BG Reads | News - August 8, 2022
[AUSTIN METRO]
Mayoral candidates outline plans to make housing more affordable (Austin Monitor)
Since the pandemic began, most Austinites have felt the effects of increased rent, higher property taxes, or home prices growing increasingly out of reach. With rising costs forcing people out of their neighborhoods (or out of the city entirely), candidates hoping to become Austin’s next mayor in November agree that something has to be done – and with urgency.?
Here, we’ll break down how mayoral candidates Celia Israel, Kirk Watson and Jennifer Virden say they’ll make housing more affordable…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin officials expect more doses of the monkeypox vaccine after U.S. declares a health emergency (KUT)
Austin health officials say they expect more monkeypox vaccine doses to head to Central Texas after the Biden administration’s declaration of a public health emergency Thursday.
Medical Director Desmar Walkes said Austin Public Health anticipates the extra doses next month. It's unclear how many doses the area will get, though, so public health officials are urging Austinites to practice safe hygiene.
In a town hall with Central Health on Friday, Austin Public Health said it has 1,500 doses of the vaccine and that it’s following federal guidelines that focus on inoculating people who’ve had high-risk contact with someone who’s tested positive…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin job market projected to fall behind the surrounding area, TWC data shows (KVUE)
The?Texas Workforce Commission ?is projecting that areas surrounding Austin are expected to outpace the City of Austin's job market.?
From 2020 to 2030, jobs in the Austin metro are expected to grow by 26%, while the City of Austin is expected to see a 23% increase. While the numbers indicate Austin will add nearly 180,000 jobs by 2030 and neighboring cities will add a combined 97,500, the percent change in the surrounding cities outpaces Austin.?
These projections are for jobs across every occupation in Central Texas.
The latest jobs report from the TWC, showing data from May to June, shows that employment numbers grew in Texas. According to the June report, released in July, Texas added more than 82,000 jobs. That makes the Lone Star State the top state in the nation for new jobs added in June.?
Texas has seen 778,700 jobs added since last June 2021. The growth in June also marked the eighth consecutive month that Texas has set a new employment record for total jobs.?
The Austin metro saw 13,000 jobs added from May to June and an additional 75,000 jobs since June 2021, making for a 6.4% annual growth rate…?(LINK TO STORY)
Austin wants to expand its airport to the South Terminal, company operating it files lawsuit (KXAN)
The company that operates the South Terminal at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport filed a lawsuit Monday against the City of Austin for reportedly breaking its contract with Lonestar Airport Holdings, LLC. in an attempt to expand the main airport.
Lonestar said it invested over $20 million in renovations at the South Terminal after the city’s department of aviation entered into a 40-year contract with the independent group in 2016.
The lawsuit claims a few years later, the department came back with an “unsolicited offer to buy out Lonestar’s rights under the Agreement for a mere $10 million.” That was in November of 2019 and was rejected by the company, which said the move was a “complete surprise” and “a mere fraction of the actual value of Lonestar’s business and its rights under the Agreement.”…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
The Bull Creek district may be getting its own art museum in the near future (Community Impact)
David Booth, founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, is one step closer to getting an art museum built on his property after the Austin Environmental Commission voted unanimously on Aug. 3 to amend a planned unit development, a PUD, on his property. The project is contingent on he and his developers meeting six conditions agreed upon by the commission during the meeting.
The property, Bull Creek District, is located at the Lake Austin and Bull Creek Water supply Suburban Watershed district.
Planned unit development is a regulatory mechanism that allows for projects that are superior to be approved, said Environmental Program Coordinator Leslie Lilly. Otherwise, these projects would not be allowed under the current review process and under current code and criteria, she said.
The amended PUD allows the zoning district to be revised from a single residential property to one for civic or cultural use. In this case, the cultural use will be an art museum to memorialize the legacy of the current property owner, Mr.Booth, Lilly said…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin’s live music venues to see new layer of city support (Austin Business Journal)
Austin’s live music venues are on their way toward having an added layer of protection against displacement following a decision by City Council to create a standardized definition for the performance spaces.
In a nutshell, music venues could soon be considered arts organizations of sorts in municipal eyes, allowing them to tap into city programs and revenue previously out of reach.
Council voted July 28 in favor of an ordinance that starts the process of defining a "live music venue" in city code. City Manager Spencer Cronk will bring another ordinance to Council codifying further changes. At the end of the process, live music venues could access revenue collected from hotel stays and regulatory incentives that might include fee waivers.
The effort complements the newly established?Iconic Venue Fund and Cultural Trust, ?which in July identified?14 live music venues and creative spaces? that are eligible to receive millions of dollars in funding.
