in years past.

Dave Vaccarezza, president of Cal-Waste Recovery Systems near Sacramento, Calif., intends to invest more than $6 million in new sorting equipment to produce cleaner bales of recyclables.

“It’s going to cost the rate payer to recycle,” he said. “They’re going to demand we make our best effort to use those cans and bottles they put out.”

China stopped taking shipments of U.S. mixed paper and mixed plastic in January. Cal-Waste Recovery Systems workers sift through recycled trash. Photo: Max Whittaker for The Wall Street Journal

Sacramento County, which collects trash and recyclables from 151,000 homes, used to earn $1.2 million a year selling the scrap to Waste Management and another processor from scrap. Now, the county is paying what will amount to about $1 million a year, or roughly $35 a ton, to defray the processors’ costs. Waste Management paid the county $250,000 to break the revenue-sharing contract and negotiate those terms.

County waste management director Doug Sloan expects those costs to keep climbing. “We’ve been put on notice that we need to do our part,” he said. The county hasn’t yet raised residential fees.

‘There’s always been ups and downs in the market, but this is biggest disruption that I can recall.’

—James Warner, chief executive of the Solid Waste Management Authority

Some recyclers said residents and municipalities need to give up the “single-stream” approach of lumping used paper and cardboard together with glass, cans and plastic in one collection truck. Single-stream collections took hold in the waste-hauling industry about 20 years ago and continue to be widely used. Collecting paper separately would make curbside recycling service more expensive but cut down on contamination.

“We’re our own worst enemies,” said Michael Barry, president of Mid America Recycling, a processing-plant operator in Des Moines, Iowa, of single-stream recycling. “It’s almost impossible to get the paper away from the containers.”

Even relatively pure loads of paper have become tough to sell, Mr. Barry said, noting the domestic market for paper is saturated as well. He stockpiled paper bales at Mid America’s warehouse, hoping prices would improve. They didn’t. He has trucked 1,000 tons of paper to a landfill in recent weeks.

“We had to purge,” he said. “There’s no demand for it.”

Write to Bob Tita at [email protected]

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Dallas Morning News parent reports $4 million quarterly loss, a decline from a year ago

The "rock of truth" stands over the entrance to the former entrance to The Dallas Morning News headquarters building. Karen Robinson-Jacobs/DMN

The parent of The Dallas Morning News Wednesday reported a reduced first-quarter loss, even as revenue declined across each of its major business operations.

For the three-month period that ended March 31, Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corporation posted a net loss of $4 million, or 19 cents a share, an improvement over the $4.4 million loss a year ago.

The first-quarter loss would have been greater if not for more than $9 million in reduced costs, including staff reductions, and a $1.3 million tax benefit.

The news and marketing services company competes in an industry that has seen declining sales as consumers migrate away from print newspapers and have yet to sign up in droves to pay for news online.

A.H. Belo has adjusted its business model to rely more on digital subscriptions and has created new revenue streams by providing marketing services to advertisers.

The number of paid digital subscribers grew by about 2,000 in the quarter, and the total of 26,206 marked a 44 percent gain compared with a year ago.

Total revenue was just under $50 million, a decline of 19 percent from a year ago. The drop was due in part to the loss of print advertising from a major grocery chain that pulled its ads from newspapers nationwide.

“That was a lot of revenue for the company to lose on a single account,” said Jim Moroney, who was presiding over his final financial report as the company’s chief executive. Moroney, 61, is retiring this month after leading The Dallas Morning News for 17 years and the parent company since 2013.

Moroney said the loss would continue to show up in financial reports throughout the year. Katy Murray, the company’s chief financial officer, told analysts that the quarterly revenue decline is also partly attributable to new accounting guidance from the Financial Accounting Standards Board for all public companies.

As print ad revenue declined, the role of digital continued to grow. Total digital and marketing services revenue was 22.4 percent of total revenue, up from 21.3 percent for the same period in 2017.

