BG Reads | News You Need to Know (May 7, 2021)
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE]
LINK TO FILED HOUSE BILLS (5,985)
LINK TO FILED SENATE BILLS (2,720)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin moves to find city land for homeless encampments after voters pass Prop B (KUT)
Following a voter-approved reinstatement of bans on behavior related to homelessness, Austin City Council members are looking for land to set aside for city-sanctioned encampments.
City Council on Thursday unanimously approved a framework for a plan, directing City Manager Spencer Cronk to look into city-owned land for encampments where residents would have access to water, storage, showers, electricity and security.
"When individuals in encampments ask where they should go, we need to have places to suggest," Council Member Kathie Tovo said. "This is not going to be an easy process, and it will take a lot of resourcefulness and creativity from each and every one of us trying to identify sites that can meet this bill."
The resolution puts Cronk on a tight timeline. Council wants an initial report on the plan by May 14, with a final schedule on or before June 1.
The move is an about-face for the city. Back in 2019, Cronk panned the idea of public encampments. His office argued upkeep is costly and setting them up "negatively impacts and detracts from systemic efforts to end homelessness."
But Council was forced to revisit the idea after voters passed Proposition B by a 15-point margin Saturday. The measure reinstates a ban on camping in public, limitations on panhandling, and a prohibition on sitting or lying down in some stretches of Austin. Cronk said the city will “proceed with a phased implementation” starting with outreach and education.
Tovo, who wrote the resolution on encampments, said the camps are intended as a temporary fix while the city ramps up work to house 3,000 people within the next three years and as it rolls out its HEAL initiative.
Under HEAL, the city will target four high-profile encampments, connect those living there with housing and then prohibit camping in those areas going forward. People displaced from the camps will stay at the former Rodeway Inn near Oltorf Street and I-35, which has become a temporary shelter.
Council on Thursday also authorized a nine-month contract with Front Steps, the nonprofit that runs the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, to run that new shelter.
City Council first set aside money to buy the hotel in late 2019. It has been housing people at risk of COVID-19 during the pandemic… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin will start training new police again this June, after a yearlong hiatus (Austin Monitor)
City Council members voted Thursday to restart cadet classes after a pause to allow the police department to make changes to how it trains new officers.
The next cadet class is set to start by June 7. It will be run as a pilot, so the department can test the changes it made, which include 30 additional hours of training for officers on community engagement.
Council members emphasized Thursday that their vote to resume training is conditional. They maintain the right to pause classes again if they feel the changes they wanted haven’t been made.
“A lot of work has gone into where we are today,” Council Member Alison Alter said before voting. “We are authorizing a pilot. We are not authorizing cadet classes for perpetuity if the reforms are not seriously implemented.”
“This is, in some sense for me, a leap of faith,” she said.
The vote was 9-1-1, with Council Member Greg Casar voting against and Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison abstaining. Both said they felt the city was greenlighting the restart too quickly.
“This is a trial phase only,” Harper-Madison said before the vote. “However, I am deeply concerned that we may be compromising that trial phase by starting it too soon.”
The 144th class of the Austin Police Academy was originally supposed to convene last June with 100 cadets; it will resume this summer with up to 92 cadets, at a cost of roughly $2.2 million to the city. When it begins in several weeks it will be run differently and be under more scrutiny than past classes, the city says.
One of the overarching criticisms of the academy was that it functioned as a “military-style academy,” creating officers who thought of themselves more as warriors than as guardians of the public.
Austin’s interim Police Chief Joseph Chacon told Council members Thursday he was committed to changing this.
“The type of training that we might see in a military academy, which is much more strict and ‘lecture and listen’ type, we are moving (away) from that direction,” he said. But Chacon added it was necessary to put cadets in unnerving role plays so they could be prepared for encounters they might have on the job.
“We do need to continue to create scenarios that place our cadets under stress,” he said. “They will be exposed to stressful situations in their careers out on the streets, and we need to prepare them for that.”
Council members asked City Manager Spencer Cronk to make changes to police training in December 2019, after the city received anonymous complaints that a former assistant police chief repeatedly used a racist term for Black people and former cadets testified about intimidation and discrimination. (An investigator hired by the city to look into the claims about the former assistant chief could not corroborate the allegations, but noted hearing unrelated anecdotes about a culture of racism and sexism in the department.)
Council asked Cronk to make changes by June 2020 or otherwise postpone cadet classes; he said the pandemic delayed the work, so the city hit pause on the training.
The restructured training academy will be two weeks longer than past courses. Cadets will take a new class titled “The History of Police and Race in America,” which was designed by the Office of Police Oversight and the UT School of Law.
The department has also agreed to get rid of the practice of having cadets carry sandbags when they make a mistake in the academy.
