In this week’s News Roundup, MLK Day celebrations continue, U.S. A.G. Eric Holder calls for an end to the much reviled practice of “asset forfeiture,” pro-choice advocates NARAL find Texas severely lacking, and more.
• Join in on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations today, which begin at 9am the MLK statue on UT’s East Mall and culminate in festivities at Huston-Tillotson University. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Travis County Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant and his staff marked the date by holding a mass swearing in of about 600 volunteer deputy registrars this past Thursday, Jan. 15, at the LBJ Library.
This past Saturday, hundreds of protesters paid tribute to the legacy of Dr. King with a march protesting police brutality. Like today’s march, theirs also began at the MLK statue, but it took them into the Senate chambers at the Texas Capitol. Check the Austin Chronicle homepage later today for a complete photo gallery of the march.
• U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that local and state police forces are now barred from seizing assets and property from citizens unless that property is obtained through a warrant or as part of a criminal charge. The decision puts an end to Equitable Sharing, a program that provided a steady stream of profits that police forces often considered gifted money; since seizures weren’t part of any budget, forces would typically use acquired assets to buy items they wouldn’t have otherwise purchased, like military-grade gear and high-powered weapons. Texas’ police agencies were particularly abusive of the program: In March 2010, the state received an overall grade of D- when the Institute of Justice conducted its “police for profit” investigation into the practice. That same study concluded that, in 2007, state agencies seized nearly $44 million in cash and $5 million in property.
• Texas’ approach to reproductive health care has earned it a dismal “F” grade from national pro-choice organization NARAL. In the group’s annual report on the status of reproductive health policies in all 50 states, the nation averaged a “D” score and more than half of states joined Texas in a failing grade. The state’s anti-choice Legislature and numerous abortion restrictions, including Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, helped earn it the low score. The report, released on Jan. 14, notes that more than 90% of Texas counties have no abortion clinic due to state laws. However, the news wasn’t all grim, at least nationally: Pro-choice measures enacted in states rose from 16 in 2013 to 22 in 2014 while the number of anti-choice laws dipped from 52 in 2013 to 27 last year. Separately, NARAL’s Texas affiliate released a statement as former Gov. Rick Perry made his exit last week, outlining the damage Perry’s leadership has left in its wake – the closure of more than 80 family planning clinics due to budget cuts; the loss of 9-1 federal matching funds as a result of excluding Planned Parenthood from a Medicaid program; mandatory 24-hour sonograms before an abortion, to name a few. “Under Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership, Texans’ access to reproductive health care, and particularly to abortion, has been devastated,” said Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas in a statement. “Even if legislation is passed to combat the damage Perry has done, Texans will continue to hurt from the years of attacks on reproductive health care.”
• House District 17 Shenanigans: Avowed independent Texan Linda Curtis made a name for herself constantly alleging electoral impropriety in Travis County. Now she’s doing the same in Bastrop, as she casts doubt on the results of the Jan. 6 House District 17 special election. On the day GOP candidate John Cyrier lead the pack on 46%, and so he and fellow Republican Brent Golemon (24%) go to a run-off (date yet to be set). However, Curtis (who came in third on 14%) is calling shenanigans. Her argument originally revolved around a mailer sent out by the Cyrier campaign, featuring an endorsement from County Judge Paul Pape. She further claims that Pape was responsible for consolidating the county’s 20 voting places down to four, and that this benefited Cyrier, as the sole Caldwell County resident on the ballot, against the four Bastrop residents running. In a Jan. 12 statement, she claimed, “The actions of Judge Pape suppressed the vote in Bastrop, clearly favoring establishment favorite Cyrier.” She initially asked Pape to recuse himself, and for all 20 Bastrop polling places to be opened for the run-off. However, now she has escalated affairs, sending a letter to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, and a Jan. 15 request to Attorney General Ken Paxton to intervene, claiming voting rights violations.
• Committee on Committees: City Hall is pumping this week’s “Town Hall” (Thursday, Jan. 22, 6pm), with the new City Council and Mayor Steve Adler, for input on the proposed changes in Council meeting and public hearing structure. Under the proposals drafted by the mayor and the new members, a baker’s dozen of Council committees would hear most proposals before they moved to Council, and the subcommittees would also hold most public hearings. More Council meetings would presumably require fewer late nights, and (in theory) earlier public input would mean more consensus. (But pushback has already begun – Sunday’s Statesman squawked to “mend not end” the current structure.) You can offer your two cents in various ways: In person at Thursday’s meeting; by phone, 888/400-0342; or by tweet, #myatxgov. You can also comment through Jan. 26 online at SpeakUpAustin.org, call 311, and comment on #myatxgov project, or tweet #myatxgov.
• Not enough cubbyholes: “Affordability” was the buzzword of last year’s Council campaigns, and the Real Estate Council of Austin has a designated culprit for exploding housing costs: not enough housing. In a white paper release last week, RECA noted that in the last decade, Austin’s housing market became the most expensive in Texas, and blames one thing, insufficient supply. “From 2000 to 2012, the Austin region grew by more than 570,000 new residents, but the number of housing units within the city limits increased by only about 84,000.” The report, “Affordable Austin: Building the Housing We Need at Prices We Can Afford,” estimates it would take 69,000 units by 2025 just to maintain the current market, and recommends 100,000 units of all kinds by 2025 to bring prices down.
• Hot Enough Yet? Despite the brief winter cold snap in Austin, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration last week officially declared 2014 the hottest global year in 134 years of record-keeping. The NOAA reported that December was the hottest on record, that 2014 was 1.24 degrees (Farenheit) above the 20th century average, and the 2010s are on track to be the hottest decade on record. If that report isn’t grim enough to suit you, the journal Science published “Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean,” which found that both overfishing and habitat loss (e.g., coral reef destruction) are threatening major extinctions of ocean life over the next century, without global counteraction. The authors wrote that while the extinction trends are accelerating, mitigation (including reducing the carbon emissions that cause global warming) can in time reverse the damage.
This article appears in January 16 • 2015.