BG Reads | News You Need to Know (May 13, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE]
LINK TO FILED HOUSE BILLS (6,100)
LINK TO FILED SENATE BILLS (2,760)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin evaluating 6 plans to redevelop 19-acre St. John site into mixed-use district (Community Impact)
The city of Austin's long-gestating plan to revitalize a vacant 19-acre site in the St. John neighborhood is moving forward this spring with six redevelopment proposals now under consideration by city staff.
The St. John site comprises 7211 and 7309 I-35 N., Austin, adjacent properties formerly occupied by a Home Depot store and a Chrysler dealership, respectively. Using bond funding, Austin purchased the Home Depot site in 2008 and the Chrysler site in 2013 with the aim of setting up a new court and police substation there before neighborhood pushback ended those plans, Community Impact Newspaper previously reported. The site now serves as a drive-thru COVID-19 test site.
Years of public engagement followed the properties' purchase and led City Council to approve a resolution last summer solidifying the city's objective of supporting "a complete community in an historic neighborhood" on the site. Council's directive outlined a redevelopment process that would produce a mixed-use district featuring affordable housing alongside locally oriented retail and open space through a competitive public bidding process and rezoning.
A request for proposals for such a project opened last September and closed March 2. According to a May 11 memo from Sylnovia Holt-Rabb, acting director of the Austin Economic Development Department, six proposals remain under review by city staff. Staff also recommended holding off on a rezoning process and amendments to the future land use map until a finalist is selected from the six submissions… (LINK TO STORY)
Central Texas colleges, students to split $250 million in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief (Austin American-Statesman)
Central Texas higher education institutions and students are set to receive more than $250 million from the latest federal pandemic relief package.
The money is part of $36 billion from the American Rescue Plan, signed by President Joe Biden in March, allotted to help colleges and universities respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
Of the money provided to institutions, roughly half must go directly to student relief, the Department of Education announced Tuesday. That assistance will now be available to all students, a change from a Trump administration rule that left undocumented and international students out of pandemic relief.
"Wrongful Trump restrictions have been removed so that Dreamers now qualify just like other students," U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said in a statement. "Good news for our Dreamers, who have faced so much uncertainty, and for all students and higher education leaders, who have encountered so many pandemic challenges."… (LINK TO STORY)
Report depicts the state of poverty in Travis County (Austin Monitor)
On Tuesday, the Commissioners Court fielded discussion from Health and Human Services on the state of poverty in Travis County. Rochelle Olivares, April Klein and Lawrence Lyman, the core informing team of the HHS Research and Planning Division, presented a report using data obtained from the 2019 American Community Survey five-year estimates.
“The data is a reflection of the years between 2015 and 2019,” Olivares said. “The analysis does not reflect the impacts that have occurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is ongoing, as you all know.”
The poverty brief was the fourth iteration of the report, which focuses on providing general poverty statistics for Travis County.
The poverty rate for Travis County was 12 percent, which marked a decrease from the overall poverty rate in Texas, 15 percent. “It’s significantly lower than both Texas and the United States,” said Klein, who also touched on some of the limitations of the data-sourcing. “Whether you live in a costly city like Austin, or a rural town in North Dakota, if you’re one person, your poverty threshold is $13,300.”
The poverty threshold, Klein noted, was the same nationwide for single individuals living alone. A person is considered to be living in poverty if the individual’s income is less than $13,300.
The U.S. Census Bureau, where HHS sourced the data for the poverty report, describes “poverty” as applying to any resident with an income below 100 percent of the poverty threshold, according to Olivares.
The HHS report also analyzed income rates at both 200 and 150 percent of the poverty threshold, to gain a better understanding of overall upward and downward mobility in Travis County.
Although the poverty rate for the county was only 12 percent, Klein explained, more than one-quarter of the population is living at below 200 percent of the poverty threshold.
“Individuals living in group quarters and institutions and those experiencing homelessness, for example, are not included in the data that you will see today,” Olivares said… (LINK TO STORY)
Tourism Commission recommendations include gondolas funded by hotel tax (Austin Monitor)
A transit system geared toward tourists, paying Austin musicians to promote local tourism, and a variety of programming and promotional efforts for historic sites are among a new batch of recommended uses for the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax dollars.
This week the Tourism Commission unanimously approved a report from its Parks and Environment Working Group that looked at how the city could spend hotel tax money in ways that benefit the local parks system. The 16 recommendations, which all appear to fall within the state laws covering use of the tax, include promotional guides for area parks and related attractions, programming and other content that could be used in media placements, and visitor centers or informational kiosks for a variety of attractions and sites in the parks system.
