BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 22, 2023)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin tried and failed to rewrite its land code. Republican lawmakers might do it for them. (KUT)
Austin tried to address its “minimum lot size problem” — and the problems many people saw in the land code as a whole. Nearly a decade ago, the City Council embarked on a rewrite of the city’s land development code, a lengthy manual dictating what can be built in the city and where. Elected officials reasoned they needed to tweak regulations like minimum lot size and height restrictions to let developers build more in central neighborhoods — to better accommodate the city’s population, which had more than doubled in three decades.
But, ultimately, these revisions never came to pass. After spending a decade and more than $10 million on the project, the city was stopped short in 2020 when a group of property owners successfully sued and halted the land code revision.
Since then, the cost of housing in the city has skyrocketed and builders and advocates for more housing have turned to the state for help. What Democratic-led Austin couldn’t get done, now the Republican-led state may do, much to the chagrin of local leaders… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Project Connect debuts 5 scaled down light rail options (KXAN)
Austin residents are getting their first look at the future of light rail in the city, with five scaled-down proposals on the table for Project Connect’s mass transit system. The new options will be on display at an open house at the Austin Public Library’s Central location from 4-7 p.m. Tuesday.
Voters approved the multi-billion-dollar Project Connect back in November 2020, greenlighting a property tax revenue stream to go toward the expansion of bus transit along with the creation of a light rail system. The conceptual version voters approved highlighted Blue and Orange light rail lines; improvements to CapMetro’s existing MetroRail Red regional line; a future MetroRail Green regional line; as well as enhanced MetroRapid bus routes and the Gold Line… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin company announces $250 million in support for minority-owned restaurant operators (CBS Austin)
An Austin-based financial tech startup company is committing $250 million to support minority-owned and underrepresented restaurant operators by 2025. inKind is a local company that is looking to create systemic change by helping minority-owned and underrepresented restaurant operators that face hurdles to get the funding needed to start or expand their businesses.
“At inKind we finance restaurants," said Johanne Moonesinghe, the CEO and co-founder of inKind.
inKind has financed 700 restaurants including the newly opened Ember Kitchen in Austin's Seaholm District. The restaurants will not only get the funding they need but also marketing services, legal advice, advice on how to purchase goods cheaper, and taking advantage of inKind's experience in financing so individual operators can be successful with their restaurants… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Caseworkers hampered by ’90s-era foster care software that the state hasn’t replaced (Texas Tribune)
Texas has poured more than $100 million into the state’s aging foster care software known as IMPACT. This one 1990s-era application helps caseworkers keep track of where abused and neglected children are placed, as well as what health care services and schooling they have received.
But despite complaints from weary Texas Department of Family and Protective Services caseworkers who use the antiquated system daily and from lawmakers who hear about the system’s shortcomings every legislative session, and even a reprimand from a federal judge, there’s no plan to replace it anytime soon… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
As book bans ebb, the battle to criminally charge Texas librarians has started (Houston Chronicle)
It occurred to Danielle Brigati several times over the past year that her education had not entirely prepared her for the real-world challenges of a modern Texas librarian. There wasn’t a course covering strategies for on-the-job threats. No class instructed her how to behave during police questioning. But last fall Brigati, who has been the director of Kerrville’s Butt-Hollingsworth Public Library for the past decade, found herself confronting both. The threats she brushed off as bluster. But the city’s detective returned for three separate interviews. Her husband, a retired cop, helped settle her nerves. The officer was friendly and respectful, Brigati recalled. But there was little doubt why a handful of citizens had summoned law enforcement to the library. “They were trying to file criminal charges,” she said.
Politically and socially conservative, Texas is a national leader in school book challenges and bans; a Chronicle investigation last summer counted more than 2,000 content reviews of challenged school library books. The state prison system prohibits more than 9,000 titles. Many of the book battles that flared up at school and public libraries across the state in the past year have returned to smolders. Yet behind the scenes an even more consequential campaign is playing out – not merely to place some books off limits, but to prosecute librarians for making them available. Local police have been called out to Texas public libraries to scan books for illegal content in at least five instances. “They are a step away from drawing chalk outlines in the library,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney for The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy organization. “They are treating librarians as suspects. That should be concerning for everyone.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Most Dallas short-term rental properties would be illegal under proposed rules (Dallas Morning News)
Just about all of Dallas’ registered short-term rental properties would not be allowed under proposed regulations, city code officials said Monday, and enforcing those regulations could cost the city more than $1 million.
