BG Reads | News You Need to Know (September 13, 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]
City’s HEAL team moves four encampments to bridge shelters (Austin Monitor)
In the wake of the reinstated camping ban this past May, stakes have risen considerably for those at the helm of the effort to rehouse Austin’s homeless population. Nonetheless, Project HEAL – the Homeless Encampment Assistance Link – which City Council adopted back in February, has moved full speed ahead with its plans to rehouse those seeking shelter at four of the city’s largest camps.
Homeless Strategy Officer Dianna Grey briefed the Public Health Committee last week with news that her team had completed phase one of the HEAL initiative as of Aug. 31. According to Grey, the project had provided 143 people with temporary housing and aimed to permanently house over 300 by the end of its second phase.
This accomplishment, which Grey described as the result of a “Herculean effort” by a team of Homeless Strategy Office workers and social services contractors, began with the rapid transformation of a hotel in South Austin that previously served as an emergency Covid shelter. Now dubbed Southbridge and equipped to provide services to aid in the transition from temporary to permanent housing, the shelter welcomed roughly 20 people from the encampment at Terrazas Branch Library in mid-June, followed by around 50 from the camp at Ben White and Manchaca in mid-July.
With Southbridge at capacity, the Homeless Strategy Department opened up a Northbridge shelter site in another hotel near 183 and Interstate 35 in early August. The street team worked quickly to relocate two more encampments located at the downtown corner of Cesar Chavez Street and Congress Avenue and the northern intersection of U.S. Highway 183 and Oak Knoll Drive to the new site.
Data collected from the four sites played a central role in the committee’s evaluation of the pilot program. Grey emphasized the fact that 95 percent of people voluntarily accepted a spot in the program as evidence of success: “The banner here is near universal acceptance of relocation.”
Another metric of interest was the program’s attrition rate. “Analyzing the attrition rate will be critical, because it will tell us what we need to add or think about for that stage of going from temporary shelter to permanent housing,” said Council Member Ann Kitchen, who is responsible for introducing the project back in February. Of the 147 people who entered the temporary shelters, 122 (83 percent) remain on the path toward permanent housing or have transitioned into permanent homes… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin shatters all-time high number of homicides in 60 years of record keeping (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin early Sunday recorded its 60th homicide, a grim tally that is now more slayings in a year than the city has seen in the six decades the Police Department has kept count. The latest two killings were reported minutes apart. At 2:20 a.m., police officers responded to a call about gunfire at the El Nocturno Night Club, located at 7601 N. Lamar Blvd., just south of U.S. 183 in central Austin. When they arrived, they found a man who had been shot several times. Witnesses told police that they had heard an argument moments earlier. About six minutes later, officers responded to a reported stabbing at Sixth and Nueces streets downtown. They found an injured man who later died. Police officials Sunday did not immediately release further details about the incidents, including the identities of victims and suspects.
The 60th case marks a 25% increase in homicides so far in 2021, compared with all of 2020 when the Police Department logged 48 violent deaths. Interim Chief Joe Chacon said he fears the 2021 tally will continue to go up with three-and-a-half months left in the year. "This is about us truly becoming a big city," Chacon said. "We are starting to experience big city problems. Having said that, I still think that among the big cities, that we remain one of the safest in the country. We have officers who are going out and doing amazing work every single day, and we have a community that is engaged, and they want to help public safety to make sure as a community we are staying safe as we possibly can."
Austin's spike in homicides is part of a national trend that various criminologists attribute to a rising proliferation of guns and instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated economic disparities, such as poverty and unemployment, that can drive people into crime. Comparable national FBI crime data from 2020 won't be available for several weeks. But according to FBI crime data from 2019 — the most recent year available — Austin’s violent crime rate of 400 incidents per 100,000 residents ranked 28th among the 30 largest cities. Only El Paso and San Diego had lower violent crime rates. Austin also ranked near the bottom of the list in 2018 and 2017… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Embalmers pour fluids from corpses down drains, but Austin Water didn't know that was happening (Austin American-Statesman)
Several Austin-area funeral home embalmers say it's common practice to pour human blood from corpses down the drain, a procedure that Austin Water officials admit they were unaware was occurring and one that could compromise the treatment of wastewater entering the Colorado River.Funeral homes are an integral part of the local business community, with about three dozen locations within Austin's city limits. Those mortuaries respond to thousands of deaths in Central Texas each year, guiding grieving family members along in decisions from embalming to burial.
Death-related issues are often considered taboo, which might be why Texas Funeral Service Commission Executive Director Glenn Bower said it's been about 20 years since he was asked how Texas funeral homes dispose of human fluids.
