BG Reads | News You Need to Know (October 5, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast Episode 108: Industry Update with Skeeter Miller, President, Greater Austin Restaurant Association (SHOW LINK)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Staffers explain how Covid relief funds were disbursed (Austin Monitor)
This summer, City Council rushed to provide economic relief to small businesses and nonprofits shouldering the burden of closures during the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic. On Thursday, as they ratified a contract with the Better Business Bureau for services performed in awarding funding under three programs, Council members still had questions about who got what amount of money and why.
According to information provided by staff of the Economic Development Department, the BBB awarded more than $16.5 million in relief grants to small businesses, a little over $6 million to local nonprofits and more than $3.3 million to Austin creative workers. Council Member Kathie Tovo, holding a list of the recipients, said she could see one recipient who received $55, another who received $9,000 and another who received $40,000. All were within the same industry, she noted, and the same was true with other industries.
Looking at grants for nonprofits, more than 90 received $20,000 grants, including everything from Allison Orr Dance Inc., which does business as Forklift Danceworks, to the Austin Youth & Community Farm, which does business as Urban Roots; the Escuela Montessori de Montopolis; the Austin Geriatric Center; and Preservation Austin. Sunny Hills Pediatric Dentistry got the maximum grant of $40,000, while Trueheart Pet Care was awarded just $18.31. Tovo said she didn’t see how it could be cost-effective for the BBB or the business to receive a grant of less than $100.
She also questioned why the city had given money to a crisis pregnancy center and a dog breeder when the city is putting a lot of money into shelter for homeless pets.
Veronica Briseño, the city’s chief economic recovery officer, told Tovo that the city, not the BBB, established the criteria for those receiving grants.
Briseño explained that the disparate amounts were based purely on the receipts provided by the applicants. “So it was a reimbursement process and it depends on the amount of ask they had for eligible reimbursement.”
Briseño explained some of the smaller grant amounts by saying the city provided reimbursement for personal protective equipment and some businesses asked for those small amounts. She said the city had two separate programs, one of which was just for PPE. The businesses could have requested reimbursement from both programs, she said, but the small-business grant program was oversubscribed very quickly. She said because they had additional funding for the protective equipment, the BBB worked hard to reimburse businesses that requested money for those items… (LINK TO STORY)
Candidates sparring for Travis County sheriff differ on role of office (Austin American-Statesman)
Travis County voters picking a sheriff in the Nov. 3 election will be choosing between an incumbent Democrat who wants to expand on the priorities of her first term in office, and a Republican who believes county law enforcement should wade into contentious Austin matters such as homelessness and protests. Raul Vargas, who is challenging Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez as she seeks a second term, began his law enforcement career a deputy constable before working in the Carrolton and Mission police departments. He then spent 30 years in the Texas Department of Public Safety where he rose to the rank of major, and served as the executive director of the Texas Police Association for one year.
“Homelessness is a big issue that just seems to be getting more and more out of hand,” Vargas said. “Austin is getting their police defunded, and they’re getting their hands tied, so this is just going to continue to get worse. The state is talking about stepping in again, but there’s no need for the state to step in. The sheriff’s office can really take a stand, step in and really take care of its constituents.” Austin City Council members have said they are not defunding the Austin Police Department. City Council members in August unanimously approved a budget that includes plans to shift a few police divisions into other city departments. The City Council voted to cancel three upcoming cadet classes, which cut about $21.5 million from the police budget. As far as stepping in for Austin police, Hernandez said the sheriff’s office has no authority to enforce city ordinances. “I don’t think he understands the role and the responsibility of the sheriff’s office,” she said of Vargas. The Travis County sheriff oversees an agency with a $198 million budget and more than 1,700 employees who are responsible for the Travis County jails, courthouse security and crime investigations in unincorporated parts of the county… (LINK TO STORY)
West Austin resident joined District 6 race after bitter battle over hiking trail fees (Austin American-Statesman)
In March 2019, a country club community in West Austin introduced a fee for a neighborhood hiking trail that the state later said discriminated against outsiders and should be repealed.
