BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 28, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Amid Austin's homeless crisis, debate rages over who should pay for solution (Austin American-Statesman)
On June 10, as they weighed how best to spend stimulus funds from the federal government, Austin City Council members decided to earmark $95 million toward addressing homelessness.
Added to $11 million in federal homelessness funding the city had previously received, that made for a $106 million financial commitment to acquire housing and pay for supportive services after voters decided to reinstate the city's camping ban.
But it came with a catch.
All but $23 million of the $106 million will be locked up in a reserve fund until city leaders are satisfied that others in the community — who they contend have a duty to assist financially — have done their part.
Those potential partners include anyone willing to help: nonprofits, businesses, donors both small and large, and Travis County, which has yet to decide how to spend its $247 million share of stimulus funds, but could do so soon.
The amount the outside partners need to produce for the city to further open its wallet: $200 million.
Council Member Kathie Tovo, who authored that challenge, said she wants Travis County to step up: "It is my fervent hope that they will also invest in housing and services for people experiencing homelessness."… (LINK TO STORY)
County rebuffs city’s offer to buy Palm School, leaving its future uncertain (Austin Monitor)
In a vote few people were aware of until last week, the Travis County Commissioners Court rejected the city of Austin’s offer to purchase the historic Swante Palm School building on the eastern edge of downtown.
Community activists, who for years have advocated preserving the school to honor its Mexican American history, were not aware of the commissioners’ June 15 vote until late last week, when the county formally notified the city in a letter dated June 22. City Manager Spencer Cronk had sent the offer letter in February 2020.
Now the county is set to consider the restoration and redevelopment of Palm School at its meeting on Tuesday. The agenda item includes a staff recommendation to sell or lease the building and to redevelop the northern parcel of the tract.
The news comes as a blow to many in Austin’s Latino community who have wanted the school to transfer to city hands and remain a public space. “We have been completely blindsided by all that’s taken place,” community organizer Paul Saldaña said, adding that the county and city have not been completely transparent about this latest action concerning the school, one of the most significant repositories of Mexican American culture in the eastern edge of downtown… (LINK TO STORY)
Inside the labor shortage of Austin’s service industry (Austin Monthly)
As for what’s causing the city’s current labor shortage, one frequently dangled explanation is lucrative federal government unemployment benefits. This includes the extra $300 weekly supplement provided by Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program, something Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to eliminate on June 26. While such benefits undoubtedly play a role in the service industry’s current, less-than-stellar state, those in the foxhole don’t believe that argument paints an accurate picture. “The pandemic laid bare how Austin service employees are working full-time and still can’t make a living wage in this town.” says Fried, noting that the base-pay for hospitality workers has largely remained stagnant since 2001… (LINK TO STORY)
Job postings for Elon Musk's Boring Co. highlight technology development plans, site in Bastrop (Austin Business Journal)
Elon Musk's tunneling startup, The Boring Company, has been quietly planting roots in Central Texas for months. Now more details have surfaced about what the company is planning.
The Boring Co. was hiring for 20 positions in the Austin area by publication time, and a few job descriptions outlined future development plans for an autonomous tunnel boring machine. One posting also mentioned the company's research and development site in Bastrop, about 30 miles southeast of Austin.
The mention of a Bastrop site is the first public recognition from the company that it has a location in the Austin area. Company officials previously announced hiring plans in Austin, but no further details have been shared.
No property records could be found with Bastrop Central Appraisal District or Bastrop County. Jeremy Morris, director of facilities and precast operations for The Boring Co., did not immediately return requests for comment.
The Boring Co. first grabbed space last year in Pflugerville, a suburb northeast of Austin, according to documents first reported by Austin Business Journal. Several filings with Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation link The Boring Co. to about 40,000 square feet in an industrial park off State Highway 130, though company officials haven't confirmed the site… (LINK TO STORY)
An Austin nonprofit is raising money to help make state homeless camp feel more like a neighborhood (KUT)
For the better part of two years, the Esperanza Community in Southeast Austin has been home for many people experiencing homelessness. On any given day, roughly 150 people live and work on the weather-beaten, 5-acre blacktop owned by the Texas Department of Transportation.
