BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 17, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
***NEW*** BG Podcast Episode 114: Discussing Austin's Code Department with Director José Roig
On today’s episode we speak with José Roig, Director of Austin’s Code Department.
José and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss his background leading to the directorship; the mission and role of the Austin Code Department; COVID-19's impact operations; and his priorities going into 2021.
Joining the City of Austin in 2007, José was most recently Interim Director of the department. His position was made on permanent Friday, November, 13th (Read the City’s press release here).
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
Link to Filed House Bills (593)
LInk to Filed Senate Bills (176)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin Public Health creates coronavirus vaccine distribution plan as trials show promise (Austin American-Statesmen)
As coronavirus vaccine trials continue to show promise, Travis County health care workers have joined forces to plan how to best distribute any potentially life-saving drug to residents in the Austin area next year.
Austin Public Health recently launched the COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Coalition, which is made up of local health care and community partners. Once a vaccine is available, the coalition will work to administer doses to the public.
“Planning for the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine will once again require many stakeholders and a community effort to be successful,” Stephanie Hayden, Austin Public Health director, said in a recent statement. “We still have a long road ahead of us, but the COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Coalition marks the beginning of a new chapter in our response.”
So far, two coronavirus vaccines are showing overwhelming success during their trial periods, according to a report by The Associated Press on Monday. Moderna and Pfizer Inc. this month both announced their vaccines were showing to be at least 90% effective.
However, Dr. Mark Escott, interim Austin-Travis County health authority, said during a recent interview that vaccines will need continued testing to determine how successful they will be, adding that he is hesitant to believe the efficacy rate would be as high as 90%… (LINK TO STORY)
Study Links Construction in Austin, Texas With Higher Potential Virus Hospitalizations (ENR Texas & Louisiana)
On March 24, as the coronavirus pandemic spread, the city of Austin, Texas enacted a stay home-work safe order that shut down any non-essential construction. But a week later Texas' governor, Greg Abbott (R), said all construction in the state should go on. Austin's commercial and residential projects reopened.
Austin's mayor, Steve Adler, commissioned a research team at the University of Texas medical school to explore the implications of keeping construction sites open, and the researchers determined by examining statistics and mathematical modeling that keeping those projects open could worsen the virus spread.
Since then, the research team has found real life examples and evidence that keeping construction workers on the job during the pandemic increases not just potential virus spread but the risk of hospitalizations, too. Latino construction workers, who have higher incidence of respiratory and other illnesses, are especially susceptible.
The research, described in a recent article on the website of the Journal of the American Medical Association, has fresh relevance. Coronavirus outbreaks are reaching peaks in many states and shutdowns on construction sites were controversial this spring.
Construction workers have long been known to have higher incidence of health problems and comparative aversion to flu shots.
A research study several years ago showed that construction craft workers are less likely than other types of workers to have themselves vaccinated for seasonal flu. In May, the news bulletin of the union-funded Center for Construction Research and Training pointed out that 1.4 million construction workers, or 12.3% of the total, were 60 or older. Nearly one in five had a respiratory disease, one in five were smokers, and altogether nearly six out of 10 had at least one factor that put them “at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19, the center reported in its bulletin.
Using data on hospitalizations, the University of Texas researchers modeled statistics about COVID-19-related hospitalizations and simulated different scenarios that varied the size of the construction workforce and level of worksite transmission. After varying the simulations 500 times for each scenario, the association between continued construction work and hospitalizations was compared with actual hospital data from central Texas up until August.
The risk to construction workers of allowing unrestricted construction work through mid-August, the article authors wrote, increased the risk from .38 per 1,000 residents to 1.5 per 1,000 residents. The risk to construction workers themselves, grew from 0.22 per 1,000 workers to 9.3 per 1,000 workers--almost five times greater… (LINK TO STORY)
Black Drivers stopped by APD in 2019 were three times more likely to be arrested than White drivers (KUT)
While around 8% of the city's population is Black, 14% of people pulled over by Austin police in 2019 were Black. One in four Black drivers who were stopped was subsequently arrested, according to a new report from the city.
White and Asian people, meanwhile, were underrepresented in traffic stops and resulting arrests, the report found. The numbers did not change markedly from the year before.
he report from the city’s Office of Police Oversight, Office of Innovation and the Equity Office used data on motor vehicle stops collected by the Austin Police Department between 2015 and 2019. The city released a report with 2018 data earlier this year.
Amid conversations in June about police reform, Austin City Council members set a goal of reaching zero racial disparities in traffic stops by 2023.
“Fundamentally our goal is not only to reach zero disparity, but also to have equity in policing,” Farah Muscadin, director of Austin’s Office of Police Oversight, told council members Monday as they reviewed the data analysis at a meeting of the Public Safety Committee.
