Governance

On the surface, Houston’s proposed city council maps barely budge, but the ground is shifting

With 2020 Census data in hand, Houston is moving forward with city council redistricting. The first proposed map was unveiled last week ahead of a public comment phase. For the most part, not much changes in terms of actual boundaries, but the underlying demographics of Houston’s population shifted considerably in the past 10 years.

At first glance, Houston taxpayers seem to pay more into county coffers than it receives in services

Do property taxpayers inside the City of Houston subsidize Harris County services? It’s a question that comes up a lot, given the fact that city residents—like their counterparts in the county—pay separate property taxes to the county, but the county provides many services only to the unincorporated areas.

What Seattle and Boise got right about Hispanic representation in city politics

Houston, Boise, and Seattle share a strong-mayor form of government, and its voters tend to favor progressive-leaning candidates. But these two majority-White cities have lifted Hispanic candidates into office in recent years, while representation has dwindled in Houston.

In 2011, Houston created a district to boost Hispanic council representation. What happened?

In November 1979, Houston City Council went from being almost exclusively male and white to being dramatically more diverse, literally overnight, as voters elected the council’s first two women and its first Mexican-American, and tripled the representation of African-Americans. The new council was also on average 10 years younger. It was a new day in city politics—thanks to federally required reforms that led to single-member districting—and Houston never looked back.

The Woodlands puts incorporation question up for a vote

The Houston suburb of The Woodlands has been called an “invisible city” for the dense tree canopy that shrouds the extent of its development. It is invisible perhaps in another way: It’s not a city at all, but rather a patchwork of special districts, service contracts and interlocal agreements—a tenuous marvel of public-private partnership. But that could soon change.