BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 13, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast Episode 113: A Post-Election Discussion with Vanessa Fuentes, District 2 Councilwoman-Elect
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
Link to Filed House Bills (567)
LInk to Filed Senate Bills (163)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin OKs million-dollar contract to audit police department (Austin Monitor)
he city of Austin has agreed to pay a New York City-based consultant up to $1.3 million to investigate racism and bigotry in the Austin Police Department, including looking into materials used to train new officers and reviewing instances where police injured or killed someone.
The contract took nearly a year to put in place. City Council members originally voted for the audit last December after the Office of Police Oversight received anonymous complaints that an assistant police chief had used a derogatory term for Black people. The vote came months before the nationwide protests against racial injustice and demands that local politicians cut and reinvest money from police budgets.
“There comes a time in everybody’s existence to have to do something really hard because it’s worth it,” Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison said before Council voted on the audit in December. “I think it’s time for the Austin Police Department to do something really hard because it’s worth it.”
The Council has asked that this third-party investigation be finished by December 2021, but it’s unclear whether the Covid-19 pandemic will push that deadline. Council members did not discuss the contract before voting on it at their meeting Thursday. The vote was 10-0, with Mayor Steve Adler out of town.
The city is asking Kroll Associates Inc. to do the following:
Analyze APD training practices, including courses, materials, internal reports and interviews with former cadets
Research national standards in policing, including best practices for police academies, reducing use of force and improving communication with diverse communities
Recommend improvements to APD recruitment and promotion practices, including screening candidates for cadet classes and promotion
Recommend incorporating the participation of community groups representing those disproportionately affected by policing in the development of new police training
Assess recruitment and promotion practices related to diversity and inclusion, including role of assessment centers
Review use-of-force incident reports from June 2019 to November 2019, analyzing them by location, any resulting charges, the outcome of each incident, and demographic information (including race, ethnicity and language spoken) of all persons involved
Review aggregate data on every recorded interaction from June 2019 to November 2019 between APD and any member of the public, including type of interaction and its outcome (search, arrest with charges, citation with charges) and an evaluation on whether there are racial and/or ethnic or other disparities in searches, arrests, charges and citations… (LINK TO STORY)
As Austin weighs new hotel levy, operators ask for more details (Austin American-Statesman)
Roughly 160 hotels in Austin could soon be required to give up 1% to 2% of their nightly revenue to the city, with the city then using that money to promote Austin to the convention planning industry.
The assessment would be made on hotels with 100 or more rooms for sleeping, and it would pay for costs associated with marketing and sales, primarily for the Austin Convention Center and the Palmer Events Center. City staff projections are that the assessment would produce $4.8 million to $24.5 million annually.
The creation of the Austin Tourism Public Improvement District, which would operate the program, was scheduled for a vote Thursday by the Austin City Council. However, members of the local hotel community were granted a delay to review the plan. The assessment won’t be official until 60% of hotel owners whose properties are in the district give their approval.
Tom Noonan, president of Visit Austin, the city’s convention and visitors’ bureau, said the hotel operators wanted “more information on how to best implement this opportunity.” He said 80 to 100 hotel groups would be subject to the assessment, but, in theory, they could receive an overall benefit from increased hotel traffic.
The earliest the City Council would revisit the new assessment would be during a work session Dec. 1. Some of the details that need to be addressed will be handled in private session, City Manager Spencer Cronk said Thursday.
The planned assessment dates back to a resolution the council passed in May 2019 that directed Cronk to engage with hotel and tourism groups and homelessness service providers to prepare for establishing the new tourism district. At that same meeting, the council gave preliminary approval to a $1.2 billion expansion to the convention center. Financial projections show the planned expansion would inject an additional $306 million per year into the local economy, but only if large events are again held in-person after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.
The new hotel assessment is separate, but it has the same purpose of increasing tourism as the existing hotel occupancy tax. The existing tax is made up of a 9% occupancy tax and a 2% venue project tax. An additional 6% rate is imposed by the state.
Under the new plan, a 1% assessment would go into effect in January on hotels with 100 rooms or more used for sleeping. In downtown Austin, the hotels that would pay the tax include the JW Marriott, the Line, and the Westin. Big hotels near the University of Texas campus and the Domain also would pay.
The assessment would stay at 1% through the current fiscal year, which concludes at the end of September 2021. It then could go up to 2%, but only with three-fourths approval from the board of directors for the new tourism district as well as authorization from the City Council. The assessment rate combined with the state hotel occupancy tax rate and local hotel occupancy tax rate are not allowed to exceed 18%.
