BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 8, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW BG PODCAST - EP. 115: 2020 Fall Closeout with Associate Intern Wendy Rodriguez
City Hall Moves
Assistant City Manager Chris Shorter will be the City of Baltimore’s first chief administrative officer. Baltimore Mayor-Elect Brandon Scott made the announcement Monday, and a similar announcement was made on Mr. Shorter’s personal Facebook page. (See, Mayor-Elect Brandon Scott Names City Administrator, Chief Of Staff - CBS Baltimore).
Mr. Shorter was appointed Assistant City Manager in February 2019 and oversees Parks and Recreation, Austin Public Health, Austin Resource Recovery, Animal Services, and Austin Public Library. Prior to his appointment he served in leadership roles for the District of Columbia (DC) Government over the past 10 years. He is currently the highest ranking Black staff member at City Hall.
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Travis County ICU beds near maximum occupancy as coronavirus hospitalizations climb (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin-Travis County hospitals are nearing capacity for those needing intensive care treatment, which local health officials say can be attributed to residents ignoring coronavirus recommendations, with some gathering with loved ones for Thanksgiving amid the pandemic.
The latest hospital capacity report released Friday says of the 483 ICU beds available in Austin-Travis County’s three health networks — Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White Health and St. David’s HealthCare — 87% are occupied.
And of the 2,473 total staffed beds within the hospitals of all three health care systems, 75% were occupied.
Austin-Travis County health officials on Monday night reported 246 coronavirus patients in area hospitals, with 75 in ICU beds and 44 on ventilators.
For comparison, ICU capacity was at 85% on Nov. 19, which was the week before Thanksgiving. However, total hospitalizations were a bit higher compared to Friday with 79% of beds being occupied… (LINK TO STORY)
'I will work to re-earn your trust': Austin mayor apologizes in open letter after vacation to Mexico (San Antonio Express News)
Austin Mayor Steve Adler went on vacation to Mexico in November after hosting a wedding for his daughter. During the trip, Adler posted a Facebook video advising Austin residents to "stay home if you can" amid a surge in COVID-19 cases. The mayor apologized for the family vacation in an open letter on Saturday.
"Let me start by saying I know that my actions let down the community this week," Adler wrote. "I should not have taken the trip with my family. It was a bad choice, and I apologize. "That trip set a bad example. Many in our community are hurting so badly and not able to travel, and others who are able have chosen not to travel under similar circumstances. That I took that trip and at the same time continued to urge people to be cautious is confusing. In my position, I need to send a clearer message."
The Democratic mayor's trip to Cabo San Lucas — via private jet — came after he hosted an outdoor wedding and reception with 20 guests at a trendy hotel near downtown Austin, according to the Austin American-Statesman. In the open letter, Adler wrote that he missed the larger context because he was "too focused" on ensuring the wedding and trip complied with city and state guidelines. He noted he needs to hold himself to a higher standard.
"I fear that my actions might result in some others taking riskier behavior during the higher “Orange,” Stage 4, we are now in," Adler wrote. "I was wrong in part because this is exactly the result I have been working so long to avoid." The mayor, one of several politicians caught flouting their own pandemic-era guidance, emphasized that residents need to be careful until vaccines are administered to the community. "So long as the virus is here, it is always safest to stay at home," Adler wrote. "We are not asking everyone to sequester themselves at home, however, and your behavior outside the home should be guided by the color-coded risk chart." "I made a mistake, and I apologize to the community. I will work to re-earn your trust."… (LINK TO STORY)
Elon Musk moved his foundation to Austin. Is he house-hunting in the Lone Star State, too? (Dallas Morning News)
Elon Musk has moved his private Musk Foundation to Austin — another sign the billionaire may be relocating to the Lone Star State. The California-based foundation created an entity in Austin over the summer. The California-based foundation created an entity in Austin over the summer. The two merged, according to a certificate of merger filed with the Texas Secretary of State in October that Musk signed. The surviving entity is located in the state capital’s downtown area.
Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. already has two facilities in Texas, and Tesla Inc. is building an assembly plant in Austin. CNBC reported last week that he’s told friends he is moving to Austin himself.
The Musk Foundation has a bare-bones website and keeps a low profile. Formed in 2001, it is dedicated to renewable energy and advocacy, human space exploration, pediatric research, science and engineering education, and research and development into “safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.” It has awarded grants to a variety of organizations, including the SETI Institute, which seeks evidence of life on other planets, and the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California.
