BG Reads | News You Need to Know (January 19, 2022)
Downtown Austin
[JOB MOVES]
Jason Alexander has been named Chief of Staff to Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk. This position is a first for the City. Most recently Jason served as Assistant to the City Manager, a position he held for nearly six years.
Nicholas Solorzano has left Austin Council Member Pio Renteria’s office. He most recently served as Chief of Staff.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin Latino, Black populations remain hardest hit by COVID-19. Advocates demand action (Austin American-Statesman)
More than 961,000 people call the city of Austin home, according to U.S. census data. Only about 8% of the population is Black or African American and 34% identified as Hispanic or Latino. But of the more than 1,200 COVID-19-related deaths reported in the Austin area, Hispanics made up nearly 50% and 11% were Black, according to the public health dashboard for Austin and Travis County.
For the week ending Jan. 9, the latest available date for inpatient demographic data, about 45% of people hospitalized because of COVID-19 were Hispanic and about 16% were Black.
During a briefing for news outlets Friday, Adrienne Sturrup, the new Austin Public Health director, said her department is working to expand testing and vaccination sites.
Additional sites could be available within the next 10 days.
"We know that we have ZIP codes as well as populations, specifically our Black and Latinx residents, that are not experiencing the same level of vaccine protection that we know is needed," Sturrup said. "And so we are very intentional in our direct efforts to make sure that the vaccine is available to those communities."
She added that the city will "also continue to support community-based organizations that do that good work in the community on our behalf."
Testing is free, and appointments aren't required, but the department recommends registering beforehand to save time in line. Spanish interpreters are on-site to help, Austin Public Health officials said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin pharmacy begins to get shipments of COVID-19 antiviral pill (KXAN)
Health care providers and pharmacies are beginning to get shipments of antiviral pills to treat COVID-19, including Tarrytown Pharmacy in Austin.
Tarrytown has the pill made by Merck called “molnupiravir.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the pill in late December, along with Pfizer’s competing drug, paxlovid.
Paxlovid isn’t widely available and is currently being given in hospital or clinical settings, because it can negatively affect the kidneys, so extra tests need to be done before prescribing those.
Pharmacist-In-Charge at Tarrytown Pharmacy Rannon Ching told KXAN on Friday these treatments are not preventive, but they are great to treat mild to moderate cases of COVID-19.
“It’s pretty cool. So the antivirals actually go and attack or attach to the COVID virus and make it so it can’t replicate or further stay in your body,” he explained.
Tarrytown has gotten 40 bottles of molnupiravir, which is one full patient treatment per bottle. They’ve been dispensing the treatment for about two weeks now and have gotten a few prescriptions.
The pharmacy is expecting to get another shipment this week… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin’s Mayor Seeks $500 Million Bond to Help Ease Housing Crunch (Bloomberg)
Austin Mayor Steve Adler wants the Texas city to borrow as much as half-a-billion dollars to help create more affordable housing as soaring real-estate prices threaten to push out the middle class.
“That’s our existential challenge right now,” Adler said in an interview outside his downtown condo Monday. “Austin is building more homes per capita than any other city in the country, and it’s still not enough.”
Adler, 65 years old and in his eighth and final year as mayor, plans to push for a bond sale of $300 million to $500 million to provide relief from median home pries that jumped almost 20% over the past year to $568,000. He doesn’t want to curb the city’s rapid growth — it posted the fastest population increase among large U.S. cities during the decade through 2020 - but says cheaper housing is needed for the creative types who inspired the unofficial motto of “Keep Austin Weird.”
“The only way to stop the growth is to make this an undesirable place to live, and I don’t want to be the mayor that does that,” Adler said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Amazon just announced a big collaboration with Texas State. Here’s what that means. (San Antonio Express-News)
Texas State University in San Marcos is partnering up with Amazon, the global trillion-dollar company that has spent the past decade establishing a firm presence in Central Texas. The university said in a news release Friday that it has been selected as an education partner for Amazon’s Career Choice program, which provides Amazon’s hourly employees access to bachelor's degrees. According to the news release, the program will provide Amazon employees with “a variety of education and upskilling opportunities including full college tuition, industry certifications designed to lead to in-demand jobs, and foundational skills such as English language proficiency, high school diplomas, and GEDs.”
