BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 21, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast Special Episode - Discussing the FY2021 City of Austin Budget Talk #1 (SHOW LINK)
Note: Show also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and Stitcher
BG Blog: RE Petition Drives and Austin’s Low Threshold for Signatures
To propose a new law, petitioners in Austin must collect either signatures from 20,000 voters or 5% of voters, whichever number is smaller. Twenty-thousand signatures is currently about 3% of Austin voters and will continue to be a lower percentage as the city grows. Of particular note, this is a relatively low threshold compared to Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. Only El Paso has a smaller signature requirement… (Read more)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Group says it has enough signatures to put Austin's homelessness ordinances on the November ballot (KUT)
A GOP-backed group says it's collected enough signatures to put a reversal of the city's homeless ordinances on the ballot in November.
Save Austin Now, a coalition led by longtime strategist and Travis County GOP Chair Matt Mackowiak, announced on Monday it's turned in 24,087 signatures for its petition to reinstate bans on camping, panhandling, and sitting or lying down in public in certain areas of the city.
Austin City Council voted in June 2019 to scale back city laws that regulate behavior related to homelessness. Supporters of that decision argued the city's laws criminalized homelessness and that similar laws have been struck down as unconstitutional in federal courts in cities without adequate shelter space. The number of people experiencing homelessness in Austin hit a 10-year high this year, and the number of unsheltered Austinites increased 45% compared to 2019, according to the city's annual census.
Officials say that's partly because shelters like the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless have moved away from overnight sleeping, requiring clients to participate in case-management services in the hopes of transitioning to permanent housing.
Opponents – including Gov. Greg Abbott – have argued the city's current rules have made Austin unsafe. Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Transportation to set up a state-sanctioned campsite on vacant land off U.S. Highway 183. That site was meant to be a temporary fix until a more permanent shelter came online, but that effort is not moving forward.
The signatures on Save Austin Now’s petition must now be verified by the city clerk…(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Public Safety budget discussion wrestles with demands to defund APD (Austin Monitor)
Chief Financial Officer Ed Van Eenoo gave the Public Safety Committee a public safety budget overview at its meeting on Monday. Much of the discussion centered around the Austin Police Department budget. Community members and some City Council members have demanded that a portion of the budget be reallocated to other city departments.
“We have some public safety resources built that no longer match the types of public safety needs that the community needs,” Chair Jimmy Flannigan said. “And there are some good reasons for that. But a lot to dig into here.”
The $434.3 million budget will be a slight ($200,000) decrease over the last year. The proposal includes 1,889 sworn employees, which is a decrease of 70.
Grassroots Leadership, one of the organizations demanding a reduction in APD’s budget, said City Manager Spencer Cronk “ignored our demands” in his proposed budget. The group’s petition asks Cronk to defund the department by half and divert those funds to public health, anti-displacement efforts and the city’s Equity Office.
“I’m certainly willing to do more than what is in the manager’s proposed budget, but I’m also not looking at this as an annual debate,” said Flannigan. “We need to figure out what is the series of budget (choices) we can plan moving forward. It would be great for us and the public to know that we’re going to come back in November and do more, and that we’re going to come back in February and do more.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Push for 2021 charter amendments could make Austin a ‘strong mayor’ city (Austin Monitor)
A new group of community activists and political insiders intends to push for amendments to the city charter that could bring about a change to a “strong mayor” form of government, along with other changes focused on increasing voter turnout and impact on city operations.
Austinites for Progressive Reform, which has formed as a specific-purpose political action committee, will work through the fall and winter to put the proposed amendments on the May 2021 ballot.
The nonpartisan group’s 16-member steering committee has identified four impacts it hopes to achieve via the amendments. Including the switch to a mayor-council government model that would eliminate the role of a city manager, possible changes include moving mayoral elections to presidential election years, implementing ranked-choice voting for city offices as soon as state law allows, and implementing a “democracy dollars” campaign finance system that would create public funding for city races.
There are different configurations in U.S. cities for how a mayor-council or strong-mayor structure works, but generally it places the mayor as a city’s top executive instead of a city manager, with City Council still responsible for approving changes to laws and policies. In Houston the strong mayor handles the appointment of a chief administrator and department heads, prepares the city budget and oversees the work of city departments… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas faces a looming $4.6 billion deficit, comptroller projects (Texas Tribune)
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar delivered bleak but unsurprising news Monday: Because of the economic fallout triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, the amount of general revenue available for the state’s current two-year budget is projected to be roughly $11.5 billion less than originally estimated. That puts the state on track to end the biennium, which runs through August 2021, with a deficit of nearly $4.6 billion, Hegar said.
