Lucia Duncan

Pounds of pot, kilos of cocaine and bundles of bills were on display at an Austin police station today.

The department’s organized crime division was showing off what it obtained from three major drug seizures over the past month. APD Assistant Chief Sean Mannix said officers also captured more than six-and-a-half pounds of tar heroin.

"In talking to the other officers and detectives, supervisors in the room, none of us in our memories can remember a seizure of heroin that large in the city of Austin,” said Assistant Chief Mannix. “It’s a tremendous amount of heroin."

“How would you turn $1.49 billion worth of potential bond projects into a bond package of up to $400 million?”

That’s the question the City of Austin is asking a bond development workshop, tonight at 6:30 p.m.

The city is considering a bond election this November, and KUT News has reported on the $1.5 billion “wish list” serving as a starting point for talks, a needs assessment from city departments outlining different projects. Now the city is in the process of whittling that number down to something it can present to voters.

Victoria Hospital Bans Overweight Job Applicants

KUT News' reporting partner, The Texas Tribune, reports a hospital in Victoria, Texas, bans job applicants from employment for being too overweight.

The Citizens Medical Center policy, instituted a little more than a year ago, requires potential employees to have a body mass index of less than 35 — which is 210 pounds for someone who is 5-foot-5, and 245 pounds for someone who is 5-foot-10. It states that an employee’s physique “should fit with a representational image or specific mental projection of the job of a healthcare professional,” including an appearance “free from distraction” for hospital patients.

Sweeping Drug Bust Targets Nightclub Owner, Family

Ten individuals connected to a downtown Austin club circuit were arrested yesterday on drug trafficking, money laundering, and firearms charges. 

Yassine Enterprises, which owns Pure, Spill, Kiss & Fly, Stack Burger Bar, Treasure Island, Hyde, Fuel, Malaia and Roial, is at the center of a coordinated effort between Austin police, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the FBI, IRS, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The investigation dates to 2007, and those taken into custody yesterday include Yassine Enterprises owner and President Hussein Ali "Mike" Yassine, his brothers Hadi Ali Yassine and Mohammed Ali Yassine, their assistant Marisse Marthe Ruales and six others.  Cocaine distribution and over $200,000 in money-laundered cash are two charges in the investigation, and authorities suspect the clubs involved were fronts for these and other illegal activities.

A report on racial profiling shows the number of people stopped by the Austin Police Department for traffic violations dropped in 2011.

In 2011, police executed 5,050 vehicle searches on Hispanics, 3,505 searches on whites, and 3,037 searches on African-Americans.

“Austin police officers made 179,882 motor vehicle stops in 2011 compared to 232,848 in 2010,” the report reads:

The primary reason for a motor vehicle stop is a traffic violation such as speeding, an illegal turn, expired registration and other violations of the transportation code.

The investigation into the firebombing of state Senator Wendy Davis' Fort Worth office on Tuesday has already nabbed a suspect.

At a press conference this morning, broadcast by WFAA in Dallas, Fort Worth police officers said last night they arrested a 40-year old homeless man, Cedric Steele. He faces charges of arson.

Caution Urged in Storm’s Aftermath

Storms pummeled the Austin area overnight. Mayor Lee Leffingwell has issued a statement “calling on Central Texans to be cautious and patient after storms moved through our city last night:”

Texas Governor Rick Perry has vowed that the Texas Women’s Health Program will continue – but questions persist as to where the state will find the money to do so without Washington.

Gov. Perry has tasked the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to work with state legislators to come up with the 30 million dollars needed to fund the program, which provides cancer screenings, health examinations and contraception to tens of thousands of low-income Texas women.

The funds are needed to replace federal Medicaid money that has been pulled out of the program due to a new Texas law that bars clinics that provide abortions or are affiliated with clinics that provide abortions from receiving funding. The federal funds have been pulled because Washington argues the law – designed to keep Planned Parenthood from participating in the program – is illegal.

Sherri Greenberg is a Professor at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. She told KUT News it’s not going to be easy to find the money, given the cuts that were made to the health department in the last legislative session.

Texas Gets a Low Grade in Corruption Protection

Federal Funding for Texas's Women's Health Program to be Phased Out

Texas officials got the letter they expected from the federal government Thursday: federal funding for the state’s Women’s Health Program will be phased out in the near future. The program provides basic health screenings and contraceptive coverage to more than a 100,000 low-income women in Texas.

The dispute stems from a state rule that would exclude Planned Parenthood clinics from providing services under the program. Cindy Mann directs the federal Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services.

Texas Challenges Voting Rights Act

Texas is challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that requires the state to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department for any change to voting procedures. Yesterday Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed that petition to a three-judge panel in Washington.

Springsteen Delivering Keynote at SXSW Music

Need another sign South by Southwest Music is underway? 

Bruce Springsteen will give his SXSW keynote speech tomorrow at the Austin Convention Center, noon.  KUT will stream the talk live, and later than night, Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band will perform in Austin via a special ticket drawing.

You can follow KUT’s continuing SXSW coverage on this blog and at kut.org.

New Contracts Consolidate State Data

The Texas Department of Information Resources announced it has signed new contracts consolidating the state’s data management and IT operations, dumping an existing contract with IBM.

The largest contract goes to a Dallas-based unit of the Xerox Corporation, known as ACS State and Local Solutions. In a press release on its website, the company says this is the largest project of its kind in the country.

Under an $848 million, eight-year contract, Xerox will help the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) streamline IT operations of state agencies by refreshing technology and combining operations from 28 separate facilities to two centralized data centers. The transformation will reduce the cost of running multiple data centers, and improve security and disaster recovery capabilities.

The Austin campus of tech-giant Apple is set to expand and offer thousands of new jobs, under an incentives package announced by Gov. Rick Perry today.

Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund is offering Apple a package totaling $21 million over ten years to “more than double” the size of its Texas workforce. The agreement would add over 3,600 jobs. The governor's announcement characterizes the new positions as "supporting the company’s growing operations in the Americas with expanded customer support, sales and accounting functions for the region."

In addition to creating the new jobs, Apple will also invest $304 million in improvements to their Northwest Austin campus.

Austin was selected to host the 2015 Cyclo-Cross National Championships. A press release on the USA Cycling website says the event will be held at Zilker Park.

The beautiful urban park will offer an exciting venue near the heart of downtown Austin, a thriving city with a strong cycling community recently rated one of the Top 20 Most Bike-Friendly Cities in America by Bicycling Magazine.