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LUFKIN, Texas (AP) — Tonya Jackson left an Angelina County nursing home on a recent December day, happy with the successful resolution she brokered between the staff and a resident.

The elderly woman faced eviction after communication broke down between her family and the facility. That’s when Jackson stepped in.

Jackson is the Deep East Texas managing local ombudsman for long-term care facilities. Each day she serves Texans living at these facilities as a state-assigned independent advocate.

“We do not enter a nursing facility to wreak havoc,” Jackson said. “We enter the nursing facility to assist and advocate for the residents who do not feel they have a voice. We are there to help mend the broken bridge.”

There are not enough people like Jackson in Texas, which has a dismal track record for long-term care. The state ranked 42nd for safety and quality, on a 2018 scorecard from AARP, the last time the survey was taken.

The lack of ombudsmen — which include both paid staff and volunteers — is a statewide issue, and is acute in Deep East Texas, which includes Angelina, Nacogdoches and Newton counties. Just five people, two paid staff and three volunteers, bounce between 48 long-term care facilities — 34 nursing facilities and 14 assisted living facilities.

“We would be lost in the long-term care community without them, but they definitely need more support across the board,” said Andrea Earl, the associate state director of advocacy and research for the AARP.

In early December, the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, a group made up of representatives from local governments, called for more volunteers to bolster this program.

Jackson prays the extra hands will better support her small team. She believes one volunteer for each facility would go a long way toward improving the lives of residents.

“Volunteers can usually catch things that we can’t, being that our time is so limited going to each of the facilities,” Jackson said.

At the same time, state officials hope the Legislature will step in to provide extra support when they reconvene in January.

Patty Ducayet, the state’s lead ombudsman, wants lawmakers to fund more full-time and part-time positions, regulate the use of Medicaid and create a portal to handle involuntary discharge, the eviction of residents.

Texas legislators have signaled they intend to prioritize dementia care and research this session. Earl hopes this means they’ll see the value in prioritizing the ombudsman program as well.

The program has faced an uphill battle in past sessions.

“This session, we have to continue to lay the groundwork to ensure that legislators over in the big pink building understand that this is a critical office to long-term care residents and families,” Earl said.
The role of an ombudsman

The state ombudsman works independently from the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the state’s long-term care facilities. This independence provides ombudsmen the chance to work on behalf of residents without fearing retribution.

Texas utilizes full-time employed ombudsmen to investigate complaints related to the health, safety, welfare and rights of residents in care facilities and help resolve any issues. Their work is ideally supplemented by a large force of volunteers who do similar work but for only a few hours a week.

Jackson tries to see 15 to 20 people at each facility during her monthly visits. If she’s successful, she’ll meet with every resident at least once a year.

The job requires patience and empathy, Jackson said. In many places, ombudsmen are the only visitors residents get from the outside world and the conversations provide them a level of peace.

Her visits serve not only to connect with residents but also to establish a rapport with staff at each facility so she can more effectively address complaints.

Facilities without that rapport may see ombudsmen as people just trying to stir up problems, Earl said. Ombudsmen and facilities have clashed before. In 2023, the Texas Assisted Living Association worked with Rep. Travis Clardy, R-Nacogdoches on legislation that Earl said would have made the job of ombudsman harder. The legislation would have limited what files ombudsmen could review, even when it is requested by the patient, Earl said.

“Accessing those documents and looking at history, especially when we’re talking about dementia patients and those facing severe medical issues, is a key part of what they do,” Earl said.

Carmen Tilton, the vice president of public policy for the Texas Assisted Living Association, said the organization supported House Bill 4220, which would have impacted ombudsman access to patient records. Their goal wasn’t to curb access, however, but to bring Texas regulation in line with federal regulations.

Prior to this, even volunteer ombudsmen – without consent from residents – could access any resident information. This meant they could access Social Security numbers, bank account information, doctors information, prescriptions, and more, Tilton said. The bill also sought changes to training to clarify the differences between facilities and to establish guidelines for what is an ombudsman’s job and what is that of law enforcement.

“It was perceived as an attack on the program, which was not our intent,” Tilton said.

Clardy dropped the bill before it went for a vote. Since then, the ombudsman office has worked with the Texas Assisted Living Association directly to institute many of the changes Tilton hoped to see within the organization’s framework without requiring legislative intervention.

Making changes actually happen within the facility can be difficult, slow and may result in backsliding instead of progress, Ducayet said. An ombudsman may fix a problem for one resident only to be back in the same facility facing the same problem with another resident. This can be extremely frustrating and requires volunteers and staff to have patience.

