BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 11, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG BLOG
Austin Council’s Unanimous Support for Five Police Reform Resolutions
Austin Council and Cap Metro Board Unanimously Approve Project Connect
*NEW* BG Podcast EP. 91: Public Transit in a COVID World with Randy Clarke, president & CEO, Capital Metro (LINK TO SHOW)
Colloquially known as CapMetro, Randy and Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham discuss how the agency adapted to a COVID-19 world, the Project Connect transit plan, and national public transit trends.
[AUSTIN METRO]
Here Are Some Areas Austin City Council Could Put Money Toward Instead Of Police (KUT)
"Defund the police” has become a nationwide rallying cry for people protesting police violence against black people. Locally, the Austin Justice Coalition has asked the City Council to remove $100 million from police department's budget.
Council members have proposed several resolutions dealing with police violence and accountability. On Thursday, they'll vote on moving some money from the police budget to other city programs that, advocates say, will better address public safety… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin's public transportation plan goes from vision to action with milestone vote (Community Impact)
Some members of Austin City Council and the Capital Metro board of directors were active in local politics in 2014, when area voters overwhelmingly rejected a $1 billion transportation bond that would have built rail in the city. Some were involved in their communities in 2000, when a light rail bond was narrowly voted down by less than a 1% margin.
The process leading up to a June 10 vote adopting a new plan to revamp the public transportation map in the Austin region, add three light rail lines and expand Capital Metro's bus lines officially started in 2018 when Capital Metro adopted a vision map. However, the discussion in the community goes back decades. After unanimous votes to support the plan, called Project Connect, every member of the City Council and the Capital Metro board said this time around, the moment feels different.
Eric Stratton, the Williamson County representative on Capital Metro's board and the president of Williamson County Republican Leaders, said he has opposed proposals that have come together in the past because he saw them as piecemeal and not well thought out. This time, he said he has no qualms about supporting the plan… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Public Health Blames Reopenings, Memorial Day Socializing For Spike In COVID-19 Cases (KUT)
The recent spike in new confirmed COVID-19 cases is not related to the string of protests against police brutality across the city in the last two weeks, Austin Public Health's top doctor said.
On Tuesday, Austin Public Health confirmed 161 new cases of the virus – the largest day-over-day increase since the start of the pandemic. The previous high was 118, the number of cases confirmed Monday.
Interim Health Director Dr. Mark Escott said the majority of the new cases can be attributed to Memorial Day gatherings and business reopenings, as well as a drop off in people taking precautions to reduce transmission of the virus.
"Quite frankly, we also have an increase in risk-taking behavior,” he said during a news conference. “People are less cautious. They’re not wearing masks as much; they’re not social distancing as much.”
Escott said people who participated in the protests have only started getting tested for COVID-19 in the last days, and he expects to see those results later this week and into next week. He said the new cases confirmed on Monday and Tuesday had symptom onset up to 10 days earlier… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Grappling with budget shortfalls, Texas cities prepare for hard choices (Texas Tribune)
The economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic has left some of Texas’ biggest cities facing a difficult choice: cutting services like libraries, pools and parks, or raising taxes on their residents in the middle of the worst economy in a generation.
“For example, this summer you’ll see swimming pools not opening. I think you'll see branch libraries not opening,” said Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, which represents city governments around the state. “I can't speak for any particular city, but I think it’s going to be a deeper, far deeper recession than what we saw 12 years ago.”
The temporary closure of businesses and high levels of unemployment due to the pandemic have caused sales tax revenue — which make up a significant portion of cities’ budgets — to plummet. On Wednesday, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced that local sales tax allocations for cities in June dropped by 11.1% in comparison with the same month last year.
And although the federal government has pledged assistance to cities through the CARES Act, experts say it won’t be enough to fill a void they expect to last for years... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Houston officials increase police budget as Dallas and Austin officials consider decreases in wake of police brutality protests (Texas Tribune)
In the first statewide policy change since George Floyd's death shook the nation, the Texas agency that regulates police, upon the request of Houston Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, has agreed to add implicit bias training to a course required for every officer. The requirement was one that had been included in an early iteration, but not the final version, of the 2017 Sandra Bland Act, which requires all officers take de-escalation training among other measures.
This time, Coleman went a different route and simply asked the regulatory agency if it would make a rule change as opposed to waiting for new legislation. To his delight, the commission responded a day later that it would adopt the policy. Coleman said he will work with the agency on crafting and finalizing curriculum, but the purpose will be to train officers about the possibility that they may be unconsciously carrying preconceived notions or prejudices that can affect their actions on the job. “It does what the public is asking for,” Coleman said. “When a police officer doesn’t understand that they have this bias, the only way to change it is for them to recognize that they have a bias that may be a racial bias … When people say, ‘How do you change how people think?’ This is how you change how people think.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Some on San Antonio Council Willing to Consider Shifting Police Funds to Social Services (Rivard Report)
Several City Council members and Mayor Ron Nirenberg suggested Wednesday that they are at least open to discussing reforms that would reallocate some San Antonio Police Department funding.
More specifically, they indicated they might consider a shift in spending from the “force” part of the police force toward programs and services that address the underlying, systemic issues that cause crime in the first place. Issues discussed Wednesday included poverty, domestic violence prevention, and lack of affordable housing and mental health resources.
“I’ve heard the chief a number of times say we can’t arrest our problems away,” Councilwoman Ana Sandoval (D7) said, referring to Police Chief William McManus. “Yet over the years we continue to send our officers into neighborhoods with crime and we expect that crime to go down, and we’re not necessarily ensuring that that particular neighborhood or those families always have the resources that they need.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
US showing signs of retreat in battle against COVID-19 (The Hill)
When throngs of tourists and revelers left their homes over Memorial Day weekend, public health experts braced for a surge in coronavirus infections that could force a second round of painful shutdowns.
Two weeks later, that surge has hit places like Houston, Phoenix, South Carolina and Missouri. Week-over-week case counts are on the rise in half of all states. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia have seen their total case counts decline for two consecutive weeks.
But instead of new lockdowns to stop a second spike in cases, states are moving ahead with plans to allow most businesses to reopen, lifting stay-at-home orders and returning to something that resembles normal life… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Amazon to halt police use of its facial recognition technology for one year (AXIOS)
Amazon announced on Wednesday it would stop supplying U.S. police officers with its facial recognition technology for one year amid a nationwide push for police reform.
What they're saying: "We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Google and Apple’s rules for virus tracking apps sow division among states (Politico)
The global rush to halt the coronavirus led countries like Australia and South Korea to launch smartphone apps to track its spread, using the technology as a key part of their push to tamp down the pandemic and restart their economies.
But U.S. efforts to do the same are running into an all-too-familiar problem that has plagued the pandemic response: a lack of national coordination. And Silicon Valley’s attempts to help aren’t resolving the confusion.
Instead, with varying opinions on what data these apps should record, the federal government has so far failed to institute concrete privacy standards. Apple and Google have sought to fill the void by asserting their own standards, flexing the power they hold over the software on almost all smartphones — but some states are refusing to follow their lead and fear the tech companies’ rules could render the apps nearly useless… (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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