BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 16, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
The Austin Council next meets for regular business on July 22.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Texas Comptroller records show Taylor ISD Chapter 313 agreement is for $17B Samsung Austin Semiconductor facility (Community Impact)
Records from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts show that a June 30 application for Chapter 313 tax limitation approved by Taylor ISD was for Samsung Austin Semiconductor.
The application, under the name “Project Colin,” was approved June 30 by the Taylor ISD Board of Trustees, Community Impact Newspaper previously reported.
At the time, TISD Public Information Officer Tim Crow declined to say how large of a limitation was approved, how long it would last or who it was from, as the project name does not belong to an existing business.
In records obtained from the Comptroller’s website by Community Impact, a property with an undisclosed location is the subject of an application for tax reimbursement on a $17 billion facility over the course of 5 years. The application does not make clear how much of a limitation is being considered. It has been accepted by the school district, but has not yet been approved by the Comptroller. The documents state that Samsung is also considering locations in Arizona, New York and South Korea for a new plant.
If approved, construction is expected to begin in January 2022, with the first year of the limitation to be 2024… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin announces stricter coronavirus protocols for unvaccinated residents as cases increase. But it can’t legally enforce them. (Texas Tribune)
Austin city and public health officials on Thursday raised the city’s coronavirus risk-based guidelines for the first time since the winter surge, urging unvaccinated people to avoid nonessential travel and take other precautions after seeing a dramatic increase in new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent days.
Officials placed at least part of the blame on the dangerous and highly transmissible delta variant of the virus, which has contributed to similar spikes in more-populous areas across Texas recently.
“We cannot pretend that we are done with a virus that is not done with us,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said during a Thursday news conference… (LINK TO STORY)
Sale prices soaring for Austin-area homes (Austin Monitor)
In the first six months of 2021, the Austin Board of Realtors reported, the median price of homes in the city of Austin has increased nearly 31 percent to $530,000. Even more eye-popping, for the month of June, ABoR said the median price of homes in the city of Austin reached $575,000, an all-time record for Austin.
The group reported Thursday that the number of homes selling during the first six months of this year in Austin increased by more than 21 percent, but active listings have now declined to 7,851. In June, ABoR said, “There were 1,374 home sales, up 16.9 percent year over year, setting a record for any June on record.” The figures include single-family homes and townhomes as well as condos.
The same trend is true throughout the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area, where the median price increased 43 percent to $482,364 – also an all-time record. At the same time, inventory was declining… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin was 'the biggest winner' of COVID tech migration. What happens to Silicon Valley? (San Francisco Chronicle)
Texas’s capital has long been a tech pioneer, starting in the 1960s with IBM and Texas Instruments. In 1984, a University of Texas at Austin student named Michael Dell launched his PC company, which would become one of the largest computer manufacturers. But the rise of social media and mobile phones was concentrated in Silicon Valley, cementing the West Coast as the world’s biggest tech hub.
Now, Austin is striving to win the next era of tech.
A year after the pandemic canceled its signature tech and arts conference, SXSW, the city has gone from a harbinger of the crisis to one of its biggest winners, according to local businesses and economic data.
Austin has regained 97% of its lost jobs from spring 2020, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Unemployment was a seasonally adjusted 4.6% in May, down from a pandemic peak of around 12% in April 2020. Company relocations added 12,421 new jobs last year, a record high. The housing market is one of the hottest in the country, with demand soaring from out-of-state arrivals. Studies show there wasn't a California exodus to Texas, but Austin has benefited from company expansions and tech migration… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas House Speaker offers Democrats free plane ride home to return to state (Texas Tribune)
The push to bring fugitive Texas Democrats back to Austin could be reaching new heights.
House Speaker Dade Phelan said Thursday that he will charter a plane Saturday from Washington, D.C., to Austin to retrieve the Democrats who fled to the nation’s capital to avoid voting on an elections bill that they say would restrict voting rights.
“I am demanding all of our colleagues in D.C. to contact my staff immediately in order to secure their seat on the plane and return to Austin in order to do the state’s business,” Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, said in a statement. “The State of Texas is waiting.”
The decamped Democrats, however, said they won’t be riding.
“The Speaker should save his money. We won’t be needing a plane anytime soon as our work to save democracy from Trump Republicans is just getting started,” they said in a shared statement. “We’re not going anywhere and suggest instead the speaker end this charade of a session, which is nothing more than a monthlong campaign for Gov. Abbott’s re-election. The speaker should adjourn the House Sine Die.”
The plane will be on standby at Dulles International Airport, and Phelan’s team said his political campaign, not taxpayers, will pay for the flight. Phelan, however, can’t force the Democrats to get on the plane.
