BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 29, 2021)

Written By AJ Bingham
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[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

State Judge says Austin and Travis County can keep their local mask mandates (KUT)

Austin and Travis County can continue their local mask mandates even though a statewide order bans them, a state judge ruled Friday.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued almost immediately after Austin said it would keep mask rules in place despite the governor's emergency orders earlier this month. He asked for a court order blocking the rules while the case is heard.

Local officials argue state law allows them to enact health-based restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

State District Judge Lora Livingston on Friday denied the state's request for an injunction, siding with Austin and Travis County. The decision will likely be appealed.

Shortly after the ruling, Travis County Judge Andy Brown told KUT he hopes Paxton doesn't appeal and the case moves ahead on its merits.

"I think everybody in Texas should be very concerned that the attorney general does not agree that local authorities — local health authorities — should be able to make their own determinations about what to do in cases of outbreaks," he said.

Attorneys for Austin and Travis County argued in court Friday that because the local rules were allowed to stand during previous statewide orders, the state didn't show an immediate need to put a halt to them.

Leslie Dippel, an attorney representing Travis County, said the local and state orders can coexist. She said the local rules fill in gaps not covered by the governor's order, which stripped guidelines that have proved effective in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the Austin area.

"They are taking action to stop the spread, not hindering it," she said. "They are basic mask and basic hygiene ... procedures that we're all very familiar with, and they are working. They've been in place for a year and [have been] proven to be effective."

Arguing for the state, Todd Dickerson called the local orders an end run around Gov. Greg Abbott's authority by an unelected official. He said giving that level of power to Austin Public Health's interim health authority is a misreading of state law and that the governor has ultimate say over how the state responds to a disaster.

"There's no way to read the Texas Disaster Act and come to that conclusion," he said, adding that, whether you agree with it or not, it's the law and that the "wisdom of [lawmakers'] decision" on the framework "has to be respected."

The lawsuit is the latest skirmish over local control relating to the pandemic. In December, Austin and Travis Count officials tried to enact a curfew on businesses ahead of New Year's, but the Texas Supreme Court sided with the state, granting an injunction that effectively killed the curfew hours before it was set to take effect.

KUT reached out to Paxton's office for comment on Friday's ruling, but has not yet heard back… (LINK TO STORY)

‘Democracy dollars’ proposal looks to spread influence, participation in elections (Austin Monitor)

Opinions are mixed about the potential impact of a ballot proposal that would provide city dollars to residents to fund local political campaigns, but proponents agree the intention is clear: to bring more people from throughout Austin into the political process.

Proposition H on the May ballot would create a so-called “democracy dollars” program; residents living in districts with a City Council seat would receive four $25 vouchers that they could donate to the candidates they support. The proposal, which is modeled after a successful program in Seattle, has been pushed since 2017 as a way to reduce the impact of wealthy donors around the city who make up the vast majority of campaign contributions.

Those who back the proposal also see the potential to make more candidates viable in a run for Council seats. Among the questions or criticisms of the plan is the possibility that Council could vote to fund the vouchers with a tax increase. There is also some question of whether state lawmakers would object to the program and attempt via legislation to outlaw or limit its impact.

Research from Austinites for Progressive Reform, which has helped spearhead the proposal, shows in the most recent Council and mayoral elections, 70 percent of all campaign contributions came from donors in districts 8, 9 and 10. The group also found that only 1 percent of the city’s voters donated money in recent elections.

Jim Wick, a local campaign manager and organizer for APR, said increasing the number of donors will likely bring more candidates into local elections and reduce the influence of wealthy donors on elected officials.

“We want to level the playing field when it comes to campaign finance, and tackle the influence of big-money donors,” he said. “This will help people who are not traditionally campaign donors. It’s the people who donate who influence the outcome of elections in an outsized way, and that’s not always a bad thing because it can result in good policy outcomes, but we can use this to increase participation.”

Estimates put the cost of the program at around $2 million a year to start and maintain. City Council would have the power via ordinance to decide whether to fund it with General Fund dollars, a property tax increase or other financial sources.

Bringing public funding into Austin elections would not eliminate private donations, which would still be capped at $400 per person. The city clerk would administer the dollars, initially as physical vouchers mailed to voters in applicable election cycles, with the intent to eventually add a digital component to distribute the funds.

Wick said the availability of more widespread money to fund campaigns would almost certainly increase the number and diversity of candidates in city elections, a dynamic that has been borne out in Seattle’s two elections using the system.