It doesn't look like a traditional "neighborhood," but it has felt like that to a lot of folks since its earliest days. Now, The Other Ones Foundation, the nonprofit that manages the camp, wants to make it look like one.
This week, the foundation launched a campaign to raise money to build out the camp. It's a continuation of efforts to build 200 tiny homes on the site, with a goal of adding communal spaces, upgraded facilities, kitchens and office space for employment and case-management services.
The Other Ones hopes to create four neighborhoods, each with its own kitchen and common area. Those neighborhoods would center around a community center that would also serve as a day shelter for people to rest or access services to help them get back on their feet.
The Other Ones hopes to raise $5.4 million for the project. It's partnering with the Austin nonprofit Glimmer to raise the money. Glimmer helped finance an initial slate of tiny homes that was installed in April after TxDOT crews razed garages that had housed some residents… (LINK TO STORY)
COVID-19 numbers in Austin continue to decline (FOX 7)
COVID-19 cases in Austin continue to steadily decline despite a few cases of the new Delta Variant popping up in Williamson County. Researchers are attributing the low numbers to people taking extra precautions to be safe and getting vaccinated.
"Right now, we're estimating about half the mortality in Austin per capita compared to many comparable major cities in the state so I think we should be really proud of that as a community," said Spencer Fox, Associate Director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.
Fox says Austin’s decline in COVID-19 cases has to do with a few things: "In general people continuing to take precautions like wearing masks and socially distancing while out, and then combined with the really rapid vaccine rollout and buildup of immunity in our community."
Fox says he expects the downward trend to continue taking precautions and getting their COVID vaccine.
"There's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about what our city has in store over the next few months. As vaccinations continue to roll out, we'll just continue to see greater numbers of immunity, our population will, which will protect us from future spread," said Fox.
With a new variant in Central Texas, Fox says they will be keeping a close eye on the Delta Variant.
"What we're thinking about right now over the next few months is what impacts the variants, the Delta variant specifically, might have on transmission in our community over the next few months," he said.
Williamson County has already reported three cases of the Delta Variant as of Friday. None of those people were vaccinated.
Officials say this variant can be transferred easier than the current variant, but it is unknown yet if it is more harmful. However, if you are vaccinated this will have little effect on you according to WILCO’s lead epidemiologist.
"The people that are fully vaccinated really don't have much to worry about because they are protected against severe disease, hospitalizations, and deaths, especially with the Delta Variant as well," said Allison Stewart, Lead Epidemiologist for Williamson County…(LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas outshines all other states, by far, in luring California headquarters relocations (Dallas Business Journal)
It’s not even close. Texas stands head and shoulders above all other states in the race to attract corporate headquarters exiting California, with Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin topping the list of destinations within the Lone Star State. That’s according to a new recent analysis shared exclusively with the Dallas Business Journal.
California lost 44 headquarters to other states between Jan. 1 and June 23 of this year, and 21 of those companies went to Texas, according to business relocation expert Joe Vranich, president of McKinney-based site-selection consulting firm Spectrum Location Services, which tracks corporate headquarters moves. That's 47.7 percent to Texas so far this year, and 52.3 percent shared between the other 48 states. Taking a longer timeframe, since Jan. 1, 2018, 101 companies have moved their headquarters to Texas from the Golden State. The next winningest destination in that time period was Tennessee with 21 relocations from California, followed by Arizona with 17, and Colorado with 14, Vranich and Spectrum’s numbers show… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas House Democrats and legislative staffers take Gov. Greg Abbott to court for defunding Legislature (Texas Tribune)
A group that includes Texas House Democrats and legislative staffers is asking the Texas Supreme Court to override Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent veto of a portion of the state budget that funds the Legislature, staffers there and legislative agencies.
More than 60 Democratic members of the House signed a petition for a writ of mandamus, which was filed Friday morning, as did the House Democratic Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, four state employees and the Texas AFL-CIO.