Last month, the company’s board approved hiring a new accounting firm, Grant Thornton. Moroney has described the accountant switch as a cost-saving move.

A.H. Belo’s previous accountant, KPMG, noted in a report that it saw as “material weakness” in financial reporting related to single-copy sales returns and raised issues about the “completeness, existence and accuracy” of revenue from Speakeasy, part of the company’s marketing services operation.

Murray said Grant Thornton’s hiring was not related to KPMG’s findings.

As of late March, the company employed 1,046 workers, down from 1,250 a year ago.

During the analysts’ call, Moroney said it’s a “good time for me to turn over the operation” to new leaders, including The News’ new publisher Grant Moise and Tim Storer, who heads up Belo + Co., the company’s marketing services arm.

Robert W. Decherd, 67, will succeed Moroney as chairman, president and CEO of the parent company. He had been chairman and CEO of A.H. Belo and its predecessor company, Belo Corp., from 1987 to 2013. Both are great-grandsons of George Bannerman Dealey, the first and longest-tenured publisher of The News.

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Verne Troyer 1969 – 2018

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Megabus Involved In Deadly Crash Hour Outside Of Houston

WALKER COUNTY, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – One person was killed Tuesday after a hitting a charter bus on I-45 South near New Waverly.

Texas Department of Public Safety officials say the driver of an SUV hit a Megabus and died.

Megabus involved in deadly crash near Houston (Newspath)

Another victim was taken to a Houston hospital via Life Flight, officials said.

According to authorities, approximately 75 people were on board the charter bus.

No other major injuries to bus passengers have been reported.

Megabus involved in deadly crash near Houston (Newspath)

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Healthy Skepticism About Walmart and Humana

There is a method to the madness of retailers that want to buy health insurers, but Wall Street still isn’t crazy about it.

Walmart WMT 1.37% is in preliminary discussions to buy Humana, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. While Walmart has long been a dominant pharmacy player, a deal would push it into new business lines. Humana manages private Medicare insurance plans and owns its own pharmacy benefit management business.

One obvious rationale lies beneath these talks: Retailers have an urgent need to maintain foot traffic. Pharmacies can help.

Grocery chain Albertsons illustrated this last month when it announced a deal to acquire the pharmacy chain Rite Aid. Pharmacy customers visit Albertsons stores an average of 2.3 times a week and spend $66 on groceries and $26 on prescriptions. Other customers visit less than once a week and spend just $24 weekly on groceries. A hypothetical entry from new online rivals like Amazon into the pharmacy business thus has the potential to hammer sales.

Adding an insurer to the fold has the potential to help protect the retail business if Walmart can expand the clinical options it can offer in stores. That thought process helped fuel CVS Health ’s decision to purchase Aetna last year.

Also

Yet that logic doesn’t mean that Walmart shareholders will be happy. For one thing, the cost of a potential deal is massive. Adding a 25% takeover premium to Thursday’s closing enterprise value would value Humana at about $46 billion. Walmart would have to stretch its balance sheet or heavily dilute existing shareholders to pay that. Minimal business overlaps mean there won’t be much opportunity to find cost savings by combining.

Yet that won’t ensure a smooth antitrust review. A Walmart-Humana tie up would mean three large deals involving health insurers will need regulatory clearance, including CVS-Aetna and Cigna’s planned purchase of Express Scripts Holding . Trump administration officials have criticized large health-care consolidation. Investors clearly are wary, since both Aetna and Express Scripts trade at significant discounts to implied offer values.

Skepticism may continue even if these deals are completed. Both CVS and Cigna have sold off sharply since unveiling their proposed deals. An Amazon entry into the pharmacy world would put these new competitive barriers to the test. Acquirers also are making pricey bets that health care regulatory rules won’t change in a way that disadvantages these deals.

If its wager backfires, everyday low prices will be where Walmart least wants it: in the stock price.

Write to Charley Grant at [email protected]

Appeared in the March 31, 2018, print edition as ‘Risky Rx: Walmart-Humana Deal.’