Fred Lewis, a local attorney versed in campaign finance law and organizer of the Democracy Dollars ATX political action committee, said the structure of the program is the best legally accepted way to reduce the impact of wealthy donors.

“It’s very practical and workable and is especially useful in the political environment we find ourselves in based on recent rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said. “This is funding a different approach where we will be able to put many more small donors into a place to participate in the election system, without being able to cap spending or take private money out entirely. This has been found to be clearly constitutional and we’ve closely modeled the proposal on what’s already been decided.”

Lewis said he would support Council moving to create an advisory committee to oversee the effectiveness of the program and ensure that candidates aren’t committing nepotism with the money or violating other campaign finance regulations.

“That way we’ll be able to fill in whatever gaps there may be, but it’s been set up to start well and work well. It’s already a loved thing in Seattle and it will be good all around to have more people able to donate and participate in elections.”… (LINK TO STORY)

After an awful year, Austin hotels hope for a rebound in 2021 (Austin American-Statesman)

As the new Austin Marriott Downtown was rising just west of the Austin Convention Center, the coronavirus pandemic was slamming the travel industry shut. The 31-story high-rise opened on March 4, it did so without the fanfare that typically comes with the arrival of a new luxury hotel. Instead, staff has focused on safety protocols and how to make guests feel comfortable, said David Meisner, general manager of the Austin Marriott Downtown. "When someone could be getting out of the house for the first time in a year, they expect a lot, and they should," Meisner said. "The most challenging thing about opening a hotel in a pandemic is the uncertainty. You're putting together a team and attempting to understand what customer demand and customer preference is going to look like."

After a horrendous 2020 for the hotel industry, there are reasons for optimism, analysts say. The rising number of COVID-19 vaccinations, easing of business restrictions and the arrival of federal stimulus checks are beginning to pump energy into the hospitality industry.

"We don't have anything we can measure yet, but anecdotally we're seeing a lot of pent-up demand, especially tourist and personal travel," said Paul Vaughn, senior vice president at Source Strategies, a hotel consulting firm that tracks the Texas market. "People want to get out there and resume their lives. We're looking to see a good rebound in the second half of the year, although that's contingent on multiple factors." While the return to travel will be led by tourists, business travel will take far longer to regain steam, he said. "We're not expecting to see business travel rebound until late in the year and really early next year," Vaughn said. "A market like downtown Austin thrives on that business travel, and that has forced a lot of hoteliers get creative."… (LINK TO STORY)

Southwest Airlines ramps up investment at Austin airport with new, returning flights (Austin Business Journal)

A flurry of announcements have been made over the last few months about new flights to and from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport — and it's not over yet.

Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) announced March 25 it is adding seven nonstop flights in the coming months to its lineup at ABIA: six new and one returning service. Southwest is the dominant carrier at ABIA, and airline officials said demand is rising for both corporate and personal travel as more people become fully vaccinated from Covid-19.

Starting June 6, Southwest will begin daily connections to Salt Lake City, Utah, and Miami plus, weekend service to Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida, according to the announcement. Nonstop flights will also be available Sunday through Friday to Santa Ana, California; Burbank, California; and Minneapolis. Flights to Sacramento, California, will also return to ABIA in May.

With the new flights, Southwest will have 37 nonstop connections at ABIA — double the offerings from its competitors. For comparison, American Airlines Group Inc. will be operating 19 nonstop flights beginning this summer, according to ABIA's website, and Delta Air Lines Inc. offers nine connections.

Dallas-based Southwest last year handled more passengers at ABIA than any other airline, though traffic took a major hit from the pandemic. Southwest recorded 2.17 million passengers in 2020 — down almost 63% from 2019 — of ABIA's total 6.47 million travelers, according to airport data. That was roughly one-third of the total activity at the Austin airport. American Airlines followed Southwest with 1.3 million travelers in 2020, down nearly 57% from the year prior.

Dave Harvey, vice president of Southwest Business, said the new flights will inch the airline closer to pre-pandemic capacity levels. Beginning in June, the airline will have roughly 70 daily flights throughout the week to 37 destinations. In 2018-19, the airline reached 78 daily flights.

Southwest is also doubling down on Austin because of its intense population growth over the last few years and the number of companies flocking to the area, Harvey said. The airline is also launching flights in Chicago and Houston.

"Austin was the top of the list and where we wanted to get seats in our aircraft back in the market," Harvey told ABJ. “Austin has led on pretty much every economic indicator, population indicator and growth indicator you have, and that's attracted a lot of carriers which creates healthy competition."

