BG Reads | News You Need to Know (October 14, 2021)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
EVENTS // Thursday, October 28 (6PM - 10PM0, A Night In Verde Presented by St. David’s Healthcare - benefiting the 4ATX Foundation (Austin FC’s non-profit arm). -> Table Link
***NEW*** BG Podcast Ep. 147: Redistricting, Austin's Mayoral Election, and a New Police Chief
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Majority of Austin LGBTQ community reports high quality of life, but disparities persist (Austin American-Statesman)
Overall, a majority of survey respondents reported enjoying a satisfying quality of life in the Austin area. Two-thirds of survey respondents reported a high satisfaction in overall quality of life, and roughly 75% said their lives in Austin were meaningful.
Most reported a high degree of acceptance from their chosen family and friends but raised concerns about the resources and help available for those who don't have the same experience, especially younger LGBTQ people.
But survey respondents said a range of societal stressors, structural racism and discrimination are negatively affecting the quality of life. Overall, respondents pointed to Austin's increased cost of living and housing, gentrification pressures and poor transportation options as some of the main factors driving disparities, especially for queer people of color. Transgender people of color experience the highest burden of that disparity in Austin, the report found.
The report also found:
Four of five respondents said that racism is a public health crisis.
Half of respondents knew someone in Austin who had experienced a physical threat or attack because of their LGBTQ identity.
Half of respondents experienced verbal abuse or harassment themselves from strangers.
41% are somewhat uncomfortable or very uncomfortable seeking help from police. Queer people of color, youths, and transgender or gender-expansive individuals disproportionally experienced negative interactions with law enforcement.
12% had thoughts of suicide.
The report also illuminated specific issues that LGBTQ Austinites still face when it comes to education and accessing health care, particularly considering the lack of LGBTQ representation in both fields. Only 6% of survey respondents reported acceptance in local schools. At least 41% of respondents have not felt comfortable disclosing their LGBTQ identity to their health care provider, and 19% had never heard of PreP, a preventative medication for people at risk of contracting HIV… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin declared ‘the new Seattle’ in wake of Tesla’s big headquarters news (CultureMap)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk shook up Central Texas with his October 8 announcement that the electric vehicle maker is relocating its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin. Musk made that proclamation from Tesla’s under-construction manufacturing plant just east of Austin, a site that eventually could house more than 10,000 employees.Following the news about the headquarters move, an economist warns that Austin is transforming into the type of place that Musk and Tesla seek to escape.
“Austin is the new Seattle and is on its way to become the new San Francisco. Its low taxes and warm climate are attracting highly paid tech workers,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at residential real estate brokerage Redfin, says in a statement. “Austin is going to have to figure out how to grow sustainably. That means revamping its zoning and infrastructure to accommodate growth.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Environmental Commission OKs updated version of development plan near Lady Bird Lake (Community Impact)
The city of Austin is one step closer to redeveloping land near the Austin American-Statesman building, an area where many Austinites watch the South Congress Avenue bridge bats fly, following the approval of a planned unit development, or PUD.
The applicant, Richard Suttle, is proposing an 18.86-acre PUD located at 305 S. Congress Ave., Austin, on the corner of South Congress and Lady Bird Lake, near the Austin American-Statesman building. The PUD will add trails, lawn space, a pier and a boardwalk area close to the shoreline of Lady Bird Lake.
Staff from the Austin Watershed Protection Department did not recommend the approval of the original PUD, citing multiple environmental concerns. The Austin Environmental Commission approved an amended version of the PUD that meets multiple environmental requirements and addresses those concerns. The PUD now moves to the Austin Planning Commission.A PUD is a type of zoning that alters code requirements in exchange for other construction opportunities. PUDs are required to preserve the natural environment, provide high-quality development and innovative design, and ensure adequate public facilities and services, Environmental Program Manager Atha Phillips said.
A debate sparked between Phillips and Suttle led to the amended version of the PUD. Phillips said the original proposed lawn areas of the PUD would add and remove certain vegetation, causing additional erosion… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin's Crux Collective leads $1.5M funding round (AXIOS)
Crux Collective, the funding arm of Austin-based Crux Climbing Center, has added gym management tech company Approach to its portfolio.
