BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 31, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
*NEW* BG PODCAST EPISODE 80: Discussing Austin's Omnibus SXSW/COVID-19 Resilience Plan (LINK TO SHOW)
BG BLOG -> City of Austin / Travis Co. Guidance on Critical Construction (UPDATED 3/31/2020) (LINK TO BLOG)
[AUSTIN METRO]
City works out logistics to allow boards and commissions to meet virtually (Austin Monitor)
After nearly a month of meetings being on hold, City Council voted last Thursday to temporarily waive a local ordinance requiring a quorum of board or commission members to be physically present in order for a meeting to take place.
The dozens of city boards and commissions may now resume their regular schedules with a quorum composed of virtually present members.
The temporary ordinance went into effect immediately after Council unanimously passed the ordinance on its consent agenda. However, actually executing the required logistics to ensure that the volunteer members of the boards and commissions along with city staffers are equipped to hold meetings will take a little longer.
While staff members are still finalizing the plans necessary to connect all parties and run meetings, City Clerk Jannette Goodall told the Austin Monitor there will be a final consensus on details this week.
Planning Commission and Zoning and Platting Commission liaison Andrew Rivera told the Monitor that although the particulars will be ironed out this week, his commission meetings will not begin next week. The April 7 Zoning and Platting Commission meeting is canceled while the April 14 Planning Commission meeting will take place virtually… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After developer backlash, a new city process will determine what construction is 'essential' in Austin (Austin Business Journal)
After nearly a week of turmoil, the city of Austin has figured out how it will decide what construction can go forward during the coronavirus pandemic.
Austin's Development Services Department Director Denise Lucas announced March 30 the city has developed an administrative process for approving construction activities under Austin's shelter-in-place order.
The March 24 order generally prohibited residential and commercial construction as part of an effort to ramp down non-essential travel and commercial activity to slow the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
But the restrictions set off a wave of dissent in the business community, angered over a lack of clarity on what projects fell in the order's exemptions and why Austin took a hardline stance against construction when other cities didn't. During last week's Council meeting, Austin Mayor Steve Adler promised more clarity from the city government.
Lucas said the city is forming a committee to review and approve requests for designating what is an "essential construction project."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
See also ->
City of Austin / Travis Co. Guidance on Critical Construction (UPDATED 3/31/2020)
Austin ISD modernization work continuing amid coronavirus stay-at-home order (Community Impact)
Austin ISD has continued construction related to school improvements and bond modernization efforts during the city of Austin and Travis County’s stay-at-home order because of education facilities’ statues as essential infrastructure.
According to a March 30 message by Nicole Conley, the district’s chief business and operations officer, active work sites are following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Contractors are also being required to provide a coronavirus-related safety plan to the district, according to Conley… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Why Texas will soon be the most politically important state (CNN)
While the world was fixated on the coronavirus, the US Census Bureau released its latest county-by-county population estimates.
And their findings make one thing abundantly clear: Texas is going to become the most important political state over the next decade.
Here's why: Growth in Texas is absolutely off the charts.
Of the 10 counties with the largest population growth in the country between 2010 and 2019, six of them are in Texas.
Harris County (Houston) had the second largest population increase over the first nine years of the decade, adding more than 620,000 people. (Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, took the top spot with more than 668,000 new people.)
The other five Texas counties in the Top 10 in terms of population increase are: Tarrant (Fort Worth), Bexar (San Antonio), Dallas (Dallas), Collin (Plano, McKinney) and Travis (Austin).
But it's not just that these big Texas counties are adding lots of people. It's that even smaller counties in Texas are growing faster -- as a percentage of their 2010 population -- than many places in the country.
Of the 10 counties in terms of percentage population growth between 2010 and 2019, four are in Texas: Hays (southwest of Austin), Comal (northeast of San Antonio), Kendall (west of Austin) and Williamson (north of Austin)… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Hotze, pastors ask Texas Supreme Court to rule Harris County stay-at-home order unconstitutional (Houston Chronicle)
A hardline conservative power broker and three area pastors filed a petition with the Texas Supreme Court Monday arguing that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s stay-at-home order violates the Constitution by ordering the closure of churches and failing to define gun shops as “essential” businesses. The emergency petition for a writ of mandamus, filed by anti-LGBTQ Republican activist Steven Hotze and pastors Juan Bustamante, George Garcia and David Valdez, contends Hidalgo’s order undercuts the First Amendment by limiting religious and worship services to video or teleconference calls. Pastors also may minister to congregants individually. Hotze and the pastors argue the order also “severely infringes” on Second Amendment rights by closing gun stores.
