New Texas laws aimed at sharp rise in electric vehicle ownership in Lone Star State

Texas has about 2,900 public charging stations for electric vehicles.

Two EV Charging stations at Cinemark West Plano and XD in Plano Texas. (Irwin Thompson/The Dallas Morning News)(IRWIN THOMPSON)

By Aarón Torres

Published at 6:00 AM on July 3, 2023

The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN — Texans are known for their long road trips, and gas stations dot the state’s highways to keep them driving, but drivers in electric vehicles may experience something else: “range anxiety.”

Texas lags other states in adopting EVs, and lacks essential charging stations needed to keep the electric engines powered. But as Tesla, Ford and Rivian increase mass production of electric vehicles, lawmakers are trying to lay the groundwork for easier adoption.

In the Legislature’s regular session that ended May 29, EV advocates successfully nudged several bills to passage — not all they wanted, but enough, they say, to keep momentum going for an essential ingredient: more charging stations.

“When you look at reasons people don’t buy electric vehicles, No. 1 is cost, and that’s changing rapidly” and decreasing, said Tom “Smitty” Smith, executive director of the Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance, and an electric vehicle owner. “The No. 2 [reason] is charging access or range anxiety.”

The number of gas stations in Texas dwarfs the number of available chargers. There are more than 12,000 devices — or pumps — in the Lone Star State from which one can fuel up a gas-powered car. Meanwhile, there are only about 2,900 charging stations in Texas.

There are about 18.7 charging stations per 100,000 residents, putting Texas 36th among states, according to data by the software company CoPilot. Vermont and California rank No. 1 and 2, respectively, and the top 10 states have at least 55 charging stations per 100,000 residents.

But new laws signed by Gov. Greg Abbott will help fast-track development of more charging stations as electric vehicle ownership increases.

One law — Senate Bill 1001 — also increases transparency by displaying the cost to use a charger before charging and creates a process for the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to inspect the chargers — similar to how it inspects gas stations.

Another — Senate Bill 1002 — ensures that utility companies can’t undercut private retailers and other businesses that offer charging stations by offering charging at a lower rate. Advocates say the measure is vital to building out a network of charging stations.

The presence of more charges is particularly important to electric vehicle owners who are unable to charge their vehicles at home.

Neal Farris, an electric vehicle owner in Dallas and vice president of the North Texas Electric Vehicle Auto Association, owns an electric BMW i3. He charges at home and said he has rarely used a public charger. He believes charging stations will be less important as more gas stations offer chargers.

“Those destination charge stations are going to become irrelevant over time,” Farris said.

But that future is likely to be decades away.

There are more than 202,800 electric vehicles registered in Texas, according to Texas Department of Transportation data compiled by the Dallas Fort Worth-Clean Cities Coalition. As of 2021, there were more than 20 million gasoline-powered vehicles registered in the state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The federal government under President Joe Biden has hoped to incentivize purchasing electric vehicles, which are seen as a cleaner fuel source that will cut down on emissions. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 gave Texas $400 million in federal funds. The state has said it plans to use that money to build more than 50 new charging stations along state highways.

TxDOT aims to have a charging station every 50 to 70 miles, according to a plan released in 2022, and will award contracts to build those stations. No contracts have been awarded yet, a department spokesman said. The plan does not set a time frame for completing the stations.

Some say the shift to electric vehicles raises equity questions. Research has shown that the average owner of an electric vehicle tends to be white and college-educated, living in a single-family home. The average price of a new electric vehicle in May was $55,488, according to Kelly Blue Book.

Car companies hope to help bridge the gap in electric vehicle ownership among demographic groups.

General Motors has announced plan to make electric vehicles for everyone. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Austin-based Tesla, has repeatedly touted the idea of producing a Tesla that sells for $25,000.

“I think they’re going to take a more practical profile here pretty quickly,” said state Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas. “If we’re going to see an electric vehicle adoption on a large scale beyond the novelty and luxury level that it presently occupies, we are going to need serious build-out of that infrastructure here.”

Texas Senator Nathan Johnson: Lawmakers must stop deep fake images for fair elections

Unscrupulous political agents are spreading disinformation. This bill will help stop them.

By Nathan Johnson | Dallas News

Seeing is believing. Well, not always. It’s OK — desirable, even — to be fooled by digital images when we watch movies. It’s not OK when we’re deciding how to vote in elections.

