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Coordinating CouncilIf you’re interested in issues related to preparedness, training, planning, communications and emergency response to public health and medical emergencies, you may want to apply to be a member of the Preparedness Coordinating Council. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission executive commissioner will appoint members to the council to serve a term expiring Dec. 31, 2022, unless otherwise noted.Applications are due by 11:59 p.m., Oct. 8.
Read moreOver the past month, as most of you are now well aware, a rash of shootings, arrests and murders have occurred in Colorado County, namely Columbus and Eagle Lake.
Read moreAustin – SB 1, a priority of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick in the third Legislative Special Session, was passed out of the Senate Finance Committee once again (14-0), and provides at least $2 billion (and up to $4 billion) towards lowering school district maintenance property tax rates for taxpayers in the 22-23 school tax year. The Texas A&M Real Estate Center has found that the median home price in Texas is $310,000 as of June 2021, and after the 25,000 homestead exemption, homeowners would save a minimum of $188 this year and nearly
Read moreIn a two-sentence press release, the secretary of state’s office announced an audit of four Texas counties — Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin — for the 2020 election. The announcement came hours after former President Donald Trump called on Gov. Greg Abbott to add an election audit bill to the current special session of the Texas Legislature. Abbott has not responded thus far. A similar audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County recently ended and concluded Biden won that state’s most populous county, which provided him the winning margin there. Trump won Texas by 5.6 percentage points in the 2020 election, although three of the four counties to be audited — Dallas, Tarrant and Harris — went for Biden. Officials from those counties told the Texas Tribune that “the development is an unnecessary partisan move aimed at sowing doubt in the results.” The position of secretary of state has been vacant since the end of May, when Ruth Hughs resigned after the Texas Senate declined to take up her nomination.
Read moreSeventeen Southeast Texas counties have been declared disaster areas after Hurricane Nicholas came ashore, dumping more than a foot of rain and cutting off power to a half-million customers in Texas, according to poweroutage. us. That number had been reduced to about 4,200 as of Sunday. Counties included in Gov. Greg Abbott’s declaration are Aransas, Brazoria, Calhoun, Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Matagorda, Montgomery, Newton, Nueces, Orange, Refugio, San Patricio, and Victoria. The Texas Department of Insurance has a number of tips for those affected by the storm:
Read moreAUSTIN – Governor Greg Abbott on Sept. 14 announced that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) is receiving up to $5 million in federal funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of an innovative program to help serve underserved Texans in rural hospitals throughout the state.
Read moreHi, my name is Isacc Vega and I’ve gladly taken the position of typesetter here at the Colorado County Citizen.
Read moreGov. Greg Abbott has called a third special legislative session to deal with redistricting, to decide how to spend billions of dollars in pandemic funding from the federal government and to determine to whether state or local governments can mandate COVID-19 vaccines, as well as some pet issues of the governor that failed to pass recent sessions. The third session begins Sept. 20 and by law can last no longer than 30 days. The second special session resulted in passage of hotly contested voting restrictions and what are considered the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, both of which are under legal attack. In the case of the latter, the U.S. Justice Department is suing the state, saying the abortion law banning the procedure at roughly six weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional. “The (Texas) act is clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday, as reported widely by media outlets. Several groups have filed suit against the elections bill signed by Abbott last week, including Voto Latino, LULAC Texas, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, and the Texas American Federation of Teachers. The law limits early voting hours, ends drive-in voting, and restricts mail-in voting. GOP leaders maintain that other provisions in the measure make it easier to cast a vote than before.
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