KEYE on Upcoming State Laws 2017

House Bill 100, Senate Bills 113, 176 and 361 all deal with statewide governance of rideshare companies in the 2017 session.

“We can let the public decide, why does the government need to dictate who we should get rides from and how it should be done,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen says lawmakers filed a similar bill in 2015, but it didn’t pass. This time around, he’s more confidence because of what happened in Austin when Uber and Lyft left the city after a new fingerprint background check ordinance passed.

“I feel more confident than I’ve ever felt before,” Nguyen said.
A texting and driving ban has also seen similar bills in the past three legislatures. However, lawmakers hope this time around will be different.

"I hope that we can find the energy to make it happen this year in Texas,” rep. Celia Israel said in November, 2016.

Here is the Senate Testimony where the city of Austin of discussing the ride-share bills.

More Trailer Park Show Talk

A couple more shows on The Trailer Park Show...

Nov 28th, 2016 with Travis County Chairman James Dickey

Jan 9th, 2017 with liberal John Carroll

Right Talk With Mike Lee

I was asked to come on another local public TV show.  Right Talk with Mike Lee.  It comes on immediately after The Trailer Park Show.

Nov 22nd, 2016 Show

Trailer Park Show

I was invited to speak on a local public TV show called The Trailer Park show.  It is a local show that talks about local Political issues.  It has mostly Conservative guests.  They have invited Liberal, but they don't seem to stay on much.

Oct 17th Show

Nov 21st Show with Matt Mackowiak

Freedom of Information Act and TX Public Information Act

Every wonder where someone lives?  Every wonder what your neighbor's home value is?  Every wonder someone's criminal history or Political voting history is?  The Internet has many database sources and today it is easier than ever to find out just about anything about anyone.  

United States Federal Government is bound by the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  Texas is bound by the Public Information Act which is a set of laws that ensures the public has access to information held by the government.  

As the Internet has matured and government has become more technological, many items are readily avalaible on government websites.  Things like home values and checking voter registration is easily found by simple name search.  Some information requires a formal records requests before they are handed out.  Other data items like voting history require searching thru huge Excel files to extract the data.  Criminal history searches usually requires a birthdate, so you may need to first get that from the voter history file.   Sometimes it's not an easy search, with so many common names. I'm sure there will be a time where everything is easily found online, but for now it is generally located in fragmented databases spread out by our local city, state, county and federal websites.

Here are a few key sites for my location in central Texas.

Travis County

• Property Search
• Voter Registration search
• Voter History Excel download
• General Document Search includes marriage records, liens, Deeds, bankruptcies

Texas State

• Business Name Search 
• Secretary of State Search

Williamson County

• Williamson County Property search
• Williamson County Voter History file
• General Document search

Hays County

• Property Search

Other Search sites

• https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com
• Voter History Online search in FL, OH, and PA
• Washington DC Voter History file
• FEC Site to review election records
• Texas Campaign Finance Search
• FAA Drone Registration database
• Wayback Machine https://archive.org/web/