As much as we tend to think election outcomes are the foregone conclusions of partisan map drawing, there still are contests in which people struggle to make up their minds about candidates; sometimes in a primary election, sometimes in a general election.

Seeing is believing. Well, not always. It’s OK — desirable, even — to be fooled by digital images when we watch movies. It’s not OK when we’re deciding how to vote in elections.

As much as we tend to think election outcomes are the foregone conclusions of partisan map drawing, there still are contests in which people struggle to make up their minds about candidates; sometimes in a primary election, sometimes in a general election.

The technology for digitally altering images and creating fake videos gets more powerful every day. It gives election saboteurs the ability to make us think and feel things that aren’t real, and to vote accordingly. It’s a growing threat to the integrity of our elections and our democratic institutions.

After all the acrimony over election laws during the past few years, addressing the threat of manipulating voters through digital alteration of images is neither controversial nor partisan.

The threat applies without regard to state boundaries, so you’d think the federal government would have already acted to safeguard the electoral process against manipulation by digital hacks. Alas, this is yet another area where Congress hasn’t performed its duty, and responsible action falls to the states.

In 2019, Texas passed the nation’s first law prohibiting “deep fake videos,” those produced using artificial intelligence, made with the intent to deceive people and influence the outcome of an election.

The 2019 law did not, however, address a simpler manipulation tool — altered still images. This session, I filed Senate Bill 1044 to expand the reach of the 2019 “deep fake” law to include digitally altered images: photos manipulated to change in a realistic way how someone looks, or to show them doing something they didn’t actually do, with the intent to deceive people and influence the outcome of an election.

Any effort to place boundaries on verbal or visual communications inevitably runs into concerns about preserving rights of free expression. Indeed, when it comes to politics, we seem to have an attitude of anything goes regarding criticizing, characterizing and caricaturing candidates and elected officials.

But this isn’t about free speech or damage to reputation or hurt feelings. It’s about protecting voters and the electoral process from malicious manipulation. And it’s not that hard. The bill doesn’t regulate caricatures, cartoons, satire or superficial changes; it applies to only deliberate attempts to trick us.

We needn’t sacrifice free expression to protect the electoral process from deliberate sabotage. And we should not permit ourselves to be played by those who would gain power through deceit. New digital tools require new rules. Texas can and should continue its lead over other states in protecting the integrity of elections from digital sabotage. After all, this isn’t a movie.

Nathan Johnson is a Democrat representing Dallas in the Texas Senate. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Texas Republicans advance bills to expand religion in public schools

BY CHARLOTTE SCOTT AUSTIN

PUBLISHED 8:00 AM CT APR. 26, 2023

Spectrum News 1

AUSTIN, Texas — Cantor Sheri Allen has worked in synagogues for more than a decade, and she recently opened her own in Fort Worth. 

“We have only been in existence since November. We meet once a month at a church in the area and have Sabbath Shabbat services,” said Allen, who’s the co-founder of Makom Shelanu Congregation. 

Even though Allen is a chaplain, she does not support legislation that’s advancing through the Texas Senate. It would allow school districts to bring in chaplains, as either volunteers or paid employees, to do the job of a counselor.

What You Need To Know

• Legislation that’s advancing through the Texas Senate would allow school districts to bring in chaplains, as either volunteers or paid employees, to do the job of a counselor

• If a chaplain is paid, their salary would come from funding intended for school safety

• The bill’s author, Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, said this bill actually falls under the Free Exercise Clause, which is also part of the First Amendment

• This clause protects someone’s right to practice their religion as they please

“First of all, chaplains are not trained in any way to be able to counsel children in anything other than spiritual needs,” Allen said. “There’s no place for this in schools.” 

Allen believes the bill violates the Establishment Clause, which is part of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Commonly referred to as the “separation of church and state” clause, it prohibits the government from supporting a specific religion. 

Allen is concerned that Texas lawmakers are promoting Christianity. 

“It just makes me feel like there is a push to introduce Christian values, Christian liturgy, Christian thought in a public space,” Allen said. “School is hard enough for kids just trying to find their way in who they are.”

But the bill’s author, Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, said this bill actually falls under the Free Exercise Clause, which is also part of the First Amendment. This clause protects someone’s right to practice their religion as they please.

