BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 28, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW // BG PODCAST - Episode 119: A Discussion with Derrick Chubbs, President and CEO, Central Texas Food Bank
On today’s episode Bingham Group CEO A.J. speaks with Derrick Chubbs, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Central Texas Food Bank.
The two discuss COVID-19’s impact the Food Bank’s operations, pivots to serve an ever increasing need, and needs going into 2021.
NEW // 2021 City Council Meeting Calendar
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin is in Stage 5: What that means for restaurants and businesses (KVUE)
Austin-Travis County has officially moved to Stage 5 of the risk-based coronavirus guidelines set by the health leaders. So, what does that mean for restaurants and other businesses?
In Stage 5 of the city's risk-based guidelines, everyone is advised to avoid all gatherings with anyone outside of your household, to avoid in-person dining and shopping and to avoid non-essential travel and trips outside your home. Under Stage 5, businesses, including restaurants, are also recommended to only operate through contactless options such as curbside and delivery.
At a press conference Dec. 23, Travis County Judge Andy Brown said leaders are asking businesses and restaurants to limit occupancy. The judge is asking restaurants to close indoor dining spaces and limit outdoor dining to 50% capacity. The judge is also asking retail businesses to limit indoor capacity to 50%.
For some owners, they feel like this is not the right move. Eric Silverstein with The Peached Tortilla and Bar Peached said he will look into the recommendations but doesn't expect to make any big changes.
"You know these restrictions, we certainly monitor and take them into account but we feel like we've created a safe dining environment," said Silverstein. "We feel good about what we're providing to not only our customers but our staff as well."
The Travis County judge is also suggesting businesses close between 10:30 p.m. and 5 a.m. There has not been a curfew imposed yet, but health leaders said they may consider imposing one before New Year's.
"If we cannot successfully slow the surge, we're going to need to consider all options to keep our community safe," Brown said.
When it comes to bars, Dr. Mark Escott said health leaders are concerned about businesses that may have a food service license but are "still functionally a bar."… (LINK TO STORY)
‘Startup City’: Accelerated Growth Strains Austin (Wall Street Journal)
The pandemic also has spurred moves to Austin. Some New Yorkers and San Franciscans, now working remotely, have come for lower rents, great bars and year-round warmth. Between April and October, the Austin metro area saw the highest ratio in the country of arrivals to people leaving, according to LinkedIn.
The arrivals have provided the economy with a boost as local businesses struggle with fallout from the pandemic. But they also are bringing the city more of the same high costs and gridlock they are escaping.
Those issues aren’t new. It has been 20 years since the onetime town of college professors, state employees, musicians and plentiful beer adopted the slogan “Keep Austin Weird.” Riffs on that have sprung up in other cities seeing fast growth and an influx of California cash, such as Portland, Ore., and Boise, Idaho, as they too try to hold on to local flavor and affordability.
But what is playing out in Austin now is on a sped-up timeline. The prospect of the once laid-back city turning into another San Francisco, crowded and ultraexpensive, feeds intense political wrangling over zoning, density, transportation and city social programs.
Many tech leaders and workers say clustering is good for innovation, and they wanted to move to Austin because others were. Some new arrivals say they wanted to be in a city with a socially progressive reputation, but also like limited regulations and the lack of a state income tax.
City and state leaders, often at loggerheads, have celebrated the relocation of people to Austin while disputing whose policies provide the draw.
Mr. Abbott noted that high-profile businesses have made or planned moves to other Texas cities as well, such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s recent announcement that it is moving its headquarters to Houston. The Republican governor credited the state’s business-friendly policies. “Regulations are a hindrance to innovation,” he said. “The leaders of these organizations are not coming to Austin for socially liberal reasons.”
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said the city’s values are a natural fit for startups. “It’s progressive socially and a really entrepreneurial, innovative, creative, welcoming place. A place that’s risk-tolerant, where it’s OK to be different,” said the mayor, a Democrat. Mr. Adler has said he moved to the city in the late 1970s to attend the University of Texas because it was his least expensive law school option.
In recent years, more people have moved to Austin from elsewhere in Texas than from out of state, according to census data. The city is relatively young, with many families and children. Still, the influx from Silicon Valley, in particular, has caught the attention of locals…” (LINK TO STORY)
Austin is winning recruits among the tech elite, but that’s not Seattle’s biggest danger (Seattle Times)
Civil War Gen. Philip Sheridan famously said, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
The situation has obviously changed.
Not only is Dallas a major corporate center and Houston, the nation’s fourth most populous city, the capital of the oil industry, but Austin is a rising tech star.