When done right, the issues are resolved within the facility — between the administration, residents and their families — and don’t require state intervention. Jackson does a good job of this, said Lynne’ Nix, the business office manager for Shady Acres Health & Rehabilitation in Newton County.

Nix’s relationship with Jackson has been built on the belief that Jackson’s interventions help both the facility and the resident. Sometimes a resident isn’t comfortable speaking their mind and the situation deteriorates quickly. The ombudsman is the logical answer.

“They’re the true advocates for the residents,” Nix said.
A shortage of ombudsman

In 2024, the state ombudsman program had a 25% turnover rate of paid staff, the highest it has ever been. Those who have stayed are overworked, Ducayet said. Ideally, Texas would have one staff member for every 2,000 licensed care facility beds. Right now, Texas has one person for every 2,514 beds, she said.

If the program was fully staffed, then paid personnel could focus their work on recruiting and supporting more volunteers, Ducayet said. An additional 22 full-time employees would further improve advocacy statewide.

Local volunteers, who are often people whose family members are in long-term care facilities, or are eyeing a facility for themselves, serve as the “boots on the ground,” Earl said.

They can accomplish a lot if they can focus on one or two facilities at a time, Ducayet said. But that’s not a reality for Texas right now. Since 2019, the number of active volunteers has decreased by more than 100 people, leaving only 300 people to serve as volunteers across the state.

The work, whether as a volunteer or a full-time staff member, takes its toll.

Residents, who are often elderly or ailing, die. The sudden loss of a person who you have been meeting with for months, or even years, can be extremely difficult, Ducayet said. After serving in the field for 18 years, she learned that any meeting with a person could be her last.

“Those are hard things,” Ducayet said. “It takes resilience and grit, like most hard things do.”

Fewer staff and volunteers means longer times between visits to care facilities. Having more eyes and ears on the ground helps address problems at a facility more quickly, Ducayet said. This could go a long way toward improving elderly care and preventing problems from escalating to the point where state intervention feels necessary.
What can be done

Ducayet has several goals this legislative session to improve the ombudsman program and care for residents of long-term care facilities overall.

First is increasing state funding for the ombudsman program by about $3 million. This would cover the cost of 22 additional full-time ombudsmen statewide, including a quality assurance officer and discharge rights officer at the state level.

She also wants to resolve noncompliance with state and federal discharge rules by nursing facilities. Involuntary discharge, like what Jackson’s client was facing in early December, is the No. 1 complaint received by the program. Ducayet believes creating an online portal for nursing homes to file discharge notices, hiring for a position that is over discharges statewide and making it increasing fines if a nursing home violates discharge laws will help.

Increasing staff at long-term care facilities should also be a priority, Ducayet said. She and the AARP are advocating for the state to require nursing homes to use 85% of Medicaid reimbursements for payroll.

This would put the money in the hands of caregivers, instead of corporations, Ducayet said.

A similar bill was proposed in 2023. The Texas Senate approved it, as did a House committee. But it never received a full vote by the state House. . Earl believes it can go all the way this year.

These goals may not necessarily resolve the major issues within the long-term care industry in Texas, but they would go a long way toward increasing accountability in the industry, Earl said.

The AARP shares many of Ducayet’s goals, and Earl believes the work completed during the 88th Legislative Session to educate lawmakers about the ombudsman program and how it’s funded could help them progress. She is optimistic, but also weary of what is gearing up to be a potentially complicated session.

While Ducayet is working at the state level to improve upon the program, Jackson has other goals – mainly: to find more local volunteers.

If she could find one volunteer for each of the 48 facilities in Deep East Texas, an 11 county region, then she could feel more confident that her program is truly meeting the needs of this vulnerable population.

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

DALLAS (AP) — Parts of Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas were under severe weather watches early Friday as the National Weather Service predicted a storm system in the Gulf of Mexico could bring high winds, hail and possible tornadoes to the region.

“Heavy showers and thunderstorms continue to race across Louisiana and the Gulf waters at this time, with SETX in the clear for the rest of tonight. Please stay safe all,” the weather service’s office in Lake Charles, Louisiana, posted on the social platform X shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday.

The weather service issued a tornado warning late that afternoon for parts of Texas northeast of Houston, meaning weather radar indicated there was a tornado in the area. There were no immediate reports of damage.

After a line of thunderstorms started moving across parts of Texas, more than 100 flights were delayed and dozens more canceled at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Delays and thunderstorm-related cancellations also were reported at Dallas’ Love Field and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, according to FlightAware, an aviation company that tracks flights across the world.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated state emergency response resources because of the increased severe weather threat.

