BG Reads 12.18.2024

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December 18, 2024  

➡️ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 'Clean-up' effort could combine, dissolve many of Austin's resident boards and commissions (Community Impact)

🟪 Beloved businesses Austin said goodbye to in 2024 (KUT)

🟪 'Austin ISD is failing many of its most vulnerable students,' AISD equity report released (CBS Austin)

🟪 ‘Politics and egos’: Council members go to battle over search for Dallas city manager (Dallas Morning News)

🟪 Giant companies took secret payments to allow free flow of opioids (New York Times)

Read On!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 Review: The 2025 Austin Council Meeting Calendar 

🟪 MEMO: City of Austin Executive Leadership Team and Organizational Announced (Effective November 4, 2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

➡️ 'Clean-up' effort could combine, dissolve many of Austin's resident boards and commissions (Community Impact)

Many of Austin's resident boards and commissions could be combined or disbanded in the coming months under a plan by city officials intended to improve the bodies' efforts.

Austin maintains scores of boards and commissions led by Austinites who are appointed by elected officials. The bodies can serve as a connection between residents and City Hall, and are generally responsible for oversight and policy recommendations on a variety of topics.That includes temporary work like the development of a new climate funding package on the 2026 Bond Election Advisory Task Force and ongoing work specific to communities like veterans, immigrants, women and people with disabilities. Some bodies are required while some were created over the years by City Council.Council member Ryan Alter, who recently proposed changes to Austin's processes, said valuable discussions, reviews and community input take place at board meetings—but that some "clean-up" is now needed. In his resolution approved by council Dec. 12, he pointed out the large number of bodies requiring city resources; several commissions that may either be inactive or existing but never officially established; attendance problems that can lead to meeting cancelations; and Austin's lack of a formal process to review and potentially "sunset" unused and unneeded bodies… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Beloved businesses Austin said goodbye to in 2024 (KUT)

It doesn't matter how long you've been here — people in Austin love to reminisce about the better, weirder, version of this city. And there's a reason for that: Local shops and restaurants are part of what makes Austin, Austin. And in 2024, we lost a lot of them.

We can't go back in time to patronize them once more, but we can take a moment to remember them.

Here are some businesses Austin said farewell to this year… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL

STORY)

➡️ Scooter update finds fewer riders and less clutter (Austin Monitor)

Transportation and Public Works has a six-month update on changes to the Micromobility Program, which regulates scooter rentals in the city, reporting positive results stemming from changes that were implemented in May 2024.

A cap was set on new micromobility vendor licenses, setting a limit of two vendors. The two current licensed operators are not allowed increases to device permits. Richard Mendoza, director of Transportation and Public Works, stated in a memorandum that this regulation “resulted in a more streamlined workload for City staff and made coordination with vendors more efficient.”

“Special event operations have also benefited. For shared micromobility operations to run smoothly during Austin’s larger events, the vendors typically request corralling space. The change to two vendors was especially apparent during this year’s ACL Festival, as less space was required to handle similar volume. Thus far, the cap has had a positive impact on staff and a negligible impact on ridership. This policy will be reviewed again prior to the one-year mark in May 2025,” Mendoza wrote.

The number of permitted e-scooters was reduced from 8,700 to 6,700 citywide. Overall ridership saw an approximate 9 percent decrease during Q2 and Q3 for 2023 and 2024… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ 'Austin ISD is failing many of its most vulnerable students,' AISD equity report released (CBS Austin)

An equity assessment commissioned by the Austin Independent School District revealed the district is 'failing many of its most vulnerable students.'

The report, conducted by research nonprofit WestEd, was presented to district leaders, with several recommendations for improvement to achieve equitable education in the district.

Key findings of the report highlight systemic issues affecting marginalized student populations:

• Students of color, particularly Black students, reported feeling mistreated and unsupported. This is backed by data revealing Black students are disproportionately disciplined compared to their peers.

• English learners face an uphill battle due to a lack of resources and support, including a shortage of qualified bilingual teachers.

• Students with disabilities experience a gap in mental health services, often leading to punitive measures instead of addressing underlying needs.

"We can no longer look away," stated Stephanie Hawley, AISD Chief Officer of Organizational Transformation.

