BG Reads | News You Need to Know (June 23, 2023)
[MEETINGS/HEARINGS]
[AUSTIN METRO]
State troopers are going to patrol Austin streets again starting next month (KUT)
State troopers will resume patrols on Austin streets July 2, the city said Thursday.
The Austin Police Department partnered with the Department of Public Safety in late March to help out with patrols, but the deal ended after complaints from Austinites and a DPS reassignment to the border.
APD said it's changing its deployment strategy to spread patrols across the city, rather than relying on calls for service. City Council members had raised concerns from constituents who felt DPS was overpolicing neighborhoods like East Riverside and Rundberg.
Roughly a month into the patrols, data from the Travis County Attorney showed state troopers were disproportionately arresting people of color.
APD Chief Joseph Chacon said the revamped patrols will address those concerns… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Parks board to consider SXSW fair pay measure (Austin Monitor)
A coalition of groups will rally on Monday at Austin City Hall to demand the city require fair pay standards in all future contracts with South by Southwest.The 5 p.m. protest is being organized by local advocacy nonprofit Austin Texas Musicians, the Austin Federation of Musicians AFM Local 433 and United Musicians and Allied Workers. It will be held before a meeting of the Parks and Recreation Board.
At the meeting, the board is set to discuss Item 6, which was delayed in March to allow for the festival managers’ annual review. The draft resolution recommends that City Council direct the city manager, the Law Department and the Parks and Recreation Department to “ensure that any future contracts with SXSW guarantee fair pay for domestic and international artists performing at City of Austin parks, park facilities, and city-owned property.”
The draft resolution also recommends the city require changes to artist pay and compensation by SXSW before waiving any future fees at Vic Mathias Shores or other city-owned park facilities… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Two paragraphs forced Black residents to East Austin. Exploding real estate prices forced them out. (KUT)
An all-white City Council adopted the plan in March 1928.
While the city didn’t, on paper, force Black people to move, it made it really hard for them to stay. In the years following the plan’s passage, the city refused services, like street paving and trash collection, to Black neighborhoods outside East Austin. Schools for Black students in West Austin, like the Wheatville School, shut down, forcing Black West Austin residents to trek across the city to access education. Black people were often denied mortgages, and they weren’t sold homes in neighborhoods on the West Side, such as Hyde Park, which advertisements claimed was “exclusively for white people.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
$8M park in Manor to begin construction in 2026 (Community Impact)
A 600-acre public park will begin construction in 2026 east of Austin as part of the Whisper Valley community.
The park, called Whisper Valley Park, is located off SH 130 from FM 973 and extends east of Taylor Lane, and will connect to Walter E. Long Park and Lake, the Travis County 14-mile trail system, and East Metropolitan Park through an estimated 20 miles of trails.
“We’ve been working with the city of Austin for more than two years on the concept plan,” said Douglas Gilliland, managing director at Taurus Investment Holdings, a real estate firm behind the Whisper Valley project, in a news release. “It is a huge undertaking, but the result will be a spectacular addition to Whisper Valley and East Austin.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas ranks 49th for women’s health in new state-by-state scorecard (DallAs Morning News)
Reproductive care and women’s health are worse in Texas than in nearly every other U.S. state, according to a new health system ranking by The Commonwealth Fund. The Lone Star State ranked 49th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, beating out only Mississippi and New Mexico for the bottom spot in women’s health. This year marks the first time reproductive and women’s health had its own category in the annual scorecard, compiled by the nonprofit foundation that promotes “a high-performing, equitable health care system.” Texas fared about the same overall, ranking 48th when researchers took all seven broad health categories into account. Arkansas came in 47th while Oklahoma, West Virginia and Mississippi rounded out the rest of the bottom five states.
