BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 2, 2021)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
In-person return for Austin City Council could be coming after summer break (Community Impact)
After more than a year away from their physical seats on the dais, Austin City Council members could be returning to in-person meetings at City Hall later this summer.
During their June 1 work session, several council members expressed a desire to return to the City Hall council chambers in some form following their summer recess in late July. It remains to be seen whether the full council contingent will be present at Austin's first in-person meetings this year, and if they would be joined at City Hall by staff and members of the public.
Among council members who spoke June 1, most shared a preference for resuming in-person meetings this summer and in doing away with protective measures such as plexiglass partitions placed between officials. The concept of physically spacing out around half of the group on the dais in person with the remaining members appearing virtually from their offices was also floated as an initial way to maintain a limit on meeting participants.
The question of requiring masks or vaccinations for members of the public at meetings this summer also remains. While no decision was made June 1, District 10 Council Member Alison Alter said she would prefer to see some limits on outside attendance if city residents are also permitted in person.
“I’m not sure that I would be comfortable with a full capacity, with the room being able to be filled to the same capacity for the safety of the staff ... and possibly requiring masks of folks who aren’t on the dais since we have no mechanism of assuring vaccination," she said… (LINK TO STORY)
City staff ask for more time, direction on Austin’s plan to set up homeless encampments (KUT)
A preliminary plan to set up encampments on city-owned land in Austin has hit a snag.
City Council directed city staffers to identify land for temporary camps last month after voters reinstated the ban on public encampments. The initial list was met with pushback, so staffers have asked to extend Thursday’s deadline to next month and begin setting up a temporary shelter in the meantime.
Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison told City Manager Spencer Cronk and staff at a briefing Tuesday she wished the rollout of a list of 45 potential sites was more transparent both internally at City Hall and with residents.
She said she found out about the list the day before it was released May 18.
“I don’t think it offers our constituents much in the way of … (us) representing them well, when it’s pretty clear that we don’t have the kind of clear communication with the city manager’s office that we should have,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to find out the day before.”
Last week, Harper-Madison and other Black leaders suggested the selection process didn’t examine Austin’s history of racism and redlining. More than half the proposed sites were on the east side, which has been historically underserved by the city.
Ultimately, staff found most of the 45 sites were unusable for various reasons, and a bill passed by the Texas Legislature could take parkland completely off the table.
Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department Director Kim McNeeley told Council only one site would be viable under the bill, which Gov. Greg Abbott has signaled he would sign.
In light of that, staffers suggested the city set aside $4.2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to set up a temporary shelter at one of the hotels the city acquired during the pandemic to house Austinites at risk of contracting Covid-19. With that money, Homeless Strategy Officer Dianna Grey told Council, the city could operate the site for a year. Staff expects it could be up and running by mid-July.
Council passed a resolution May 6 to look into encampments, directing staffers to find city-owned land that could accommodate 50 people on a 2-acre tract or 100 people on a 4-acre tract for a period of two years. Properties needed to have access to transportation and food resources, and couldn’t be within a floodplain or an area at risk of wildfires.
At a work session after the list of 45 sites was released, Council members removed high-traffic and environmentally sensitive parkland from the list, as well as land close to schools or already in the process of being developed by the city.
In a memo ahead of Tuesday’s briefing, Grey suggested the criteria Council established severely limited the city’s options. She asked Council to make them less broad to include more public land.
After that, staff could come back to Council with options by July 1, the memo said… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin Is biggest winner from Tech migration, LinkedIn data show (Bloomberg)
Austin is the top beneficiary of tech-related migration in the past 12 months, according to data from Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn profiles. Nashville and Charlotte also saw noteworthy migration rates.
The Texas capital captured a net inflow of 217 software and information technology company workers per 10,000 existing ones, according to data from May 2020 to April 2021 provided by LinkedIn. That’s the best net migration rate among 35 metropolitan areas with gross tech migration of at least 2,000 LinkedIn users in the past 12 months.