Austin’s ascendency was emphasized recently when software powerhouse Oracle said it would move its headquarters there from Silicon Valley.
In truth, the reality is more nuanced and the threat to Silicon Valley minimal. The same can be said for Seattle.
After losing Boeing’s headquarters to Chicago in 2001, Seattle went on a nearly unprecedented boom, especially in the 2010s. But unpacking what’s driving Austin’s popularity and the implications for Seattle’s status as a major tech capital is still rewarding.
Oracle’s roots in Silicon Valley go back to the early years of the transformation of the agricultural “Valley of Heart’s Delight” to its present name. The company was founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories.
In Texas this month, the boosters immediately went to work. The local newspaper trumpeted an economist calling Oracle “a huge development for Austin’s future. It follows the recruitment of Apple and Tesla and other companies that are really going to guarantee Austin a decade of significant growth, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott predictably said, “While some states are driving away businesses with high taxes and heavy-handed regulations, we continue to see a tidal wave of companies like Oracle moving to Texas thanks to our friendly business climate, low taxes, and the best workforce in the nation.”
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. recently announced a move of its headquarters to Houston as well. And Elon Musk, a longtime critic of California, moved to Texas. So have 687,000 other Californians over the past decade.
Austin has evolved over the decades from a sleepy capital city (albeit with a capitol dome, Texans will remind you, that rises higher than the one in Washington, D.C.).
It boasts a leading music scene with the South by Southwest festival, decent Tex-Mex cuisine and the flagship campus of the University of Texas. Austin is more progressive, edgier and tolerant than most of the Lone Star State.
Put it all together and Austin was well positioned to develop as a tech hub. Oracle already has a campus there. You’ll find similar outposts of Big Tech, including Apple, which announced in 2019 plans to build a $1 billion campus there. That site is prepared to handle 5,000 employees initially with capacity to grow for 15,000. Apple already has about 7,000 employees in Austin. Amazon, too, has an Austin software development office… (LINK TO STORY)
Landmark commission approves former Barton Springs florist shop for demolition (Austin Monitor)
The building at 605 Barton Springs Road has been home to McPhail’s Florist, Austin’s most prominent florist, for decades. But the 92-year-old building may soon be demolished.
The flower shop, which ceased operations in 2018, has become – at least unofficially – a historic part of Barton Springs Road. Longtime residents will recognize the iconic teal building next to Sandy’s Hamburgers by its large windows, greenhouse and irregular design.
Virgil and Rosa McPhail moved to Austin from Beaumont and opened up their florist shop on Barton Springs Road in the late 1920s. The business was noteworthy for being one of the first and only 24-hour florist shops in the city.
By 1935, the shop’s motto was, “The Original McPhail Flowers for any Occasion, Corsages our Specialty, 1st Greenhouse on Barton Springs Road, corner S. 1st. We never close.”
In 1938, the couple divorced, and Rosa McPhail took over operations at Barton Springs Road, making her one of the city’s pioneering female entrepreneurs. Virgil McPhail went on to serve as the chief floral inspector for the state Department of Agriculture.
Over the past few years, and especially as the building has been vacant, it’s fallen into disrepair – which is why last month at its Nov. 16 meeting, the Historic Landmark Commission discussed a proposal to have the building demolished. In addition to visible decay, the building also has numerous code violations.
Historic Preservation Officer Steve Sadowsky called the building “the last vestige of the old character at Barton Springs Road.”
In November, city staff proposed two options for the building: initiate the historic zoning process or delay a decision to “see if there’s a way to rehabilitate the building,” according to Sadowsky.
In staffers’ analysis, the building, “represents a chapter of Austin history when flower farms and truck farms lined the south bank of the Colorado River along Barton Springs Road.” They added that, “nothing else remains from that time in Austin’s history to commemorate the former agricultural character of the Barton Springs Road area.”
Without much discussion, the commission voted unanimously to revisit the proposal. The city and commission agreed that the property was secure and unlikely to be vandalized, so there was no rush to make a decision.
A month later, little had changed – only this time, city staffers and the commission were more certain about the impracticality of restoring the building.
At the Dec. 14 meeting, Sadowsky said, “I think anybody who has spent their lives in Austin knows this flower shop and most people have sentimental attachments to it … but unfortunately it has fallen into such disrepair that there are many, many major code violations on this property.”
In short order, the commission moved to release a permit for demolition… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Census estimates: Texas leads US in population growth, California sees first-ever drop (Austin Business Journal)
Texas' population continues to explode as people move to the state in droves.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 population estimates, Texas added the most residents of any state this year, while California's population took a major hit. Many people are likely swapping the West Coast for Central Texas — a years-long trend that's only accelerated during the pandemic.
