BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 3, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast EP 89: COVID-19's Impact on the Built Environment with Michael Hsu (LINK TO SHOW)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Texas Governor Warns Of Out-Of-State Agitators. But Protesters Arrested In Austin Were From Here. (KUT)
Gov. Greg Abbott warned during a press conference Tuesday that people are coming from outside Texas to protest violently.
“Some of the violence that we’re seeing is not being done by people who reside in Dallas or even in Texas,” he said at Dallas City Hall. “Instead, the violence is coming into Texas from across state lines.”
But in the Austin area, the vast majority of people arrested during weekend protests against systemic racism and police killings were locals, according to records from the Travis County Sherriff’s Office.
The Austin Police Department released on Monday the names of 53 people arrested in relation to the weekend’s protests; only two of those listed home addresses out of state — in Florida and Illinois — according to the Travis County Sherriff’s Office. Two of those arrested were recorded as “transient,” or people experiencing homelessness.
Most of the people arrested as part of the protests this past weekend listed homes in Austin or surrounding cities, including Pflugerville and Manor… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin coronavirus cases trending upward after economic reopening, health authority says (Austin American-Statesman)
New coronavirus cases in Austin and Travis County have trended steadily upward in the weeks after the reopenings of some local businesses, but health officials say the actual number of infections could be seven to eight times higher than statistics show.
Interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott on Tuesday told members of the Austin City Council that health officials are seeing about 60 new coronavirus cases in Austin and Travis County each day.
On Monday, Travis had 88 confirmed new cases, the highest single-day increase since the pandemic arrived in Austin.
In mid-May, the average number of daily new cases tracked closer to 45. The estimate of a seven- to eight-fold discrepancy in the actual infection figures, Escott said, is that many who have the virus don’t present symptoms and might never know they are sick.
“As expected, as the community started to open up, we are seeing new cases, which has trailed that policy change by about two and a half weeks.” Escott said.
On Monday, the total number of confirmed cases in Travis County had reached 3,360, included 93 deaths and 1,217 recoveries. In the greater Austin area, 97 people were hospitalized with the virus, including 41 in intensive care units and 21 on ventilators.
While the number of cases has increased, the seven-day rolling average of new hospitalizations from the virus, which city leaders are closely monitoring to determine whether Austin will return to more strict social distancing guidelines, has stayed near 10… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Justice Coalition executive director: City’s racism is ’unique because it is so subtle’ (Community Impact)
Protestors continued to march in the streets of American cities from Washington D.C., to Philadelphia to Austin on June 1 to voice their anger and frustration following George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis.
The video of Floyd’s death captured by bystanders, which showed him repeating, “I can’t breathe” while then-Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck, was shocking and unsettling form any. But Chas Moore, executive director and founder of the Austin Justice Coalition, said in a June 1 Facebook Live conversation with Austin Mayor Steve Adler that such an event is nothing new for black people in the U.S.
“The fact that this has become the new normal for so many black men and black people in general in this country is the reason why we see so much anger and angst in the streets today,” Moore said.
The Austin Justice Coalition is among the groups that called for the firing of Austin Police Chief Brian Manley, Assistant Chief Troy Gay and Assistant City Manager Rey Arellano, who oversees public safety, after police shot and killed an unarmed man, Michael Ramos, on April 24… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Dallas mayor blamed "outsiders" for violence at protests. But almost everyone arrested was from North Texas. (Texas Tribune)
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson blamed “outsiders” Tuesday for sparking violence among peaceful protests in Dallas over the past five days in response to the death of George Floyd. But arrest data provided by the city of Dallas shows nearly all the people who were arrested in protests this past weekend are from Dallas or the surrounding areas.
“The violence, vandalism and theft that we saw committed by some groups of people over the weekend is not reflective of the city that I know,” Johnson said at the Tuesday press conference, sitting alongside Gov. Greg Abbott and other state and North Texas officials. “And much of it was perpetrated by people who are not residents of the city of Dallas. They don't pay taxes here. It's not their property they're destroying.”
Johnson also said the city “will not tolerate those who want to come into our city and exploit these peaceful protests.”
The Dallas Police Department arrested 185 people between Friday and Monday morning, according to the data provided by the mayor’s office. Only seven people arrested were from outside of Texas, and 172 of the 185 arrests were of people residing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Seventy-five of those arrested over the weekend were residents of the city of Dallas. Defending the mayor’s comments, Tristan Hallman, a spokesman for Johnson, said the data shows that more than half of the people arrested are “not actually in the city of Dallas.”
