BG Reads | News You Need to Know (January 3, 2022)
[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.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Mayor emphasizes Austin’s knack for rising to the occasion (Austin Monitor)
The Austin Monitor sat down with Mayor Steve Adler in early December to recall the highlights – and lowlights – of 2021, including Covid-19, homelessness, Winter Storm Uri, police reform, and the rising cost of housing in Austin.
At the beginning of 2021, Adler and others hoped that they would not have to deal with the pandemic much longer, but as 2022 gets underway, it’s unclear exactly how long the virus will be with us.
“I think our city’s done really well in (dealing with) Covid. If the mortality rate in the state was the same as it is in Austin, over 30,000 Texans would still be alive today.” He added, “I think that our mortality rate is about half of what the state’s is.”
Austin-Travis County’s health department has never faced bigger challenges than the ones presented by Covid, and Adler noted that the pandemic “exercises the city apparatus in an entirely different way.”
The pandemic has also pushed Adler into a role Austin mayors have not previously faced. Under most circumstances, the mayor has just one vote, like his City Council colleagues, but during the pandemic his authority grew, as did the authority of the Travis County Judge. But Adler stresses that Austin is able to weather situations like the pandemic better than most cities. Part of the reason for that, he said, is our workforce, which is younger than in many cities. Covid may have emphasized “the disparities and the challenges that we face … But generally speaking, the city’s worked very hard, put in a lot of resources against it. And compared to our peers, Austin is very strong.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Brown: The stakes are high for the county judge (Austin Monitor)
Unlike the city of Austin, Travis County doesn’t have a behind-the-scenes manager directing operations, overseeing staff and preparing budgets. But it does have Andy Brown, the county judge, head of the Commissioners Court and a former senior adviser to Beto O’Rourke during his 2018 campaign for U.S. Senate.
Over the last year or so, Brown organized the biggest non-federal vaccine operation in the state, weathered an unusually severe Texas snowstorm and played a seminal role in fending off a gargantuan-yet-unpopular investment plan to expand the holding capacity of the county jail. Oh, and did we mention that he was sued twice by the governor?
“It’s been a busy, busy year,” Brown told the Austin Monitor. “During the winter storm, I was there at the emergency operations center along with a lot of other county and city staffers.”
Brown doesn’t have to struggle to keep himself occupied, whether he’s at Commissioners Court, talking with constituents, agenda-setting with county executives, or meeting with the mayor, health authorities and other emergency response entities. Comparing his first full year as county judge to his years as an organizer and political campaigner, Brown said his current role is “way more intense.”
“The decisions that I’ve had to make have been life or death – with the winter storm where people lost their lives, or the pandemic where people lost their lives. Right now, the stakes are higher here,” the county judge said.
Brown considers his role in the bipartisan effort of organizing and executing a mass drive-thru vaccine clinic one of his greatest achievements of the year. Four county judges in total, two Democrats and two Republicans, Brown explained, banded together to ask for additional vaccines from the Texas Division of Emergency Management… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin council priorities likely to carry over into 2022 with elections, budgeting in focus (Community Impact)
Austin City Council had a busy 2021, tackling issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Winter Storm Uri alongside housing and homelessness policy, public safety, local development and transportation.
Many of those topics will continue to be priorities in 2022, a year that will also see shakeups on the council dais beginning this month with a new mayor pro tem and the special election to select Greg Casar's successor as representative for District 4.
City boards and commissions will return to regular meetings at City Hall and other city buildings throughout January. Council's first full meeting of 2022, a work session, is scheduled for Jan. 25 and will be followed by a regular voting session Jan. 27…
(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Jan. 6 committee prepares to go public as findings mount (Associated Press)
They’ve interviewed more than 300 witnesses, collected tens of thousands of documents and traveled around the country to talk to election officials who were pressured by Donald Trump. Now, after six months of intense work, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is preparing to go public. In the coming months, members of the panel will start to reveal their findings against the backdrop of the former president and his allies’ persistent efforts to whitewash the riots and reject suggestions that he helped instigate them. The committee also faces the burden of trying to persuade the American public that their conclusions are fact-based and credible. But the nine lawmakers — seven Democrats and two Republicans — are united in their commitment to tell the full story of Jan. 6, and they are planning televised hearings and reports that will bring their findings out into the open.
Their goal is not only to show the severity of the riot, but also to make a clear connection between the attack and Trump’s brazen pressure on the states and Congress to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election as president. “The full picture is coming to light, despite President Trump’s ongoing efforts to hide the picture,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman and one of its two Republican members. “I don’t think there’s any area of this broader history in which we aren’t learning new things,” she said. While the fundamental facts of Jan. 6 are known, the committee says the extraordinary trove of material they have collected — 35,000 pages of records so far, including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump — is fleshing out critical details of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries, which played out on live television. They hope to fill in the blanks about the preparations before the attack, the financing behind the Jan. 6 rally that preceded it and the extensive White House campaign to overturn the 2020 election. They are also investigating what Trump himself was doing as his supporters fought their way into the Capitol. True accountability may be fleeting. Congressional investigations are not criminal cases and lawmakers cannot dole out punishments. Even as the committee works, Trump and his allies continue to push lies about election fraud while working to place similarly minded officials at all levels of state and local government… (LINK TO FULL STORY)