BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 5, 2021)

News
Written By AJ Bingham
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[BINGHAM GROUP]

[MEETING/HEARINGS]

  • Travis County Commissioners Court Voting Session (3.9.2021 @9AM)

  • Austin Council Work Session (3.23.2021 @9AM

  • Regular Meeting of the Austin City Council (3.5.2021 @10AM)

[THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE]

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin Water responds to ‘demoralizing’ water outages (Austin Monitor)

Austin Water gave a presentation to the Water Oversight Committee on Wednesday detailing the timeline of the water outages last month, preparation for future disasters and upcoming utility bill relief measures.

City Council members demanded to know how a substantial portion of Austin residents lost water during the freeze, among other questions about Austin Water’s response. Answers so far proved incomplete. Full answers will likely take months to surface as part of a “thorough and objective, multi-part resiliency review.”

Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros pledged to create a more resilient water system that “operates in a way that our employees don’t have to be heroes.”

“When we talk about resiliency, it’s not only our infrastructure systems, it’s our communication systems … our preparedness,” Meszaros said. “Those are the kind of areas that Austin Water is going to be stepping up and examining.”

Meszaros, like many members of the public, said he felt “demoralized” at times during the winter storm that left thousands without water for days, shut down one of the city’s main water treatment plants and forced a boil-water notice for the entire city.

Rick Coronado, assistant director of operations, gave a timeline of the water outages. The image below shows water usage and output during the height of the crisis… (LINK TO STORY)

City Council apologizes for Austin’s systemic racism, vows to invest in a Black embassy (KUT)

The Austin City Council has formally apologized for its role in perpetuating racist policies that contributed to historical equity, health and wealth gaps that persist for Black Austinites.

A resolution, which passed unanimously Thursday, also directs the city to quantify the impact of systemic racism in real dollars and invest in an effort to build a Black "embassy" in East Austin, which would serve as a resource center for Black residents.

Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison, who led the effort on council to pass the resolution, said the measure is symbolic but it's also an important step in addressing the city's racist past. Shortly before the vote, Harper-Madison said she hopes the resolution will more tangibly address what she called a "chasm of inequality, of inequity" between Black and White Austinites.

"I want to make sure that we don't just settle for words, that we demand actions," she said. "Justice demands actions."

The resolution acknowledges Austin's failures throughout history, highlighting the city's role in propagating slavery in its earliest days; its support of urban renewal and development efforts that displaced Black communities throughout the 20th century; and its present-day struggles to address disparities in health and wealth impacting Austin's Black community.

The resolution also directly acknowledges the impact of the city's 1928 Master Plan and Jim Crow-era segregation. City Hall has previously acknowledged that impact, but advocates have argued those efforts were symbolic and didn't directly address that impact through relief, restitution or resources for Black Austinites.

The 1928 plan broke up at least 17 Black-led Freedom Communities across the city, seized the land for development and forced Black Austinites into a so-called Negro District in East Austin. The plan effectively stunted Black residents' ability to create generational wealth by legally segregating the city's Black population across what is now I-35.

Nook Turner, a rapper and member of the Black Austin Coalition, ran point on the community-led effort to get the resolution to the dais at City Hall. A native East Austinite, Turner organized the coalition late last year and helped draft the resolution along with Yasmine Smith of the Austin Area Urban League.

Turner said he hopes the resolution leads to fundamental change within his neighborhood in East Austin — a historically Black neighborhood where the Black population has been decimated because of urban renewal and gentrification in recent decades.

He said the resolution's plan for an embassy — a city-backed center that would aim to provide health resources, foster growth and creation of Black-owned businesses and serve as a cultural hub in East Austin — will go a long way toward addressing and reversing long-standing inequalities.

Austin is the only major city in the U.S. that hasn't seen growth among its Black population despite a boom in overall population in the last decade. White Austinites earn double the median income of Black and Latino Austinites. Between 2000 and 2010, the Black population in the area around 12th and Chicon dropped by 60%.

