BG Reads | News You Need to Know (September 21, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
*NEW* The Political Life: Politics, Partnerships, and Publishing in the New American South (SHOW LINK)
This is a special post from our friends at the Political Life podcast, a show people whose lives are immersed in the political world, and how they got there. The episode features our Atlanta-based colleague Howard Franklin, Founder and Managing Partner of Ohio River South, a strategy firm focused on “the New American South.”
Also check out CEO A.J.'s Political Life episode: Launching a Firm and Lobbying in the Lone Star State (SHOW LINK)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin Public Health official says Governor relaxed capacity rules too soon (KUT)
Austin Public Health’s interim health authority says he would’ve rather waited a few more weeks before easing capacity restrictions for businesses in the area.
On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that many businesses – including restaurants, gyms and libraries – can open at 75% capacity beginning Monday. Dr. Mark Escott says Austin Public Health wanted to wait until the city was at stage 2 of its risk-based guidelines before easing restrictions.
"That’s particularly concerning because over the past two weeks we’ve seen an increase in the number of new cases,” Escott said. “On September 3, we had an average of 69 new cases in Travis County. That’s increased 83% in the two weeks since then.”
Stephanie Hayden, director of Austin Public Health, stressed that there are still local orders in place despite the governor’s updates. She also urged people to continue avoiding gatherings.
Escott said there are about four dozen cases in area secondary schools and hundreds of cases in colleges. Despite that, he said, there is currently no evidence any of these cases were transmitted in a classroom.
“[Transmission] is happening in social gatherings, they’re happening in extracurricular activities. We’ve seen clusters in the area related to football, strength and conditioning, cheerleading, band,” Escott said. “We know that these activities are likely to present situations where masking and social distancing is not possible or practical.”
Austin Public Health is asking that children and adults who are active in those kinds of programs wear masks and social distance in their homes to protect other family members.
The highest positivity rate in the area currently is in the 10-19 and 20-29 age ranges. College students are testing at a 10% positivity rate and high school students are testing at 14% – almost triple the rate of the community as a whole… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin jobless rate keeps improving, down to 5.5% (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin’s unemployment rate dipped to 5.5% in August for its fourth straight monthly decline, a trend reflecting significant improvement in the regional economy since tens of thousands of local people lost their jobs earlier this year amid the initial wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The estimated 70,000 unemployed workers in the Austin metro area last month are still twice as many as in August 2019, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, when the local unemployment rate registered 2.8%.
But the figure marks a major turnaround from April, when the local jobless rate spiked to 12.2% — its highest point by far in the three decades that the data have been collected — and about 139,000 people in the Austin area were out of work.
The local unemployment rate has been on a steady decline since then, coming in at 11.4% in May, 7.3% in June and 6.8% in July.
Michael Sury, an economist and managing director of the University of Texas Center for Analytics and Transformative Technologies, attributed the trend partially to the composition of the Austin area’s labor force, which includes a heavy dose of people in tech-related and professional services fields who he said have been able to adjust to the pandemic by performing more functions remotely.
“It’s a tribute to how quickly businesses were able to adapt,” Sury said. “That is a remarkable transition we have made.”
Statewide, the unemployment rate registered 7% in August, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, compared with 8.3% in July and 3.7% in August last year.
Adjusted for seasonal factors, the workforce commission pegged the statewide jobless rate at 6.8% last month, down slightly from 8% in July but well above its rate of 3.5% in August 2019. The agency doesn’t immediately adjust metro-level data for seasonal factors.
The statewide unemployment rate spiked to 13.1% in April, not adjusted for seasonal factors… (LINK TO STORY)
Convention center expansion moves forward (Austin Monitor)
After a long day considering various different topics, City Council voted 10-0-1, with Council Member Leslie Pool abstaining, to authorize staff to move forward with negotiations to purchase two expensive blocks to the west of the Austin Convention Center for the purpose of starting expansion. Pool said she was abstaining because she was concerned about financing for the expansion.
There were no details about the eventual cost since that will be part of the negotiations, but Council approved an exclusive negotiating agreement for blocks 16 and 32. The city will pay $6.3 million in earnest money to begin the process of acquiring the properties between East Second Street on the south and East Fourth Street on the north, between Trinity and San Jacinto Boulevard.
