County Judge Brown to focus on diversion center, passenger rail in 2024

In January, Travis County Judge Andy Brown told the Austin Monitor that he intended to double down on overdose prevention efforts and the county’s work to build a mental health diversion center to help more people in crisis avoid jail time.

In December, Brown sat down with the Monitor again and confirmed not just his work on these subjects in 2023, but the broader business of running Travis County, including the bolstering of its social safety net, the passage of two historic road and parks bonds, and a winter ice storm that tested recent investments in infrastructure and emergency response.

With regard to emergency response, Brown said the county saw improvement in certain aspects during the February ice storm.

“So in emergencies, the county has to clear county roads so that emergency crews can get out,” Brown said. “That first storm we had not put our sand piles under a tarp, and so they were big ice buckets. This year they were not. And today they let me know that we’re using (anti-icing treatment) now, which apparently works more effectively on melting ice. These are important steps.”

In the short term, the county is working to ensure each of its four warming centers is equipped with emergency power backups. The county also added staff to its emergency services department.

“It’s such a lift having more natural disasters, and we need to staff accordingly,” Brown said. “I think in future years we’re going to see a need to have even more expansion, just because of what climate change is doing to us on the local level.”

This summer, the county and city declared a joint local state of emergency because of extreme wildfire risk. While the region avoided a major wildfire this year, Brown emphasized that the county must continue to coordinate regionally and with the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

“Despite my political differences with the state of Texas, we actually work well with TDEM making sure that our emergency services and the city of Austin wildland fire response groups are working together well,” he said.

In 2021, the Commissioners Court pledged $110 million of its American Rescue Plan Act funds to dozens of area nonprofits in an attempt to bolster the county’s social safety net. This year, the Commissioners Court allocated the remaining $51 million of the funding into mental health and addiction treatment, eviction prevention, food access, child care assistance and a trauma recovery center.

“The end result would be – after all that $110 million is out – would be about 1,500 units largely of supportive housing that the county will have added to the community when this is done,” Brown said.

“And that’s key, not only to making people’s lives better by having housing, but it’s also to help the diversion center efforts. Because if we don’t have that housing on the back end, diversion center efforts don’t work that great. Because then you just get a backup at the diversion center if you don’t have a place for people to go after.”

The county’s work to plan a full-scale diversion center is ongoing. However, a parallel effort to pilot a smaller-scale pilot program early next year is slated to start with approximately 25 beds.

“That should start in January, and then the bigger, more permanent one just as soon as we can get the building built,” he said.

Another of Brown’s priorities is tackling the opioid overdose epidemic as the number of accidental overdose deaths continues to rise. Bipartisan efforts at the Texas Legislature this year did not result in passage of a bill that would have increased access to fentanyl testing strips.

“The county – again, doing what the state should be doing – we put up another $300,000 for methadone services; we convinced Central Health in their budget process to add more capacity for methadone services,” Brown said.

The county is also partnering with the University of Texas’ TxCOPE, which is working to collect data from agencies across the region to understand where overdoses happen and better direct intervention services. Additionally, the county continues to distribute and raise awareness about Narcan in the community.

“I think still trying to create more awareness in general about the dangers of fentanyl, how it can be in any drug you use, and you should always have Narcan and not use alone,” he said.

When it comes to transportation, one of Brown’s ongoing priorities is working to support high-speed rail in Central Texas, which he hopes could materialize in the next three to five years. This summer, Texas Central and Amtrak announced a joint effort to build a high-speed passenger rail between Dallas and Houston.

“They have told me that the next step would be doing an environmental survey to build one from College Station to Austin to San Antonio, and then ideally to Monterrey someday,” Brown said. “My sense is that if Amtrak agrees to help fund that and includes that in this national high-speed rail plan, then that would be very likely.”

The big task in that case would likely be convincing the state of Texas to commit to contributing a share of the funding, he said.

“The other part that we’re actually working on building support among county governments from Bexar County, Travis, all the way up to Dallas, is just increased funding to expand Amtrak service on the existing rail, which is not as good in my opinion as building a brand-new one that is just passenger, but it’s better than what we have.”

Brown praised the court’s September decision to expand the county’s paid parental leave policy from eight to 12 weeks, noting that approximately 100 families have benefited from the policy so far.

In 2024, Brown said his top priorities will continue to be the mental health diversion center and passenger rail.

“I think (the diversion center) will affect all aspects of life here, I think it will make it a safer community,” he said. “It’ll get people the help they need. It’s something we should have done 20 years ago. And then continuing to work on passenger rail. I know that there’s a lot of support for it. It seems like, with the way the federal government is now, a real great opportunity to get our share of federal money towards improving passenger rail transportation.”

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