By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – Authorities say a note left by a Dallas area mayor who killed herself and apparently her daughter explains the two were still grieving over the 2008 death of their husband and father.
Coppell Mayor Jayne Peters also had financial troubles. At a Friday afternoon funeral service for the two, Peters' pastor said that she had tried to hide the financial troubles from 19-year-old Corinne after the death of their husband and father.
Also on Friday, the Coppell city manager said the mayor had questionable charges of at least $4,000 on her city credit card. He says he had asked her repeatedly to clarify those charges.
Peters and her daughter were found dead in their upscale suburban home Tuesday night when police checked on them after the mayor missed a city council meeting.
Court dismisses lawsuit over Oklahoma water
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a North Texas water district that was trying to force the state to give it access to Oklahoma water.
Attorney General Drew Edmondson says U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton dismissed the lawsuit on Friday. The Tarrant County Water District, which serves Fort Worth, Texas, and surrounding areas, filed the lawsuit in January 2007.
The lawsuit was filed against the Oklahoma Water Resources Board and the Oklahoma Water Conservation Storage Commission. It challenged the constitutionality of a moratorium on out-of-state water sales passed by the Oklahoma Legislature.
State Secretary of the Environment J.D. Strong says Tarrant was seeking to divert more than 400,000 acre-feet of water, about 130 billion gallons, from tributaries of the Red River in Oklahoma.
State report pegs dropout rate at 9.4 percent
The Texas Education Agency says the high school dropout rate in Texas dropped to 9.4 percent for the class of 2009.
The report released Friday says 86 percent of the students who were freshman in 2005 graduated on schedule, 1.4 percent received a GED certificate and 8.6 percent continued in high school.
Texas has adopted the national dropout definition and this year marks the first year the definition has been fully phased in.
Other studies estimate the Texas dropout rate at a much higher figure. The Intercultural Development Research Association in San Antonio has pegged the rate at 31 percent, based on the number of students enrolled in 2005 and finished in 2009.