The 2023 scorecard, which uses most-recently-available 2021 data, does not include data to reflect the implications of abortion restrictions or bans that states enacted after the fall of Roe vs. Wade in June of last year. The state of women’s health in the year before abortion bans went into place still speaks to potential future findings, Commonwealth Fund researchers said. “We see wide state variations in reproductive care and women’s health. Ultimately, we see states with the worst outcomes are also implementing and considering further restrictions on reproductive health care,” said Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, study co-author and Commonwealth Fund senior vice president for advancing health equity. Access to usual and preventive care for women of reproductive age heavily contributed to the state’s poor women’s health showing. Texas came dead last in the share of births without prenatal care in the first trimester, with nearly 30% of women receiving no early prenatal care. The state did not report the share of women without a postpartum checkup… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Younger, more female: New San Antonio City Council members join dais with a ‘diversity of background’ (San Antonio Report)
San Antonio’s new City Council skews younger than the previous version, and — for the third time in the city’s history — is again majority female. Three new members — Sukh Kaur (D1), Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) and Marc Whyte (D10) — along with seven returning council members and Mayor Ron Nirenberg were formally inaugurated at a Wednesday evening ceremony. The newcomers are all under the age the age of 45, joining a council that last election cycle added two members in their 20s. “When I look at this City Council, I see a group of people that is going to be focused on pragmatic solutions to the issues we’re facing, but also bringing diversity of experience and perspective to the table as we hash out those issues,” Nirenberg said of his colleagues.
On Wednesday morning, the council formally approved results of the June 10 runoff elections in District 1 and District 7, swore in the two new members, and said goodbye to the outgoing ones. Whyte, 43, was sworn in earlier this month to replace Clayton Perry in District 10, after securing the seat in the May 6 municipal election. “We represent the broad spectrum of politics in local government,” Nirenberg said of the new council. “But we’re also a dais that is two years more experienced and full of a diversity of professional background now that I think is going to add a lot of richness to the work that we do.” Kaur, a 34-year-old education consultant, is the first person of South Asian descent ever elected to the San Antonio City Council. She replaces one-term council member Mario Bravo, whose voice wavered as he thanked friends and family for standing by him through some of the struggles that preceded his unsuccessful bid for reelection. “I got to sit in this chair, I got to peek behind the curtain, and I got to see how the sausage is made … the good, the bad, the ugly, and learn from it,” said Bravo, who worked as progressive campaign operative and Environmental Defense Fund staffer before running for office… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas Senate’s handling of Angela Paxton’s role gives small boost to her husband in pending impeachment trial (Texas Tribune)
In deciding what role state Sen. Angela Paxton would play in the impeachment trial of her husband, suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Texas Senate had to split the baby on a number of legal and ethical questions.
Angela Paxton, a Republican senator from McKinney, will sit as a member of the court of impeachment but will not vote on any issues before the court of 31 senators and won’t be allowed into deliberations on whether to convict or acquit.
That removes Angela Paxton’s influence over her fellow senators in the closed-door deliberations on the political fate of her husband, but it also keeps the two-thirds threshold for convicting him at 21 senators — a number that would have been reduced to 20 had she been removed entirely from the proceedings… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Will Hurd, a moderate Texas Republican and Trump critic, announces run for president (Texas tribune)
Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, announced Thursday he is running for president, becoming the first Texan with experience in elective office to enter the Republican primary.
Hurd, who represented Texas in Congress from 2015-21, begins his campaign as a major underdog. He is an unabashed moderate and a Donald Trump critic in a party where many remain loyal to the former president and frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Hurd revealed his decision in a Thursday morning interview on CBS and followed it up online with an announcement video that began with Hurd listing illegal immigration, inflation and other problems before addressing the current and former presidents… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn wants the U.S. to train Mexican troops to fight drug cartelS (Texas tribune)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wants the U.S. to train the Mexican military to combat drug cartels.
The Texas Republican introduced bipartisan legislation, dubbed the PARTNERS Act, Wednesday night that would bring Mexican troops to the United States to receive training to fight against criminal groups. The initiative would create a pilot program by the Department of Defense in close coordination with the Mexican government.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, joined Cornyn in introducing the bill.
“The United States and Mexico must work together to put a stop to the cartel violence and drugs ravaging communities on both sides of our shared border,” Cornyn said in a statement. “This bill would equip Mexican military forces with the training they need to help them confront murderous cartels and keep our countries safe and secure.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Where’s the Recession We Were Promised? (Wall Street Journal)
The 2023 recession is missing in action. At the end of last year, economists were more convinced than they’ve ever been that recession was on the way, but it refused to arrive. Now investors, economists and Federal Reserve policy makers are giving up on the idea, expecting the economy to be (a bit) stronger and stock prices and bond yields to be higher.
Why aren’t we in recession? Is it still on the way? And could it be that the recession forecasts perversely helped us avoid recession?
The recession didn’t arrive because we had two pieces of surprising good news. First, energy prices dropped, helping support demand, as Europe secured supplies to replace Russian gas more easily than expected… (LINK TO FULL STORY)