City staff projects a 7.4% increase in collections every year. The first full fiscal year, beginning in October 2021, would produce $6.9 million or $13.8 million depending on whether the assessed rate in place is 1% or 2%… (LINK TO STORY)
Williamson County judge will not issue stay-home order (Austin American-Statesman)
Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell said he is not going to issue a “stay home” order one day after the county’s health district said there was high risk of community transmission of the coronavirus. “The Williamson County and Cities Health District makes recommendations based on the COVID-19 transmission rate to help residents understand the risks,” Gravell said in a new release on Thursday.
“The guidelines are suggested for planning, but are not requirements. ... As the county judge, I have no plans to enact another stay home order. Williamson County trusts our residents to be smart and prudent. We know that they will take the appropriate measures to stay safe.”
The health district said on Wednesday that it had moved the county to its “orange phase,” which means high community transmission of the disease. The district also said Wednesday it had added 600 previously unreported confirmed coronavirus cases to its records that were unintentionally excluded from reports over the past few months. The county had 10,676 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, including the previously unreported 600 cases. It also had 10,187 estimated recoveries on Wednesday. Coronavirus numbers for the county were not yet available on Thursday. The county had a rolling seven-day average 4.16% positivity rate on Wednesday. The Centers for Disease Control have identified coronavirus hotspots as places with positivity rates of 5% or higher… (LINK TO STORY)
Council not yet sold on street impact fee plan (Austin Monitor)
City Council passed the first of three readings for a street impact fee program on Thursday, marking a milestone in the multi-year effort to guarantee that developers help carry the cost of adding new transportation infrastructure. Council approved the first reading in a unanimous vote, but Council members raised several issues for the city to address before moving forward with second and third readings.
State limitations require transportation impact fees be used for roadway capacity projects, which may include facilities for active mobility or transit-related enhancements if stated in the city’s Roadway Capacity Plan. Austin Transportation Director Rob Spillar said the fees could essentially help pay for things like sidewalks or shared-use paths if they are part of a larger-capacity expansion project as defined by the state, but not outside of that context.
“I’m hearing sidewalks will be included in the complete streets considerations, but sidewalks for car-centric roads,” Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison said. “So when we’re talking about transit and transportation and including our access by way of modes, I’m hearing more roads for more cars in addition to the sidewalk.”
Council Member Paige Ellis asked for more information on how the state regulations would play out in downtown – where development is paired with severe restraints on added roadway capacity – before the program returns for second and third readings, potentially in December or January.
The city predicts the program will generate nearly $260 million for transportation projects in its first 10 years. Although that money will be limited to capacity expansions, Spillar said the added revenue will free up transportation bond dollars that would have been used for building new roadways and allow them to be spent in other ways.
A street impact fee is just one of the fees developers are required to pay the city to build a new structure. Given the city’s housing shortage, Council members Harper-Madison and Greg Casar said the program should be studied within the entire collection of development fees before final adoption, with the goal of ensuring the fees don’t discourage much-needed residential development.
“Austin’s development fees on average are three to four times higher than other similarly sized cities,” Harper-Madison said. “I would like to direct the relevant city staff … to evaluate all of the existing fees that are levied on development projects and identify that these could either be eliminated or reduced to offset the increases for street impact fees.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Apple’s Austin workforce growing ahead of schedule (Austin American-Statesman)
Apple Inc. accelerated its pace of Austin hiring in 2019, pushing the number of people it employs here above the total required under a 10-year incentives agreement with the city and Travis County in just the deal’s fourth year. The tech giant’s Austin workforce swelled by about 11%, to 6,754 from 6,089 at the end of 2018, according to a compliance report required as part of taxpayer-funded incentive agreements that helped lure its existing North Austin main campus to the city.
Those employment figures don’t include any hiring yet at Apple’s planned new campus less than 1 mile away on Parmer Lane in Williamson County, which is still under construction. That facility, announced in December 2018 and covered under separate incentives agreements, is expected to employ up to 5,000 people initially when finished in 2022, and up to 15,000 over time. Austin is Apple’s largest hub outside of its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and the new campus will cement the status. The company recently collected a combined $3.3 million in incentive payments from the city and Travis County — about $2.1 million from the city and $1.2 million from the county — for hitting 2019 development benchmarks at the existing campus.
Growth of Apple’s Austin workforce has been tracking well ahead of schedule overall since the 2012 incentives deal that helped attract the existing campus became active in 2016 and the payments started in 2017. The 6,754 people Apple employed in Central Texas as of the end of last year — a figure that includes contractors but not workers at its local retail stores — blew away its 2019 target of 3,750 under the incentives agreement, and it also slightly exceeds the total of 6,735 the company is required to have by the end of 2025, when the 10-year deal ends… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Appeals court temporarily stops El Paso business shutdown (Texas Tribune)
A state appeals court on Thursday put on hold El Paso County’s shutdown of nonessential businesses that was scheduled to last until Dec. 1.
