BG Reads | News You Need to Know (May 4, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE]
LINK TO FILED HOUSE BILLS (5,908)
LINK TO FILED SENATE BILLS (2,697)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
With Proposition B's passage, Austin City Council looks to solidify homelessness summit goals, may consider designated campgrounds (Community Impact)
Following Austinites' passage of Proposition B in the May 1 election by a more than 15% margin, city officials are now considering how to begin the process of removing the controversial downtown encampments that spurred much of the passion behind the ballot item while planning for possible spaces for the camps' homeless residents to relocate to.
Proposition B passed with 57% support from Austin voters with more than 90,000 people across Travis, Williamson and Hays counties voting in favor of the measure and just over 66,000 against. Once the May 1 election is officially certified, the multi-part proposition will create a city ordinance criminalizing camping in public spaces; panhandling at night; and sitting, lying down and sleeping throughout much of downtown.
Andy Tate, a city of Austin spokesperson, said the city is now in the process of evaluating the enforcement of penalties contained in the new ordinance, which is expected to take effect May 11.
"We will start with education and outreach and will focus first on individuals living in situations that present higher health and safety risks. Outreach will be ongoing as we continue to assess encampment sites and coordinate with our service providers," Tate said in a statement.
While the exact timeline and scope of enforcement for the Proposition B ordinance are yet to be determined, City Council may look to the concept of establishing designated campsites in the near future as a replacement for the unregulated encampments that have become a common sight throughout downtown since 2019.A late addition to council's May 6 meeting agenda centers on a resolution both reaffirming a commitment to mitigating homelessness through work with housing-focused organizations as well as a directive to City Manager Spencer Cronk to research and report to council over the coming weeks on possible strategies for implementing "temporary designated encampments on public land" and expanded tiny homesites for temporary housing… (LINK TO STORY)
New working group to study equity in preservation (Austin Monitor)
Property demolitions in underserved areas of Austin have historically ranked among the most emotional cases to come before the Historic Landmark Commission – often the first stop in a succession of reviews of what’s proposed to be built in place of a building already standing.
Now, the HLC and the Historic Preservation Office aim to bring a more egalitarian playing field to the city’s preservation program with the formation of an equity-based Preservation Plan Working Group made up of about 30 community stakeholders.
The commission approved the creation of the working group at its April 26 meeting, delegating recruitment efforts to an HLC subcommittee and staff, with input from City Council members and others.
Working with staff, the HLC Preservation Plan Committee, composed of HLC Chair Terri Myers and commissioners Ben Heimsath, Beth Valenzuela and Alex Papavasiliou, is in the initial stages of fashioning a concept of what they hope will be an extensive cross-section of community members at the table. The group would be charged with crafting recommendations for improving the preservation program while introducing social justice metrics into the equation when considering a property’s historic significance.
The HLC will formally approve the complete working group at its June meeting.
The ambitious undertaking is made possible with $30,000 in funding from a Certified Local Government grant program administered by the Texas Historical Commission. The funds will go toward hiring a facilitator and compensating certain working group members who are not paid through their jobs to participate in the meetings, Elizabeth Brummett of the Historic Preservation Office told the Austin Monitor.
While the working group will include representatives from established entities, such as educational institutions and school districts that base their long-range planning on Austin’s growth and development trends, commissioners were adamant about the inclusion of voices that are either never heard, or heard and often ignored.
Myers said she wants to position the HLC to be more proactive rather than reactive when faced with the prospect of losing structures that have historic significance.
“Probably most of the items on our agendas involve people who want to demolish historic buildings,” she said, adding that while commissioners try to resolve these cases by demonstrating the historic value of a particular site, “some (applicants) are receptive and some are not.” Most of the time, property owners move ahead with demolition.
“Some of the most volatile issues that we’ve had have been properties associated with underserved communities, and so I’d like to see a preservation plan to educate neighborhood associations about the process,” she said, adding that some people still hold assumptions that preservationists are “little old ladies in tennis shoes saving the mansions of the great industrialists. Preservation is something that should be democratic.”
