BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 25, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Blog: State Leaders Threaten Property Tax Revenue Freeze Over Police Defunding (BLOG LINK)
BG Podcast Episode 103: FY 2021 Budget with Council Member Jimmy Flannigan (District 6) (SHOW LINK)
Note: Show also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and Stitcher
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin City Council will discuss city manager’s employment in meetings this week (KXAN)
Upset over the pace at which City Manager Spencer Cronk has addressed calls for leadership changes at the Austin Police Dept., Council Member Jimmy Flannigan has called for a review of Cronk’s employment with the city.
The Austin City Council will discuss the “employment, duties, and evaluation” of Cronk during executive sessions at a work session on Tuesday and, again, at Thursday’s regularly called meeting.
Flannigan told KXAN that the discussion of Cronk’s employment is not a routine check-in with the city manager. A spokesperson for the city said Cronk requested his quarterly review for the same time.
“I asked for it myself,” Flannigan said in an interview. “Because the change needs to come and needs to come faster and I’m not satisfied with the pace of change in leadership in law enforcement.”
Cronk, not the City Council, has control over who leads APD. Chief Brian Manley faced mounting criticism over the department’s response to police brutality protests in May and June, as well as the officer-involved shooting death of Mike Ramos, though calls for his ouster quieted while the city council worked on budget reform.
Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison believes it is time for a change in leadership at APD and she too has felt frustrated by the pace at which change is carried out. But Harper-Madison, unlike Flannigan, believes the City Manager’s Office has followed the will of the council and is doing its due diligence.
“I do wish that there had been more action sooner but I certainly understand the complication of the job,” Harper-Madison told KXAN… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Expect uptick in positive coronavirus tests, UT president says (Austin American-Statesman)
Seeking to manage expectations as students return to Austin, interim University of Texas President Jay Hartzell told members of the university community Monday that “we will almost certainly find a larger number of COVID-19 cases and clusters than we have seen in recent weeks.”
Classes begin Wednesday.
The campuswide email from Hartzell said an expected initial spike in positive cases “will primarily reflect infections that community members developed outside of our campus environment this summer and will mark a starting point for measuring our overall ability to mitigate the spread and impact of the virus.”
Hartzell made his comments in the context of a proactive community testing regimen, which involves encouraging students and staffers to voluntarily take saliva tests.
“Our goal is to maintain COVID-19 rates that are close to, or less than, what we record during these initial weeks,” Hartzell wrote.
The university has seen a roughly decreasing trend in reported cases since late June. Officials said they hope students will self-isolate for 14 days before returning to campus.
“UT students have been 100% remote since March with most faculty and staff working remotely as well,” university spokesman J.B. Bird said in an email. But even as most classes are online this fall, UT officials anticipate thousands of students returning to campus.
A recent UT coronavirus modeling study found that reopening risks “may be considerably lower if infected individuals who test positive or are sufficiently symptomatic self-isolate and do not attend in-person classes and events.″
Only 5% of classes this fall are fully in-person, according to Bird… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin ISD trustees welcome new Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde at first board meeting (Community Impact)
New Austin ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde has been on the job for 13 days, and board of trustees President Geronimo Rodriguez said she has not had time to rest while preparing for the coming school year.
During her first board meeting Aug. 24, Rodriguez said that Elizalde’s dedication to the job has been on display since before she was hired, taking community meetings to get to know the district through the month.
“She has demonstrated her firm commitment to building relationships with our community, while listening to gain a deeper understanding of our strengths challenges opportunities as a district has shown that she is the right person at the right time,” he said.
Rodriguez said she has dove into the district’s reopening process and has continued discussions on how to get students and teachers prepared for virtual learning and ensure district safety.
Trustee Ann Teich said she appreciated Elizalde reaching out to the community and engaging with local stakeholders so quickly into her career with the district… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Why tech-investment luminary Jim Breyer opened an Austin office (Austin Business Journal)
If an investor hall of fame existed, Jim Breyer would be in it.
He might be best-known for investing in Facebook Inc. in 2005, a year after Mark Zuckerberg founded the social media company. At the time, Breyer was managing partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million in Facebook. When it went public in 2012, that bet yielded billions of dollars to Accel investors. Breyer also sat on Facebook's board and helped recruit Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to the company.
