BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 1, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW BG PODCAST - EP. 115: 2020 Fall Closeout with Associate Intern Wendy Rodriguez
Watch last night’s Austin Council Run-off Forums:
Austin 2020 City Council Candidate Run-off Forum District 6 (Video - City of Austin)
Austin 2020 City Council Candidate Run-off Forum District 10 (Video - City of Austin)
Early voting for the December runoffs begins Wednesday, December 3, with Election Day happening on Tuesday, December 15. You can find voting locations in Travis County for early voting or on Election Day at this link.
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Checking in on Tesla’s Austin-area factory (Austin American-Statesman)
Construction of the planned Tesla factory in southeastern Travis County has been proceeding so fast that watching it take shape is practically a spectator sport.
Here are five things to know about the facility, which is at Texas 130 and Harold Green Road.
1. Tesla appears intent on producing more than cars here
The company has said it will manufacture many of its electric vehicles at the factory, but it has filed for a permit from the state to produce batteries as well. That would make the facility among the first Tesla locations to have both full-scale battery and vehicle production.
Tesla, which is based in California, hasn’t publicly confirmed the battery operation, but an air-quality permit application it filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality makes things pretty clear.
“The facility is proposing to operate a cell-manufacturing unit to produce the battery packs that are installed in the vehicle. The final product from this operation are the cells,” the application says.
2. Speaking of electric vehicles ...
The new manufacturing plant will be a key site for Tesla as it attempts to break into the U.S. market for pickups now dominated by Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler, the so-called Big Three automakers.
The factory, just outside Austin in Travis County, will be the launching point for Tesla’s electric pickup — which it is calling the Cybertruck because of the vehicle’s unconventional, sci-fi appearance.
Tesla also has said the plant will serve demand in the eastern and central portions of the country for its Model 3 compact sedan and for its recently introduced Model Y compact sport utility vehicle. In addition, it will produce Tesla’s planned commercial semi-truck for long-haul shipping.
The new manufacturing plant will be just the company’s second in the United States and fourth in the world.
3. Hiring has begun
When Tesla executives sought taxpayer-funded incentives earlier this year to locate the factory in Travis County, they pledged to employ a minimum of 5,000 people here eventually.
The company appears to have hit the ground running on that target, even though the factory remains a long way from operational. Dozens of jobs have been listed on Tesla’s corporate website for positions in Austin.
Rohan Patel, Tesla’s senior director of public policy and business development, said recently that the company also plans to forge partnerships with area high schools, colleges, workforce training agencies and trade groups as it builds its roster of employees in the region… (LINK TO STORY)
Hinojosa tries again for inclusionary zoning (Austin Monitor)
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, is trying once again to repeal the state law that prevents Texas cities from using an affordable housing tool known as inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning programs allow cities to require developers to provide housing for low-income residents when they request zoning changes. Only Texas, Arizona and Tennessee currently prohibit inclusionary zoning.
Hinojosa filed a bill last year to repeal the state ban. However, the bill was filed in March and never got a hearing. While the bill’s chances never seemed particularly good with a conservative Legislature, at least this time the bill was filed early. City Council Member Leslie Pool, the lead sponsor on a resolution on this week’s agenda supporting Hinojosa’s bill, said Monday she and her co-sponsors are supporting the push to allow inclusionary zoning as “one of the more potent tools” the city can use to gain more affordable housing in Austin.
Cicely Kay, Hinojosa’s legislative director, told the Austin Monitor the city approached Hinojosa about carrying the legislation again. She said, “The bill would simply strike the language in state statute that does not allow cities” to require affordable housing units. The language was added to state law in 2005.
Pool said the money from the 2018 affordable housing bond would go further and more affordable housing could be built if the city could use inclusionary zoning. “I think it would balance the scales,” she said.
However, Pool acknowledged that the failure to elect more Democrats to the Texas House might mean that the legislation won’t pass this time either. She pointed out that while getting a rail system for Austin took several tries, it eventually passed. If the Legislature does not approve eliminating the ban on inclusionary zoning this year, she said they will try again.