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Policy Feuds Keep Spending Bill in Flux

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers hustled Monday to resolve policy disputes holding up an agreement on a sweeping spending bill needed to keep the government funded beyond Friday.

Disagreements over health-care policy, immigration and funding for a New York rail tunnel project persisted as Democrats, Republicans and the White House negotiated the measure that would keep the government open until October and prevent a partial shutdown when its current funding expires at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

Congress and President Donald Trump had already agreed to the overall spending levels last month, as part of a two-year budget deal, and senior lawmakers were confident it would pass before week’s end.

Natural Flea Treatment for Cats

As part of the budget deal, the bill will boost defense spending by $80 billion this fiscal year over spending limits set in 2011, although Congress has regularly agreed to lift federal funding since then. Domestic spending would get a $63 billion increase.

A bipartisan congressional effort to shore up the Affordable Care Act was likely to be excluded from the bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) told House Republicans Monday evening, although Senate Republicans had been pushing late Monday to get it in the legislation.

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) had hoped to include a plan from Mr. Alexander and Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) to restore payments to insurers that offset their costs for providing mandatory subsidies to some low-income consumers on the ACA. Mr. Trump ended those payments last year, and many insurers raised premiums as a result. That meant people who don’t get federal assistance to help with premiums saw their costs rise, in some cases by double digits.

The health-care package also would have provided money to states for reinsurance, which help cover high-cost insurer claims as a way to reduce overall premiums. And it would have given states greater flexibility with waivers on how they implement the ACA. Its omission would deal a major blow to insurers and could further imperil the ailing health law’s markets.

Democrats objected to a requirement from Republicans that would have only allowed subsidies to go to insurers that don’t provide any coverage for abortions. Current law prevents federal funding from covering abortions, but doesn’t stop insurers from providing separate coverage for them.

In an unusual move, Republicans publicly released their proposal Monday afternoon, criticizing Democrats for blocking it over the abortion restrictions.

“What we’ve come up with is not going to be a major change in policy in any way,” said Ms. Collins, pointing to her voting record in support of abortion rights.

But Democrats said the proposal expanded abortion restrictions in ways they couldn’t support. “I’m not going to do anything that appears to further retreat from our commitment to choice,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who added that he would vote against the bill if that restriction was included.

A partisan impasse also looked likely to block any extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Mr. Trump ended the program, which shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, in September and gave Congress until early March to pass a replacement.

On Sunday, the White House proposed extending the program for those enrolled in it now for 2½ years if paired with $25 billion to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Democrats were willing to support the $25 billion for the border wall, but wanted the agreement to include a path to citizenship, and wanted it to cover both those in the DACA program now and those eligible under its rules, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. The White House objected, leaving the issue at an impasse.

Federal judges have blocked the administration from winding down the DACA program for now, easing pressure on lawmakers to reach an immediate deal.

The Democrats’ proposal found some support in conservative circles. Three political groups funded by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch issued statements in support of a border security for citizenship trade that Democrats proposed.

“That’s an offer all parties should immediately accept,” said Brent Gardner, chief government affairs officer for Americans for Prosperity. Supportive statements also came from Koch-backed Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and the Libre Initiative. The Libre Initiative is also funding digital advertising campaign urging action on the Dreamer issue as part of the omnibus spending deal.

Lawmakers were still negotiating Monday over funding levels for the Homeland Security Department and how they should be allocated. Rep. John Carter (R., Texas), chairman of the House Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee, said he was pushing for $1.6 billion for the border wall, but that remained under discussion Monday night.

Lawmakers said Monday night that no deal had been struck yet over whether the spending bill should include $900 million in funding for a tunnel under the Hudson River.