In short, Bower explained that if a family chooses to embalm a loved one, all the blood and body fluids mixed with embalming liquid that come out of the remains — referred to by embalmers as drainage — go down the common sink… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The battle for 3000 Funston Street (KUT)
What does a house interrupted look like?On a small piece of land in West Austin, you can see the answer: Wooden boards form a rectangle in the center of the lot meant to case a foundation, but it’s a container without anything to contain. The inspector who would have signed off on pouring the concrete was scheduled to come, then told not to show.
On the edge of the lot, metal fencing is in the midst of toppling onto the road. Here the grass hits at the knee and weeds climb. You can’t deliver mail to a plastic sign, but one juts out of the ground in lieu of a mailbox, announcing the place: 3000 Funston St.
The City of Austin more than a year ago started building a single-family home at this address, a plot of land it has owned for five decades. In an attempt to increase access to a wealthy neighborhood, the city planned to sell the home to a low-income family. In a part of town where the typical household earns more than $150,000 a year, the family living here would make half that.
Construction began. But before workers could turn much dirt, neighbors sued.
In their lawsuit filed in January 2020, they argue building on this plot of land is illegal and potentially dangerous. And the neighbors have a case: A judge ordered the city to abandon construction until the claims can be heard at the end of this year. So, for 18 months, 3000 Funston St. has been little more than a plotted foundation.
“The city wanted to do something on it and the people that lived here did not want the city to do something on it,” Nick Comiskey, a neighbor who is not part of the lawsuit, said, summing up the case.
But in a city that has struggled, and largely failed, to build affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods, this small lot in West Austin is grounds for a bigger story. It’s the site of a battle that has unfolded countless times in this city, raising the question: How do you balance the rights of neighbors to determine what gets built next door with the pressure to build affordable housing where little exists?… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas wanted to be the tech haven of the U.S. Its new abortion bill and other measures are causing workers to rethink their move. (Washington Post)
On Sept. 3, just two days after Texas banned abortions, Vivek Bhaskaran, the chief executive of an Austin-based online survey software company, quickly assembled the handful of female employees that are based in the city. In a virtual town hall that lasted about 15 minutes, he told the women that regardless of insurance, the company would cover out-of-state abortion services. “I’m not a politician; I can’t change anything. But I’m still responsible for my employees in Texas, and I have a moral responsibility to them,” said Bhaskaran, CEO of QuestionPro. For the past several years, Texas has been selling itself as a tech haven attracting start-ups and tech companies such as Oracle, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, and even Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire co-founder and CEO, who has moved to the state. Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Apple all have grown their presence in the state, opening new warehouses, data centers, and production facilities.
But Texas’s recent swerve to the right on abortion, voting restrictions as well as a ban on coronavirus vaccine mandates has many workers and industry leaders like Bhaskaran worried about retaining workers and recruiting top tech talent to the state. In August, Texas had 33,843 tech job openings — the second highest in the U.S. after California — according to a report from the Computing Technology Industry Association. That’s up 56% from a year earlier. “We already find it extremely challenging to attract tech workers,” said Bhaskaran, noting there are more jobs than talent in the industry. “This seems like an extremely unnecessary conversation we’re going to have to have” with potential recruits. The new abortion law in Texas, which went into effect earlier this month, bans abortions at six weeks and allows private citizens to sue people or services that perform or aid in an abortion. Reporting parties could receive at least $10,000 as well as recover legal fees if they win their cases. In response, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state over the law, trying to block it. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Thursday also signed a bill that would prohibit large tech companies from blocking or restricting people or their posts based on their viewpoint, setting the stage for a legal battle with the tech industry. Abbott also slammed President Biden’s vaccine mandate for private companies, calling it a “power grab.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Could Texas’ new heartbeat law lead to lawsuits against companies providing abortion insurance? (Dallas Morning News)
For companies offering abortion coverage as part of their employee health benefits, Texas’ restrictive new abortion law raises a chilling question: could they, too, be held legally liable if their employees get an abortion? The so-called Heartbeat Act that outlaws the procedure at six weeks creates a new reality for Texans as they decipher what aiding and abetting means under the new law. Employers could be at risk of expensive lawsuits and media coverage attaching them to one of the most controversial and highly politicized health care procedures in modern history. “It makes me concerned that an employer, if they were self-funding or partially funding an insurance policy that did allow for abortion coverage, and then a woman covered by that policy did get an abortion, whether they knew or not, they could potentially be liable,” said Mary Goodrich Nix, a partner at the Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann law firm in Dallas.