“This is not an establishment clause issue,” Sen. Middleton said. “This is just… one more tool in the toolbox for our public schools to be able to meet the needs of their students.” 

If a chaplain is paid, their salary would come from funding intended for school safety. Sen. Middleton argues that having chaplains on campus can help students’ and teachers’ mental health, thereby making schools safer.

Chaplains would not be required to be certified. They also could be hired in lieu of a school counselor, if the school district chooses to spend its money that way.

This bill is part of a bigger push by Texas Republicans to increase religion’s presence in the state’s public schools. But critics like Allen are raising concerns about violating the separation of church and state. The controversy revolves around three bills, including the one to bring chaplains into public schools. Another would mandate the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Such a display sits on the Capitol grounds, but this is the first push for the text to appear in schools. A third bill would allow a period for prayer and reading the Bible or religious texts during the school day. Last year, a law passed that says schools must display "In God We Trust" posters in public schools if someone donates them.

When the school chaplain bill was debated on the Senate floor on Monday, Democratic Sens. Nathan Johnson of Dallas, José Menéndez of San Antonio and Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa of McAllen brought up a variety of concerns. 

“What are the odds that a given campus is going to employ a Muslim chaplain as opposed to a Christian chaplain?” Sen. Johnson asked Sen. Middleton.

Sen. Middleton said it’ll be up to school districts to decide which chaplains they hire. 

“We’re just authorizing our school districts to permissively opt in to this program,” he said.

“As a practical matter, I think it’s unlikely that we will see anything close to parity in representation in terms of which religion is represented by chaplains on a school campus,” Sen. Johnson said in response. “I just don’t think we’re going to see Muslim and Jewish rabbis on campus. Chaplains do a great deal of good in hospitals. They do a great deal of good in the correctional systems. I don’t think those systems are the same as our school system… I still have great concern that we are continuing to break down the wall of separation that framers of our Constitution insisted on having between church and state, and so I would respectfully oppose the bill.” 

A majority of Chaplains are Christian, Sen. Middleton conceded on Monday.

“As you referred to the separation of church and state, that’s not an actual doctrine. That was in a letter from Jefferson to the Danbury baptists. It’s not a real doctrine,” Sen. Middleton argued. “What this does is free exercise [of religion], and I think you’re referring to the establishment clause there.” 

“It’s a pretty real doctrine to some of us, but perhaps not to everyone,” Sen. Johnson fired back.

In an interview with Spectrum News, Sen. Middleton also made the point that lawmakers say a prayer every day in their respective chambers, and they work beneath lettering that says, “In God We Trust.” 

“In the Senate chamber, in the House chamber, it says, ‘In God We Trust’ above everything else,” Sen. Middleton said. “So our schools are not God-free zones. And what this does is to make sure that our students are able to exercise their religion freely and provide them tools that they currently don’t have. So that’s why that bill is so important. So an example right here in this building of why religious liberties are so important.”

Sen. Middleton believes this bill stands on sturdy legal ground because last year the Supreme Court backed a public school football coach who prayed on the field after games.

“[This] expands religious liberties and really gets rid of a lot of the legislating from the bench that we’ve seen our courts do over the years that have limited that Free Exercise Clause in our Constitution,” Sen. Middleton said.

But Michael S. Ariens, a law professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, said the legislation Texas lawmakers are pushing cannot be compared to the so-called Kennedy Case.

“The court decided that because his prayer was as a private citizen, and not as a coach — that is, he was not on the clock in the sense of having to just do things related to his coaching activities — it was a violation of the Free Exercise Clause for the school district to forbid him for saying these prayers after the end of games on the 50-yard line,” Ariens said. “I think the sponsors of these bills are reading the Kennedy Case very, very broadly. I don’t think it says what they are asking, and I think that if any of the three bills that have been proposed that have something to do with what we broadly call ‘religious liberty,’ it will be immediately challenged on Constitutional grounds.” 

As for Allen, she remains concerned about students who aren’t Christian — those who practice another religion or none at all — that could be made uncomfortable by framed posters of the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, time set aside to pray or read religious texts and even the presence of school chaplains.

“This is supposed to be a country that is open to all faiths, all religions and the ability to express them, but not in public schools. I mean, the Constitution is pretty clear about that,” Allen said.  

A disagreement about the separation of church and state in schools is likely to go from the classroom to the courtroom.