BG Reads | News You Need to Know (September 10, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
Work Session of the Austin Council (9.28.2021 at 9AM)
Regular Meeting of the Austin City Council (9.30.2021 at 10AM)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
‘No Way on Prop A’ campaign opposes police staffing initiative (Austin Monitor)
A political action committee focused on defeating a November ballot proposal that would significantly increase the size of the Austin Police Department held its first formal campaign event Thursday. More than 80 community groups and more than three dozen local elected officials have joined the No Way on Prop A coalition, which was formed in response to Save Austin Now PAC’s push for voters to approve a proposal that would require the city to have two police officers per every 1,000 residents.
The campaign event at Barton Springs came just after publication of an analysis by the city that estimates the level of staffing mandated by Proposition A – and the requirement that officers spend at least 35 percent of their time in the community instead of servicing 911 calls – would have a five-year cost of between $271.5 million and $598.8 million.
City Council members as well as other local officials, employee unions and community groups argue that the city would have to raise property taxes to the maximum allowable limit and make deep spending cuts to services such as parks and recreation.
David Chincanchan, a community organizer who helped lead Thursday’s event, called the ballot proposal an unfunded mandate that would significantly impact the city’s budget for years to come, “without being attached to any kind of accountability or requirements.”
Carol Guthrie, business manager for AFSCME Local 1624, said estimates based on the city’s budget projections put up to 1,100 jobs among her group’s 3,300 members at risk of layoff. With the requirement to add 500-800 new police officers, she said parks and libraries could be at risk of closure and voters may be asked in coming years to approve property tax rates above the state’s cap of a 3.5 percent annual increase.
“It’s a huge piece of the pie. And of course, the only way to get this additional funding will be through layoffs in departments for other services,” she said. “Clearly the city will have to vote to raise taxes above the 3.5 (percent annual increase), but I don’t think that will generate enough and they’d still have to cut services, and when you cut services that means cutting employees.”
Save Austin Now organizers said an increase in violent crimes over the past two years shows the need for the city to commit to an ongoing level of police staffing.
A statement from Save Austin Now said, “Low-income neighborhoods disproportionately hurt by skyrocketing homicide rates, 911 wait times and other horrific residual effects of the Council’s police defunding efforts are going to lead the way voting for Prop A. A police department with better trained, sufficiently staffed and foreign language-proficient officers are issues Austinites agree on …. City Hall may not support law enforcement, but city residents do.”…. (LINK TO FULL STORY)
ACL Fest hasn’t been given the final OK on its permits yet, but the city says that’s normal (KUT)
As cases of Covid-19 continue to surge in Austin, there’s been some question of how live events like the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which drew 400,000 people during its last in-person festival, will mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
Last week, the city implemented new Covid-related protocols for special events on city land. The city then denied a permit for the long-standing Pecan Street Festival, leading many to wonder if the same would happen to ACL, which is less than a month away.
The city has not yet confirmed ACL’s permit but says that’s normal.
Spokesperson Bryce Bencivengo told KUT these permits involve approval from dozens of departments and that, traditionally, final approval isn’t given until a few weeks before the event.
“It’s not unusual at this point that Austin City Limits hasn’t had their permit approved,” Bencivengo told KUT, adding that ACL’s 2019 permit wasn’t approved until Sept. 26 – eight days before the festival kicked off on Oct. 4.
The city is requiring increased safety requirements for events on city land, like ACL. Event organizers must implement proof-of-vaccination policies for attendees, lay out strategies for social distancing and have “mask zones” for spaces in which distancing isn’t possible.
Still, there’s the question of whether the festival will be canceled, like South by Southwest was as the first wave of the pandemic ramped up. Bencivengo said the city is working to provide clarity soon on whether that would be the case, and urged Austinites and anyone attending the festival to first get vaccinated against Covid-19.
“We’re going to work to give people some certainty in the coming weeks, but right now, we’re still evaluating all events that are happening in the community that require a permit and understanding the impact both on the community and public health and the health care system,” he said. “And we’ll make decisions about each one depending on their ability to put mitigation measures in place.”
ACL is requiring proof of vaccination for its attendees, or proof of a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours of attending the festival. On top of that, the festival is offering free one-day passes to people who get vaccinated.
So far, C3 Presents, the organizer of the festival, hasn’t indicated any plans to push off this year’s in-person festival, though some Austinites have called for the festival’s cancellation in light of the surge of Covid-19 cases in Austin… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Here's what Austin City Council districts could look like after redistricting (Austin American-Statesman)
A preliminary map of proposed new boundaries for the 10 Austin City Council districts calls for mostly modest changes from the current district boundaries.
Unveiled Wednesday evening, the unveiling of the proposed map is a much-anticipated moment in the city's redistricting process, which last happened in 2013 and won't happen again until 2031.
The map, relying on population changes captured in the 2020 census, is significant in that it sets the geographical boundaries for each council district, which in turn determines which elected council member represents the people who live in that geographical area.
If adopted, the proposed map would not make significant changes to the current districts. A wholesale redrawing of the districts had been considered as an option until a week ago, when a consultant brought on by the city suggested major disruptions might cause confusion among residents and lead to lower voter participation in elections.