Driving the news: Approach, which offers a point-of-sale platform, announced Wednesday that it raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by Crux Collective.
It's the latest investment by Crux Collective, which launched to invest in locally owned and operated climbing gyms in need of capital and operational resources.
Flashback: Kevin Goradia co-founded the first Crux gym in Austin five years ago but realized it was tricky to raise capital as a locally owned gym, especially during the pandemic.
Private equity is an option, but Crux and other gyms worry about losing sight of their culture and mission when big firms enter the picture, Goradia told Axios.
"We had looked for private equity funding in the past, but the things they were asking of us just didn't quite fit our culture," he said. "We said, 'Hey, we can do it ourselves.'"… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas House passes proposed new map for chamber’s 150 districts, aiming to protect Republicans’ majority for the next decade (Texas Tribune)
The Texas House on Wednesday approved proposed political boundaries for the lower chamber’s 150 districts that aim to fortify Republicans’ strength in the state House for the next decade.
House Bill 1, authored by state Rep. Todd Hunter, a Corpus Christi Republican who chairs the lower chamber’s redistricting committee, will now head to the Senate for consideration.
The House’s 83-63 vote comes as the Legislature rounds out its third special session of the year, an up to 30-day stretch ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott that has focused on redrawing the state’s congressional, Senate, House and State Board of Education maps based on the latest census data. Those numbers, which were delayed largely because of the pandemic, showed that people of color fueled 95% of the state’s population growth over the past decade.
Despite those growth trends, the number of districts in which white people make up the majority of eligible voters would increase from 83 to 89 in the new map. Meanwhile, the number of districts with a Hispanic majority among eligible voters would drop from 33 to 30, while the number of districts with Black residents as the majority of eligible voters would go from seven to six. Those numbers are based on census estimates of the number of citizens in each district who are of the voting age.
The new map includes 85 districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and 65 that would have voted for Joe Biden. That’s one less Trump district than was originally proposed in the House late last month. The current partisan breakdown of the House is 83 Republicans and 67 Democrats, though Trump only won 76 of the current House districts in 2020.
The special session is slated to end Oct. 19, which means lawmakers have a week left to hash out differences over those maps and other items included on the agenda set by Abbott.
Debate over the House’s map proposal kicked off Tuesday morning and went into early Wednesday morning. Members considered more than 50 amendments to the map, with dozens of those proposed changes being added or failing largely along party lines… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas Rep. James Talarico says he’ll move to Austin for 2022 run after Round Rock district redrawn by GOP (KXAN)
State Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, announced Wednesday he is moving to run for reelection in a different House district because his current district is being redrawn to be more favorable to Republicans.
Talarico said he would run in nearby House District 50, where the Democratic incumbent, Celia Israel, is not seeking reelection as she prepares to run for Austin mayor. He announced the new campaign with the support of the biggest names in Democratic politics in Texas, including Beto O’Rourke, Wendy Davis and Joaquin Castro.
Talarico currently represents House District 52, which is set to become redder in redistricting — going from a district that President Joe Biden won by 10 percentage points to one that Donald Trump carried by 4. House District 50, meanwhile, is likely to remain solidly blue after redistricting… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
GOP state Rep. Lyle Larson, who has increasingly broken with his party, won’t seek reelection (Texas Tribune)
State Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, who bucked his party on a number of major issues this year, announced Wednesday he will not seek reelection.
In an email to constituents, Larson said he was following through on legislation he has repeatedly introduced that imposes a term limit of 12 years on any elected official at the state level.
"As a strong proponent of term limits, will follow the limits we previously proposed in this legislation," Larson wrote.
Larson was first elected in 2010 to represent House District 122 in the San Antonio area.
He had been increasingly expected to pass on a 2022 reelection campaign as he grew disillusioned with his party and potential GOP candidates lined up for his seat. Larson was the only Republican to oppose the GOP's priority elections bill that led House Democrats to break quorum this summer. He also was the only Republican to vote against legislation that Republican supporters argued would crack down on the teaching of critical race theory in Texas classrooms. More recently, he filed a long-shot bill during the current special session to provide rape and incest exemptions for Texas' new near-total abortion ban, despite previously voting for it.
