BG Reads | News You Need to Know (January 3, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW -> Episode 68: BG Media Group 2019 Wrap Up Feat. The BG Podcast and Kicks & Comics (LINK TO SHOW)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Adler: 2019 saw action, and frustration, on city’s long-standing issues (Austin Monitor)
Looking back on 2019, Mayor Steve Adler sees a year where a series of major issues came to inflection points on which he and City Council had to take decisive action – and then face the criticism that often follows such moves.
From the June vote to decriminalize homelessness and the recent first-reading approval of the new Land Development Code that aims to increase housing density, to the recent attention caused by evidence of ongoing racism in the Austin Police Department, Adler said important issues with years of work and quiet progress in the background wound up in the spotlight.
“The race stuff with the police department obviously is a huge issue, but like with the Land Development Code where there’s been lots of incremental movement that it now looks like we’re poised to resolve, we’ve been doing a lot of equity things in the city with the Task Force on Institutional Racism and the work to lower the number of arrests for offenses that could be ticketed,” he said. “And we created the Equity Office in the city. Now with this event it seems to have focused people’s attention in a way that it had not been before. And just like with the Land Development Code, I feel like we’re poised to take a lot of the things that have been happening incrementally and drive it home.”
Other attention-getting issues last year included preparing for state-imposed limits on future property tax revenue, early work on plans to expand the Austin Convention Center, passage of affordable housing policies tied to the 2018 bond election that will provide $250 million to house low-income residents, and a new contract with the police department… (LINK TO STORY)
County Judge Sarah Eckhardt sees a future of tough decisions and tax referendums for Travis County (Austin Monitor)
Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt has plenty of good news to report as she looks back on 2019.
Her greatest achievement is the county’s new public defender’s office, for which she was the lead champion on the Commissioners Court. While her background in criminal law was as a prosecutor, Eckhardt was a passionate voice for providing better legal defense to poor people.
Setting up an office with dedicated public defenders will help to raise the bar for legal defense in Travis County, she says, even if the majority of indigent defendants will continue to be represented by private attorneys contracted by the county.
“This was the last year to bring up a new big program in Travis County,” since it was the last year the county was not subject to the local government property tax limits signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott this summer… (LINK TO STORY)
Zillow predicts Austin will have nation's hottest housing market in 2020 (Austin Business Journal)
Austin has topped its first list of 2020 for its sizzling real estate market.
Zillow Inc. this week named the Texas capital as the hottest housing market of the year, based on the results of a survey of 110 economists and real estate experts.
The vast majority — some 83% — of panelists expect home values in the Austin metro to grow faster than the expected national rate of 2.8%. Only 10% expect home values to grow at the national rate, and 7% expect home values to grow slower than the national average.
That is sure to heighten worries about affordability, which is consistently one of the top concerns in Austin… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Marijuana prosecutions in Texas have dropped by more than half since lawmakers legalized hemp (Texas Tribune)
It’s been more than six months since Texas lawmakers legalized hemp and unintentionally disrupted marijuana prosecution across the state.
Since then, the number of low-level pot cases filed by prosecutors has plummeted. Some law enforcement agencies that still pursue charges are spending significantly more money at private labs to ensure that substances they suspect are illegal marijuana aren't actually hemp.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and local government crime labs expect to roll out a long-awaited testing method to distinguish between the two in the next month or so. But that's only for seized plant material. There's still no timeline for when they will be able to tell if vape pen liquid or edible products contain marijuana or hemp. And DPS said even when its testing is ready, it doesn’t have the resources to analyze substances in the tens of thousands of misdemeanor marijuana arrests made each year — testing it didn’t have to do before hemp was legalize.
“If law enforcement agencies and prosecutors asked for all of those to be tested when these new procedures become available … DPS would start with such a huge backlog that it would likely never get caught up,” said Shannon Edmonds, director of governmental relations for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. “One decision for prosecutors and law enforcement agencies and the labs is: How do they triage these cases to focus on the most important ones?”
In June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a widely supported bill to legalize hemp in Texas. The bill focused on agriculture practices and regulations, but it also narrowed the state’s definition of marijuana from cannabis to cannabis that contains more than 0.3% of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the ingredient in marijuana that gets you high. Anything with less THC is hemp… (LINK TO STORY)
Related: BG Podcast Episode 62: Cree Crawford, Founder and President, Ionization Labs
In his presidential campaign, Julián Castro stood out but couldn't break out (Texas Tribune)
On the afternoon of April 19, a day after Robert Mueller released his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, Julián Castro declared on CNN that it would be "perfectly reasonable" for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
Castro was the first Democratic presidential candidate to make such a statement, though just a couple of hours later, rival Elizabeth Warren sent out a series of tweets calling for impeachment proceedings — albeit more explicitly — and received most of the credit.
"Elizabeth Warren becomes first 2020 candidate to call for Trump's impeachment," read a Guardian headline at the time.
The episode spoke to perhaps the defining struggle of Castro's campaign: a failure to break through in the crowded field despite often being the first — or among the first — to lay claim to a certain cause or position. Time and time again, Castro found ways to distinguish himself in many areas important to Democratic primary voters — except those areas where it mattered most, especially this election cycle: fundraising and polling… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas leans on Lyft and Uber to get Medicaid patients to the doctor (San Antonio Express-News)
Each year, a lack of transportation keeps 3.6 million Americans from medical care. But under a new Texas law, some Medicaid patients will be able to take ride-hailing trips to the doctor’s office. Last summer, lawmakers relaxed regulations to shift funds for non-emergency transportation to ride-hailing companies such as Lyft and Uber. So far, only a handful of states are going this route.
More than 3.8 million Texans rely on Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income patients in the nation. The state arranges free rides for some of these patients to their appointments, but it’s not always reliable, leaving some patients worse off. Starting Wednesday, regional health care brokers will be able to contract with ride-hailing companies to take certain Medicaid recipients free of charge to their appointments or to the pharmacy. The pilot program allows these managed care organizations or health plans to offer ride-hailing as a value-added option. But health policy experts say it’s unclear whether the federal government will OK funding for this “carve-in” benefit… (LINK TO STORY)
Turner pledges focus on flooding, street repairs, asks help from private sector to reduce homelessness (Houston Chronicle)
Freshly sworn in Thursday morning, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner promised to make significant strides in street repairs and flood control while boosting services for the city’s homeless in his second term. He also called on private businesses and nonprofits to be more generous in their giving, saying they are crucial to helping the cash-strapped city fund his signature initiatives, including the Complete Communities neighborhood program.
“We ask financial institutions, businesses, developers, nonprofits and endowments to leverage their resources with the city and with one another to share the risks and expedite the transformation,” Turner said his inaugural speech at the Wortham Center. “Though many have stepped forward to assist, we are still missing that level of support, the investments that will serve as game-changers for those under-served communities in our city.” Turner easily prevailed in the Dec. 14 runoff election over second-place finisher Tony Buzbee. In a post-election interview with the Chronicle, Turner promised to make transformational changes in his final term, including restructuring the fire department, accelerating the city’s permitting process and repairing streets as top priorities… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Pentagon Says Trump Authorized Killing Of Top Iranian Military Leader (The KUT)
United States forces assassinated Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an air strike early Friday at Baghdad International Airport, an escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran that is prompting concerns of further violence in the region.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the Pentagon took a "decisive defensive action" in killing Soleimani, who Esper says was planning to attack American diplomats and service members.
"This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans," Esper said.
The Pentagon said the attack was undertaken at the direction of President Trump.
For two decades, Soleimani led the elite Quds Force, a branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for the country's intelligence and military operations outside of Iran… (LINK TO STORY)
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