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BG Reads 1.25.2024

BG Reads 1.25.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - January 25, 2024

January 25, 2024

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January 25, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

✅ Austin among metros in the US with steepest rent declines

✅ BG Podcast Ep. 233 featuring Jack Craver of the Austin Politics Newsletter

✅ Acevedo won't be taking on police oversight role in Austin, but should someone?

✅ Texas’ border standoff with feds continues, despite U.S. Supreme Court order

Read on!

🎙️ BG Podcast Weekly Recap EP. 233 (Week of 1.15.2024)

On this episode Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham and Associate Hannah Garcia wrap up the week of January 15th, 2024 in Austin politics.

Topics include:

✅ Austin Council reaction to Art Acevedo hire

✅ Former Council Member Kathie Tovo running for mayor

✅ A guest feature from Jack Craver of the Austin Politics Newsletter

LISTEN ON: SoundCloud, YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Council moves to extend police pay package, incentivize bargaining (Austin Monitor

City Council recently directed the city manager to extend the package of pay and benefits for police enacted last year in the face of stalled labor contract negotiations. With the Austin Police Association still refusing to return to the bargaining table, Council also directed the city manager to implement a controversial bonus program for officers that incentivizes the union to bargain.

Council approved the measure as part of its consent agenda at its Jan. 18 meeting. Mayor Kirk Watson anticipates Council will vote on the extension ordinance at its next meeting, on Feb. 1, according to a recent issue of his Watson Wire newsletter.

The extension, as envisioned by Council, would guarantee officers’ current salaries and benefits for another year after the current pay package expires on March 31. APA President Michael Bullock, a senior officer at the Austin Police Department, told the Austin Monitor such a move is “an important signal to officers that there will be some stability.”

The extension also would maintain financial incentives for new cadets and for current APD officers in an effort to alleviate staffing shortages.

In a new development, however, the extension ordinance also would include bonuses related to the labor contract negotiation process, providing each officer $500 if APA returns to the bargaining table and another $2,500 if an agreement is reached by June 30, according to the Watson Wire.

Both APA leadership and police reform advocates question this logic… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin among metros in the US with steepest rent declines (Austin Business Journal)

Housing affordability has been a persistent challenge in recent years — for homebuyers and apartment renters alike.

And in 2023, renters in the Austin metro saw some of the steepest declines in rental rates in the entire country, according to Rent.com's December market report. The median rent in Austin last month clocked in at $1,985, a 12.5% decrease from the $2,270 the service reported in December 2022. Of the 50 largest metros in the country, only Salt Lake City saw a greater year-over-year decrease in rental rates with an almost 21% decrease.

Data from RealPage Inc. came to a similar conclusion. As of November, the Austin area ranked No. 2 in the nation for percentage declines in rental rates, according to RealPage data. The average monthly asking rent in Austin in the third quarter was $1,608, down from $1,653 in the second quarter, according to the data… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Acevedo won't be taking on police oversight role in Austin, but should someone? (KUT)

While Art Acevedo will not be taking a City Hall job overseeing Austin Police, there's general consensus something needs to be done to get the department back on track.

What that looks like is the question.

The Austin Police Department has more than 350 vacancies. The union has been in a stalemate with the city over a long-term labor contract. The department has been without an official chief since Joseph Chacon retired in September.

Several City Council members told KUT they’d like to explore a few different options, including creating a position to solely focus on the police department.

“It is clear that we have persistent issues within the department — whether it's training, staffing or other things — that require some kind of new action,” Council Member Ryan Alter said. “But I don’t believe there is a silver bullet answer here."

Council Member Chito Vela said the idea of having an assistant city manager who just focuses on the police is interesting and should be discussed further. But it should not be Acevedo.

"The public safety portfolio is huge," he said. "There is so much going on there, and it's really too much for one person to manage.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Click here for this week’s Austin public meeting meeting times and agendas.

[TEXAS NEWS]

San Antonio's open 2025 mayoral race draws field of early birds (San Antonio Report)

Ron Nirenberg has another 16 months left in his final term as mayor, but political jockeying to succeed him is already ramping up among members of the City Council and bleeding over into the council’s daily operations. So far four sitting council members — Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), Manny Pelaez (D8) and John Courage (D9) — have signaled interest in the May 2025 race. By the end of the week, at least two of them will have publicly declared intentions to run, while a third is still reeling from a profile-raising policy endeavor gone awry.

“If you say that you’re running, you get a certain level of attention from lobbyists and interest groups,” said Rocha Garcia, who is not among those racing to start a mayoral campaign. She has one more term of eligibility representing her Southside district and plans to make a decision on entering the mayor’s race sometime this summer.