At its committee meeting to discuss the working group format, members made clear – replete with anecdotes of past experiences – that they don’t want city staffers to drive the outcome of the working group’s mission. Staffers assured them they wouldn’t.
“Once this group is up and running, they need to take initiative and they have to have some level of autonomy,” Heimsath said. “If the goal is to get the best plan possible from a broad number of interests, the ownership part of it becomes a very important part of broadening our constituency base and having something very strong to take to Council, and introduce more broadly to the community.”… (LINK TO STORY)
City of Austin announces new Chief Information Officer (City of Austin)
The City of Austin has identified Christopher Stewart as the City’s next Chief Information Officer (CIO) after a national search. Mr. Stewart will start his new position on May 10, 2021.
“I am very happy to announce Chris Stewart as the City’s next Chief Information Officer. His extensive experience in IT services, most recently as interim CIO, will continue to be crucial to overseeing the department’s programs to ensure our organization has the best solutions available to provide exceptional technology services to internal departments and the Austin community,” said Deputy City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde.
The Communications and Technology Management (CTM) department provides a broad array of information technology (IT) services to City of Austin departments. CTM manages three major programs: Communications and Technology Management; the Combined Transportation, Emergency and Communications Center (CTECC); and Wireless Communication Services. CTM’s customer base also includes other governmental entities that are members of the Greater Austin/Travis County Regional Radio System (GATRRS) as well as the partners of CTECC. The CTM Department is the principal IT department for the City of Austin and provides centralized IT services and business units across the municipal organization.
"I am honored to have been selected as the City’s next Chief Information Officer. I look forward to continuing my service to the City of Austin providing technology solutions that ensure the best possible customer service to our department stakeholders and residents. “said Mr. Stewart… (LINK TO STORY)
After yearlong ban, Austin and Travis County will let some landlords file evictions starting in June (Austin Monitor)
Austin-area renters who have not paid rent for five months or more and have exhausted all rent assistance will once again be subject to eviction beginning June 1.
Most other residential tenants and some commercial tenants will be safe from eviction until at least Aug. 1.
On Friday, Austin and Travis County officials extended an eviction ban that has been in place for much of the pandemic; the order was set to expire Saturday. But this time there were some changes, most notably that landlords may now file an eviction against a tenant who owes five months or more of rent going back to April 2020. In these cases, the landlord and the tenant must have exhausted all rental assistance options.
There are additional exceptions to these orders. The bans apply only to residential tenants who pay no more than $2,475 a month in rent and to commercial tenants who run businesses affected most by the pandemic, including bars, restaurants and live music venues.
“The orders Judge (Andy) Brown and I have each signed still prevent many evictions. They also incentivize connecting eligible landlords or tenants to City and County rental assistance programs,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler wrote in a press release.
But Emily Blair, executive vice president of the Austin Apartment Association, said the extension of the order means some landlords will continue to struggle with a loss of income – in this case, unpaid rent.
“While other small business owners are being supported with the lifting of mandates and regulations to enable them to recover from the pandemic, rental housing providers are being mandated to provide their goods and services for free, some for now 18 months,” Blair wrote in an emailed statement. “With this turn of events, many small property owners are having to make do-or-die decisions with their businesses.”
Blair said the Austin Apartment Association supports the expansion of rent assistance programs.
Renters – and in some cases, landlords – can apply for rent help from the city, county or state. The city of Austin has been doling out $25 million in federal funds through a program for people who need help paying rent.
But some of these programs have been slow to help tenants affected financially by the pandemic. By the end of March, the state had gotten money to fewer than 1 percent of those who had applied. Tenants who applied to an earlier iteration of the city’s rent assistance program complained of burdensome document requirements and a long delay in getting rent paid once they were approved… (LINK TO STORY)
Waterloo Park reopens this August after being closed to the public for a decade (KUT)
The last time Austinites were able to take a stroll in Waterloo Park, Barack Obama was in his first term as president, Contagion was scaring moviegoers with its portrayal of a fictional pandemic, and the median price for a home in Austin was under $250,000.
