Travis County Judge Andy Brown Pledges Continued Focus on Health Care, Passenger Rail in 2025

For the past two years, Travis County Judge Andy Brown has told the Austin Monitor he wants to double down on overdose prevention, mental health care and passenger rail. Looking ahead to 2025, these priorities have not changed – but significant progress has been made in these areas.

After a an ideation process lasting several yearsThe county’s long-awaited diversion program has transcended guesswork and made landfall in 2024. In August, Integral Care’s Airport Boulevard walk-in clinic began offering 24/7 care, increased peer support services and access to psychiatric prescriptions for people in mental health crisis who interact with first responders. Instead of taking these people directly to jail or the hospital, where neither would provide the lasting health care they need, EMS and APD can now drop them off at a stabilization specifically designed to alleviate mental health crises. Soon, the county hopes to provide long-term services and supportive housing.

“We are making good progress – we have contracted to hire someone to help us design and build the diversion center,” Brown said. “The idea is that the voluntary facility would provide them with mental health treatment, they could receive medication and then if they need a place to stay while we try to find housing, they can stay in that location on 15th Street for up to 90 days.”

As for the physical diversion center that could provide longer-term care, Brown says the plan is to ask the Legislature for permission to build on the newly renovated State Hospital campus. ‘Austin.

“Who knows how long it will take, but I think we will have a lot of ducks in a row once the session is over, assuming we are successful,” he said.

As for Brown’s other public health priority, overdose prevention, county medical examiner data shows overdose-related deaths are declining — a trend reflected nationally — which Brown says is a result of the county’s persistence on the issue. More good news in this area came this month, as the county received a federal grant continue such work.

“Right now, people are eight times more likely to die of an overdose six months after leaving prison than people in our general community. “We don’t have perfect data, so we don’t know the exact circumstances of every person who overdoses – but what we do know for sure is that more people die when they leave prison.” he declared. “This grant will dedicate $1.6 million to our efforts to work with (these) people and also, very importantly, to give them access to longer-acting medications (like methadone, for the treatment of disorders related to opioid use). So this is a targeted program that will help us save lives in an area that we know needs help.

Brown says collaborative efforts between the county, Austin Public Health and the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance to introduce more Narcan, an overdose-fighting drug, into the community have led to a drop in deaths.

“But there are still people who overdose – investing more money to make more mental health services available, supportive housing and other efforts to provide people with the mental health care they need needs are more important than ever, so this has to be my number one priority,” he said “I think this will really change our community and have an effect on everything from homelessness to. levels of crime through the living situation of people. People will be able to stay in stable housing if we meet their mental health needs.

Travis County and Austin are no strangers to tough battles with the Texas Legislature and have withstood targeted attacks on their ability to pass progressive policies for years. But the new Trump administration will pose potentially greater and as-yet-unknown threats to county operations, particularly regarding federal funding for local projects.

“The reality is we continue to receive unfunded mandates from the state,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t be sitting here talking about mental health diversion if the state was adequately meeting its requirements for providing mental health care to the indigent.

“We’re trying to make Travis County a safer place where people’s needs are met – from child care, to mental health access, to overdose risk education. And it is on these points that Parliament does not seem to agree with us. I am very concerned about what the Trump administration and the continuation of the Republican legislature means for citizens’ access to basic things like health care.

This year the county saw the adoption of a radical investment in child care tax rate this will fill gaps in state funding, increasing the number of providers and offering more hours of child care outside of the traditional 9-5.

“I am very pleased that Travis County voters have decided to support investing in affordable child care in large numbers. Funding begins in January, and in the first year we will fund a large number of large existing child care providers, then in the second year we will launch a competitive process to award specific awards to new child care providers. child care in an attempt to address child care deserts across the county.

There is one priority issue that Brown believes will get support from both sides of the aisle in the upcoming legislative session: passenger rail.

“There appears to be no inherent disagreement about the need for better passenger rail service in Texas,” he said. “I hope there are a lot of people, including our U.S. senators and members of Congress from the other party who were big supporters of Trump and very happy with his victory, who are interested in more rail service travelers.”

There is already $66 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding for rail projects across the country, but Texas must provide 20 percent of the funding.the Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee indicated it may need to come from a mix of private investorsbut Brown still has his sights set on the Legislature for some of that.

“If we can find the money to do this, that would mean that instead of going 30 to 60 miles an hour between Austin and Taylor, trains could go 100 miles an hour,” Brown said . “So we’re trying to find a sponsor for the bill – the idea would be that we would have to find 20 percent locally, and then the federal government would pay 80 percent. It’s hope.

On this issue, Brown is cautiously optimistic – but in general, he is realistic: “I think we need to be careful. We must be prepared to meet the challenges that the federal government may present and we must work together as a community to ensure that we stand up to the federal government when necessary and take care of our residents with the resources we have here locally. I believe this will require continued collaboration between the city, county and Central Health and CommunityCare. This is definitely a time when we all need to step up, work together and make sure we are doing everything we can to help our residents.

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