BG Reads | News You Need to Know (February 14, 2022)

News
Written By AJ Bingham

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

City anticipates legal challenges to race-based grants, including Live Music Fund (Austin Monitor)

The city may need to roll back or adjust race-based considerations in some of its grant programs over concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts may in the coming months rule against the use of such criteria.

One of the city programs most under threat from that possibility is the long-planned and still-evolving Live Music Fund that would use Hotel Occupancy Tax dollars to award grants to applicants in the live music industry, with race and equity one of the primary determinants in the scoring system.

The city’s Equity Office, Small Business Division, Economic Development Department, Purchasing Department, and Small and Minority Business Resources Department also have or are considering programs that use race as part of the scoring matrix.

Last week the Music Commission received a presentation from Neal Falgoust, an attorney in the Law Department, who explained that race-based criteria have received the highest level of legal scrutiny based on about 30 years of case law, with sex, gender, age, disability and socioeconomic factors being much easier to enact and withstand legal challenges.

With the Supreme Court indicating it will hear a case that could end race-based considerations in college admissions, Falgoust said that change could pave the way for lawsuits against the city for any of its programs that rely too heavily on race in determining how grants and contracts are awarded.

“Our concern is that in this environment if someone should decide to file suit against the city and the case ended up in the courts, that cases like (City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Company) could put the city at risk not only for the city but for all cities across the country,” he said. “It would provide the court with an opportunity to overturn settled law for the entire country.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Director of Austin Water resigns after three-day boil-water notice caused by 'employee error' (KUT)

The head of Austin’s public water utility has resigned after an employee mistake at a water treatment facility resulted in residents having to boil their water for three days to ensure it was safe to drink.

In a letter sent Friday to City Manager Spencer Cronk, Greg Meszaros said after 15 years at the helm of Austin Water, he was "ready to step aside." He said he made the decision “in consultation with my family and my circle of close and trusted friends.”

Meszaros did not say when his last day would be.

His resignation comes just days after the city and surrounding communities emerged from a three-day mandatory boil-water notice. This was the city's third boil-water notice in at least four years, one of which was caused by a power outage at a water treatment plant during the February 2021 winter storm.

During this latest one, the public utility said employee error caused issues at a water treatment plant, forcing the city to issue the notice, which lasted from Saturday to Tuesday. Austin Water serves more than 1 million residential customers with an annual operating budget of roughly $654 million.

In his resignation letter, Meszaros wrote that he took "full responsibility for any shortcomings" at the public utility this past week.

The utility has refused to say what exactly went wrong to cause increased turbidity, or cloudiness, of water at the Ullrich Water Treatment Plant on Saturday. But in a separate memo sent Friday, Meszaros said Austin Water has placed three employees on administrative leave while the city investigates… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

AOC hosts Austin campaign rally with congressional hopeful Greg Casar (CBS Austin)

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited Austin Sunday afternoon to endorse congressional hopeful and former Austin City Council Member Greg Casar. The event rallied voters ahead of early voting which starts Monday morning.

A large crowd turned out in support of AOC and Greg Casar at Mohawk in downtown Austin. A day before early voting is set to kick off AOC encouraged Texas voters to get out the vote and continue organizing by knocking on doors and sending text messages.

“I started my entire organizing life here in the state of Texas. A lot of people don’t know that,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The progressive Democrat has been walking the halls of Congress since 2019 but not without making herself well-known to people on both sides of the aisle.

“It was when I first started coming out here as a teenager and in my early 20’s that really led me to believe even back then that the seat of change in this country is going to come from the state of Texas,” she said.

AOC is now pushing for progressive Democrat Greg Casar to join the ranks in D.C. by endorsing him Sunday in front of a large crowd.

