BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 24, 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:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin's programs to aid music venues, bars, other businesses take shape (Austin Business Journal)
There's a chance that owners of Austin live music venues and legacy businesses could see some short-term financial assistance from the city before the end of the year.
But larger grants to help businesses that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic likely won't be available until early 2021.
Austin City Council in October allocated $15 million for live music venues, bars, restaurants and child care providers through the Save Austin's Vital Economic Sectors, or SAVES, Act. Those businesses have long been pegged as entities in critical need of financial aid to pull through the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic — and many of them are also central to Austin's identity as "Live Music Capital of the World."
Council will consider at a Dec. 3 meeting the framework of the proposed Live Music Venue Preservation Fund and Legacy Business Relief Grant. They asked city staffers to bring back "enhanced guidelines" that will shape how the city could help these businesses longterm. Council already approved guidelines for a grant program for child care providers… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin's airport prepares for uptick in holiday travelers as it awaits industry rebound (KUT)
Despite warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities, officials at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport expect an increase in passengers during the holiday travel season.
Like a lot of things for the aviation industry this year, there’s a lot of uncertainty about the exact number.
Unlike at other airports, the holidays are typically not the busiest time at Austin-Bergstrom. Officials expect that to be different this year since events like ACL and the Formula One race have been canceled.
At the same time, airlines are reporting an uptick in cancelations and fewer bookings.
“Whether or not to travel, we know, is a personal decision,” said Mandy McClendon, a spokesperson for the airport. “On the busiest day since the pandemic, we had about 11,000 outbound folks. On the lowest, we had about 500. And no matter how many travelers come through our doors, we take the same precautions.”
Those precautions include increased sanitation and disinfection procedures, and ubiquitous signs about masks and social distancing. The airport also closed its economy parking lots and lowered its garage pricing, so passengers won’t have to get on shuttles.
The travel season comes as the aviation industry struggles to recover from the pandemic, one of the biggest disruptions to the industry in decades.
“It's almost like we rewound the clock and went back to the '70s, if you look at total industry demand,” Dave Harvey, vice president of Southwest Business, said during a discussion hosted by the Austin Chamber of Commerce on Friday. “So we’ve been punched in the gut, we got back on the mat. And this is all about how do you get off the mat and make sure we're meeting the needs of our customers.”
Southwest has the largest share of passenger traffic in Austin, Harvey said, and that’s expected to grow. But he says he doesn’t expect traffic to rebound significantly until 2022, and a return to 2019 levels isn’t expected until 2023 or 2024.
A rebound couldn't come soon enough for the airport, which saw its ambitious expansion plans put on hold because of the pandemic… (LINK TO STORY)
Application deadline extended for Austin Transit Partnership board (Austin Monitor)
Application deadlines have been extended to 5 p.m. on Dec. 2 for community members interested in serving on the five-member board of the Austin Transit Partnership, the independent organization that will oversee execution of Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Project Connect. The deadline was previously Nov. 27.
Applications will be reviewed by the Capital Metro-City Council joint nominating committee in early December. Selected nominees will be submitted for appointment at Council’s next scheduled joint meeting with the Capital Metro board on Dec. 18.
The Austin Transit Partnership board will include one member of Council, one member of the Capital Metro board and three Austin residents with expertise in finance, engineering and construction, and planning and sustainability. The board is scheduled to hold its first meeting on Jan. 20 to approve its bylaws, elect board officers, adopt an interim budget and approve interlocal agreements with the city and Capital Metro. The board will then turn its attention to hiring a third-party auditor and guiding design and construction of the transit plan’s initial investment.
“For a long time, the election felt like the finish line, but it’s the starting line,” Capital Metro chief counsel Kerri Butcher said Monday. “We started running months ago and are in full swing with Project Connect.”
As virtual National Environmental Policy Act community meetings kick off for the Orange and Blue light rail lines early next year, the city’s Equity Office will be leading the development of an equity assessment tool that accounts for Project Connect’s potential impacts on the human environment as well as the physical environment. The office intends to coordinate with the NEPA team to incorporate any relevant environmental findings into the equity tool.
“It makes sense that we would really be sort of aligned with each other and informing each other as a part of that process,” Chief Equity Officer Brion Oaks said at last week’s meeting of Council’s Mobility Committee… (LINK TO STORY)
Students, booming suburbs swung Hays vote to Democrats (Austin American-Statesman)
Catherine Wicker had to go about registering Texas State University voters much differently this year. Typical get-out-the-vote events were out the window with the coronavirus pandemic. Outside organizations were prohibited from holding voter registration events on campus. Wicker, a graduate student in public administration, said her efforts with the national nonpartisan organization Campus Vote Project had to evolve. Passing around clipboards wouldn’t work. Sharing pens was too risky. But an even greater challenge was finding where to meet her fellow Bobcats while many of the university’s 37,849 students attended classes remotely.