According to documentation provided by staff, “This action is the first of a two-step approval process. The exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) will allow the city, the landowners and developers to establish more detailed specifications, including guaranteed maximum pricing for the acquisition and development of westward expansion of the convention center space. The transaction will include an estimated 750,000 square feet of convention space and related amenities.”
The second step of the process outlined by staff “is anticipated for the summer of 2021, with a real estate purchase and sale agreement with accompanying documents. Once the expansion space is completed to the west, the convention center plans to work towards potential redevelopment of the current convention center space.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin ISD releases more details on which students could return first in phased-in plan (KXAN)
Phased-in learning for Austin Independent School District students is still on track to start in a little over two weeks on Oct. 5.
On Wednesday, Superintendent Dr. Stephanie Elizalde announced she was submitting a waiver to the Texas Education Agency that would extend online learning for another four weeks.
In an email newsletter sent to parents Friday, the district said it will continue to offer a 100% virtual learning option for as long as the TEA allows, but will also give an on-campus option for those who want to return in person.
Starting Oct. 5, campuses will start at 25% capacity, the newsletter said.
“This means that if the amount of students who want to return is less than or equal to 25% of building capacity, then all students who wish to return, may do so,” AISD said in the newsletter.
However, if the amount of students wanting to return is more than 25%, then certain students will have to be prioritized, AISD said. Those prioritized students allowed back on campus are outlined as… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas reports lowest unemployment rate since March, when coronavirus hit the state (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
Six months after the coronavirus pandemic hit Texas, the unemployment rate has dropped to 6.8%, the lowest rate since March 2020, when it was at 5.1%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. August’s data shows that the state’s economy is improving. In April, the unemployment rate hit a peak of 13.5% and has decreased since, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In last month’s report, the unemployment rate was at 8%. In August, the professional and business services sector added 33,200 jobs; trade, transportation and utilities added 28,800 jobs; and the government sector added 25,000 jobs, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
“The Texas unemployment rate continues to move in a positive direction as job seekers and employers adjust to current challenges,” said, Bryan Daniel, Texas Workforce Commission chairman. Locally, Tarrant County commissioners denied themselves and other elected officials a pay raise citing the coronavirus recession. The high unemployment rate experienced in the state was largely due to the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted elected officials to close businesses to combat the spread. Then, since late April, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a reopening plan to jumpstart the economy. Most recently, Abbott opened almost all businesses such as restaurants and retailers to 75% capacity, starting Monday except for bars, which he considers businesses that allow coronavirus to rapidly spread… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas bars and distilleries rip Gov. Greg Abbott for leaving them out of "unacceptable" reopening plan (Texas Tribune)
As Gov. Greg Abbott outlined his latest reopening plan this week, bar owner Greg Barrineau watched in disbelief. Abbott, who announced that Texas restaurants could expand dine-in service to 75% capacity, said bars must remain closed.
“Some bars and their associations have offered some very helpful ideas,” Abbott said of reopening, “and we will continue to work with them on that process.”
But Barrineau, who has laid off his 12 staff members and suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses at Drink Texas, a bar with locations in San Antonio and Boerne, said that assertion of collaboration is “insanity — he doesn’t care about small businesses.”
Michael Klein, the head of Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance, which represents thousands of bars, said that Abbott’s statement about working together was “incorrect,” carefully choosing his words. The TBNA laid out a six-point plan to reopen in August, but Klein said the governor, whom he referred to strictly as “anti-business Abbott,” has not responded to the plan.
“We’ve never heard back from them,” Klein said. “We believe that he is disingenuous.”
Abbott’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
While restaurant owners applauded Abbott’s move to allow them to increase operations, Klein said Thursday’s ruling was “completely unacceptable” for many bars and other facilities where alcohol sales make up more than half of the revenue. It could leave 30% of Texas bars and 39% of distilleries permanently closed within six months, industry leaders said… (LINK TO STORY)
Dallas mayor says council is cutting ‘backroom’ budget deals. But some say he quit communicating (Dallas Morning News)
Council member Adam Bazaldua recalled when he first learned about the Dallas mayor’s proposal to cut City Hall salaries. Instead of hearing about it from Eric Johnson, though, Bazaldua says he found out from the mayor’s social media blitz that included the hashtag “defund the bureaucracy.” Bazaldua said he wasn’t the only one on the council who felt it was “somewhat of a slap in the face.” He called it “a gesture of disrespect” for Johnson to skip personal phone calls and seek support from his colleagues through a media tour. “We have built real relationships among colleagues where we actually collaborate and listen to each other,” Bazaldua said.
