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As lawmakers on Friday voted to send the Texas legislative session s main defund the police to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott for his imminent signature, the city of Austin and some of its political leaders are scratching their heads on what the new law could mean for the future of criminal justice reform in the capital city.
House Bill 1900 has been described as draconian for the punitive measures it would exact on any city Abbott s office unilaterally deems as defunding the police.
If it becomes law, it would allow the state to cut off large portions of tax revenue and would enable vast swaths of outlying areas of Austin to remove themselves from the city. Further restrictions would be placed on the ability of Austin s utilities to increase rates and could cut off their contribution to the city s budget.
A rail station at Austin FC s Q2 Stadium is a go after Capital Metro s board approved a financial agreement Monday that calls for the Major League Soccer team to help pay for its construction and maintenance.
CapMetro s board approved a resolution to finalize the agreement with Austin Stadco LLC, the Austin FC subsidiary that supervised the construction of Q2 Stadium.
Austin FC will pay $640,000 up front for the construction of a rail station and bus stops at Q2 Stadium. The team will then pay $3 million over the following 15 years to CapMetro. Payments for the rail station will start either when construction begins or on March 1, 2022, according to the agreement.
The results of the Proposition B vote in Austin s May 1 election show a sharp east-west voter divide over whether a public camping ban aimed at the city s homeless population should be reinstated.
Precinct-by-precinct results indicated that supporters of Prop B carried all precincts west of MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1). Meanwhile, large swaths of East Austin voted against Prop B.
The east-west divide in how voters cast ballots is nothing new to Austin West Austinites tend to be less progressive than their East Austin counterparts. But passing Prop B required a bipartisan coalition.
The final results showed that in a city that favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a near 3-to-1 ratio in last November s presidential election, a large number of Democrats turned away from the party line.
The Austin metropolitan area continued to see widespread growth during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but growth in Travis County might be slowing, according to the latest estimates from the Census Bureau.
The Austin area continues to be one of the fastest-growing in the nation, ranking fourth in total population growth and No. 1 in rate of growth among metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people. We added more people than the San Antonio metro, said city of Austin demographer Lila Valencia. It s a large number and we re growing fast.
The counts for cities and counties from the 2020 census are not expected to be released until September. This week s estimates are the Census Bureau s annual estimates for counties and metropolitan areas.