Earlier this week, Republicans voted overwhelmingly to send law enforcement to track down and arrest the Democrats, but Texas law enforcement doesn’t have jurisdiction outside of the state… (LINK TO STORY)
Paxton urges Texas high court to toss Dems' lawsuit over Abbott's veto of legislative funding (Houston Chronicle)
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has asked the Texas Supreme Court to toss a lawsuit brought by House Democrats over Gov. Greg Abbott’s move to veto funding for the Legislature, arguing that lawmakers improperly blocked the issue from being resolved when they fled the state. After Abbott vetoed the portion of the coming two-year state budget that funds the Legislature and its staff, known as Article X, more than 50 Democratic state House members filed a lawsuit accusing the Republican governor of violating a constitutional provision that provides for three separate and independent branches of government. In calling lawmakers back to Austin for a 30-day special session, Abbott gave them the option to restore the funding.
In a filing Tuesday evening, Solicitor General Judd Stone wrote that the special session is the “forum for addressing the very issue in dispute, yet it is (the Democrats) who are preventing that outcome by purposefully stopping the Legislature from being able to exercise its constitutionally granted powers.” Abbott vetoed the funding in retaliation for a walkout by House Democrats in late May that prevented the GOP-led Legislature from passing an elections overhaul bill. The veto, which affects about 2,000 staffers who work for lawmakers and legislative agencies, would take effect Sept. 1, when the new fiscal year begins. Stone went on to argue that the matter “is a political question unsuited for adjudication” that should instead be resolved by the legislature. “By staging another walkout, …House Democrats are forcing the Legislature into the result they say would injure them—the lack of Article X funding,” Stone wrote. “Proceeding with this case would improperly reward (Democrats) for their misguided attempt to manufacture jurisdiction and would waste this Court’s resources.”… (LINK TO STORY)
El Paso Democrat Joe Moody stripped of leadership position in Texas House after leaving state with Democrats (Texas Tribune)
El Paso Democrat Joe Moody was stripped of his position as speaker pro tem of the Texas House on Thursday in the first major backlash for a Democrat who left the chamber to prevent a vote on a GOP priority elections bill.
House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, announced the removal of Moody as speaker pro tem in a memo Thursday morning before the House was set to return Thursday. He gave no statement but said the removal was effective immediately.
"The most important titles in my life will never change: Dad, Husband, El Pasoan," Moody said in a statement. "Nothing political has ever even cracked the top three, so nothing has changed about who I am or what my values are."
Moody has served as speaker pro tem for two sessions under two speakers. He is one Phelan’s top allies in the Democratic party, and the two have worked together to push bills aimed at making fixes to the state’s criminal justice system.
The speaker pro tem performs the duties of the speaker in their absence. Moody’s appointment to the position was seen as an olive branch by Republicans and raised the El Paso Democrat’s profile and stature in the chamber.
Rep. Chris Turner, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, blasted Phelan's decision in a statement on social media.
"The smartest decision Dade Phelan has made as speaker was to appoint Joe Moody Speaker Pro Tem," he said. "Joe works tirelessly to help lead the House and is respected by [Democrat] & [Republican] members. That's why the Speaker's decision to remove Joe is so short-sighted and so dumb."… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Los Angeles imposes new mask mandate (Wall Street Journal)
Los Angeles County will again require the use of masks indoors, following a sharp rise in coronavirus infections since most Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in California a month earlier.
The new order will require everyone, regardless of whether they are vaccinated, to wear face coverings in most indoor public places. It takes effect at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday. Some exceptions will apply, similar to those in place for much of the past year, including for restaurants. No businesses are being ordered to reduce capacity or close.
The new restrictions follow what officials called alarming growth in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks, as residents of the nation’s largest most populous county cast off their masks in coffee shops and movie theaters and life returned to something resembling a pre-pandemic normal.
Some 1,537 new cases were confirmed on Thursday, according to county health officials, an 83% increase over the previous week. Hospitalizations have more than tripled over the same period… (LINK TO STORY)
Biden slow-walks Cuba action (Politico)
Cuba’s dictatorship quickly shut down the internet across the island and then blocked social media apps after demonstrators shared images of protesters across the island chanting for liberty, calling for an end to the 62-year-old regime and being beaten and arrested by authorities.
In the U.S., President Joe Biden’s administration has been slow to react. But Republicans haven’t stopped talking since the protests began on Sunday.
On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, two Miami GOP House lawmakers and a federal communications official called on the Biden administration to instantly greenlight a special type of high-altitude communications system and other technology that would enable Cuban citizens to evade the communist government’s censorship. It comes after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) met with the White House on Wednesday to make the same ask.
“We need President Biden to step up and make this happen,” DeSantis — who might challenge Biden in the 2024 presidential election — said at a press conference.
“The one thing that communist regimes fear the most is the truth. And if we're able to help Cubans communicate with one another and also communicate to the outside world, that truth is going to matter … Mr. President, now's the time to stand up and be counted.”… (LINK TO STORY)