“The state is in a constitutional crisis at this moment,” said Chad Dunn, an attorney involved with the petition, during a briefing with reporters Thursday.
The governor had vowed to veto the Legislature’s funding in the final hours of the regular legislative session in May after House Democrats broke quorum and left the chamber to prevent passage of a controversial elections bill. That legislation, an Abbott priority, would have created new limitations to early voting hours, increased voting-by-mail restrictions and curbed local voting options.
The petition argues that Abbott exceeded his executive authority and violated the state’s separation of powers doctrine. The parties involved with the petition are asking the all-Republican court to find Abbott’s veto unconstitutional, which would allow Article X of the state budget, the section at issue, to become law later this year… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
An exhausting year takes toll on nation's mayors (The Hill)
The cumulative effects of a chaotic year were enough to force many to choose between doing the job for which they were elected and running for another term. Several of the nation’s most prominent mayors — Seattle’s Jenny Durkan, Atlanta’s Keisha Lance Bottoms and Steve Benjamin, of Columbia, S.C. — have opted against running again, cutting short once-promising political careers.
“I knew how great the challenges were that remained,” Durkan said of her mindset in December, when she announced she would not seek a second term. “I could not do what I needed to do for the city and run for mayor. I could either do the job I was elected to do or I could run for mayor, but I couldn’t do both.”
The mayors retiring now join a handful of other prominent city leaders who are leaving, either for jobs in the Biden administration or because term limits will force them out of office. By the end of the year, the nation’s two largest cities — New York and Los Angeles — will have new mayors. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh quit to take over the Labor Department under President Biden. The mayors of Fort Worth, El Paso, Fresno, Honolulu, San Diego and St. Louis have all been on the job for less than a year… (LINK TO STORY)
Officer asks McCarthy to denounce GOP remarks on Jan. 6 riot (Associated Press)
A police officer who was injured in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection confronted House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy in a meeting on Friday, asking him to publicly denounce statements by GOP members who have voted against honoring police and downplayed the violence of the attack. Officer Michael Fanone has said for weeks that he wanted to meet with McCarthy, who has opposed the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack and has remained loyal to former President Donald Trump. It was a violent mob of Trump’s supporters that laid siege to the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory after Trump told them to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat. Fanone said after the meeting that he had asked McCarthy to denounce 21 House Republicans who recently voted against giving police officers a congressional medal of honor for defending the Capitol and also Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, who had compared video of the rioters to a “tourist visit.”
He said McCarthy told him he would “address it in a personal level with some of those members,” a response he said wasn’t satisfactory. McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting. As the House Republican leader, Fanone said, “it’s important to hear those denouncements publicly.” And as a police officer who served that day, he said, ”that’s not what I want to hear.” McCarthy and Fanone were joined by Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was also among the officers who responded to the rioting. Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, was also expected to be in the meeting but did not speak to reporters afterward. Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the mob, and a medical examiner later ruled that he died of natural causes. The meeting comes as many Republicans have made clear that they want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack — frustrating law enforcement officers who were brutally beaten by the rioters as they pushed past them and broke into the building. Senate Republicans have blocked an independent, bipartisan investigation of the attack and some House members are increasingly downplaying the insurrection. Fanone said he found Clyde’s comments “disgusting.” Dunn said afterward that it was an “emotional meeting.” He declined to go into detail and thanked McCarthy for his time. “He was receptive, and I think ultimately, we have the same goal. It’s just going to take a little time getting there, I guess,” Dunn said. The goal, Dunn said, is “accountability, justice for everybody that was involved.”… (LINK TO TO STORY)
Political campaigns worry they're next for ransomware hits (The Hill)
Political campaigns are ramping up their protections, worrying the next in a rising number of ransomware attacks could target them.
Cyber criminals have gone after an ever-increasing number of targets, from Colonial Pipeline to JBS USA. And political campaigns are painfully familiar with risks after the 2016 attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
“I think we have already seen Armageddon in what happened in 2016 at the DNC,” said Jesse Thomas, senior director of impact and mobilization of the Democratic firm Bully Pulpit Interactive… (LINK TO STORY)