BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 13, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
Today, 2PM: The Austin City Council will receive a presentation of the City Manager's proposed budget. No actions are proposed. (AGENDA LINK)
Thursday, 10AM: Council will hold a Special Called meeting for a briefing on the proposed Tesla site. (AGENDA LINK)
*NEW* BG Podcast Episode 100: Processing Austin with Virginia Cumberbatch, Co-Founder of Rosa Rebellion (SHOW LINK)
Note: Show also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and Stitcher
[AUSTIN METRO]
Early voting ends with record high turnouts, high number of mail-in ballots (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin-area voters didn’t let a little thing like a pandemic dampen their participation in democracy the past two weeks. Election officials say turnout for early voting in party primary runoffs, which ended Friday, was the highest in years and mail-in voting set records.
“For a little runoff election, this looks more like a presidential election than anything else,” said Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County clerk.
For early voting, Travis County saw 11.8% of total registered voters cast ballots. For comparison, the 2016 primary runoff had only 1.25% of voters show up during early voting.
DeBeauvoir attributed the high turnout, in part, to the special election being held to replace retiring state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin. The special election had been scheduled for May 2 but was postponed to July 14 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Tuesday’s election also features primary runoffs for U.S. Senate, Congress and county- and state-level offices.
Also, DeBeauvoir said she thinks voters just want to vote… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Travis County updates Tesla incentive package, pushing for $1 billion-plus investment from the company (Community Impact)
Travis County released the details of its proposed economic incentives deal with electric carmaker Tesla on July 10, refining a previously announced proposal with a new tax rebate structure for the company. Travis County Commissioners Court is poised for a potential vote on the agreement at its next meeting July 13 after weeks of closed session discussions and input from Tesla, county staff and the public.
According to new documents provided by county staff, Tesla’s performance-based deal with the county would offer the carmaker a 70% rebate for maintenance and operations property taxes on the first $1.1 billion it invests in Travis County with the construction of a new gigafactory in the Del Valle area. The company would receive a 75% rebate for taxes associated with the second “incremental billion,” and 80% once $2 billion of investment is exceeded.Originally, Tesla requested an 80% rebate for the first 10 years in Travis County, and 65% for the subsequent 10 years. County staff said in the documents they believe the new proposed structure will encourage greater investment from the company… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Commissioners Court considers allocating relief dollars to Baylor Scott & White (Austin Monitor)
Baylor Scott & White Health is the largest not-for-profit hospital system in the state of Texas, and like many other businesses, it has been footing the bill for unanticipated Covid-19 related expenses since March. Jay Fox, the president of Baylor Scott & White Health of the Austin/Round Rock region, estimates that by December the regional system will spend $4.3 million on pandemic-related expenses for clinics in Travis County that are outside the Austin city limits.
To help ease the financial burden, the health care system is requesting that Travis County allocate $810,000 from its federal Covid-19 relief fund for expenses incurred by the hospital between March and May. The Commissioners Court took no action on the request at its July 7 meeting except to announce that further discussion on the proposal will reappear on the agenda in two weeks… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner in favor of a ‘step back,’ two-week shut down to reduce COVID-19 spread (Houston Chronicle)
Local officials are calling for a two-week shut down as COVID-19 cases surge in Texas and hospital beds in the Texas Medical Center fill up with patients. Mayor Sylvester Turner said it’s time for the city of Houston to “step back.” “Let’s look at the numbers, look at the data, see where things are,” Turner said in remarks to the media Saturday. “And then gradually, move forward again.” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo agreed with Turner in a statement posted on Twitter Sunday.
