BG Reads | News You Need to Know (April 15, 2021)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
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BG Podcast EP. 138: Q1 2021 Review with Veronica Briseño, Chief Economic Recovery Officer, City of Austin
On today’s episode we speak with return guest Veronica Briseño, Chief Economic Recovery Officer for the City of Austin.
Veronica and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss developments in Q1, including recent efforts by the city and Austin Council including the Economic Recovery and Resiliency Framework (bit.ly/3sbsJ6d), released last month.
You can listen to all episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. New content every Wednesday. Please like, link, comment and subscribe!
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE]
LINK TO FILED HOUSE BILLS (5,557)
LINK TO FILED SENATE BILLS (2,572)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
American Airlines plans nonstop flights from Austin to Bahamas (Austin Business Journal)
American Airlines Group Inc. is adding another flight to its Austin lineup this summer as officials expect a surge in travel activity.
Representing yet another sign of Austin's growing affluence, American Airlines will offer nonstop flights beginning June 5 to Nassau, Bahamas, from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, according to an April 14 announcement. A company spokesperson said the flights will be available on Saturdays through Aug. 14.
Based on strong demand, American Airlines (Nasdaq: AAL) officials expect to fly more than 90% of its domestic seat capacity and 80% of its international seat capacity this year compared with 2019, according to the announcement. That's before the pandemic caused a brutal year for the tourism industry.
“Throughout the pandemic, our trademark has been to build a schedule based on what customers tell us they want and need,” Brian Znotins, American's vice president of network planning, said in a statement. “And today, they are telling us they’re eager to get back to travel. With our summer schedule, we can offer customers the best network and continue welcoming them safely back to the skies.”
Overall, American is launching more than 150 new flights across the globe this summer, according to the announcement.
Fort Worth-based American announced last month that it was doubling down on Austin because of its immense growth as people and companies continue to flock to Central Texas. That announcement was for 10 more nonstop flights through Austin in the coming months, including service to Las Vegas, New Orleans and the Washington, D.C., area.
American was the second-busiest airline at ABIA last year — behind Southwest Airlines — with 1,336,450 people traveling with the company, according to airport data. That's down nearly 57% from the year prior because of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, ABIA recorded 6,472,579 total passengers last year, down nearly 63% compared with 2019's record-setting 17,343,729 passengers.
Passenger traffic at ABIA was still down in January by 68% year-over-year, though there's optimism the travel industry will see a boost in activity this year as more people become fully vaccinated from Covid-19. Data for February and March was not available by press time... (LINK TO STORY)
Austin’s village of tiny homes for formerly homeless folks to triple in size (KUT)
The nonprofit that runs Austin's Community First Village has acquired land and plans to build out more tiny homes to house Austinites transitioning out of homelessness.
The far East Austin development of tiny homes and trailers, managed by Mobile Loaves and Fishes, currently houses 221 formerly chronically homeless Austinites. The expansion could add space for at least 1,400 additional tiny homes.
At an announcement Wednesday, MLF's founder Alan Graham said the nonprofit secured 127 additional acres for two new sites — one that will expand the current site off Hog Eye Road and another that will host a new village off Burleson Road in Southeast Austin. All told, the expansion, which is set to begin construction next summer, would more than triple the footprint of Community First — from 51 acres to 178.
Graham emphasized that the expansion is "a part of solving the pandemic of homelessness" but emphasized the need for a larger, community-wide effort to address homelessness, an issue that's become a political football in recent years as Austin's homeless population has increased.
"We are excited to share the news with Austin, Texas, today because we want our city to see the great things that are happening," he said. "Because a lot of the time the front page of the news doesn't include the great things that are happening. We just want to see the things that people can talk and yell and scream about, but this is something we can rejoice."
The announcement comes ahead of a citywide vote over Austin's policies surrounding homelessness and as state leaders at the Capitol attempt to target the city's 2019 decision to largely stop penalizing people for behavior related to homelessness.
Opponents of that decision say it's led to public health and safety crises and a boom in public tent encampments. Proponents say it's helped divert Austinites living outdoors from tickets that make it harder to transition out of homelessness.
After the announcement today, Graham called Community First an "apolitical" endeavor, though it's been held up as a model for solving chronic homelessness by both left-leaning leaders like Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Republican hardliner Gov. Greg Abbott… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin's mayor pushes Travis County to help fund city's homelessness initiatives (Austin American-Statesman)
To address the Austin's escalating homelessness crisis, Mayor Steve Adler is calling on Travis County elected officials to join the city in spending millions in federal stimulus dollars on housing for unsheltered people.
