BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 29, 2021)
Downtown Austin
[BINGHAM GROUP]
The BG Podcast is back! EP. 148 features Jose "Chito" Vela III a candidate for Austin's Council District 4.
The immigration and defense attorney declared in early November, following Council Member Greg Casar announcing his candidacy for Congress (triggering an automatic resignation).
Bingham Group CEO A.J. and Associate Wendy Rodriguez discuss Chito's campaign and what he hopes to achieve if elected.
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Incentive package to lure Samsung to Taylor is biggest in Texas history (Austin American-Statesman)
Samsung's plan to build a $17 billion next-generation semiconductor factory in Taylor is being called the largest direct foreign investment in Texas history.
The amount of publicly funded incentives that sealed the deal for the small town northeast of Austin is of similar historic significance.
South Korea-based Samsung is set to receive property tax breaks from the city of Taylor, the Taylor school district and Williamson County totaling $954 million over the life of the agreements, according to an American-Statesman analysis.
Combined with a $27 million grant from a state incentive fund, the package adds up to $981 million and easily ranks No. 1 in a database compiled by the public-interest group Good Jobs First of the biggest such corporate incentive deals in Texas history.
It's the most expensive deal even without including about $260 million in infrastructure improvements near the future site of the Samsung factory — such as new roads and water lines — nearly all of which will be funded by Williamson County, the city of Taylor or the state… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Shea: A career spent combating the climate crisis (Austin Monitor)
In the summer of 1988, Brigid Shea unfolded a copy of The New York Times and read a front-page story that changed the trajectory of her life, about a NASA scientist who had testified to Congress about the life-threatening consequences of releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The article helped fuel a three-decade career dedicated to combating the climate crisis and preparing communities for a changing world.
Over the decades, Shea has worn many hats as a reporter, consultant, Austin City Council member, and since 2014, a Travis County commissioner. Finding ways to battle climate change has been a common thread throughout.
Shea was initially interested in running for Travis County commissioner because the county has special authority in emergency situations, including those caused by climate change. This mission was emphasized during Texas’ winter storm and the subsequent failure of the power grid in February 2021. With thousands of constituents left without power and water, the importance of emergency management became especially apparent.
Looking ahead to future policy, Shea said it’s not enough just to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s also vital for the county to prepare residents for future climate-related disasters.
“It was a lesson for anyone who was paying attention about the kinds of things that will continue to happen as climate change impacts become more severe,” she said. “We really need to take important lessons from this and focus on being better prepared and that really has been my wheelhouse. That’s the thing that I’ve worked on most extensively for my time in office. We can’t … stop the extreme weather, but we can be better prepared.”
A key element of disaster management is providing timely updates to the public. In late 2020, Shea advocated for the modernization and expansion of the Travis County emergency alert system, Warn Central Texas. With the expansion, Shea helped the county transition from a landline-based notification system to a mobile phone-based system, increasing the contact rate from 8 to 70 percent.
“I will continue to focus on those kinds of things,” she said. “How can we better prepare our residents …. What can we do at a systemic level to improve the county’s infrastructure and have our resources better prepared, better positioned to help people?”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Ann Howard reflects on a turbulent first year in office (Austin Monitor)
From the winter storm last February to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Travis County Commissioner Ann Howard has seen a lot this past year. The Austin Monitor sat down with Howard to reflect on 2021 and the highs and lows that came with it.
“My first year here in office is this intense year of pandemic and winter storm,” she said. “Between the two of those things, we have learned so much about our community. Strengths and weaknesses and things we need to be doing, and that’s human-to-human and also our infrastructure.”
One of the things the commissioner is excited to share is the way the county invested some of the money from the American Rescue Plan Act toward affordable housing, in an effort to fight homelessness in the region.
“The county has committed $110 million that will help provide several thousand homes for people,” said Howard, who formerly served as executive director for the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, or ECHO. “It has been a wonderful opportunity to help coalesce so many organizations and efforts and really move the ball on that issue.”
She’s also proud of the work that the county is doing to try to stop the incarceration of people who struggle with mental health issues.
“We committed more money to mental health programs to help divert people out of the criminal justice system and make sure there’s more services in the community to help them stay strong and stay safe and not end up in jail,” she noted… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas economy continues to bounce back, although recovery is mixed (Austin American-Statesman)
Amid coronavirus variants and supply chain issues, the Texas economy continues to bounce back, although the recovery is mixed. The state's manufacturing sector saw growth in December, while several parts of the service sector showed a slower pace of acceleration this month, according to new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas surveys. The Dallas Fed surveys are designed to take the pulse of executives in the manufacturing and service sectors. The service sector includes retail, hospitality, professional and technical services and other businesses. Despite some headwinds, the state's manufacturing sector continues to expand, said Emily Kerr, Dallas Fed senior business economist.
“Despite continued supply-chain and labor challenges, expansion in the Texas manufacturing sector continued at an impressive clip this month, though price and wage pressures remained highly elevated,” Kerr said. The manufacturing survey received responses from 339 business executives from Dec. 13-21. Among the findings: The production index held fairly steady at 26.7, a reading "well above average and indicative of robust output growth," according to the report; The new orders index dipped slightly from 19.6 to 18.1; On average, responding firms saw a 7% increase in wages in 2021, and a 7% increase in selling prices. These are significantly higher figures than for the prior four years, according to the Dallas Fed… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Retirements of key Texas lawmakers leave void in education policy expertise, advocates say (Dallas Morning News)
Blistered by long standing disputes and legal challenges over how Texas funds public schools, few education leaders had hope that anything would change. It was 2018, and the Legislature charged a group to redesign state finance formulas that would funnel money to schools in a way that spurred lasting reform. “Everybody said, ‘They’re not going to get it done. Nobody’s going to get this done,’” said Donna Bahorich, a former State Board of Education member. Yet a year-and-a-half after the commission started its work, every Republican and Democrat in the statehouse voted yes on landmark legislation that overhauled the school finance system. Advocates say that’s largely due to Rep. Dan Huberty and Sen. Larry Taylor.
