BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 20, 2023)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Are self-driving cars here? Experts say they could soon revolutionize trucking, rideshare (Austin American-statesman)
Cars with no one in the driver seat have been giving rides to the public in Austin in recent months, thanks to Cruise, an autonomous vehicle startup that offers rideshare downtown.
It's a future barely imaginable even a few years ago. But could this type of technology become commonplace?
The future of autonomous technology was a focus of several sessions at South by Southwest as industry experts and executives discussed what could be on the horizon for self-driving vehicle technology, including its potential uses in trucking and rideshare. This included Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, who said the industry is in a scale-up phase.
“It’s the golden years of driverless technology, migrating from driving to being driven,” Vogt said.
Vogt also announced at SXSW that Austin will see even more driverless technology in the coming weeks as the company tests its new, completely driverless and pedal-less Origin taxicab.
Cruise is not the first such company in the Austin area. In 2019, Google’s autonomous vehicle company Waymo pulled out of the city after testing its autonomous vehicle technology here for several years. Argo AI, a Ford subsidiary that was testing self-driving technology in Austin since 2019, including rideshare and delivery partnerships with Lyft and Walmart, shut down last year.
Vogt also announced Cruise will soon be testing its new vehicle, the Origin, in Austin. The new vehicles won’t be open to the public, at least at first, but the company said it could be in a “matter of months.” Cruise Origin is made in collaboration between GM and Cruise investor Honda and is designed specifically for ridesharing… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
San Antonio, Austin groups team up to lobby for economic development programs (San Antonio Express-News)
Greater:SATX, San Antonio's main economic development organization, is working with Opportunity Austin to push for legislation aimed at attracting and retaining businesses. The push includes advocating for a replacement for a controversial tax break program known as Chapter 313 and supporting a bill that would provide incentives for manufacturing projects, said Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, president and CEO of Greater:SATX, a public-private nonprofit formerly known as the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation. "We are specifically focused on economic development ... policies that foster economic growth," she said.
The Chapter 313 program, created in 2001 and named for its location in the Texas tax code, allowed companies to cut a decade's worth of school property tax bills they would otherwise owe on manufacturing and energy projects. The state gave local school districts the taxes the companies did not pay. The Legislature voted to let the program expire at the end of 2022, after a Hearst Newspapers investigation examining the track record of Chapter 313 deals creating jobs and luring companies to Texas instead of other states. Chambers of commerce, trade groups and other business organizations are now urging state lawmakers to create a replacement and warning that companies will opt to put headquarters and projects elsewhere if that does not happen. Gov. Greg Abbott recently told business leaders in Arlington that legislators are seeking "to ensure that we will have economic development tools going forward," the Texas Tribune reported. He also said Chapter 313's expiration influenced Micron's decision to build a computer chip factory in New York instead of Texas… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
New University of Texas faculty face difficulties affording cost of living in Austin (Austin american-statesman)
Jay Hartzell, the university’s president, told the Statesman in September the school had recently purchased the Boulevard on Town Lake apartment complex on Lake Austin Boulevard, and he said UT plans to set aside units at the complex, as they become available, “to experiment with faculty housing."
"We've never really provided a faculty housing program, and the hope is to start with an existing apartment complex and kind of learn as we go, and then I expect we'll also try to build some units ourselves in the years to come," he said. "But this would be a way to try things and also learn what works, what doesn't work, and to use them as a tool to recruit more faculty."
UT previously implemented a series of efforts to address employee cost-of-living concerns, including increasing minimum wages and making available more merit pool funding. In 2021, UT increased the minimum pay for full-time employees from $11 to $15 an hour, and the university added $50 million to the merit raise pool in 2022, increasing employee salaries by about 6%… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
New forecast modeling puts Austin homeless population near 4,600 (Austin monitor)
New methods for counting and forecasting by one of Austin’s leading homelessness services organizations suggests nearly 4,600 people are experiencing homelessness in the city, far higher than previous estimates and counts using federal guidelines.
The new figure was revealed at last week’s Downtown Commission meeting in a report from Dianna Grey, the city’s homeless strategy officer, on the current state of homelessness in the area and efforts to decrease it. The estimate of 4,600 people comes from the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, which in 2021 began pairing ongoing outreach efforts with statistical analysis of interactions with service providers for the homeless, instead of relying on traditional point-in-time counts.
In recent years, the traditional counts have put the local homeless population – living either in shelters or with no housing at all – at 2,500 to 3,000 people… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
To tackle high housing costs, Texas lawmakers push to build more homes (Texas Tribune)
As Texas contends with historically high home prices and rents, state legislators might try to ease the affordability crisis with proposals rooted in a simple idea: build more homes and costs will come down.
Texas lawmakers have introduced several bills this legislative session intended to speed up the construction of new houses and apartments. Some would allow builders to use less land to build single-family homes, help them get local permits faster and make it more difficult for neighborhood groups to block new housing projects.
For a Legislature that historically hasn’t treated housing affordability as a priority, these steps would represent a dramatic intervention — an indicator that high housing costs have become increasingly difficult to ignore and no part of the state has gone untouched… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How a $2 billion federal project is bringing Horns and Aggies, Biden and Abbott together (Houston Chronicle)
Decades after fumbling away what once looked like a dominating hold on the 1980s computer revolution, Texas has launched a comeback that threatens to loosen China’s economic grip on America and make the Lone Star State a true tech industry hub rivaling Silicon Valley. Already some of the biggest computer microchip makers and designers like Intel, AMD and Samsung are expanding their footprints in the state, and now the federal government is considering making Texas a $2 billion national research hub for the industry, which has been firmly rooted in East Asia. The prospect is so enticing that it has Longhorns working with Aggies, Democrats with Republicans and even Gov. Greg Abbott is ready to work with President Joe Biden’s administration.