The Covid-19 pandemic upended -- at least temporarily -- the idea that technology workers need to cluster around high-rent San Francisco or that finance workers need to do so in pricey New York. It also reinforced existing growth trends in smaller and relatively affordable markets, including Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida.
Lately, another Florida market -- the Miami area, which is neither cheap nor second-tier -- tends to grab most of the attention. It has been at the center of a buzzy social media campaign to lure tech workers. Even though Mayor Francis Suarez’s move-to-Miami campaign on social media didn’t begin in earnest until early December, the city was No. 11 by net migration rate.
By contrast, the San Francisco Bay area, Boston and Chicago all saw significant outflows, the data show. There’s no telling whether many of those moves will prove permanent, especially as the pandemic wanes in the U.S. and many companies eye a return to the office… (LINK TO STORY)
Council to increase homestead exemptions, tax rate ceiling (Austin Monitor)
City Council plans to vote this week on three items affecting Austinites’ property taxes.
Two measures would give homeowners modest property tax relief through increased homestead exemption rates. The third measure would effectively set a higher maximum property tax rate, allowing the city more flexibility as it decides what rate to set in August. All three look likely to pass at Thursday’s meeting.
The new homestead exemption rates would decrease city property taxes for people who own and live in their homes. Council is looking to increase the general exemption rate from the current 10 percent to 20 percent, the maximum allowed under state law. This means that qualifying properties would only be taxed at 80 percent of their appraised value instead of 90 percent.
Council will also decide this week whether to change homestead exemptions for seniors 65 and over and people with disabilities. The senior and disability exemptions are flat rates, rather than a percentage. The exemption rate would increase from $88,000 to $113,000. These amounts are deducted from a qualifying property’s appraised value, meaning taxes are then levied on the new value.
The general exemption would save the typical homeowner $141.06 next year if the city increases taxes by 3.5 percent, according to Deputy Budget Officer Erik Nelson. Under the same scenario, the savings with the senior and disability exemption would be $150.87.
Council members said that the exemptions would help homeowners handle increased tax burdens as property values in the city skyrocket. “There are many folks that need this type of relief,” Council Member Paige Ellis said.
The city has wanted to change the general homestead exemption rate to 20 percent for several years, but has opted out because doing so, according to the state comptroller, would have decreased the city’s allowed property tax revenue under state law, jeopardizing some city services. But after the comptroller changed its interpretation of state law this year, increases in homestead exemptions do not affect the city’s total allowed property tax revenue.
Though Council members supported the exemptions, some still had concerns. Council Member Greg Casar said he wished that general homestead exemptions could be a set amount – like the senior and disability exemptions – instead of a percentage, so that lower-income homeowners could see more relief. State law requires that general homestead exemptions be calculated as a percentage… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas cities retain powers to regulate private-sector hiring, benefits (Austin Business Journal)
An effort to stop Texas cities from creating rules for businesses around scheduling and benefits — including controversial mandates passed in some places such as paid sick leave — failed at the state Legislature.
Senate Bill 14 would have banned municipalities and counties from adopting rules around terms of employment "that exceed or conflict with federal or state law," and thrown out old laws. But it missed the May 30 deadline for a final vote to reconcile different versions of the bill passed by the House and Senate.
It remains to be seen whether Gov. Greg Abbott will include SB 14 in a special session for later this year. He has indicated he wants to see changes to voting laws and a bail bond bill taken up by lawmakers, the Texas Tribune reported.
Supporters of SB 14 argued it was necessary to avoid a patchwork of regulations that change from one city to the next. They said employers would benefit from a consistent set of rules, especially after a difficult pandemic year that pushed many businesses to the brink.
"We were very sad and disappointed that it didn't make it through, given how close it was to final passage," said Shelby Sterling, a policy analyst at Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. "It would have been a great law for protecting small businesses and business owners and employees in the state."
Opponents argued it would have rolled back worker protections in communities that have made such protections a priority.
"It's so shameful that after essential workers have put so much on the line during this pandemic, the legislature would consider taking basic worker rights away," Austin City Council Member Greg Casar, former policy director of the Workers Defense Project, said April 21, before SB 14 died at the State Capitol. "Workers need more protections after this year, not fewer."
