BG Reads | News You Need to Know (January 4, 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]
Vanessa Fuentes: Building a pipeline to community power (Austin Monitor)
Vanessa Fuentes, like all of us, had no idea what 2020 would entail when she ran to become the District 2 City Council member. But the issues that the pandemic have exposed were less of a surprise.
“I didn’t realize the extent of what 2020 would include,” Fuentes told the Austin Monitor. “(But) certainly, the pandemic has just magnified what we already know about Austin.”
Prior to her official start date in January, Fuentes launched a listening tour that will continue through the winter as a way to get feedback from the different neighborhoods in her district. The sessions will help her determine the priorities of her office.
“My strength is organizing, and I am always thinking through that lens,” she said. “How am I building that community power and building that pipeline so that my community is involved and invested and ready to take action on any issue that they are passionate about?”
She explained that her year-one priorities would focus on health and the economy. “Public health is part of having a sound economy. We know that Austin is one of the most economically segregated communities in the country. What more can we do to ensure our communities of color are part of the prosperity of Austin?”
Fuentes ran for office because of the health divide in the city, spurred by her background in community organizing. As she noted during her campaign, her life expectancy, on average, is 10 years shorter than those who live west of Interstate 35.
“I was in it to address health equity and to really bridge that divide. And then the pandemic showed how deep the inequalities are,” she said.
Along those lines, Fuentes said her first priority when she takes office in January will be pandemic response and recovery, both in terms of health and economics… (LINK TO STORY)
The firm behind New Zealand’s workplace COVID-19 contact tracing tech takes aim at Texas and the U.S. (Dallas Morning News)
Contact tracing technology provider SaferMe, which played a role in helping New Zealand bring COVID-19 case counts down to zero, is setting its sights on Texas and the North American market. The company’s tech, highlighted by the World Health Organization, is being used in 30 countries around the world. Along with a handful of other mitigation measures, SaferMe’s platform was chosen by the New Zealand government as the contact tracing solution for businesses in that country’s successful efforts thus far to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Zealand’s government, which also contributed funding to SaferMe, effectively eliminated local spread of COVID-19 among its nearly 5 million residents. When the country has detected new cases in travelers, it has systematically managed those through mandated quarantine. SaferMe set up shop in the U.S. earlier this year with its first office in Austin, where it has five employees. The company plans to expand its U.S. workforce in 2021. And SaferMe already has dozens of clients in the U.S., including Fortune 500 companies and several schools, according to the company. The platform consists of an app where employee location data is tracked automatically; a wearable, Bluetooth-enabled keycard for employees who don’t have the app, and a central database for the employer. The company is scaling up the availability of the wearable, now in use in New Zealand and in a limited capacity in North America, for its U.S. clients. SaferMe charges clients variable rates to use its platform, based on the size of the organization… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas Football fires Herman, hires Sarkisian, will pay nearly $25M to ex-coach and assistants (KUT)
The University of Texas announced Saturday morning it has fired its football coach, Tom Herman, and his staff. The move comes just three days removed from a convincing 55-23 win over Colorado in the Alamo Bowl, Herman’s fourth bowl win in a row at Texas.
“With our football season coming to a close, our vice president and athletics director, Chris Del Conte, has evaluated the UT program’s strengths and weaknesses and where the program is relative to our goals," the university said in a statement. "While we have made measured progress during the past several years under Tom Herman’s leadership, Chris has recommended to the university president, Jay Hartzell, that UT make a coaching change to get us on track to achieving our ambitious goals… In addition to Sarkisian and the new coaching staff, the University of Texas is now on the hook to pay Herman more than $15 million for the three years remaining on his contract. The school must also pay roughly $10 million for his assistant coaches. That $25 million cost could be reduced if they were to take new coaching jobs.
This is the same year that UT-Austin officials were asked to make $28 million in cuts because of funding concerns due to the pandemic… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin won’t be allowed to restrict dining-in at restaurants, Texas Supreme Court says (Texas Tribune)
The Supreme Court of Texas on Friday blocked Austin-area orders that restricted dining-in and drinking at restaurants through January 3. The order followed a New Year’s Day appeal by Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Andy Brown announced the orders on Dec. 29 in a bid to slow spiraling coronavirus infections and hospitalizations going into New Year’s Eve. They were quickly challenged by Gov. Greg Abbott and by Paxton, who described the orders as “needlessly oppressive.” Both officials exhorted Texas restaurants to remain open in defiance of the orders, which were upheld by a district judge Thursday. In a further blow to the state, Texas’ Third Court of Appeals swiftly rejected an appeal later that night.