He said that as demand for personal and corporate travel continues to ramp up and when larger group settings start to come back online in the future — such as conventions and local events like Austin City Limits — the airline is anticipating a big tourism boom for Central Texas.

"Businesses have been really, really depressed as far as not allowing a whole lot of travel. ... We're talking to a lot of companies who are gearing up to open up their headquarters or regional offices on June 1 or right at Labor Day, and there's a lot of lost time that people are going to try to make up for. We expect a nice uptick in the business sector," he said.

The airline still has more room for future expansion at ABIA with the eight gates it operates from, he said. The million-dollar question at this point is when the travel industry will return to pre-pandemic activity. Harvey said most airline carriers are still down roughly 60% to 70% in travel activity compared to March 2019… (LINK TO STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

After slow start, Texas lawmakers pick up the pace on GOP priorities as legislative session passes halfway mark (Texas Tribune)

As the new Austin Marriott Downtown was rising just west of the Austin Convention Center, the coronavirus pandemic was slamming the travel industry shut. The 31-story high-rise opened on March 4, it did so without the fanfare that typically comes with the arrival of a new luxury hotel. Instead, staff has focused on safety protocols and how to make guests feel comfortable, said David Meisner, general manager of the Austin Marriott Downtown. "When someone could be getting out of the house for the first time in a year, they expect a lot, and they should," Meisner said. "The most challenging thing about opening a hotel in a pandemic is the uncertainty. You're putting together a team and attempting to understand what customer demand and customer preference is going to look like."

After a horrendous 2020 for the hotel industry, there are reasons for optimism, analysts say. The rising number of COVID-19 vaccinations, easing of business restrictions and the arrival of federal stimulus checks are beginning to pump energy into the hospitality industry.

"We don't have anything we can measure yet, but anecdotally we're seeing a lot of pent-up demand, especially tourist and personal travel," said Paul Vaughn, senior vice president at Source Strategies, a hotel consulting firm that tracks the Texas market. "People want to get out there and resume their lives. We're looking to see a good rebound in the second half of the year, although that's contingent on multiple factors." While the return to travel will be led by tourists, business travel will take far longer to regain steam, he said. "We're not expecting to see business travel rebound until late in the year and really early next year," Vaughn said. "A market like downtown Austin thrives on that business travel, and that has forced a lot of hoteliers get creative."… (LINK TO STORY)

All adults in Texas are now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. But there still aren’t enough doses for everyone. (Texas Tribune)

Starting Monday, all Texans ages 16 and older — about 22 million people — are eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccine doses, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced. But as vaccine eligibility expands, actually getting the vaccine may be even more difficult.

Texas joins several other states in opening eligibility to all adults. DSHS said providers should continue to prioritize walk-ins and appointments for Texans 80 and older.

State health officials said Texas has no strictly enforced residency requirement to be vaccinated, but doses allotted to Texas are intended for those living, working or spending substantial amounts of time in Texas. DSHS spokesperson Chris Van Deusen said out-of-state residents have represented fewer than 1% of all people vaccinated in Texas.

Texas has administered more than 10 million vaccine doses, and the state will receive more than 1 million first doses this week, according to DSHS. The department also said it’s in the process of ordering more than half a million second doses for people who received their first shot a few weeks ago.

Still, vaccines remain in short supply, and it is difficult to secure an appointment to get vaccinated. The process often involves refreshing webpages over and over and trying to grab an appointment before they fill up — often in seconds. For Texans who do not have access to transportation or the ability to navigate technology, signing up for a vaccine appointment is nearly impossible… (LINK TO STORY)

Briscoe Cain has proved ineffectual at chairing the House Elections Committee. So why does he have the job? (Texas Monthly)

In February, when the new Speaker of the Texas House, Dade Phelan, appointed Deer Park republican Briscoe Cain as chair of the Elections Committee, many were surprised by the decision. Cain had earned a reputation among Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike as a provocateur at best and a legislative lightweight at worst. The representative’s ascendancy to the committee chairmanship, in other words, was not evidence of meritocracy. Why had Phelan put one of the most unprepared and incompetent members of the House in charge of the committee that will be handling “election integrity,” one of Governor Greg Abbott’s emergency priorities? Cain has become one of the loudest Republicans in the Lege hawking unsubstantiated claims of mass voter fraud. In November, he flew to Pennsylvania to help former President Trump’s legal team challenge the integrity of election results there. Earlier this session, he proposed legislation to make it more difficult to vote by mail or for anyone to help the elderly or infirm cast ballots. The legislation is widely seen by Democrats less as an effort to root out fraud—which the state attorney general’s office has repeatedly failed to find any significant evidence of—as one to make it hard for minorities to vote.

