Friday news roundup

Glad to have you with us here this morning on North Texas Now. I'm Ron Corning. And I'm Miranda Suarez. As usual on Fridays, we like to talk through some of the most notable stories or stories we missed in a little news roundup. And to help us today, we are joined by North Texas Now's managing producer, Becca Moore. Hi, Becca. Hey, good to be with you, always. So let's start off by talking taxes in Tarrant County. Yes, we are going to run through some numbers in this segment. So bear with me, folks. The $834 million budget proposal cut more than $10 million from the previous budget. I also got a new recommended property tax rate. So that's 18.6 cents per $100 valuation. That is a very, very small decrease compared to last year. I think it was like 18.62 cents per $100 valuation last year. And according to data presented at yesterday's meeting, the tax bill for the average home and tarant county shakes out to about $516 a year. And my perennial reminder, whenever we talk about budgets or taxes on KERA news that county tax is a very teeny, teeny part of your... property tax bill compared to bigger things like school district budgets and such. And that fractional, fractional cent may not mean a whole lot to you, but I guess it adds up. for them on the back end? Absolutely. Yeah, in terms of making that cut. So you mentioned that $10 million reduction from last year's budget. Where are those cuts coming from? One of the most notable cuts here is more than $3 million cut to community services funds. When that issue came up yesterday, Tarrant County Commissioner Elisa Simmons questioned if the county is being fiscally responsible. The public should not be fooled by a lower tax rate or cuts to selected programs when overall county spending has increased. But then on the flip side, Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare was congratulating county staff on their hard work in putting this budget together. It's very difficult work to put together a budget. You work all year, essentially, I'm putting together a budget, and you don't know what the tax revenue will be until basically the end of July. And just a couple other notable things that were talked about. Public safety in this proposed budget would get about $14 million more than it did last year. And then raises for county employees also came up. Those raises would range between like 2.5% and 4%. Which is sort of in track with the cost of living increase.

Really, generally speaking. Here is a story that's getting national attention. In fact, it was on all the national morning shows today. A newborn with a severe heart defect is at the center of this legal battle. This is between a California couple and a surrogate. That surrogate flew from Alaska to Texas to give birth. Tell us what's going on here as this dispute sort of continues to unfold right here in Dallas. It's kind of a crazy story. So this surrogate, whose name is McKenna West, she gave birth this week to a child with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. That's a life-threatening heart condition. And this was after the biological parents of that child had consulted doctors about the diagnosis and told the surrogate that they wanted to end the pregnancy around 20 weeks, normal gestation periods, about 40 weeks. So that would have been about halfway through the pregnancy. since then, since the woman, as you said, Ron came, flew from Alaska to Texas to have this child since Texas is considered like a sanctuary state for the unborn because of our abortion laws that we have here. Attorney General Ken Paxton has since gotten involved and a Dallas judge ordered hospitals to provide life-sustaining care for the baby until a hearing that's scheduled for later this month. What are the biological parents saying? So Omar Ahmed and Anasheen Gilker say West has violated the surrogacy contract that the couple and the surrogate signed. They also have obtained a restraining order that has prevented West from seeing or holding the child after he was born, according to an attorney for the surrogate. But the couple's lawyer says they, We're recently here in Dallas. They are with their newborn child, who they've named Rumi while he is being treated. And so it seems like they are being very active in the treatment and care of the child. Otherwise, as I understand it, the surrogate mother has named the child Gabriel. The child's being referred to as baby Gabriel. So there's a contract issue here between a surrogate and biological parents, but there may also be... other laws that influence the outcome of this. This could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Yeah, we'll have to wait and see. We are going to talk more in depth about some of the legal and ethical precedents that this case could set on Monday morning. So y'all will have to tune in for that. And I want to talk about... This really fascinating story, we talk about AI a lot on the show, so this feels fitting to include today. An SMU PhD student lost a book deal worth over $2 million last month after he was accused of using AI to write his book. And this is not a new phenomenon. There have been quite a few authors accused of doing the same thing, right? Yes. If you're on book talk as much as I am, then you've probably seen a lot of these allegations floating around publishers pulling works by authors who have been accused of using AI. And that's what happened here with Jerry Falate's book. He was accused of having portions written by AI after it had already sold in a very competitive publisher auction. Jane Friedman now has worked in the publishing industry for over a decade. And she said this string of AI use allegations in the publishing world has created some paranoia.

So right now we're just operating in a world of both confusion and suspicion. No one really trusts anyone anymore. And now, Falade has denied claims that he used AI to write his book. It should be noted. So for SMU's part, how are they sort of processing this and how are they responding? Yeah, they issued a statement. All we really know is they said they are aware of the allegations against Falade, but they said that none of the work he did on the book was done at the school. I wonder how this will shake out overall. I mean, will we come to a place where using it in certain situations is almost considered like, a virtual editor, for example, as opposed to the original work being from the author. Well, that's tough when so many publishing companies have taken the stance that actually creating generative AI language models was an act of plagiarism. That they're only able to spit out what they spit out because they've taken real works that are written by real people. Exactly. Yeah, so interesting. Data centers, of course, here we are. Every day there will be data center talk from now until eternity. Dallas could be the latest Texas City to regulate. data center land use. We talked about this yesterday, but give us a reminder of what's happening. So five Dallas City Council members have called for a meeting and a vote to potentially amend the city's development code. Now, that includes Chad West. He's one of the council members who've called for that meeting for that vote on social media. Wednesday, he said he's hopeful that any amendments would give the council and residents of Dallas more say in how data centers are built here in the city. It comes the same week that the Fort Worth City Council also took steps towards issuing a 90-day morning. moratorium on data center development. That would take effect next year and also allow city leaders some time to evaluate potential regulations. Fort Worth City Council members also voted to create the data center and infrastructure committee whose sole task is to advise the council on the development of data center regulations. We also talked yesterday about the audit from Governor Greg Abbott to look into kind of what the environmental and other impacts of these data centers are in the state of Texas. And so, as you said, Ron, this is going to be a continuing issue. that we'll cover on the show in perpetuity. Truly in perpetuity, as cities try to figure out, wait a second, we are getting so many applications for these data centers. What the heck do we do to regulate them? It almost feels like this rush came in and city governments are like, oh, my God, we have to figure out what to do about this. Yeah, and another area of regulation that's impacting people who have purchased real estate for the sole purpose of renting it out with short-term rentals. We're talking Airbnb and VRBO and so forth. Things are taking shape differently in Irving as well. Yes, owners now need permits to operate a short-term rental or an STR, like an Airbnb. This is called a conditional use permit. And the owners who, the only people who are exempt from this new permit are owners who started operating their short-term rentals before July 31st. They can continue doing so without needing this extra paperwork as long as they're staying up to date on their registration and following other rules. But code enforcement director Shane Diller with the city of Irving said residents should contact. the city if they have any questions or concerns about these new regulations.

I encourage them to reach out to the Code Enforcement Department here in Irving and discuss that with us and let us investigate any concerns they might have. And Diller says generally public feedback has been positive on these regulations so far. Awesome. Thank you so much, Becca. I appreciate it. Of course, happy to be here. And just a quick correction from earlier in this segment. I think we said there was a 10 million cut to the Terran County budget. It's actually 10 million more than the previous budget, according to reporting from the great Terran County reporter Penelope Rivera. You're listening to North Texas now. Thanks.