Some of these changes are in response to recommendations from various consultants over the past year. In that time, outside auditors hired by the city published several unfavorable reports about how Austin police are trained and the materials used to educate them. For instance, a panel of community members tasked with watching videos used in training officers said depictions of police interactions rely on racist, sexist and classist stereotypes.
But while the department has made some changes, others are still pending. According to a presentation made to Council members earlier this week, APD still needs to make a dozen changes, including OK’ing a process for how cadet teachers are evaluated. That’s one reason Casar chose not to vote for restarting the cadet classes.
“I wish we had done some of this in the months beforehand so that we could say we got everything done before we start the class,” he said.
Council members say the city will keep a close eye on how the class, officially dubbed the Pilot Reimagined Cadet Training Academy, is going. The city is paying an additional $375,000 to Kroll Associates, one of the outside consultants hired to review how police are trained, to observe and report on the reinstated class… (LINK TO STORY)
Foreign investors set their sights on Austin in a real estate twist, survey says (Forbes)
Austin is the U.S. city with the most interest from foreign real estate investors this year, a new survey found, signifying a shift in investment toward smaller metropolitan areas as the coronavirus pandemic and rise in remote working pushes people out of large cities. (LINK TO STORY)
Tesla plans another industrial facility near gigafactory, records show (Austin Business Journal)
Documents recently filed with the city of Austin indicate Tesla Inc. plans another facility on its land in eastern Travis County.
There aren't too many details about what the facility would be used for, and project representatives either declined to comment or could not be reached by publication time. But a site plan filed April 30 for Tesla's "Bobcat Project" points to another industrial building rising off Harold Green Road near the company's $1.1 billion gigafactory.
It is not surprising that the company is planning another project in the area. Tesla's Colorado River Project LLC has purchased more than 2,500 acres in the city of Austin extraterritorial jurisdiction, leaving many to wonder what could be planned on the massive site. Though the city did not have very many details, Bobcat Project showcases another step in Tesla's (Nasdaq: TSLA) development plans.
It is unclear exactly where the new facility would be located. It could sit on up to 150 acres, although a 65% impervious cover limit in the Austin ETJ means development could be at most about 97 acres. That would include the facility, driveways, sidewalks, roadways and parking lots, among other factors.
A Tesla employee listed on city documents declined to comment for this article. Michael Loftis of engineering firm Kimley-Horn, also mentioned in the documents, could not be immediately reached for comment. Austin Business Journal has attempted to contact Tesla officials in recent weeks but has been unsuccessful.
A May 4 drone video posted to YouTube, starting at the 24-minute mark, shows land east of the gigafactory that could be where Tesla is planning the new industrial building. The site appears to be largely cleared and looks as if construction crews have been active. There's a pond in the center of the site, which would have to be filled prior to development.
Andy Linseisen, assistant director of the city’s Development Services Department, said Tesla has been doing restoration work since last year to wind down the mining operations on the land. He did not have any further details to disclose.
Over at the gigafactory, crews are working full speed to meet CEO Elon Musk's goal of being up and running by the end of this year. Roughly 270 jobs were posted to the company's website at publication time, and Musk recently said Tesla will need 10,000 people at the electric vehicle plant by the end of 2022.
Site observers have long speculated that additional development is in the cards for the thousands of acres owned by Tesla. Sources previously told ABJ a SpaceX facility is likely planned west of the State Highway 130 toll road… (LINK TO STORY)
Autonomous trucking company Einride to set up US headquarters in Austin after raising $110M (Austin Inno)
Google was the first company to start testing autonomous vehicles in Austin back in the summer of 2015. While Google has since spun those efforts into Waymo and ultimately pulled its testing vehicles out of the city, other companies have taken up the mantle.
Austin has since become one of several tech hubs paving the way for autonomous vehicle development and testing. That includes, perhaps most notably, the decision by Ford and Argo AI to make Austin the center of their self-driving vehicle efforts. The pair is set to launch a forthcoming robotaxi service in 2022 that will make autonomous vehicles accessible to everyday consumers.
Now, Swedish autonomous electric freight vehicle company Einride is planning to establish Austin as its U.S. headquarters later this year after raising a $110 million series B funding round, TechCrunch reported.
The company was founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, Linnéa Kornehed and Filip Lilja. Einride's primary offering, its Pod vehicle, is a futuristic vehicle with no cab that can be deployed in fenced-in facilities using predetermined routes, as well as shipping on public roads.
Einride offers its vehicles on a subscription basis. Its customers include Coca-Cola, Oatly, Lidl and Electrolux.
Einride says it is the world’s first company to operate autonomous, all-electric freight vehicles on public roads. Last year, it named its COO, Niklas Reinedahl, as its U.S. general manager. The company has raised a total of $150 million, with backers including Temasek, Soros Fund Management LLC, Northzone, Maersk Growth, Build Capital, EQT Ventures, Plum Alley Investments, Norrsken VC, Ericsson and NordicNinja VC.