Nonresidents of the River Place Limited District had to pay $10 on weekends and at peak times during the week to use the trail, a rigorous 3-mile path that approximately connects Lake Austin with an area just south of RM 2222. Hikers who brought a dog were charged an additional $10.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department directed the neighborhood to stop charging the fee immediately in July 2019, citing language from a 2001 grant in which the state agreed to use $500,000 in taxpayer money for development of the trail and other outdoor amenities in the neighborhood. River Place agreed to let nonresidents use the trail and to charge admission only if fees were “reasonable.”
The state said the $10 fee was not reasonable. The neighborhood claimed it was needed for trail maintenance and would help ease traffic that posed a hazard.
The feud over the fee, in addition to other disagreements with the city, is part of the backdrop for a River Place resident’s run for Austin City Council in the Nov. 3 election. Dr. Jennifer Mushtaler, president of the River Place Limited District and an architect of the trail fee, is challenging Council Member Jimmy Flannigan in District 6, an area that includes River Place, reaches the city’s northwestern boundary and pushes north to the slice of Austin inside Williamson County.
The two have already feuded on the campaign trail. Mushtaler has attacked Flannigan in forums for the council’s decisions to cut the Austin Police Department’s budget by more than $20 million and to repeal the city’s homeless camping ordinance. She also has gone after Flannigan for siding with a council majority last fall to rezone a portion of River Place for 30 single-family residences. Flannigan has questioned Mushtaler’s knowledge of local government and preparedness for a spot on the council.
Flannigan and Mushtaler are both Democrats. Also in the race are Republicans Mackenzie Kelly and Dee Harrison.
None of the four candidates has made the trail fee a significant campaign issue… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Top aides accuse Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of bribery, abusing office (Austin American-Statesman)
Top aides of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have asked federal law enforcement authorities to investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes against the state’s top lawyer.
In a one-page letter to the state agency’s director of human resources, obtained Saturday by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, seven executives in the upper tiers of the office said that they are seeking the investigation into Paxton “in his official capacity as the current Attorney General of Texas.”
The Thursday letter said that each “has knowledge of facts relevant to these potential offenses and has provided statements concerning those facts to the appropriate law enforcement.”
Paxton, a 57-year-old Republican, was first elected in 2014. His office said in a statement Saturday evening: “The complaint filed against Attorney General Paxton was done to impede an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office. Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law.”
The statement did not elaborate… (LINK TO STORY)
Gov. Abbott: New criminal allegations against Texas AG Ken Paxton ‘raise serious concerns’ (Dallas Morning News)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he was concerned by allegations that Attorney General Ken Paxton broke state and federal laws related to bribery and abuse of office. “These allegations raise serious concerns. I will withhold further comment until the results of any investigation are complete,” Abbott said in a statement Sunday. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick weighed in later Sunday, saying he first learned about the allegations in the media and echoing Abbott that they were “obviously concerning” but that he’d withhold further comment “until the investigation is complete."
Abbott and Patrick’s remarks came a day after The Austin-American Statesman and KVUE-TV first reported that several of Paxton’s top employees had accused him of “improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses” and asked federal law enforcement to investigate. The staffers, who included many of the most senior lawyers in Paxton’s agency, filed a whistleblower complaint with the agency’s human resources director on Thursday. They provided no further details on the exact nature of their allegations against Paxton, The Statesman report added. The state’s other top GOP leaders — including Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen and Party Chairman Allen West — did not respond to request for comment Sunday. Paxton, a Republican first elected to statewide office in 2014, co-chairs the Lawyers for Trump coalition. The coalition also did not respond to requests for comment Sunday. Paxton is up for re-election in 2022… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas colleges offer free coronavirus tests. Why aren't more students getting tested? (Texas Tribune)
Texas colleges and universities spent the summer months bulking up their testing capacity to catch COVID-19 outbreaks fueled by students who are infected but don’t show symptoms.
The University of Texas at Austin said it could test up to 5,000 asymptomatic students, faculty and staff weekly. Texas A&M University trumpeted a similar goal of testing more than 5,000 students each week – about 7% of the student body. And the University of Texas at El Paso, with about 25,000 students, said it had the capacity to test up to 2,500 campus members weekly.