“As Texans and out-of-state visitors begin traveling after the Christmas holiday, it’s crucial that everyone regularly monitor road conditions, make an emergency plan and heed the guidance of state and local officials,” Abbott said in a statement.

The greatest weather risk was forecast for a stretch of Texas east of Dallas, between Houston and portions of southern Arkansas and western and northern Louisiana, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

“There does look like the possibility of one or a few tornadoes with this risk, but the main risk will be with high winds and hail,” Hurley said, adding that he expected wind gusts generally between 60 and 80 mph (96 to 128 kph), and hail 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) in diameter or greater.

The storms were likely to push into southern Arkansas and western and northern Louisiana after nightfall, posing a potentially dangerous situation for holiday travelers, Hurley said.

“People can’t see a whole lot and may not be as weather aware,” he said.

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports that Fort Worth has now surpassed Austin to become the fourth most populated city in Texas, according to estimates released by The Texas Demographic Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Fort Worth’s population is closing in on the 1 million mark, with an estimated population of 989,878 people, as of Jan.1, 2024, based on the data. That’s nearly 3,000 more residents than Austin, which had an estimated population of 986,928. Fort Worth has gained nearly 71,000 new residents since the 2020 census count, according to the numbers.

Houston remains the state’s largest city, with its population holding steady at more than 2.3 million residents, followed by San Antonio (1,495,295) and Dallas (1,302,868). Complete list here.

AUSTIN (AP) – When Nathan Hecht ran for the Texas Supreme Court in 1988, no Republican had ever been elected to the state’s highest civil court. His election foreshadowed a coming transformation of the court, civil legal procedure and Texas itself.

Hecht is the longest tenured Supreme Court justice in Texas history. He won six reelections and led the court as chief justice for more than a decade. He heard more than 2,700 oral arguments, authored 7,000 pages of opinions, and retires now not because he’s had enough, but because state law requires him to.

Late on a Friday afternoon, just two weeks before he hung up his robe, he was still in his office, his mind mired in the work that was left to be done.

“This is always a really busy time for us, because the opinions are mounting up to be talked about,” he said. “It’ll be busy next week.”

Hecht began as a dissenter on a divided court, his conservative positions on abortion, school finance and property rights putting him at odds with the Democratic majority and some moderate Republicans. But as Texas Republicans began dominating up and down the ballot, his minority voice became mainstream on one of the country’s most conservative high courts.

In his administration of the court, Hecht has been a fierce advocate for the poor, pushing for more Legal Aid funding, bail reform and lowering the barriers to accessing the justice system.

“If justice were food, too many would be starving,” Hecht told lawmakers in 2017. “If it were housing, too many would be homeless. If it were medicine, too many would be sick.”

Hecht’s departure leaves a vacancy that Gov. Greg Abbott, a former justice himself, will get to fill. He may elevate a current justice or appoint someone new directly to the chief justice role. Whoever ends up in the top spot will have to run for reelection in 2026.

In his typical understated manner, so at odds with the bombast of the other branches of government, Hecht told The Texas Tribune that serving on the court has been the honor of his life.

“I have gotten to participate not only in a lot of decisions shaping the jurisprudence of the state, but also in trying to improve the administration of the court system so that it works better and fosters public trust and confidence,” he said.

“So I feel good about the past,” he said. “And I feel good about the future.”
A ‘sea change’

Born in Clovis, New Mexico, Hecht studied philosophy at Yale before getting his law degree from Southern Methodist University. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and returned to Texas, where his reputation preceded him.

As a young lawyer, Tom Phillips, a former chief justice and now a partner at Baker Botts, reached out to a Dallas law firm that had promised to hire him the next chance they got.

“I called them a few months later and said, ‘So I assume you never got a vacancy,’” Phillips recalls. “And they said, ‘Well, we did, but we had a chance to hire Nathan Hecht, so you’ll understand why we went ahead and did that.’”

Hecht was appointed to the district court in 1981 and quickly made a name for himself, pushing the court to modernize their stenography practices and taking the unusual step of writing opinions as a trial judge. He was elected to the court of appeals in 1986, and ran for Texas Supreme Court two years later.

This race came at a low point for Texas’ judiciary, after a string of scandals, ethics investigations, eyebrow-raising rulings and national news coverage made several sitting Supreme Court justices household names — and not in a good way.