Muscadin promised to release annual reports on these numbers.
The Austin Police Department said the report showed “some progress.”
“Although we are in the initial stages of reviewing the results and recommendations, we are pleased that according to the data, there has been some progress made to minimize the disproportionate number of traffic stops made among these communities,” a spokesperson for the Austin Police Department wrote in an emailed statement.
APD did not respond to a request to elaborate. According to the report, Black people accounted for a smaller proportion of traffic stops than in 2018, but the difference was minimal: Black people made up 15% of motor vehicle stops in 2018 and then 14% in 2019.
“We recognize there is work that still remains and we continue to make strides towards providing equitable public safety for the entire Austin community,” the APD spokesperson wrote.
The analysis also showed that Black people were three times more likely than White people to be arrested or searched once stopped by police. A similar but lesser disparity held true for Hispanic and Latino people, who were twice as likely to be searched or arrested once stopped.
Of the nearly 20,000 motor vehicle stops involving a Black driver, roughly 12% ended in a search, while 1 in 10 ended in an arrest. Of the more than 45,000 traffic stops involving a Hispanic or Latino person, 7% resulted in an arrest… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Presumptive Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan will face choppy waters in difficult legislative session (Dallas Morning News)
As results started rolling in on Election Day and dashing the Texas Democrats' hopes of flipping the Texas House, Rep. Dade Phelan, a three-term Republican from Beaumont, started working the phones to lock in his bid to become the next leader of the chamber. The next morning, Phelan announced at a Capitol press conference that he had enough votes to become the next speaker of the House. He put out a list of 83 lawmakers from both parties that included most of his rivals for the speaker’s gavel, as well as a coalition of a majority of the Republican Caucus and prominent Black and Latino Democrats. By Thursday, his final GOP rival, Rep. Geanie Morrison of Victoria, folded her campaign and left Phelan a clear path to becoming speaker.
Within three days, the 45-year-old Phelan had maneuvered his way into one of the most powerful jobs in Texas. Now, Phelan, the presumptive speaker of the House, faces a long slog as the Legislature takes on the state’s myriad challenges in his first session in charge. With COVID-19 still ravaging the state’s economy and public health, lawmakers will face a revenue shortfall that could be as high as $20 billion or more. The Legislature is also on the hook for billions of dollars of promises to Texas schools made in last session’s marquee school finance bill. Lawmakers will also have to grapple with how to kick start the state’s economy and fill the need for affordable health care that the pandemic has laid bare. Phelan’s colleagues say his experience as a staffer gives him an appreciation for the hard work of all those involved in the legislative process. They also say his family life — he has a wife, Kim, who is a working attorney, as well as four young boys — keeps him grounded in the realities of working families. F
irst elected to the House in 2014, Phelan is a nuts-and-bolts lawmaker who passed bills on flood mitigation and disaster relief after Hurricane Harvey devastated his hometown in 2017. He has also passed legislation to lower business regulations, like a bill to let out-of-state gulf shrimp unloaders sell their products in Texas. That seemingly small bill amounted to 7 million pounds of additional Gulf shrimp in the state and $100 million in economic activity for local communities, his office estimated. “He is a policy wonk. You don’t often see that in a representative,” said Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from Edinburg who pledged to support Phelan. “[He] gets into the weeds on a lot of the issues that affect most Texans. That in and of itself will ensure his success.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Houston Harvey victims feel 'tossed around' in city-GLO dispute over housing relief (Houston Chronicle)
The flooring alone cost Alice Torres $6,000 to replace. After Hurricane Harvey flooded the home she shared with her mother, Dolores, Torres racked up some $20,000 in expenses buying new light fixtures, door frames and a litany of other basic items that had been wiped out by floodwaters. Her mother used up her savings and Torres took on a mountain of credit card debt to fund the repairs, expecting reimbursement from the government that has yet to arrive. Last Tuesday, less than four months after Dolores, 86, died of COVID-19, a city official told Torres she would have to switch to a Harvey recovery program controlled by the Texas General Land Office, which is taking control of the city’s effort to repair and reconstruct single-family homes damaged by the storm.
When Torres called the state agency, however, she received a confusing message: The city never should have told her to switch, a GLO official said, because the agency will not be reimbursing home repairs as part of its recovery program. Torres has been unable to reach anyone from the city to clarify. As the GLO begins its takeover of part of the city’s Harvey housing recovery program, long-suffering homeowners seeking relief are struggling to get reliable information about where they stand. The confusion has arisen as city and state officials begin to transfer some residents from Houston’s $428 million single-family program over to the GLO’s parallel recovery effort. Some people being told to transfer worry they will have to start the cumbersome process all over again, erasing months of gathering and organizing bank documents, tax records and other application information.
