Austin has been the only city in Texas that has actually reduced its police funding since the latest protests over police brutality. Credit: Evan L Roy/The Texas Tribune
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The Texas House on Thursday voted to financially penalize the state s largest cities if they cut their police budgets.
House Bill 1900 comes after a year of civil rights advocates calling on cities to reduce what they spend on policing and to reform police behavior. Those calls were spurred by high-profile deaths at the hands of police like George Floyd’s in Minneapolis and Mike Ramos’ in Austin.
Texas larger cities would face financial penalties for cutting police budgets under House bill
Juan Pablo Garnham, Jolie McCullough, The Texas Tribune
May 7, 2021
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The Texas flag flies over the state Capitol in Austin in 2019. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/TNS)Tom Fox/TNS
The Texas House on Thursday voted to financially penalize the state s largest cities if they cut their police budgets.
House Bill 1900 comes after a year of civil rights advocates calling on cities to reduce what they spend on policing and to reform police behavior. Those calls were spurred by high-profile deaths at the hands of police like George Floyd’s in Minneapolis and Mike Ramos’ in Austin.
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A Texas Republican-backed voting reform bill could be reworked in a series of private deliberations after the legislation cleared the state House on Friday.
Senate Bill 7 prohibits the solicitation of ballot by mail applications, requires disabled voters to affirm they are physically unable to enter a polling a place if they seek alternative means of casting their ballot, and disallows those in political subdivisions from using public funds to distribute early voting forms to people who did not request them.
The House voted 81-64 to pass the legislation, though it has seen resistance from Democrats who have proposed about 130 amendments to the bill as of Thursday, according to the
Credit: Michael Stravato for The Texas Tribune
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The Texas House on Wednesday moved to advance a bill that would ban homeless encampments in public places statewide, a move that comes less than a week after voters in Austin reinstated a similar ban that was removed two years ago.
Critics say that removing the ban in Austin triggered the proliferation of tent cities there, sparking a fierce and divisive debate over how to handle homelessness in the state capital, where some 10,000 people are estimated to have experienced homelessness in the last year.