Advocates have said the tunnel is needed to strengthen commuter rail service on the heavily traveled northeast corridor. Mr. Trump has threatened to veto the bill over the funds and administration officials have said it is the type of project that they would ask states and cities to fund themselves.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R., Texas) said he was hopeful the spending bill would include a measure he has championed to strengthen compliance with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. The “Fix NICS” bill is supported by 73 senators, but has some GOP opposition. Democrats have also pushed to hold votes on other gun-related legislation.

“I just can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be [included] unless people are being just stubborn,” Mr. Cornyn said Monday afternoon.

Lawmakers and aides had hoped to unveil the spending bill late Monday night, setting up a vote in the House on Wednesday and in the Senate, later in the week.

That compressed time frame could pose problems in the Senate, where any one senator can prevent the chamber from speeding up its time-consuming procedures, as Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) did last month, triggering a brief government shutdown. It wasn’t clear Monday whether Mr. Paul might act similarly this week.

Write to Kristina Peterson at [email protected] and Stephanie Armour at [email protected]

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Hope Hicks reportedly told House Intelligence Committee that her email was hacked

Hope Hicks told the House Intelligence Committee last week that her email was hacked, NBC News reported Wednesday.

Four people present for Hicks’ testimony told NBC that the former White House communications director talked about both her Donald Trump campaign and personal email accounts. Hicks said that one of her accounts had been hacked, two sources told NBC.

The sources said, however, that it was not immediately clear which account she was referring to when she made that remark.

Hicks testified before the committee as part of its investigation into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. She had been one of Trump’s earliest campaign aides and had been a senior White House official in his administration until last week.

Read the full report on NBC News.

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Dallas-area moms look to turn anguish over gun violence into action

Not much out of the ordinary happened at Saturday’s monthly meeting of the Dallas chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, unless you count the part where 100 people showed up instead of the usual 20.

Spurred by this month’s slaying of 17 students and staff at a school in Parkland, Fla., many came looking for some way to direct all the anger, frustration and tears that have been boiling up inside. For some, the emotions were fresh and idealistic; for others, lingering and intense.

"We’re going to turn our anguish into real action," said group leader Donna Schmidt. "We’ve been crying daily. Weekly. But we have to push forward to stop the epidemic of gun violence."

The at-times emotional meeting, held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in South Dallas, had been moved to a bigger room in anticipation of the larger turnout. The agenda held little more than connecting with and hearing from like-minded organizations such as the National Organization for Women and Faith Forward Dallas at Thanks-Giving Square.

But in the aftermath of Florida’s mass shooting, attendees felt called to action to honor those killed — "victims of gun violence in what should have been the safety of their school," as Rabbi Debra Robbins of Dallas’ Temple Emanu-El put it in her opening tribute to the fallen.

Moms Demand Action was founded five years ago by Indiana mom Shannon Watts, a graduate of Plano Senior High, in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

The group now claims 4 million national members, with 16 chapters in Texas, including a newly formed one in East Denton County. And it’s one of several organizations under the umbrella of Everytown For Gun Safety, which includes Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Everytown Survivor Network.

"We’re not gun grabbers," Schmidt said. "We respect gun ownership."

The group, focused on legislative action, is calling for what it calls "common-sense gun laws," including universal background checks on all gun purchases. And leaders laid out plans to vote out lawmakers deemed as "beholden to the gun lobby."

The idea of taking action rather than just offering "thoughts and prayers" is what drew attendees like Traci Lee of Dallas, who’s been a group member for more than a year but hadn’t felt compelled to attend a meeting until today.

"I felt like this time it was just enough," she said.

Lisette Carlton of Dallas said she’d felt strongly about gun control even before she was a mom.

"As an American, it’s very upsetting that we’re still discussing this and that no action has been taken," she said.

And Lindsey Rangel of Hurst, who has a son, 14, and daughter, 10, and is a victim of gun violence herself, said she was tired of hearing about such violence on the news.

"I just want to do what I can to prevent it from happening to others," she said.

The day’s meeting was a chance to collect that anguish and give people an outlet for action, Schmidt said. Nationwide, she said, other local groups were seeing the same boom in attendance.

