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Austin, Travis County work to allocate CARES Act funding by December deadline as Congress deadlocks over new relief bill

CARES Act funding has helped pay for testing sites in the Austin area.
As Congress faces a stalemate over another possible coronavirus relief package, local and state governments around the country are facing a looming deadline for the last one.
By Dec. 30, they must spend all the federal coronavirus relief dollars they received through the CARES Act, a bipartisan bill that was signed into law in late March and provided more than $2 trillion in assistance. Any unspent dollars must be returned to the U.S. Treasury Department.
At the local level
The city of Austin received nearly $171 million in CARES Act funding, which was intended for necessary expenditures incurred by the pandemic, according to an April presentation by Brie Franco, intergovernmental relations office for the city.
As of Sept. 30, the city has spent more than $101 million of its CARES Act allocation, spokesperson Bryce Bencivengo wrote in an email to Austonia. More than two-thirds of the spending occurred between July and September.
Some of this funding has paid for new pandemic-era hires, such as epidemiologists, contact tracers and strike force teams that have helped respond to clusters at long-term care facilities and schools, Austin Public Health Director Stephanie Hayden said on Sept. 29.
Earlier this month, council members unanimously approved the SAVES Resolution, which allocated $15 million in CARES Act funding to music venues and other businesses deemed vital to the local culture.
Although Congress has not yet developed a relief package that could extend funding into 2021, APH is already planning to continue its COVID response efforts beyond the deadline.
"We understand that the federal funding will end as of December of this year, but we must continue to provide testing and contact tracing, our case investigations, our surveillance and our enforcement," Hayden told City Council. "Those efforts have really helped us as a city and county be in this place that we are in."
At the county level
Travis County received just over $61 million in CARES Act funding. As of Oct. 9, it has spent around 43%, with a remaining balance of more than $34 million to administer in the next 11 weeks.
The largest expense for Travis County has been through its economic development and strategic investments department, which has disbursed nearly $10 million in small business grants.
The bulk of the county's unspent dollars fall under two programs: 1) rent and mortgage assistance and 2) direct response.
With a countywide ban on rental evictions in place through at least the end of the year, staff have recommended that some of the rent and mortgage assistance funding be reallocated toward other causes rather than risk it being returned.
Direct response funding covers direct personnel and operating costs for the county's public health response.
Despite the unspent dollars, Budget Director Travis Gatlin told county commissioners on Tuesday that the county's COVID-related costs are far in excess of the CARES funding it has received.
"We want to spend every dollar as soon as we can because we don't want to take a chance on having to send a dollar back," he said. "We want to keep those funds in the community."
An Oct. 13 presentation by Travis County Budget Director Travis Gatlin shows how CARES Act funding has been allocated. (Travis County)
At the state level
The state of Texas received approximately $8 billion in CARES Act funding and had a similarly broad mandate for how it could distribute it. The act also included funding for specific applications, such as homelessness outreach and rental assistance.
Although the state has disbursed some of its CARES Act funding to public schools, it simultaneously reduced its typical funding to those same schools, leaving many districts—including Austin ISD—scrambling to make up the additional costs incurred due to the pandemic.
At the federal level
Congress has not passed a relief package since May. Since then, more than 100,000 Americans have died of the disease.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced an abrupt end to negotiations with Democrats over additional COVID relief funding until after the election. Hours later, he tweeted a request for Congress to send him a bill for a second round of stimulus checks.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler expressed hope that another relief bill was imminent during an Oct. 1 City Council meeting but acknowledged "it's like reading smoke signals or tea leaves."
Since then, Congress has struggled to reach an agreement. Treasury Secretary Steven Mncuhin said Wednesday that he does not expect a relief bill to arrive before the Nov. 3 election.
Despite the uncertainty of additional funding coming through in the new year, Hayden stressed the importance of the programs currently being reimbursed through the CARES Act.
"Public health is a number-one priority for the city of Austin and Travis County," she said at a press conference earlier this month. "We will continue to provide the level of service that we have provided thus far."
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Popular
(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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(Council Member Chito Vela/Twitter)
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, Friday morning. Moments later, Austin City Council set a special meeting for next month to pass a resolution aimed at decriminalizing abortion.
The GRACE Act, which stands for guarding the right to abortion care for everyone, is a twofold plan submitted by council member Jose “Chito” Vela. It recommends that city funds shouldn’t be used to surveil, catalog, report or investigate abortions. It also recommends that police make investigating abortion their lowest priority.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who co-sponsored the resolution along with council members Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo and Mayor Steve Adler, said the importance of the GRACE Act cannot be overstated.
“By introducing this resolution during a special session, City Council is doubling down on fighting back for reproductive health,” Fuentes said. “Items like the GRACE Act will promote essential healthcare while enabling individuals to exercise their bodily freedom.”
The act takes an approach similar to when former council member Greg Casar moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Ultimately, state law doesn't allow city officials to order police chiefs to adopt specific enforcement policies so the resolution would be a request to Police Chief Joe Chacon. In May, Politico reported that Vela is having "ongoing conversations" with Chacon about the proposal.
Austonia contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the GRACE Act but did not hear back by time of publication. On Friday, Paxton celebrated the overturning of Roe and announced an annual office holiday on June 24 in recognition of the high court's decision.
In a press release, Vela said the Texas state government has a history of overturning municipal protections of human rights. Thirty days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas will ban all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Still, Vela expressed hope for the GRACE Act’s longevity. Council’s special meeting on it is set for the week of July 18.
“We know this resolution is legally sound, and Austin is not alone in this fight,” Vela said. “We are working with several other cities who are equally horrified by the prospect of an abortion ban and want to do everything they can to protect their residents.”
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