“The city wants to preserve and protect and make sure that we have those places in our city. It is getting harder and harder to do,” Mayor?Steve Alder ?said before the resolution’s approval by Council…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Jury awards parents of Sandy Hook victim more than $45 million in punitive damages in Alex Jones defamation case (Texas Tribune)
A Texas jury on Friday added $45.2 million to the damages that conspiracy theorist and media personality Alex Jones must pay to the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim as punishment for repeatedly claiming the school shooting was a hoax.
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Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old victim Jesse Lewis, sought $150 million from Jones after he told listeners of his Austin-based website and broadcast Infowars that the government staged the Sandy Hook shooting in order to take away Americans’ guns. The tragedy was the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting, in which 20 children ages 6 and 7 and six adults were killed.
On Thursday, the jury ordered Jones to pay the parents?$4.1 million in compensation ?for his comments, bringing the total amount owed to just under $50 million. Friday’s order determined punitive damages, which can be awarded to punish a defendant for reckless, negligent or outrageous behavior or to deter future bad acts…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
CPAC Dallas straw poll shows Republicans want Trump for president in 2024 (Dallas Morning News)
Former President Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for president in 2024, according to attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. In the unscientific CPAC straw poll conducted during the three-day conference and released Saturday, 69% of about 1,000 attendees who voted said they would choose Trump if the election were held today, while 24% said they would vote for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump had 59% of support in a straw poll conducted during a CPAC event in Orlando in February. During his speech Saturday, Trump didn’t mention DeSantis by name, saying that “second place” was 24%. If the former president is not on the ballot, CPAC attendees’ support for DeSantis grows to 65%, according to the poll.
Ahead of Trump’s speech, most CPAC attendees said they believe the Republican Party is DeSantis’ to inherit, but not until the former president steps aside. The two Texas Republicans with presidential aspirations, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott, fared poorly in the straw poll. Cruz got 2% of the vote, while Abbott and several others didn’t register beyond 0%. Former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump and his base heavily criticized for certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory on Jan. 6, scored higher than Abbott at 0.3%. On the ballot without the elder Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., had 8%, Cruz 6%, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 5%…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas leads the US in maternity ward closures, and it's worse in the western part of the state. (Bloomberg)
Once a week, Adrian Billings drives his white Chevy pickup from his home in Alpine, Texas, to Presidio, a city along the Mexican border. This summer he’s been taking his son Blake, who’s home from college, with him. The drive, through mountains and desert on a two-lane highway across which actual tumbleweeds roll, takes an hour and a half. Billings is a family doctor, one of only a handful in this part of West Texas. He offers a one-stop shop for his patients’ ailments: heart murmurs, kidney stones, etc. Most of the time he works in Alpine or the nearby city of Marfa. But he makes the weekly drive to Presidio because, without doctors like him, it wouldn’t have medical care. There’s no hospital and no full-time doctor. His clinic, which opened in 2007 with the help of government grants, is the only access residents have to even a local pharmacy. Presidio is poor. The median household income is $20,700, one of the lowest in the US, though still well above Texas’ miserly Medicaid income eligibility limits. “We have a lot of uninsured patients here,” Billings says. Because of this, he sees many cases of unmanaged diabetes and high blood pressure. He also sees a lot of pregnancies.
On a sunny Thursday in early June, Billings wheeled out a sonogram machine donated by a charity a few years ago and confirmed that a young woman was pregnant. She was happy—she wants to have a baby. But in West Texas, that’s easier said than done. Billings explained, as he does to all pregnant patients, that he can use the machine to detect a fetus, but he can’t do much else. The clinic doesn’t have a sonographer with the expertise to ensure one is developing properly. Normally he’d recommend the woman drive the hour and a half to Big Bend Regional Medical Center, Alpine’s hospital, for her prenatal needs and to give birth. But for more than a year, Big Bend’s labor and delivery unit has closed routinely, sometimes with little notice. Some months it’s been open only three days a week. Big Bend is the only hospital in a 12,000-square-mile area that delivers babies. If Billings’s patient goes into labor when the maternity ward is closed, she’ll have to make a difficult choice. She can drive to the next nearest hospital, in Fort Stockton, yet another hour away. Or, if her labor is too far along and she’s unlikely to make it, she can deliver in Big Bend’s emergency room. But the ER doesn’t have a fetal heart monitor or nurses who know how to use one. It also doesn’t keep patients overnight. When a woman gives birth there, she’s either transferred to Fort Stockton—enduring the long drive after having just had a baby—or discharged and sent home…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
South Texas farmers face a possible future without water (McAllen Monitor)
A bright green citrus the size of a baseball sat on the tailgate of Dale Murden’s truck parked alongside his Cameron County groves Thursday morning. “You see that fruit right there?” he asked. “It should be twice that size right now.” Cloudless, pale blue skies promised no rain that day to the farmer who’s been looking up, relying on rainwater for more than 40 years. “You anticipate drought. You just do,” Murden said. “Never had a season where I didn’t have any water.” This year came close. He’s only been able to water his fields once, in January, when he received his allocation from the watermaster. Normally, he would’ve irrigated six to seven times by now. Then again, farmers lost their sense of “normal” three years ago. Crops flooded with Hurricane Hanna at the start of the pandemic in 2020, froze the next year, and are now drying up through a drought that is forcing farmers to make hard choices.