“We’re going to organize because there’s too much at stake, there is too much at stake for us to be resigned this November,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The former Austin City Council Member is looking to represent Texas's 35th Congressional District which stretches from Austin to San Antonio. Congressman Lloyd Doggett currently holds the seat but will be running for the new Congressional District 37… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

New Austin collaborative launching this year aims to reach more unsheltered people of color (Austin American-Statesman)

A $3.1 million grant from St. David’s Foundation to the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, or ECHO, represents yet another private investment in a community and local government effort to address homelessness in the Austin area. ECHO hopes the collaboration, dubbed the Austin Street Outreach Collaborative, will address substantial equity issues among Austin’s unsheltered population by funding full-time staff among smaller organizations or grassroots organizations already working with some of the most vulnerable people living without shelter or regular housing in the Austin area. Black and Latino residents are significantly more likely to experience homelessness in Austin, according to ECHO data.

“The idea is that not only would we be helping individuals today who need it, but also we'll be creating our infrastructure, where we have a platform to analyze data, see where the holes are, see where the problems are, and see who is falling through the cracks,” St. David’s Foundation CEO Ed Burger said. About $2 million of the grant will fund the collaboration, while an additional $1 million to ECHO will continue an ongoing operating grant to support efforts to end homelessness in Austin/Travis County. ECHO is the lead agency for the Austin/Travis County Continuum of Care, meaning it coordinates the area’s housing and services funding for homeless families and individuals. The remaining $100,000 will pay people with firsthand experience of homelessness and who are working to improve the Austin area’s overall homelessness response system… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

LGBT Chamber CEO Tina Cannon is living her childhood dreams (Austin Business Journal)

While her classmates dreamt of becoming an astronaut or a movie star, Tina Cannon knew from a very young age that she wanted to be a CEO.

Cannon's passion and relentless pursuit to better herself everyday are among the key traits that have carried her through a career of entrepreneurship to her current role as president and CEO of the Austin LGBT Chamber of Commerce. At the minority chamber, she's able to combine her loves of business, government advocacy and mentorship.

And Cannon's drive seems to be unstoppable.

When she was 15, she earned her first dollar stocking shelves at a department store. She wasn't legally old enough to work, but she lied about her age because she wanted the job.

When she was in school, she learned to play any instrument that teachers would dissuade her from playing. Her musical repertoire included the clarinet, saxophone, bass clarinet, trumpet and trombone.

"I had a band director that told me that girls didn't play brass, and so I went and had my buddy teach me how to play trumpet and trombone," Cannon said.

That same drive led her to found online pet health care website PetsMD.com and co-found veterinary appointment service Book-a-Vet. She was also a founding partner at startup consulting services firm Napkin Venture, according to past ABJ reporting, before transitioning to roles with the city of Austin and Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Now, she's using the lessons she learned as an entrepreneur to mentor others in the area.

"Too often, you'll see organizations — whether it be a nonprofit or for-profit — fail because they won't take the risk and try something," Cannon said. "The upsides of being in a leadership position of an organization that's this size, as it is for any entrepreneur, is that if we want to change or add something, we have the power to do that."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin ISD paid hundreds of millions more than other districts in Texas' 'recapture' program (KUT)

The Austin Independent School District is sending more taxpayer dollars than any other school system to the state’s so-called recapture program, a new study finds. The decades-old system, known commonly as “Robin Hood,” is meant to balance resources among less property-wealthy school districts, with the goal of leveling out the per-student spending across all districts statewide. Using data from the Texas Education Agency, the Texas School Coalition study found Austin ISD paid more than $710 million in the 2020-2021 school year. For context, that’s three-and-a-half times more than what Houston ISD paid. Houston is the state’s largest public school district, serving 196,000 students, compared to Austin’s 75,000. The total AISD paid is more than remittances from the three districts below it on the list — Houston, Plano and Midland ISDs — combined.