“Gangnam Style” wasn’t even a thing yet.
Now, 10 years later and five years over schedule, the 11-acre city park east of the state Capitol is set to reopen. The Waterloo Greenway Conservancy, the nonprofit that operates the park, says it does not have an exact date for the reopening, but it will be sometime this August.
"Everybody can enjoy the old Waterloo Park. Only a lot, a lot better,” Kathy Miller, the group’s interim CEO, told KUT on announcing the reopening.
The park was initially closed in 2011 to allow the City of Austin to build a flood-control intake building and tunnel underneath Waller Creek. That project, starting at Waterloo Park and stretching down to Lady Bird Lake, opened up a 30-acre swath of prime downtown real estate for development by lifting it out of the floodplain.
At the time, the redesign of Waterloo Park and the Waller Creek Greenbelt (now called the Waterloo Greenway) was pitched as a visible public benefit arising from the $164 million flood-control project.
The park was initially supposed to reopen in 2015, but serious flaws in the design of a floodwater intake structure and the flood-control tunnel itself pushed that project back.
John Rigdon, the Waterloo Greenway Conservancy’s director of planning and design, said it has also taken park planners more time than expected “engaging and getting the feedback we need” to get the park design right.
“Most recently, we've had some impacts relative to opening and timing that with COVID," he added… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Overhaul of ERCOT board could replace experts with political appointees (Texas Tribune)
During February’s deadly winter storm, Gov. Greg Abbott and many state lawmakers quickly criticized the Electric Reliability Council of Texas because several members of its large governing board reside outside Texas.
Many of the out-of-state board members are experts in the electricity field, but resigned following criticism of the agency’s oversight of the state’s main power grid during the storm that left millions of Texans without electricity for days in freezing temperatures.
State lawmakers are now trying to change the way ERCOT is governed by requiring members to live in Texas and giving more board seats to political appointees — changes that experts say may do little to improve the power grid.
One former board member who resigned after the storm, Peter Cramton, criticized legislation for politicizing the grid operator’s board.
“These people would be political types without electricity expertise,” he told The Texas Tribune.
The Texas House has already approved House Bill 10, which would remove independent outside voices on the ERCOT board and replace them with five political appointees. The governor would appoint three of those people, while the lieutenant governor and speaker of the House would each appoint one. None of the appointees would be required to be electricity experts. The only requirement is that appointees live in Texas.
Senate Bill 2, which has cleared the upper chamber, would give the governor five ERCOT board member appointments…(LINK TO STORY)
Business coalitions to speak out against votingr restrictions in Texas (New York Times)
Two broad coalitions of companies and executives plan to release letters on Tuesday calling for expanded voting access in Texas, wading into the contentious debate over Republican legislators’ proposed new restrictions on balloting after weeks of relative silence from the business community in the state.
One letter comes from a group of large corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Unilever, Salesforce, Patagonia and Sodexo, as well as local companies and chambers of commerce, and represents the first major coordinated effort among businesses in Texas to take action against the voting proposals.
The letter, under the banner of a new group called Fair Elections Texas, stops short of criticizing the two voting bills that are now advancing through the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, but opposes “any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot.”
A separate letter, also expected to be released on Tuesday and signed by more than 100 Houston executives, goes further. It directly criticizes the proposed legislation and equates the efforts with “voter suppression.”
That letter was organized by a breakaway faction of the Greater Houston Partnership, the equivalent of a citywide chamber of commerce in the country’s fourth-largest city, and came after a month of intense debate within the organization over how to respond to the voting proposals.
Together, the letters signify a sudden shift in how the business community approaches the voting bills in Texas. Until now, American Airlines and Dell Technologies were the only major corporations to publicly speak out about the Texas legislation, and after doing so they quickly found themselves threatened by Republicans in Austin, the state capital. Neither American Airlines nor Dell signed the new letter from Fair Elections Texas.