The stage was set for a bitter budget battle. The sore feelings stemmed from a communication breakdown between the mayor and many on the 14-member council that started before the coronavirus pandemic began wreaking havoc in North Texas early in the year. And it has precipitated a war of words between proponents of two competing proposals to trim the budget: the mayor’s $6 million in staff salary cuts vs. a $7 million decrease in police overtime favored by Bazaldua and a coalition of 10 other council members. Both sides want to reinvest the savings in other areas, though Johnson’s proposal failed, 13-2, more than a week ago. One consequence of the impasse is that a group of council members have come together to fill the void. They say they’ve built their own coalition through regular contact and close collaboration… (LINK TO STORY)
The problem with politics on NextDoor—and inside Dallas City Hall (D Magazine)
On Sunday, NextDoor users across the city logged in to find a message from Mayor Eric Johnson via what appeared to be the city’s official account. The post read that he did NOT (his caps) support cutting $7 million from the budget for police overtime. The post cited a 28 percent increase in aggravated assaults not related to family violence over the last 10 months. It noted that the murder rate was on track to match last year’s, the most homicides Dallas has seen in a dozen years. The NextDoor post did not include the total amount of what was budgeted for overtime. “With the police department hundreds of officers smaller than it was a few years ago,” the mayor wrote, “the overtime budget supplements patrol officers and detectives working to keep people safe and to catch the offenders responsible.” It said to “let your council member know where you stand” and included a link to the contact information for all 14 of them.
Here are some topics of other recent posts from the city’s NextDoor account: a request to take the U.S. Census, locations for mosquito control spraying, COVID-19 testing locations, bulk trash pickups skipping a week. Nothing political. That made the mayor’s post stick out. It didn’t mention the other side of what he’s referencing. Why would it? It was a political ad — if not as defined by the Texas Ethics Commission then at least in its intent. The mayor’s strategy of getting his message out wherever he can despite lacking support from his colleagues has drawn the ire of city staff. Last week, he even tweeted a link to a favorable story published by the Empower Texans-owned Texas Scorecard, which he claimed contained “actual facts” about the amendment. It was a bizarre move; Johnson, a Democrat, elevated a website owned by an organization that is funded with dark money and has for years used its resources to get Tea Party and other far-right conservatives elected to state office. His email newsletter has repeatedly advocated for his amendment, which some on city staff suspect violates state ethics rules. Johnson’s staff maintains all of the mayor’s messaging is above board.
NextDoor, meanwhile, is a highly segmented platform. You can see only posts from your own neighborhood. It verifies your address through your mobile phone’s billing address, your utility bill, your driver’s license — something official. But if you’re the mayor, you can talk to everyone. The whole city elected you. Some cops can do this, too. If you’re a Dallas resident who perhaps does not pay attention to the discourse at City Hall — remember, just 13 percent of Dallas residents voted in the mayoral election — and see that the City Council is cutting police overtime, perhaps you would be more inclined to contact your council member. “And the calls for people to contact them have been quite effective,” says Tristan Hallman, the mayor’s chief of policy and communications… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
McConnell locks down key GOP votes in Supreme Court fight (The Hill)
Republican senators are coalescing behind Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) vow to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A number of GOP senators, including both retiring members and vulnerable incumbents, are backing McConnell's promise to hold a vote on whomever President Trump nominates, underscoring Republicans' desire to fill the seat even as they face charges of hypocrisy from Democrats and pushback from some of their own colleagues.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is retiring at the end of the year, said on Sunday that he would support filling the seat this year, though he'll make a decision on the nominee once Trump names his pick… (LINK TO STORY)
Sources: Trump Considers Barrett, Lagoa, Rushing For Supreme Court Spot (NPR)
Judges Amy Coney Barrett, Barbara Lagoa and Allison Jones Rushing are emerging as serious contenders to fill the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to sources familiar with the process.
An announcement on the nominee could come as early as Monday or Tuesday.
Barrett is the front-runner, according to the sources. A former high-ranking White House lawyer told NPR's Tamara Keith that "Barrett remains very highly regarded. She would be a brilliant and compassionate justice. Her intellect and thought leadership are well-established. It is telling in these violent chaotic times that opposition to her is based primarily on her Catholic faith."
Barrett sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and was a finalist for Trump's second high court nomination, which ultimately went to Brett Kavanaugh… (LINK TO STORY)