Breyer has also been an investor and board member companies such as Round Rock-based Dell Technologies Inc. (NYSE: DELL), New York-based Etsy Inc. (Nasdaq: ETSY), Marvel Entertainment LLC, the former Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. and Arkansas-based Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT). Today, he is on the board of The Blackstone Group Inc. (NYSE: BX), one of the world's largest investment firms.
Earlier this month, he announced the opening of an Austin office for his global venture capital and private equity firm, Breyer Capital LLC, its first and only other location beyond its original digs in Menlo Park, California. Breyer started the eponymous venture capital firm in 2006.
Austin tech entrepreneurs certainly know Breyer. He already is an investor in local companies OJO Labs Inc. and Swivel Inc.
Breyer Capital participated in the $62.5 million series D round announced in June by OJO Labs, which has developed artificial intelligence software for homebuying. The VC firm led the $8 million series A round that Swivel — which makes it easier for companies to lease move-in ready, short-term office space — closed in February.
And Breyer considers Michael Dell, whom he’s known for more than a decade, a friend and mentor.
“We’re already talking about collaboration,” Breyer said.
The investor said he plans “to spend significant time in Austin with the opening of Breyer Capital’s office there. Given Covid-19, we will start with a leaner Austin-based team and consider expanding in the months and years to come. By the end of this year, I expect the Breyer Capital portfolio to include six to eight Austin-based companies and nonprofits."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas State University welcomed students back in person Monday. Campus was a ghost town. (Texas Tribune)
Omar Cruz, a 19-year-old sophomore, stocked up on bottles of disinfectant for himself and his roommate in anticipation of the first day back on campus at Texas State University. He wore two face masks — as “an extra precautionary measure” — to his in-person precalculus class.
But Cruz said he’s not too worried about catching the new coronavirus from classmates on campus.
“Of course with COVID, you’d expect people to be nervous, but I’m not super nervous,” Cruz said.
At 9:45 a.m. Monday, Texas State University looked like a ghost town. The first day of school at the campus, which had more than 38,000 students last fall, is typically bustling with energy and activity, with first-time students walking shoulder to shoulder in search of their new classes and friends reuniting after being separated over the summer.
But Monday was the first day of in-person instruction at the San Marcos campus since the coronavirus pandemic raged across Texas, forcing school officials to reinvent the college experience in an attempt to keep students — who would otherwise live, eat and learn together — safe and socially distanced.
In interviews with The Texas Tribune, over two dozen students and teachers expressed a range of emotions about the first day back, including nervousness about the pandemic and excitement about the new school year. Some students were unfazed about the possibility of falling ill.
Others expressed doubt that the school would continue face-to-face classes for the duration of the semester… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Austin’s police cuts give Texas Republicans new campaign material (Texas Tribune)
Texas Republicans may have found their best argument going into the 2020 general election, thanks to leaders of the state’s most exuberantly liberal big city.
In a political season when almost everything seems stacked against the state’s GOP leadership — the flailing government response to the pandemic, the Rona Recession and a summer of protest against racism and police violence — the city of Austin made itself a perfect target for a good, old-fashioned Republican law-and-order campaign.
By cutting and redirecting a third of the city’s police budget and selling it as a corrective for law enforcement gone wrong, Austin gave Texas Republicans something to talk about, an issue they can use to raise money, rally voters and build a defense in an election year that seemed written for the Democrats.
Support your local police. It’s a revival of an old and reliable establishment rallying point, complete with references to “inner cities” and “thugs” that echo the racism of earlier demonstrations and movements involving law enforcement and people of color.
Texas Republicans are doing with Austin’s police budget cuts what national Republicans are doing with Seattle and Portland — painting it as a dangerous place where liberal leaders are eroding security. Gov. Greg Abbott, joined by legislative leaders at a news conference in Fort Worth, proposed freezing local property tax revenue of cities that, like Austin, cut their police budgets.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican, Democrat, independent, you want to be safe, and people are just not safe now in Austin,” said U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican who claims Austin as his residence in a district that runs from Burleson, south of Fort Worth, to Hays County, in an interview with Marble Falls radio station KBEY-FM… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Nearly 350,000 unemployed Texans don't qualify for extra $300 weekly benefit (Texas Tribune)
Approximately 347,700 Texans currently receiving unemployment benefits do not qualify for the additional $300 weekly payments issued by the Trump administration, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
Some people do not qualify because they did not indicate on their unemployment filings that they lost work because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Cisco Gamez, spokesperson for the Texas Workforce Commission, the state agency in charge of distributing jobless benefits. Those Texans could change their status when filling out future payment requests, Gamez said, and could then qualify for the extra $300 payments.
