Tarrant County resident Janet Jones fills out a mock mail-in ballot at the public test of the county’s elections on Sept. 16, 2024.
CODY COPELAND
ccopeland@star-telegram.com
More than a thousand Tarrant County voters who have requested a mail-in ballot may still need to submit a new application ahead of the March primaries.
A mail-in ballot application sent by the Texas Democratic Party was missing information related to the March 3 primary elections, Tarrant County Democratic Party chair Allison Campolo said in a Friday text message.
The forms are acceptable for every election this year, including Saturday’s runoff, except for the primaries, where voters must select which party’s primary they want to vote in, said Campolo and Tarrant County Election Administrator Clint Ludwig.
“The application had everything but a box for the primaries to select what party you wanted,” Ludwig said.
The state party said the mailers were specific to the runoff election, and that an additional mailer has been sent to voters with a primary ballot application.
Campolo called the issue “very serious” and said Tarrant County Elections is notifying voters out of courtesy, rather than not sending the voters a primary ballot, and allowing them to submit an application for the primary if desired. Ludwig said the affected voters are being sent a letter and new application from the county.
Campolo and Ludwig estimated that more than 1,000 voters in the county have been affected. The Texas Democratic Party said it sent out 30,000 mailers to elgible mail-in voters living in Senate District 9.
“Our Vote by Mail program in Tarrant County was specifically targeted at the SD9 special election runoff,” said Terri Burke, the executive director of the Texas Democratic Party in a Saturday statement. “Those voters received mail-in ballot applications for today’s runoff and all other elections this year except for the primary. An additional mailing has been sent to individuals who require primary ballot applications.”
Asked about the party’s statement, Campolo said in a Saturday text that she’s “grateful to the state party for sending these vote by mail applications to our voters.
“The barrage of elections this year combined with Texas election laws has made this inherently confusing for voters no matter what the applications looked like or included,” Campollo continued. “This will be a tremendous year of voter education and outreach to make sure that all voters have the information they need at every election.”
Eleanor (Elly) Dearman is a Texas politics and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She’s based in Austin, covering the Legislature and its impact on North Texas. She grew up in Denton and has been a reporter for more than six years. Support my work with a digital subscription
U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, speaks to the capacity crowd on the stage for ‘The People vs. The Power Grab’ rally at the Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025.
Chris Torres
ctorres@star-telegram.com
One week after filing, U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth has stepped out of the race for Tarrant County judge.
Instead, Veasey said in a statement he is going to remain “laser-focused” on representing Congressional District 33.
“At a time when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are escalating their assaults on our democracy, our rights, and the rule of law, I believe we cannot afford to retreat from the arenas where those fights are being waged most intensely,” Veasey said in the statement.
That leaves Precinct 2 Commissioner Alisa Simmons and Fort Worth civic advocacy leader Millennium Anton C. Woods Jr. as the only two in the Democratic primary on March 3.
Veasey was the last to join the race on the filing deadline, Dec. 8. Before his announcement, he had been expected to place a bid for Congressional District 30 or run for reelection in his freshly redistricted seat.
Rachel Royster is a news and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, specifically focused on Tarrant County. She joined the newsroom after interning at the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Capital Community News in DC. A Houston native and Baylor grad, Rachel enjoys traveling, reading and being outside. She welcomes any and all news tips to her email.
Tanisha Thomas plays with her son Kingston, 3, in one of the child care rooms following the grand opening ceremony of the new Riverside Campus of the Center for Transforming Lives in the Morningside neighborhood of Fort Worth on May 2. With the help of the organization, Thomas was able to find stability after experiencing homelessness and battling suicidal thoughts.
Chris Torres
ctorres@star-telegram.com
In the first two weeks of the program, Center for Transforming Lives has distributed $45,000 to Tarrant County residents in need of emergency rental and utility assistance.
In August, Tarrant County Commissioners decided to outsource the assistance that the Human Services department had previously done because it was not being run efficiently. The Center for Transforming Lives subsequently won the $2.3 million contract to provide rental and utility assistance to residents beginning on Nov. 3.