“Not only do we need a stay-home order now, but we need to stick with it this time until the hospitalization curve comes down, not just flattens. Many communities that persevered in that way are reopening for the long haul. Let’s learn from that & not make the same mistake twice,” she said. However, the decision to shut down Houston and Harris County is currently out of their hands. While Hidalgo issued a stay-at-home order in March, Gov. Greg Abbott has since taken over decisions on whether to open or close businesses and has refused to allow local officials to make decisions on the matter. Hidalgo’s office has unsuccessfully petitioned the governor for power to issue more restrictions as COVID-19 hospitalizations spiked. But on Friday afternoon, Abbott too said that he could considering shutting down nonessential businesses if the pandemic continues to worsen. “If we do not slow the spread of COVID-19… the next step would have to be a lockdown,” he told KLBK TV in Lubbock… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Trump's ban on new visas will hurt Texas universities, experts say (Texas Tribune)
The Trump administration’s suspension of issuing new H-1B visas for specialized roles — such as professors, researchers and computer programmers — is likely to hurt Texas universities, professors, experts and students say.
And, some say, the suspension likely won’t preserve jobs for U.S. workers as unemployment hovers at devastating levels during the coronavirus pandemic.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 22 that suspends the issuance of several visas designated for foreign workers until the end of the year. These visas include H-1B visas for high-skilled laborers and J-1 cultural and educational exchange visas, among others.
“It hit the United States like a slap in the face — and no one saw this coming,” said Menelike Deresse, immigration specialist at Indeed.com. “It's just not helpful in this climate, especially what the world's going through with COVID-19 right now.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
In Texas beach city, out-of-towners drove in an outbreak (New York Times)
As recently as early June, days went by with hardly anyone testing positive for the coronavirus. A single case one day. Three the next. Then zero. Zero. Zero. Word spread that Corpus Christi, always a popular beachfront vacation spot for Texans from around the state, was a safe place to go. They didn’t even require masks indoors. It was an oasis from the virus. “People in San Antonio, in Houston, Austin, even Dallas, knew that we had low caseload,” said Peter Zanoni, the city manager. “It was a nice getaway from the rules, the regulations, the doom and gloom.” It turned out that no place was safe.
Now the city of 325,000 has one of the fastest-growing outbreaks in Texas, a state where new records for positive cases were set for four straight days last week, with nearly 11,000 recorded on Thursday. Corpus Christi has seen more cases per capita than Houston and a rapidly mounting death toll: of the 38 deaths recorded from the pandemic, 30 have come in July, including a baby less than 6 months old. Local officials have been left scrambling to get ahead of an outbreak that went into overdrive without warning. As recently as June 15, the city had tallied 360 cases during the entirety of the outbreak; on Wednesday alone, there were 445. The city’s two dozen contact tracers are so overwhelmed that they are no longer able to seek detailed information about each new infection. Hospital beds have filled at an alarming rate, prompting pleas for additional staffing. The surge in cases forced local leaders, businesses and residents to grapple with the uncomfortable reality that the same out-of-towners who help the city thrive economically may have caused the outbreak. The feeling is less one of resentment than of frustration at a seemingly impossible dilemma… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Nation's pediatricians walk back support for in-person school (NPR)
The American Academy of Pediatrics once again plunged into the growing debate over school reopening with a strong new statement Friday, making clear that while in-person school provides crucial benefits to children, "Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics." The statement also said that "science and community circumstances must guide decision-making."
The AAP is changing tone from the guidance it issued just over two weeks ago. Then, the organization made a national splash by recommending that education leaders and policymakers "should start with a goal of having students physically present in school." The Trump administration this week repeatedly cited the AAP in pressuring school leaders to reopen. Dr. Sally Goza, the association's president, appeared at a White House roundtable with President Trump. She later told Morning Edition's David Greene that local coronavirus infection rates and hot spots have to be taken into consideration to safely reopen schools… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Trump rips private Texas border wall built by his supporters (AP News)
President Donald Trump on Sunday criticized a privately built border wall in South Texas that’s showing signs of erosion months after going up, saying it was “only done to make me look bad,” even though the wall was built after a months-long campaign by his supporters.
The group that raised money online for the wall promoted itself as supporting Trump during a government shutdown that started in December 2018 because Congress wouldn’t fund Trump’s demands for a border wall. Called “We Build the Wall,” the group has raised more than $25 million promoting itself as supporting the president.
Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon joined the group’s board and Trump ally Kris Kobach became its general counsel. Kobach is now seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Kansas.
The company that built the private section in January, North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, has since won a $1.3 billion border wall contract from the federal government, the largest award to date… (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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