Austin ISD's payments to the program have consistently dwarfed other districts’ over the last decade. During that time, AISD has seen declining enrollment while property values in the area have skyrocketed. That puts the district at a distinct disadvantage, especially since nearly half the district's students qualify as economically disadvantaged, the TSC study notes. The study calls on Texas lawmakers to revamp the program in its next legislative session. Back in 2019, payments into the program were projected to balloon to $6 billion within the next five years. That year, state lawmakers passed sweeping bipartisan legislation that eased some of the tax burden on school districts. But because property values have soared since then, the report found, the program brought in $1.4 billion more than what was forecast. That money was ultimately used to balance the state’s budget. TSC called on lawmakers to allow surplus money from the program to go only toward public education funding. “Those dollars should be directed straight back to public education for the benefit of all students,” the study's authors wrote . “In other words, if taxpayers are paying more than expected in school taxes, it should actually be the schools that benefit.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is peddling baseless conspiracy theory that FBI incited Jan. 6 Capitol riot (Dallas Morning News)

Sen. Ted Cruz has been peddling a conspiracy theory for weeks suggesting that the FBI incited last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. In this scenario, the nation’s prime law enforcement agency prodded supporters of defeated president Donald Trump to ignore police lines, assault officers, smash through doors, turn flagpoles into spears, invade the Senate chamber and threaten the vice president and House speaker. No evidence has surfaced for this explosive theory. And the purported motives for such a conspiracy are murky. The FBI director, under oath two months after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, ruled out that there were “fake Trump protesters” of any kind in the mob. Another top FBI official told Cruz at a hearing last month that no federal agents incited violence.

That has not deterred the two-term Texas Republican from persisting with the “false flag” theory in a Senate hearing and a flurry of campaign emails, and on social media and his popular podcast. “If the federal government was actively encouraging illegal conduct, was actively encouraging violence,” Cruz said on an episode of his podcast devoted almost entirely to the so-called fed-surrection theory, “that is incredibly concerning, because it is an abuse of power.” The key word there is “if.” Cruz has offered no evidence the FBI has done anything wrong — an allegation-by-insinuation approach that critics view as demagoguery. His office sidestepped requests to provide any factual basis for the speculation. Instead, an aide pointed to this and other comments that ignore the FBI’s denials and put the onus on the bureau to disprove a theory that remains baseless. “I asked the FBI over and over and over again: Did FBI agents commit acts of violence on January 6? The FBI refused to answer that question — whether or not FBI agents committed acts of violence,” Cruz said on his Jan. 14 podcast. “I asked, did they incentivize? Did they incite? Did they urge others to commit acts of violence? Again, the FBI refused to answer.” The theory is full of contradictions… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

How Dallas-based HKS became the NFL’s go-to architect for Super Bowl stadiums (D Magazine)

The best way to understand how HKS reimagined the NFL stadium might be through sheer tonnage—of acreage and asphalt, glass and steel, brick and mortar. This feels appropriate given the scale of what the Dallas architectural firm has built over the past decade and a half: four boundary-pushing stadiums, each more audacious than the last, where the NFL has chosen to host four of the last 12 Super Bowls. Or, better yet, you could consider The Champagne Bar. The Champagne Bar—yes, capitalized—is one attraction within the 75,000-foot Executive Club at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, home to the Rams, who will play the Cincinnati Bengals at SoFi in Sunday’s Super Bowl. It is the first of its kind at an NFL venue, designed from its tiles to the light fixtures as a physical representation of the beverage itself. Which is to say it is perfectly L.A., where “probably unnecessary” and “definitely awesome” collide unlike anywhere else in America… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Biden weighs appeal of 3 top candidates for high court (Associated Press)

President Joe Biden had zeroed in on a pair of finalists for his first Supreme Court pick when there were rumors last year that Justice Stephen Breyer would retire. But since the upcoming retirement was announced late last month, it has come with the rise of a third candidate, one with ready-made bipartisan support that has complicated the decision. For Biden, it’s a tantalizing prospect. The president believes he was elected to try to bring the country together following the yawning and rancorous political divide that grew during the Trump administration and especially following the Capitol insurrection in January 2021. And a Supreme Court nominee with a raft of qualifications who has the vocal support of even one or two Republican senators could well attract the backing of other Republicans. That, in turn, could make for a smoother nomination process after some painfully partisan ones in recent years… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

AJ Bingham
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