The foundation’s assets totaled almost $329 million as of June 30, 2018, according to a tax return filed last year. The return showed a $2 million gift to the Future of Life Institute in the Boston area, which focuses on “keeping artificial intelligence beneficial.”
Musk, 49, is the chief executive officer of Tesla, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, near Los Angeles. Tesla’s stock has soared more than 650% this year, and Musk’s wealth has ballooned to more than $145 billion, making him the world’s second-richest person. Besides his own foundation, Musk has joined other rich luminaries in signing the Giving Pledge, a commitment to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas begins providing rapid COVID-19 tests to small businesses (San Antonio-Express News)
Businesses in a handful of Texas cities could begin regularly testing employees for the coronavirus under a new pilot program that the state announced Monday. The so-called rapid tests, provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will be distributed through chamber of commerce groups in Amarillo, Lubbock, El Paso, Laredo and Edinburg. Gov. Greg Abbott said officials plan to ramp up the program across the state. “This rapid testing pilot program will protect the safety of small business owners, their employees, and Texas consumers as we continue to combat COVID-19,” Abbott said in a statement.
The governor did not say how many tests are available or how businesses will be selected if there are shortages. The program is intended for small businesses and is completely voluntary — both for employers and employees. Rapid tests, or antigen tests, are becoming more popular amid the pandemic. Though less accurate than traditional molecular tests, which are sent away and analyzed in labs, they are quick and relatively cheap to produce. That helps to screen for the infection among large groups of people… (LINK TO STORY)
What went wrong with Texas Democrats' 2020 plans? State party leaders intend to find out. (Texas Tribune)
The head of the Texas Democratic Party has appointed a committee to take a "deep dive" on what went wrong in the November election after a group of executive committee members wrote to him demanding answers, reforms and a shakeup in senior staff.
The chair of the party, Gilberto Hinojosa, said he always intended to convene a formal effort to review the election results, but the news of the panel comes after 38 executive committee members sent him a letter urging sweeping changes at the party after what they described as an "electoral failure" in November.
"Even though we very much disagree with the allegations that are made in the letter, we think it is important to find out exactly what happened in this election because we were just as shocked as everyone else," Hinojosa said in an interview Monday.
Texas Democrats severely underperformed expectations in the November election after looking to it as their best shot in decades at making inroads. President Donald Trump carried the state by 6 percentage points, U.S. Sen John Cornyn won reelection by 10 points, Democrats picked up zero U.S. House seats despite targeting 10, and their push to flip the state House fizzled as they gained one seat and lost another.
Democrats have since said they were misled by bad polling and lamented their decision to hold off on in-person campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic. Hinojosa cited both those factors in a letter responding to the executive committee members, while saying he agrees that a "complete analysis needs to be done on this to determine what really happened."… (LINK TO STORY)
Lyle Larson: COVID plight shows why Legislature needs to meet every year (Austin American-Statesman)
The worldwide pandemic wrought by COVID-19 has brought clarity about so many things for folks across the world. Here in Texas, it has become abundantly clear that the Legislature must be able to act more quickly than once every two years. When the World Health Organization deemed the spread of COVID-19 a global pandemic in March, the Legislature was more than half way through the biennial interim, nine long months away from convening for the next session. We missed opportunities to address all aspects of the pandemic's impact on the lives of Texans — everything from mask mandates, to food insecurity, to hospital capacity, to shutdowns, to public education challenges.
Due to the archaic schedule set forth in the Texas Constitution, the Legislature was powerless to act, and the sole responsibility of addressing the pandemic fell upon our governor. The Legislature is intended to act in times like these, but just as it has many times in the past, it will show up too late, working to address problems that have waited far too long for solutions. No successful organization with a $250 billion biennial budget and a gross domestic product of $1.6 trillion can be actively managed for just five months every two years. No successful business, country or even 46 other U.S. states operate this way. But Texas still does. When our state government was just getting started, this setup made sense. It took more than eight days to travel by stagecoach from Amarillo to Austin. Understandably, legislators from far-flung parts of the state had little desire to make the arduous trip annually. In 2020, however, the same trek from Amarillo takes eight hours by car and even less time by plane. Now, there are no discernible reasons to continue to meet just once every two years, letting important state business languish while we wait for the pages of the calendar to fall… (LINK TO STORY)
Houston Rep. Al Green will lead Texas Democrats in push for infrastructure deal (Houston Chronicle)
Houston Rep. Al Green will lead Texas Democrats in the U.S. House for the next two years as delegation chair, and Green says his top priority is getting an infrastructure deal done, which eluded lawmakers for four years under President Donald Trump. “The delegation is exceedingly interested in infrastructure. All parts of the state have needs and we don’t want any of those needs unmet,” Green said. “It’s something that is long overdue.” Infrastructure was an area where Democrats and the Trump White House long believed they could reach a deal, but it never materialized and optimism around funding for highways, ports, broadband and more became a running joke in Washington.
