BG Reads 10.17.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - October 17, 2024

October 17, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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October 17, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Child care costs as much as a semester at UT. Travis County wants to make it cheaper. (KUT)

🟪 Austin has ‘healthy supply’ of hotel rooms ahead of busy Formula 1, SEC game weekend (KXAN)

🟪 Canceling subscriptions has to be as easy as signing up, FTC says in a new rule (NPR)

Read On!

  • Item Highlight, #47: Discussion and possible action to ratify a proposed five-year Meet and Confer Agreement with the Austin Police Association relating to wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment for police officers of the Austin Police Department.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 The Austin Council has four (4) regular meetings left in 2024

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 2 - Video (9.26.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 4 - Video (9.19.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: Mayor - Video (10.3.2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Child care costs as much as a semester at UT. Travis County wants to make it cheaper. (KUT)

Travis County is asking voters to approve a tax rate increase this election to address the growing need for affordable child care.

The ballot measure — Travis County Proposition A — comes at a cost to taxpayers. If the 2.5 cent per $100 valuation tax rate increase passes, it’ll add about $126 to the average Travis County homeowner’s annual property tax bill. (Renters will indirectly pay for that added cost through their rent.)

The first bucket of funding will fill a gap in affordable child care slots. Travis County Judge Andy Brown estimates almost 3,000 kids under 3 lack access to child care, and there’s a two-year-long waitlist for affordable options.

County officials estimate the tax rate increase would fund about 1,900 new slots for infants and toddlers and 3,900 slots for after-school and summer programs.

Those slots would be available for families earning 85% or less of the median family income. For a family of four, that’s an annual income of around $100,000.

It will also fill funding gaps in the state’s child care subsidy program. The reimbursement rates to child care providers for children that rely on state subsidies do not cover the true cost of child care, Cathy McHorse, a coalition manager for Affordable Childcare Now, said. Affordable Childcare Now is a coalition convened by United Way of Greater Austin to support Prop A.

The second bucket of funding would help child care centers expand their hours beyond the typical 9-5 workday… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin has ‘healthy supply’ of hotel rooms ahead of busy Formula 1, SEC game weekend (KXAN)

Austin is days away from thousands of more visitors to the city for an eventful weekend.

Formula 1 weekend at the Circuit of the Americas is on Oct. 18-20. During that same time, the Georgia Bulldogs will face the No. 1 Texas Longhorns in Austin on Oct. 19.

Austin’s airport said it expects around 44,000 passengers to fly out on the Monday after.

“For four years in a row, the F1 weekend has been record breaking for us here at AUS,” said AUS public information office manager Kimmie Hey.

“With it coinciding with the SEC game, UT versus Georgia, we expect to continue that record breaking weekend.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Incumbent Mackenzie Kelly faces Krista Laine in D6 race (Austin Monitor)

Council Member Mackenzie Kelly and her lone challenger, Krista Laine, will go head to head in the Nov. 5 election. Kelly touts her credentials as a promoter of all things public safety, while Laine says she will do better for the district in that area as well as others.

One factor favoring Laine is that she is a Democrat and Kelly a Republican. Only one of the city’s eight Council districts offers Republicans a chance to be elected, and that’s District 6 in Northwest Austin. Although Republicans won in the original districts 8 and 10 in 2014, as the maps have been revised and the candidates have changed, no Republican has been elected in D8 or D10 since then.

And D6 has become more mainstream with some Republicans being moved into District 10, according to Republican Party Chair Mack Mackowiak. District 6 first elected Republican firebrand Don Zimmerman, then Democrat Jimmy Flannigan, and in 2020 chose Kelly… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Greater Austin YMCA aims for solutions to high child care and housing costs  (Austin Business Journal)

Add the Greater Austin YMCA to the roster of entities attempting to help alleviate two of the biggest problems vexing the region — the rising cost of child care and too little affordable housing.

