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- BG Reads 1.3.2025
BG Reads 1.3.2025
🟪 BG Reads - January 3, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
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January 3, 2025
➡️ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Marc Duchen readies to take his place on the dais for District 10 (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Despite deadly attack in New Orleans, Austin plans to reopen Sixth Street to vehicles (KUT)
🟪 With hotel conversions complete, Austin looks to fund hundreds more homeless housing units (Community Impact)
🟪 City Council has more time to decide on funding for I-35 “Caps” (Austin Chronicle)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🟪 On Monday January 6th: Austin City Council Swearing-In Ceremony
🟪 Review: The 2025 Austin Council Meeting Calendar
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
➡️ Marc Duchen readies to take his place on the dais for District 10 (Austin Monitor)
After besting his only opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Marc Duchen is getting ready to take the City Council District 10 seat. He will succeed Council Member Alison Alter, who is retiring after two terms.
Duchen represents a change in personality but has been in agreement with many of his predecessor’s ideas, particularly as they relate to development. He made clear during his campaign that he was opposed to many of the changes Council made in adopting HOME and HOME 2 ordinances. Those changes were intended to make it easier to build more housing in most of the city through changes to the Land Development Code.
As a leader of the Community Not Commodity group, Duchen became familiar with the changes HOME and HOME 2 proposed for the land code and spoke out against various aspects of those changes.
Duchen hopes to convince his colleagues to reinstate regulations that have prevented developers from adding as many structures within the wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas of the district as other areas. Those rules expired on Nov. 16, and Alter expressed hope that her colleagues would reinstate those rules after she leaves Council. Duchen said, “I think it’s absolutely worth trying to extend those.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Despite deadly attack in New Orleans, Austin plans to reopen Sixth Street to vehicles (KUT)
Austin officials have been considering whether to allow vehicles back onto a stretch of Sixth Street normally closed during weekend evenings. But after a man killed at least 15 people when he drove into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year's Day, many are questioning the idea.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said reopening the road could help police crack down on crime and make it easier to respond to calls for help.
Heading into the weekend, she said the department is increasing its presence throughout the city. But, she said, the incident in New Orleans will not stop the city from moving forward with its plan to reopen Sixth Street to traffic.
Davis also said closing the street requires a lot of resources and the department is struggling with officer shortages.
“Not only that, but the amount of calls for service, the amount of officers injured, the amount of uses of force – all those things are untenable," she told KUT. "We have to find ways to reduce that and look at risk to the police department, and this needs to be opened.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ With hotel conversions complete, Austin looks to fund hundreds more homeless housing units (Community Impact)
After several former hotel properties were reopened as supportive housing for homeless tenants in 2024, hundreds more apartments for clients exiting homelessness are expected to arrive in Austin over the years ahead.
The city's series of hotel conversions took place as part of a broader strategy to boost the local stock of permanent supportive housing, or PSH—units offering extended rental assistance and supportive services, such as health care and career assistance for homeless people with disabling conditions.PSH is viewed locally and nationally as among the best-performing homeless interventions. In Austin, nearly 100% of people who move into supportive housing either successfully maintain their space or move out into a stable living situation.“It’s a highly successful intervention. That being said, it’s also our most costly intervention, so that's why we’re trying to do some more work upstream," Homeless Strategy Officer David Gray said. "PSH is a worthwhile investment for folks who’ve been chronically homeless, have some type of underlying health condition and really need that long-term sustained care.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ City Council has more time to decide on funding for I-35 “Caps” (Austin Chronicle)
City Council now has more time to consider committing taxpayers to paying nearly a billion dollars for infrastructure projects that would improve the Texas Department of Transportation’s plan to expand I-35 through Central Austin.
Initially, TxDOT told Council they would need to commit to paying for “caps” over portions of the expanded highway by Dec. 12, but that deadline was pushed until March due to a delay in TxDOT securing a contract related to the highway expansion project. So, Council – including three new Council members, one of whom (Mike Siegel) has opposed the expansion project entirely – will vote on whether or not the city should pay $896 million to fund the caps.
The caps would essentially cover the new highway lanes built by TxDOT and create publicly owned land that could be used for a limited set of public amenities (like parks and small buildings) that would not be usable until 2031 at the earliest. Staff estimates, in their least expensive scenario, the city would need to find $87 million just to pay for limited amenities – either from the public or private sources... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
➡️ Republicans prepare fresh effort to ban local governments from using public funds for lobbying (Houston Public Media)
Republican state lawmakers will make another push to bar local governments from spending public funds on lobbying. A ban is all but certain to pass the Senate, but its prospects in the House are less clear. State Senator Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) has repeatedly sought to bar local governments from using tax dollars to hire lobbyists. He filed his latest version as Senate Bill 239. Five Republican House members have filed identical or similar bills.
"Over $70 million a year is spent on this right now, and it's always the first bill I file every single session because of that," Middleton said, "It’s an unethical practice, and It’s a waste of your local property tax dollars." Middleton argued that local governments too often use public funds to lobby against their citizens' own interests and wishes.
"Taxpayer-funded lobbyists, they lobby against property tax relief and reform," he said. "They lobby against election integrity. They’ve lobbied against border security. They even lobbied to get boys into girls' restrooms, locker rooms and showers."
Indeed, apart from property tax reform, most of the issues Middleton named – election law, immigration and border security, and LGBTQ rights – are ones on which Texans divide sharply along partisan lines. These are also issues on which Republican state leaders tend to split with Democratic leaders who represent the state's largest cities and counties.
The last several legislative sessions have seen Republican state leaders pass multiple bills restricting local government powers. The most notable has been House Bill 2127, also known as the "Death Star" law, which lets private entities sue Texas cities and counties over local regulations in any of eight broad areas that don’t have prior approval from the state Legislature.
Asked whether he would support a similar ban on corporate lobbying to protect shareholders and customers from having their money used for lobbying against their wishes, Middleton said there was no comparison… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
➡️ Apple to pay $95 million to settle lawsuit accusing Siri of eavesdropping (NPR)
Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.
The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.
The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, "Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ South Korean president defies arrest in standoff with officials over martial law order (NBC News)
South Korean authorities tried and failed Friday to carry out an unprecedented arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol over his botched attempt to declare martial law in a dramatic standoff at the presidential residence where Yoon has been staying since he was impeached last month.
Investigators and police officers began leaving Yoon’s official residence in central Seoul around 1:30 p.m. local time (11:30 p.m. Thursday ET), more than five hours after they first passed through the steel gates.
They said they had suspended the execution of the arrest warrant for the day “because we have concluded that it is impossible to execute it today,” citing safety concerns as they were blocked by Yoon’s presidential security detail.
“It is to our extreme regret that the suspect did not respond to the legal proceedings,” a joint team of investigators said in a statement… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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