Ahh...Summer in New Braunfels is just around the corner. You can tell because, shortly before Groundhog Day, the New Braunfels City Council started fighting about the Comal River. A San Antonio defense lawyer, who I met in court a couple of days ago, asked me about the latest round in New Braunfels' Great Comal River War, which involves a proposed parking permit scheme for the area surrounding the river. The plan eliminates nearly 500 parking spaces near the Comal River, which would force tubers to park in nearby neighborhoods. And, oh, by the way, the city also plans to make parking in those neighborhoods by city-issued permit only, which means tubers couldn't park there, either. "What's wrong with you people?", the San Antonio lawyer asked. What's wrong, indeed?
This is just the latest chapter in a fight over the Comal River that has been raging in New Braunfels for over a decade. For decades, New Braunfels has poured millions of dollars into promoting river tourism on its two rivers, the Guadalupe and the Comal. And the tourists have come in huge numbers. And although most of the tourists simply come, have a good time, and cause no trouble at all, there have been the problems that are normally associated with large crowds on a river in the summer -- people having a little too much to drink, using illegal drugs, getting in fights, noise, etc. New Braunfels has been willing to live with these annoyances because tourism has brought a great deal of revenue to city businesses and city tax coffers and has supplied jobs to many residents, be they the people who work for an outfitter, staff a hotel or restaurant, or stand behind the counter at a convenience store where a tourist fills his gas tank. But over the last ten years, the population of New Braunfels has exploded, and the composition of the city has changed. Many of the people moving into New Braunfels are not directly plugged into the local economy -- either they work somewhere else, such as San Antonio or Austin, or they are retirees. In other words, the city is becoming a bedroom community in the I-35 Corridor.
These folks view the problems with tourism not as a necessary annoyance to be tolerated, but as a threat to their quality of life that has to eliminated. So, for several years, you have had a civil war over tourism. City council recall campaigns have been waged and referendums have been held over what to do with the Comal River. Over the past ten years, the anti-tourism faction in New Braunfels has tried (without success) to ban alcohol on the river, has passed some pretty ridiculous ordinances (such as regulating cooler size) that are aimed as hassling tourists, and, now, plans to deny tubers a place to park. What has also taken place over the last few years is the creation of a zero tolerance policy on the Comal River by the New Braunfels Police Department in response to pressure from the anti-tourism faction on New Braunfels City Council. I now routinely have people from Houston and Dallas come into my office after having been arrested for relatively minor offenses that, if they had occurred somewhere else, might have, at worst, resulted in someone being issued a ticket. When they ask "What's wrong with those people?" I have to explain that they now have to face the possibility of having an arrest on their criminal records for the rest of their lives because they are being used to "send a message" in a local political fight.
I have to explain to them that "What's wrong with those people" is that they have an unresolved love-hate relationship with tourists and that the person who contacted me happens to be a tourist who is caught in the middle. The latest parking permit plan is just another symptom of the toxic political atmosphere that surrounds the issue of tourism in New Braunfels. "What is wrong with those people" is that they are willing to pass inane ordinances that adversely affect the lives of thousands, in order to protect the interests of a few privileged and affluent newcomers. One has to wonder, when the tourists finally leave, will those who drove them away volunteer to make up the lost tax revenue and replace the lost jobs. How many more seventeen and eighteen year olds will need to be carted off to jail before they feel like the living is good in New Braunfels. What's wrong with those people?
I have just spoken to the umpteenth truck driver who was just misinformed by a municipal court that it is impossible to keep a speeding ticket from going on his driving record because he has a commercial driver's license. What this trucker was told by the court is only partially true and very misleading. The true part is that a municipal or justice of the peace court can't give a commercial driver any disposition (other than an acquittal) to keep a conviction off of his driving record in a speeding case. Under Texas law, if a person with a commercial driver's license gets a speeding ticket, a muni or JP court is prohibited from giving the driver a deferred disposition, which would keep the ticket from resulting in a conviction. So a lot of muni and JP courts tell truckers that their only two options are to plead guilty, and be convicted, or set the case for trial, and take their chances (while risking getting a worse punishment). What many of these courts don't tell truck drivers is that it is possible to transfer the case to another court that does have the power to grant a deferred disposition to someone with a commercial license.
In Texas, if you have a ticket in a muni or JP court, you have the right to appeal the case to a County Court-at-Law, a type of court that normally handles jail-time type cases. The aims of this appeal right are to make sure that everyone can have his case heard by a judge with a law license (many judges who sit in traffic courts have no legal training) and to let people bypass small-town kangaroo courts that seem to exist for the sole purpose of generating revenue for a locality. The statute that forbids deferred dispositions for commercial licenses is contained in the part of the Texas of Code of Criminal Procedure that deals with the power of municipal and justice courts. It does not apply to county courts-at-law. So county courts-at-law are still free to defer findings of guilt in traffic cases for commercial license holders, just as they would be in any other Class C misdemeanor case. If you are a truck driver, and you get a ticket, one of the first things you should consider doing is getting your case transferred out of muni or JP court. While transferring the case takes more time and effort, it might save you some points on your CDL.
I just finished a jury trial in a Driving While Intoxicated case in Guadalupe County that brought up this issue of diabetes and DWI. Whenever someone comes into the office on a DWI case, one of the questions we always want to ask is if he person is diabetic. Diabetes can influence a DWI case in several ways. The first has to due with the issue of impairment (loss of normal use of faculties). If a person's blood glucose is too low (hypoglycemic) or too high (hyperglycemic) he can mimick the signs of intoxication -- slurred speech, trouble balancing, problems with cognitive skills, etc.
He can even smell as if he has been drinking an alcoholic beverage, since the acetone that is emitted from the breath of a hypo- or hyperglycemic smells the same as the smell of alcohol on a person's breath. Secondly, diabetes can interfere with accurate breath testing for alcohol because the molecule that a breath test machine looks for resembles the acetone coming from a diabetic. If you are diabetic and charged with DWI, you should always tell your attorney. If you are detained by an officer for possible DWI, and you are not intoxicated, you should tell the officer you are diabetic and ask for a blood test. If you are arrested and no blood test is given, have your blood glucose tested as soon as possible.