Addressing both are key components of the nonprofit's 2030 Vision plan, in which it aims to expand the services it offers in Central Texas. Kathy Kuras, president and CEO of the Greater Austin YMCA, said child care and housing are two of the main concerns that the organization has heard from the community.

The YMCA plans to expand efforts to provide low-cost child care — which include infant to pre-K education as well as after school programs — by opening a series of "Tomorrow Academies" that ideally would be built at existing YMCAs, Kuras said.

The first Tomorrow Academy is expected to open in the Four Points area of Austin in early 2025, thanks to a $3 million gift from the Schmetterling Foundation. If all goes as planned, a string of YMCA child care centers will follow in the next few years, Kuras said.

The cost of each Tomorrow Academy could range from $1.5 million to $3 million to develop, a YMCA spokesperson said, but the YMCA is exploring partnerships to hopefully do it for less.

Overall, the YMCA aims to grow its endowment from $4.9 million to $9 million, and its annual fundraising revenue from $1.3 million to $6 million by 2030, the spokesperson said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

In wake of Ken Paxton’s acquittal, Senate mulls changing rules for impeachment (Dallas Morning News)

Work has begun on legislation to change state impeachment proceedings, a Texas Senate committee was told Tuesday. After the Senate voted last year to acquit Attorney General Ken Paxton of impeachment charges, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick criticized the process as rushed, secretive and unfair to the accused.

Patrick followed by directing the Senate State Affairs Committee to study and propose changes to the impeachment process when the Legislature meets next year. During a State Affairs meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, said he has been drafting laws to address what he saw as flaws in the process.

Birdwell’s input is notable. The six-term senator chaired the committee that drafted the rules governing Paxton’s trial in the Senate. Birdwell was not at the Capitol Tuesday due to a COVID-19 illness, according to Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who read aloud a letter from Birdwell. Last year, Patrick, who presided over Paxton’s trial, criticized the impeachment as “rammed through” the House without due process.

The House voted 121-23 to impeach Paxton two days after its General Investigating Committee unveiled 20 articles of impeachment accusing the attorney general of corruption and misusing his office.

Patrick has called for the Texas Constitution to be amended to require evidentiary hearings and a slower House impeachment process. “This is not a partisan issue,” Patrick said at the end of Paxton’s trial. “We owe it to future legislatures to make these changes so no future official impeached by the House, whether Republican, Democrat or independent, is subject to the way this impeachment process occurred in the House this year.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Canceling subscriptions has to be as easy as signing up, FTC says in a new rule (NPR)

Health clubs that demand membership cancellations by certified mail or in person. Cable subscriptions that require lengthy calls to customer service, where representatives aggressively dissuade from cancellation.

Federal regulators say they receive around 70 complaints a day about charges for subscriptions that are either arduous to cancel or that people didn't realize they accepted in the first place.

Now, a new U.S. rule will require retailers, gyms and other businesses to make canceling subscriptions as easy as enrolling in them, and to make the subscription process more transparent.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday released a final rule called "click to cancel," which says online subscriptions should require the same amount of clicks to end as they do to sign up, and in-person signups should have an option to cancel online or over the phone... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Georgia judge blocks elections rules backed by Pro-Trump Republicans (Reuters)

A judge on Wednesday overturned controversial changes to Georgia election rules made by a Republican-controlled state board, the latest defeat for allies of Donald Trump seeking to change how the battleground state's votes are counted in the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.

Judge Thomas Cox struck down a half-dozen new rules that were described by Republicans as necessary election security measures but opposed by Democrats, who said they were aimed at impeding certification of results in a state that could be crucial in selecting the next president.

Cox said the rules, including ones that would have empowered local officials to investigate irregularities and examine troves of documents related to the vote, contradicted state law.

"The rules at issue exceed or are in conflict with specific provisions of the Election Code. Thus, the challenged rules are unlawful and void," Cox wrote.

Cox's ruling is final, though it could be appealed. The judge directed the election board to immediately remove the new rules from its rolls and inform election officials that they were invalid... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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