Combined, the city and county governments expect to receive an estimated $442 million-plus in stimulus funds from President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan — $195 million for the city, $247 million for the county.
The total amount flowing to them is $210 million more than they received through the federal CARES Act last year, leading to ongoing discussions on both sides on how to best take advantage of a generational payday.
At least twice recently, Mayor Steve Adler in a public forum presented a case for devoting a major portion of the city's cut to homelessness services, and in the same breath challenged the county to do the same. The combined amount he estimated to solve the problem was $400 million.
But to this point, Travis County leaders say they have no intention of lending financial assistance to house people experiencing homelessness through the city's master plan to buy hotels to convert into homeless housing. Instead, they say, they'd prefer to prop up existing social services that they said will help prevent more people from becoming homeless.
In a City Council meeting on March 23, Adler --- whose political legacy will be shaped in part by the city's handling of its homelessness crisis --- made a plea for the county to direct stimulus funding to the cause.
"What if we paused for a second and engaged with Travis County," he said. "Could we in fact take our most significant challenge, or two, or three, and really move the bar so that in five years and 10 years and 15 years and 20 years, people look back at this moment and say, 'You know that virus was horrible. ... but that was also the moment in time when we could take one of our most significant challenges and just fix it.'"… (LINK TO STORY)
Outdoor Voices is not f***ing around with Austin bar Little Brother (Texas Monthly)
Matthew Bolick, cofounder of the Austin bar and burrito joint Little Brother, was joking around with his sous chef, Seth Jones, about merchandise ideas when Jones came up with a good one, one night in 2018. “He said, ‘You should do a hat like the Outdoor Voices ‘Doing Things’ hat that just says, ‘F—ing Around’ on it,” Bolick recalls. “I was like, that’s an amazing idea.”
He tucked the notion into his back pocket, where it sat for a year and a half, while Bolick pursued other merchandising ideas for the group of small Austin businesses he helps run, which include the coffee shops and restaurants Brew & Brew, Better Half, and Holdout Brewing. Then, a year ago, Bolick decided to order a limited run of fifty hats that directly reference the omnipresent royal blue ball cap and its distinctive phrase “Doing Things” from the Austin-based athletic wear giant. Little Brother’s version of the hat is embroidered with a similar font, on a similar blue cap, and listed for sale on the bar’s website with product copy that read “Our iconic ‘F—ing Around’ hat in LB blue,” a parody of the text on Outdoor Voices’ web store. Outdoor Voices’ version of the hat sells for $28. The price on each of the hats Bolick made? $29. “We charged a dollar more,” he said.
On Monday—a year after he began selling the hat online—Bolick received a cease-and-desist order from a lawyer representing Outdoor Voices. “It has come to our attention that you are selling an imitation of our Doing Things hat, which is a well-known symbol of our brand and which customers closely associate with OV,” the letter said. “I am reaching out to kindly ask that you immediately discontinue all sales of the imitation hat and remove all references to the hat, including in marketing materials, social media pages, and websites. We are both local Austin brands, and OV is very mindful of preserving our brand perception, so we hope that we can resolve this amicably.” Bolick immediately posted the letter, along with a picture of the hat, to Instagram. Most of the comments on the post are from people dunking on the athletic wear brand. Local brewery Austin Beerworks, in a tongue-in-cheek show of support, vowed to make a hat that read “Brewing Things.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Amazon continues to expand its footprint and influence in Hays County (Community Impact)
Hays County is consistently ranked as one of the fastest growing in the country, and a key indicator of the county’s growth is Amazon, its largest employer, which will expand by the end of this year with a 1,005,000-square-foot delivery center in San Marcos.
The new delivery center, known as SAT6, will be the fourth and largest Amazon operation in the county. The first, an 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center in San Marcos called SAT2, opened in August 2016 with initial employment estimates ranging from 350-1,000. However, those estimates proved conservative.
By the end of 2016, Amazon reported 2,226 employees at SAT2, which increased to 2,935 by the end of 2017, according to economic incentive documents acquired through an open records request.
Employment dipped to roughly 1,850 in 2018 and 2019 for reasons Amazon was unable to share, but surged to 3,119 in 2020 as shoppers avoided stores and went online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Jason Giulietti, Greater San Marcos Partnership president, said SAT2’s workforce has since jumped to more than 4,400.
“It’s just mind-blowing what’s going on there, and what we find is that facility is actually one of their most productive facilities in their global network,” he said. “Productivity levels are just unprecedented there.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
The Texas Senate has approved a new statewide appeals court. Critics contend it's another attempt to limit Democrats' power. (Texas Tribune)
The Texas Senate passed a bill Wednesday to create a new statewide court of appeals that would hear cases that have statewide significance — including ones that challenge state laws, the constitution or when the state or its agencies are sued.