"Every chapter we have is exploding," Schmidt said. "We hope that the tide has turned."

The session had begun with a moment of silence to honor those killed in Parkland. As Rabbi Robbins slowly read the names of the 17 victims, a candle was lit in honor of each, the pause between each unleashing reservoirs of emotion and sniffles throughout the room.

"We have tears," Schmidt said. "But we’re going to turn those tears into action today."

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Tender Smokehouse Brings Big Texas Barbecue to Small-Town Celina — and It’s Worth the Hike

Distance from Dallas aside, there’s no debate that Tender Smokehouse in Celina serves up some eminently tasty barbecue. email Print Article

It’s nearly 40 miles from the Dallas Observer offices to Tender Smokehouse in Celina, a fact that spurred some internal debate before our visit. We can almost write the Facebook comments ourselves from readers who will think we’ve ventured too far north to be relevant. But North Texas food is about so much more than what goes on within Dallas city limits. As the population continues to seep outside the traditionally accepted boundaries of DFW, it’s harder to define where the metro area ends and the rest of Texas begins. Judging by the number of new housing developments you’ll spot as you drive through northern Frisco, Prosper and into Celina, there’s no doubt residents of these parts consider themselves part of the fabric of DFW.

Dante Ramirez is Tender Smokehouse’s owner/pitmaster, and he makes a similarly long drive five days a week from his home in Grapevine to Celina’s newest barbecue joint. Thank goodness he does, because the barbecue at Tender Smokehouse is swipe-right worthy. Tender makes its home in a cozy brick building just off the square in downtown Celina, which still drips with small-town charm despite being swept up in exurbs’ rapid northern growth. Step inside from the patio to where a large chalkboard menu overlooks the counter where orders are placed. Meats are reasonably priced by the quarter-pound, with the exception of Tender’s spare ribs, which come either as a half ($10) or full slab ($20). Customers can also order their meats on a sandwich or loaded into baked potatoes, while a kids menu will keep the toddlers happy until their barbecue palates mature.

Tender Smokehouse’s modest dining room. Small crowds increase your chance of getting a sample from the pitmaster.

We settled on a quarter pound each of brisket ($5), pulled pork ($5) and jalapeño-cheddar sausage ($4.50), added a side of potato salad ($2) and banana pudding ($4) to round out the meal, then headed back to the restaurant’s modestly sized dining room. We weren’t seated long before Ramirez himself brought out our tray of food, dressed out with two triangles of ultra-buttery Texas toast, house-made pickles and sliced onions.

Two bites in — about to declare our love to the brisket, with its perfectly rendered fat encapsulated by a textbook bark — Ramirez reappeared with a small tray holding another slice of brisket cut into three pieces.

"It’s wagyu brisket, raised right here in Celina," he said.

Three of the five meats regularly peddled by Tender Smokehouse, along with delicious potato salad and ultra-buttery Texas toast.

As good as the regular brisket was, the A Bar N Ranch wagyu was a step above, like finding out that your penthouse hotel room has its own indoor swimming pool. The wagyu is a special item only available on Saturdays, and these melt-in-your mouth morsels are well worth the drive north on a lazy weekend, but the standard brisket didn’t disappoint, either.

Lest you think we get free barbecue samples as a perk of the trade, that’s simply not the case. As if on cue, Ramirez, unprompted, brought a few spare ribs to the couple sitting next to us.

"The closer you sit to me at the window, the more likely I’ll bring you a sample," Ramirez said. Consider your seating choices accordingly when you visit.

Oh, brisket, Tender be thy name.

As enamored as we were with the brisket, we can’t give short shrift to the rest of our order. The jalapeño-cheese sausage (also locally sourced) had an endearing heat from the jalapeños mixed with copious globules of cheese and finely ground pork. If we were forced to pick favorites, the pulled pork would probably land in third place. It’s moist and tender, but we wished it had a touch more smokiness. However, a dash of Tender’s house-made barbecue sauce rescued the pork nicely and goes well with any of the meats we ordered.

