Andrew Weber

Gov. Greg Abbott doubled down on his threat to intervene over Austin's homelessness ordinances. 

A month after her first official day on the job, Austin's homeless strategy officer, Lori Pampilo Harris, is quitting.

Threats of state intervention, confusion on the part of officers and indecision on the dais at City Hall have all led the Austin Police Department to rethink how it enforces laws regulating where people can sit, lie down and camp in public. 

Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said police are going to retool how they enforce laws that prohibit obstruction of sidewalks and public spaces and that he has asked the city to revert back to old rules on homelessness while it considers revising ordinances passed in June.

Gov. Greg Abbott says he's prepared to "unleash the full authority of every state agency" if Austin doesn't address issues surrounding homelessness by Nov. 1. 

There's an election this November. You'll have a slew of state constitutional propositions to decide on, but at the city level you'll have just two.

Here's what they'll do.

The Census Bureau released the latest batch of data from its American Communities Survey last week. The survey offers a glimpse into economic indicators, demographic shifts and population numbers.

It's a lot.

Here are a few items that stood out. 

Manchaca Road is no more.

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to block the City of Austin from changing the name of the South Austin road to honor a Texas revolutionary.

Mayor Steve Adler says the Austin City Council doesn't necessarily need to revise rules passed in June that effectively legalized camping, siting and lying down in public.

Blooms of blue-green algae on Lady Bird Lake persist, city officials said Wednesday.

After a brief decline in the neurotoxin-laden algae at Red Bud Isle, the Austin Watershed Department says, another swath of algae is covering as much as a quarter of the surface.

The Travis County Appraisal District said its computer systems were hacked Sept. 11 in a ransomware attack, but there's no evidence any data from appraisals was compromised. The district said it didn't pay any money to the attackers. 

Austin City Council members heard testimony on revisions to its homelessness rules ahead of an expected vote Friday that could reinstate restrictions on camping and resting in public.

City leaders have a new proposal to regulate behavior related to homelessness ahead of a possible City Council vote that could happen as soon as Wednesday.

Austin City Council members have presented plans to roll back city laws passed in June that effectively allowed camping, sitting or lying down in public. Council members will consider the changes, which limit that behavior at specific locations, at their Sept. 19 meeting.

Austin's third forum on homelessness this summer began with a benediction, of sorts, from moderator Jack Musselman: that all people are created in God's image, and that the forum, hosted by St. Edward's University, would be civil and comport to the university's Catholic mission.

The guy from InfoWars apparently wasn't there for that benediction.

City officials released additional guidelines Friday on how to limit homeless encampments in Austin – including spatial limitations on sidewalks and along waterways. The memo from the city manager and the Homeless Strategy Office is meant to guide the Austin City Council as it rolls out a plan to limit resting and camping in public.

Travis County is in the home stretch in its yearslong effort to establish a public defender office for low-income adult defendants. The Texas Indigent Defense Commission on Thursday OK'd a four-year grant to establish the office in the county – the largest jurisdiction in the country without such an office.

The University of Texas Police Department is calling on city leaders to ban camping on public space near the Forty Acres.

Austin voters will decide in November the fate of the convention center's expansion, along with a possible reshuffling of how the city spends money from hotel stays.

Austin's mayor and members of the City Council tried to allay fears about the city's revised rules on homelessness and its push to expand shelter space, at a forum hosted by the Downtown Austin Alliance.

Large and small cities in Texas are becoming increasingly vulnerable to measles outbreaks as more parents exempt their children from required vaccinations, according to a new study from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

The Austin City Council provided some clarity Tuesday over where it will limit camping and resting in public, as well as its overall strategy to boost citywide, housing-focused initiatives and investments.

Austin will re-examine its new rules governing homelessness, according to a memo released Friday.

The memo sent to the City Council on behalf of Austin's Homelessness Strategy Office says the city could abandon its idea to make space for emergency encampments in every City Council district.

Austin police arrested a man carrying an assault rifle, a pistol, a knife and a baton at Pease Park on Wednesday. 

The suspect was identified in an Austin Police Department affidavit as 23-year-old Dalton Broesche. He was arrested for unlawfully carrying a weapon, a Class A misdemeanor, and has an outstanding warrant for aggravated assault in Harris County.

Austin is being sued over wording for a petition-driven referendum on the city's $1.2 billion expansion of the convention center and its use of hotel tax revenue.

The City of Austin says it has found potentially dangerous blue-green algae blooms at Auditorium Shores and Barton Creek downstream from Barton Springs Pool. The algae samples contain neurotoxins that are similar to those found earlier this month at Red Bud Isle, but the city says the concentration of neurotoxins is higher.