The order does not define gun shops as essential businesses, though Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion Friday that stay-at-home orders cannot force gun stores to close or otherwise restrict sales or transfers. Hidalgo’s order, issued March 24, requires most businesses to close and directs residents to stay home unless they are getting groceries, running crucial errands, exercising or going to work at a business deemed essential. The directive is aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, and it came a day after chief executives at the Texas Medical Center unanimously called for the county to implement a shelter-in-place order… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Amid coronavirus pandemic, will retired nurses and new nursing grads offset shortage? (San Antonio Express News)
Local hospitals are struggling with a shortage of nurses as the number of COVID-19 patients multiplies in Bexar County. That isn’t part of the “new reality” brought on by the coronavirus. Hospitals, clinics and physician practices have had a hard time hiring enough nurses for at least the past two decades. But the strain could get much worse in the weeks ahead, as hospitals rotate nurses and send some into 14 days of quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus. Before the pandemic, state health officials estimated a shortage of nearly 16,000 registered nurses over the next decade.
Yet there’s help on the way. Hospitals are tapping retired RNs, school nurses and nursing instructors, as well as those who assist in elective surgeries. “We are getting calls from retired nurses who want to come back into the workforce and help,” said Cindy Zolnierek, CEO of the Texas Nurses Association. “I think we are going to see redeployments to help fill the gaps. “Now, will that be enough? I don’t know.” Kristen Lemus, chief nursing officer for six area hospitals in the Baptist Health System, said administrators have started to recruit retired nurses. The system, owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., continues to hire nurses — in addition to its other recruitment efforts — and to pay nurses overtime when necessary to cover shifts. Other local hospitals aren’t ready to sound the alarm. Palmira Arellano, spokesperson for Methodist Healthcare System, said its nine area hospitals are “staffed appropriately right now.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas shale producers ask state to cut oil output as demand plummets during coronavirus pandemic (Texas Tribune)
Two Texas oil companies with large footprints in the West Texas oil patch sent a letter Monday to state regulators formally requesting an emergency meeting to consider reducing oil production as demand for oil around the world has collapsed during the new coronavirus pandemic.
The presidents of Pioneer Natural Resources, based in Irving, and Parsley Energy, based in Austin, urged the Texas Railroad Commission — the state’s oil and gas regulatory body — to hold a virtual meeting no later than April 13 “for the purposes of determining the reasonable market demand for oil, whether wasteful production either is occurring or is reasonably imminent, and, if so, the necessary and appropriate proration order to prevent such waste,” the letter read.
Scott D. Sheffield, president of Pioneer Natural Resources, and Matt Gallagher, president of Parsley Energy, said a move to limit oil production in Texas “would be a responsible measure in the public interest.” Also copied to receive the letter were Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz… (LINK TO THE FULL STORY)
[NATION]
How the pandemic is magnifying America's class divide (New York Times)
For about $80,000, an individual can purchase a six-month plan with Private Health Management, which helps people with serious medical issues navigate the health care system. Such a plan proved to be a literal lifesaver as the coronavirus pandemic descended. The firm has helped clients arrange tests in Los Angeles for the coronavirus and obtained oxygen concentrators for high-risk patients. “We know the top lab people and the doctors and nurses and can make the process efficient,” said Leslie Michelson, the firm’s executive chairman. In some respects, the pandemic is an equalizer: It can afflict princes and paupers alike, and no one who hopes to stay healthy is exempt from the strictures of social distancing. But the American response to the virus is laying bare class divides that are often camouflaged — in access to health care, child care, education, living space, even internet bandwidth.
In New York, well-off city dwellers have abandoned cramped apartments for spacious second homes. In Texas, the rich are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to build safe rooms and bunkers. And across the country, there is a creeping consciousness that despite talk of national unity, not everyone is equal in times of emergency. “This is a white-collar quarantine,” said Howard Barbanel, a Miami-based entrepreneur who owns a wine company. “Average working people are bagging and delivering goods, driving trucks, working for local government.” Some of those catering to the well-off stress that they are trying to be good citizens. Michelson emphasized that he had obtained coronavirus tests only for patients who met guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rather than the so-called worried well. Still, a kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had. “I do get that there are haves and have-nots,” said Carolyn Richmond, a Manhattan employment lawyer who is advising restaurant industry clients from her second home, on Long Island, as they engineer layoffs. “Do I feel guilty? No. But I do know that I am very lucky. I understand there’s a big difference between me and the people I work with every day.”… (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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