The changes that did make it into the draft were aimed at bringing larger districts closer in population totals to smaller districts. To do that, District 6 in Northwest Austin would shrink, losing 12,538 residents and, in turn, triggering a domino of changes moving to the east.
Among the areas leaving District 6 would be the River Place neighborhood, whose new home would be in neighboring District 10. This change could be significant politically in that River Place was viewed as crucial in Council Member Mackenzie Kelly's upset victory over Jimmy Flannigan in the December 2020 runoff election.
River Place favored Kelly, 77% to 22% — the largest margin for her of any precinct in the district. Losing such a favorable area from her district could make it more difficult for Kelly, the council's lone Republican, to win reelection in 2024.
The end result of all of the district shifts would be a significant population reduction in North Austin's District 7 (10,194 residents) and big gains in adjacent District 4 (14,178 residents) and in District 9 in Central Austin (7,321 residents). District 5 in South Austin would lose 5,160 residents.
This draft map is only a preliminary sketch, one intended as a base foundation for the final product. The deadline is Nov. 1, and the map will be finalized by the volunteer city commission tasked with reworking the districts. It will be a quick turnaround, one made unavoidable by several months of delays in the release of the census data, which wasn't available to the commission until August… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
U.S. Justice Department sues Texas over new abortion law that Attorney General Merrick Garland calls unconstitutional (Texas Tribune)
The Justice Department sued Texas on Thursday over its new abortion restrictions law, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters, a week after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the law.
Garland announced the lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Austin, after abortion rights advocates, providers and Democratic lawmakers called for the Biden administration to act. Other legal challenges have been stymied due to the design of the law, which opponents say was engineered to flout a person’s right to an abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
“This kind of scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States is one that all Americans, whatever their politics or party, should fear,” Garland said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas AG Ken Paxton’s fraud cases should stay in Collin County, appeals court affirms (Dallas Morning News)
A Texas appeals court affirmed that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s case should be moved from Harris to Collin County, dealing a blow to prosecutors who have fought the venue change. In a split decision earlier this summer, a three-judge panel of the 1st Court of Appeals in Houston agreed with Paxton that Collin County was the proper venue. On Thursday, the court denied prosecutors’ request to reconsider the ruling. Prosecutors, however, said they would continue to appeal. “Because we agree with the dissenting justices that there are critical errors in the majority’s decision, we will seek further review of it in the Court of Criminal Appeals,” special prosecutor Brian Wice said in a statement. Paxton lawyers have called the court’s ruling a win and expressed hope the cases, which turned six years old in July, will restart.
“It is time that the prosecutors allow Mr. Paxton to have his day in court,” Philip Hilder said. The decision to move the cases back to Collin County is a big win for the attorney general. Paxton, a Republican who has lived in McKinney for decades and enjoys support in the reliably red county. He has long argued the cases should be tried where they originated. Earlier this year, prosecutors pursuing the charges against Paxton had asked the full court to reconsider and put their decision on hold until then. Democrats make up the majority of the nine-member court. “We believe the disagreement between the panel members as to where this prosecution should take place warrants re-consideration of this important issue by all nine justices of the 1st Court of Appeals,” Brian Wice said in a statement. In their motion for reconsideration, filed Tuesday, June 8, the prosecutors argued siding with Paxton would create bad precedent that would allow defendants to abuse the system. “Like Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth, the panel majority’s decision will haunt Texas jurisprudence whenever an opportunistic defendant attempts to sandbag a trial judge or the criminal justice system itself,” Wice wrote. Quoting Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court case that allowed Japanese Americans to be excluded from military service in World War II, he added, “the majority’s decision ‘lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.’”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Biden administration to extend vaccine mandate to U.S. companies (Washington Post)
President Biden is announcing sweeping new vaccine mandates Thursday that will affect tens of millions of Americans, ordering all businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be inoculated or face weekly testing. Biden also will require all health facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their workforces, which the White House believes will impact 50,000 locations. And the president plans to sign an executive order that would require all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead — in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments and private companies will adopt. The cluster of new policies comes as the country grapples with the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases surging to more than 150,000 a day and is causing more than 1,500 daily deaths. The White House has struggled to convince hesitant Americans to get vaccinated and has been increasingly shifting toward requirements.
The changes also come as Biden’s approval rating has fallen in recent weeks, with Americans less supportive of his handling of the pandemic. Defeating the pandemic was among his central promises, and White House aides believe that his ability to deliver on it will be critical to the success of his presidency. The White House released an 11-page memo Thursday entitled “Path Out of the Pandemic” that outlined six key areas where Biden is either shifting or hardening his strategy on the virus. The most far-reaching is a new regulation to be written by the Labor Department that will requires all businesses with more than 100 employees either to mandate vaccinations for all their workers, or require them to take weekly coronavirus tests.
The White House estimates that the policy will impact about 80 million workers, or two-thirds of the country’s workforce. Businesses that ignore the policy, once it’s in place, could trigger penalties of up to $14,000 per violation, according to a senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters on the plan ahead of the president’s speech under the condition that his name would not be used. Businesses also will be required to give workers paid time off to get vaccinated, according to the new rules. “This plan will ensure that we are using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even more lives in the months ahead, while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage,” according to a copy of the memo… (LINK TO FULL STORY)