Texas gained an estimated 373,965 people between July 1, 2019, and July 1, 2020, according to the data released Dec. 22. That includes both migration and births. At the beginning of July, the state's population stood at an estimated 29,360,759 — roughly 1.3% year-over-year growth and a rate consistent with the past few years.
On the other hand, California lost an estimated 69,532 residents — the first major, negative population change for the West Coast state since at least 1900, based on available data, according to a report by Wendell Cox, principal of St. Louis-based international public policy firm Demographia.
Silicon Valley-based companies are seeing plenty of opportunity in Texas, with incentives such as zero state income tax and fewer business regulations. Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) was the latest company, and largest, to shift its headquarters to Central Texas from the Golden State. Site selection experts have speculated that the relocation of Oracle, a giant in database software with a market capitalization of more than $190 billion, could prompt many other companies to follow.
Cox said in an interview that California’s high cost of living is the main reason the state is seeing such a drastic decline in population. The state’s population growth had been slowing the past few years, with population estimates showing a year-over-year gain of only 147 people in 2019 compared with 317,590 people in 2015, according to the data.
“The problems of housing affordability in California have ruined the economy and made it virtually impossible for middle-income people to stay and have a decent life,” Cox said. “I expect outward migration to continue so long as California housing affordability is worse than the rest of the country.”
The second fastest-growing state was Florida with an estimated 241,256 new residents this year. Site selectors have said Texas and South Florida are currently the leading states in attracting businesses from California and New York… (LINK TO STORY)
Weeks before the legislative session, state leaders’ policy priorities and COVID-19 safety plans remain works in progress (Texas Tribune)
With less than three weeks until the Texas Legislature meets, uncertainty is lingering as state leaders have yet to flesh out their agendas and lawmakers scramble to figure out how to safely convene during the coronavirus pandemic.
It has been anything but the typical pre-session run-up, and members are heading into the Christmas holiday faced with several unknowns — which, to be sure, could be settled in short order. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has suggested there could be an announcement about pandemic protocols next week, and Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to give more details about his legislative agenda once the new year begins.
But for now, the pre-session landscape remains somewhat unsettled, aside from the obvious must-pass items like the budget and redistricting legislation that Capitol observers expect to form the backbone of a challenging session, which begins Jan. 12.
“I think the political community has taken it to heart that the agenda for this session will be more modest, and I think ... with a presumed budget deficit and redistricting and some sort of COVID protocols stifling at least a portion of the typical Legislature means that some — a significant amount — of the political oxygen has already been eaten up,” said Ted Delisi, a Republican political consultant… (LINK TO STORY)
Balancing Texas' budget is always complicated. The pandemic and recession will make it even harder in 2021. (Texas Tribune)
One of the largest tasks Texas lawmakers will tackle during the 2021 legislative session that begins in January is writing the state budget, which outlines state spending for the next two years.
While the tome-like General Appropriations Act can seem overwhelming and often abstract, the spending and cuts detailed within it can have immediate and highly consequential effects on Texans’ lives. For example, previous cuts have kept children with disabilities from accessing important therapy through the state’s Early Childhood Intervention program. Increasing the base wage for community attendants who care for the elderly and people with disabilities can have a dramatic impact on the daily lives of many Texans… (LINK TO STORY)
Bexar County leader 'encourages' Spurs to 'hold off' on fans (San Antonio Express-News)
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said Saturday he has “encouraged” Spurs Sports and Entertainment officials to “hold off for a while” on letting fans return to the county-owned AT&T Center for Spurs games. SS&E announced Dec. 4 that it was targeting the Jan. 1 game against the Los Angeles Lakers as the day the Spurs would “begin welcoming fans back to the AT&T Center in a limited capacity” pending the “status of public health data and guidelines” for the coronavirus pandemic. But Wolff said he and city officials are bracing for bad news next week regarding the number of new local COVID-19 cases.
“I don’t have the up-to-date data yet because we did not do testing yesterday or the day before, but I will have the up-to-date data on Monday, and I told (SS&E) I didn’t think it would be good,” Wolff said. “It’s still a dangerous time. I might be wrong, but based on what we have seen happening, I don’t think it is going to be good.” SS&E did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wolff said he delivered a similar message to the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, which is moving next year from the AT&T Center to the smaller Freeman Coliseum next door because overall attendance will be limited to about 120,000, which would be less than 10 percent of last year’s turnout of 1.5 million. “But the rodeo is not until Feb. 11, so they have time to where hopefully it will get better,” Wolff said… (LINK TO STORY)
Houston native Beyoncé donates $500K to people facing eviction (Houston Chronicle)
Houston-native and singer Beyoncé Knowles is extending relief to families who are at risk of losing their homes after the federal moratorium on foreclosures and evictions expired Saturday. “This holiday season, while many are stressed with what they will do next regarding their housing, we are proud to share some GOOD news. Beyoncé is giving $5,000 grants to individuals and families facing foreclosures or evictions,” according to a news release posted last week on the singer’s website.
