BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 3, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast Episode 93: Processing with Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette, President/CEO at Huston-Tillotson University (SHOW LINK)
The BG Podcast returns this Wednesday August 5th with Episode 101!
Note: Show also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and Stitcher
[AUSTIN METRO]
Study pushes city toward using data, results in plans to address homelessness (Austin Monitor)
The city and organizations working to solve homelessness will adopt a more data-heavy approach to achieving the goals of the 2018 Action Plan to End Homelessness. The move to handle contracts for homeless services in a results-focused way is expected to quickly bring about investments in permanent housing from foundations and private businesses.
A recent summary of a study conducted by consultant Barbara Poppe and Associates notes that the city lacks a strong management approach in its efforts to combat homelessness, which negatively impacted decisions on setting priorities from the action plan, securing investments to remedy homelessness and measuring the results of those investments.
As a result of the study, the new Public-Private Partnership Task Force to End Homelessness was formed and is meeting weekly to create a data-driven plan for adding permanent supportive housing and other resources. Member organizations of the task force include the city of Austin and Ending Community Homelessness Coalition as well as the Downtown Austin Alliance, Caritas of Austin, Front Steps, Integral Care, LifeWorks, and the Salvation Army.
Matt Mollica, executive director of ECHO and co-chair of the task force, said one of the existing hurdles to using data for planning around homelessness was that programs from different organizations measured many kinds of data in non-uniform ways, which made it difficult to gauge their effectiveness and coordinate… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
HBCU President: 'I slept better' after deciding on all online classes in the Fall (NPR)
Historically Black colleges and universities have an extra factor to consider as they plan on how to operate this next school year: Black communities are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
According to the COVID Racial Data Tracker, Black people are dying from the coronavirus at two and a half times the rate of white people.
Colette Pierce Burnette is the president of Huston-Tillotson University, a small, private HBCU in Austin, Texas. She recently announced that the school's 1,100 students will not be returning in the fall, but that all classes will be online.
"We must have looked at over a dozen different scenarios — from being fully online to being fully on ground here on campus," she tells All Things Considered. "The students' health, the safety of our faculty, our staff, the people who work here, was paramount."… (FULL STORY HERE)
In effort to manage crowds, Austin’s Barton Creek Greenbelt will require reservations for next 5 months (Community Impact)
Officially closed since the July 4 weekend, Austin’s Barton Creek and Bull Creek greenbelts will reopen Aug. 8; however, those who want to visit the Barton Creek Greenbelt, from Thursday through Sunday, will need to make a reservation ahead of time, park officials said.
The new requirement comes as the city continues to balance reopening amenities and curtailing the spread of the coronavirus, which has gripped the city since mid-March. In a press release sent out July 31, park officials said the reservation pilot program is an effort to manage crowd capacity at one of the city’s most popular outdoor amenities. The program could continue for five months, officials said.
Reservations will be free… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
UT official: No parties, on or off campus, are allowed fall semester (Austin American-Statesman)
The University of Texas will not allow students to hold parties on or off campus during the fall semester as Austin and the state continue to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
In an email sent to students Friday, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Soncia Reagins-Lilly encouraged students to follow the city of Austin’s guidance to stay home and the state’s orders to wear a mask in public. Parties, she added, will not be permitted.
“While the orders and guidelines continue to evolve, parties (whether on or off campus) put people’s health and safety at risk and raise anxiety levels,” she said in the email.
The fall semester will begin Aug. 26, with students taking classes in person and online. It’s not clear how the university plans to enforce the no-party rule in off-campus settings, but the city of Austin has prohibited gatherings of more than 10 people. According to UT’s student conduct rules, those who deliberately engage in behavior that threatens the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and visitors will be subject to disciplinary action.
The rule has the potential to affect a large number of social gatherings across the campus. Sara Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the dean of students’ office, said fraternities and sororities are private, off-campus organizations and not under the purview of the university, but they would still be subject to the no-party rule… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
August agenda for local government includes schools, police spending, property taxes and a pandemic (Texas Tribune)
Property valuations in Texas are supposed to be complete now that the July deadline has passed. The next step is as hard as arguing over what a house is worth, as cities, counties, school districts and all those other local governments set their budgets and their tax rates.
That happens in public hearings, perhaps held in person at a time when many gatherings have moved to the tiny online boxes of Zoom, Meet, Team, Webex and other services most of us hadn’t heard of six months ago.
Those annual budget and tax hearings are where Texans find out what’s going to happen to police and public safety budgets — to steal a talking point from this summer’s justice marches and protests — and to parks and public health and the other programs and services of local government.
School districts are being remade and reconfigured before our eyes, as local educators contend with major changes in teaching, transportation, technology, food services — all the intricacies of sending 5.5 million young Texans to public schools five days a week, 180 days a year. Oh, yeah, and how to keep people in schools — young and old, staff and student — safe from a virus that has already killed more than 6,200 Texans in less than five months… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Facing a crisis, Abbott charts a lonely middle course (Austin American-Statesman)
Last Sunday, the White House Coronavirus Task Force placed Texas and 20 other states in a red zone. The numbers from Texas were worrisome, with the rate of new cases and deaths from COVID-19 a third higher than the national average and the positivity rate for diagnostic tests at 17.3%, twice the national number. That same day, the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States, a joint project of four major universities, completed its seventh wave of a large, 50-state survey, placing Gov. Greg Abbott in his own red zone for his performance in contending with the crisis. In late April, 61% of Texas adults surveyed (not just voters as in most political polls), approved of Abbott’s handling of the pandemic, 3 points below the national average for governors.