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego issued the shutdown order Oct. 29 in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, which has hit this area with such force that patients are being airlifted to other cities in order to make room at local hospitals.
Samaniego extended the order Wednesday, but a group of local restaurants and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had been trying to block the effort since it was issued, arguing that it went beyond Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that outlines what limits can be placed on private businesses across the state.
A state district judge permitted the El Paso shutdown to stand last week pending a final resolution of the case, but the 8th Court of Appeals paused Samaniego’s effort until a final decision is made. That could come as soon as Friday.
“I commend the 8th Court of Appeals for stopping El Paso Co. Judge Samaniego’s shutdown order — pending the final decision on the merits,” Paxton tweeted Thursday. “It is important that we do not shutdown the economy ever again, [and] this decision allows small businesses to continue to operate & pay employees.”
On the day of the appellate court’s decision, El Paso County recorded 976 new coronavirus cases, adding to the overall total of more than 68,000 since the pandemic began. The city also reported an additional 29 deaths due to the virus. About 1,150 people are hospitalized, including 287 in intensive care, according to city statistics.
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo, who’s been at odds with Samaniego over the shutdown, said during a news conference Thursday that since the beginning of the year, about 26% of small businesses have closed and more than 15,000 jobs have been lost because of the economic hit the city has taken.
“Besides the physical deaths, we have a lot of financial issues and families hurting,” he said. “They’re trying to put food on the table, they’re trying to pay rent, they’re trying to pay for their medicine.”… (LINK TO STORY)
In economic crisis, Texas Democrats push to legalize marijuana. Key Republicans likely stand in the way. (Texas Tribune)
With a state budget devastated by the coronavirus, some Democratic lawmakers are hoping the economic crisis could become an opportunity to coax Texas into joining a growing number of states opting to legalize — and tax — recreational marijuana use.
The chances are slim.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio and state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso filed bills this week in advance of the 2021 legislative session that would legalize, regulate and tax personal cannabis use. State Rep. Terry Canales of Edinburg has proposed putting the question of legalization to Texas voters.
The coronavirus pandemic has blown a $4.6 billion hole in the state budget, according to the comptroller's latest estimate, and the lawmakers argue that a legal marijuana industry could bring in hundreds of millions in tax revenue and create tens of thousands of jobs.
Voters in more and more states, they note, have legalized recreational cannabis use, including four more this month bringing the total to 15.
At the same time, marijuana arrests and prosecutions across Texas have been plummeting, largely because a bill passed last year that legalizes hemp has thrown prosecutions into disarray, and some cities have already eased off on pursuing small pot cases.
“As we see a number of states engaging around the country in a retail market, this is no longer an experiment,” Moody said. “It is also no secret that we are heading into some rough economic waters and we need to explore every possible revenue stream.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Deadlock leaves no clear path for lame duck coronavirus deal (The Hill)
Hopes for an end-of-the-year coronavirus relief deal are off to a rocky start, raising fresh questions about the chances for a long-elusive agreement before January.
Lawmakers in both parties say they want a deal, but they have just a few weeks to get one.
Neither side is signaling any interest in backing down, with both saying they have more leverage because of the elections.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the “starting point” on any agreement should be the $2.2 trillion coronavirus bill passed by the House in October, the same line Democrats have held for months.
“Joe Biden has won, now move on and work with us to solve the COVID crisis,” Schumer said Thursday, pointing to the results of the presidential election. “The American people are waiting for relief from the COVID virus, but Republicans refuse to take comprehensive action that meets the needs of the country.”
Senate Republicans are digging in on the roughly $500 billion figure that they previously coalesced behind. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is making it clear that he wants any deal to mirror the scaled-back packages that have been blocked twice by Senate Democrats.
“My view is the level at which the economy is improving further underscores that we need to do something at about the amount that we put on the floor in September and October. Highly targeted at what the residual problems are,” McConnell told reporters.
He warned that the “dramatically larger” figure being pushed by Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is “not a place I think we’re willing to go.”
In a post-election setback for Democrats, McConnell is taking over the reins of any negotiations from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to GOP senators. The decision significantly shifts the dynamics because the administration, before the election, had indicated it could agree to $1.9 trillion or higher, while that figure was always dead in the water with Senate Republicans… (LINK TO STORY)
Vaccine offers hope for airlines — and a big logistical challenge (AXIOS)
The vaccine news airlines have been waiting for arrived this week, raising hopes for a recovery in passenger air travel — but only if the crippled industry can muster the resources to deliver billions of life-saving doses to the world.
Why it matters: A vaccine could restore the public's trust in flying — if it's widely available — and airlines themselves will play a crucial role in what UNICEF calls the world’s largest and fastest vaccine distribution effort in history… (LINK TO STORY)