Headlines

Members of Austin's Black Lives Matter movement marched from Victory Grill to the Capitol on Wed., July 13, to remember Sandra Bland and other African-American men and women who have died in police custody or from police brutality. Last July, Bland was found hanged in a Waller County jail cell three days after a traffic stop by a state trooper. (Photo by John Anderson)

City Council remains on hiatus this week, resuming budget discussions at a work session Wed., July 27. The regular agenda work session is Tue., Aug. 2, followed by another budget session Aug. 3, with the next regularly scheduled meeting Thu., Aug. 4.

Greg Guernsey, director of the beleaguered Planning and Zoning Department, has announced that Jerry Rusthoven will become acting assistant director, while Jorge Rousselin becomes acting development services manager and project lead for CodeNEXT (see "CodeNEXT Loses Another Manager").

Austin Police Officer Steven Martinez is currently serving a 20-day suspension after being found in violation of three department policies. The 17-year veteran was responding to a robbery call on Jan. 17 when he engaged in a high-speed chase through a neighborhood and down the wrong way of the I-35 frontage road. The pursuit ended with what APD Chief Art Acevedo deemed an improper arrest of two suspects and, later, the physical removal of one suspect from the patrol car that Martinez did not document as a use of force.

Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir has savaged a staffing report on county departments for being riddled with inaccuracies, but the Travis County Commissioners Court voted Tue., July 19, to accept it for further discussion anyway. The study by Public Works, LLC recommends major departmental restructuring, but both DeBeauvoir and Chief Deputy County Clerk Ronald Morgan have condemned it for working from "significant errors," including wrong staffing numbers.

Texas' voter ID law has been overturned by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found its strict photo ID requirements violate the Voting Rights Act. The court order, released on July 20, calls for "an interim remedy" that will end the current system's suppression of poor and minority voters, while not disrupting the 2016 elections.

More textbook controversy for Texas: After national fury over one proposed book that called slaves "workers," the Responsible Ethnic Studies Textbook Coalition is calling on the State Board of Education to reject the book Mexican American Heritage. The coalition says it peddles lazy racial stereotypes, such as Mexican laborers being "not reared to put in a full day's work."

A state-mandated booklet given to abortion-seeking women includes even more flawed science in its pages. In a new draft, the Department of State Health Services revised its "A Woman's Right to Know" pamphlet to refer to the fetus as "your baby" or "unborn child." This is aside from the numerous politically motivated medical inaccuracies, including the long-discredited link between abortion and breast cancer. (See "Health Department Adds More Faulty Science to Pre-Abortion Booklet" online.)