Johnson is “mayor of the city of Dallas, not of the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” Hallman said to The Texas Tribune… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Turner drops furloughs, reinstates police cadet classes in revised budget plan (Houston Chronicle)
Houston will not need to furlough roughly 3,000 city employees nor cancel its police cadet classes in the upcoming budget year, Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin announced during a city council budget committee meeting Tuesday. Instead, the city will use federal coronavirus relief funds to help bridge its projected $169 million shortfall in the fiscal year that begins July 1. “No employee in the (City of Houston) will be furloughed,” Martin said. The administration has updated Mayor Sylvester Turner’s initial budget proposal, eliminating many of the most dire consequences attributed to the revenue gap. The revised budget plan eliminates furloughs and adds back five cadet classes for police, Martin said.
It also adds another fire department cadet class, giving that department four classes. The new proposal also adds $15 million back into the city’s rainy day fund as hurricane season gets underway; Turner’s original spending plan would have exhausted that fund entirely. The changes comes as the city has weighed how it can spend $404 million in federal funds it received through the CARES Act, part of a stimulus package approved by Congress. The administration plans to use roughly $19 million of those funds to cover expenses for redeploying city employees from their normal duties to address the coronavirus pandemic, freeing some budgetary space. It is not clear if the city plans to use additional federal funds to cover the remaining costs of the budget revisions. The initial budget proposal said the furloughs would save the city roughly $7 million. The five police cadet classes cost $13.9 million. Martin said the administration would use city employees for newly-required temperature checks at City Hall and other duties, instead of outsourcing them to private companies… (LINK TO STORY)
H-E-B no longer making masks mandatory for customers (San Antonio Express-News)
H-E-B will no longer require customers to wear face masks to enter its stores, the grocery chain said Tuesday.
H-E-B encourages customers to wear masks but are no longer mandatory, said H-E-B spokeswoman Julie Bedingfield. Employees and vendors will still wear masks, H-E-B said.
"The CDC, State of Texas, and local health officials strongly recommend the use of masks or facial coverings in public spaces. As Texans Helping Texans, we wear masks to keep each other and our families safe. Social distancing, wearing masks, proper hand washing, and sanitization are all things we do to help keep Texas healthy," H-E-B said in a statement… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
CBO projects virus impact could trim GDP by $15.7 trillion (Associated Press)
The Congressional Budget Office said Monday that the U.S. economy could be $15.7 trillion smaller over the next decade than it otherwise would have been if Congress does not mitigate the economic damage from the coronavirus.
The CBO, which had already issued a report forecasting a severe economic impact over the next two years, expanded that forecast to show that the severity of the economic shock could depress growth for far longer.
The new estimate said that over the 2020-2030 period, total GDP output could be $15.7 trillion lower than CBO had been projecting as recently as January. That would equal 5.3% of lost GDP over the coming decade.
After adjusting for inflation, CBO said the lost output would total $7.9 trillion, a loss of 3% of inflation-adjusted GDP.
CBO called this a “significant markdown” in GDP output as a result of the pandemic.
“Business closures and social distancing measures are expected to curtail consumer spending, while the recent drop in energy prices is projected to severely reduce U.S. investment in the energy sector,” CBO Director Philip Swagel said in a letter… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
'It just doesn't seem right': Pentagon officials on edge over military leaders' dealings with Trump (Politico)
The optics of the past 72 hours are putting people inside the halls of the Pentagon on edge as images of U.S. troops on the streets of the nation’s capital dominate airwaves across the globe, and as the top brass is increasingly viewed as mixing politics and the military.
Defense Department officials say they are increasingly uncomfortable with the more prominent role the U.S. military is playing in tamping down violent protests breaking out all over the U.S., and the growing tendency of the president to call on the troops for domestic missions ranging from border security to law enforcement.
“The decision to use active military forces in crowd control in the United States should only be made as a last resort,” said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense under President Donald Trump. “Active Army and Marine Corps units are trained to fight our nation’s enemies, not their fellow Americans. American cities are not battlefields.”
The anxiety hit a high point on Monday, when word leaked out that Defense Secretary Mark Esper referred to cities undergoing protests as a "battlespace," and as Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley walked with Trump across the street from the White House after protesters were cleared from Lafayette Square in advance of a staged photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church.
For years, top military leadership has tried to minimize the perception that the armed forces are being used by the president for political purposes. Today, the nation is confronting the prospect of civil strife that rivals the racial unrest of the late 1960s in scale, even as civil-military tensions reach levels not seen since the use of National Guard units to respond to anti-Vietnam protests at Kent State university… (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.
PLEASE RESHARE and FOLLOW:
Twitter #binghamgp
Instagram #binghamgp