BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 24, 2022)
[BG Podcast]
Episode 152: Discussing Municipal Crypto and Blockchain Policy
Today’s episode (152) features Elijah John Bowdre, Chairman of the Miami-Dade County Cryptocurrency Task Force.
Created in May 2021 (led by the efforts of Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins), Task Force is comprised of eight industry-expert appointees who shall work to study the possibility of incorporating cryptocurrency as a form of payment for County taxes, fees, and services and other recommendations that may be beneficial to Miami-Dade County.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
City of Austin, Travis County COVID-19 Orders Lifted (City of Austin)
The City of Austin and Travis County have lifted all COVID-19 emergency rules and orders, effective immediately. Infection and hospitalization numbers are among the lowest the area has seen since the beginning of the pandemic.
Masking in most City facilities will now be optional, with a few exceptions such as the airport, clinical settings and jails. Orders regarding masking on public school campuses and signage requirements for businesses are no longer in effect, either. The decision to continue wearing a mask should be respected as public health officials still encourage wearing masks indoors for individuals who are high risk or provide care for someone who is high risk.
"We have not eliminated the virus but adapted to it. We now have knowledge and tools to fight COVID-19 when we are called to do so," said Austin-Travis County Health Authority, Dr. Desmar Walkes. "I am confident that the community will come together if the need arises again, as they have for the past two years of this pandemic."
In this new phase of the response, Austin Public Health is preparing to adopt the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Levels tracker. Expect this update in the coming days. APH is closely monitoring data for any concerning trends following spring break.
"I want to thank our public health leaders and staff, our vaccine and testing clinics, and our community for getting us to this point," said Travis County Judge Andy Brown. "This is a testament of how adaptable we have been and can be in the future."… (LINK TO PRESS RELEASE)
Community leaders release ‘red flags’ report on Central Health (Austin Monitor)
Leaders of the NAACP Austin and Texas League of United Latin American Citizens District VII released a scathing report Wednesday on Central Health’s financial and operational activities. The organizations called on the Travis County Commissioners Court to order a “comprehensive, independent, third-party performance audit” of the agency.
Frank Ortega, director of the LULAC district, and Nelson Linder, president of the local NAACP chapter, said Central Health had failed in its mission to effectively provide health care to the poor and to use taxpayers’ funds efficiently.
Linder said commissioners “had financial supervisory authority by law over Central Health” and should order the audit. Linder said the “red flags” report demonstrates the need for an independent audit. “Without accountability, there is no equity,” he said.
Ortega said Travis County’s 185,000 uninsured are predominantly people of color. “They depend on Central Health for their health care. Health equity requires that Central Health serve the poor’s health care needs effectively,” he said.
Central Health recently announced it would soon begin construction on two new clinics in eastern Travis County, exactly the sort of thing Central Health’s critics would like to see. The agency has also recently released a health care equity plan… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Council cautiously supports city’s look into blockchain, crypto (Austin Monitor)
City Council members want city staff to move very deliberately if a pair of resolutions are passed today that encourage exploration into the use of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies in the coming years.
At Tuesday’s work session, discussion on the resolutions put forth by Mayor Steve Adler and Council Member Mackenzie Kelly focused on how strongly the language should advocate for early adoption of the technologies. Council Member Kathie Tovo offered amendments that would direct study before moving toward support of development of applications for city use.
Tovo also stated the need to study the energy consumption and environmental impacts of both technologies, which record transactions and documents in unbreakable digital ledgers. She said the study should include examination of how public banks and alternative payment platforms that may use blockchain could be beneficial to those without ready access to banking.
Adler’s blockchain resolution included a list of 20 possible city functions that could potentially be converted and streamlined using blockchain.
“I think we need a check back before we’re asking the manager to create and develop the whole long list of things that were included here,” Tovo said. “Many of them will be very useful, but you would have them actually developing and creating some of these things, including public banks and complementary currencies that I’m super supportive of exploring … I just don’t know that we’re ready at this point to create them.”
Adler said he wanted the resolution to be as encouraging as possible so the city can interact with startups and others involved in blockchain in the private sector in Austin.
“We are early in the process where we may want to develop technologies and encourage people,” he said. “We have creators and movers in this technology and they have the opportunity to see what kinds of services they could bring to use, or what kinds of uses there could be, so it’s more than just studying at this point for a value determination.”
To date, the city’s most advanced move into examining uses of blockchain came from the Innovation Office’s grant-funded work to develop a system that would allow for easy conversion and storage of vital personal documents for the homeless and others who may be prone to losing things… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Affordable development program revision heads to Austin City Council (Community Impact)
A city code update opening the door for additional height in developments along major Austin corridors is heading to City Council for final approval, months after officials approved a preliminary outline for the new option.
