BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 15, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
*NEW* BG PODCAST Episode 92 : Processing with Austin Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison (District 1) (LINK TO SHOW)
Today's BG Podcast features a conversation with returning guest, Austin City Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison.
She and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss the protests and national conversation around the murder of George Floyd, police reform, and the continued threat and impact of COVID-19 in Austin’s Black community.
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin-area Covid-19 hospitalizations hit one-day record, seven-day average now tops 20 (KUT)
A record of 30 new COVID-19 hospital admissions was reported in the Austin area Sunday evening. The seven-day moving average of new admissions increased to 20.6.
Austin Public Health has been warning that the average — which has been rising since June 9 — needs to remain below 20, otherwise the area will move into stage 4 of APH’s COVID-19 risk-based guidelines and more restrictions will be necessary to slow the spread of the disease and prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler is expected to renew the city's "Stay Home-Work Safe" order, which is set to expire Monday night. He told KUT on Friday that if the area does get to stage 4, the city would appeal to the governor to make face masks and social distancing in public an enforceable requirement or at least allow local jurisdictions to enforce those rules.
"Somebody is going to have to enforce those provisions and convince the community that it's actually serious and it's real, or else ... the number of hospitalizations will continue to increase," he said. "And then we're going to have to take more drastic action in terms of restraining the opening of the economy or we'll overrun the hospitals."… (LINK TO STORY)
Tourism leaders see multiyear hit to tourism business and hotel tax from Covid-19 (Austin Monitor)
The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to cause a drop in local tourism and events business for at least five years, with a decline of at least 25 percent in hotel business this year and an ongoing drag on the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax collections going forward.
A summary of the current state of hotel tax revenue at last week’s meeting of the Tourism Commission showed an $8 million reduction in money for three line items – cultural arts, historic preservation and the newly created Live Music Fund – that together represent 30 percent of the city’s total tax collections. Those categories had been budgeted for just over $30 million total in this budget year, but now are expected to have $22.1 million in total revenue.
As of April 30, hotel tax collections for the year stood at $58.5 million, though that figure includes two normal months in January and February plus at least some bookings related to South by Southwest, which was canceled in early March and erased the biggest annual spike in local hospitality business… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
RideAustin shuts down operations (Community Impact)
Local ride-sharing nonprofit RideAustin will be discontinuing its operations, according to a June 12 email sent to users.
“While we are sad to be closing our doors—it’s amazing to see how much of a difference we have made together in the Austin community,” read the email.
The service allowed users to round their fare up to give to local charities. According to RideAustin, that led to $450,000 in donations over the service’s four years in Austin. RideAustin said users took 3 million rides, and $38 million was paid to drivers.
The service began in 2016 following the exit of Uber and Lyft from Austin due to a legal battle between the city and the ride-share giants over municipal rules requiring drivers to undergo fingerprint background checks.
The following year, those companies returned to the city when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill establishing state regulations that overruled Austin’s local ordinances… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas has shifted to an “It’s Your Responsibility” pandemic plan (Texas Monthly)
The current spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Texas isn’t unexpected. When the state began winding down its restrictions on businesses and public gatherings on May 1, despite evidence that the pandemic was far from being under control, Governor Greg Abbott acknowledged that reopening would “lead to an increase in spread.” Abbott justified relaxing restrictions by arguing that more coronavirus cases are acceptable, as long as those cases don’t lead to overwhelmed hospitals or a sharp uptick in the death toll. Later that month, experts at the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium projected that reopening could lead to a rise in hospitalizations that would necessitate a second order closing businesses and restricting public gatherings. Austin city council member Greg Casar told me shortly before reopening that if cases in the city threatened to overwhelm hospitals, the city would take action on its own.
