BG Reads | News You Need to Know (May 5, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
*NEW* BG PODCAST Episode 85: School District Land Use Talk with Tanya Birks, Director of Real Estate, Austin ISD (LINK TO SHOW)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Casar to seek reelection (AUSTIN MONITOR)
Council Member Greg Casar announced Monday that he will not be seeking Sen. Kirk Watson’s now-vacant District 14 seat. In early March, Casar explored the possibility of running for state Senate. However, that move was quickly overshadowed by the cancellation of South by Southwest and the unprecedented fight against Covid-19 that has since consumed Austin and the world.
Casar told the Austin Monitor that the pandemic had influenced his decision “significantly.” In a statement released to the press Monday morning, he emphasized that work at the city level is what he feels called to do and where he “can do the most good.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin, Travis County Encourage Wearing Masks And Minimizing Social Contact As Businesses Reopen (KUT)
Austin and Travis County leaders re-emphasized Monday that the local “Stay Home, Work Safe” orders are still in effect.
Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott let his statewide stay-at-home order expire and issued a new order that allows restaurants, retail stores, movie theaters and malls to reopen Friday with certain capacity limits and health protocols.
Austin and Travis County say their local actions are consistent with Abbott’s new order, which requires people to “minimize social gatherings and minimize in-person contact with people who are not in the same household.” Previously, the exception to that rule was to access essential services, but now the exception includes accessing the newly reopened businesses, according to a press release from the city and county… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
$42 billion Austin-area transportation plan approved (Austin American-Statesman)
A regional board of elected officials on Monday approved an influential plan comprised of hundreds of transportation projects with an estimated cost of $42 billion — but not without a certain degree of skepticism and disappointment at the final proposal.
The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization policy board approved its 2045 Regional Plan, a federally required document that lists about 600 projects across the organization’s six-county region.
CAMPO is a federally mandated government organization with a voting body of 20 elected officials. The chief purpose of the organization is to create a long-term plan that must be updated every five years.
The plans are highly influential in determining what area transportation projects get state and federal money for construction… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Big-footed by Gov. Greg Abbott, San Antonio panel to release its own guidelines for business reopening (San Antonio Express-News)
A team of top-level business and community leaders was supposed to figure out a plan for businesses in San Antonio and Bexar County to safely reopen whenever the COVID-19 pandemic showed signs of releasing its stranglehold on the economy. But Gov. Greg Abbott beat them to the punch. Last week, Abbott opted to let retailers, restaurants, shopping malls and other businesses reopen — before the committee could issue its own report.
Abbott has promised that more reopenings will follow in the next few weeks, provided Texas doesn’t see a spike in its infection and hospitalization rates. The governor’s move effectively neutered the ability of city and county leaders to place restrictions on business activity to ensure that there’s no surge in the virus as residents resume everyday activities. With it, Abbott also rendered a key part of the city-county economic transition panel’s mission moot. The panel — headed by co-chairs Kevin Voelkel, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas president, and Julissa Carielo, Tejas Premier Building Construction president — was going to review recommendations from a separate appointed team of health experts and come away with its own plan on how and when to reopen businesses. The committee’s members includes business leaders across several sectors, including health care and hospitality. Among them were Pete Cortez of restaurant group La Familia Cortez, Bobby Perez of Spurs Sports and Entertainment and Jody Newman, who owns the Friendly Spot Ice House… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas unemployment claims surpass 2 million as state economy begins to reopen (Dallas Morning News)
More than 2.1 million Texans have filed for unemployment pay since COVID-19 brought the state’s economy to a near halt, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
That’s now equal to about three years worth of Texas’ typical annual unemployment claims. The state has paid out about $3.4 billion in benefits, TWC spokesman Francisco Gamez said Monday.
The unprecedented rise in unemployment claims is playing out across the country, causing some states to dig deep into their unemployment trust funds. California is the first state to borrow from the federal government so that it can continue paying unemployment benefits during the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.
California, Texas and four other states are at risk of depleting unemployment trust funds in the next month, according to an April report from the Tax Foundation.
TWC has said previously it will tap into interest-free Federal Title XII advance funds to keep its trust fund solvent. It expects to do that as early as mid-May… (LINK TO STORY)
Was That a Cough? Going Back to the Movies in Texas. (New York Times)
It happened early inside the cool, darkened cineplex, before Vin Diesel even had a chance to turn superhuman, as people sat munching popcorn and sipping sodas in their plush recliner seats. Someone coughed. If anyone seated nearby was alarmed, no one showed it. The cough sounded muffled: The moviegoer was wearing a mask — part of the recommended etiquette of going to the movies in the middle of a pandemic. On Saturday, three movie theaters in the San Antonio area became some of the first in the country to reopen, a move that worried some infectious-disease experts but was applauded by those who bought tickets and went to the show.
Santikos Entertainment opened three theaters, offering discounted prices, a limited food menu, workers in masks and greeters who opened doors as people entered, limiting contact with door handles. The theaters were showing older releases for $5, and at the Palladium, in an upscale shopping center called the Rim, business was steady — low for a Saturday in May, but higher than what might be expected in a state still grappling with a coronavirus outbreak that has killed nearly 900 people, 48 of them in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. Texas took a big step out of its coronavirus lockdown Friday, allowing restaurants, malls, retail stores and some other businesses to resume operations, with strict limits on the number of patrons allowed inside. Movie theaters, like restaurants, were allowed to seat only 25% of their listed capacity. Grady McClung and his wife Rachel went to the 1:10 p.m. showing of the Christian movie “I Still Believe” at the Palladium, each wearing a mask. “Yesterday was my birthday, so I got the first two tickets for the first opening of the first movie in the first movie theater,” said Grady McClung, 51, a project manager for a telecommunications company who lives in nearby Boerne. “There’s about 12 seats in a 150-seat auditorium. We’re well spaced out.” To sit in a theater with dozens of strangers was a walk on the wild side of public health. But as the movies played and the plots thickened amid the crunch-crunch of patrons chewing popcorn, Hollywood was doing what it has done for decades: providing an escape, albeit masked and at a distance… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Coronavirus protests take aim at scientists, elites (The Hill)
Stark warnings from the nation's most trusted scientists led governors across the nation to lock down their economies in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus that has already infected more than a million people in the United States.
But after weeks of stay-at-home orders, millions of lost jobs and trillions in emergency government spending, conservative agitators have begun to turn their ire on the scientists themselves, blaming them for overhyping a health crisis and in the process creating an economic one from which it will take years to recover.
The bubbling anger aimed at those who are perceived as elites is reminiscent of the Tea Party movement that protested the Obama administration and fueled Republican gains in the 2010 elections. It’s an anger that President Trump rode successfully to his election in 2016… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
SEC loosens crowdfunding regs so small businesses can raise alternative financing in pandemic (Tech Crunch)
Just like American workers are turning to crowdfunding to pay for the medical procedures that can keep them alive, the Securities and Exchange Commission is telling small businesses that everyday citizens may provide them with the lifeline that the U.S. government won’t.
After two multi-billion dollar stimulus packages which have largely failed to reach the small businesses they were ostensibly intended to support, the SEC said that it will lift restrictions related to reporting requirements and accelerate the approval of crowdfunding listings so that main street businesses and small startups can try to raise funds from speculative investors who may have cash on hand… (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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