Abortion coverage through health insurance is rare, especially in Texas. Under state law, those who want it have to pay a premium to add abortion care to their private insurance policies. It’s illegal in the U.S. under the Hyde Amendment to receive abortion coverage through public health insurance. There are fewer restrictions for companies with self-funded insurance plans, meaning the employer takes on most or all of the cost of benefit claims and all of the risks associated with funding health care coverage. Between 70% and 80% of employer-based health care plans in North Texas fall in the self-funded category, said Britt Berrett, director of the Center for Healthcare Leadership and Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. “We have a huge risk on our hands because a majority of health care plans only use insurance companies as administrators,” Berrett said. Because of this setup, it’s individual businesses that are liable for abortion coverage. These companies join a growing list of people and entities that could potentially be sued under the law. Doctors, clergy members and even ride-share drivers who take people to abortion clinics could be exposed to lawsuits… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas Republicans quietly reduced penalties for honest voting mistakes (Houston Chronicle)
The Republican priority voting reforms and restrictions signed into law last week added a number of new election-related offenses and raised criminal penalties for others, all of which were hotly debated this summer. But one major such provision got little attention. The bill lowered the criminal offense for illegal voting from a second-degree felony to a Class A misdemeanor, the latter punishable by up to a year in jail. It also made a slight change to require that a person charged with illegal voting must have done so either “knowingly,” as the law currently states, or “intentionally.”
The provisions could impact ongoing cases that inflamed debate over the bill, including that of Crystal Mason, a Black Fort Worth woman who is facing five years in state prison for illegally casting a provisional ballot — that was never counted — despite her saying she did not know she was ineligible to vote.
In another high-profile case that could be affected, Hervis Rogers, a Black man from Houston this year was charged with illegal voting after he had made national headlines for his six-hour wait in line during the 2020 primary election. The ACLU, whose lawyers among others on the legal team represent both Mason and Rogers, could not be reached for comment. The illegal voting offense accounts for nearly half of the Texas Attorney General Office’s pending voter fraud cases, about 20, though most are related to one alleged illegal voting scheme in a mayoral election in Edinburgh in 2017. The office also did not respond to a request for comment. The changes originated from an amendment by state Rep. Steve Allison, R-San Antonio, on the House floor in late August. Allison was not available for an interview, but his chief of staff Rocky Gage said Allison wanted to ensure people who accidentally vote illegally don’t face charges. The amendment wasn’t crafted specifically with Mason’s case in mind, Gage said, but rather to address the general issue.
“The main reason for filing this — Rep. Allison, he and other members thought it was important to establish that ‘intent’ piece,” Gage said. “There’s a lot of talk — (state Rep.) Diego Bernal, for instance, was saying, ‘If I help my grandmother, and I don’t know (it’s illegal), now I’m in trouble.’ So we thought to address those concerns — it’s necessary to address those concerns. “I think members understood that was important,” Gage said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Democrats wanted Trump gone. Now they want him on the ballot (Washington Post)
Democrats are growing confident that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) will prevail in Tuesday's recall election, averting political disaster by energizing liberal voters. Across the country his party is paying close attention to how he's doing it: Warning Democrats that if they stay home, Donald Trump and his agenda will prevail. “Trumpism is still alive all across this country,” Newsom said at a recent campaign stop in east L.A., talking to volunteers for a Black voter outreach group before they began knocking on doors. “Is it any surprise the entire Trump organization is behind this recall?” California is one of three Democratic-led states — the others are Virginia and New Jersey — holding statewide elections this year. In each state, party leaders acknowledge that in past elections Trump polarized and motivated voters that they had never won before his presidency. Democrats worried that his absence from the ballot, along with their party’s historic difficulties in turning voters out in nonpresidential elections, would threaten their chances.
Yet in all three, Democrats say they believe that the ex-president, who has hinted at a third run in 2024, still has power to mobilize liberal voters and keep suburban moderates in the Democratic tent, even if he is no longer on the ballot or in office. The recall will be the first test of whether they’re right. “Republicans thought they could get away with this because Democrats weren’t going to show up,” said Rusty Hicks, the chairman of the California Democratic Party. “Trump may be less a part of the scene, but his policies and viewpoints and positions have become part of the landscape. We’ve done a good job making clear what the stakes are.” That effort has been given some credibility by Republicans themselves. With Trump’s loyalists the most powerful part of the party, GOP candidates who once might have enjoyed some level of independence from national leaders have had to overtly embrace the former president lest they depress Republican turnout. Amid a sharply partisan electorate, issues like Republican objections to mask mandates and strict abortion bans have been swiftly tailored into Democratic campaign ads. Support for Newsom increased after he announced vaccine mandates for health care and education workers, another tactic Democrats believe they can scale across the country. “It’s good politics and good policy marrying together,” said David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, which poured $7.4 million into the anti-recall effort. “Democrats are on the right side of this issue.” Democrats also are counting on changes that have made it easier to vote early or vote by mail… (LINK TO FULL STORY)