But with a varied coalition that numbers well into the dozens, companies are hoping a collective voice willing to apply pressure at the state level could break through and sway the thinking of some Republican legislators who may be wavering on the bills… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas House gives early approval to bill that would punish Wall Street for fossil fuel disinvestments (Texas Tribune)
The Texas House on Monday gave preliminary approval to a bill that would direct state investment funds to divest from companies that cut ties with fossil fuel companies.
Senate Bill 13 was approved on second reading in the House, and needs only a third reading before it is sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.
The legislation would require state entities — including state pension funds and Texas’ massive K-12 school endowment — to divest from companies that refuse to invest in or do business with fossil fuel-based energy companies.
It’s a response to the sentiment on Wall Street that oil and gas companies are contributing to climate change — and may not be a good investment in the midst of an energy transition. The bill seeks to divest the state’s massive investment funds from firms that “boycott” fossil fuel companies.
“Oil and gas is the lifeblood of the Texas economy,” state Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the House floor before the bill was approved in a 92-51 vote. “In the world of capital, there’s a movement to deny funds to businesses that will not sign on to extreme anti-fossil fuel policy.”
Pressure is increasing on Wall Street for companies and investment funds to reduce financial support for oil and gas companies due to the outsized impact the industry has on carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Last year, Larry Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investment companies, wrote to shareholders that the firm would make climate change “a defining factor” in its investment strategy.
King said he spoke to an engineer in the energy industry who said the “virtue signaling” by BlackRock has changed capital availability to oil companies… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
FDA plans to ban Menthol Cigarettes, citing minority impact (Bloomberg)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has moved to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes, citing their disproportionate effect on the health of African Americans.
The decision infuriated tobacco companies but delighted anti-tobacco activists and public-health advocates.
In its announcement [last] Thursday, the FDA said it’s “working toward issuing proposed product standards within the next year to ban menthol” as a flavor in cigarettes. It also plans to ban all flavors, including menthol, in cigars. The agency will allow an opportunity for public comment, and a ban would likely take years to take effect.
“Banning menthol -- the last allowable flavor -- in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in the statement.
She said the ban would save lives and address health disparities in communities of color and in low-income populations. About 85% of Black smokers in the U.S. favor menthols, by some estimates, compared with just 29% of White smokers.
The move comes after more than a decade of inaction. Congress first recommended in 2009 that the agency decide what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes, which gives them a minty taste and soothes the throat but can make smoking more addictive, the FDA said… (LINK TO STORY)
Gaetz, Greene plan national tour to call out RINOs (Politico)
Matt Gaetz is going on tour. With Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Rocked by a steady stream of leaks about a federal investigation into alleged sex crimes, the Florida congressman is planning to take his case on the road by holding rallies across the nation with Greene, another lightning rod member of Congress.
Their targets? So-called RINOs and “the radical left.“
Together, they plan to attack Democrats and call out Republicans they deem as insufficiently loyal to former President Donald Trump, such as the 10 GOP House members who voted for his second impeachment after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Gaetz and Greene will kick off their barnstorming “America First Tour” on May 7 in the mega-conservative Florida retirement community known as The Villages, a must-stop for any Republican candidate hoping to win the state or generate grassroots excitement. The idea is to send a message from the two controversial Republicans: They’re not canceled, they’re not going to be quiet and the infamy their critics attribute to them is translatable as fame and power in the conservative movement.
“The radical left is coming for you. And they know I'm in the way. Come stand with me as we fight back together against this radical president and his far left agenda,” Gaetz says in a new radio ad rallying conservatives to The Villages event… (LINK TO STORY)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
BG Podcast EP. 139: Q1 20201 Review: COVID-19's Impact on the Built Environment with Michael Hsu
On today’s episode we speak with return guest, Austin-based Michael Hsu, Principal and Founder of Michael Hsu Office of Architecture.
He and Bingham Group CEO A.J. catch up from their June 2020 show, updating on impacts to the design/built environment sector through Q1 2021.
You can listen to all episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. New content every Wednesday. Please like, link, comment and subscribe!