Between citrus and sugarcane, the other ubiquitously planted Valley crop, both grow across 25,000 acres of commercial industry in South Texas. The drought threatens a nearly billion dollar business and thousands of jobs. “Without water, we’re out of business,” Murden said matter-of-factly. Between the water wars with Mexico, the absence of rain and the subsequent declining levels at the Amistad and Falcon reservoirs, where South Texas gets its water supply, the Rio Grande Valley land is parched. “We have not had an allocation in five months now,” Sonny Hinojosa, the general manager of Hidalgo County’s Irrigation District #2, said Friday. Water irrigation districts stand between irrigators and the watermaster. Farmers have a sort of water bank account with the state, but they can only withdraw their allocations through the water irrigation district to which they belong. “We will place that order through the watermaster, and he releases that water from storage: Amistad and Falcon,” Hinojosa explained. “He releases it, and then we pick it up through our pumping plant via canals and pipelines. And we’ll deliver it to the farmer.”…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Dallas mayor leaving the door open for a second professional sports team (WFAA)
If Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson was looking for attention when he announced he’s forming a committee to explore all options to attract a second NFL team to play in Dallas, or any professional team for that matter, he got it. And now that the one NFL team that does call North Texas home is back in training camp, the Dallas Mayor discussed his effort on Inside Texas Politics. “I was basically letting everyone know that I would be open to having a football team that played in the opposite conference from the Cowboys playing in the city of Dallas as opposed to one of our suburbs,” Mayor Johnson told us. “I’m open to any professional sports team that wants to come to our city and play downtown or play in one of the many spaces in our city that can maybe accommodate professional sports.”
A new report says the Dallas Cowboys are worth $7.64 billion, easily the most valuable franchise in all of American sports. So, it’s not difficult to see why a city would want an NFL team. Mayor Johnson stresses, though, he’s been a huge, life-long fan of the Cowboys. And he also told us the city will continue to be proud to be the home of the NBA’s Mavericks and NHL’s Stars. But if the city can attract more professional teams, Mayor Johnson says they will. The Mayor also discussed some new public safety initiatives he recently announced, including blight remediation, school partnerships and what’s known on focused deterrence, the goal of which is to change the behavior of high-risk offenders. The plan also includes focusing on hot spots, where there is repeat violent crime and challenging the liquor license of any business that continuously creates public safety problems. Mayor Johnson says Dallas is one of the few large cities that has seen its violent crime drop over the last year. And he says the city’s partnership with business owners in entertainment districts such as Deep Ellum will continue to be strong because of these new initiatives, not in spite of them. “This is not about being onerous or burdensome to anyone who’s obeying the law,” said the Mayor. “But this is about acknowledging the reality of things, which is there are some problem establishments, who, once we put them on notice that we need them to take some corrective action and do some things, if they’re not willing to do those things, or they’re in violation of the law, we’re going to use every tool that’s in our toolbelt to make sure that our residents are safe…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
GOP governors sent buses of migrants to D.C. and NYC — with no plan for what's next (NPR)
For months now, the governors of Texas and Arizona have been sending charter buses full of migrants and refugees to Washington, D.C.'s Union Station, just a few blocks from the Capitol building.
When they disembark, they find neither the local nor federal government there to meet them.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he started sending the buses to D.C. because the Biden administration attempted to lift the pandemic-era emergency Title 42 order that allowed the U.S. to deny migrants entry.
According to Abbott's office, more than 6,100 migrants have been bused to D.C. from Texas alone. They arrive six days a week, as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m. — sometimes multiple buses each day.
And on Friday, Abbott?said the first bus had arrived in New York City .
"In addition to Washington, D.C., New York City is the ideal destination for these migrants, who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city," Abbott wrote in a statement. "I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief."…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
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