Applications will open Jan. 7, and all necessary documentation must be provided to the NAACP. One hundred recipients will be selected and grants disbursed in late January. Round 2 will open in February. This grant program is part of a larger campaign called BeyGOOD, which worked with the NAACP to support Black-owned small businesses impacted by the pandemic, so far providing 250 businesses with $10,000 grants. She also set up mobile Covid-19 testing sites with her mother, Tina Knowles-Lawson, in Houston. She put this effort together in May, when Texas was lagging behind most states for coronavirus testing… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Trump backs down, signs stimulus package (Politico)
President Donald Trump signed into law a major coronavirus stimulus package along with an annual spending bill, avoiding a government shutdown before a Monday night deadline.
Trump has railed against the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill and a $1.4 trillion government funding bill since Congress approved it, demanding $2,000 checks and cutting out foreign aid. But on Sunday evening after days of being lobbied by allies, Trump decided to sign the bill and not leave office amid a maelstrom of expired benefits and a government shutdown.
He said he will insist on reductions in spending in parts of the bill, though Congress does not have to go along.
"I will sign the omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill," Trump said on Sunday night… (LINK TO STORY)
5G Auction Shatters Record as Bidding Tops $69 Billion (The Wall Street Journal)
The Federal Communications Commission’s ongoing sale of wireless licenses has fetched more than $69.8 billion after three weeks of bidding, a record sum that could alter cellphone carriers’ prospects for the next decade.
The auction proceeds have already topped the $44.9 billion raised in 2015 by an earlier sale of midrange cellular licenses, which U.S. cellphone carriers used at the time to enhance their 4G service. Those companies are now investing billions of dollars in the next wave of fifth-generation coverage. The 5G standard promises to speed the flow of data to phones and other wireless devices like personal computers, cars and industrial machinery.
The recent bids have blown past Wall Street’s highest forecasts, suggesting that several companies are fighting over the most valuable wireless rights. The 5G auction kicked off Dec. 8 and will pause for the holidays until Jan. 4, when total bids could move even higher.
Each bid is swathed in secrecy until the auction process ends. Analysts expect big names like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to walk away with a large share of the licenses to match assets that rival T-Mobile US Inc. captured with its February takeover of Sprint.
“Mid-band spectrum will be where 5G lives,” said Walt Piecyk, a telecom analyst for research firm LightShed Partners. He added that T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint “clearly put pressure on Verizon and AT&T” to match their rival’s war chest…” (LINK TO STORY)
Growing number of House Republicans warm to proxy voting (The Hill)
A number of House Republicans who previously opposed Democrats’ proxy voting system to let lawmakers vote remotely during the pandemic have begun embracing it in recent weeks. Most of the Republicans who’ve warmed to proxy voting are leaving Congress and have little to lose politically by utilizing proxy voting at the end of their terms. But it’s nevertheless a sharp turnaround, as lawmakers who voted against establishing the rules changes to adjust to the pandemic or signed onto a lawsuit challenging the proxy voting system as unconstitutional are now authorizing Democrats to cast votes on their behalf.
House GOP leaders and the party’s campaign arm, meanwhile, are still attacking Democrats for using proxy voting even as more of their own members have begun partaking in the system. Four of the Republican lawmakers who have utilized proxy voting in recent days, Reps. Greg Gianforte (Mont.), John Shimkus (Ill.), Francis Rooney (Fla.) and Paul Mitchell (Mich.), are all leaving Congress at the end of the session. Mitchell also announced earlier this month that he was leaving the GOP over disagreements with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. But Mitchell, as well as Gianforte, signed on as a plaintiff earlier this year to the GOP’s lawsuit challenging proxy voting. That lawsuit was later dismissed by a federal judge in August, which the GOP has appealed. The House general counsel representing Democrats in the lawsuit seized on Mitchell and Gianforte’s reversal. “Two plaintiffs’ use of remote voting also reaffirms the compelling interests that led the House to adopt the rules—permitting the House to conduct its business safely during a crisis while maximizing representation in Congress,” Douglas Letter, the House general counsel, wrote in a letter filed with the court on Dec. 23… (LINK TO STORY)