Currently, when such cases go to the intermediate appellate level, they are mostly heard by the 3rd Court of Appeals based in Austin. That court’s judges are elected by voters in Democratic-leaning Travis County. Senate Bill 1529, though, would send the cases to the new appellate court whose judges would be elected by voters statewide — an electorate that skews Republican.
Some of the state’s highest profile cases could be affected by this proposed court. Bill author Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said that recent lawsuits surrounding Gov. Greg Abbott’s pandemic emergency orders are examples of types of litigation the proposed court would have jurisdiction over.
Critics say the proposed new court is a Republican attempt to yank jurisdiction of these cases from Democrats.
The Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals has five Democrats and only one Republican. Currently, all statewide elected judges are Republican, including on the Texas Supreme Court — and it’s likely the proposed court would also be all Republican.
“Since the [3rd Court of Appeals] deals with issues facing state government, it's a thorn in the Republican Party side,” Mark P. Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University, said in an interview. “And so by transitioning that by moving that to a statewide election where Republicans have the advantage, they would be able to, most likely, flip from being a Democratic majority… to a [5-0] Republican advantage.”
Huffman maintains that she wrote the bill to promote consistency — not for partisan reasons… (LINK TO STORY)
US Rep. Kevin Brady of The Woodlands to retire in 2022 (Houston Chronicle)
U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a longtime congressman from The Woodlands and one of the most powerful Republicans in the House, announced Wednesday he won't seek a 14th term in office. Brady, who was first elected in 1996, is the top GOP member on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and was its chairman as it drafted former President Donald Trump's tax rewrite in 2017. But Brady faces a term limit leading the committee at the end of 2022, which he said in his announcement was a factor in his decision not to return. “In the end, I’ll leave Congress the way I entered it, with the absolute belief that we are a remarkable nation — the greatest in history,” Brady said in an address at the Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce Economic Outlook Conference.
Brady is the second member of the Texas delegation to announce his retirement this year, following U.S. Rep. Filemón Vela, a South Texas Democrat. Their announcements come as Republicans are already pushing to take back the House from a slim Democratic majority — something Brady said in his announcement he was confident would happen. Brady’s departure will leave open a reliably red seat north of Houston as Texas lawmakers work to redraw congressional boundaries. Brady won reelection last year by 47 percentage points and it is unlikely Democrats will be able to gain much ground there in 2022. He struck an optimistic tone in his announcement, saying he has not “lost faith in a partisan Congress and the political system” as he touted legislative accomplishments, including a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, a ban on surprise medical billing, and perhaps most notably, the GOP tax overhaul that he spearheaded in the House. “The tax cuts lifted millions of Americans out of poverty and gave hope to so many the old tax code had left behind,” Brady said. “America recaptured the title of the most competitive economy in the world, bringing manufacturing jobs and investment back home to America from overseas.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
COVID-19 fallout threat 'will ripple through the world for years,' new intel report finds (ABC News)
The U.S. intelligence community warned in a new report that fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will "ripple through the world for years" and is likely to escalate existing challenges posed by America’s adversaries -- a sign of the challenges that lie ahead as the nascent Biden administration seeks to stem the virus’ spread and reassert America’s role as a global leader. The Annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, which provides lawmakers and the American people with a vast landscape of threats to the U.S. homeland, found that the "far-reaching effects" of the pandemic, which "extend well beyond global health to the economic, political, and security spheres," may present the governments of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, an opportunity to "advance their interests at the expense of the United States and its allies."
"The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to strain governments and societies, fueling humanitarian and economic crises, political unrest, and geopolitical competition as countries, such as China and Russia, seek advantage through such avenues as 'vaccine diplomacy,'" the report found. "No country has been completely spared, and even when a vaccine is widely distributed globally, the economic and political aftershocks will be felt for years." The 27-page report, released Tuesday, precedes two days of highly anticipated congressional testimony from America’s spy chiefs, who will convene on Capitol Hill this week for the first time in more than two years. Once an annual event, the Worldwide Threat Assessment hearings took a hiatus in 2020 after intelligence community leaders reportedly balked at depicting a national security landscape in conflict with the sentiments conveyed by then-President Donald Trump. Their 2019 testimony, which contradicted Trump’s rosy vision of relations with Iran, attracted scrutiny on the then-president’s now-dormant Twitter page. "The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!" Trump tweeted. "Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!"… (LINK TO STORY)