BG Reads | News - September 12, 2022
[HEARINGS AND MEETINGS]
Monday (9.12)
Tuesday (9.13)
Thursday (9.15)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Travis County adopts $20 minimum wage, 5% across-the-board salary increase (Community Impact)
On Aug. 30, Travis County commissioners unanimously voted to raise the minimum wage for Travis County employees from $15 to $20 an hour and implement a 5% salary increase across the board.
The wage increases will take effect on Oct. 1 with the start of fiscal year 2022-23.
The FY 2022-23 compensation package, which also includes increases in shift differential pay—which refers to extra pay given to employees who work outside normal business hours—overtime rates, and a cost-of-living adjustment for retirees, is expected to cost the county $48,152,777.
“I think this is an essential increase we are doing; I don’t think it’s excessive; and hopefully it will help us fill the vacancies we have for the crucial work that needs to be done,” Commissioner Brigid Shea said.
Commissioners said they favored raising wages to match the rising cost of living in Austin and to be competitive with the city of Austin, which recently?adopted?a $20 an hour minimum wage…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
City finally funds tenant relocation assistance, though program’s future remains uncertain (Austin Monitor)
After leaving the Tenant Relocation Assistance Program without funds for six years, the city has found money in next year’s budget to help tenants displaced because of redevelopment. But without a dedicated funding source, the program’s longevity remains uncertain.?
On Tuesday, city staffers told the Housing and Planning Committee that the $700,000 earmarked in the Fiscal Year 2023 budget will allow the program to get underway sometime next year, following a search for a nonprofit service provider.?
The program aims to help residents displaced by redevelopment find new housing, move and store belongings, and temporarily pay rent. Only lower-income residents (those making 70 percent or less of the?median family income, or 80 percent if they live in a mobile home) are eligible. The MFI for a family of four is $110,300.?
The program is part of an?ordinance?approved by City Council in 2016. The ordinance requires property owners to provide notice of plans to redevelop, demolish or renovate a property well before residents are affected – 120 days for multifamily buildings and 270 days for mobile home communities if at least five households live on-site. The notice period gives tenants time to figure out moving plans and apply for relocation assistance.
Originally, Council had planned to fund the relocation assistance mainly by charging developers a fee. Those plans were stymied in 2017 when the Texas Legislature passed?House Bill 1449, which prohibited such a fee…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Nearly half of homeless residents exit HEAL program without housing (Austin Monitor)
Despite the city’s work to move those living in homeless encampments into permanent housing, nearly half of all temporary shelter inhabitants exit the system and return to homelessness. One hundred and two?people – 48 percent of those moved into shelter – in the Housing-Focused Encampment Assistance Link, or HEAL program, have left the program with no housing available to them compared to 94 shelter residents advancing into stable housing.
At last week’s meeting of City Council’s Public Health Committee, a pair of updates showed the?current state?of the city’s homelessness strategies and gave a look at the housing challenges ahead for housing-insecure senior citizens.
Dianna Grey, the city’s homeless strategy officer, reviewed data for HEAL’s effectiveness since its inception last year and for the current fiscal year. Since HEAL’s start, 361 people from 10 encampments have been moved into shelter, with wait times for housing falling to just over three months in 2022 compared to more than six months when the program began.
Council Member Ann Kitchen was among the committee members who questioned the high number of shelter residents either choosing to leave or being removed before stable housing is available. “I’d like to understand if there have been any opportunities to talk to those who are exiting to understand the reasons behind their exit, or is it the case that they just leave?”
Grey said the structure required to live in the shelter environment may be uncomfortable to those who have lived without any kind of stability for long periods of time, raising discipline issues or a general desire to leave.
“Some people just leave, but more commonly it’s difficult to adjust to a more structured environment,” she said. “There are rules there and there is a curfew where people have to be in by a certain time in the evening … occasionally we will have issues arise where there is an interaction with staff or another shelter guest that is such that management makes a decision to exit someone.”…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
In El Paso, Abbott says border inspections that snarled trade weren’t about finding contraband (KERA)
During a roundtable discussion with border business leaders in El Paso Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott defended a costly bridge slowdown he implemented earlier this year and said the wait times they created were “minuscule.”
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Abbott also said that the operation was never about finding illegal drugs or migrants but instead about keeping state roadways safe. That’s despite Abbott saying several times the operation was a direct response to what he called President Biden’s open-border policies.
In?April, Abbott ordered Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to conduct inspections of commercial vehicles coming into Texas in response to the Biden administration’s plan to end Title 42, a pandemic-era rule used to quickly expel migrants back to Mexico. The inspections led to delays that exceeded 12 hours at some ports and led to billions of dollars in losses for the state economy.
Abbott downplayed the wait times during his meeting.
“To be clear about it, it was an average of a five-hour delay and that average of a five-hour delay is miniscule when you compare it to the 18-month delay by the Biden administration to step up and do anything about securing the border,” Abbott said in El Paso. Abbott then cited the more than 2 million encounters of undocumented immigrants by U.S. Border Patrol agents this fiscal year and the amount of fentanyl seized at the border as justification for the operation…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
DFW Airport tries to put the brakes on car-sharing companies (Fort Worth Report)
Rising prices and demand for rental cars are driving travelers toward other ways of finding vehicles to use during their trips.?
Enter car-sharing platforms — cheaper car rentals booked directly through people in the nearby area.?
Although such platforms may benefit passengers, some airports are trying to reverse this growing trend.??
