BG Reads | News You Need to Know (October 12, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
***NEW*** BG Podcast Episode 109: Q4 2020 Update with Veronica Briseño, Chief Economic Recovery Officer, City of Austin (SHOW LINK)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Prop A: What voters would get for $7.1 billion transit plan (American American-Statesman)
While many Austinites will be focused on the presidential election when they head to the polls starting Tuesday, buried deep in the ballot is a tax rate election that could change the face of the city.
Proposition A is perhaps the most ambitious mass transit item ever to come before Austin voters. It calls for a permanent increase to the city’s property tax rate to fund a $7.1 billion mass transit system. Capital Metro refers to that as an initial investment for what the agency has dubbed Project Connect.
Mayor Steve Adler has called the plan “transformational.” It would build the city’s first light rail lines, create multiple new rapid bus routes, install a downtown tunnel system, and provide $300 million for affordable housing and to address housing displacement.
Its approval would be a stark turnaround from the 2,004-vote margin that brought down the city’s first rail proposal in the 2000 election.
“The best time to have built mass transit in the city was 20 years ago,” said City Council Member Greg Casar, who spearheaded the addition of a $300 million affordable housing measure to Proposition A. “The second-best time to do that is in November.”
The city also rejected rail in 2014. But many, in hindsight, say that running a rail line along Red River Street and near Interstate 35 was a flawed idea. At the time, even many transit advocates turned away from the proposal because it did not align with the route they believed would have been best: Lamar Boulevard.
Fast forward six years and — amid a pandemic and set against the backdrop of what could be the most anticipated presidential election in a lifetime — Austin voters are once again being asked to decide whether the city’s public transportation system should include trains.
Peck Young, the executive director of the advocacy nonprofit Voices for Austin, sees the idea as anachronistic.
“Investing in light rail is like investing in landline telephones,” Young has said repeatedly in interviews.
Recent surveys, including one from the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, show that not only is traffic down during the pandemic, but congestion might be down permanently.
A CTRMA survey released last month said the number of people who believe they will work from home at least part of the week after the pandemic was nearly twice the number who worked from home before COVID-19.
“There are going to be more people off the roads (working from home) than there will even be off the roads because of billions spent on these choo choo trains,” Young said. “The new lifestyle is going to allow people to keep doing what they’re doing, to telecommute.”
Adler, a proponent of Proposition A like all other members of the City Council, points to recent counts from the Austin Transportation Department indicating that traffic has already bounced back to 80% of what it was before the pandemic.
“The ultimate cost of not doing this is greater than the cost of not doing it now,” Adler said.
One advantage, as Austin comes out of the pandemic, Adler said, is that it will be a huge job program, “which is something the city is going to want.”
Call it a miniature New Deal, but Proposition A comes with a price tag. Its opponents have zeroed in on the cost to the average homeowner as their chief reason to vote against it. And unlike voter-approved bonds that are traditionally used to fund specific infrastructure projects, the tax increase from this ballot measure would be permanent… (LINK TO STORY)
District 4: An incumbent and two challenger (Austin Monitor)
After briefly weighing a state Senate run, Austin City Council Member Greg Casar is seeking reelection once again, facing challengers from his ideological right and left.
Louis C. Herrin III and Ramesses II Setepenre are running against Casar to represent North Central Austin’s District 4 on Austin City Council.
Casar said this campaign has been a departure from a previous reliance on door-knocking to reach voters.
“Even though in many ways we’re socially distanced, people are more engaged with their local government than ever,” Casar said in an interview. “I’m proud of a lot of the change that we’ve been able to make, but I especially have been proud to be a part of working with community members to make that change themselves.”
Casar said he is most proud of the city’s Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance and his advocacy work on the affordable housing bond passed in 2018.
In addition to the city moving forward with repurposing the former Home Depot/Chrysler site near Interstate 35 and St. Johns Avenue, Casar touted expanded amenities in St. John Park, the Highland neighborhood and Cook Elementary School.
“We’re bringing real and new investment to a district that inarguably has been one of the most neglected in the city,” he said. “We’ve brought a lot of public investment to the district, while still focusing also on affordable housing.”
Casar believes the city has made solid progress toward achieving the goals of the Austin Strategic Housing Blueprint and the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan, noting how Orange and Gold service in Project Connect would serve District 4 if Proposition A passes.
“We have to continue to double down,” he said. “I think that essentially we have started to make some real important incremental improvements in a lot of policy areas, but it’s time for us to make more transformative change.”
Casar defended votes on reducing Austin Police Department funding and pivoting dollars to other focus areas, as well as last summer’s vote on the camping ordinance affecting people experiencing homelessness.
“We need to improve both public safety and protect people’s civil rights,” Casar said. “We should be doing both. I think that’s what the Council believes we need to work on.”