Seeing an opportunity, Hecht challenged one of the incumbents, a Democrat who’d been called out in a damning 60 Minutes segment for friendly relationships with lawyers who both funded his campaigns and argued before the court.

Hecht teamed up with Phillips and Eugene Cook, two Republicans who had recently been appointed to the court, and asked voters to “Clean the Slate in ’88,” separating themselves from the Democrats by promising to only accept small donations.

“Party politics were changing in the state at the same time, but the broader issue on our court at the time was to ensure that judges were following the law,” Hecht said. “That was a driving issue.”

Since Phillips and Cook were incumbents, Hecht was the only one who had to take on a sitting Supreme Court justice. And he won.

“It really was a sea change in Texas political history,” Phillips said. “He was the first person ever to do that in a down ballot race, to defeat a Democrat as a Republican.”
Political changes

Republican dominance swept through the Supreme Court as swiftly as it did Texas writ large. The last Democrat would be elected to the court in 1994, just six years after the first Republican. But even among Bush-era Republicans filling the bench, Hecht’s conservatism stood out.

In 2000, he wrote a dissent disagreeing with the majority ruling that allowed teens in Texas to get abortions with a judge’s approval if their parents wouldn’t consent, and a few years earlier, ruled in favor of wealthy school districts that wanted to use local taxes to supplement state funds. His pro-business bent stood out next to the court’s history of approving high dollar payouts for plaintiffs.

Alex Winslow, the executive director of Texas Watch, a consumer advocacy group, told the New York Times in 2005 that Hecht was “the godfather of the conservative judicial movement in Texas.”

“Extremist would be an appropriate description,” Winslow said. “He’s the philosophical leader of the right-wing fringe.”

The only other justice who regularly staked out such a conservative position, according to the New York Times, was Priscilla Owen, who President George W. Bush appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005. Hecht and Owen, who now goes by her maiden name, Richmond, wed in 2022.

Wallace Jefferson, Hecht’s predecessor as chief justice, said Hecht’s sharp intellect and philosophical approach to the law improved the court’s opinions, even when he ultimately didn’t side with the majority.

“He was a formidable adversary,” said Jefferson, now a partner at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson. “You knew that you would have to bring your best approach and analysis to overcome Nathan’s approach and analysis … You had to come prepared and Nathan set the standard for that.”

Hecht briefly became a national figure in 2005 when he helped Bush’s efforts to confirm Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. As her longtime friend, Hecht gave more than 120 interviews to bolster Miers’ conservative credentials, jokingly calling himself the “PR office for the White House,” Texas Monthly reported at the time.

This advocacy work raised ethical questions that Hecht fought for years, starting with a reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Hecht got that overturned. The Texas Ethics Commission then fined him $29,000 for not reporting the discount he got on the legal fees he paid challenging the reprimand. He appealed that fine and the case stretched until 2016, when he ultimately paid $1,000.

Hecht has largely stayed out of the limelight in the decades since, letting his opinions speak for themselves and wading into the political fray mostly to advocate for court reforms. While Democrats have tried to pin unpopular COVID and abortion rulings on the justices in recent elections, Republicans continue to easily win these down-ballot races.

Hecht is aware of the perception this one-party dominance creates, and has advocated for Texas to turn away from partisan judicial elections. In his 2023 state of the judiciary address, Hecht warned that growing political divisions were threatening the “judicial independence essential to the rule of law,” pointing to comments by both Democratic politicians and former President Donald Trump.

But in an interview, Hecht stressed that most of the cases the Texas Supreme Court considers never make headlines, and are far from the politics that dominate Austin and Washington.

“There’s no Republican side to an oil and gas case. There’s no Democrat side to a custody hearing,” he said. “That’s the bread and butter of what we do, and that’s not partisan.”
Hecht’s reforms

Unlike its federal counterpart, the Texas Supreme Court is often a temporary port of call on a judge’s journey. Many, like Abbott, Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, leave for higher office. Others, like Owen and 5th Circuit Judge Don Willett, leave for higher courts. Most, like Phillips, leave for higher pay in private practice.

But Hecht stayed.

“I didn’t plan it like this,” Hecht said. “I just kept getting re-elected.”

Hecht had been considering retirement in 2013, when Jefferson, the chief justice who replaced Phillips, announced he would be stepping down.

“He wanted me to consider being his successor,” Hecht said. “So I did, and here I am. I didn’t say, ‘Let’s spend 43 years on the bench,’ but one thing led to another.”

In 2013, Hecht was sworn in as chief justice by then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, another great dissenter whose views later became the majority.