“I hope the governor supports us shutting down the city again at that point,” he said. “And if he doesn’t, we’ll have to do it again anyway.” Casar said that he’s confident that the Texas constitution gives Austin the authority to do that, and that if hospitals were filling up, courts would side with the city. In late March, as “flatten the curve” served as a national mantra, Texans largely accepted strict mandatory public safety measures to protect themselves and their neighbors—and especially their elders—from a disease that had wreaked havoc throughout the world. While the order was in place, Texas avoided the sort of exponential growth seen in New York and Northern Italy. As cities now face rising hospitalizations and case counts, though, the politics around orders that close down businesses and prevent public gatherings have changed. When heavy restrictions were in place, armed right-wing protesters showed up everywhere from bars to hair salons demanding the right to buy a drink or get a haircut. More recently, a broad coalition of demonstrators against police brutality, galvanized by the killing of longtime Houstonian George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, have gathered, often packed closely together (though outdoors), for protests across the state… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
As black athletes speak up, University of Texas faces ‘neo-Confederate’ origins (Houston Chronicle)
For those who see the University of Texas campus through the unsparing eyes of history rather than burnt orange-colored glasses, the Forty Acres is littered with examples of what anthropology professor Edmund T. Gordon describes as the school’s “neo-Confederate” origins. To that end, Gordon has assembled a “Racial Geography Tour” of the UT campus, cataloguing points from buildings to statutes to UT’s storied anthem, “The Eyes of Texas,” cited in an online call Friday by Texas athletes for reforms addressing what they described as “racism that has historically plagued our campus.”
Gordon, the university’s vice provost for diversity and founder of its African and African Diaspora Studies program, is in accord with the athletes’ calls for changes how UT Austin views itself. “I always think it’s important and good when students exercise their rights to express their ideas, particularly when they involve how universities represent themselves,” he said. “That’s what students are supposed to do. And athletes are students, which are what they should be before anything else.” But, as a teacher who believes one can learn from the past while reshaping the present, Gordon also sees the merits of leaving certain landmarks untouched as, in his words, a “scarlet letter” to remind the university of its origins. “The University of Texas is a (teaching) institution first and foremost, a place where we teach folks and critically engage with them,” Gordon said. “Many of these things from our past need to be the object of investigation and also the object of teaching… (LINK TO STORY)
With coronavirus cases climbing, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says "no real need" to scale back business reopenings (Texas Tribune)
With the number of people hospitalized for the new coronavirus continuing to climb in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that there’s “no real need to ratchet back the opening of businesses in the state.”
One of the reasons, he said in an interview with KYTX television in Tyler, is “because we have so many hospital beds available to anybody who gets ill.”
The state reported Friday that the number of people hospitalized in Texas who are confirmed to have the coronavirus has increased to a new peak of 2,166. That came after three days of record highs this week — reaching 2,153 hospitalized patients Wednesday — and a one-day dip Thursday to 2,008. On Saturday, the state broke another record and reported 2,242 hospitalized patients.
Meanwhile, the seven-day average of new daily confirmed cases of the virus also continues to climb. It reached an all-time high of 1,724 on Friday… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Big tech to Congress: Your move on facial recognition (Politico)
Big tech companies are dialing up the pressure on Congress to limit police use of facial recognition software, amid resurgent efforts in Washington following the nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd.
But the latest pledges by Microsoft, Amazon and IBM haven't defused civil rights advocates' concerns about tech companies dealing potential surveillance tools to governments. And they’re stirring suspicions among lawmakers that industry giants are trying to dictate the terms of its regulations to Washington.
The three big companies drew headlines this week by promising either to temporarily halt sales of their face-scanning software to law enforcement agencies, or in IBM’s case, to shutter that part of its business. The companies also urged Congress to step in and place guardrails on the use of facial recognition, an effort that stalled in the Capitol last fall and has until recently remained largely stymied during this year’s pandemic.
While the announcements are at least partially symbolic — Microsoft says it already wasn't selling those tools to police departments — the calls for congressional action mark an increasingly offensive posture for an industry that has faced heat from its own employees for dealing out tools that critics say facilitate mass surveillance and racial profiling by cops… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Nationwide protests spark renewed local efforts to get rid of Confederate symbols (The Hill)
Cities and states across the country are seeing renewed efforts to remove Confederate symbols following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died last month after a white police officer kneeled on his neck during an arrest.
A number of monuments honoring Confederate figures have been toppled by protesters or ordered for removal by local leaders in states like Alabama, Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana.
And the past week has seen a raging national debate over whether to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders and remove Confederate statues from the Capitol… (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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