You can also count us as fans of Tender’s potato salad. Large cubes of redskin potatoes and hard-boiled eggs live in the salad, which hit the perfect balance of creamy and chunky. The banana pudding, thoughtfully kept chilled until the diners call for it, was somehow thick and creamy while still fluffy and light, with plenty of banana chunks and crunchy vanilla wafers.

Banana pudding so thick that the spoon stands up straight, and kept chilled until you’re ready to eat it.

Celina is rapidly growing from a sleepy Texas town to the next suburb to be swallowed by the sprawling city, the merits of which are certainly debatable. But just like Frisco, Plano and Dallas to the south, Celina has its own rush hour on Preston Road and now has a barbecue joint in Tender Smokehouse that’s worthy of the drive.

Tender Smokehouse, 224 W. Pecan St., Celina. Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday

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Texas execution delayed for man who murdered his daughters

FILE PHOTO: John Battaglia appears in a police booking photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice March 29, 2016. Texas Department of Criminal Justice/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A man who killed his two young daughters at his Dallas apartment in 2001 while the girls’ mother heard the fatal gunshots and her children’s screams on the telephone, had his planned execution on Thursday delayed as courts considered last-minute appeals.

John Battaglia, 62, a former accountant, had been set to be put to death by lethal injection at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville at 6 p.m. (0000 GMT). It would be the third execution this year in the United States, all in Texas.

Lawyers for Battaglia launched appeals with federal courts to spare his life, arguing he suffers from severe mental illness and his "perception of reality may be so distorted that he is incompetent to be executed."

They said three experts who examined him found he has "delusional disorder of the persecutory type," and was mentally incompetent for execution.

Lawyers for Texas contend Battaglia understands what he has done, is competent to be executed and used his intelligence to deceive the experts.

Battaglia had been divorced from his wife, Mary Jean Pearl, for about a year when he fatally shot their two daughters, Mary Faith, then 9 years old, and Liberty, 6, prosecutors said.

At the time of the shooting, Pearl was seeking to have him arrested for violating a protective order by threatening her.

According to court documents, shortly before Battaglia was scheduled to host his daughters for a regular dinner, a police officer informed him by phone he needed to surrender for violating his probation.

The officer asked him to turn himself in so that police would not have to take him into custody while he was with his daughters, court documents showed.

After the girls arrived at his apartment, he left a message on his wife’s phone. When she called back, he put the phone on speaker and demanded that his wife speak with daughter Mary Faith.

The daughter then asked: “Mommy, why do you want Daddy to go to jail?" and could be heard a few seconds later saying: “No, Daddy, please don’t, don’t do it.”

Then the mother heard gunshots and screams. Battaglia shouted an obscenity at her on the phone, the documents showed.

Pearl called 911 and police found the dead girls in Battaglia’s apartment. Both had been shot multiple times.

After the shooting, Battaglia went to a bar with his girlfriend and was arrested shortly afterward at a tattoo parlor where he was getting rose tattoos to remember his dead daughters, the documents showed.

It took a jury about 20 minutes to convict him.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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kgsminiranch · 7 years ago

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Former Dallas ISD chief: City, school district must ‘make economic diversity an explicit priority’

Staff Photographer

The growth of affordable housing in America is likely going to slow, thanks to the new tax law passed by Congress last month.

In a recent article by Conor Dougherty in The New York Times, an analysis by San Franciso-based accounting firm Novogradac & Company found the new law will reduce the amount of “affordable rental homes at a minimum by about 219,200 to 232,200, or more” units over the next decade.

That’s bad news for Dallas ISD, where affordable housing has becoming increasingly scarce in parts of the district.

Before leaving to found housing think-tank Opportunity Dallas, Mike Koprowski preached about the necessity of mixed-income housing for the district’s future, in his former role as DISD’s chief of transformation and innovation.