Carol Klocek, CEO of the Center for Transforming Lives, said people were already lined up at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 waiting to apply for the program. In four hours, the center received 170 applications without ever having advertised the program. Thirty of the county’s in-process applicants were also transferred over that day.
On Tuesday, Klocek said 23 households will receive the assistance they requested on Nov. 3. Once that is done, the portal will open back up for more applications to be submitted.
Klocek said the center has been charged with getting the allotted $2 million of aid to the community as quickly as possible, but she’s not sure how long the funds will last. The county gave a grant of $2.3 million to the center with only $300,000 of that going toward administrative costs. The remainder is designated for aid.
“Will that aid run out in six months? In seven months? And then, will there be a gap until the next year, or will there be, you know, additional funds?” Klocek said. “But what we want to do is stabilize as many households as we can and do that quickly, and that’s our primary charge.”
Commissioner Roderick Miles, who hosted the public town hall at the center, said if the money is spent before the year-long contract ends, that will give the commissioners a strong case to say more investment is necessary.
“How can you refute the evidence?” Miles said. “If we run through $2 million, then it’s incumbent upon us to say the need is greater than we anticipated, and we need to earmark, and we need to put more money into this program. It makes my colleagues and I reexamine how we’re doing our budget every year.”
Before the county opted to outsource the utility and rental assistance programs, Human Services was only giving out about $1.5 million in aid. Budget director Helen Giese said the $4.5 million budget wasn’t being maximized to help residents in need.
By spending over $2 million less of taxpayer money, the county is helping more members of the community through the partnership with Center for Transforming Lives.
Rand Otten, acting director of Human Services, said at the October commissioners court meeting that in one month, the county’s department helped about 30 to 40 individuals pay rent in emergencies and about 100 people who needed help paying for utilities.
According to the county staff report, Center for Transforming Lives proposed to assist approximately 2,200 households from Nov. 1 through Sept. 30, 2026.
There is a great amount of need and a severe shortage of affordable housing in Tarrant County, Klocek said.
“The problem is that for so many households, a flat tire, an illness, a gap in child care, all of those kinds of situations can cause people to destabilize,” Klocek said. “A lot of people are also having to take care of an older relative, and so maybe they have child care issues, but an older relative gets sick, so they have to take off work for that, and they work for an employer who doesn’t allow sick time, or doesn’t have flexibility. So all of those kinds of situations can mean they can’t make rent payments.”
Under the Center for Transforming Lives, residents will no longer be able to receive long-term utility assistance as they could under Human Services. They will be allowed to apply for aid once a year and receive up to three months of help.
“We’re really limiting this to an emergency assistance program,” Klocek said. “So with our goal of preventing homelessness and allowing people to really weather those things that come up, … but where people are going to be able to pay their rent.”
Residents in need will be able to get connected with the other resources the center offers and other organizations who can help through the process of applying for emergency assistance at the Center for Transforming Lives.
Miles said with the number of people ready to apply on Day 1, he saw that the center is a safe and trusted place for the community.
“People know where it is, and they’re here waiting because they know, once the door is open, they’ll get what they need,” Miles said. “So I feel really good about how we’ve started.”
Rachel Royster is a news and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, specifically focused on Tarrant County. She joined the newsroom after interning at the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Capital Community News in DC. A Houston native and Baylor grad, Rachel enjoys traveling, reading and being outside. She welcomes any and all news tips to her email.
Alex Montalvo began the inaugural People’s Commissioners Court meeting on Oct. 21, 2025 with an overview of the evening agenda before opening up the floor for public comment.
Rachel Royster
rroyster@star-telegram.com
In response to the Tarrant County Commissioners Court deciding to only meet once a month, local residents decided to start their own version of commissioners court “where the voices of the people will be privileged,” according to an Instagram post.
The inaugural People’s Commissioners Court was hosted on Tuesday evening at Blanc Co-Work & Studios by Tarrant4Change, an advocacy organization, and co-founder Alex Montalvo. About 30 people came to take part. Many of those were familiar faces from the county commissioners meetings, but there were new faces as well.