Larson, a former San Antonio City Council member and Bexar County commissioner, has also stood mostly alone inside the House GOP for his support for expanding Medicaid, filing legislation to do so during this year's regular session.
Larson has come to regularly use his Twitter account to lament the partisan divisions at the Capitol, and he has advocated for ending America's two-party political system and floated a "Texas Independent Party."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Developers plan bullet train rail station south of downtown Dallas (Dallas Morning News)
Real estate investors who have bought up land south of downtown Dallas plan to develop the property into a high-speed passenger rail terminal. Dallas developer Jack Matthews and his partner, Fort Worth businessman John Kleinheinz, own more than 50 acres for the proposed station along Riverfront Boulevard south of downtown. They’re working on similar projects in Houston and near College Station. Their Texas High-Speed Rail Station Development Corp. would build stations to serve the proposed Texas Central high-speed rail line from Dallas to Houston. “Our high-speed rail project connecting Dallas and Houston will be as transformational to Texas as DFW Airport was to the region when it was opened in 1973,” Kleinheinz said in a statement. “Texas Central will be the blueprint for national high-speed rail, a solution for environmentally efficient transportation.
“As this first high-speed rail project comes online, Texas is positioned to lead in discussions about a national rail strategy with the local and federal stakeholders,” he said. “These station assets will be an integral part of the system.” Developer Matthews is one of the largest property owners in the area south of downtown Dallas, near the Trinity River. His Matthews Southwest Inc. did the successful Southside on Lamar redevelopment on the south side of Interstate 30 near Dallas’ convention center. Matthews Southwest also owns large blocks of undeveloped land along Riverfront Boulevard near Cadiz Street, including the property earmarked for the new train terminal. The rail station would be just part of a much larger multiblock mixed-use development Matthews plans in the area between the Trinity River and Lamar Street. Proposals for the district include everything from residential buildings, to offices, retail and hotels. Architects Perkins & Will and Omniplan have done preliminary designs for the big south side development. Matthews is also a partner in the proposed redevelopment of the nearby former Dallas Morning News buildings on the south side of downtown… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
City of Midland fires lobbyist group out of Austin (News West 9, Midland)
Austin-based lobbyist group Hilco was hired by the City Midland 20 years ago to advocate at the state level for things our community needs. But according to come Midland council members, the firm wasn’t doing their job. In fact, they hadn’t been advocating for anything the city needs or wants for years, but all the while the city had been paying them about $10,000 a month. Jack Ladd, the representative for district 3 who also works as a full-time attorney, raised concerns to the council about paying Hilco so much each month to lobby when the Texas legislature is only in session for 6 months every two years. “Councilman Blong and I took a trip to a trip to Austin to meet with your lobbyists and we discovered they hadn’t registered a single bill the entire session. In other words, they couldn’t prove to us that they had done a single thing at all. So what is the turnaround… we were paying 10,000 a month and I’m not sure what they did?” Ladd said.
According to Ladd, the firm was cashing in on at least $1.2 million from the city. “They hadn’t been to Midland in years, they didn’t know anything about Midland, they didn’t know our key issues. In fact, they had been proponents for things that we as a city council had been against, such as bringing nuclear waste in to our area. They were advocating to bring nuclear waste in even though we had a literal resolution put forward saying we didn’t want that. And we asked them would they contradict that? And they said no because the nuclear waste people were paying them money. So it was a clear conflict of interest they had never alerted us to," Ladd said. The city has fired the Hilco and isn’t looking to replace the position anytime soon. Why? The city council says having Representative Tom Craddick is enough in Austin. “We have the best lobbyist in Austin already. We have Tom Craddick. You can’t do better than that. So I didn’t see a purpose with these people when we have a guy up there who was a former speaker of the house and knows that system better than anybody,” Ladd said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How Baylor steered lower-income parents to debt they couldn’t afford (Wall Street Journal)
Some of the wealthiest U.S. colleges are steering parents into no-limit federal loans to cover rising tuition, leaving many poor and middle-class families with debt they can’t repay. Parents at Baylor University had the worst repayment rate for a type of federal loan called Parent Plus among private schools with at least a $1 billion endowment, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of available Education Department data. Only about a quarter of Baylor parents paid down any of what they originally borrowed after two years. Unlike undergraduate loans that have limits, there is no cap on what parents can borrow through the fast-growing Parent Plus program, no matter their income. Some parents wanting the best schools available for their children sign on the dotted line unaware how the debt can burden them into retirement. Baylor increased its tuition sharply to transform itself from a regionally known Baptist college into a national brand that now has a $1.8 billion endowment. The central Texas school has added facilities, built a sports powerhouse and climbed college-ranking lists in a push to become a world-class research institution.