“We’re in a digital race with our adversaries,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul said after a meeting last week in Austin with top semiconductor industry leaders and U.S. Commerce Department officials. “We’re on the cusp of something really big.” Semiconductor chips are in everything from cars to computers, to smartphones and appliances. During COVID-19, McCaul said it became abundantly clear that having almost all of the semiconductor chip manufacturing overseas was disastrous for supply chains and is a national security problem, given that chips are vital for the military. That's why he and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn led a bruising effort in Congress last year to pass legislation, called the CHIPS Act, that creates billions of dollars in incentives for semiconductor companies to move to Texas. More than $60 billion is now targeted to come to Texas to grow the industry. And tucked into the legislation is another $2 billion proposal to create a National Semiconductor Technology Center. While Texas is in competition with other states for that site, McCaul said the University of Texas and Texas A&M University are combining forces to land the contract. “I want it here,” said McCaul, whose congressional district stretches from Austin to Katy… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Universities navigate diversity as Abbott and GOP target programs (Houston Chronicle)
As Republicans attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses, the state’s flagship universities are doing everything they can to assure future students and faculty that they are still committed to diversity while also placating GOP leaders. Over the last two months, top Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have launched an all-out assault on the programs, known as DEI, at public colleges. While universities point to big diversity gains over the last five years, in part because of their DEI efforts, Abbott has called the practices potentially discriminatory, and some state legislators have vowed to cut college funding in retaliation. That pressure increased Thursday as GOP leaders proposed barring the use of state funding for support of DEI programs. The state budget has months of work ahead, but the language added this week is the first concrete signal that millions of dollars are now in jeopardy for college campuses.
College presidents have responded by appealing to politicians who hold the fate of the budgets in their hands, while also trying to assure students and faculty that they are not retreating from efforts to be more representative of what the state’s population looks like. “We’re all looking for ways to have a diverse, vibrant campus that works for all our students, all of our community, and do that in a way with excellence,” the University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell told Hearst Newspapers this week, without directly talking about the anti-DEI campaign. Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said his system is more committed than ever to getting into diverse communities and neighborhoods to recruit both students and faculty. But the University of Texas System has already paused new DEI programs and vowed to review all its existing efforts after Abbott sent warning letters to all public colleges on the issue. The Texas A&M University System also announced last month that it was banning requirements for jobs or admissions candidates to submit DEI statements as part of their applications. The rollback couldn’t be happening at a worse time, according to state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. Diversity programs have been a big reason why colleges have seen improvements in their attempts to address systemic racial barriers, he said. West worries that the anti-DEI campaign will drive students from Black and Hispanic families elsewhere, reversing the gains… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Trump to hold first 2024 rally in Texas this month (Associated Press)
Former President Donald Trump will be holding the first rally of his 2024 campaign later this month in Waco, Texas.
The rally, announced Friday, will be held the evening of Saturday, March 25, in a Republican state where the former president has a large following, increasing the chances of a packed house.
The rally comes as Trump is facing the possibility of becoming the first former president in U.S. history to be indicted, with law enforcement officials in New York currently making security preparations for the possibility of legal action in the coming weeks.
Waco holds deep symbolism as the site of the 1993 Waco massacre, when federal agents seized a compound of the Branch Davidians, a religious cult. The siege lasted 51 days and ended with the deaths of cult leader David Koresh and 80 of his followers in a fire 30 years ago next month.
It’s not clear that the city’s history played a role in Trump’s decision. Trump has made numerous visits to the state over the years and Waco is part of McLennan County, which Trump won in 2020 by more than 23 points… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
The new Red Scare for red states: Diversity programs (Politico)
To save free speech on college campuses, Republican lawmakers and governors say it’s time to stop talking about diversity, equity and inclusion.
A movement to temper difficult conversations about race in the classroom, promote “patriotic” education and limit how gender is discussed with young kids now includes nixing college DEI initiatives conservatives equate with “wokeness” and Cold War-era “loyalty oaths.”
In Florida, lawmakers are advancing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposal to prohibit public universities from funding diversity, equity and inclusion programs and requiring commitments to diversity in statements during hiring. The wide-ranging legislation would also eliminate majors or minors that touch on critical race theory and “radical” feminist or gender theories.
“We are not going to back down to the woke mob, and we will expose the scams they are trying to push onto students across the country,” said DeSantis, who held a roundtable this month on what he called divisive concepts. “Florida students will receive an education, not a political indoctrination.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
California enters a contract to make its own affordable insulin (NPR)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a new contract with nonprofit drugmaker Civica Rx, a move that brings the state one step closer to creating its own line of insulin to bring down the cost of the drug.
Once the medicines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Newsom said at a press conference on Saturday, Civica — under the 10-year agreement with the state worth $50 million — will start making the new CalRx insulins later this year.
The contract covers three forms of insulin — glargine, lispro and aspart. Civica expects them to be interchangeable with popular brand-name insulins: Sanofi's Lantus, Eli Lilly's Humalog and Novo Nordisk's Novolog, respectively… (LINK TO FULL STORY)