“I think that when there are conversations in good faith that there’s actually a lot more agreement than when people are hearing from the governor, who is very clearly fear-mongering,” he added. “I find that people are supportive of our actions when they understand what we actually did.”
Casar said the city will need to address the “public health crisis” created by Covid-19 in order to tackle the economic damage from the pandemic… (LINK TO STORY)
Why tech innovators, startups ditch Silicon Valley for Austin - Opinion (Austin Business Journal)
The dream of Silicon Valley is dead — at least for the vast majority of its residents.
The 1% of those founders, executives and well-paid employees that have made it to the top — those who go work every day for a company like Facebook or Amazon or Google or Netflix — probably aren’t going anywhere. But for the rest of us, the city has little left to offer.
When I first arrived in Silicon Valley over a decade ago, it was still a magnet for the world’s best and brightest. At the time it was just affordable enough that the average resident could enjoy a stable quality of life from their day job while building the next great startup in their garage during their spare time. Those smart, energetic people had ample opportunity to meet, to share ideas, to try to build something unique and afford to fail a few times before finding success.
Silicon Valley was less of a place and more of a culture.
Today, I don’t see that same spirit and energy in the Bay Area. Once the epicenter of disrupting the status quo, it’s evolved over the years to become the status quo itself. Thanks to the pandemic and the rapid transition to remote work, the Valley is now itself ripe for disruption.
That startup culture, which was once unique to a particular area of California, has since been exported all over the world. Few of the new Silicon-Somethings, however, enjoy the advantages that put the Bay Area on the map decades prior. Austin might be the only exception.
While the Valley’s spirit and energy has been taxed and mismanaged and discouraged through overcrowding and unaffordability, it appears to be alive and well about 1,700 miles east. The city of Austin has the culture, it has the lifestyle, it has the venture capital, it has the infrastructure, it has the top-tier educational institutions, it has the natural beauty, and pretty soon I believe it will have the best and brightest talent as well.
I’m far from alone in thinking this way, and a number of influential voices are using their platforms to facilitate an even greater push eastward. Elon Musk recently referred to his West Coast headquarters as “Sanctimonious Valley” in a tweet from April that was liked nearly 100,000 times, before announcing that Tesla’s next Gigafactory will be built in Austin. Just last month, Joe Rogan announced that his $100 million podcasting empire would also move from its current headquarters in L.A. to Austin.
“You need someone who can poke fun at the status quo and challenge deeply assumed beliefs, and that is increasingly difficult to do in the Bay Area,” writer and philosopher Ryan Holiday said during an episode of one of the most popular podcasts in the world, The Tim Ferris Show. “We’re in Austin, which is jokingly referred to as the blueberry in the Tomato Soup ... you have a commingling of political, artistic and financial interests that I deeply enjoy.”
When some of the most popular voices of a generation tell their millions of fans and followers that the Silicon Valley dream has picked up and moved to Austin, it has a real, tangible impact… (LINK TO STORY)
Pilot parking program in San Marcos seeks to aid downtown businesses (Community Impact)
A new pilot program designed to help San Marcos businesses recover from the effects of COVID-19 will begin Oct. 12.
A press release from the city of San Marcos states the 90-Day Curbside Parking Pilot Program, a project from the city’s Main Street Program, will create 15-minute curbside parking spaces in areas of downtown where businesses are already providing curbside service.
“We created temporary curbside parking signage at the start of the pandemic, and both businesses and their customers appreciated this,” said Josie Falletta, downtown coordinator for Main Street, in the release. “This pilot will support businesses as they continue to make sales via curbside services, a strategy that has allowed many stores to weather this pandemic.”
The program will last through Jan. 11 and then be evaluated by city officials regarding its continuance. Seven signs and 14 parking spaces will be allocated throughout downtown San Marcos for the program.
A map from the city shows the signs and parking spaces will be along South LBJ Drive, North Guadalupe Street and West San Antonio Street… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas counties temporarily blocked from offering multiple mail-in ballot drop-off locations (Texas Tribune)
Texas counties are currently blocked from setting up multiple drop-off locations for absentee ballots heading into the Nov. 3 general election due to a temporary order from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That order came hours after top Texas officials on Saturday again sought to limit drop-off locations some voters use during the coronavirus pandemic.
The federal appeals court's order sets up a likely last-minute legal battle over absentee voting in Texas as mail-in ballots are already being collected and early voting is set to begin Tuesday.
Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an emergency stay Saturday, seeking to halt a federal judge's ruling from Friday night that said Texas counties can have multiple absentee ballot drop-off locations. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman's ruling blocked Gov. Greg Abbott's recent order that sought to limit counties to just one such location… (LINK TO STORY)
Days before election, $154 million workforce plan is still developing (San Antonio Express-News)
San Antonians will begin casting votes in person Tuesday on Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s $154 million plan to put those who lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic back to work — but details about how the money will be spent aren’t fully known. Nirenberg wants to use a 1/8-cent sales tax to help 40,000 residents get training for higher-paying jobs or college degrees over four years starting in September 2021. A soon-to-be-released study by economist Steve Nivin found that the San Antonio economy will see $85 in spending for every dollar spent on the program, the mayor said Friday.
“We have developed a program with tried and tested institutions and leaders matched to the industries in a way that allows us to meet the needs of both workers and industry,” Nirenberg said. In the three months since Nirenberg embarked on the push, city officials have figured out some markers, such as who would benefit from the program; how many participants they expect to stick it out and complete their training or degree; and what industries would employ those graduates. How the proposed program will reach those goals — the policies that guide the program and how it will be implemented — won’t be solidified until after the election, if the measure passes. Officials in the city’s economic development department, for instance, are working on an oversight structure for the program. City officials will likely build upon the existing $75 million workforce training program created by the City Council over the summer as part of a $191 million recovery package intended to blunt economic damage caused by the pandemic. That program is supposed to help 10,000 residents get jobs in industries such as construction, health care and advanced manufacturing by September — when the sales tax would kick in… (LINK TO STORY)
Can thermal cameras slow COVID-19 spread? Airports are the testing ground for new tech (Dallas Morning News)
A camera in the security lines at Dallas Love Field is scanning every passerby for elevated temperatures, in a test by the airport and Southwest Airlines to find out if it can detect sick people before they board flights. In the back hallways, employees are getting temperature checks at kiosks before they start work each day, trying to keep sick employees out of the airport, too. As airlines, companies and governments scramble to reopen a battered economy facing the eighth month of a worldwide pandemic, airports are now the frontline for evolving thermal imaging technologies designed to pick out infected travelers before they can spread COVID-19 further.
Temperature scanning device makers such as Dallas-based Wello Inc. and Beaumont’s Infared Cameras Inc. have suddenly been inundated with requests for their technology. Even small restaurants, hotels and schools are asking about it. “It’s not just convention centers and airlines,” said Gary Strahan, CEO of Infrared Cameras Inc. “It’s impacting so many different places.
We have to do something.” Thermal cameras that can pick out COVID-19 cases are a Holy Grail for an airline industry that has lost 70% of its business and is facing another quarter of multibillion-dollar losses, along with any other business or institution trying to keep people safe. Airlines are trying hard to find ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 and assure governments that travelers aren’t bringing the disease with them. Fort Worth-based American Airlines will let passengers bound for Hawaii take rapid COVID-19 tests at DFW International Airport. The airline is also working on a similar program for travelers to Europe and Latin America… (LINK TO STORY)
State GOP Chair Allen West, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller join anti-Greg Abbott protest outside Governor's Mansion (Texas Tribune)
Two of Texas' top Republicans took part Saturday in a protest of Gov. Greg Abbott's coronavirus restrictions outside the Governor's Mansion, a striking display of intraparty defiance three days before early voting begins for a momentous November election.
The "Free Texas" rally featured speeches from Texas GOP Chair Allen West and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, both of whom invoked the governor critically. At one point, Miller turned toward the mansion with a message for Abbott.
"Quite frankly, governor, your cure is worse than the disease," Miller said.
West, who took over the party in July and has been an open critic of some of Abbott's coronavirus decisions, read a resolution that the State Republican Executive Committee passed last month. The resolution tells Abbott: "No Exceptions, No Delays….Open Texas NOW."… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Twitter slows down retweets ahead of U.S. election (Wall Street Journal)
Twitter Inc. will make it harder for posts to go viral ahead of the U.S. election, including by putting limits on how users can retweet. The moves unveiled Friday, which also include pointing users viewing certain tweets to credible content, are among the boldest yet for the social-media platform and are designed to slow the spread of misinformation. Where users previously hit a button to reshare, or “retweet,” items, they will now be directed to a screen that will encourage adding commentary before resharing posts. If users don’t write anything, their post will still appear as a traditional retweet—but the change “adds some extra friction” in the process, according to a company blog post.
Twitter will start experimenting with this change for some users later on Friday and will roll it out to all users Oct. 20. The change will last at least through the end of the week of the U.S. election. “We hope it will encourage everyone to not only consider why they are amplifying a tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts,” Twitter’s legal, policy, trust and safety head Vijaya Gadde and product lead Kayvon Beykpour wrote in a blog post Friday.
