Pain & Profit series, bulk trash pickup, Curious Texas: Your Thursday morning roundup

June 07,  2018 By  Carla Solórzano Good morning! Here is a look at the top headlines as we start the day. 🌤️ Weather: A 20 percent chance for scattered thunderstorms. Otherwise, mostly sunny and hot with a high of 97 degrees. 🔎 Prefer the online view? It's [here](. Pain & ProfiT Texas families take fight for fragile kids to the Legislature Before she had a baby so sick he couldn’t leave the hospital for his first year, Hannah Mehta never dreamed she would need help from a government health care program. She and her husband had good corporate jobs, private health insurance and a big brick home in Flower Mound. But Aiden, one of the triplets she had given birth to in 2007, had congenital defects and anomalies that mystified doctors. His organs weren’t in the right places, his lungs were collapsed, and he couldn’t breathe or eat on his own. He underwent several surgeries before his first birthday. [On the advice of a friend, she signed up for a program, paid for with state and federal money, designed to keep chronically sick kids alive and protect their parents from financial ruin](. Unlike other Medicaid programs in Texas, this one helps families even if they aren’t extremely poor. In 2016, Texas stopped running this Medicaid program directly and turned it over to the private sector under a system called managed care, which already covered foster kids and many elderly and disabled Texans. Mehta and parents like her learned their doctors weren’t going to accept the new program — it paid them too little and added too much red tape. Families suddenly had to search out new pediatric lung and brain and spine specialists who were willing to participate. There weren’t many. The parents were desperate to protect their kids. “There’s no Plan B for our families,” Mehta says. “There’s nowhere else for them to go, outside of placing them in an institution.” State health officials said there was nothing they could do — any changes to the new program had to come from the Legislature. So the parents banded together, forming a shoestring nonprofit called Protect TX Fragile Kids. And they headed to Austin. If Texas lawmakers saw their children — in wheelchairs and gurneys, tethered to machines — then maybe they would change their minds. The parents had no idea what they were up against. [Part 5 of our Pain & Profit investigation follows these parents as they take on the Austin machine.]( Catch up with Part 1: [The preventable tragedy of D’ashon Morris.]( Catch up with Part 2: [As patients suffer, companies rack up profits.]( Catch up with Part 3: Texas pays companies billions for ‘sham networks’ of doctors. Catch up with Part 4: [Texas fails to act when health-care companies put patients in peril.]( Explainer: [How does Medicaid work?]( The documents: [How we reported this special investigation.]( Dallas Sanitation Services employees picked up bulk trash in East Dallas in November 2016. The city is considering limiting its bulk trash program. Dallas collects double the amount of bulk trash of any other major Texas city and does not have any limitations to the amount households can leave out for pickup. But that could change. (DMN File) Dallas Sorry, Dallas, but generous bulk trash pickup program may be changing Dallas officials say the city's bulk trash and brush collection service is a mess. So, too, are the proposed fixes, City Council members said. The council didn't reach consensus Wednesday after Sanitation Services Director Kelly High briefed them on [proposals to revamp bulk-and-brush collection service](. High said the city's program is "significantly more generous" to residents than what is offered elsewhere. His complex proposals are aimed at cutting back on collection and creating volume limits to reduce waste and strain on sanitation services. #PigOn35: Eyes were glued to Twitter as a [slow-speed pig chase played out Wednesday morning](in North Dallas. Commentary: "Dallas County is the key battleground for Democrats' efforts to gain seats in the Legislature," [writes Gromer Jeffers Jr.]( A statue of Sleeping Panther upholds tradition on the lawn of the Tarrant County Administration building, at the corner of Weatherford and Main streets in downtown Fort Worth. (Jae S. Lee/Staff Photographer) Fort Worth Why is Fort Worth called Panther City? Curious Texas investigates a regional rivalry There’s a story that Amon Carter, the father of modern Fort Worth, disliked Dallas so much that he would bring a sack lunch any time he had to take a meeting in the larger city. That way, he said, he wouldn’t have to spend a penny in Dallas. That rivalry goes back more than a century, and helps explain one North Texas nickname. [Ann from Dallas recently asked Curious Texas: Why is Fort Worth called Panther City?]( Her mother was raised in Fort Worth and they were both curious why the panther mascot is so popular in Tarrant County. Also: Three Fort Worth friends are miles away from home but [still work within blocks of each other, performing on Broadway](. And: [Forty-one cats living in squalid conditions were rescued]( from a Fort Worth property. Advertisement (Smiley Pool/Staff Photographer) Photo of the Morning Two turtles sun themselves on a submerged rental bike in the waters of the Trinity River bottom under the Ronald Kirk Bridge. [In his latest column, Robert Wilonsky lays out how Dallas has curbed the bike-share mess]( and how, he says, that means nothing without the bike lanes we were promised. Around The Site - Austin: The Republican speaker of the Texas House says a [Confederate plaque hanging in the state Capitol can — and should — be removed](. - Police: [Dallas police are asking for the public's help to identify a man]( who is suspected of burglarizing a South Dallas business. - Rockwall County: [McLendon-Chisholm city officials and their volunteer fire department agreed to enter a new contract]( 10 days before the department was to pull out of the town. - Child saved: A Dallas police officer helped revive a 2-year-old girl after [she fell into an empty pool where rainwater had collected](. - Retail: [New Neiman Marcus CEO says their strategy is working](and sales are up. - Commentary: [How](the](results of the Mexican election]( could impact U.S. national defense. - Business: [H-E-B chairman Charles Butt is among the 14 new wealthy individuals]( from around the world who joined the Giving Pledge. Cynthia Koogler and Amanda Godina, the horticulturists behind Flower Child Plants. (Robert W. Hart/Special Contributor) Finally... Meet the 'flower children' behind some beautiful Dallas gardens The home in northwest Dallas is beautiful itself, big and stately for a smaller lot. But the first thing you notice is the flowers. There are flowers everywhere, even hung in planters on the gates. And enough trees to turn a hot spring afternoon into a cool shade. [The gorgeous scenery is a project of Flower Child Plants, a specialty garden service in Dallas]( run by Cynthia Koogler and Amanda Godina, both 29, who met in college. They both found a love for horticulture at a young age. For Koogler, her interest in gardening started when she was 4 years old. She would spend time with her mother in their vegetable plot, pulling carrots and eating things straight from the garden. Koogler went on to work as a cashier at a plant nursery in Mansfield in high school. Godina also helped her mother in the garden when she was a child. But in El Paso, helping out meant watering twice a day in an attempt to keep plants alive in the desert climate and picking up pecans as they fell from the tree. When Godina was 15, she began to spend summers in Colorado, living with her sister and working on landscaping crews. AdVERTISEMENT 👋 That's all for this morning! For up-to-the-minute news and analysis, check out [DallasNews.com](. 💖 Share the love! If you like this newsletter, please forward this email to a friend and [check out our other newsletters here](. 📧 Do you have feedback? Send your thoughts, questions, praise and corrections to [newsletter-feedback@dallasnews.com](mailto:newsletter-feedback@dallasnews.com?subject=). 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