Naked City

City Council Member Beverly Griffith announced Monday that she will not enter the mayor's race. Meanwhile, 20-year-old UT student Daniel Nazar has not officially entered the mayoral race, but notified the Chronicle that he will be running as an "Independent" -- a somewhat redundant declaration, given that City Council races are nonpartisan.

In recent months, cooperation between the city and Capital Metro on shuttle service hasn't been all that it could be, but the transit authority did its part to respond to the shutdown at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Cap Met says it shuttled more than 300 stranded passengers to area hotels, with specially trained Austin police officers behind the wheel -- lest the unthinkable happen here as it did in New York and D.C.

Austin's two hospital chains, St. David's Healthcare Partnership and Seton, were jointly awarded "Texas Employer of the Year" honors by the Texas Workforce Network. The Network, made up of the state's 28 local Workforce Development Boards, tapped Seton and St. David's for their joint project with Austin Community College to ramp up ACC's nursing program and respond to Central Texas' chronic shortage of nurses.

At the Brackenridge Hospital Oversight Council's next meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 18, the city of Austin will present the most recent version of their "hospital within a hospital" proposal. The city believes the plan -- which involves "taking back" the fifth floor of Brack from Seton Healthcare Network and turning it into a separate facility -- provides a workable plan for continuing contraception, tubal ligations, vasectomies, and other reproductive services at the Catholic-run hospital. Many questions remain about the hospital-within-a-hospital plan, from layout to capacity. Find out more at the meeting, which begins at 6pm at Town Lake Center Assembly Room, 721 Barton Springs Rd.

The FCC's equal time provisions, which would force potential mayoral candidate Sammy Allred to leave KVET-FM, apparently don't extend to the Web: KVET.com has a poll asking "Should Sammy Run for Mayor?" (The results so far: 309 yes, 77 no.)

Convicted murderer Harold Laird escaped from a Texas prison yesterday (perhaps the guards were mesmerized by footage of World Trade rubble) and was believed to have stolen a pickup truck containing a rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition. If Laird finds the time, he might consider selling the ammo -- at a discount, of course -- to Texans who are stockpiling in preparation for the Attack Part II: America Fights Back ...

Meanwhile, according to the Statesman, folks in Austin and elsewhere have gone absolutely insane in the aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, clearing store shelves of weapons, ammo, and flags. This might be a good time for Charlton Heston to run for public office ...

In other items of concern to gun nuts, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has postponed her scheduled lecture in Waco -- which was to be today (Thursday) -- in light of the terrorist tragedy on Tuesday. The very pro-gun Young Conservatives of Texas, which had planned a "counter-information" protest against the lecture, announced Wednesday that they already decided to postpone their activities as soon as Tuesday's news broke.