The bill was bound to be controversial. Phelan, known as a relatively bipartisan Republican who courted Democrats in his bid for Speaker, has avoided speaking in too much depth about his legislative priorities, consternating the far-right wing of his party. In past sessions, he voted for some restrictive voter legislation, including a 2019 bill to prevent county clerks from using mobile voting booths during early voting. But if he were looking for a way to avoid passing controversial elections legislation this year, he couldn’t have made a better pick to chair the Elections Committee than Cain.

On Thursday, Cain managed to turn a hearing on his bill into a farce. As is the custom with legislative committees, when Cain started to present the legislation, he handed the gavel off to vice chairman Jessica González, a Dallas Democrat, so she could run the meeting. Poorly prepared, Cain then struggled to answer questions from Democratic members. He kept claiming he had not fully read his bill because he had received a substitute draft at only 7:30 that morning. That was bad enough: committee chairs are supposed to be subject matter experts. But Cain fully showed his incompetence when Fort Worth Democrat Nicole Collier showed up at the hearing to ask questions about the bill and he tried to block her from doing so. Collier is not on the Elections Committee, but it is not uncommon for nonmembers to participate in committee hearings… (LINK TO STORY)

Seven Texas lawmakers to watch (Texas Monthly)

We’ve now passed the halfway point of the Texas legislative session, a stretch when typically about half the lawmakers are zipping around in a clown car, pushing bills that are provocative and entertaining, if of little consequence, while the other half try to tackle the issues that matter. A few hot-ticket issues beyond COVID and energy have also come to a head recently. Since lawmakers last met two years ago, Texas has seen two mass shootings, and thousands have protested police brutality and systemic racism following the killing of longtime Houstonian George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. As always, lawmakers must pass a budget, and will debate proposed new restrictions on abortion and voting. After a herky-jerky start, state lawmakers finally are voting on thousands of bills. Here are seven lawmakers we’ll be watching closely during the session’s final two-month stretch—beyond the usual suspects such as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan. This isn’t a Best and Worst Legislators list, which we’ll bring to you in July, but an accounting of those positioned to be key players in the months ahead.

The Powerhouse: Kelly Hancock, R–North Richland Hills: Hancock’s main focus has been in the rearview mirror. He wants to ban high-risk retail electricity plans and find a way for power companies and consumers to better weather the costs of last month’s storm over time through securitization, which provides for extended repayment. We’re watching Hancock to see whether the Senate will ensure that Texans will be better prepared when the next winter storm rolls in. The COVID Czar: Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham: She has a leading role in navigating the state out of the biggest pandemic in a century, guiding health officials on vaccination policy, although mask mandates and business capacity limits are out of her hands. Her other priorities include preparing Texas for future pandemics by requiring that the state stockpile personal protective equipment, hiring a chief epidemiologist for the state, and creating a Public Health Oversight Board, loaded with legislators, to vote on whether to extend past sixty days a Department of State Health Services disaster declaration… (LINK TO STORY)

The grocery war is on: H-E-B is making its move into D-FW (Dallas Morning News)

H-E-B is finally bringing its namesake supermarkets to Dallas-Fort Worth. The San Antonio-based grocer, which has been buying land in North Texas for more than 20 years, always said it was a matter of when, not if, it would expand here. H-E-B said it will break ground on two stores this summer in Frisco and Plano. They will open in fall 2022.

“We’re excited to say that the time has come for us to bring our flagship H-E-B banner to Dallas-Fort Worth,” said Stephen Butt, president of H-E-B’s Central Market division based in Dallas. The Frisco H-E-B store will be built on the northeast corner of Legacy Drive and Main Street on land the company bought in 2016. The site is a mile east of a Kroger on Main. The Plano store will be on land H-E-B has owned since 2012 at the southwest corner of Preston Road and Spring Creek Parkway. That location is about 5 miles from the company’s Central Market store in Plano.

The two stores will be about 9 miles apart, straddling the Dallas North Tollway and surrounded by rooftops in Collin County, one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation. Butt declined to say how many stores it plans to open here beyond the first two. Supermarket chains and other food retailers, including Walmart and Target, stopped building stores to focus resources on their digital programs, said Herb Weitzman, founder of the Weitzman retail real estate company in Texas. His firm has helped H-E-B locate a dozen stores in Austin, San Antonio and locally at the Southlake Central Market… (LINK TO STORY)

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AJ Bingham
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