Systemic Issues

Houston: Lack of Zoning

Houston is the largest city in the United States with no zoning laws of any sort. The city codes do not address land use, and Houston voters have rejected any efforts to pass zoning laws three different times in the past century. Zoning laws create areas where you can only put up a certain type of building or structure – for example, residential zones for homes, commercial zones for businesses, or industrial zones for manufacturing. They exist in almost every major city in the country.

Since Houston is the energy capital of America (and perhaps the world), this proves problematic. It means single-family homes can end up on the same street as petrochemical plants and oil refineries, and the city has no legal obligation to remedy that. Houston’s lack of zoning has breeded toxic environmental burdens in residential areas, which are disproportionately inhabited by low-income people of color.

Some have argued that Houston’s lack of zoning exacerbates impacts felt by climate-induced extreme weather events. Many environmental have argued that Houston’s hands-off approach to urban planning contributed to its catastrophic flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. As one Washington Post article put it: “Growth that is virtually unchecked, including in flood-prone areas, has diminished the land’s already-limited natural ability to absorb water.”

Dallas: Complex (and historically discriminatory) zoning

Dallas, on the other hand, has a much more parliamentary and democratic system. It has one of the most sophisticated and complex zoning ordinances in the country, with 29 different classifications for property within the city limits, a zoning board, and a city council to interpret and modify zoning laws.

However, zoning codes in Dallas and surrounding cities have come under fire for discriminating against low-income people, who disproportionately tend to be people of color. One suburb, Sunnyvale, was known as the “whitest town in North Texas” for decades until a lawsuit found that its zoning codes — which only allowed for single-family homes on one-acre lots — were inherently geared toward keeping low-income people out. Demographic data proved this to be true — in 1990, the town had only 16 black people among its 2,228 residents.

The Corruptive Power of the Texas Oil Industry

Background: Texas is the only state that has its own electrical grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas. It is operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and was created to avoid federal regulations. Because of the intense energy needs of the oil-and-gas business, Texas uses more electricity than any other state. Its oil and gas revenues surpass every other U.S. state by a landslide; in fact, if Texas were its own country, it would be the sixth largest producer in the world.

However, with great power comes great responsibility, and this responsibility can often be corrupted. Upon looking at the oil and gas industry’s contributions to U.S. political campaigns, I was not surprised to learn that the senator accepting the most money from Big Oil hailed from Texas in the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 election cycles. In 2016, Ted Cruz received 1.6 million dollars from the oil and gas industries, more than twice as much as the runner-up in contributions. In 2018, 6 of the 15 U.S. Congressional candidates receiving the most oil money were from Texas.

Because of the oil industry’s strength, Texas government officials are widely considered beholden to energy superpowers. A number of corruption scandals have revealed the heavily deregulated state government’s tendency to turn a blind eye to the oil industry’s malpractice.

Houston-Based Corruption: the Enron Scandal

Perhaps the most famous example is the Enron scandal, when a Houston-based natural gas company (and global superpower, at the time) was found liable for billions of dollars in accounting fraud in 2001. Prior to that, it was the single largest donor to Texan George W. Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998. A good friend of Enron’s then-CEO, Bush was widely regarded as beholden to company interests during his governorship. He supported aggressive deregulation policies, including legislation that exempted important elements of Enron’s energy business from oversight by the federal government. The corruption extended to a national level. While Bush’s deregulation enabled Enron to obtain a monopoly on energy utilities, the federal government deregulated energy subsidiary trading. At the time, the federal government — under the presidency of none other than Bush’s father — had a commission on energy trading subsidiaries, which was chaired by Wendy Gramm, a close friend of the Bush family who had received nearly $100,000 in Enron campaign contributions. After working to pass an exemption in trading energy subsidiaries that would enable the Enron scandal to occur, she subsequently resigned to join the Enron board.

Corruption around Dallas: the Denton Anti-Fracking Campaign

In 2014, residents of a town in the Dallas-Forth Worth Metro Area called Denton voted to ban fracking, a natural gas and oil extraction process that was spreading toxic chemicals in residents’ backyards. The ban–a ballot initiative– won by 59 percent.

However, following that vote, then-governor Greg Abbott — who had received $9 million from the oil and gas industry, and run his campaign on a promise of returning control to localities — signed a bill that barred all Texas cities from making their own decisions on oil and gas drilling. This law put oil and gas decisions in the hands of the Texas Railroad Commission — which receives 80 percent of its money from the oil and gas industry, the industry it is supposed to regulate.