Council Member Greg Casar, a co-sponsor of the resolution, noted that the city regularly uses its density bonus program with zoning approvals. In that case, the developer agrees with a private group, such as a nonprofit development corporation, to provide a certain amount of housing for people who cannot afford market rates… (LINK TO STORY)
Public safety, homelessness in Austin take center stage in final forum before District 6 runoff vote (Community Impact)
Three days ahead of the first day of early voting for the Austin City Council District 6 runoff election, a final public debate between candidates Jimmy Flannigan and Mackenzie Kelly was mostly focused on issues of public safety.
Several of the questions lobbed by moderator Carol Eckelcamp of the League of Women Voters Austin Area centered on the role of Austin’s police officers and how city policies can help Austin’s homeless population.
One of Eckelcamp’s early questions asked the candidates to address homeless campsites, which have become increasingly visible citywide since Austin City Council last year voted to overturn the ban on public camping.
“Make no mistake, simply banning camping does not ban homelessness ... it just moves these people back into the shadows,” the incumbent Flannigan said during the Nov. 30 forum.
Flannigan further advocated for “wraparound” services to support Austinites experiencing homelessness, including transitional housing in city-owned hotels… (LINK TO STORY)
Candidates for Austin City Council District 10 face off ahead of Dec. 15 runoff (Community Impact)
Ahead of a Dec. 15 runoff election that will determine the next District 10 representative for Austin City Council, candidates Alison Alter and Jennifer Virden participated in a forum Nov. 30 facilitated by the Austin League of Women Voters. Alter and Virden went head to head on hot-button campaign issues including public camping and funding for the Austin Police Department—two issues one local campaign operative said could be pivotal in the runoff.
The incumbent council member for District 10, Alter received the highest share of the vote in the race Nov. 11, with 34.2%—not enough of a majority to win the race outright. She now faces Virden, her nearest challenger from a crowded field, who earned 25.4% of the popular vote.
During the forum, Alter and Virden differed on ideas to improve Austin's homelessness crisis. The more conservative Virden came out strong against city council's 2019 vote to decriminalize public camping for people experiencing homelessness.
"The reinstating of the camping ban is a tool that must be reinstated in order to consolidate our homeless population, so that we can then enact other help to get them into the housing and services that they need," Virden said. "We have existing models of care that are proven to work, such as San Antonio's Haven for Hope and Travis County's [Mobile Loaves & Fishes Community First! Village]. These locations provide regular services such as food delivery, meal services, social services, sanitary facilities and 24-hour security. For the subset of our homeless population that prefers to camp, we have the state-sanctioned five-acre campsite near [Austin-Bergstrom International Airport]."… (LINK TO STORY)
Work to start in 2021 on 3rd pedestrian bridge for Lady Bird Lake (Austin American-Statesman)
With the passage of Proposition B, Austin is now set to get a third pedestrian bridge over Lady Bird Lake — a companion to the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge that will complete the loop of the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail.
The as yet unnamed bridge would span Lady Bird Lake just upstream from the Longhorn Dam and be an eastern companion to the popular Pfluger Bridge near Lamar Boulevard. The Pfluger Bridge got its name when it was opened in 2001, and the Austin City Council generally gives notable city-owned landmarks their names.
City leaders aim to emulate the atmosphere of the Pfluger Bridge, a popular spot for strollers, runners, bicyclists and Instagrammers that has become inextricable from the fabric of downtown Austin since it opened in 2001.
In that vein, the initial designs for the new pedestrian bridge show a similar mid-bridge plaza, an area wide enough for people to pass one another safely but also for people to stop and have a seat on a bench.
City staff members are referring to it as the “wishbone bridge” as a nod to its three-pronged design. The concept chosen last year shows a bridge that crosses Lady Bird Lake from Longhorn Shores on the southern edge of the lake to Holly Shores.