City Council approval of proposed changes in zoning regulations making it illegal for the rental properties to operate in nearly all residential neighborhoods would lead to the city issuing code violation notices to 95% of the 1,735 short-term rental owners, according to Jeremy Reed, an assistant director in the city’s code compliance department. If owners and hosts don’t stop listing their properties on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, they risk being fined up to $2,000… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Iran hostages bitter that John Connally may have stalled their release to help Reagan win (Dallas Morning News)
For 444 days, Iranian militants held 52 Americans hostage in Tehran, leaving emotional scars for them and their loved ones – and dooming Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The revelation that five months before their release, former Texas governor John Connally encouraged Iran to prolong the ordeal left hostages bitter. “444 days,” Rocky Sickmann, a 22-year-old Marine guard when the U.S. embassy fell, said Monday. “I will never regain those lost days…. Each day you didn’t know if you were going to live or die.” Ben Barnes, a protégé of Connally who served beside him as lieutenant governor, told The New York Times about a three-week trip they took to Middle East capitals during the crisis. Connally, angling to impress Republican nominee Ronald Reagan in hopes he’d be named secretary of state or defense, asked leaders to send word to Iran not to release hostages before Election Day. With Carter, 98, receiving end of life hospice care, Barnes told The Times, he needed to unburden himself of the secret.
“History needs to know this happened,” Barnes, now 84, said. “Carter… didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.” To survivors, the revelation was more appalling than stunning. Democrats and hostages suspected the Reagan camp had a hand in prolonging the ordeal, given the obvious political benefits. “It’s just typical. Politicians do all sorts of things to achieve whatever political agenda they have in mind,” said William Royer Jr., now 91 and a resident of Katy in suburban Houston. On Nov. 4, 1979, when militant college students overran the embassy after the fall of the U.S-backed shah, Royer was an English teacher at the U.S. Information Agency. Over the years he’s recounted the torture – being stripped naked and forced against a wall in front of a firing squad, testing his faith that he was more valuable alive than dead. “I have a lot of respect for Reagan and his policies. And I thought he was a great president,” Royer said, calling Carter “one of the few relatively honest men” to hold the job. “I have a great deal of appreciation for President Carter. He had a bad deal.” The crisis spawned ABC’s Nightline, providing a nightly update on Carter’s inability to end the humiliation. Politically, Election Day – Nov. 4, 1980 – was the deadline to save his presidency. “If we had gotten the hostages home, we’d have won,” Carter’s White House Communications Director, Gerald Rafshoon, told The Times in response to Barnes’ account. “It’s pretty damn outrageous.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Superbug Candida auris now reported in more than half of states (Associated PresS)
U.S. cases of a dangerous fungus tripled over just three years, and more than half of states have now reported it, according to a new study.
The COVID-19 pandemic likely drove part of the increase, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the paper published Monday by Annals of Internal Medicine. Hospital workers were strained by coronavirus patients, and that likely shifted their focus away from disinfecting some other kinds of germs, they said.
The fungus, Candida auris, is a form of yeast that is usually not harmful to healthy people but can be a deadly risk to fragile hospital and nursing home patients. It spreads easily and can infect wounds, ears and the bloodstream. Some strains are so-called superbugs that are resistant to all three classes of antibiotic drugs used to treat fungal infections… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Bipartisan lawmakers introduce bill to ban members from owning, trading stocks (the hill)
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill on Tuesday that seeks to ban members of Congress from owning and trading stocks, the latest piece of legislation put forward in the effort to enact a stock trading ban for Congress.
A number of lawmakers from both parties and chambers introduced legislation in the last Congress to ban members from trading stocks while in office, but none of the proposed measures passed. The effort gained steam after news surfaced that several lawmakers had violated existing laws meant to prevent conflicts of interest when it comes to investing.
The House came close to holding a vote on legislation barring lawmakers from trading stocks in September 2022, but Democratic leadership ultimately scrapped those plans, saying there was not enough time to study the proposal.
The decision angered some lawmakers who had hoped to vote on the legislation — which is popular among voters — ahead of the midterm elections… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Some Trump supporters ambivalent on calls for protests (Associated Press)
Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests before his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap. The ambivalence raises questions about whether Trump, though a leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race who retains a devoted following, still has the power to mobilize far-right supporters the way he did more than two years ago before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also suggests that the hundreds of arrests that followed the Capitol riot, not to mention the convictions and long prison sentences, may have dampened the desire for repeat mass unrest. Still, law enforcement in New York is continuing to closely monitor online chatter warning of protests and violence if Trump is arrested, with threats varying in specificity and credibility, four officials told The Associated Press… (LINK TO FULL STORY)