BG Reads | News You Need to Know (October 26, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
Early voting in Travis County runs through Friday, October 30 (Monday-Saturday, 7:00 AM-7:00 PM, Sunday 12-6 PM). Find early voting locations here (Travis County only).
***NEW*** BG Podcast Episode 111: Discussing COVID-19's Impact on Austin's Tech Scene with Amber Gunst, CEO, Austin Technology Council (SHOW LINK)
On this episode we speak with Amber Gunst, CEO, Austin Technology Council (ATC). She and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss COVID-19’s impact on the Austin tech scene, as well as major state and local policy priorities/concerns going into 2021.
Next week for Episode 112 we speak with Perla Cavazos, Deputy Administrator at Central Health.
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin Public Health launches coalition to prepare for future Covid-19 vaccine distribution (Austin Monitor)
Austin Public Health is gearing up for when a Covid-19 vaccine becomes available.
The health authority announced Friday the launch of the Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution Coalition, a group of health care and community partners that will help APH develop strategies for distributing the vaccine.
“Slowing the spread of Covid-19 in Austin-Travis County has been a community effort since the beginning,” APH Director Stephanie Hayden said in a press release. “Planning for the distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine will once again require many stakeholders and a community effort to be successful. 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.”
There is no authorized Covid-19 vaccine yet, but several are being developed. While a vaccine could be approved by the end of the year, state health officials say it likely won’t be widely available to Texans until well into 2021.
When vaccines are available, the supply is expected to be limited at first, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means critical groups, like essential workers and those at the highest risk of developing severe illness from Covid-19, will be first in line to receive the vaccine… (LINK TO STORY)
As Austin reviews how it trains police, the City graduates the last cadet class for at least a year (KUT))
Forty-two new police officers graduated Friday at a ceremony at a church in North Austin. It was the last graduating class of new officers for the foreseeable future, as the city put the department’s academy on hold as it audits training materials.
“It means I’ll be the rookie for a really long time,” said Vanessa Swesnik, who worked as a teacher and gym manager before applying to APD’s training academy. “But that also means that I’ll get to learn a lot.”
In December, Austin City Council members asked city staff to review how the department trains new police officers after former cadets said leadership intimidated them and used discriminatory language during training in 2017. Council members decided APD would gather its last class of cadets in February, then put the program on hold until after the city finished its training audit.
Those February inductees graduated Friday. At least 100 people gathered to watch the graduation, most of them masked. (KUT asked APD why it decided to hold an in-person ceremony as local public health officials warn of another uptick in COVID-19 cases. APD said it was following the governor’s latest emergency order, which states there are no occupancy limits for “local government operations.”)
“We are at a pivotal moment in policing, both nationally but especially in our Austin community,” City Manager Spencer Cronk told graduates. “More so than ever, our community is watching closely your performance and the performance of your department.”
The Austin City Council voted in August to cut and reinvest $20 million from the police budget, earmarking another $50 million in potential cuts over the next year. The decision came after protests erupted in May against police violence, and after hundreds of people told City Council members to move at least $100 million out from the police department and spend it elsewhere… (LINK TO STORY)
As they brace for a scary Halloween, Austin businesses hope for a bounce (Austin American-Statesman)
spring, when school drama programs and local theater groups canceled their costume rentals.
Demand for party and special event costumes quickly evaporated as well.
“From April to August there was no business — zero,” said Mary Ellen Butler, who owns the Round Rock costume rental business with her family. “We saw a small bit in September, and now we’re moving into Halloween, so hopefully there will be a little more. Hopefully.”
For many small Austin businesses including costume shops, party stores, seasonal pop-ups and event spaces, Halloween provides a crucial boost to the bottom line and marks the beginning of the do-or-die holiday season.
Now many are trying to figure out how to navigate what they expect to be a steep drop-off in sales as consumers change the way they celebrate the holidays during the pandemic. Nationally, Halloween spending alone is expected to fall 8% to $8.05 billion, with costume sales accounting for much of the decline, according to the National Retail Federation.
“Halloween is a make-or-break time for smaller seasonal retailers,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, told the Washington Post. “They wait all year for October. Now the pandemic is going to put many of them back an entire year, if not more.” … (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Democratic state Rep. Senfronia Thompson files to run for speaker of the Texas House (Texas Tribune)
State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, the longest-serving woman and Black person in the history of the Texas Legislature, filed Friday to run for speaker of the Texas House, making her the first to enter what’s been a quiet race so far to replace retiring Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton.
Thompson, a Houston Democrat, has filed ahead of a November general election in which Democrats are confident they will regain control of the House for the first time in nearly two decades. If elected, she would be the first Black woman to serve as speaker.
Thompson's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thompson is not the only candidate expected to enter the race, which has had a different tempo and tone from the last one in 2018. The uncertainty surrounding which party will be in control of the lower chamber in 2021 has kept the race relatively quiet; by this time two years ago, several candidates had already declared that they were seeking the gavel… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in donor’s legal affairs multiple times this year (Dallas Morning News)
For years, Jeff Mateer served as Attorney General Ken Paxton’s loyal second-in-command, handpicked to run the agency’s daily operations. But this summer, Mateer began to have serious qualms about his boss’s behavior. Paxton appeared to be taking a special interest in Nate Paul, a Texas real estate developer and campaign donor who was under federal investigation. In July, Mateer said, he learned Paxton wanted to personally appear in court to argue that a charity’s lawsuit against Paul’s businesses should be put on hold.