"Blacks have to be able to have an opportunity as Blacks to enjoy the same quality of life that Austin boasts about and that makes this such a great city," Turner said. "So we stand behind this resolution. We stand behind anybody that wants to ... work with us to make sure that we see a future [that's] better for our kids."… (LINK TO STORY)

AE chief apologizes for hardships caused by storm (Austin Monitor)

Austin Energy General Manager Jackie Sargent apologized to the community during Wednesday’s AE Utility Oversight Committee meeting for the suffering and hardships experienced during Winter Storm Uri as a result of electric system outages. Even though the outages were ordered by the state grid operator, ERCOT, Sargent said Austin Energy would work to do a better job in the future.

“We at Austin Energy share the frustration that our customers and everyone here feels about what happened during the recent winter storm events,” Sargent said. “The outage duration, severity and inability to rotate outages was unacceptable. People suffered and endured significant hardship. For that, I am truly sorry.”

The storm was beyond what anyone in the Texas utility industry had foreseen, Sargent explained. “No one ever imagined that we would be required to shed so much load so quickly and for so long in order to keep the entire ERCOT grid from collapsing,” she said. Comparing this year’s snow, ice and freezing cold to the storm of 2011, Sargent noted that 10 years ago Austin Energy was required to shed 158 megawatts of customer load. That emergency lasted only six hours.

But during this year’s storm, she said ERCOT directed Austin Energy to shed more than 700 megawatts starting on Feb. 15 – four-and-a-half times more than in 2011 and lasting for three days. Because of the huge amount that Austin Energy was required to shut down, she said the utility had no other circuits to rotate the outages to. “To rotate outages at that point would have endangered critical loads, such as hospitals” and public safety facilities, Sargent said.

Deputy General Manager and Chief Operating Officer Sidney Jackson went through the sequence of events that nearly led to a total shutdown of electric power plants in the state. At one point, he said 220,000 Austin Energy customers had outages as a result of orders from ERCOT. He said it was not easy to know what ERCOT would order next. “Our systems were standing by. Our systems were ready to execute the rotating outages, but … the depth of the load shed” orders were “so severe that to execute an outage rotation” could have jeopardized critical services, such as police, fire and EMS, and might have provided only diminishing returns, he said.

Some consumer advocates, including Tom “Smitty” Smith, have said that Austin Energy needs to consider creating more micro-circuits for critical facilities, so it will be easier for the utility to rotate outages… (LINK TO STORY)

Activist group sets camp in Rosewood Park to protest fatal police shooting, refuses to leave (Austin American-Statesman)

Representatives from an activist group that has pitched several tents in Rosewood Park in protest to a fatal police shooting last month said Thursday they were prepared to resist any action the city might take to remove them after officials told them they were violating park rules. 

Austin Parks and Recreation Department officials told the group on Wednesday to pack up and leave by Thursday at noon. Signs were also posted in the area instructing them to leave. 

The group is in violation of park rules that prohibit camping and overnight use, city spokesman Andy Tate said.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, no one from the city had shown up at the park to evacuate the group.

"PARD came out (Wednesday) and gave us a notice to vacate by (Thursday) at 12 p.m., we communicated that we would not vacate, that we would not be going anywhere," said Njera Keith, co-founder of the Austin-based activist group 400+1. "We're just here. Nothing has happened yet and we're going to continue to stay out here."

The activist group set up camp in the park after police shot and killed 21-year-old Jordan Walton last month… (LINK TO STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas’ largest cities will keep requiring masks in municipal buildings even after statewide mandate ends (Texas Tribune)

Mayors in some of Texas’ biggest cities announced that they will still mandate the use of masks in municipal buildings, even after the statewide mask order ends next week.

Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and El Paso’s leaders announced Wednesday and Thursday that masks will be required to enter city-owned indoor spaces like libraries, police and fire department headquarters, convention centers and transportation hubs.

“I am going to issue an order mandating masks at all city-owned buildings. We have to do what we are legally allowed to do to get people to wear masks,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said on Twitter Thursday morning.