While the hotel tax has long been an attractive pool of money for local uses, it’s equally problematic because the state limits its use to four areas – convention center expenses, cultural arts funding, historic preservation, and tourism and marketing promotion – with spending caps on some of those categories. The working group was created last February to look for ways to address some parks needs so that the budget for the Parks and Recreation Department and parks-related nonprofits could be directed toward other expenses.
Although hotel tax receipts have dropped drastically since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, they are expected to rebound within the next five years to previous levels in which more than $100 million was collected annually.
After voting to adopt the report, the commission also voted unanimously to ask City Council and staffers to consider the recommendations during annual budget negotiations, specifically when deciding how best to allocate hotel tax dollars in ways that comply with state law.
There was some debate among working group members about how widely to interpret the state’s language allowing for the creation of a transportation system to move tourists to and from hotels “in and near the municipality.”
The approved recommendation language reads: “Proposed projects in this category include a tourist transportation system (e.g., a shuttle, bus route, ferry, gondola, or other transportation system that does not primarily serve the general public) for transporting tourists between hotels, commercial areas and tourist attractions (e.g., Zilker Park or Barton Springs). While the general public could use such a tourist transportation system, HOT tax funding would be limited to the extent that tourists use the tourist transportation system.”… (LINK TO STORY)
With state change, Board of Adjustment could consider new hardships (Austin Monitor)
A move by the Texas Legislature could change the way the city grants variances to the Land Development Code.
The bill, House Bill 1475, would add another type of hardship for the Board of Adjustment to consider – the financial cost of complying with the code. Specifically, the bill would allow board members to consider whether:
(1) the financial cost of compliance is greater than 50 percent of the appraised value of the structure as shown on the most recent appraisal roll certified to the assessor for the municipality under Section 26.01, Tax Code;
(2) compliance would result in a loss to the lot on which the structure is located of at least 25 percent of the area on which development may physically occur;
(3) compliance would result in the structure not being in compliance with a requirement of a municipal ordinance, building code, or other requirement;
(4) compliance would result in the unreasonable encroachment on an adjacent property or easement; or
(5) the municipality considers the structure to be a nonconforming structure.
It would be a big change for the city board. Lee Simmons, the assistant city attorney who works with the Board of Adjustment, told board members that when the bill was first filed he had a neutral stance on it. “My only concern is, how does the board really quantify the financial cost of compliance?” he said. He said he hoped that point will become more clear as the bill advances through the Legislature.
“Applicants have been pushing for this kind of thing for a long time, because it’s expensive. It’s expensive to do the things that they want to do to their homes,” Simmons said. “I think the way that this is drafted, it doesn’t necessarily meet that hope or that goal that applicants have been lobbying for, but it is the first step that I’ve seen of a financial compliance hardship.”
In order to grant a variance, the Board of Adjustment must find that there is a hardship imposed on an applicant due to some facet of their property. Currently, hardships do not include financial pressures.
“I always understood that economics could not be brought into the determination of a variance. That is like the hard and fast golden rule of variances. People can’t say they don’t have the money, or they can’t say it’s a hardship financially,” Board Member Brooke Bailey said. “But now they are going to bring economics into it. Does this mean that economics in other areas can be considered?”
Simmons said, in his opinion, the bill was “fairly tailored” to the appraised value and contained specific guidelines that would prevent the board from considering economics in other cases… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Prospects for many Texas House bills dim if they’re not passed today. Here’s what you need to know. (Texas Tribune)
Lots of legislation that originated in the Texas House this session faces a key deadline tonight: By midnight Friday, the lower chamber has to grant preliminary approval to such bills that don’t have near-unanimous support.
Members of the House are expected to work late into the night Thursday to pass out bills its members have written. And the lower chamber’s calendar is packed with legislation that has been approved by committees and is in line for consideration by the full chamber. But there’s not enough time to get to them all — and it’s not certain that leaders in the House will actually want to.
Sometimes, the late-night proceedings can get tense. Here’s what you need to know…(LINK TO STORY)
Texas law now allows alcohol to go from restaurants after Gov. Greg Abbott signs bill (Texas Tribune)
Alcohol to go is now law in Texas after Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed a bill to permanently allow Texans to include alcohol in take-out orders from restaurants, achieving a shared goal of Abbott and restaurateurs.