But halfway through the semester, schools are reporting participation rates far below their goals, prompting at least one school to go so far as to offer prizes to students who volunteer to get a coronavirus test.
UT-Austin, which has more than 50,000 students, has only required students to be tested before attending football games. During the first five weeks of the semester, the school had the capacity to test 25,000 community members but tested only 8,870 – an average of about 1,770 per week. That included the 1,198 students tested for the first home football game on Sept. 12… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Republicans gripped by dread as multiple crises swirl (Politico)
On Sunday evening Sen. Lindsey Graham, like many Republicans in Washington, was simultaneously monitoring three political crises, all of which were made worse by the spread of coronavirus infections through the upper echelons of the Republican Party.
First there was the president. His real condition was as much of a mystery to Graham as to everyone else. Graham said he hadn’t talked to Trump since Friday after the president’s positive Covid-19 test came back — “he was in good spirits” — but that he had just checked in with Jared Kushner earlier in the day to get an update.
Then there was the Supreme Court. The virus has forced six Republican senators — three who have tested positive for covid — into quarantine for at least two weeks. Two of them, Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, are on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Graham chairs. His plans to push through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett were now uncertain. Mitch McConnell said over the weekend that “our biggest enemy” in confirming Barrett before the election, and cementing a conservative 6-3 high court majority, is “the coronavirus, keeping everybody healthy and well and in place to do our job.”
Trump had immediately recognized how the “enemy” could derail the plan. On Friday Graham said that Trump asked him about Barrett and the senator assured him “we’re moving on.”
Finally, Graham was dealing with his own reelection. The South Carolina senator who famously declared in 2015 that Trump was a “complete idiot,” became a Trump loyalist over the last two years in part to fend off GOP primary challengers. It worked. He easily secured his party’s nomination only to be thrust into a competitive general election against a well-financed and gifted Democratic candidate, Jaime Harrison, who has made the race competitive. The two men had debated on Saturday night and Graham was still trying to make sense of how it went… (LINK TO STORY)
Pence ordered borders closed after CDC experts refused (AP News)
Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus, according to two former health officials. The action has so far caused nearly 150,000 children and adults to be expelled from the country.
The top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor who oversees these types of orders had refused to comply with a Trump administration directive saying there was no valid public health reason to issue it, according to three people with direct knowledge of the doctor’s refusal.
So Pence intervened in early March. The vice president, who had taken over the Trump administration’s response to the growing pandemic, called Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC’s director, and told him to use the agency’s special legal authority in a pandemic anyway.
Also on the phone call were Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. Redfield immediately ordered his senior staff to get it done, according to a former CDC official who was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The CDC’s order covered the U.S. borders with both Mexico and Canada, but has mostly affected the thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants arriving at the southern border. Public health experts had urged the administration to focus on a national mask mandate, enforce social distancing and increase the number of contact tracers to track down people exposed to the virus… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Use of 'China virus' led to spike in anti-Asian bias: study (The Hill)
he use of the phrase "China virus" by top administration officials, including President Trump, has coincided with a surge in discrimination against Asian-Americans, according to a new study.
The study, from professors at the Universities of California — Berkeley and San Francisco — as well as the Tulane School of Medicine, found that years of incidents of violence and bias against Asian Americans trending downward was reversed earlier this year after top U.S. officials used the term to describe the COVID-19 outbreak.
It also found that bias by Americans toward Asian Americans "declined steadily from 2007 through early 2020 but reversed trend and began to increase on March 8, following the increase in stigmatizing language in conservative media outlets," according to the study's abstract.
Eli Michaels, a researcher on the study, told NBC News in an interview that U.S. officials' statements had added a racial connotation to the virus, leading to a rise in anti-Asian bias.
“Progress against bias is generally stable,” Michaels said. “But this particular rhetoric, which associates a racial group with a global pandemic, has particularly pernicious effects.”
Top administration officials began using the term when the number of virus cases increased in the U.S. earlier this year. President Trump has used the term repeatedly in public events and on social media in order to blame its origins. Early cases of the virus were first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
"Big China Virus breakouts all over the World, including nations which were thought to have done a great job. The Fake News doesn’t report this," he tweeted in August… (LINK TO STORY)