The proposed changes to Austin's vertical mixed-use, or VMU, density bonus program passed through the Austin Planning Commission 8-1-2 March 22 after months of review by the city. The broadened VMU program concept was brought forward by District 5 Council Member Ann Kitchen and passed by council in the fall, and the commission also took on its own VMU review last summer.
In VMU-zoned areas, buildings with a mix of residential and commercial space are allowed benefits such as greater height if they provide a set percentage of affordable housing units in the development. The Kitchen-backed program expansion would keep the current VMU rules in place, renaming them as VMU1 while adding a new VMU2 category that could grant developers up to 30 feet of additional height for projects that add more affordable units or pay into city affordable housing funds… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Fort Worth’s Republican mayor criticizes GOP, pushes for Medicaid expansion and defends trans kids (Texas Tribune)
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, the only Republican helming one of Texas’ largest five cities, criticized the current state of the GOP and its intraparty battles Wednesday.
“I could not run in a Republican primary because I just couldn't look myself in the mirror and do it,” Parker said during an event with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith.
Parker’s remarks came weeks after her predecessor Betsy Price, who Parker worked for as chief of staff, lost her Republican primary bid for Tarrant County judge. Price lost the contentious primary to Tim O’Hare, a Southlake attorney and former mayor of Farmers Branch who drew the endorsement of former President Donald Trump… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Former Houston Council member Amanda Edwards announces run for mayor in 2023 (Houston Chronicle)
Amanda Edwards, a former at-large member of Houston City Council and candidate for U.S. Senate, announced Wednesday she is running for mayor of Houston in 2023. Edwards’ return to politics comes two years after her fifth-place finish in the 2020 Democratic Senate primary. She previously had served a single term as one of Houston’s five citywide council members, before passing up a second term to run for Senate. With Edwards’ announcement, there now are three major candidates vying next year to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who cannot run again due to term limits.
Edwards, who would be the first Black woman to lead Houston city government, said her experience at City Hall sets her apart from the other two candidates, former Harris County clerk Chris Hollins and state Sen. John Whitmire, both of whom, like Edwards, are Democrats and attorneys. “There are complicated issues that are facing the next mayor. The easy stuff, that was done many years ago,” Edwards said. “It's the hard stuff that's left, and you've got to have somebody at the helm on Day One that is ready to lead and knows how to navigate the city and all of its challenges and opportunities that may be in front of us.” During her four-year tenure on Houston City Council, Edwards served as vice chair of the council’s Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee and helped direct a task force focused on boosting the city’s tech and startup economy. She proposed amendments to the annual city budget — one of the few levers of power for council members under Houston’s strong-mayor form of government — that sought to speed up the permitting process, expand internet access for low-income communities and improve conditions for women- and minority-owned businesses… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas and Biden’s White House locked in $30 billion ‘game of chicken’ over Medicaid funding (Houston Chronicle)
Nearly a year after the Biden administration revoked approval of billions in future Medicaid dollars for Texas, state and federal officials are at an impasse over the safety net funding, with a deadline looming Friday. The money, funneled through what’s known as an 1115 waiver, has brought more than $30 billion to Texas since its start in 2012 and now accounts for nearly a third of the state’s Medicaid budget. Those dollars primarily prop up hospitals for emergency care to patients without government or private insurance. Last April, the new Democratic administration withdrew a surprise, 10-year waiver renewal made in the final days of the Trump presidency. Republican state leaders sued to reinstate it and a federal judge ordered both sides to negotiate. They remain locked in disagreement over how the state funds its portion of the waiver… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Madeleine Albright, 1st female US secretary of state, dies (Associated Press)
Madeleine Albright, a child refugee from Nazi- and then Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe who rose to become the first female secretary of state and a mentor to many current and former American statesmen and women, died Wednesday of cancer, her family said. She was 84. A lifelong Democrat who nonetheless worked to bring Republicans into her orbit, Albright was chosen in 1996 by President Bill Clinton to be America's top diplomat, elevating her from U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where she had been only the second woman to hold that job.
As secretary of state, Albright was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession to the presidency, however, because she was born in what was then Czechoslovakia. The glass ceiling that she broke was universally admired, even by her political detractors. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend,” her family said in a statement. President Joe Biden ordered flags at the White House and other federal buildings and grounds to be flown at half-staff until March 27. Outpourings of condolences came quickly. Biden said, “America had no more committed champion of democracy and human rights than Secretary Albright, who knew personally and wrote powerfully of the perils of autocracy.” “When I think of Madeleine,” Biden added, "I will always remember her fervent faith that ‘America is the indispensable nation.’” Clinton called her “one of the finest Secretaries of State, an outstanding U.N. Ambassador, a brilliant professor, and an extraordinary human being.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)