Among wealthy colleges, though, Baylor is one of the least generous with aid to needy students, publicly available documents show. It has suggested that parents make up what student loans and scholarships don’t cover through Parent Plus, according to interviews with current and former students, parents and employees. “I will never get it all paid off,” said Trina Saverin, a 53-year-old public-school administrator in Texas. She owes $231,000 in federal student loans of which at least $65,000 in Parent Plus loans came from sending her daughter to Baylor, at least $74,000 in Plus loans for her son’s college costs, and loans for her own 2015 master’s degree. Linda Livingstone, Baylor’s president since 2017, said that until a couple of years ago, “we were admitting students who really couldn’t afford Baylor.” The school now takes into account families’ ability to pay when offering acceptances, she said. But families that stretched to pay for Baylor in the past may be stuck with their debt for decades. When asked what she would say to the parents of former Baylor students who were struggling, Dr. Livingstone said: “My heart goes out to families that are in that situation….We are working very, very hard to ensure that we don’t see that so much going forward.” Plus loans—which are available for parents and graduate students—have become the new face of the student-debt crisis, helping drive a sea change in the student-loan marketplace. Until five years ago, undergraduates borrowed more than parents and grad students combined; now parents and grad students borrow more, according to the Journal’s analysis of federal data… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Canceled Southwest flights send the right-wing rumor mill flying (Washington Post)
A 2020 in which a presidential campaign framed by the political right as the last chance to derail the onset of socialicommunithoritarianism has become a 2021 in which those doomsayers are seeking out the predicted doom. If the election of Joe Biden was a step toward the collapse of traditional America then we ought to at least see some cracks in the foundation, no? Overlay how the American predilection to celebrate stubborn individualism has gotten a lot of exercise over the past 20 months — fighting with baristas over mask rules and protests against coronavirus mandates — and you suddenly have a narrative: President Biden’s push for more vaccinations is the heavy hand of the authoritarian state on display. And so those engaged in this great and invented struggle against what they say are the forced injections of Americans look for heroes. Over the weekend, some were identified: unnamed pilots at Southwest Airlines who refused to fly, protesting their employer’s mandate that they be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
A glut of flights canceled by the airline was attributed to a work stoppage and, in short order, those protesting pilots became a symbol of the new American cold war. Here, at last, are the freedom fighters opposing “Josef” Biden (even though the not-actually-a-mandate announced by Biden isn’t yet in place and the mandate at Southwest comes from the company, not the government). There’s one other problem. The celebration of these anti-mandate pilots is suffering from a remarkable dearth of evidence that the delays were to any significant degree, if at all, a function of pilots choosing not to work. An exchange between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and a reporter for the Houston Chronicle is a good synopsis of the rhetorical fight. Cruz declared Sunday evening on Twitter that the cancellation of hundreds of Southwest flights was a function of “Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate.”
He linked to an article at CNBC that made no claim that America was suddenly “short on pilots & air traffic controllers,” as Cruz claimed. Instead, the article noted that there was “speculation on social media” that it was a response from pilots to vaccine mandates. The Chronicle’s Jay Jordan outlined what was known about the cancellations, contrasting it with Cruz’s claims. Cruz then accused Jordan on Twitter of being a “Dem propagandist” for outlining that evidence and offered a circumstantial defense of his initial claim. Jordan responded in kind. That “Dem propagandist” dig is telling, though. For Cruz, an effort to contextualize his unsubstantiated claims is definitionally an effort to aid his political opponents… (LINK TO FULL STORY)