House Bill 1024 allows beer, wine and mixed drinks to be included in pickup and delivery food orders, securing a revenue stream made available to restaurants during the pandemic when their dining areas were forced to close. Because the measure was approved by more than two-thirds of the House and Senate, it went into effect as soon as Abbott signed it.
“Today is a great day for Texas restaurants, as well as for customers,” Abbott said as he signed the bill, filed by Republican state Rep. Charlie Geren, a restaurant owner in Fort Worth.
Abbott signed a waiver in March last year to allow to-go alcohol sales. The waiver was originally to last until May 2020, but it was extended indefinitely. As lawmakers began their work during the legislative session, expanding Texans’ access to booze picked up bipartisan support.
“It turned out that Texas liked [alcohol to go] so much, the Texas Legislature wanted to make that permanent law in the state of Texas,” Abbott said Wednesday.
Texas has historically had restrictive alcohol laws. Since the repeal of Prohibition, the state has banned selling alcohol on Sundays in liquor stores, and distilleries have limits on the amount of bottles a person can buy, among other limitations.
The permanent alcohol-to-go option could benefit the restaurant industry after it was devastated during the pandemic. According to the Texas Restaurant Association, 700,000 restaurant employees in Texas lost their jobs in the early days of the pandemic, and thousands of Texas restaurants have closed… (LINK TO STORY)
A controversial tax program promised high-paying jobs. Instead, its costs spiraled out of control. (Houston Chronicle)
When Houston lawmaker Jim Murphy tried to expand Texas’ most lucrative corporate tax incentive six years ago, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed Murphy’s legislation, fearing it would cost taxpayers even more money. “I cannot support expansion of an incentive program that has not been proven to deliver the value taxpayers deserve,” Abbott said at the time. The governor complained that the state’s Chapter 313 program, named after a section of the Texas Tax Code that erases billions of dollars in property taxes for eligible companies, was costing taxpayers $341,000 for every permanent job it created. His veto, however, didn’t slow the program’s growth. Since then, that price tag has more than tripled. Using the same calculation Abbott cited, Chapter 313 now costs more than $1.1 million in tax breaks per new job, according to state data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle. By any metric, costs are rising — and there’s no telling how high they’ll go. The program has no limits. The spiraling costs of Chapter 313 — which soon are projected to top $1 billion per year — are just one example of how the program falls short of the benefits touted by supporters.
Ever since lawmakers created the program 20 years ago, they’ve repeatedly amended the law in the name of reforming it. Not only have promised protections for taxpayers not materialized, however, but the revisions have undercut the program’s job-creation goals and weakened wage requirements for the workers at the subsidized job sites. A Houston Chronicle review of hundreds of records in legislative archives and on file with the Texas Comptroller’s Office found that the law was written in ways that encourage the gatekeepers of the program — the comptroller’s office and local school districts — to approve nearly every Chapter 313 application they receive. The review also found the comptroller’s office often has shied away from applying a more stringent interpretation of the law, though doing so could have recouped public money from companies that broke their jobs promises or prevented a project from being needlessly subsidized… (LINK TO STORY)
Here’s how Fort Worth’s mayoral candidates differ on wages, workforce and transit (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
After advancing out of the crowded mayoral field, Mattie Parker and Deborah Peoples are differentiating themselves on more than just political backgrounds, including at a forum Wednesday where they were divided on transit, wages and the best way to grow business. Parker, a lawyer who spent five years as chief of staff for Mayor Betsy Price and is now a nonprofit executive, and Peoples, a retired AT&T vice president and outgoing Tarrant County Democratic Party chair, spared in a forum that focused on Fort Worth’s workforce and business climate. While the candidates appear to agree on unifying the city and moving away from partisan politics, the forum, hosted by the Star-Telegram and the city’s three chambers, was one of the first times the pair contrasted clearly on policies. One of the clearest differences was on how the city should improve mobility. The AllianceTexas corridor has become a mecca for jobs, but arterial streets in the far north are often clogged. Meanwhile, residents inside Loop 820, particularly in east Fort Worth, have a hard time getting to work on a bus system that has been called “bare bones.”
Peoples, 68, took an aggressive stance on transit, saying the city should invest in light rail and other multi-model forms of mobility to help residents get to jobs. That’s not the first time a light rail concept has been pitched. In 2019 the City Council heard three options for Trinity Metro’s future: incremental improvements that wouldn’t require additional funding but also wouldn’t catch up to Fort Worth’s growth, a more robust plan that called more more frequent routes and a TEXRail extension, and a “visionary” plan that called for at least 19 bus routes with service at 15 minutes and two light rail lines crossing the city. The issue with any transit plan that involves significant improvement is the cost, with the most robust plan likely requiring well over $1 billion. But Peoples said the city should not get caught up in the cost and instead should strive for a robust transit system like other major cities. She suggested looking for federal and state dollars as well as public-private partnerships to fund the expansion.