SB 14 originally was broad enough to affect a wide range of hiring- and benefit-related ordinances, such as mandatory breaks for construction workers passed in Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015. It also would have ended Austin's Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance, which makes it illegal to ask about a job applicant's criminal history until after extending a conditional job offer. But SB 14 was pared back as it moved through the Legislature.
Ultimately it came down to a referendum on paid sick leave mandates, which have been delayed in court and never went into effect. If SB 14 is not part of a special session, it would be up to the courts to decide if such rules could go into effect in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio… (LINK TO STORY)
Gov. Greg Abbott signs slate of legislation to increase criminal penalties for protesters, punish cities that reduce police budgets (Texas Tribune)
Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a slate of legislation Tuesday that targets protesters and restricts cities’ abilities to reduce police budgets.
In a ceremony attended by state law enforcement associations and bill authors, Abbott signed four Republican-backed bills aimed at widespread protests over police killings of Black and Hispanic Americans and calls to reduce spending on law enforcement.
House Bill 9, a priority bill for the lower chamber, requires jail time for people who knowingly block emergency vehicles or hospital entrances after a California incident last September in which the sheriff’s department said protesters blocked a police car with two injured officers from entering a hospital.
Similarly, House Bill 2366 makes it a felony to use fireworks to interfere with official police activity or use laser pointers to cause bodily injury to officers. Prior to the bill, using a laser pointer was only a misdemeanor offense.
Critics have decried both bills as overly punitive, while Abbott and other supporters have called them necessary to keep law enforcement safe.
The other bills create two new barriers to big cities that wish to reduce their law enforcement budgets. Abbott called police budget reductions “downright dangerous” and a “reckless decision” in a press release after signing the legislation.
Although calls to “defund the police” can mean several things, they usually include reallocating money to other social services or investing in alternative public safety programs… (LINK TO STORY)
Trump ally Michael Flynn says what happened in coup-stricken Myanmar ‘should happen’ in U.S. at Dallas conference (Dallas Morning News)
A former national security adviser for Donald Trump told attendees at a weekend conference in Dallas linked to the baseless QAnon conspiracy that what happened in Myanmar — where the military overthrew the government — “should happen” in the United States. Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, was among the keynote speakers at the For God & Country Patriot Roundup, which took place Friday to Monday at the city-owned Omni Dallas Hotel. The event featured other speakers associated with the QAnon theory that helped drive failed efforts to overturn the results of last year’s presidential election. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his role in the Russia scandal but was later pardoned by Trump, has maintained that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. President Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and repeated Republican-led efforts to prove widespread voter fraud have turned up empty.
During a question-and-answer session that CNN reported took place Sunday, an audience member asked Flynn, while mispronouncing the Southeast Asian nation’s name: “I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?” “No reason,” Flynn responded as the crowd cheered. “I mean, it should happen here.” Myanmar’s military overthrew the country’s democratically elected government in a Feb. 1 coup and has cracked down on dissent in the months since then, killing protesters and imprisoning journalists. Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy have urged a similar government overthrow by the American military. U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and until recently one of the party’s highest-ranking members, posted a link on Twitter to an article about Flynn’s remarks Monday, writing, “No American should advocate or support the violent overthrow of the United States.” Flynn was Trump’s first national security adviser, serving less than a month before Trump fired him after reports that he had misled the White House about his communications with Russia’s ambassador to the United States… (LINK TO STORY)
After gloomy outlook amid pandemic, Houston budget emerges from COVID unscathed - for now (Houston Chronicle)
A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Sylvester Turner painted a dire picture of the city’s finances as he laid out his plan to balance last year’s $5 billion city budget. Like other cities across the country, Houston’s sales tax revenue had plunged as the public stayed home, and Turner was proposing to make up the loss by furloughing 3,000 municipal workers, deferring police cadet classes, cutting the library budget and draining the city’s emergency reserves. “These are financially difficult times, and it’s simply unavoidable,” Turner said of the cuts.