Friday’s Supreme Court order, however, directs the lower court to block enforcement of the orders, pending any further appeal.
Brown said in a statement he was “disappointed” by the decision “as it limits our ability to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our community.”… (LINK TO STORY)
No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0 (Texas Monthly)
“On the heels of last month’s remarkable migration of tech industry capital from California’s Bay Area to Austin, including an official relocation by $180 billion software company Oracle Corporation and a more-than-likely move by $140 billion man and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, two popular narratives have taken shape. Both got Austinites of all sorts worked up, whether jolly or jittery, over the holiday season. The two stories, however, share the same flaw: a facile comparison of two sharply different contexts and cities.
The first emerging narrative, favored by champions of Austin’s growth and fans of the state’s dominant low-tax, anti-regulatory economic philosophy, holds that California’s business environment has declined as a result of liberal mismanagement and intellectual conformism. Texas is swooping in to offer a new home for the global technology industry for the coming decades—a back-to-its-libertarian-roots Silicon Valley 2.0 with a bright future. A partial version of this argument was made by recent California-to-Austin transplant Joe Lonsdale of venture capital firm 8VC in the Wall Street Journal: “Our job as entrepreneurs and investors is to build the future, and I know of no better place to do so than Texas.”
The other tale, told by those appalled by the sky-high rents and wealth inequality of today’s San Francisco region, is that the tech industry itself is the real villain, having eaten the Bay Area alive and now in the process of spitting out the bones of a once-dynamic city. The same rapacious billionaires are moving on to fresh prey in still-groovy Central Texas, which is destined to turn into another smoking cultural wasteland, this story goes. As an op-ed by a California writer in the Houston Chronicle put it, “Thank you, Texas, for taking Elon Musk off our hands.”
Both stories have their truthful elements, but both fail to credit the vast differences between Austin and the Bay Area: in history, in industrial and social capital, in physical landscape, and in cultural horizons. There’s no question that the pandemic-era “Texodus” from the Bay Area is big news and that Austin’s post-Oracle trajectory should make residents excited—or worried, depending on one’s level of economic security and nostalgia for the city’s laid-back, low-rent mystique. But it’s lazy, chimerical thinking to graft global giant Silicon Valley’s recent history onto upstart Austin’s near future. Austin has its own unique story as a tech-industry town, and crucial chapters remain to be written.
For years, the Austin metro region has been trying to earn the self-anointed moniker “Silicon Hills,” with varying degrees of success. Like Silicon Valley’s Hewlett-Packard garage, the 1939 spiritual birthplace of the U.S. tech industry, Austin’s tech sector has a mythical origin point in Michael Dell’s UT dorm room circa 1984. There are other similarities too, in the role of large universities as incubators and in the cross-pollination between entrepreneurs and the counterculture. But the history of Austin’s tech sector is neither as long nor as storied as that of the Bay Area… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas State Capitol reopens to the public on January 4 (CBS Austin)
Saturday, the State Preservation Board announced the public will once again have access to the Capitol building beginning January 4, releasing new details after Governor Abbott's first announcement of the reopening earlier this month.
The reopening comes in preparation for the 87th Legislative Session, which will begin Tuesday, January 12 at noon.
In a press release, the board said "the agency has the responsibility to provide a safe environment when persons are on the grounds and in the public areas of the building. This includes implementing best practices for preventing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus during the pandemic."
As part of these preventative implementations, the public can expect a few changes when visiting the historic building:
Public access inside the Capitol will be from 9a.m.-6p.m., Monday through Friday.
The building will be closed for cleaning on Saturdays and Sundays.
The public may only enter via the north door of the Capitol. A mask worn over the mouth and nose will be required at all times while inside the building.
The State Preservation Board says COVID-19 testing is highly recommended and easily accessible on the north plaza at no charge. No personal data will be collected during the testing… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas’ medical marijuana program is one of the most restrictive in the country. Advocates hope the Legislature will change that. (Texas Tribune)
Five years after Texas legalized medical marijuana for people with debilitating illnesses, advocates and industry experts say the state’s strict rules, red tape and burdensome barriers to entry have left the program largely inaccessible to those it was intended to help.