The bridge would bend upstream to a triangular intersection stretching from a slim peninsula near the north edge of the lake, providing an alternative to traveling along the narrow sidewalk atop Longhorn Dam.
“There are definitely a lot of safety improvements with the new bridge,” said Katie Wettick, manager of the city’s urban trails program. “It is totally separated from traffic, wide enough that people can hopefully safely pass each other and the wishbone alignment makes it convenient for people either traveling down Pleasant Valley or on the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail loop.”
The initial design and public outreach campaign for the bridge was funded by the 2016 voter-approved $720 million mobility bond. A July preliminary engineering report estimated designing and building the bridge will cost $12.6 million.
Design and engineering work for the bridge will begin early next year. City staffers estimate that it will take about five years to complete… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Despite staggering pandemic losses, Texas budget forecast better than expected, state comptroller says (Texas Tribune)
Despite “historic declines,” state lawmakers will have more money to work with in the upcoming legislative session than Comptroller Glenn Hegar expected over the summer, he said Monday. But Hegar did not outline specifics as state coffers continue to suffer from the economic recession spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.
Sales tax revenues, by far the largest part of the state budget, fell by 4.8% in the second half of the 2020 fiscal year compared with the same stretch last year, Hegar said. It was a much softer hit than he anticipated, thanks to Texans staying home and spending money on “staycations instead of vacations.”
Other revenue streams, such as taxes related to alcohol, hotel occupancy, and oil and gas, were down more than 40% in the same period this year compared with last, Hegar told lawmakers Monday during a Legislative Budget Board meeting at the Capitol.
“Revenues remain down significantly relative to a year ago, and well below what we expected to collect when the Legislature wrapped up work on the budget in 2019,” Hegar said.
Legislative budget writers decide how much money will be allocated for large state expenses like how much school districts get, how well health care programs are funded, which transportation projects get built and what amount state law enforcement gets based on how much the comptroller says will be available during the next two-year budget cycle, which runs from September 2021 through August 2023. Hegar will likely unveil that number as the session nears.
Hegar, whose office is in charge of collecting taxes owed to the state of Texas, last formally updated lawmakers in July, when he wrote a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott and lawmakers projecting the state’s current two-year budget to be roughly $11.5 billion less than originally estimated. That would put the state on track to end the biennium, which runs through August 2021, with a deficit of nearly $4.6 billion, Hegar wrote in July.
On Monday, Hegar presented virtually to some of the state’s political leaders, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, who co-chair the budget board and who appeared in person at the Capitol along with eight other colleagues from both chambers… (LINK TO STORY)
City creates task force to solidify Dallas as an entrepreneurial hub in the U.S. (Dallas Morning News)
Mayor Eric Johnson will create a new task force Monday to examine how to make Dallas a top city for entrepreneurs. The task force will be led by Mandy Price and Trey Bowles, two significant figures in the Dallas-Fort Worth startup scene. Bowles has spent the last decade working in the space, mentoring entrepreneurs and developing programs to support them in his work as CEO of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center. Price is CEO and co-founder of Kanarys, a platform where employees can anonymously review companies’ performance on issues like diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace. Kanarys recently received funding from Google through its startup accelerator program for Black founders.
“Dallas is a great city for big businesses, which is why we are home to 11 Fortune 500 companies’ headquarters,” Mayor Johnson said in a statement. “But as the economy changes and our recovery from COVID-19 begins, we have the opportunity to accelerate our growth if we foster a culture of innovation and focus on doing what it takes to ensure that small businesses are able flourish in Dallas. " The task force will be working with an April 30 target to recommend a course of action to Johnson and Tennell Atkins, who chairs Dallas City Council’s economic development committee. Potential funding to support the recommendations won’t come until after city leaders review them. Another of the mayor’s task forces, the Task Force on Safe Communities, recently received $4.5 million in the city’s 2020-21 budget to implement its recommendations on combating violent crime… (LINK TO STORY)
El Paso Mayor Mayor Dee Margo on "Face the Nation” (CBS NEWS)
The following is a transcript of an interview with El Paso, Texas, Mayor Dee Margo that aired Sunday, November 29, 2020, on "Face the Nation."… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Bay Area exodus accelerates at year-end as some seek to avoid tax hikes in 2021 (San Francisco Business Times)
The Bay Area exodus, which accelerated amid Covid, appears to be gaining more steam in the final months of 2020. Moving out of the state by year-end could help those leaving avoid being hit by a California income tax increase next year that might be retroactive to the start of 2021.