Social-media companies have been scrambling to clamp down on potential confusion and ways their platforms can be abused to undermine the integrity of the political process in the U.S. Facebook has said it would suspend all political advertising after the polls close Nov. 3, something that other platforms including Twitter and TikTok have already implemented, and many platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, have taken steps to ban QAnon, the fast-growing conspiracy movement. Twitter has conducted prior experiments to encourage users to read articles before sharing them on the site. Additionally, Twitter plans to display a new prompt that provides credible information when users attempt to retweet a post that Twitter has identified as containing misleading information. This change starts next week… (LINK TO STORY)
The Swamp That Trump Built (New York Times)
It was springtime at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and the favor-seekers were swarming. In a gold-adorned ballroom filled with Republican donors, an Indian-born industrialist from Illinois pressed Mr. Trump to tweet about easing immigration rules for highly skilled workers and their children. “He gave a million dollars,” the president told his guests approvingly, according to a recording of the April 2018 event. Later that month, in the club’s dining room, the president wandered over to one of its newer members, an Australian cardboard magnate who had brought along a reporter to flaunt his access. Mr. Trump thanked him for taking out a newspaper ad hailing his role in the construction of an Ohio paper mill and box factory, whose grand opening the president would attend. And in early March, a Tennessee real estate developer who had donated lavishly to the inauguration, and wanted billions in loans from the new administration, met the president at the club and asked him for help. Mr. Trump waved over his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. “Get it done,” the president said, describing the developer as “a very important guy,” Mr. Cohen recalled in an interview.
Campaigning for president as a Washington outsider, Mr. Trump electrified rallies with his vows to “drain the swamp.” But Mr. Trump did not merely fail to end Washington’s insider culture of lobbying and favor-seeking. He reinvented it, turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign. As president-elect, he had pledged to step back from the Trump Organization and recuse himself from his private company’s operation. As president, he built a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics. As president-elect, he had pledged to step back from the Trump Organization and recuse himself from his private company’s operation.
As president, he built a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics. Federal tax-return data for Mr. Trump and his business empire, which was disclosed by The New York Times last month, showed that even as he leveraged his image as a successful businessman to win the presidency, large swaths of his real estate holdings were under financial stress, racking up losses over the preceding decades. Federal tax-return data for Mr. Trump and his business empire, which was disclosed by The New York Times last month, showed that even as he leveraged his image as a successful businessman to win the presidency, large swaths of his real estate holdings were under financial stress, racking up losses over the preceding decades. But once Mr. Trump was in the White House, his family business discovered a lucrative new revenue stream: people who wanted something from the president.
An investigation by The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Nearly a quarter of those patrons have not been previously reported. But once Mr. Trump was in the White House, his family business discovered a lucrative new revenue stream: people who wanted something from the president. An investigation by The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Nearly a quarter of those patrons have not been previously reported. The tax records — along with membership rosters for Mar-a-Lago and the president’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., as well as other sources — reveal how much money this new line of business was worth… (LINK TO STORY)
Regeneron CEO: Trump's success with antibody cocktail is not evidence of cure (AXIOS)
Leonard Schleifer, the founder and CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, said on Sunday that President Trump's successful treatment with the company's antibody cocktail is "the weakest evidence you can get" on whether the drug is a cure.
Driving the news: Since leaving Walter Reed Medical Center on Monday, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is "immune" from COVID-19 and said he views the antibody cocktail as a "cure."
What they're saying: “The president’s case is a case of one, and that’s what we call a case report. And it is evidence of what's happening, but it’s kind of the weakest evidence that you can get," Schleifer told CBS News' "Face the Nation."
“[T]he real evidence about how good a drug is and what it will do on average has to come from these larger clinical trials, these randomized clinical trials, which are the gold standard, and those are ongoing," he said.
The president’s case is “just low down on the evidence scale that we really need," and while the drug does create immunity, "it's probably going to last you for months," Schleifer added.
The bottom line: “Regeneron can’t do this alone. We need the entire industry. And I am so proud the industry has risen,” Schleifer said… (LINK TO STORY)
Buzz grows around Cuomo as Biden's attorney general pick (AXIOS)
Democrats are so convinced that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo could be considered for Joe Biden's attorney general that aides at the National Governors Association, which Cuomo chairs, are looking into contingencies for replacing him, two sources familiar with the situation tell Axios.
What we're hearing: Some Democratic donors in Cuomo's orbit tell Axios that the governor is being pushed for the job and that Biden would consider him, based on their long friendship.
Why it matters: The AG would be among the most politically sensitive — and high-profile — jobs in a Biden administration.
The Justice Department will face pressure to investigate Trump-era officials — and perhaps Trump himself — for wrongdoing in office.Biden's AG also would manage the federal response to police violence, social unrest and systemic racism, and the AG could seek to use federal powers to blunt state abortion restrictions… (LINK TO STORY)