By late July, Abbott — a Republican whose standing had been slipping month by month as he sought to make Texas a leader in reopening the economy — had a 38% approval rating, 13 points off the national average and not all that much better than President Donald Trump’s rating of 32% among Texans for his leadership in the crisis, down from 44% in April. All this scarcely three months before a 2020 election in which Texas appears to be truly in play, from the presidency to control of the state House. The 62-year-old Abbott, who said before all this that he planned to run for a third term in 2022, is not on this fall’s ballot, but politically, everything is on the line for him. Yet there was Abbott, his tie off and top shirt button unbuttoned for “casual Friday,” making his usual round of appearances, via his Austin TV studio, on evening newscasts, on this day in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, talking about COVID-19 and clarifying plans for reopening schools, with his usual confident demeanor — his favorite locutions are “Know this...” and “Understand this ... ” Months into a modern plague with no end in sight, he is looking none the worse for wear. “Internally doing OK also,” Abbott said during a half-hour telephone interview Friday afternoon with the American-Statesman from the Governor’s Mansion “One thing I know is that when you deal with something like this, this is a marathon,” Abbott said. “I know how to run long distances. I know how to pace myself.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Thousands of Texans are getting rapid-result COVID-19 tests. The state isn’t counting them. (Houston Chronicle)
The government’s official data on the coronavirus outbreak is startling: More than 4.6 million cases in the U.S. More than 440,000 in Texas. More than 70,000 in Harris County. But those numbers don’t include all positive COVID-19 patients. Texas, unlike 27 other states, excludes the results of increasingly popular, rapid COVID-19 tests from the numbers it reports publicly — obscuring the scope of the pandemic, records and interviews show. The antigen tests are used in doctor’s offices, hospitals and stand-alone clinics and deliver results in less than 30 minutes.
But conflicting guidance from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services created confusion among local health departments about what test results to report. A reliance on faxed test results has created a paper backlog that makes it impossible for the state to do its own tally. And while there is no way to independently estimate the scope of the undercount, based on the 11 Texas counties that publish antigen tests results separately of their own accord, the state’s tally is short by at least tens of thousands of cases — but likely far more, a Houston Chronicle analysis found. And the undercount is about to get worse. The federal government is rolling out a program to use thousands of antigen tests in nursing home across the country - including Texas. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, who serves as vice-chair of the House committee that oversees the state’s public health agencies, said the lack of reliable data is hindering the overall COVID-19 response effort in Texas. “The only way people will be inspired to act right without government mandates is if they have the information they need to make smart choices,” Hinojosa told the Houston Chronicle. “And that has been just impossible to come by.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas Supreme Court lets coronavirus orders stand, despite outcry by conservatives (Dallas Morning News)
The Texas Supreme Court has refused to hear several challenges by a Houston conservative power broker to emergency orders on coronavirus issued by Gov. Greg Abbott and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Without comment, the nine Republican justices on Friday denied a request that they review a trial court that upheld Hidalgo’s April 22 mask order. The order required residents to wash hands before leaving home and wear masks, stay 6 feet away from each other and avoid touching their faces in public. For a time, Abbott, a Republican, prevented Hidalgo, a Democrat elected in 2018, from enforcing it. The governor later reversed course and issued his own mask order.
Experts said Friday they weren’t surprised that in five recent lawsuits, the state’s highest civil court has declined Dr. Steve Hotze’s demands that it step in and overturn Abbott and Hidalgo’s COVID-19 orders. Each time, the court ruled on procedural grounds. Hotze, a staunch conservative who for decades has wielded influence with his “slate cards” telling Harris County voters whom to back in Republican primaries, said his bid to protect Texans’ state and federal constitutional rights will continue. “We fight on,” he said. “It’s obvious to me some members of the Supreme Court just don’t want this case to come up. They don’t want to go against Abbott. Six of them were appointed by Abbott.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Biden VP short-listers jockey as search enters final round in secrecy (Politico)
The competition to be named Joe Biden’s running mate has entered the final stretch with huge unknowns about how it will unfold — among even some of the candidates themselves.
At least some of the contenders were in the dark on Sunday about their upcoming interviews with Biden: They were told to be prepared for in-person sit-downs while at the same time cautioned that could change due to health and logistical concerns surrounding Covid-19.
For weeks, aides of contenders going through the vetting process said they had little visibility into the campaign’s thinking. They’ve scoured news reports for tidbits on the finalists and any window into where they are in the horse race.
Amid the uncertainty, short-listers have adopted competing strategies, with several lesser-known candidates taking to TV news shows to raise their profiles while more prominent contenders such as Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren remain out of the spotlight… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Microsoft consults with Trump about ongoing talks to buy TikTok from Chinese firm (NPR)
Microsoft said Sunday it has discussed with President Trump its plan to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations, just as the White House threatens to blacklist the hugely popular Chinese-owned app.
"Following a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Donald J. Trump, Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States," the software giant said in a blog post.
It's Microsoft's first public acknowledgement that it's in talks to take over TikTok, a deal that could be worth billions of dollars. News of the talks first trickled out on Friday.
"Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President's concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury," Microsoft said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The Bingham Group, LLC is an Austin-based full service lobbying firm representing and advising clients on municipal, legislative, and regulatory matters throughout Texas.
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