Those figures are a significant downward revision from Hegar’s last revenue estimate in October 2019, when the comptroller said the state would have over $121 billion to spend on its current budget and end the biennium with a surplus of nearly $2.9 billion. The state, Hegar said, will now have roughly $110 billion to work with for the current budget… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Metro Health and city leaders were at war with each other at height of coronavirus outbreak in San Antonio, emails show (San Antonio Express-News)
The day before Dawn Emerick resigned as director of the Metropolitan Health District, her boss sent a scathing internal memo blasting Emerick as lacking the expertise needed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and creating a hostile work environment for health department employees.
“If the problems were simply her inability to get along with people who disagree with her, we could try to get her a coach and do team building, etc.” Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger wrote in a June 24 email to the city’s human resources director. “However, there is also a glaring deficit in her ability to understand and explain epidemiology and basic public health science.”
The four-page memo, obtained through a public records request, paints the clearest picture yet of the circumstances behind why Emerick — not even six months into the job — stepped down from her post just as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in San Antonio began to spike.
The memo and other internal emails reveal that in the midst of the worst public health crisis in a century, the two top officials overseeing San Antonio’s response were bitterly at odds and barely on speaking terms.The memo and other internal emails reveal that in the midst of the worst public health crisis in a century, the two top officials overseeing San Antonio’s response were bitterly at odds and barely on speaking terms.
The memo and other internal emails reveal that in the midst of the worst public health crisis in a century, the two top officials overseeing San Antonio’s response were bitterly at odds and barely on speaking terms… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Hidalgo County warns COVID-19 positive residents must stay home or face prosecution (Houston Chronicle)
The COVID-19 surge in rural Texas has escalated into a deepening public health crisis for Hidalgo County, where officials issued an order Sunday requiring those who test positive for the virus to not leave home for 14 days under threat of criminal prosecution.
On Sunday evening, Hidalgo County officials addressed the public in a Facebook Live event, asking the public to please heed the warning. Hidalgo County reported 1,320 new COVID-19 cases and 17 deaths on Sunday. "Who would ever think back in March 21 when we had the first incident of someone testing positive, that Hidalgo County would be caught in this pandemic with such tragic numbers," Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said. According to health officials, the situation has become dire in the Rio Grande Valley, and measures must be taken. Some patients had to wait for up to 10 hours for ambulances to deliver them to emergency rooms in Hidalgo County, according to The Texas Tribune. The order is not only for residents who test positive, but also for any of those who live with someone who test positive… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
California delays high school sports seasons until at least December (The Hill)
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) said on Monday that it will be delaying its kick off for high school sports seasons for the coming 2020-2021 school year to December 2020 or January 2021.
The move by the governing body comes as season calendars for student and professional sports across the nation have been pushed back amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which health data shows has led to more than 3 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and more than 140,000 deaths.
In its announcement, the group said its officials are “continuously monitoring the directives and guidelines released from the Governor's Office, the California Department of Education, the California Department of Public Health, and local county health departments and agencies as these directives and guidelines are followed by our member schools/school districts with student health and safety at the forefront.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Democratic mayors accuse federal agents of escalating violence against civilians (AXIOS)
Democratic mayors in Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, Portland, Kansas City, Mo. and Washington, D.C., condemned federal agents dispersing protesters in their cities, in letters to congressional leadership and the Trump administration on Monday.
What they're saying: "Deployment of federal forces in the streets of our communities has not been requested nor is it acceptable," the mayors write to Attorney General Bill Barr and Chad Wolf, acting Homeland Security secretary.
"In Portland, their actions have escalated events and increased the risk of violence against both civilians and local law enforcement officers," they write."None of these agents are trained in modern urban community policing, such as de-escalation. They are operating without coordination with local law enforcement," the mayors say, urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top congressional leaders to investigate what they describe as the administration's "abuse of power."
The other side: "DHS is not gonna back down from our responsibilities. We are not escalating, we are protecting, again, federal facilities. It's our job, it's what Congress has told us to do, time and time again," Wolf told Fox News on Monday… (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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