Thread: Minorities gain ground in Texas suburban counties

Minorities gain ground in Texas suburban counties

JAY ROOT,Associated Press
Posted: 04/23/2011 10:25:12 AM MDT

RICHMOND, Texas (AP) - When Hilmar Moore became mayor in 1949, this Southeast Texas town was surrounded by fertile farmland and inhabited mostly by white people. More than 60 years later, Moore is still mayor, but almost everything else around here has changed.

Richmond now sits in the center of one of the fastest growing counties in the nation's fastest growing mega-state. The Houston suburb is also one of the most racially diverse - minorities account for almost two-thirds of its population. In 1950, about three-fourths were white.

Fort Bend County is a convenient microcosm for what's happening across America, where 85 percent of the population growth has come from minorities over the last decade. Rather than take over neighborhoods abandoned by whites, minorities are increasingly the first-time home buyers in neighborhoods drawing multiple ethnicities.

In Texas, the booming minority population is bringing the state more representation in Congress and fueling a changing political and ethnic landscape in suburban counties like Fort Bend, one of the state's wealthiest counties.

The year after Moore was elected, the population of Fort Bend was 31,056. Today, the county has reached almost 600,000 and has grown by two-thirds over the last decade.

"I knew a high percentage of people in the whole county at one time," said Moore, who at age 90 is the longest serving mayor in the United States. "I don't know all the people in Richmond now."

The county's white population grew slightly, but dropped as a relative percentage of the total, according to the 2010 Census. Blacks, joining a nationwide exodus to the suburbs, saw their numbers rise by 86 percent since 2000. The Hispanic population increased by the same amount and now makes up almost a quarter of the Fort Bend County population.
Asian growth particularly soared over the last decade here, more than doubling to almost 100,000 today - 17 percent of the total.

"If you sit here and watch the kids walking out of school, it looks like the United Nations," says Democratic County Commissioner Richard Morrison, waving his hand toward suburbs fashioned from quickly disappearing farmland. "Ten years ago this was 'out in the country.' None of this was here."

Several other counties with rural origins - and surrounding large metropolitan areas - saw similar rates of growth in Texas and around the nation. Collin and Rockwall counties, north and east of Dallas, grew by 60 percent and 82 percent, respectively. The "halo" counties that ring the state capital of Austin - Bastrop, Hays and Williamson counties - also saw huge population increases.

Like them, Fort Bend reeks of newness. Freshly poured concrete, newly sodded landscaping and signs proclaiming to be the "future site of" something important dot the horizon. Cattle ranches and cotton farms back up next to brand new subdivisions. Drainage pipes, waiting to be buried, line roads choked with paving crews. Colorful signs advertising starter houses, from $140,000 and up, compete for the attention of passing motorists. A frequent complaint here is that the GPS systems motorists use to guide them can't keep up with all the new developments.

One, the Lakemont subdivision, was mostly open prairie in 2000. Now the neighborhood's McNeill Elementary School, built in 2008, is bursting at the seams. The school has already added portable buildings and officials say there are plans for new schools to be built.

McNeill, like Fort Bend County, is a portrait of ethnic diversity. It's 36 percent black, 26 percent Hispanic, 18 percent white and 19 percent Asian. There are 16 countries and 26 languages represented at the school, which was an "exemplary" campus - the highest level of academic achievement - in the most recent school rankings, said school Principal Amber Barbarow.

"Our kids are going to grow up this way. They are competing in a global world and the more mixes of cultures they see and the different languages they hear, the more prepared they are," Barbarow said.

Former Cleveland Browns linebacker Kris Griffin, 29, joined the Rust Belt exodus when he moved here a couple years ago from Pennsylvania. Griffin said he was drawn by the warm weather, the low cost of housing and schools like McNeill, which his children now attend.

"It's very family friendly," he said.

Griffin and thousands like him moving to suburban Texas counties are bringing their political clout with them: Pennsylvania is one of 10 states, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast, that is losing representation in Congress due to relative population declines. Texas is picking up four new congressional seats, more than any other.

The changing demographics have also changed Fort Bend's political dynamic. This is the former stronghold of ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Republican heavyweight who was recently convicted on public corruption charges stemming from his efforts to expand GOP strength in Congress. DeLay is appealing his conviction.

Morrison, the Democratic county commissioner, ran a surprisingly strong race against DeLay in 2004, getting 41 percent of the vote in a district that incumbent President George W. Bush easily won with 64 percent of the vote. Four years later, Morrison narrowly beat a Republican for county commissioner. That same year, Barack Obama won 49 percent of the vote in Fort Bend, sending shockwaves through the political establishment and putting the GOP on notice that the county was up for grabs.

In areas where slaves once worked fields of cotton and sugar cane, upscale black neighborhood like Sienna Plantation and Teel Run have sprung up - and are voting Democratic. Box 1114, in Teel Run, was Obama's best precinct in the Houston metropolitan area in 2008, according to University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray. Obama got almost 3,000 votes - 95 percent of those cast there.

Republicans aren't about to concede the minority vote, or the county, to Democrats. Fort Bend County chairman Rick Miller said that despite Democratic claims of growing momentum, Republicans retain all but a handful of the state elective offices in the county. He said the GOP is making significant inroads with Fort Bend's growing Asian population - an ethnic group Miller called naturally conservative. He also predicted Republicans would take back Democrat Morrison's county commissioner seat in 2012 and said the party was conducting political outreach in minority communities to keep the county in GOP hands.

"We're going to work our tailbones off to make a dent into some of the black areas," Miller said. "We have a lot of work to do and we know it."

Moore, the Richmond mayor, has seen political change come before. The former Fort Bend County campaign manager for Lyndon Johnson can remember when Democrats ran everything and Republicans were so rare they were like "freaks in a circus." He figures Fort Bend, which is the wealthiest county in Texas when measured by median income, is going to thrive no matter who's in power.

An avid hunter - and still one of the nation's largest cattle ranchers - Moore gets a little wistful when he sees "so much of the very, very productive agricultural land being covered with concrete."

"That said, I'm certainly not against progress," Moore said. "I realize its coming. I have no control over that."

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_17914766

US education department says Texas will get $830M

Associated Press
Posted: 04/23/2011 10:11:19 AM MDT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas will receive $830 million in public education funds that had been stalled amid political wrangling, the U.S. Department of Education announced Friday.

"There is a huge sense of urgency to get these funds out the door," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a news release.

The federal budget deal negotiated earlier this month to avoid a government shutdown had removed the strings U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D- Austin, attached to the funds over the summer. The bill removed a requirement that Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, use the money to supplement existing school spending rather than just replace state funds in order to balance the budget.

Perry has blasted Doggett for attaching strings to the federal money intended to protect 300,000 teachers and other nonfederal government workers from layoffs. Texas Republicans made repealing the amendment a priority.

Perry said in a news release Friday that he welcomed the Education Department's decision to approve the state's application for the funds.

"Today is a victory for Texas schools that have been waiting for these well-deserved federal funds for far too long," Perry said.

Education faces major cuts with Texas forced to confront a $27 billion budget shortfall in order to maintain the current level of services.

The Texas-specific provision required that Perry promise the state maintained certain education spending levels through 2013 in order to get the funds. Perry said the Texas Constitution prohibited him from committing to future state spending.
"These funds will provide much needed funding for our schools as they prepare their budgets for the coming year and will help retain thousands of teacher jobs," Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott said.

Democrats in Congress said they added the provision because of the way Texas handled federal stimulus dollars in 2009. Texas lawmakers used $3.2 billion in federal stimulus money to replace state money and ended the legislative session with billions in the state's reserve Rainy Day Fund.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_17914765