“I’m seeing an acceleration of clients — not to mention friends and neighbors — leaving California,” said Paul Bleeg, a partner with accounting firm EisnerAmper in San Francisco. “The destinations vary: Montana, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Utah and elsewhere.”
Bleeg said factors fueling the acceleration include anticipation that California taxes will move higher in the year ahead and the shift to working from home amid the pandemic.
“The majority of those moving are people who’ve been working from home for several months or more and now realize they could pay less in taxes by working out of state,” Bleeg said. “Once they get the OK from their employer to work remotely in another state, away they go.”
California has a history of raising income taxes retroactively to the start of the year, as the state did in 2012, when taking the top tax rate to 13.3% — the nation’s highest. This year, proposed legislation to raise the top rate to 16.3%, again retroactively, didn’t pass. But many expect the state to consider a tax hike again in 2021.
Those who have left in recent weeks include Ron Suber, a prolific fintech investor who moved from San Francisco to Boulder, Colorado, in late September. Suber may be blazing a trail, given the reaction he’s receiving from his decision to leave California.
“The number of calls, emails, inquiries and outreach over the past two months has been staggering,” Suber told me Tuesday from his new hometown. “It’s not about ‘why’ but about ‘where.’ Many are currently doing their due diligence on where they might go.
“It’s not just to the warm and zero-state-income-tax states,” Suber said, noting that some are considering moves to Arizona, Utah, Oregon and Colorado, among other destinations.
Others that have recently moved from the Golden State include Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX) CEO Drew Houston and Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK) CEO Douglas Merritt, who both recently purchased homes in Austin, with plans to make the Texas capital their permanent home, The Information reported this week, noting that some Splunk employees are already asking executives whether they too should move to Austin. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale is also moving from San Francisco to Austin, taking the headquarters of his venture firm, 8VC, with him. Palantir recently moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Denver.
Keith Rabois, a veteran of Paypal, LinkedIn and Square, said this month that he too is moving, to Florida.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s state-to-state migration figures released this month showed that the exodus was roaring even before Covid struck. Texas was the most popular destination for those leaving the Golden State in 2019… (LINK TO STORY)
Coronavirus was in U.S. weeks earlier than previously known, study says (NPR)
The coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, and before cases in China were publicly identified, according to a new government study published Monday.
The virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn't until Jan. 19 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, from a traveler returning from China, was found in the U.S.
However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggest that the coronavirus, known officially as SARS-CoV-2, had infected people in the U.S. even earlier.
"SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized," the authors said.
This discovery adds to evidence that the virus was quietly spreading around the world before health officials and the public were aware, disrupting previous thinking of how the illness first emerged and how it has since evolved. It also shows the virus's presence in U.S. communities likely didn't start with the first case identified case in January... (LINK TO STORY)
Biden to introduce top economic advisers as pandemic threat worsens (Reuters)
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will formally introduce his top economic policy advisers on Tuesday as his administration prepares to take power amid a slowing economic recovery hampered by the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.
Biden will appear at an event in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, alongside his selections for senior roles, including his nominee for U.S. Treasury secretary, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen.
The team’s makeup reinforces Biden’s view that a more aggressive approach to the pandemic is required. The advisers have all expressed support for government stimulus to maximize employment, reduce economic inequality and help women and minorities, who have been disproportionately hurt by the economic downturn.
Other picks include Cecilia Rouse, an economist at Princeton University, as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; economists Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein as council members; and Neera Tanden, chief executive of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, as head of the Office of Management and Budget… (LINK TO STORY)