"It's on paper that our children are telling us the system is broken… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

➡️ ‘Politics and egos’: Council members go to battle over search for Dallas city manager (Dallas Morning News)

Dallas council members Monday agreed to interview semifinalists for the city manager position Dec. 23 after two conflicting scheduled meetings and nearly three hours in executive session. They took no other action publicly but spent nearly three hours in executive session.

The majority of the City Council skipped a special meeting at 9 a.m. called by council members Paula Blackmon, Gay Donnell Willis and Jaynie Schultz in hopes of speeding up the search for Dallas’ new city manager. But most attended a 1 p.m. meeting of the ad hoc committee on administrative affairs, which is leading the search.

Only council members Omar Narvaez, deputy mayor pro tem Adam Bazaldua, and the three who called the meeting were present at 9 a.m. The meeting itself could not start because they lacked a quorum — nine council members — necessary to conduct official business.

“What we want to ultimately do is take [the search] away from [the committee] and bring it to the full council and have the process play out at with community meetings,” Blackmon said, adding council members might add more candidates to the list. Before the meeting, Blackmon told The Dallas Morning News she hoped her “colleagues will see the importance of this exercise and come express it at the meeting because it’s been dragging out too long.”

In the afternoon, Atkins immediately moved the committee into an executive session. The committee includes council members Cara Mendelsohn, Kathy Stewart, Paul Ridley and Jesse Moreno. All of the council members present in the morning also attended the afternoon meeting and went into executive session, though they are not on the committee. When the committee reconvened, Ridley made a motion to interview semifinalists virtually on Dec. 23. Committee members approved the motion but did not publicly explain why and did not state whether new semifinalists would be added to the mix…  🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas GOP threatens House members who support Dustin Burrows in speaker race with attack mailers (Texas Tribune)

Leaders of the Republican Party of Texas are upping the pressure on Republican lawmakers who are backing Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, in the contentious race for House speaker.

This week, multiple Republicans received text messages from Republican Party Chair Abraham George, calling for them to “unite” behind Burrows’ opponent, Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield.

“Before the Republican Party of Texas sends any direct mail into your district I wanted an opportunity to personally connect about your public position on the speakers race,” George wrote, according to a screenshot of a text message shared with The Texas Tribune.

The text messages come amid an intra-party fight over the speakership that has only intensified since earlier this month, when Cook won the endorsement of the House GOP Caucus and then Burrows announced that he had enough bipartisan support in the 150-member chamber to win.

The day of the caucus vote, the Texas GOP indicated it would censure any Republican lawmaker who does not vote for Cook as speaker — a move that, under new party rules, would bar those lawmakers from appearing in a GOP primary for two years... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

➡️ Giant companies took secret payments to allow free flow of opioids (New York Times)

In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America’s overdose crisis. The company said it was “putting the brakes on the opioid epidemic” by making it harder to get potentially dangerous amounts of the drugs.

The announcement, which came after pressure from federal health regulators, was followed by similar declarations from the other two companies that control access to prescription drugs for most Americans. The self-congratulatory statements, however, didn’t address an important question: Why hadn’t the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, acted sooner to address a crisis that had been building for decades? One reason, a New York Times investigation found: Drugmakers had been paying them not to.

For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments.

The details of these backroom deals — laid out in hundreds of documents, some previously confidential, reviewed by The Times — expose a mostly untold chapter of the opioid epidemic and provide a rare look at the modus operandi of the companies at the heart of the prescription drug supply chain. The P.B.M.s exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price.

The three dominant companies — Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx — oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million people and are part of health care conglomerates that sit near the top of the Fortune 500 list.

The P.B.M.s are hired by insurers and employers to control their drug costs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical manufacturers. But a Times investigation this year found that they often pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs, while driving independent pharmacies out of business. Regulators have accused the largest P.B.M.s of anticompetitive practices…

🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Luigi Mangione is charged with murder as an act of terrorism in CEO's death (NPR)

The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from from a Pennsylvania jail.

Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.

Under New York law, such a charge can be brought when an alleged crime is "intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping."

Mangione's New York lawyer has not commented on the case.

Thompson, 50, was shot dead as he walked to a Manhattan hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States' biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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