Much of the meeting was used as a listening session through public comment and small groups to find out how it can best serve the participants. Attendees were given 3 minutes to speak, same as in the commissioners court, and primarily spoke about jail deaths and the freedom of speech being eroded.
Montalvo said the meeting will be recurring on the third Tuesday of each month — a week after the county commissioners have their meeting — and always at 6 p.m., with a potluck. This week’s offerings included a fan-favorite frito pie, tortilla soup, Hawaiian roll sandwiches and an array of desserts.
People’s Commissioners Court attendee Nydia Cardenas notified the public commenters how much time was left for them to speak in their allotted three minutes. Rachel Royster rroyster@star-telegram.com
Among the crowd was Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat from Arlington, and two of her staff members. Jamal Williams, the chief of Commissioner Roderick Miles’s staff, was also present.
Williams said People’s Commissioners Court gives the citizens a place to formalize their ideas and solutions to county issues that they can then present to the commissioners for action.
“My linear mind wants to put this in a box and structure it, but I thought Dr. (Harriet) Harral made a really good point earlier today: It’s about the people, and allowing the people to lead the effort, and seeing what this looked like and seeing where it goes,” Williams said.
Commissioner Alisa Simmons sat alongside the other People’s Commissioners Court attendees to hear what residents wanted to see the group’s monthly meetings to serve as. Rachel Royster rroyster@star-telegram.com
After the meeting, Simmons said the fact that the citizens feel the need to create their own version of the commissioners court tells her that they are not being properly served by the people in charge.
“We’ve disrespected them so much that they’ve had to pivot and come up with new strategy for getting their concerns heard and addressed,” Simmons said. “And I think the People’s Commissioners Court is their effort to strategize differently and become more cohesive, so that when they do show up at commissioners once a month, their presentations are titled, their messages are communicated.”
Simmons said she will be receptive to the ideas the People’s Commissioners Court brings her, whether it be putting something on the agenda for more information or a possible solution to an issue at the county.
Through small group brainstorming, the People’s Commissioners Court heard from attendees who said they would like to see the meetings be a place for delving deeper into county issues, breaking down what all is on the agendas and coordinating what they will speak out about in the county’s public comment section.
The People’s Commissioners Court attendees broke up into small groups to discuss what they would like the monthly meetings to serve as. Rachel Royster rroyster@star-telegram.com
Zoe Wilkerson, who uses they/them pronouns, said their full-time jobs means attending the 10 a.m. commissioners court meeting isn’t possible without taking time off. Getting to the 6 p.m. People’s Commissioners Court meeting on the third Tuesday of each month is much more doable for them.
“This is an opportunity for me to be involved and figure out those times that it is important for me to take that time off without necessarily having to be constantly on top of what’s happening in the Commissioners Court,” Wilkerson said. “What’s happening is important, but it also can be exhausting for those of us that are doing a million other things.”
Joe Palmer, who is a regular at the county commissioners meetings, said he wasn’t surprised to be the only Republican in the group, but he hopes more people from the right or middle will join him next month. He said it would bring more attention to the issues that really do affect everyone in the county, indiscriminate of their party affiliation.
“If I can bring in people from the right or people from the middle, it would add legitimacy to anything that comes out of this group,” Palmer said, “because, you know, it’s going to be bashed as ‘Oh, it’s just another leftist activist group, and shocker, they’re complaining about stuff we’re doing.’ But if somebody goes to the meeting and says, ‘I’m a Republican voter, I went to that meeting, and here’s a new idea or a new understanding that I have on this agenda item,’ that’s powerful.”
Rachel Royster is a news and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, specifically focused on Tarrant County. She joined the newsroom after interning at the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Capital Community News in DC. A Houston native and Baylor grad, Rachel enjoys traveling, reading and being outside. She welcomes any and all news tips to her email.
The United States Capitol at night in Washington, D.C., on April 18, 2017.
Clifford Oto
USA TODAY Network
U.S. Rep. Craig Goldman, a Fort Worth Republican, and U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill, a Flower Mound Republican, have asked that they not be paid during the duration of the government shutdown which began Oct. 1.
