Letters

As Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation in the Texas Legislature, I have had the privilege of working toward improving our ability to deliver road projects in the Rio Grande Valley. Throughout my tenure, one issue has become increasingly clear: Hidalgo County’s transportation system is being left behind. It is time for a change. It is time for HidalgoCounty to embrace a centralized system of managing its road construction and maintenance.

I am happy to report that Gov. Abbott signed House Bill 4742 into law last month. It becomes effective Sept. 1.

Re: the headline, “Debt deal imposes new work requirements for food aid” (June 4): What could be a more descriptive difference between the terms “conservative” and “liberal” than a sticking point in compromise over food aid to the poor or the just-hanging-on?

We are in a strange era when nothing is normal. It’s like we have entered into a twilight zone.

I have made at least a half dozen trips up the Texas and Louisiana coast over the past 10 years, have seen the many refineries and petrochemical plants around St. Charles, Beaumont, Port Arthur, the Houston Ship Channel, Baytown and Corpus Christi. I always return home grateful and relieved that where I live, the Rio GrandeValley, we have none of those. The defunct 1970s’ small Brownsville Union Carbide refinery left its legacy as a designated superfund site due to its nationally significant hazardous pollution of soils and/or groundwater.

On Memorial Day weekend I saw parades and marches and a gathering of people, and speeches given by our leaders to honor those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country. I remembered my father, Manuel M. Moreno, who served during WWII.

The U.S. housing market is cooling. Median home prices have declined more than 9% from record highs last summer.

Rep. R.D. “Bobby” Guerra wrote recently about the need in Texas for bilingual education and many legislative proposals to accomplish this. I’d like to offer my perspective.

Your guest editorial from the infamous New York Times wants someone to rein in the renegade Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is not beholden to anyone. That’s the way the Founding Father wanted it to be. The Supremes are accountable only to the Constitution, and that was and is the plan.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are now proposing laws to fix banking regulations due to the recent large bank failures. These Republicans won’t tell their supporters that it was their guru Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress who got rid of the regulations put in by President Barack Obama in the first place.