While the Texas Supreme Court’s political makeup has changed largely without Hecht’s input, the inner workings of the court have been under his purview. And that, many court watchers say, is where his greatest legacy lies.

Hecht ushered in an era of modernization, both to the technology and the rules that govern justice in Texas. He led a push to simplify the appellate rules, removing many of the trapdoors and procedural quirks that led to important cases being decided on technicalities. The court scaled back how long cases could drag on by limiting discovery, including how long a deposition can go. And he ensured every case was decided before the term ended, like the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I think people generally don’t understand the impact the rules can have on the equitable resolution of disputes, but they’re enormous,” Jefferson said. “Nathan recognized that at an early juncture in his career.”

Hecht pushed Texas to adopt e-filing before many other states, which proved prescient when COVID hit. Hecht, who was then president of the national Conference of Chief Justices, was able to help advise other states as they took their systems online.

Hecht also dedicated himself to improving poor Texan’s access to the justice system, pushing the Legislature to appropriate more funding for Legal Aid and reducing the barriers to getting meaningful legal resolutions. He helped usher through a rule change that would allow paraprofessionals to handle some legal matters like estate planning, uncontested divorces and consumer debt cases, without a lawyer’s supervision.

“Some people call it the justice gap. I call it the justice chasm,” Hecht said. “Because it’s just a huge gulf between the people that need legal help and the ability to provide it.”

Hecht said he’s glad this has been taken up as a bipartisan issue, and he’s hopeful that the same attention will be paid even after he leaves the court.

“No judge wants to give his life’s energy to a work that mocks the justice that he’s trying to provide,” he said. “For the judiciary, this is an important issue, because when the promise of equal justice under law is denied because you’re too poor, there’s no such thing as equal justice under the law.”
What comes next

Despite the sudden departure of their longtime leader, the Texas Supreme Court will return in January to finish out its term, which ends in April.

Among the typical parsing of medical malpractice provisions, oil and gas leases, divorce settlements and sovereign immunity protections, the high court has a number of more attention-grabbing cases on its docket this year.

Earlier this year, the court heard oral arguments about the Department of Family and Protective Services’ oversight of immigration detention facilities, and in mid-January, they’ll consider Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to subpoena Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that serves migrants. They’ll also hear arguments over Southern Methodist University’s efforts to cut ties with the regional governing body of the United Methodist Church.

Other cases will be added to the schedule before April.

Phillips, who has argued numerous cases before the Texas Supreme Court since leaving the bench, said Hecht’s loss will be felt, but he expects the court to continue apace.

“It’s not a situation like it might have been at some point in the past where if one justice left, nobody would know what to do next,” he said. “It’s an extremely qualified court.”

As for Hecht, he’s tried to put off thinking too much about what comes next for him. He still has opinions to write and work to finish. He knows he wants to stay active in efforts to improve court administration nationally and in Texas, and he’s threatened his colleagues with writing a tell-all book, just to keep them on their toes. But beyond that, he’s waiting for the reality of retirement to sink in before he decides on his next steps.

“We’ve got 3,200 judges in Texas, plus adjuncts and associate judges and others,” he said. “I really think it’s such a strong bench, and I am proud to have been a part of it. I look forward to helping where I can.”

WASHINGTON – The Houston Chronicle reports the biggest Republican state in the nation is suddenly facing a power outage in the U.S. House of Representatives. While the GOP will hold the White House and have majorities in the House and Senate, Texans will be in short supply for key leadership roles on Capitol Hill, at least compared to previous years. That’s thanks to lost seniority through retirements. U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, who led the powerful Appropriations Committee, and U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Pilot Point, who led the Rules Committee and was the 2nd ranked Republican on the Commerce Committee, are both leaving Congress this year. That comes just two years after former U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, retired after formerly chairing the Ways and Means Committee.

Those three A-list committees set national spending, taxing, health care and energy policies, which gave Texas an outsized role in influencing a wide range of public policy. While Republicans from Texas are on those committees, they lack the seniority to be able to lead them. Eighteen of the 25 Texas Republicans who will be in the House in January will have been there for three full terms or fewer. That’s a result of an unusual spike in retirements by members of Congress over the last eight years. Just since 2018, 22 Republican members of Congress from Texas have left either through retirements or losing reelection. Texas is also losing a key post on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, has led that committee for six years, but cannot continue because of GOP term limits for committee leadership posts. McCaul said its definitely a period of change for the Texas delegation. Just eight years ago Texans chaired seven different committees and had other high ranking members close to power providing influence. “It’s better when we are leaders up here, rather than not having any chairmanships,” McCaul said.