One year later, the city is emerging from the worst of the pandemic with its finances largely unscathed. Thanks to a payout of more than $1 billion in federal aid, Turner and city finance officials avoided the projected furloughs, reinstated the police cadet classes and are heading into the next fiscal year with replenished emergency reserves and a rare budget surplus. Still, as City Council prepares to consider Turner’s $5.1 billion annual spending plan Wednesday, not everyone agrees on how the city should use its newfound wealth. Since prior mayoral administrations, city officials have passed annual budgets that spend more than the city takes in through recurring revenue, such as taxes. They have made up the difference by selling city-owned land, deferring hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance on city buildings, dipping into cash reserves and using other one-time fixes. Turner has attributed much of the budgetary struggles to the city’s revenue cap, which limits annual growth in property tax revenue to 4.5 percent or the combined rates of inflation and population, whichever is lower… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Major rulings including Obamacare loom for U.S. Supreme Court (Reuters)
The U.S. Supreme Court heads into the last month of its current term with several major cases yet to be decided including a Republican bid to invalidate the Obamacare healthcare law, a dispute involving LGBT and religious rights and another focused on voting restrictions. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has 26 cases in total left to decide. There also is speculation about the potential retirement of its oldest justice, Stephen Breyer. Some liberal activists have urged Breyer, who is 82 and has served on the court since 1994, to step down so President Joe Biden can appoint a younger liberal jurist to a lifetime post on the court. The court is due to issue at least one ruling on Tuesday. Its nine-month term starts in October and generally concludes by the end of June, though last year it ran into July because of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking during an online event for students on Friday, Breyer hinted at the court's complex deliberations that go into deciding high-stakes cases at this time of year. "It's complicated by the fact that you are dealing with eight other colleagues. ... You'd better be willing to compromise," Breyer said. Republican-governed states have asked the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, a law signed in 2010 by Democratic former President Barack Obama that has helped expand healthcare access in the United States even as Republicans call it a government overreach. It appears unlikely based on November's oral arguments that the court would take such a drastic step. But if the Obamacare law were to be struck down, up to 20 million Americans could lose their medical insurance and insurers could once again refuse to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions. Obamacare expanded public healthcare programs and created marketplaces for private insurance. Another major case yet to be decided is one that pits religious rights against LGBT rights as the justices weigh Philadelphia's refusal to let a Catholic Church-affiliated group participate in the city's foster care program because it would not accept same-sex couples as prospective foster parents… (LINK TO STORY)
The Southwest is America’s new factory hub. ‘Cranes everywhere.’ (Wall Street Journal)
Companies producing everything from steel to electric cars are planning and building new plants in Southwest states, far from historical hubs of American industry in the Midwest and Southeast. The lure is open land, local tax breaks and a growing supply of tech-savvy workers.
The Southwest, comprising Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, increased its manufacturing output more than any other region in the U.S. in the four years through 2020, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Those states plus Nevada added more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs from January 2017 to January 2020, representing 30% of U.S. job growth in that sector and at roughly triple the national growth rate, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Executives say the region’s growing population makes for plenty of available labor, and its lower cost of living is a draw for new talent.
“I was surprised how straightforward a choice it was,” said Peter Rawlinson, chief executive for Lucid Motors Inc., an electric-vehicle startup that plans to open a $700 million vehicle factory this year in Arizona, where state officials rolled out the red carpet. “There was only one logical conclusion.”
The company had looked at more than 60 sites in 13 states before settling on the 590-acre site in Pinal County, Ariz., a rural area dotted with dairy and cotton farms. The company’s roughly 1 million-square-foot plant will be the state’s first auto-assembly operation.
Manufacturers in the Southwest have been relatively insulated from pandemic shutdowns and layoffs, and job growth there is expected to continue. More than a year of global supply chain disruptions are nudging more manufacturers to reshore or expand U.S. production, likely benefiting Southwest states the most, said Eric Stavriotis, the head of location incentives for CBRE Group, a Dallas-based real-estate company… (LINK TO STORY)