“These things aren’t easy fixes but you can’t ignore them,” Peoples said. “You have to start working on them now.” Parker, 37, said the city should strive for the “visionary” concept, but she estimated the cost at $2 billion. So she advocated for starting small with incremental changes that would improve access in neighborhoods. Neighborhoods can’t wait decades for a long-term plan, so Trinity Metro should look at “innovative programs,”she said, like the Zipzones. With Zipzones, users pay $3 for a ride share service within a designated area... (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Colonial Pipeline Restarts Operations After Cyberattack (Wall Street Journal)
The owner of the Colonial Pipeline said Wednesday that it has begun restarting operations following a cyberattack that shut down the main fuel conduit serving the East Coast.
Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of the vast 5,500-mile network of pipes taking 100 million gallons of fuel a day from Texas to New Jersey, said it initiated a restart at around 5 p.m. ET, but cautioned that the process of fully restoring the flow of fuel could take days.
The company, which estimates that it provides 45% of the East Coast’s fuel, shut down the pipeline last Friday after being hit by a ransomware attack. U.S. officials have linked the attack to a criminal gang known as DarkSide.
“Colonial will move as much gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as is safely possible and will continue to do so until markets return to normal,” the company said in a statement.
It previously said that it had restarted some smaller segments of the pipeline system by operating them manually, while its main line remained shut down. The company said that as of Tuesday afternoon it had delivered 41 million gallons of fuel to various delivery points.
The shutdown, in its fifth full day Wednesday, spurred a run on gasoline in the southeastern and mid-Atlantic regions, which depend heavily on the pipeline. The average U.S. gasoline price vaulted above $3 a gallon for the first time in 6½ years as motorists lined up at thousands of gas stations and purchased all of the available fuel.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 68% of the gas stations in North Carolina were out of fuel, according to price and fuel tracker GasBuddy, which compiles data when drivers report such outages. In Virginia, 49% of gas stations had run dry; in Georgia, 45%; in South Carolina, 45%; in Tennessee, 18%; in Florida, 14%; in Maryland, 13%.
Energy analysts and government officials warned that consumers who were panicking and hoarding gas stood to make the supply situation worse.
“Hoarding does not make things better,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a media briefing Wednesday. “And under no circumstances should gasoline ever be put into anything but a vehicle directly or an approved container.”… (LINK TO STORY)
‘Let’s move on’: Congress’ other pro-impeachment Republicans stay quiet (Politico)
Seventeen congressional Republicans supported the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump. Unlike Liz Cheney, most of them want to move on.
Amid Cheney's ouster from House GOP leadership on Wednesday for continuing to rebut Trump’s election lies, other Republicans who deemed him guilty of inciting insurrection on Jan. 6 are taking an approach that largely spares them intra-party retribution. They stand by their anti-Trump votes and oppose Cheney’s demotion, but they're focused on strengthening their party’s message against Democratic control of Washington.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the only Senate Republican elected from a state that Trump lost in 2020, recently escaped censure by her state party for her vote to convict him and has dived into a bipartisan group negotiating on current issues. She said that President Joe Biden’s proposed expansions of government and the nation’s increasing debt “are the issues we should be talking about, rather than re-litigating the election.”
“I tend to focus on policy, not personalities. And I made my [impeachment] decision very clear by giving a long floor speech explaining it. And it’s time to move on to the challenges we’re facing,” Collins said. “Let’s move on.”
Getting past Trump and 2020 hasn’t come easily for Cheney. But as much as her fellow Republicans who crossed the former president would prefer to keep their focus on Biden, some recognize that their silence runs the risk of ceding Trump more power. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who voted to convict, said his House colleagues' Wednesday vote to evict Cheney is “going to be perceived as President Trump dictating what the House does.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast EP. 139: Q1 20201 Review: COVID-19's Impact on the Built Environment with Michael Hsu
On today’s episode we speak with return guest, Austin-based Michael Hsu, Principal and Founder of Michael Hsu Office of Architecture.
He and Bingham Group CEO A.J. catch up from their June 2020 show, updating on impacts to the design/built environment sector through Q1 2021.
You can listen to all episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. New content every Wednesday. Please like, link, comment and subscribe!