The?Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport?sued one such company — California-based?Turo?—?and six people using the platform in October 2021 in the?352nd District of Tarrant County. The airport is seeking a permanent injunction against the company, trying to force it to cease all activity on airport property. A trial for the case is set for the week of April 24, 2023, according to court documents.?
The airport’s board of directors also approved a resolution Aug. 4, requesting a change to the airport’s code of rules and regulations to allow illegally parked cars — such as the vehicles booked through the car-sharing platforms and left at terminals for passengers — to be towed.?
The previous code allowed the airport to tow any vehicle considered abandoned or parked in violation of the code if it represents an operational hazard. This amendment removed the latter part of that code…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Shuford Named Interim Commissioner of State Health Department (Texas Health and Human Services)
The Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Cecile Erwin Young today named Dr. Jennifer Shuford interim commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, effective Oct. 1, replacing Dr. John Hellerstedt who is retiring from state service.
Shuford currently serves as chief state epidemiologist at DSHS, where, as Texas' top disease detective, she uses epidemiologic and medical data to inform public health decisions, including many during the COVID-19 response.
"Dr. Shuford's passion for service, extensive experience and knowledge in public health will serve us well as she steps into this role," said Young. "I'm confident she will successfully lead DSHS through this transitional time."…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Inflation showed signs of easing in several industries in August (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. consumer-price inflation showed signs of moderating in August for the second straight month, though the decrease was uneven across sectors and it remains unclear whether the slowdown will continue. Gasoline prices fell sharply in August, airfares dropped and used cars and hotels ebbed, while rent increases also gave hints of slowing, according to private firms that track such data. Still, food prices continued to soar this past month and prices for a range of goods and services remained much higher than a year earlier, the figures show. The path of inflation could influence looming decisions by the Federal Reserve about how high to lift interest rates. Inflation could also shape midterm elections as voters assess their pocketbooks.
Looking ahead to a government inflation report to be released on Tuesday, many Wall Street analysts estimate the Labor Department’s overall consumer-price index was unchanged or dropped in August from July. If so, it would mark the second straight month of slower inflation since annual inflation surged to a four-decade high in June. “We are experiencing a slowdown driven by the decline in fuel prices, but there is still significant upward pressure in such important categories as food, household items and healthcare products,” said Alberto Cavallo, a Harvard Business School professor who in 2008 created a “billion price” index that tracked dollar amounts of online consumer transactions. “We are not out of the woods yet.” Called PriceStats, the price index—which is managed by State Street Global Markets and generally tracks the CPI—fell in August. The year-over-year increase in the CPI reached 9.1% in June, the highest annual inflation rate since 1981, and ticked down to 8.5% in July. In some industries, firms report progress working through pandemic-related supply-chain disruptions that have pushed prices higher. Meantime, consumers—particularly in low-income households—are pushing back against high prices by changing their spending habits. Moreover, many retailers have amped up discounting programs to clear inventory of clothing and other items that they overstocked during the pandemic…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Chief Roberts says Supreme Court will reopen to public and defends legitimacy (Washington Post)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. defended the integrity of the Supreme Court on Friday in his first public remarks following a tumultuous term, saying that disagreement with its decisions should not lead to questions about its legitimacy. “The court has always decided controversial cases and decisions always have been subject to intense criticism and that is entirely appropriate,” Roberts told a gathering of judges and lawyers in Colorado Springs. But he said that disagreement with the court’s role of deciding what the law is has transformed into criticism of its legitimacy. “You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is. And you don’t want public opinion to be the guide of what the appropriate decision is,” said Roberts, who added, to laughter, “Yes, all of our opinions are open to criticism. In fact, our members do a great job of criticizing some opinions from time to time. But simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court.”
With the support of three justices chosen by President Donald Trump in the past five years, the Supreme Court now has a 6-to-3 conservative majority. Those justices sent the court on a dramatic turn to the right in the term completed this summer, overturning the guarantee of a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, striking a gun control law in New York, limiting the power of the Biden administration to confront climate change, and scoring victories for religious conservatives. The court’s approval rating has dropped to one of its lowest levels ever in public opinion polls, led by unhappy Democrats and by a lesser extent those who view themselves as independent. But Roberts said it is the Supreme Court’s job to decide what the law is.
“That role doesn’t change simply because people disagree with this opinion or that opinion or with a particular mode of jurisprudence,” he said. Without speaking directly about the court’s decision to overturn nearly 50 years of precedent in striking down Roe, Roberts acknowledged the difficulty of the past year. “It was gut-wrenching every morning to drive into a Supreme Court with barricades around it,” Roberts said. And it has been “unnatural” to hold oral arguments by teleconference or before a small number of court personnel and reporters. The court has been closed to the public since March 2020 because of worries about the pandemic. “When we take the bench the first Monday in October at 10 a.m., the public will be there to watch us,” Roberts said. “I think just moving forward from things that were unfortunate is the best way to respond to it.”…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[BG PODCAST]
Today's episode (165) features Taylor O'Neil, CEO of Richard's Rainwater.
Headquartered in Austin, Richard's Rainwater is the U.S. leader in capturing and bottling pure rainwater, and is the nation’s first FDA approved cloud-to-bottle company.
He and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss Richard's history, the rain harvesting process, water supply and conservation, and regulatory hurdles in the industry.
Taylor is also a fellow Wake Forest University alum (Go Deacs!). ->?EPISODE LINK
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