Goldman made the request in an Oct. 6 letter to the House’s chief administrative officer, whose office handles pay for members of the U.S. House of Representatives. He requested his pay be “suspended and withheld until normal government operations are restored,” according to the letter shared by Goldman’s office. Goldman will not accept a paycheck during the shutdown, but he will receive benefits like health insurance. He will receive back pay once the shutdown ends, a spokesperson said.
Gill has also sent a letter to the administrative office asking his pay be withheld, according to a statement to the Star-Telegram. A spokesperson for the North Texas congressman did not immediately return requests for a copy of the letter or questions about back pay and benefits.
“I sent a letter to the Chief Administrative Officer requesting that my pay be withheld until the Democrats’ shutdown ends,” Gill said in an Oct. 6 statement. “I will continue to work tirelessly on behalf of Texas’s 26th District while they hold up government operations for partisan gain.”
It’s been widely accepted, including in recent Trump administration guidances, that furloughed employees are paid etroactively once the shutdown lifts, according to AXIOS. However the news site reports that a draft memo from the White House says furloughed federal works aren’t guaranteed back pay, which would mark a switch from those guidances.
The Star-Telegram reached out to Tarrant County’s congressional delegation for comment on whether they are accepting paychecks during the shutdown.
As of Tuesday afternoon, spokespersons for Rep. Beth Van Duyne, an Irving Republican, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrat, and Rep. Marc Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat, had not returned requests for comment. A spokesperson for Rep. Jake Ellzey, a Waxahachie Republican, was not immediately available for comment. A spokesperson for Rep. Roger Williams, a Willow Park Republican, declined to comment.
The Star-Telegram has also reached out to the Senate’s Disbursing Office and the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer in the House seeking information about which Tarrant County lawmakers have asked that their paychecks be withheld.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, has also asked his pay be withheld, according to an Oct. 1 post on X and an accompanying letter to the Senate’s financial clerk. He does get backpay after the shutdown ends and medical benefits, according to his office.
“Due to Senator Schumer’s Shutdown over his deranged demand that we provide free healthcare for illegal aliens and that we reverse the Republican reforms blocking handouts to able-bodied adults who refuse to work, I have asked the Financial Clerk of the Senate to hold my salary,” Cruz said in the social media post.
A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
As the shutdown continues, a Change.org petition opposing salaries and benefits for members of Congress during shutdowns has gained more than 115,000 signatures. The petition says members of congress should have their salaries and benefits stripped during the shutdown. Their salaries should also be permanately cut by 2% each day the shutdown lasts, the petition states.
Eleanor (Elly) Dearman is a Texas politics and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She’s based in Austin, covering the Legislature and its impact on North Texas. She grew up in Denton and has been a reporter for more than six years. Support my work with a digital subscription
Tarrant Appraisal District offers update on who’s impacted by ransomware attack
Amanda McCoy
amccoy@star-telegram.com
An investigation by the Tarrant Appraisal District determined sensitive information for 300 or fewer people has been effected by a ransomware attack, the agency said in a statement Wednesday.
“It has been determined that there was unauthorized access to our network, which has resulted in the potential exposure of a small amount of personal information,” the statement said.
The statement also said TAD will notify those impacted “as soon as possible.”
On March 25, the district’s legal council announced at an emergency meeting that the hackers were asking for $700,000.
Appraisal district board chair Vince Puente told the Fort Worth Report that the district is in communication with Medusa.
Medusa, the group suspected of the attack, has previously used extortion and the threat of selling sensitive information on the dark web as a tactic to negotiate, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.
The appraisal district’s chief appraiser, Joe Don Bobbitt told the Star-Telegram last week that a majority of the data the district keeps on file is “sales data” and property details such as square footage, tax deeds or the year a property was sold — almost all of it public information.
A spokesperson for the district said Social Security numbers are not among data collected by the district and only on rare occasion are driver’s licenses kept on file.
In the statement put out Wednesday, TAD offered information on how to freeze a credit card or report fraud.
Many function’s of the appraisal distict’s website are still offline.
The district sets property appraisals and administers exemptions for tax purposes.