“We also still need to practice social distancing. And we still need to avoid taking unnecessary risks. The pandemic is not over.”The cities’ announcements came shortly after Gov. Greg Abbott said on Tuesday that he is lifting the statewide mask mandate, effective March 10. Abbott said that “all businesses of any type are allowed to open 100%” and that, although the threat of COVID-19 is still present, “it is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.”… (LINK TO STORY)

Strike Force to Open Texas disbanded months ago (KXAN)

The Strike Force to Open Texas, formed near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, has not met in months, one of its members said this week. The Strike Force was launched in April by Gov. Greg Abbott to advise him on “safely and strategically reopening the state of Texas,” through a team of “nationally recognized medical experts and private and public leaders.” He made the announcement as he shared the beginnings of his plan to reopen the state. One of its members, Dr. John Zerwas, a former state lawmaker and current executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Texas System, said the four chief medical advisors on the panel had not met regularly as Abbott mulled lifting statewide pandemic measures.

“I don’t think that the Strike Force to Open Texas is largely an operational thing anymore, to tell you the truth,” Zerwas said in an interview. “We as four doctors have not met in weeks, if not months, to determine any kind of conversations around further openings, and so forth.” Abbott announced Tuesday he was rescinding business capacity restrictions relating to the pandemic and would lift the statewide mask mandate on March 10. Abbott’s chief medical advisors on the Strike Force were split on lifting COVID-19 restrictions. Some were not consulted directly before he made the announcement Tuesday. “I don’t know that he was getting advice just from me, frankly,” Zerwas added. “But, I certainly support the direction that the Governor is taking.”

He described the Strike Force as a “very large group” put together to look at reopening the state in “various stages.” “It had really its greatest amount of activity during the month of late April, May and into June, then we went through a surge, you know, and largely everything was — was put on pause at that point,” Zerwas said. “And really, the Strike Force never sort of reconstituted itself, as far as an active Strike Force in that regard.” Zerwas said Abbott routinely reached out to him and Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt for consultation on medical advice. They were regulars at his pandemic press conferences during the summer… (LINK TO STORY)

Texas Watchdog Says Grid Operator Made $16 Billion Error (Bloomberg)

A firm hired to monitor Texas’ power markets says the region’s grid manager overpriced electricity over two days during last month’s energy crisis, resulting in $16 billion in overcharges.

Amid the deep winter freeze that knocked nearly half of power generation offline, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as Ercot, set the price of electricity at the $9,000-a-megawatt-hour maximum -- standard practice during a grid emergency. But Ercot left that price in place days longer than necessary, resulting in massive overcharges, according to Potomac Economics, an independent market monitor hired by the state of Texas to assess Ercot’s performance. In an unusual move, the firm recommended in a letter to regulators that the pricing be corrected and that $16 billion in charges be reversed as a result.

Potomac isn’t the first to say that leaving electricity prices at the $9,000 cap for so long was a mistake. Plenty of power companies at risk of defaulting on their payments have said the same. But the market monitor is giving that opinion considerable weight and could sway regulators to let companies off the hook for some of the massive electricity charges they incurred during the crisis… (LINK TO STORY)

This Fort Worth mayoral candidate has Mayor Betsy Price’s endorsement (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price has endorsed Mattie Parker, her former chief of staff, in the 2021 mayoral race. After a decade as mayor, Price announced in January she would not seek a sixth term and remained quiet about her thoughts on who should succeed her. On Thursday in a statement from Parker’s campaign, Price said Parker is the only candidate she trusts to lead the city. “I know her heart is to serve Fort Worth with honesty and integrity while focusing on positive policies not divisive partisan politics,” Price said.

Parker was the mayor and council chief of staff for five years before leaving for the education-focused nonprofits Fort Worth Cradle to Career and the Tarrant To & Through Partnership. In the statement, Price said Parker had been a “go-to leader” on a number of Price’s goals, including stabilizing the city pension and economic growth such as Stockyards redevelopment. Parker was also involved in the creation of a citywide strategy on quality early childhood education policy. “I learned firsthand from Mayor Price that for Fort Worth to truly be successful, we must make sure every neighborhood in every part of our city has the opportunity for a prosperous future,” Parker said in the statement. Parker has a long list of endorsements from some of Fort Worth’s prominent citizens including Marianne Auld, Ramona and Lee Bass, Sid Bass, Mike Berry, Dee Kelly Jr., Matt Rose, Victor Vandergriff and Kyle Whitaker… (LINK TO STORY)

HPD Chief Acevedo feuds with Texas AG Paxton over Utah trip, federal charges (Houston Chronicle)

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo is amid a heated Twitter battle with Attorney General Ken Paxton, swiping at the litigator’s pending felony charges and questioning his trip to Utah during last month's winter storm. The exchange began Saturday when Acevedo publicly denounced Paxton’s decision to sue the San Antonio police chief over his handling of releases of several immigrants in 2017. “How much longer are Texans going to tolerate @KenPaxtonTX shenanigans?” Acevedo posted. “Suing police a police chief for difficult operational decisions? I hope the court quickly leaves Paxton in the cold like he did his fellow Texans last week during a historic freeze.”

