BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 14, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
Today is Election Day for the 2020 Joint Primary Runoffs and Special Election. Polls are open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. in Travis County. As long as you're in line by 7 p.m., you will be able to vote.
City Manager Spencer Cronk’s FY21 Proposed Budget Documents
Thursday, 10AM: Council will hold a Special Called meeting for a briefing on the proposed Tesla site. (AGENDA LINK)
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]
Austin Proposes Budget That Includes Cutting Roughly 2% From The Police Department (KUT)
The City of Austin is proposing to reduce the Austin Police Department’s planned budget by $8.1 million, despite calls for much bigger cuts to the department.
The proposal cuts roughly 2% of the department's forecasted budget for the coming year and is roughly $150,000 less than last year’s police budget. It's the first time in at least five years that the city has proposed not increasing the amount of money spent on policing… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Reopening efforts slowed economic skid in Austin, Dallas Fed says (Austin American-Statesman)
The effort over the past two months to reopen the state’s economy amid the coronavirus pandemic might be proving questionable from the perspective of public health, but it has shown promise as an antidote for local businesses. New figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicate the pandemic-induced plummet in the Austin-area economy slowed in May, corresponding to a decision by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to start lifting orders that had shutdown many categories of businesses across the state to curtail the virus’s spread.
The Dallas Fed’s main barometer of Austin’s economy, called the Austin business-cycle index, dropped 20.3% on an annualized basis in May, a big drop but not as precipitous as a revised 75.3% annualized plunge in April — the steepest on record since 1978, which is as far back as the data on the area’s economic output goes. Other evidence also has emerged that the effort to jumpstart the state’s economy paid some early dividends. In Travis County, consumer spending picked up from the middle of April to the middle of June, according to the Dallas Fed’s latest report on the Austin area, although it still was down about 3% from January. “People going back to work certainly helped,” said Judy Teng, a research analyst at the Dallas Fed. Major metro areas across the state experienced similar trends. The agency’s barometers of economic activity in San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth and El Paso all fell at record paces in April but showed varying degrees of improvement in May… (LINK TO STORY)
Economic Development Department to update progress on CARES Act relief funding programs (Austin Monitor)
As of June 29, five of the eight grant programs approved by City Council to provide economic relief to Austin’s economic sectors through the CARES Act had not yet passed the development stages in their funding allocation plans.
The Economic Development Department is tasked with updating Council every 14 days on how the eight assistance programs are developing. The deadline for the EDD update passed on Monday. The memorandum for the next update is being finalized and will be released within the coming days, according to a spokesperson for the city, although no specific date is set.
On May 7, Austin passed a resolution to develop a program that would allocate money the city received from the federal CARES Act to financially support nonprofits and small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Three funds were established: the Childcare Support Fund, the Commercial Loans for Economic Assistance and Recovery (CLEAR) Fund and the Austin Nonprofit and Civic Health Organizations Relief (ANCHOR) Fund.
The memorandum sent to Council on June 29 outlined progress made on the eight current assistance grant programs. The upcoming update will have more information about additional recovery programs… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
In Forth Worth, activists are hoping voters will reduce the local police budget by as much as $80 million (Texas Tribune)
For the first time since nationwide calls to defund law enforcement gained traction in Texas, voters in one of the state's largest cities will decide Tuesday whether to keep or do away with a half-cent sales tax that funds at least 24% of its police department's budget.
A measure on Fort Worth voters' ballots asks if they want to extend for another decade the sales tax that provides more than $85 million to the department's budget, which gets another $267 million from the city's general fund. In 2014, an extension of the tax was approved by 84.6% of voters.
But this year's vote comes after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis police custody sparked massive protests against police brutality across the country. And it follows at least three high-profile incidents where Fort Worth officers were accused of — or charged with crimes for — using excessive force against Black residents, two of whom were killed by police... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. is likely to hold his office, but he’s campaigning as if he’s on the ropes (Texas Monthly)
Generating attention for the months-delayed primary runoffs has not been easy in state Senate District 27, where the COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging border communities from Kingsville to Brownsville. That changed, however, at the height of early voting, when a direct-mail piece opposing 29-year incumbent Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., who faces a challenge from attorney Sara Stapleton-Barrera, hit mailboxes. The mailer, sent in late June and financed by civil-liberties nonprofit the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) and Planned Parenthood Texas Votes (PPTV), leveled all the criticisms Lucio has faced for years.
In his three-decade legislative career, the literature noted, the state senator has joined Republicans to support measures including school vouchers, bathroom restrictions for transgender Texans, and abortion rollbacks. It was the mailer’s banner, however, that incited a wave of impassioned responses from Lucio’s allies, and then a counterreaction from his foes: in bold red letters, the incumbent was identified as “Sucio Lucio,” a nickname derived from the Spanish term for dirty. Within days of the handbill’s arrival in mailboxes, state Representative Eddie Lucio III, the senator’s son, attacked the political action committees behind it for “disparaging our family name with derogatory and racial slurs” over their “traditional Catholic values.” Lucio III, who disagrees with his father on the issues the mailer highlighted, accused outside agitators of initiating a smear campaign against Lucio Jr., noting the “deeper connotations” of portraying Texans of Mexican descent as grimy. Immediately, several of Lucio III’s Democratic colleagues and allies took to social media to support his comments. Within an hour, Stapleton-Barrera’s allies heard that the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC), the often powerful, bipartisan forty-member body in the Texas House, was planning to weigh in, potentially targeting her campaign, TFN, and PPTV… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Republican Party of Texas leaders opt for virtual convention after loss at state Supreme Court (Texas Tribune)
The Republican Party of Texas' executive committee voted Monday evening to hold its statewide convention online, concluding a weekslong whirlwind of controversy and legal battles over initial plans to hold an in-person event during the worsening coronavirus pandemic.
After exhausting legal options, the party's State Republican Executive Committee, a 64-member governing board, met virtually Monday to consider moving the convention online. The vote was 53-4.
Monday's vote is the latest development in a saga over whether the party would end up hosting what was expected to be a roughly 6,000-person event in an area of the state that has emerged as one of the country's hot spots for the coronavirus. The gathering, before Houston officials canceled it last week, was scheduled to begin Thursday at the George R. Brown Convention Center… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
California Closes Indoor Businesses Statewide As COVID-19 Cases Surge (NPR)
With coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continuing their rise in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday he is reimposing restrictions on many indoor businesses statewide, effective immediately.
Restaurants, wineries, movie theaters, family entertainment centers, zoos, museums and card rooms must suspend their indoor operations, and bars must close altogether.
Thirty counties must also close indoor operations of fitness centers, places of worship, offices for noncritical sectors, personal care services, hair salons, barber shops and malls.
Those 30 counties have been on a monitoring list for three consecutive days, and represent about 80% of the state's population, according to Newsom. They include Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Orange, San Diego and Fresno… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
L.A. Unified will not reopen campuses for start of school year amid coronavirus spike (L.A. Times)
Los Angeles campuses will not reopen for classes on Aug. 18, and the nation’s second-largest school system will continue with online learning until further notice, because of the worsening coronavirus surge, Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday.
The difficult decision became unavoidable in recent weeks, Beutner said, as coronavirus cases have skyrocketed in Los Angeles County, and the district cannot come close to protecting the health and safety of some half a million K-12 students and about 75,000 employees.
“Let me be crystal clear,” Beutner said in an interview with The Times. “We all know the best place for students to learn is in a school setting.” But, he said, “We’re going in the wrong direction. And as much as we want to be back at schools and have students back at schools — can’t do it until it’s safe and appropriate.”… (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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