"We understand the value of supporting Amazon’s investment in education and skills training," said Gene Bourgeois, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Texas State, in the news release. "This new opportunity aligns with our educational mission and we are pleased to help drive what’s next for Amazon employees." In the U.S., the company is investing $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs, Amazon said. Amazon and Texas State are the two largest employers in Hays County, according to economic firm Greater San Marcos Partnership. Amazon employs upwards of 5,000 people, while Texas State employed 3,730 people in 2021. Amazon opened its fourth distribution center in San Marcos in November 2021 and has additional plans to expand in the area… (LNK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas college students confront anxiety, apathy as another pandemic semester begins (Texas Tribune)
For a lot of Texas college students, last fall was a brief oasis from the pandemic’s disruptions. In-person classes returned and with them, a small sense of normalcy, compared to the start of the pandemic two years ago.
“The ability to walk out of a room or walk outside and then walk into another classroom … It did so much more for me than I would have expected,” Rohin Balkundi, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, said about the fall semester.
But then the highly contagious omicron variant emerged and with it, a sense of dread for college and university students, including some who are now watching as their fifth semester becomes another casualty of the ongoing pandemic… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s political consultant indicted on charges of theft, bribery in hemp license scheme (Texas Tribune)
Todd Smith, a top political consultant to Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, was indicted Tuesday on felony charges of theft and commercial bribery related to taking money in exchange for state hemp licenses that are doled out through Miller’s office, according to Travis County district attorney José Garza.
Smith was arrested in May, accused of taking $55,000 as part of the scheme, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Smith and others were accused of soliciting up to $150,000 to get an “exclusive” hemp license from the Texas Department of Agriculture. Smith allegedly said $25,000 would be used for a public poll on hemp. A hemp license from the state costs $100, according to the arrest warrant.
“We are holding accountable powerful actors who abuse the system and break the law,” Garza said. “Our community needs to know that no one is above the law and will face justice.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Dallas-area home rental costs are through the roof (Dallas Morning News)
Dallas-area home rental costs are outpacing the rest of the nation. The cost of renting a single-family home in Dallas was up almost 15% in the latest survey by researchers at CoreLogic. The median Dallas-area rent for a house was almost $1,900. Nationwide single-family home rental rates were 11.5% higher than in November 2020, according to the new report. “Annual rent price growth has continued to double and even triple in the last several months,” CoreLogic analysts say. Dallas area rents for all types of housing have soared in the last year because of severe shortages.
“Improvements in the economy and job market have helped push single-family rent growth to record levels,” Molly Boesel, principal economist at CoreLogic, said in the new report. “However, rapid increases in single-family rents, especially for lower-priced properties, have led to a continued erosion of affordability.” Single-family rentals have become increasingly popular housing options for many urban residents who have been priced out of homeownership. Miami had the highest year-over-year single-family rent increases among the 20 major metro areas CoreLogic surveyed. Phoenix had the second-highest annual rent increase of 19.5%, and Las Vegas home rents were 16.7% higher. Home rents in the Houston area were only 10% higher than they were a year earlier. While single-family rents are moving up, the cost of renting an apartment in the Dallas-Fort Worth area has increased even more. A shortage of apartments and higher construction costs fueled a more than 17% increase in average D-FW apartment rents last year — surpassing the nationwide rise of 14.4%, according to RealPage. Less than 3% of D-FW apartments were vacant at the end of 2021. Because of the demand for single-family rentals, builders in North Texas are planning dozens of new neighborhoods of rental houses in the suburbs… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Momentum builds to prohibit lawmakers from trading stocks (The Hill)
The push to bar lawmakers from trading stocks is gaining momentum as lawmakers and congressional candidates in both parties seek to capitalize on the proposal’s huge popularity.
Members of Congress historically haven’t been eager to police themselves — particularly when the legislation would hit their wallets — but public outcry over lawmakers’ pandemic-era stock trades has made the issue impossible to ignore.
Last week, Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) — who is up for reelection this year — introduced a bill to require lawmakers to put their stocks in a blind trust. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) unveiled his own stock trading ban on the same day. Those follow similar House bills introduced last year, including a proposal from Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas)… (LINK TO FULL STORY)