That tweet kick started a series of barbs that has yet to let up. Paxton responded the next day, doubling down on his lawsuit against San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and telling Acevedo to worry about rising crime in his own city. “@ArtAcevedo is flying cover for his reckless buddy,” Paxton wrote. Acevedo responded that he is worried about crime – and about a perceived failure of the state to enact bail and criminal justice reform. “If you spend more time in the state during times of crisis instead of Utah and Florida, and remain laser focused on crime fighting, it may help,” Acevedo said. Paxton hit back on Tuesday, blaming Acevedo for “letting dangerous felons back on the streets to reoffend.” Houston criminal justice officials such as Acevedo have spoken out about a “bond epidemic” over the past year, referencing an apparent increase in defendants being charged with murder while they were released on bond. “Maybe you being the chief of police is the problem,” the attorney general tweeted… (LINK TO STORY)

Dallas police officer who faces 2 capital murder charges ordered pair of hits in 2017, authorities allege (Dallas Morning News)

A Dallas police officer was arrested Thursday on two counts of capital murder after authorities say he ordered the killings of two people in 2017: a 30-year-old woman whose body was recovered in the Trinity River and a 60-year-old man whose remains were never found. Officer Bryan Riser, 36, was booked into the Dallas County jail about 6:30 p.m., records show. His bail was set at $5 million, and it was unclear whether he had an attorney. “This officer’s actions not only tarnished the badge, but it hinders the efforts of those who go out every day to inspire the public confidence and create respect for the law enforcement profession,” police Chief Eddie García said.

Riser, who joined the department in August 2008, is assigned to the South Central patrol division, according to a news release. He is currently on administrative leave pending the outcome of an Internal Affairs investigation, the release said. The first murder happened on March 10, 2017, when a female victim, Liza Saenz, was found dead in a body of water near Santa Fe Avenue, García said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. The second murder happened Aug. 14, 2017, when a victim was kidnapped and killed at the order of Riser, García said. García said Riser had a relationship with at least one of the victims. “This individual has no business wearing this uniform,” García said, adding the department was moving toward Riser’s termination. “I can’t be clearer than that.” García added that former Dallas Police Chief Reneé Hall was aware of the allegations… (LINK TO STORY)

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Trump’s cash plea could complicate GOP fundraising efforts (Associated Press)

“Trump needs you,” one fundraising email implored. “President Trump’s Legacy is in your hands,” another pleaded. Others advertised “Miss Me Yet?” T-shirts featuring Donald Trump’s smiling face. While some Republicans grapple with how fiercely to embrace the former president, the organizations charged with raising money for the party are going all in. The Republican National Committee and the party’s congressional campaign arms are eager to cash in on Trump’s lure with small donors ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when the GOP hopes to regain control of at least one chamber of Congress.

But there’s a problem: Trump himself. In his first speech since leaving office, the former president encouraged loyalists to give directly to him, essentially bypassing the traditional groups that raise money for GOP candidates. “There’s only one way to contribute to our efforts to elect ‘America First’ Republican conservatives and, in turn, to make America great again,” Trump said Sunday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. “And that’s through Save America PAC and donaldjtrump.com.”

The comment was particularly notable because Trump is generally loath to ask for money in person. It amounts to the latest salvo in the battle to shape the future of the GOP, with Trump making clear that he holds no allegiance to the party’s traditional fundraising operation as he tries to consolidate power. That could help him add to an already commanding war chest, aiding his effort to influence the party. Save America has more than $80 million cash on hand, including $3 million raised after the CPAC speech, according to a person familiar with the total… (LINK TO STORY)

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AJ Bingham
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