In the end, Wicker said, volunteers were able to register 1,200 new voters in Hays County. While it is a small fraction of the nearly 108,000 people who voted in this month’s election, the voting power of Texas State University played an outsized role in Democrat Joe Biden winning by nearly 11 percentage points in a county that hadn’t favored a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992. An American-Statesman analysis of precinct level voting data showed that the areas surrounding the campus and in San Marcos bent heavily for Biden. Biden ran up the score on President Donald Trump in and around the San Marcos campus by margins that were generally above 60 percentage points. In one student-housing heavy precinct east of campus along Aquarena Springs Drive, Biden won by nearly 70 percentage points, the highest margin in Hays County. While Trump generally won in the more rural western reaches of Hays County, his margins of victory were far slimmer than the wallopings delivered in San Marcos. A heavily Democratic student body and an exploding population along the Interstate 35 corridor that leans progressive is fueling Hays County’s dramatic shift toward the left in recent years, county political leaders say.
“Pretty much what we’re seeing is the bedroom community aspect of Travis County,” Hays County GOP Chair Bob Parks said. “Williamson County also had a little bit of a change there with more Democrat votes, and Hays County is the same way. There’s a lot of bedroom communities that are close and contiguous with Travis County. As you know, Travis County is our liberal bastion.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Who’ll get Texas’ first COVID-19 shots? Hospital, nursing home, EMS, home health workers top the list (Dallas Morning News)
Hospital staff members working directly with coronavirus patients and workers in long-term care institutions serving vulnerable populations should be the first state residents to receive vaccines for COVID-19, a Texas health department panel has recommended. On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott hailed the issuance of a priority list for who should receive initial shots from a limited supply of vaccine, beginning as early as next month.
Abbott also praised the panel for embracing seven standards to guide its future rationing decisions, such as initially placing priority on health-care workers and workers essential to the state’s economy moving forward, but also protecting at-risk subgroups of the population and recognizing “health inequities” and Texas’ considerable geographic diversity. The standards and a definition of health care workers were adopted in recent days by the Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel, a group of 17 advisers, including legislators, that state health commissioner John Hellerstedt created last month.
“These guiding principles established by the Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel will ensure that the State of Texas swiftly distributes the COVID-19 vaccine to Texans who voluntarily choose to be immunized,” Abbott said in a written statement… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas Republicans eye 2022 — and beyond — after romping in November election (Texas Tribune)
The day before the Nov. 3 election, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was in Corpus Christi about to begin a stump speech in support of the state’s senior senator, John Cornyn, when someone began chanting about an election — but not the imminent one.
“Cruz 2024! Cruz 2024!”
It was a small reminder that, as all-consuming the 2020 election was for Texas Republicans, many eyes had already begun to shift beyond it. Every statewide elected official is up for reelection in 2022 — a ticket led by Gov. Greg Abbott — and speculation is already simmering about whether a Texan will run for president two years later, which could set off a dramatic round of political dominoes.
Democrats, meanwhile, suffered devastating setbacks on Nov. 3, dampening the appetite for any immediate post-election maneuvering for 2022.
Abbott’s bid for a third term will be the marquee contest in two years, and at least before the latest election, Beto O’Rourke or Julián Castro were among the names most discussed as potential Democratic challengers. But Abbott could also face a credible primary opponent, and the new Texas GOP chairman, Allen West, has stoked speculation that he could step up with his striking splits with the governor on his coronavirus response.
Abbott has said he is “100%” running for reelection but more recently breathed new life into long-lingering rumors he is thinking about a White House run.
After 2022, Abbott said in a recent radio interview, “we’ll see what happens.”
Cruz appears a more likely bet for the next presidential race. He has not concealed his interest in running for president again after falling short in 2016, and 2024 would bring an additional layer of political intrigue because he is also up for reelection that year… (LINK TO STORY)
As Texas grows, communities face an unwelcome neighbor: concrete companies. Homeowners have few options. (Texas Tribune)
Peggy Watson noticed a few months ago that one of her neighbors was clearing his 78-acre plot of land. It was a matter of time, she thought. Her rural and “eclectic” neighborhood outside Austin was getting more valuable by the day as the city grew.
But it wouldn’t be an apartment complex that would occupy the unrestricted land in Oak Hill, as she and her neighbors anticipated. They soon learned it could be a concrete batch plant to service the construction of Oak Hill Parkway, a Texas Department of Transportation plan to widen Highway 290. The owner was courting TXDOT's contractor to make it happen. (Laurie Simmons, a spokesperson for Colorado River Constructors, confirmed that the landowner had reached out to the company but said the plant site still hasn't been selected.)
Watson was even more surprised to learn that there was little in the way of legal protections to stop the plant from being built next door — a patchwork of state and local environmental laws, she said, has left her neighborhood few options.
“It just seems like we’re in this Bermuda Triangle of responsibility and accountability,” said Watson, 64, a retired head of a birdwatching tour business turned anti-concrete batch plant activist. “Because we’re not in the city, the city defers to the county on transportation. And, the county defers to the city on environmental issues. It’s like the Wild West.”
Watson’s neighborhood faces an increasingly familiar problem for rural and urban homeowners alike across Texas. As the state’s population continues to grow, so too does the need for roads, bridges and sidewalks. It’s driving demand for the dusty business of concrete, cement, sand and other aggregate materials, which are being stored, transported and mixed closer and closer to residential areas.