Attorneys general almost never show up for such lawsuits, and since the case involved a campaign donor, Mateer said he considered the circumstances suspect. “I was shocked,” Mateer told The Dallas Morning News in his first in-depth interview since he stepped down this month.
“That, in my memory, no attorney general has ever done.” The incident was not isolated. This year, Paxton has personally intervened at least four times on a range of legal matters before his agency that involved or helped Paul, including at least one previously unreported incident in early spring, The News has learned. Experts say that level of involvement from the attorney general, the state’s top lawyer, is highly unusual and potentially unethical. Some of Paxton’s top deputies claim it is criminal… (LINK TO STORY)
El Paso officials ask residents to stay home for two weeks as COVID-19 hospitalizations surge (Texas Tribune)
As El Paso continues to grapple with a surge of coronavirus cases, county authorities on Sunday implemented a curfew and city health officials asked residents to stay home for the next two weeks in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.
COVID-19-related hospitalizations in the area have spiked from 259 to 786 in less than three weeks — a 300% increase, according to Angela Mora, the director of the El Paso Public Health Department. And over the past 14 days, El Paso County has seen nearly 10,000 cases, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Sunday’s stay-at-home request from city officials — and the announcement of the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. county curfew — came nine days ahead of Election Day and as El Paso follows a statewide trend of record turnout during early voting. Officials, though, stressed that Sunday's announcement did not mean residents should not vote if they have not already…(LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Pence’s Chief of Staff and Other Key Aides Test Positive for Coronavirus (Wall Street Journal)
At least five people close to Vice President Mike Pence, including his chief of staff and a top campaign adviser, have tested positive for Covid-19, but with just days left until Election Day, President Trump’s running mate will maintain a busy campaign schedule.
Mr. Pence, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, has been in close contact with his chief of staff Marc Short, who tested positive on Saturday, the vice president’s spokesman Devin O’Malley said.
Marty Obst, Mr. Pence’s longtime political adviser, also recently tested positive, according to people familiar with the matter, and at least three additional staff in the vice president’s office also have tested positive, one person familiar with the matter said.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Sunday that multiple staff members close to Mr. Pence had tested positive but didn’t identify others beyond Mr. Short by name. He compared the contagion to the flu, and said the administration was aiming to contain the virus.
“We are not going to control the pandemic,” Mr. Meadows said on CNN. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”
Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said the Trump White House was “admitting defeat” and that Mr. Pence “should be following the guidelines” when it comes to campaign travel. Earlier this month, Ms. Harris canceled campaign events for several days after one of her top aides tested positive… (LINK TO STORY)
CDC staffers say morale inside the public health agency has plummeted during the pandemic (NBC News)
Months of mixed messages, political pressure and public gaffes about Covid-19 have caused morale at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to turn "toxic," said four current and two former CDC staffers, with one saying the election could be a "tipping point" for a mass exodus if President Donald Trump wins. "The house is not only on fire," said a veteran CDC staffer who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. "We're standing in ashes." Current and former CDC employees told NBC News that career staffers are still struggling to influence key decisions on the pandemic as new daily Covid-19 cases soar nationwide, but are overruled by Trump appointees when politics intrudes.
Most recently, they said, they wanted to extend the "No Sail" order for cruise ships through February. It had been set to expire four days before the Nov. 3 election. Instead, they say Vice President Mike Pence's office pushed for the order to expire, which stands to benefit 21,000 cruise industry workers in the swing state of Florida. The dispute between the White House and the CDC over the cruise ship order was first reported by ProPublica. A White House official said that when the CDC proposed an extension to the "no sail" order it seemed "arbitrary" and "they provided no metrics or data as to why."
The White House official added that two or three weeks ago the vice president, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and CDC Director Robert Redfield hosted a call with the cruise lines to discuss their plan and "discussions about lifting no sail are currently in front of them, but no decision made yet. The political pressure has taken its toll on CDC employees, said the current and former staffers. One current staffer said that during a recent Zoom call, a supervisor went so far as to instruct CDC staff to be loyal to the Constitution, not to the president. Another current employee said: "I don't know if the damage to our reputation can be overcome with a new administration. I worry it's a permanent problem."… (LINK TO STORY)
Republicans crash Florida early vote, eating into Democrats’ lead (Politico)
Florida Republicans are pouring out of the trenches.
After weeks of Democrats outvoting them by mail, Republican voters stormed early voting precincts in person this week, taking large bites out of their opponents’ historic lead in pre-Election Day ballots.
The Democratic advantage was still huge as of Saturday morning: 387,000 ballots. But that’s a 21 percent reduction from Democrats’ high water mark, set three days prior. The election is in 10 days.
President Donald Trump was one of those GOP voters going to the polls, kicking off Florida’s statewide in-person early voting period Saturday by casting his ballot in West Palm Beach and livestreaming an event to urge supporters to show up and catch Democrats. Further south, in Miami, former President Barack Obama held a rally for his former vice president, Joe Biden, at Florida International University.
The split-screen schedule of the two presidents, each of whom carried Florida with different voter coalitions, shed light on the different strategies of the two campaigns in Trump’s must-win state, with the president trying to supersize older and white voter turnout and Obama seeking to boost young Black and Latino voting… (LINK TO STORY)