Green says he’s hopeful President-elect Joe Biden will make it a priority and said with low interest rates and an economy still recovering from the coronavirus collapse, now is the time to push for a deal.
“It has to be a priority for it to get done,” Green said. Green said he also wants to prioritize housing relief — and funding for housing in any infrastructure package — as thousands face eviction during the pandemic. He said he also wants to make sure the delegation gets names for potential judicial nominations before the White House for consideration. While Democrats are the minority in the Texas delegation, Green said he hopes they can wield their influence in the Democratic-controlled House — especially as Democrats’ majority has thinned after the 2020 elections.
“We won’t have the overwhelming majority that we have had in the past,” he said. “Every vote is going to count. That means that every person with a vote will have some influence.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
McConnell refuses to endorse bipartisan stimulus, risking deal (Bloomberg)
Almost a week after Democratic congressional leaders climbed down from their demand for a multi-trillion dollar stimulus package, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continued to tout his own plan, endangering prospects for a compromise.
McConnell’s top priority -- federal limits on Covid-19 related lawsuits against businesses -- has emerged as the key potential deal-breaker. Republicans have balked at the six-month moratorium proposed in a bipartisan stimulus package, saying it’s too limited, and talks have stalled.
McConnell’s continued use of rhetoric that pre-dates the shift by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the overall dollar amount of aid underscored the risk of no further Covid-19 help by year-end.
“Drop the all-or nothing tactics,” McConnell said of Democrats on the Senate floor on Monday. He again called on Schumer to allow a vote on a targeted bill that provides extended unemployment insurance, small-business aid and funding for vaccine distribution… (LINK TO STORY)
Biden picks retired general Lloyd Austin to run Pentagon (Politico)
President-elect Joe Biden has selected Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to serve as secretary of defense, according to three people with knowledge of the decision. If confirmed, Austin would be the first Black person to lead the Pentagon.
In picking Austin, Biden has chosen a barrier-breaking former four-star officer who was the first Black general to command an Army division in combat and the first to oversee an entire theater of operations. Austin’s announcement could come as soon as Tuesday morning, people familiar with the plans said Monday.
Austin, who also ran U.S. Central Command before retiring in 2016, emerged as a top-tier candidate in recent days after initially being viewed as a longshot for the job. Michèle Flournoy, Obama’s former Pentagon policy chief, was initially viewed as the frontrunner, but her name was notably absent from Biden’s rollout of key members of his national security team two weeks ago.
Biden had been under growing pressure to nominate a Black person to be his defense secretary in recent weeks. He chose Austin after also considering former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson for the job, several people familiar with the discussions said.
Lingering concerns about Johnson's tenure in the Obama administration improved Austin's standing among Congressional Black Caucus members in recent days, according to two people, including a House Democratic aide. Johnson has been criticized for his record on expanding family detention and accelerating deportations, as well as approving hundreds of drone strikes against suspected terrorists that killed civilians… (LINK TO STORY)
DeLauro intends to be 'strong chair' as Appropriations leader (The Hill)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the next chairwoman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, is an unapologetic liberal who will take the gavel at a critical moment for the committee and the country.
DeLauro, 77, the second woman in history and in a row to lead the panel, will be a key player in deciding how to appropriate funding to deal with a pandemic that has already killed more than 280,000 Americans and is rapidly worsening.
Actions already taken to counter the pandemic and a recession triggered by the closing of businesses has added trillions to the national debt. Communities of color have been disproportionately hit by the economic calamity and will need support.
“What may be different this time is the environment in which we’re all working,” DeLauro told The Hill in an interview.
She noted that the effects of the pandemic have underscored already existing problems.
“There’s a general crisis both in health and the economy, and the inequities and inequalities that have been exposed by the virus,” she said.
DeLauro, who won the leadership vote 148-79, is a political veteran from an early age… (LINK TO STORY)