At the time, the two Republicans led their respective chambers’ education committees. To get the bill to the finish line, they negotiated differences between the House and Senate, created minute fixes to address specific concerns and corralled votes from every one of their colleagues. Over the years, Huberty became a fierce advocate for students with dyslexia -- inspired by the struggles of his own son. Taylor pushed for more school choice options -- including voucher-like initatives. Both recently announced they weren’t running for reelection, taking with them substantial education expertise and what observers describe as an ability to compromise in the name of serving children. Neither will return to Austin in 2023, when lawmakers will have to grapple with COVID-19?s aftermath and how to tackle lingering needs of students who fell behind during the pandemic. “If losing Huberty is a blow to us, losing Taylor is potentially devastating to [the Senate],” said Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, who worked with both lawmakers to pass school finance legislation in 2019. But the pair weren’t always steeped in education policy debates… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
A Southwest Texas paper folded. A conspiracy-spewing Facebook streamer took its place. (Texas Monthly)
In late September, rumors erupted on local Del Rio Facebook pages that Haitian migrants on a plane leaving the airport for repatriation had begun to riot. Karen Gleason, a crime reporter for the 830 Times, a local news outlet that stepped up last November to fill a news void when the 136-year-old Del Rio News-Herald folded, went to the airport to investigate. There she found a host of law enforcement officers gathering around a single migrant who had fainted. There had been no riot. Gleason decided there wasn’t a story to pursue and went home. Frank Lopez Jr. saw the same scene and decided, instead, to broadcast it. The former chair of the Val Verde County Republican Party and a retired Border Patrol agent, Lopez has nearly 22,000 followers from across the country on Facebook, where he livestreams under the moniker “US Border Patriot.” He paced along the airport fence, filming law enforcement and immigration authorities escorting reluctant migrants onto the plane. Even though there wasn’t a riot, Lopez stirred anxiety among his viewers. “They’re dragging ’em in; they don’t want to go; they resist; they fight; they push back . . . imagine when they come to your hometown and they don’t like the way things are,” Lopez said.
Within minutes, he had 38,000 viewers—more than the number of people who live in Del Rio. For nearly two hours, he harangued about immigration policies that repatriated some Haitian migrants while allowing others to pursue asylum in the country. There were no references or authorities cited for context, yet hundreds of appreciative comments for his version of truth telling came pouring in. One representative commenter wrote that Lopez “is out there and putting [his] life on the line to show us the truth.” Del Rio, Lopez’s base, briefly became the center of national media attention in September as about 15,000 Haitian migrants gathered under the international bridge there. But after national journalists, who filled every hotel and room for rent for about three weeks, left town, there were few reporters to tell local stories. Val Verde County, of which Del Rio is the seat, had become one of more than twenty Texas news deserts, defined by the University of North Carolina as communities with limited access to credible and comprehensive news and information, after the News-Herald folded last year. That’s left room for Lopez to fill an information gap… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
How Oklahoma became a marijuana boom state (The New York Times)
Across Oklahoma, a staunchly conservative state with a history of drawing people in search of wealth from the land, a new kind of crop is taking over old chicken coops, trailer parks and fields where cattle used to graze.
Next door to a Pentecostal church in the tiny town of Keota, the smell of marijuana drifts through the air at the G & C Dispensary. Strains with names like OG Kush and Maui Waui go for $3 a gram, about a quarter of the price in other states.
Down the road, an indoor-farming operation is situated in a residential area near mobile homes, one of about 40 in the town of just 500 residents. “It might look strange, but this is where the action is,” said Logan Pederson, 32, who moved this year from Seattle to Oklahoma to manage the small farm for a company called Cosmos Cultivation.
Ever since the state legalized medical marijuana three years ago, Oklahoma has become one of the easiest places in the United States to launch a weed business. The state now boasts more retail cannabis stores than Colorado, Oregon and Washington combined. In October, it eclipsed California as the state with the largest number of licensed cannabis farms, which now number more than 9,000, despite a population only a tenth of California’s.
The growth is all the more remarkable given that the state has not legalized recreational use of marijuana. But with fairly lax rules on who can obtain a medical card, about 10 percent of Oklahoma’s nearly 4 million residents have one, by far the most of any other state.
Fueled by low barriers for entry and a fairly hands-off approach by state officials, weed entrepreneurs have poured into Oklahoma from around the United States. It costs just $2,500 to get started, compared to $100,000 or more across the state line in Arkansas. And Oklahoma, a state that has long had a tough-on-crime stance, has no cap on how many dispensaries can sell marijuana, the number of cannabis farms or even how much each farm can produce.
That unfettered growth has pitted legacy ranchers and farmers against this new breed of growers. Groups representing ranchers, farmers, sheriffs and crop dusters recently joined forces to call for a moratorium on new licenses. They cited climbing prices for land, illicit farms and strains on rural water and electricity supplies as among the reasons. In some parts, new indoor farms are using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water… (LINK TO FULL STORY)