During a 2016 presentation to the Dallas City Council, Koprowski asked council members to consider the impact on neighborhood schools and their socioeconomic diversity when evaluating housing plans. He also launched intentional socioeconomic integration as a pilot program at two DISD schools: Solar Prep and CityLab.

Koprowski talked to The Dallas Morning News about his new work, after taking part in a panel discussion on childhood poverty in the region.

Dallas ISD is currently underway with its own racial equity audit, beginning the process of looking at inequities born out of the district’s decades-long segregationist efforts. Is this a good place for the city to begin when trying to address the North-South gap: one part of Dallas rich with prosperity — and the other struggling with poverty?

We often talk about economic segregation, but it’s very tightly correlated with racial segregation. It’s hard to even find the difference between the two, quite frankly. So, I think the first thing that we need to do is acknowledge the fact that this did not happen accidentally. This is a direct consequence of government policy that goes back many, many decades to the red lining of black neighborhoods; white neighborhoods that we labeled ‘residential’ and black neighborhoods labeled as ‘industrial’; the World War II G.I. Bill, which black veterans were systematically left out of, meaning they were left out of generous education benefits, they were left out of generous home loan benefits; there was a racial ranking scale that the Federal Housing Administration had for a number of years that identified minorities as the least desirable residents. This stuff was engineered. It was race-based. But we also have to acknowledge the intersection between race and economics. These two types of segregation are largely the same issue.

Opportunity Dallas’ executive director Mike Koprowski at an editorial board meeting at The Dallas Morning News in Dallas, on February 13, 2015.

How can the city find the political will to move forward swiftly on this?

What we really have to focus on is the power of economic integration. I think there is a history lesson that needs to happen here, but we also need to be forward-looking and pay attention to the research that shows what happens when you have mixed-income neighborhoods and you have mixed-income schools. So if we want a stronger worker pipeline for corporations, if we want a more balanced property tax base, if we want all of these things, then mixed-income communities have to be part of the solution.

You have the historical conversation, but you also have the forward-looking conversation. If you want the things that we want, here’s a really strong strategy to accomplish it.

So what’s that strategy?

We’ve talked about housing policy in four domains. The first one is mobility to opportunity — low- and moderate-income access to higher-opportunity areas. That’s where vouchers come in to play. There’s a lot of research from Raj Chetty which shows what happens when a low-income kid, before age 13, is able to access a mixed-income neighborhood as opposed to a high-poverty neighborhood. The life trajectories change rather dramatically.

The second domain is kind of the reverse of that. There are high-poverty communities — how can we holistically revitalize those communities and attract a diverse range of people to those communities. And that means investing in mixed-income housing, education reform, health and wellness programs so that private investment starts to come. The purpose-built community model, there’s about 16 cities in the country that are implementing that model. The idea is if you can create mixed-income neighborhoods, outcomes can improve. If you have an integration of folks from different economic backgrounds, positive outcomes are very likely to happen.

The third domain is actually a corollary to the last one, which is: when there is development happening in high-poverty communities, how do you have policies that protect against displacement? So that you can actually maintain the diversity of those neighborhoods. The West Dallas case, right? Identifying gentrification early, freezing property taxes, whatever it is, there has to be sort of an anti-displacement pillar of a housing policy because otherwise, you’re just taking Little Mexicos and turning them into Uptowns. That’s segregated the other way.

The last piece is how do you incentivize the development community to do more mixed-income and affordable housing. And so that last domain is really about increasing the supply and availability throughout the entire city. One of the challenges in an Uptown, or in a hot market, a developer can come in and say, ‘Hey, I want to do this development. I can rent out 100 percent of these units at market rate, and the market rate’s pretty significant. If you ask me to do a 20 percent set-aside for affordable units, my profit margin reduces, and my investors are looking for particular yield, so what do I do?’ That’s where I think policy comes in. How do you address that gap? What incentives can you provide developers so that they do more affordable, mixed-income housing — not in pockets of the city, but throughout the city? And it’s incentives like density or height bonuses, tax abatements, parking easements, maybe some direct subsidies … this is the talk about the Housing Trust Fund, to create the resources to do it with.