While the GLO says it will aim to keep their places in line, nothing has been guaranteed to the residents. GLO spokeswoman Brittany Eck said homeowners such as Torres could receive repair work under the state-run program while remaining within the city’s pipeline for reimbursements, but city officials said they are seeking clarification because they do not have enough money for that part of the program. Homeowners’ frustrations boiled over in group texts and conference calls last week. In a call arranged by the Harvey Forgotten Survivors Caucus, an organizing group for storm victims, the residents said the instructions have been cursory, at best, and at times inaccurate or contradictory. That effectively has put the onus on them to get caught up, making them dig for incomplete information, they said… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
2 states announce new virus restrictions as US cases hit 11M (Associated Press)
Michigan and Washington on Sunday joined several other states in announcing renewed efforts to combat the coronavirus as more than 11 million cases of COVID-19 have now been reported in the United States — with the most recent million coming in less than a week — and as many Americans prepare to observe a Thanksgiving holiday marked by the pandemic. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration ordered high schools and colleges to stop in-person classes, closed restaurants to indoor dining and suspended organized sports — including the football playoffs — in an attempt to curb the state’s spiking case numbers. The order also restricts indoor and outdoor residential gatherings, closes some entertainment facilities and bans gyms from hosting group exercise classes.
The new rules, set to last three weeks, are extensive but not as sweeping the Democratic governor’s stay-at-home order this past spring, when she faced criticism from a Republican-led Legislature that refused to extend the state’s coronavirus emergency declaration and authorized a lawsuit challenging Whitmer’s authority to combat the pandemic. She faced pushback from those who opposed the decision to toughen rather than relax what already was one of the nation’s strictest stay-home orders.
“The situation has never been more dire,” Whitmer, who authorities say also was the target of a kidnapping plot spurred on by anger over her earlier virus measures, said at a Sunday evening news conference. “We are at the precipice and we need to take some action.” The directives from Michigan come on the same day that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced the state would enforce new restrictions on businesses and social gatherings for the next month as it, too, continued to combat a rising number of cases… (LINK TO STORY)
Trump campaign sees election lawsuits fizzle (The Hill)
The Trump campaign and its allies on Monday remained engaged in numerous election-related lawsuits more than a week after former Vice President Joe Biden was projected to win the race, even as the scattershot legal effort has fallen far short of its goal of changing the election result.
To date, the litigation has produced very little for the Trump campaign in terms of court wins, and it has unearthed no credible evidence that systematic fraud or ballot tampering tainted the election, as President Trump continues to baselessly claim.
As state and federal vote-certification deadlines draw near, and with Biden’s win moving further beyond the reach of the courts, some election law experts have increasingly begun describing Trump’s legal gambit as a lost cause.
“With an overwhelming number of losses and withdrawals of cases, there is no path for the Trump campaign to overturn the results in a single state, much less states making up more than 36 electoral college votes,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Irvine, told The Hill in a statement.
In the weeks leading up to the election, legal experts emphasized that the ultimate impact of any post-Nov. 3 lawsuits would depend on how close the voting result was. If either candidate won comfortably, they said, it would put the race outside the “margin of litigation.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Pence faces a new test after 4 years of fealty to Trump (Politico)
For four years, Vice President Mike Pence has faced one sweeping loyalty test after another. This time, allies are questioning whether there should be a limit to his fealty.
As President Donald Trump pushes to overturn the election outcome and pressures Republicans not to recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the next commander in chief, Pence is facing pressure from allies to put country and party first — even if they collide with the inclinations of his boss.
The head of the White House’s coronavirus task force since the early weeks of the pandemic, Pence could be warning the public about an explosion of coronavirus cases and steering administration officials toward a more robust response to the pandemic — something Trump does not want his government dwelling on. The vice president also could spend more time promoting a pair of GOP senators in special-election races that are likely to determine the balance of power in the Senate — but part of that message rests on acknowledging Trump won’t hold the White House. And Pence, who has long harbored presidential ambitions of his own, might at this moment have his eyes on a 2024 Republican primary — but can’t do that with Trump in the way.
It’s an unusual bind for a vice president who has always been known for coming to Trump’s aid. “At some point, he will have to prioritize his own interests,” said a Republican close to Pence.
What comes after January for Pence is as unknown to the vice president himself as it is to those around him. He doesn’t own a home in Washington or Indiana, where he served as governor before joining the GOP presidential ticket in 2016, and his closest friends aren’t yet sure whether and to where he might relocate. One person familiar with his thinking said Pence is likely to spend the next two years raising money for his own political apparatus if he does launch a White House bid in 2024, delivering paid speeches and assisting GOP House and Senate candidates in the 2022 midterm cycle, all from a home base located back in the Midwest. Pence created his own PAC called the Great America Committee early on in his tenure as vice president and is expected to use it as a vehicle for fundraising between now and 2022… (LINK TO STORY)