But with a new legislative session gaveling in next month, some Texas lawmakers see an opportunity to fix the state’s medical cannabis program — known as the Compassionate Use Program — by further expanding eligibility and loosening some restrictions so Texas’ laws more closely resemble those of other states that allow the treatment.
There are 3,519 Texans registered with the state to use medical marijuana, though advocates say 2 million people are eligible based on current law… (LINK TO STORY)
Further coronavirus relief for San Antonio, Texas cities may hinge on outcome in Georgia Senate runoffs (San Antonio Express-News)
Whether San Antonio gets more federal cash to spend on coronavirus-related expenses as its leaders see fit may depend on what happens Tuesday in Georgia. The city already is assured of additional funding to help residents stay in their homes and keep the lights on at small businesses after President Donald Trump signed a $900 billion federal stimulus package last week — though it’s not clear how much or what kind of authority the city will have over that money.
What’s absent from the latest round of federal stimulus is direct financial aid to cities and counties whose coffers were hit by the economic downturn resulting from the pandemic. Democratic lawmakers had wanted $61 billion for that, which would have allowed leaders at the local level to determine spending to address needs in their respective communities. That proposal faced heavy opposition from Republicans who labeled the measure a “bailout” for municipalities that haven’t properly managed their finances. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ultimately sank the effort in the last round of stimulus negotiations by tying it to rules that would have shielded businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits — an idea unpopular with Democrats. Democrats hope a package of direct financial aid to cities and counties will pass once President-elect Joe Biden takes office, but the measure would continue to face a difficult path in the Senate if Republicans win a pair of runoffs in Georgia, which would keep the chamber under Republican control… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Georgia Senate candidates in full-court press ahead of pivotal runoff elections (The Hill)
Georgia’s Senate runoffs are likely headed to nail-biting finishes Tuesday as both parties prepare to sprint down the homestretch of the two races that will decide who controls the Senate.
Considerable resources — including hundreds of millions of dollars in outside spending and the standard bearers of both parties — are descending on the Peach State to help boost their chosen candidates.
The contests pit GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock. The two races are heading to a runoff after no candidate garnered 50 percent or more of the vote in either of the race in November… (LINK TO STORY)
See also, BG Podcast Episode 117 - The State of Georgia with Howard Franklin
Pelosi reelected speaker despite narrow majority (Politico)
Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the House for the 117th Congress, clinching the gavel for the fourth — and potentially last — time as she prepares to steer the sharply divided chamber through the final turbulent days of the Trump era.
Pelosi won 216 votes to secure the speakership with five Democrats breaking ranks to support someone else or vote present. All Republicans voted for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“As we are sworn in today, we accept a responsibility as daunting and demanding as any that previous generations of leadership have faced. We begin the new Congress during a time of extraordinary difficulty,” Pelosi said in a speech after accepting the gavel. “Our most urgent priority will continue to be defeating the coronavirus. And defeat it, we will.”
If this is in fact Pelosi’s last term as speaker — as she has signaled — it would cap a remarkable House career spanning more than three decades, including leading the Democratic Caucus for nearly 20 years and becoming the first, and still the only, woman to ever wield the speaker’s gavel.
Now Pelosi must lead one of the slimmest House majorities in decades — Democrats hold just 222 seats in the House to Republicans’ 211, with two vacancies — through the final days of President Donald Trump’s tenure before preparing to usher in a new era under President-elect Joe Biden… (LINK TO STORY)
McConnell calls Jan. 6 certification his "most consequential vote" (AXIOS)
In an extraordinary conference call this morning with fellow Senate Republicans, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his Jan. 6 vote certifying Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election will be "the most consequential I have ever cast," according to a source on a call and two other sources briefed on the private remarks.
The big picture: The conference call came in the wake of Sen. Josh Hawley defying McConnell's wishes and publicly declaring that he'll object to certifying the electoral votes in Pennsylvania and perhaps in other states as well.
McConnell had previously urged senators not to force this vote, which he believed would put Republicans up for re-election in 2022 in a horrible position — forcing them to choose between defying the most popular politician in the party, Donald Trump, and undermining democracy.
His remarks to his conference are likely to escalate President Trump's anger with him for daring acknowledge Trump's defeat… (LINK TO STORY)