BG Reads | News You Need to Know (February 16, 2022)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin Water facing staffing, culture issues, departing director says (Austin American-Statesman)
[Greg] Meszaros spoke of what he called "enormous" turnover at Austin Water, including 20 employees who left in January, the most ever in a given month. He lamented an absence of longtime operators with decades of experience, saying, "Those days are gone." The identities and experience levels of the three suspended employees have not been revealed publicly. "Our experience is being diluted," Meszaros said. The American-Statesman sent an email to Austin Water on Tuesday seeking the current number of vacancies at the utility. Officials said there are 138 vacancies, roughly 11% of all budgeted positions… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Same as it ever was: Musician pay for live shows in Austin hasn't changed in 40 years (KUT)
Austin musicians have known all along that they don't make much money, but the 2015 Austin Music Census confirmed just how little money they make.
“What I think surprised a lot of people when the census came out is that 20% of musicians are below the poverty line, and about another 30% hover just right above it,” says Nikki Rowling, who runs Titan Music Group, the firm that conducted the census.
At the time, the poverty line was just under $12,000 a year for an individual and around $24,000 for a family of four.One reason musicians here make so little money is that the pay for a gig in Austin has been the same for the last 40-plus years, averaging between $50 and $100 per gig, per musician.
“I dug out a calendar from 1979,” musician Marcia Ball says, ”and we played 12 to 15 gigs a month, mostly in Texas and Louisiana. And many of those gigs paid $300 a night. Some paid 5- and sometimes even $600 a night.”
Assuming the pay was split evenly between her five-member band, each musician could expect to take home between $60 and $120 a night… (LINK TO STORY)
In fight for Congress, Eddie Rodriguez targets Greg Casar’s record on Austin homelessness, police funding (Texas Tribune)
A Democratic nomination fight is brewing in one of Texas’ most liberal congressional districts. This prize fight captures parts of Austin and San Antonio and features two local political heavyweights: former Austin City Council member Greg Casar and state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez.
Casar is a local lightning rod, synonymous with some of the most progressive policies in Austin, including a push to reduce the city police budget and a measure — later overturned by voters — that allowed homeless people to camp in tents throughout the city. Casar is armed with an endorsement from Democratic superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who visited San Antonio and Austin this weekend to rally for him.
Rodriguez, on the other hand, is a longtime Democratic fixture who has steadily climbed the ranks of local and state politics — a former Travis County Democratic Party executive director who has spent the last 19 years in the state House. He lacks some of Casar’s progressive flash but is also unburdened by policies passed by the City Council that may have soured moderate Democrats and attracted powerful Republican adversaries.
The question ahead is, what kind of Democrat do voters want to send to Washington from the Texas 35th Congressional district?… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
UT Faculty Council passes resolution supporting freedom to teach critical race theory (Austin American-Statesman)
The Faculty Council at the University of Texas approved a nonbinding resolution Monday defending the academic freedom of faculty members to teach about race, gender justice and critical race theory.
The resolution, approved 41-5 with three members abstaining, states that educators, not politicians, should make decisions about what to teach, and it supports the right of faculty members to design courses and curriculum and to conduct scholarly research in their fields. The UT Faculty Council is an organization that represents the faculty members at the university.
Faculty members approved the resolution partly in response to legislation around the country seeking to limit discussions involving race in schools, colleges and universities. The resolution expresses solidarity with K-12 teachers in Texas who are seeking to "teach the truth in U.S. history and civics education."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Dripping Springs extends development moratorium for another 90 days (Community Impact)
Dripping Springs City Council voted to extend the city’s development moratorium for 90 days at its Feb. 15 meeting.
Limited wastewater capacity and the need to update land-use regulations in the city’s comprehensive plan drove the decision to institute the moratorium in November 2021.
The last comprehensive plan for Dripping Springs was released in 2016. The city experienced rapid population growth during the 2010s, increasing by 97.27% between 2014-2019 alone.
The extended moratorium will continue to be based on both land use and wastewater capacity. After the 90 days are up, only wastewater capacity will be considered in potential future extensions.
The 90-day extension will allow for time to gather data informing future land-use regulations, though the moratorium based on land-use will expire before the comprehensive plan is released in December 2022… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas could connect to national power grids without losing autonomy, former grid regulator says (Texas Tribune)
Texas could connect its decentralized electrical grid to the rest of the country’s system without losing autonomy and without action from the state legislature, according to Pat Wood, who previously served as the top official for both the state’s and the nation’s energy regulators.
Wood, now CEO of the Hunt Energy Network, said during a Texas Tribune panel discussion about changes to the state’s power grid that long-held fears of additional federal oversight have dissuaded Texas from fully connecting to the national power networks, which would allow the state to buy and sell energy with the rest of the country.
Texas relies on a separate power grid from the two larger national grids and is in most respects not subject to federal regulation. The state can draw a very limited amount of power from out-of-state sources… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Families of Sandy Hook victims reach $73 million settlement with Remington (NPR)
Families of victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit against the company that made the murder weapon, for $73 million.
"These nine families have shared a single goal from the very beginning: to do whatever they could to help prevent the next Sandy Hook. It is hard to imagine an outcome that better accomplishes that goal," said Josh Koskoff, an attorney for the victims' families, in a statement on Tuesday.
According to Koskoff's law firm, Remington's four insurers have all agreed to pay the full amount of coverage available, which is the $73 million total. The gun-maker filed for bankruptcy in 2020, and its assets were sold off.
Thousands of pages of internal Remington company documents can also now be made public, according to Koskoff's law firm.
"This victory should serve as a wake-up call not only to the gun industry, but also the insurance and banking companies that prop it up," Koskoff said. "For the gun industry, it's time to stop recklessly marketing all guns to all people for all uses and instead ask how marketing can lower risk rather than court it. For the insurance and banking industries, it's time to recognize the financial cost of underwriting companies that elevate profit by escalating risk. Our hope is that this victory will be the first boulder in the avalanche that forces that change."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Trump's long-time accounting firm cuts ties over financial statements (New York Times)
Donald J. Trump’s longtime accounting firm abruptly cut ties with his family business last week amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether Mr. Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets, court documents filed on Monday show. In a letter to the Trump Organization on Feb. 9, the accounting firm notified the company of its decision and disclosed that it could no longer stand behind annual financial statements it prepared for Mr. Trump. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided. The letter instructed the Trump Organization to essentially retract the documents, known as statements of financial condition, from 2011 to 2020. In the letter, Mazars noted that the firm had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Mr. Trump’s assets. But given what it called “the totality of circumstances,” the letter directed the Trump Organization to notify anyone who received the statements that they should no longer rely on them.
The statements, which Mr. Trump used to secure loans, are at the center of the two law enforcement investigations into the former president and his company. The Manhattan district attorney’s office and the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, have been investigating whether Mr. Trump used the statements to defraud his lenders into providing him the best possible loan terms. The Trump Organization declined to comment. The revelations appeared in the new court documents filed by Ms. James’s office, which is seeking to question Mr. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of her investigation. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had asked a judge to prohibit the questioning, and in response, Ms. James’s office argued in court papers last month that the company had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices. Her filing on Monday — which marked her latest attempt to press ahead with questioning Mr. Trump as well as Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump — included a copy of the Mazars letter, signed by the accounting firm’s general counsel. The brief letter could bolster Ms. James’s investigation, which has focused partly on the statements and whether they overvalued Mr. Trump’s various hotels, golf clubs and other properties… (LINK TO FULL STORY)