News

Standing on a stage inside Ballroom A of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center downtown, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro began his annual State of the City address by joking that people should pick up a copy of Vogue.

The mayor and his brother, Congressman Joaquín Castro, are featured in the March edition of the trendy fashion magazine.

Before long Castro was into a list of items he and the city council have taken up over the last year:

The deadline for candidates to file for the San Antonio City Council elections is Friday. So far,  District 4 is the only office with no candidates listed.

The incumbent, Rey Saldaña, said that’ll change Thursday when he runs for the office, quite literally.

The Stanford graduate and former Stanford Cardinal baseball player will run seven and a half miles, do nearly 100 push-ups, 170 squats and finish with 10 burpees – a sort of squat-push up combo.

Northside Independent School District has begun testing its radio frequency identification project on its buses. While the district has previously stressed that students are only tracked on the two campuses in the RFID pilot, the bus readers are not actively collecting data.

Out of its 850 buses, five special education buses in NISD now have the RFID readers installed. According to the district, that is to test functionality.

Border security is a critical part of comprehensive immigration reform, but a congressional hearing on Tuesday made it clear that there’s disagreement over what a secure border looks like. 

Since 9/11 he number of border agents has doubled on the southern border, 700 miles of fence was built and new technologies have been deployed like surveillance cameras and unmanned drones.

Bexar County Commissioners adopted a resolution Tuesday supporting Medicaid expansion for Texas residents, but commissioners know they have some convincing to do in Austin.

Local leaders are sending a message to lawmakers -- and the governor.

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff has been spending time in the state capital this year trying to convince lawmakers to stop referring to Medicaid expansion as "optional."

If Congress isn’t able to avoid the automatic $2.4 trillion budget cuts of sequestration, then border protection and legitimate border traffic could suffer.

"Certainly, without question. If on March 1 -- if sequestration does happen -- the Border Patrol will have reduced capability," said Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher testifying at a congressional hearing on border security on Tuesday.

Bexar County's only child advocacy center, ChildSafe, has announced a realignment to serve more children, but there are some challenges in the move.

For 23 years, ChildSafe has served child victims of sexual abuse, but the now it's expanding to provide services for children of physical abuse and neglect. The organization is one of the last advocacy centers in Texas to expand to this role.

President Kim Abernethy said she thinks that is because the center started with a major focus on sexual abuse.

Joint Base San Antonio has been working with its civilian workers to communicate the military’s instructions if sequestration kicks in this Friday.

A 20 percent across-the-board cut includes furloughs of federal employees at all military bases across the country.

That’s the bad news. The good news is the furloughs are part-time.

Joint Base San Antonio Spokesman Brent Boller said the sequester will cut $1.2 trillion from government spending, and about half of that will be cuts in Department of Defense spending.