Skip to main content

Ross Ramsey

Ross Ramsey’s staff photo

Ross Ramsey co-founded The Texas Tribune in 2009 and served as its executive editor until his retirement in 2022. He wrote regular columns on politics, government and public policy. Before joining the Tribune, he was editor and co-owner of Texas Weekly. He did a 28-month stint in government with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Before that, he reported for the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Times Herald, as a Dallas-based freelancer for regional and national magazines and newspapers, and for radio stations in Denton and Dallas.

Latest Contributions

  • TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

    By Ross Ramsey

    E. Smith interviews Gov. Rick Perry for the Trib and Newsweek, Philpott dissects the state's budget mess in a weeklong series, Hamilton looks at whether Bill White is or was a trial lawyer, M. Smith finds experts all over the state anxiously watching a court case over who owns the water under our feet, Aguilar reports on the battle between Fort Stockton and Clayton Williams Jr. over water in West Texas, Ramshaw finds a population too disabled to get on by itself but not disabled enough to get state help and Miller spends a day with a young man and his mother coping with that situation, Ramsey peeks in on software that lets the government know whether its e-mail messages are getting read and who's reading what, a highway commissioner reveals just how big a hole Texas has in its road budget, Grissom does the math on the state's border cameras and learns they cost Texans about $153,800 per arrest, and E. Smith interviews Karen Hughes on the difference between corporate and political P.R. — and whether there's such a thing as "Obama Derangement Syndrome." The best of our best from April 19 to April 23, 2010. Full Story 

    Article thumbnail
    Credit: Jacqueline Mermea

  • TribBlog: 13 Months of Sunset

    By Ross Ramsey

    For a certain kind of animal — i.e., the Policy Wonk — this is a gift: Sunset reports on insurance and utility regulators and on the capital city's transportation authority hit the internet this morning. Full Story 

    Article thumbnail
    Credit: Caleb Bryant Miller

  • Spies Like Us

    By Ross Ramsey

    Sign up for state agency e-mail alerts from, say, the Comptroller or TCEQ and they'll let you know when meetings are being held and when proposed rules are ready for review. But click a link in those e-mails and they have the ability to see who looked at which rule and which web page and who didn't look at all. Full Story 

    What the user sees on the screen is a link to the "Consumer Confidence Index" for March. But clicking on that link actually goes through a tracking system that can be used to identify the email address where this notice was originally sent.

  • FCC's McDowell: Better for Grandma

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story 

  • FCC's McDowell: No Place for State Regulation

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story 

  • FCC's McDowell: Convergence

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story 

  • FCC's McDowell: The Last Mile

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story 

  • FCC's McDowell: Regulate My Rival

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story 

  • FCC's McDowell: What Congress Might Do

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story 

  • FCC's McDowell: What Consumers Want

    By Ross Ramsey

    Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell visited Austin to talk with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and agreed to an interview on net neutrality — whether people who use more internet bandwidth should pay more for the service, like they do now for greater speed — the recent court decision preventing FCC restrictions on "information service" providers like Comcast, and other issues before his agency and the industries it regulates (and unregulated companies that compete with regulated ones). Full Story