Einride, which also plans to open offices in New York and Silicon Valley, has more than 50 job openings posted on its site, including roles for regional commercial director, sales director and solution architect manager in Austin.
The company is one of several autonomous vehicle companies hiring in Austin.
San Diego-based TuSimple, for example, is an autonomous trucking company that has expanded to Texas to launch autonomous freight shipping between Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston. Its recruiting autonomous vehicle system operators and testing engineers in Austin. California-based Nvidia, meanwhile, is recruiting in Austin for a director of engineering for its AI infrastructure and autonomous business unit.
And earlier this week, NI, an Austin-based company formerly known as National Instruments that makes automated testing equipment and software, acquired local startup MonoDrive, which makes simulation software for autonomous vehicles. NI said it hopes to use MonoDrive's signal processing and simulations to improve performance in virtual testing environments… (LINK TO STORY)
How the camping ban won, and what political experts say it means for future Austin elections (KXAN)
Otto Swingler is a native Austinite who works and lives downtown. It was less than three weeks before the May 1 election day when we walked by the homeless encampments along Lady Bird Lake that motivated Swingler to become politically involved – for the first time in his life. “I don’t consider myself a strongly leaning Democrat or Republican either way. I don’t think this is a political issue, quite frankly,” he said. Swingler voted for Proposition B, which Austinites passed to reinstate the city’s ban on public camping anywhere not designated by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department.
The proposition also creates criminal penalties for those sitting or lying down on a public sidewalk or sleeping outdoors in and near downtown and University of Texas areas. Additionally, solicitation, or requesting money at specific hours and spots or in an aggressive way, will also be criminalized. Swingler says he’s not anti-homeless but considers the growing number of tent cities in Austin a public health and safety issue. He says his girlfriend won’t run the hike and bike trail alone. “You pay to use these sidewalks, these running trails — you’ve got all this public infrastructure that has been completely taken over,” he said. During our interview with Swingler, a man experiencing homelessness approached us. He said he’d arrived in Austin eight months earlier. He said he didn’t know where he would go if public camping wasn’t allowed. “They’re the ones [expletive] telling us we can’t live anywhere, and there’s nowhere else to live,” said the man, who identified himself as “Truth.”
The exchange is a microcosm of the public camping ban debate. It has impassioned Austinites on all sides, says Don Kettl, Professor at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. “It’s been hard to remember anything in recent Austin memory that has generated so much interest, so much support, so much debate,” he said… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas GOP’s voting restrictions bill could be rewritten behind closed doors after key House vote (Texas Tribune)
As opposition to Texas Republicans’ proposed voting restrictions continues to intensify, state lawmakers’ deliberations over the GOP priority legislation could soon go behind closed doors.
The House early Friday voted 81-64 to advance a pared down version of Senate Bill 7, leaving out various far-reaching voting restrictions that have prompted widespread outcry from voting rights advocates, advocates for people with disabilities, and local officials in the state’s biggest counties. The legislation still contains some provisions opposed by those groups — including a prohibition on counties sending unsolicited applications to vote by mail.
Facing more than 130 proposed amendments from Democrats late Thursday — and a procedural challenge that could have delayed the entire bill’s consideration — lawmakers huddled off the chamber’s floor throughout the night to cut a deal and rework SB 7 through a flurry of amendments passed without objection from either party.
But the final contours of the bill remain uncertain.
The bill will need a second House vote, expected later Friday, before it can head back to the Senate. It will then likely go to a conference committee made up of members of both chambers who will be able to pull from both iterations of the legislation in crafting the final version largely outside public view.
SB 7 has emerged as the main legislative vehicle for changing the state’s voting rules, though the versions passed in each chamber differ significantly.
As passed in the Senate, the legislation restricted early voting rules and schedules to do away with extended hours and ban drive-thru voting. It also required large counties to redistribute polling places under a formula that could move sites away from areas with more Hispanic and Black residents.
Those and other provisions fell off when it was reconstituted in the House Elections Committee, with little notice and without a public hearing, to match the House’s priorities contained in House Bill 6… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas Republicans target 'critical race theory' with bill to muzzle teachers on racism, sexism (Houston Chronicle)
After months of denouncing calls for the country to more fully reckon with its discriminatory roots, Texas Republicans are joining national conservatives in a push to restrict how teachers can talk about race and racism. A bill that supporters say will strip politics from public education, but that critics call a thinly veiled attempt to whitewash American history, has already passed the Senate and could be voted on by the House as early as Friday. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans. The measure targets critical race theory, an academic movement that has become a buzzword among Republicans who dispute the existence of white privilege and systemic racism. The bill would limit teachers from pushing its core tenets, such as connecting modern day inequities to historical patterns of discrimination.
