The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) released its fifth annual Municipal Equality Index on Monday. It rates cities on how inclusive their policies and laws are when it comes to LGBTQ people.
Xavier Persad, legislative counsel for the HRC, says they looked at protections that “expressly include and protect on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In Texas, only three cities scored a perfect 100: Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth. The scorecard made sure to exclude protections on the state level.
“In Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth, where perfect scores were achieved… the important piece is having fully inclusive citywide protections in employment, housing, and public accommodations – that’s a big chunk of this scorecard,” Persad says. “It’s important that people are able to live without the fear of being discriminated in work, being evicted, or being refused services, simply because of who they are and who they love.”
Other cities in Texas didn’t score so well – Irving, Laredo, and College Station scored a measly six points, and Killeen got 18.
Persad says the idea for cities who did really poorly is to take this information and make changes that will help them score higher.
“We want them to know there’s a lot they can be doing and should be doing,” he says, “and hopefully we’re providing the resources and the roadmap through this report and the scorecard to help identify exactly what needs to be done.”
Nationally the average score for cities was 55 out of 100.
What TV show is the most popular in Texas? According to CableTV, it’s the Netflix series “Narcos.”
The website tried to figure which show was the most popular in each state. To do that, they combined the Internet Movie Database’s list of most popular shows with Google trends – so you could take these results with a grain of salt.
For comparison, California’s favorite show was “Silicon Valley” and New Mexico went for “Breaking Bad.”
If you dreamed of boarding a commuter rail line between San Antonio and Austin, thumbing through a good book instead of fighting bouts of road rage, keep dreaming.
Last night the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization officially axed plans for the Lone Star Rail project. It first went off the rails in February, when Union Pacific put the brakes on plans to share its rail lines with the group.