At the same time, those in the industry say that locating operations far from construction projects is expensive and argue that the state’s environmental laws are adequate.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's process "is very protective" of public health and the environment, said Josh Leftwich, president and CEO of Texas Aggregates and Concrete Association, an industry group for concrete, cement and aggregate companies in the state. “Companies do try to work hard with the community.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Trump tells GSA that Biden transition can begin (The Hill)
The General Services Administration (GSA) has informed President-elect Joe Biden and his team that the Trump administration is ready to begin the transition process.
GSA Administrator Emily Murphy, a Trump appointee, sent a letter to Biden on Monday saying that he would have access to federal resources and services to facilitate a presidential transition, according to a copy obtained by The Hill.
Trump in two tweets wrote that he had asked his administration to begin the transition, though he did not concede his loss to Biden and said he would keep fighting.
The tweets marked a shift for Trump, who has refused to acknowledge the results of the election since Biden was first projected as the winner more than two weeks ago.
The move comes roughly three weeks after the presidential election, amid mounting pressure on Murphy to ascertain Biden as the winner so that millions of dollars in federal resources would be freed up and Biden's team would be given access to government agencies in order to help with the transition process. Biden and Democrats warned that the delayed transition threatened national security and would hamper the incoming administration’s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration, I have the ability under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, to make certain post-election resources and services available to assist in the event of a presidential transition,” Murphy wrote… (LINK TO STORY)
Millions stick to Thanksgiving travel plans despite warnings (Bloomberg)
About 1 million Americans a day packed airports and planes over the weekend even as coronavirus deaths surged across the U.S. and public health experts begged people to stay home and avoid big Thanksgiving gatherings.
And the crowds are only expected to grow. Next Sunday is likely to be the busiest day of the holiday period.
To be sure, the number of people flying for Thanksgiving is down by more than half from last year because of the rapidly worsening outbreak. However, the 3 million who went through U.S. airport checkpoints from Friday through Sunday marked the biggest crowds since mid-March, when the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the United States.
Many travelers are unwilling to miss out on seeing family and are convinced they can do it safely. Also, many colleges have ended their in-person classes, propelling students to return home… (LINK TO STORY)
1,000 U.S. hospitals are 'critically' short on staff — and more expect to be soon (NPR)
More than 1,000 hospitals across the United States are "critically" short on staff, according to numbers released this week by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those hospitals, which span all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, represent about 18% of all hospitals that report their staffing status to HHS. And that number is expected to grow: 21% of all hospitals reporting say they anticipate having critical staffing shortages in the next week.
The worst-hit state is North Dakota with 51% of hospitals that reported saying they're facing shortages; seven states say over 30% of their hospitals are in trouble. This is the first time the federal agency has released this data, which includes limited reports going back to summer. The federal government consistently started collecting this data in July. After months of steadily trending upward, the number of hospitals reporting shortages crossed 1,000 this month and has stayed above since.
The data, however, are still incomplete. Not all hospitals that report daily status COVID-19 updates to HHS are reporting their staffing situations, so it's impossible to tell for sure how much these numbers have increased. While the data is a welcome addition to the arsenal of information that public health officials have to fight COVID-19, it highlights the shortcomings of what the federal government has made available to the public. Though the government has precise daily figures for COVID-19 hospitalizations at thousands of the country's hospitals, it shares only a small subset of this information to people outside government… (LINK TO STORY)
The secretive consulting firm that’s become Biden’s Cabinet in waiting (Politico)
The website for WestExec Advisors includes a map depicting West Executive Avenue, the secure road on the White House grounds between the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, as a way to show what the consulting firm can do for its clients.
“It is, quite literally, the road to the Situation Room, and it is the road everyone associated with WestExec Advisors has crossed many times en route to meetings of the highest national security consequences,” the firm says.
And staffers are poised to cross it again — en masse.
The firm, which now looks like a government-in-waiting for the next administration, was founded in 2017 by Tony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of State, and Michèle Flournoy, a top contender for secretary of Defense. And one of its former principals, Avril Haines, is Biden’s pick for director of national intelligence.
But little is known about WestExec’s client list. Because its staffers aren’t lobbyists, they are not required to disclose who they work for. They also aren’t bound by the Biden transition’s restrictions on hiring people who have lobbied in the past year.
Such high-powered Washington consulting firms are “the unintended consequence” of greater disclosure requirements for registered lobbyists, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight.
By not directly advocating for federal dollars on behalf of their clients, they don't have to publicly divulge who is paying them and for what activities, such as the connections they make with government agencies, she said. But it is also impossible to assess the influence they have on federal expenditures.
“They avoid becoming registered lobbyists or foreign agents and are instead becoming strategic consultants,” she said.
WestExec is loaded with other former top Democratic national security and foreign policy officials who raised money for the Biden campaign, have joined his transition team, or have served as unofficial advisers.
At least 21 of the 38 WestExec employees listed on the firm’s website donated to the Biden campaign; Flournoy alone raised more than $100,000… (LINK TO STORY)