Racism is “part of our reality, and that’s part of our shame, and we shouldn’t do anything to cover that up,” said Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican and the bill’s author in the House. “But what we should also not do is blame that on tender little children that have done nothing wrong.” The backlash stems in part from the 1619 Project by The New York Times that asserted slavery and its remnants were more integral to the country’s founding than is commonly acknowledged. The essay collection, commemorating the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to colonial Virginia, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and has been adapted into children’s literature and lesson plans for educators. School districts in some states are adapting parts of the project into their curriculum, and the Biden administration announced last month that it wants to prioritize education grants to programs that “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities and discriminatory policy and practice in American history.” The Texas legislation, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Brandon Creighton of Conroe, would bar schools from requiring teachers to talk about current events, and prohibit teachers from discussing certain viewpoints, including that some people are “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”… (LINK TO STORY)
As hot-button issues dominate Texas legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott sends clear signals on some conservative priorities (Texas Tribune)
Late last month, Gov. Greg Abbott called in to a friendly radio host apparently intent on making news.
"I'm told by your press office this is the first public statement on your position on 'constitutional carry,'" WBAP's Rick Roberts told Abbott before asking him about the proposal, which the state House had passed days earlier in a long-sought breakthrough for gun-rights activists.
Abbott did not hesitate, telling Roberts that he supported "constitutional carry" — an idea to allow permitless carry of handguns — and promising to sign the legislation if it reached his desk.
A week earlier, Abbott had dodged the a similar question. But his swift embrace of the proposal — which the Senate approved Wednesday — marked an emerging trend of Abbott moving to his right in the closing weeks of the session, or at least offering clearer signals on some hot-button issues than Republicans have come to expect from the typically cautious governor.
In addition to permitless carry, he has said he would sign a "heartbeat" bill that could ban abortions at six weeks, as well as legislation that would prohibit transgender girls from joining Texas sports teams that match their gender identity. The House advanced the abortion legislation Wednesday, while the transgender sports bill is stalled in a lower-chamber committee.
Abbott's support for the hard-right agenda is a contrast to the last session, when he and other state GOP leaders made clear they wanted to focus on a middle-of-the-road agenda in the run-up to a challenging 2020 election. And his approach differs somewhat from past sessions, when Abbott kept legislators in suspense on whether certain hot-button proposals would have his support — most notably the "bathroom bill" in 2017.
But Texas Republicans beat expectations in November, turning back an all-out Democratic offensive and positioning themselves for another decade of dominance in the Legislature because they fully control the redistricting process. Without an intimidating 2022 election on the horizon, Republicans at the Capitol are on track to have a more conservative session than the last one… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Keisha Lance Bottoms won't run for reeelection as Atlanta Mayor (NPR)
In a move that shocked Georgia political circles, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced she would not seek re-election later this year. The first term executive had been raising money, including holding a virtual fundraiser with President Joe Biden, for her reelection.
On Thursday night, Bottoms published a lengthy open letter and slickly produced video on dearatl.com elaborating on her decision. In it, she ticks off a list of achievements she accomplished in her term, such as investments in affordable housing and tens of millions of dollars spent on homelessness. She first told close friends, staffers, and allies of her decision privately, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"While I am not yet certain of what the future holds," she wrote. "I trust that my next season will continue to be one full of passion and purpose, guided by the belief that within each of us is the power and responsibility to make a positive difference in the lives of others."
Her announcement sparked speculation online that she may be running for higher office in Georgia. The state's gubernatorial election is next year… (LINK TO STORY)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs election restriction bill (The Hill)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday signed a sweeping new election reform measure that would restrict access to the ballot box, the latest Republican-led effort to change election procedures sparked by former President Trump’s defeat six months ago.
DeSantis signed the legislation live on Fox News, shutting out local media who had planned to cover the ceremony. Florida Republicans passed the measure on near party-line votes over the objection of civil rights groups and over the opposition of all 67 of the state’s county supervisors of elections.
The measure would limit voter access to absentee ballot drop boxes used by most Florida counties, and it would require voters who want to cast absentee ballots to submit new requests every election cycle, rather than every four years. It will also ban anyone other than election workers from distributing food or water to anyone waiting in line within 150 feet of a polling place.
The bill would require voters who want an absentee ballot or to change their party registration to submit a driver’s license number, a state identification number or the last four digits of their Social Security number along with their request.
It also bars the state or any Florida county from entering into legal consent agreements that would change election procedures, and it bans counties from accepting grants or private funds to pay for election-related expenses. The ban on private funding is similar to measures under consideration in Texas, Arizona and other states where dozens of counties received grants from a nonprofit tied to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to help pay for additional poll workers and security systems… (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!