BG Reads | News You Need to Know (January 1, 2021)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW // BG PODCAST - Episode 120: A Discussion with Courtney Santana, Founder and CEO, Survive2Thrive Foundation
On today’s episode Bingham Group CEO A.J. speaks with Courtney Santana, Founder and CEO of the Survive2Thrive Foundation, 501(c)(3). A domestic violence survivor/victor, Courtney founded Survive2Thrive Foundation in 2013 to help provide direct services to survivors of domestic violence.
See also, Nonprofit provides hotel rooms for Central Texas abuse victims (Austin American-Statesman)
PRE-FILED BILLS FOR THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin ISD will resume classes Monday, despite high number of COVID-19 cases in Austin (KUT)
The Austin Independent School District will resume classes, both in person and online, Monday. Before winter break, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said the district might cancel classes altogether next week since the city moved into stage 5 of Austin Public Health's risk-based guidelines for COVID-19.
The district would not have been able to move students to online learning only because the state of Texas requires all school districts to offer an in-person option at all times. The district could lose state funding if it doesn't offer in-person classes. Losing state funding could have long-term consequences for the district's payroll, Elizalde said during a press conference Thursday.
So, the choice was between offering both online and in-person learning or canceling classes entirely and making up the days later in the year.
"We are between a rock and a hard place," Elizalde said. "There is no agreement, even among physicians and experts. There's no agreement between parental philosophies. So, this is a very difficult place, of course, to be."
Elizalde said that canceling classes while the city is in stage 5 would mean students would have to make up those missed days at the end of the year or on weekends. She said she worried they wouldn't be able to make up the time by the June 30 deadline that the state requires, so the district chose to resume classes Monday… (LINK TO STORY)
Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton tell Austin restaurants to defy COVID-19 order banning overnight dine-in services (Texas Tribune)
Gov. Greg Abbott directed restaurants to ignore local curfews — specifically in Travis County — that were implemented to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus on New Year's Eve.
"To Texas restaurants. A formal statement. 'The Governor’s statewide executive order allows food establishments to be open for in-person dining on New Years Eve as authorized by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. They should remain open. Happy New Year!' Cheers!" Abbott wrote on Twitter at 7:39 p.m., within three hours before the Austin-area curfew was to go into effect.
"I'm not a lawyer, but... This appears to me to be a response to @KenPaxtonTX’s latest court defeat and it appears our Governor, who is a former AG and Supreme Court Justice, is telling the public to defy the ruling of a Texas District Judge. *Please* tell me I’m wrong," wrote Democratic state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie on Twitter.
In a statement issued within an hour of Abbott's tweet, Austin Mayor Steve Adler noted the city was "experiencing uncontrolled spread of the virus" and that individuals should "celebrate at home, order out and tip generously."… (LINK TO STORY)
Paxton will ask Texas Supreme Court for emergency stay blocking Austin curfew (Austin American-Statesman)
A Travis County judge on Thursday rejected a bid by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block Austin and Travis County pandemic-related orders that disallow dine-in service after 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
"The Court finds the State has not demonstrated a probable right to the relief sought nor imminent and irreparable harm," District Judge Amy Clark Meachum wrote in a two-page letter delivered little more than an hour after a 2½-hour virtual hearing ended.
A longer ruling will be filed in the future, the judge wrote.
Paxton quickly asked the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals to block the order limiting dine-in service, but the court rejected the appeal late Thursday night. Paxton said Friday morning that he will ask the Texas Supreme Court for an emergency stay blocking enforcement of the dine-in curfew… (LINK TO STORY)
To survive another decade, Bobby Epstein positions COTA as family-friendly event venue (Austin Business Journal)
2020 was a brutal year for Circuit of The Americas. 2021 will be a pivotal one.
This year, the race track and event venue in Southeast Austin saw the cancelation of both the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix (which will return in '21) and an IndyCar race (which won't) because of the coronavirus pandemic. It also missed out on many concerts and events.
2021 is the final year on the 10-year contract for COTA to host the F1 race, which has put the facility on the global sporting map.
"We all want to make it happen and hopefully that comes together," COTA Chairman Bobby Epstein said of negotiations with F1.
Epstein in 2018 told Austin Business Journal that F1 race weekend accounted for up to half of the track's annual revenue. Now executives are racing to diversify revenue streams, and a big component of that is renting out the massive facility more often.
Consider that when the first-ever NASCAR race descends on Circuit of The Americas in May — a major coup in terms of exposure — the event will be managed by Speedway Motorsports, the company that owns Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. The NASCAR race weekend will include multiple races, including the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Series, which last appeared at COTA in 2017.
COTA has long rented out its meeting facilities and its 3.4-mile track, for everything from races to corporate retreats. But there is a fresh emphasis on rentals in the front office as a way to boost revenue while decreasing risk.
"We're doing this more and more. We're acting more as a landlord with the venue — rent it out and partner with others," Epstein said… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Eligible Texans can’t get answers about the COVID-19 vaccine. It’s not clear who — if anyone — has them. (Texas Tribune)
On Dec. 22, Gov. Greg Abbott sat in a conference room at the Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin and rolled up his sleeve for the cameras. A nurse pricked a dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine into his left arm and state officials and hospital staff in the room applauded.
Abbott then threw up his arms: “It’s that easy,” he said.
The event was a celebration of a major milestone in the battle against the coronavirus. Although cases were still mounting in Texas and new hospitalizations were climbing, 1.4 million health care workers and vulnerable Texans were set to receive the vaccine by the end of 2020, Abbott said, with millions more to come soon after.
But in the days since that celebration, getting that vaccine to the people eligible to receive it has proven far from easy. The vaccine’s rollout has been marred by poor messaging from state officials, technical errors and logistical delays… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
So, You’ve OK’d Shrooms and Defunded the Police. Now What? (Politico Magazine)
One of the biggest unfinished stories of November’s election was the sweeping changes voters demanded of the American justice system.
Dozens of states and cities had justice-reform initiatives on the ballot, some radical, and the results were far more one-sided than the national elections. Drug legalization initiatives won in red and blue states, including in Oregon, where voters opted to decriminalize personal possession and use of even cocaine and heroin. New or revamped police oversight boards were also approved in nearly a dozen cities.
But change is rarely so simple in politics. A big policy reform can take months, even years, to go into effect—which gives opponents plenty of time to build new leverage, and maybe even work the system to block it. Police unions are already gearing up to fight proposed changes to their disciplinary processes; a conservative governor is helping an effort to block cannabis legalization; and even public opinion, given time, can swing back, as it did with bail in California.
So, what really happened this November when it comes to criminal justice reform—and, more importantly, what happens next? Below are five of the most consequential ballot measures of 2020, and the not-so-straightforward paths that still lie ahead for them… (LINK TO STORY)
Pence asks judge to toss GOP lawmaker's bid to overturn election results (The Hill)
Vice President Pence on Thursday asked a federal judge to reject a bid by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and other Republicans to broaden Pence’s powers in a manner that would effectively allow him to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this week, seeks to expand Pence’s role in an upcoming Jan. 6 meeting of Congress to count states’ electoral votes and finalize Biden’s victory over President Trump.
But in a Thursday brief to Texas-based U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, Pence said he was not a proper defendant to the suit.
“A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” a Department of Justice attorney representing Pence wrote in the filing.
Typically, the vice president’s role in presiding over the Jan. 6 meeting is a largely ceremonial one governed by an 1887 federal law known as the Electoral Count Act.
But the Republican lawsuit seeks to invalidate the law as an unconstitutional constraint on the vice president's authority to choose among competing claims of victory when state-level election results are disputed… (LINK TO STORY)