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BG Reads 1.26.2024

BG Reads 1.26.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - January 26, 2024

January 26, 2024

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January 26, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

✅ Austin school board hires Matias Segura as superintendent

✅ Public improvement districts on track to return in Travis County

✅ The U.S. economy boomed in 2023, thanks to consumers opening up wallets

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

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]

Austin school board hires Matias Segura as superintendent (Austin American-Statesman)

Matias Segura, who has led the Austin district in a temporary capacity for more than a year, will be the next permanent superintendent of the 73,000-student district.

Board members, who voted unanimously to approve Segura's contract, hope the appointment will bring stability to a district that's undergone significant leadership changes in the last four years.

Segura steps into the position as the district juggles several weighty needs, including funding constraints, continued post-pandemic academic recovery, the rollout of a $2.4 billion bond and state-mandated oversight of the district's chronic special education shortcomings.

After the unanimous vote, the board members praised Segura... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Money for city parks, facilities dwindling (Austin Monitor)

James Snow, director of Capital Delivery Services for the city, on Wednesday gave the City Council Audit and Finance Committee a detailed view of how money has been spent from bonds approved by voters in 2006, 2012 and 2018, with an emphasis on parks, libraries, museums and cultural facilities.

The city is more dependent on bond money for parks than in the past because the Texas Legislature recently passed a law preventing the city from collecting park development funds from developers of commercial, multifamily and hotel-motel developments. The law also sharply decreased the amount of parkland the city can require.

Even though the city is seeing few dollars in its coffers for buying parkland, Chief Financial Officer Ed Van Eenoo has warned Council that the city would not be in a financial position to offer more bonds until 2026. Council Member Alison Alter, who chairs the committee, has expressed particular concern about where the city would find the money for more parkland acquisition… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Public improvement districts on track to return in Travis County (Austin Business Journal)

Developers behind large-scale projects in Travis County will soon have another tool at their disposal.

Travis County Commissioners plan to reintroduce public improvement districts, or PIDs, at the start of February. PIDs allow counties and cities to levy additional taxes on a site to fund specific project-related improvements. They are used in other counties across the region to help cover some costs to developers.

Designed for long-term projects, including master-planned communities, a PID can be used to pay for community enhancements such as road construction, wastewater collection, landscaping, water distribution systems and more.

Travis County will reopen the application process on Feb. 1 for the program that has been under review for nearly a year. A moratorium was put in place on new applications at the onset of the pandemic when the county paused non-essential construction… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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

[TEXAS NEWS]

Republican senator who voted to acquit Paxton wants Senate to consider reopening impeachment proceedings (Texas Tribune)

A Republican state senator who voted to acquit Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial last year wants the Senate to consider restarting proceedings now that the attorney general is no longer fighting the whistleblower claims in court that were central to the trial.

The bombshell request came in a letter Thursday from retiring state Sen. Drew Springer to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and his Senate colleagues.

“At this stage, and the point of this letter, I am asking the Senate whether there is a legal mechanism to reopen the impeachment proceedings,” Springer wrote. “Failure to at least consider this possibility runs the risk of AG Paxton making a mockery of the Texas Senate.”

Springer’s letter came days after Paxton announced he would not contest the facts of the whistleblower lawsuit in an attempt to end it without having to testify under oath. The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by a group of former top deputies who said they were improperly fired for telling federal authorities they believed Paxton was abusing his office to help a wealthy friend and donor, Nate Paul... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Sen. John Cornyn backs Donald Trump after previously questioning his ability to win (Dallas Morning News)

After previously casting doubt on Donald Trump’s ability to win a general election, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, says it’s time for Republicans to rally behind the former president’s 2024 campaign for the White House. Cornyn issued his rallying cry on social media minutes after The Associated Press called Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary for Trump. “To beat Biden, Republicans need to unite around a single candidate, and it’s clear that President Trump is Republican voters’ choice,” Cornyn wrote on X. The state’s senior senator had a strikingly different take during a call with Texas reporters last May, when he was asked by The Dallas Morning News about Trump’s recent performance during a CNN town hall.

“We need to come up with an alternative,” Cornyn said then. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by, and what’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win.” A Trump campaign spokesman returned fire at the time, calling Cornyn part of the “deep state rotting through government.” Cornyn focused last year’s objections to Trump on his lack of electability and characterized the former president as overly concerned about satisfying his most enthusiastic supporters. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base,” Cornyn said during the May call. On Wednesday, Cornyn offered a rosier assessment of Trump’s prospects while chatting with reporters at the U.S. Capitol… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

The U.S. economy boomed in 2023, thanks to consumers opening up wallets (Washington Post)

The U.S. economy probably grew at a brisk pace in 2023, shaking off recession fears and offering an upbeat picture of consumers and businesses ahead of a pivotal election year. Fresh government data this morning is expected to show that the economy expanded by 2.7 percent last year, according to economists polled by Bloomberg News, a comparatively strong pace that matches gross domestic product figures notched most years leading into a presidential election year, going back four decades. Although growth probably slowed in the last three months of the year — to about 2 percent, down from the a sweltering 4.9 percent in the previous quarter — the economy has soundly returned to stable footing following a period of dramatic pandemic-fueled swings that marked 2020 through early 2022.

“The doom and gloom the prevailed last year has been swept aside,” said Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, global chief economist at Boston Consulting Group. “The pessimism has been punted out, quarter after quarter.” The economy’s resilience has been driven by vigorous consumer spending. A strong job market and rising wages have made it possible for many households to keep shelling out — particularly on services such as entertainment, travel and dining out — even at a time of elevated inflation. That spending by everyday Americans is expected to have accounted for 80 percent of the economy’s growth in the fourth quarter, according to estimates from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Increased government spending, particularly at the state and local levels, also probably lifted the latest GDP reading, which sums up the goods and service produced in the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, a drop in exports as well as declining private and residential investments are expected to drag down the latest reading… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin on the city’s ‘hard turn to the right’ (Politico)

Chesa Boudin was San Francisco’s top prosecutor for less than three years. In that short time he became a potent symbol of a movement to rethink crime and punishment’s promise — and its perils.

The public defender and son of leftist radicals who spent years in prison for their roles in a deadly armed robbery was elected district attorney on a platform of cutting incarceration and cracking down on rogue cops. It didn’t last long. He was ousted in a 2022 recall election fomented by a potent blend of crime fears fanned by increases in homicides and property crimes, Covid-era frustration and Boudin’s practice of diverting offenders.

Yet the larger progressive approach to criminal justice Boudin embodied endures, pursued by district attorneys around the country. At the same time, public safety has become a politically volatile issue that Republicans eagerly and often effectively use as a bludgeon. Some wary Democrats in blue states like New York and California have begun to retreat by reversing changes to bail and the discovery process and mulling tougher property crime penalties, marking yet another turn in a decadeslong push and pull… (LINK TO FULL STORY)