“I’m trying not to be distracted by it because we’re still about a year out, and there are so many things that we have to focus on,” she said. On Thursday, Courage plans to formally launch his mayoral campaign on the City Hall steps after the council’s meeting. The longtime Democratic activist was reelected to his fourth and final term in one of the city’s most conservative Northside districts with 63% of the vote in May.

Last Friday Cabello Havrda, in her third term representing the West Side, told an audience at a Dream Week event that she is angling to make history in a city that hasn’t yet elected a Hispanic woman as its leader. “They told me Westside girls don’t become lawyers … but I proved them wrong. They told me it’s too late in life to get an MBA, it’s too late in life to start a business, but I proved them wrong,” Cabello Havrda said at the event. “… They’re also telling me there has never been a Latina mayor, but I am determined to prove them wrong.”

Those moves come as Pelaez, who is term-limited from seeking reelection in his Northwest district, spent the past month rolling out and then walking back support for a City Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in Israel’s war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas’ border standoff with feds continues, despite U.S. Supreme Court order (Texas Tribune)

The Texas National Guard and state troopers are still rolling out concertina wire and preventing Border Patrol agents from accessing most of Shelby Park, a 47-acre Eagle Pass park that sits on the bank of the Rio Grande where thousands of migrants have crossed.

Those continued efforts come despite the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week vacating a lower court’s decision that prevented Border Patrol agents from cutting the state’s concertina wire to apprehend people who already crossed the river.

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 order didn’t give any reason and didn’t explicitly say Border Patrol agents were allowed to access the park or that the state had to remove the concertina wire. So the state has doubled down and some Republican lawmakers have said Texas should defy the Supreme Court’s ruling.

On Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott, defended his actions, saying Texas has the right to continue doing what it's doing. He added, without providing evidence, that President Biden has been refusing to enforce current immigration laws.

"President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress," Abbott said in a statement. "Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Trump racks up endorsements from Republicans in Congress as any resistance that once existed fades (Associated Press)

Long before Donald Trump announced his campaign to retake the White House, he launched a quieter campaign to rack up Republican endorsements.

In early 2021, after Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden and inspired a mob of supporters to attack the Capitol trying to overturn the 2020 election, the defeated president started laying the groundwork for the support in Congress he would need for a return.

With lavish three-hour dinners hosted at his private clubs, telephone town-hall fundraisers, rides on his private jet and endorsements of his own up and down the ballot, Trump schmoozed and strategized and wined-and-dined his way to the GOP lawmakers’ support… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

‘They’ve all turned their backs on her’: Haley hosts a homecoming in a hostile state (Politico)

Nikki Haley returned to South Carolina on Wednesday as a political outcast in her own home.

Seeking to regain her footing a day after her defeat in the New Hampshire primary, the former South Carolina governor urged supporters at a rally here to show up for her as they had done more than a dozen years ago, when they sent her to the governor’s office.

But the terrain for Haley in her home state has never seemed more forbidding. It’s not only that Haley is polling 30 points behind Donald Trump in her home state. Or that her state’s Republican leadership has overwhelmingly flocked to Trump. It’s that as the campaign unfolded over the past two weeks, even one-time allies like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina have elected instead to endorse Trump… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Defense startups risk becoming ‘Failed Experiment’ without more Pentagon dollars (The Wall Street Journal)

Venture capitalists have poured more than $100 billion into U.S. defense-technology startups since 2021, banking on government interest in upgrading the military.

Convincing the Pentagon to buy from Silicon Valley has proven difficult.

Washington and Silicon Valley have for years tried to forge a more lucrative partnership, and the rise of China and conflicts in Ukraine and Israel showcasing modern technology have made military leaders more anxious to modernize their arsenals. At the same time, many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, who historically have shunned military work, are increasingly enthusiastic about becoming a part of the country’s war infrastructure.

Reflecting the new rhetoric of mutual benefit, there have been more venture-capital luncheons and salons in Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley tours by defense officials. There is one problem: Defense Department dollars haven’t kept up.

Only a very small number of U.S. defense startups had more than $25 million in government orders last fiscal year, according to government data. Traditional defense contractors typically get billions of dollars from the Defense Department annually.

“If there is not a shift in the concentration of contracts still going to the top defense primes toward these new vendors, this VC investment will dry up,” said Michael Brown, a venture investor with Shield Capital and the former director of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Silicon Valley outpost of the Defense Department… (LINK TO FULL STORY)