Local Nuggets of News

An anti-tax group called Citizens Lowering Our Unfair Taxes ("CLOUT") has filed suit against state lawmakers alleging illegal spending of our tax dollars over the last 28 years. According to CLOUT, lawmakers use inflated budget numbers to overspend and this leads to Texans being overtaxed.
Democratic goober nominee Chris Bell has reported that his campaign received a donation of $100,000 from Houston oilman A. Earl Swift. According to the Texas Ethics Commission for the April 17 through May 15 period, Bell reported a total of $333,000. Carole Cougar Mellencamp reported $308,000, while Perry reported $375,000. Kinky Friedman? Roughly $149,000. In other Kinky news: Meet Kinky Friedman tonight at BookPeople at 7:00 p.m.
The City of Austin Water Utility is part of a new water conservation program called WaterSense. Austin Water Utility, along with other national water suppliers and product manufacturers, is a member of a coalition that provided input and support for the program. High efficiency toilets hooray!
Residents of Southwest Travis and Northern Hays County affected by water outages no longer need to boil their drinking water. LCRA lifted the boil-water notice Friday morning after test results from samples taken Thursday showed no contamination of the water. If your water is still cloudy Friday morning, LCRA officials say that's likely air in the water, and the cloudiness should disappear in a few minutes.
An Austin civil rights group has filed suit against Secretary of State Roger Williams and Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir claiming that the Travis County's electronic voting system violates state law because it doesn't produce paper ballots. Two of the corporations that provide nearly all of the voting machines in the United States—ES&S and Diebold—are controlled by Republicans with strong ties to the Bush administration.