The rest of the people who will not receive the additional payments do not qualify because they receive less than $100 per week in jobless benefits, a threshold President Donald Trump set when announcing his action on the issue earlier this month after extra $600 weekly payments expired in July. Some jobless Texans receive as little as $69 per week in benefits, which is based on the state agency’s formula calculating benefits according to wages from the jobs unemployed Texans held before they applied for relief… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Judge won't be removed from criminal case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (Texas Tribune)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is still fighting 5-year-old felony securities fraud charges, has failed in his bid to kick a Democratic Harris County judge off his ongoing criminal case.
An administrative judge in Houston, Susan Brown, denied Paxton’s motion to recuse Judge Jason Luong from the case, The Dallas Morning News first reported Friday.
It’s a loss for Paxton’s team in the long-running prosecution, which has yet to go to trial amid side fights over venue and prosecutor pay that have spanned years and bounced among numerous courts across the state. Paxton, a Republican, has maintained his innocence in the case, in which he is accused of persuading investors to buy stock in a technology firm without disclosing that he would be compensated for it.
An earlier judge in the case, Democrat Robert Johnson, recused himself earlier this summer because the Texas attorney general’s office is representing him — along with about 20 other Harris County judges — in an unrelated lawsuit over bail practices… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Republicans officially renominate Trump for president (The Hill)
Republicans officially selected President Trump to be their party’s nominee on Monday, setting up a general election battle against Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
President Trump made a surprise appearance in the convention hall in Charlotte, N.C., where he touted the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and said he’d rebuild the economy to where it was before the “plague.”
“We’re getting ready to do things like nobody has ever seen before, but the best way to bring unity is success,” Trump said. “Success brings unity and we were there and then we got hit with the plague and we won’t forget that.”
The president said the economy is on pace for a “super V-shaped” recovery and he accused Democrats of trying to keep business closed during the pandemic to hurt him politically.
“They want our numbers to look as bad as possible,” Trump said.
Trump also railed against the expansion of mail voting, calling it the “greatest scam in the history of politics.”
The president, who has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in mail voting, accused Democrats of “trying to steal the election from Republicans.”
While the Republican National Convention in Charlotte has been scaled back dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans officially nominated Trump through an in-person roll call vote, with delegates standing up to declare their support for the president.
Vice President Pence addressed the convention before Trump, touting the administration’s efforts the past four years to renegotiate trade deals, confirm conservative judges and lower taxes.
The choice in this election has never been clearer and the stakes have never been higher,” Pence said.
“Men and women of the Republican National Convention, it’s on," he added. "Now is the time. This is the moment for each of us to everything in our power to reelect this president to four more years.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY HERE)
Wisconsin deploys National Guard after shooting of Black man sparks protests (NPR)
The Wisconsin National Guard has been deployed to Kenosha, Wis., after a Black man was shot several times at close range in the back during an encounter with police over the weekend.
The shooting was caught on video that has since gone viral on social media, sparking outrage.
Gov. Tony Evers said the guard troops would support local law enforcement officials but added it would not be an extended deployment, according to a Monday afternoon statement.
"Every person should be able to express their anger and frustration by exercising their First Amendment rights and report on these calls to action without any fear of being unsafe," Evers said.
"This is a limited mobilization of the National Guard focused on supporting the needs of local first responders to protect critical infrastructure, such as utilities and fire stations, and to ensure Kenoshians are able to assemble safely."
The governor did not give a time frame for how long the guardsmen would remain in the city.
Protesters took to the streets Sunday evening into the early hours of Monday in Kenosha, roughly 40 miles south of Milwaukee. In the video, a man identified as Jacob Blake is seen being shot multiple times as he leaned inside a vehicle… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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