I think if we had those four pillars — first, if you had low-income people being able to access high-income areas where possible, with vouchers, for example; second, if you had a holistic revitalization of high-poverty communities; third, if you could revitalize without displacement; and fourth, if you just had a stronger supply of mixed-income housing throughout the city — I think that’s the way to go.

Where does the school district play a part? Doesn’t redevelopment in some of these areas require Dallas ISD’s action first?

You can’t do one or the other; you have to do it together, almost simultaneously.

That’s why I think housing policy is education policy, and I think there needs to be an intentional effort to make sure that the city goes in and says we’re going to do holistic revitalization in this part of town, and DISD needs to be in the conversation to say here’s what we’re going to do to complement that strategy with our schools.

When you were with the district, were you having those conversations with the City of Dallas?

We started to have that conversation; senior staff was meeting. I don’t know if they’re still meeting. But we were meeting, having conversations. It was kind of proceeding when DISD was getting its bond package together and the city was thinking about doing theirs. Those conversations were happening, but it goes back to what I said — it can’t be a once-a-week, or a once-a-month meeting. It has to be really intentional, roll-up-your-sleeves, to make this work.

I think DISD has sort of found the formula, right? If you have an attractive instructional model, people from different economic backgrounds are going to be interested: the Solar Preps, CityLabs, the IB model. That’s part of the solution, but it can’t be done in isolation.

That might work in areas that have shown strong economic growth, like parts of Oak Cliff and Old East Dallas. But what about neighborhoods like Pleasant Grove, where it’s going to be difficult to pull affluent families in?

This is a long-term strategy. And I think that we commit to it today, and we get there in a couple of decades. That’s really what we are talking about. In the meantime, and I think this is often a point that’s missed, you can’t just forget about high-poverty schools. DISD is going to have high-poverty schools for the foreseeable future. So that’s where stronger teachers, stronger principals, strong instruction — all those things come into play. You can’t forget about high-poverty schools, but at the same time you’re working to improve them — ACE, TEI — you also have to figure out how do we create more mixed-income schools. I see it as a ‘walk and chew gum’ kind of thing. This is a long game, but it starts with a commitment from the boards, from the staff, that we’re going to make economic diversity an explicit priority in our work.

Is that commitment there in DISD?

My understanding is that the new Ignite Middle School is going to do the 50/50 economic diversity model, which is encouraging. We did Solar Prep and CityLab right before I was going to leave. I’m not there anymore, but it looks like they are going to keep going with that. There was enough will to do Solar Prep, CityLab and now Ignite, so my hope is that continues on. My hope is that the commitment is there to do it at scale.

When you left the district, was part of your reasoning because you couldn’t affect enough change in your role in the district?

My realization was that if we were to do economic diversity in schools at scale, then we also need to be doing this at the neighborhood and housing level. So that’s what my frustration was. We need this same sort of economic diversity movement in the housing space. I felt like at my time in DISD, the community had really rallied around this idea that education is critical to our fate. It’s critical to our future. So you saw Commit and these non-profits, everybody was really rallying around education. And I felt there wasn’t a similar groundswell in the housing space. There wasn’t an equal commitment to doing that diversity work. And yet, I knew from research that diversity in housing is as critical as diversity in schools. I felt the void there, that the conversation needed to be had, and that I could fill it.

How is that fight going?

The momentum is starting and that’s what we’re trying to do. But it’s certainly not where it is with education. … A few years ago, I think education became a dinner table conversation when talking about the fate of our city. Is housing critical to the fate of our city? Is that a dinner table conversation right now? No. I don’t think it is a dinner table conversation. But that’s where we are trying to go. What we do in housing is equally important to what we do in schools, and you can’t divorce the two from each other.

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