BG Reads 10.21.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - October 21, 2024

October 21, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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www.binghamgp.com

October 21, 2024

➡️ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Early voting runs today until Friday, November 1st.

🟪 City of Austin public meetings + agendas for the week of October 21st.

🟪 40,000 passengers expected to depart Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (KVUE)

🟪 Huston-Tillotson seeks to expand to California, open first undergraduate HBCU in West Coast (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Texas adds record number of jobs, boosting state’s labor force to a high of 15.5M (San Antonio Express-News)

Read On!

🗳️ Early voting begins today until Friday, November 1st. To find voting locations and sample ballots, visit:

  • 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]

🟪 Tomorrow 9AM - Austin City Council Work Session (Agenda)

🟪 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]

➡️ 40,000 passengers expected to depart Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (KVUE)

Lesly Ramirez, a public information officer for the airport, says 36,000 people left Sunday from Austin, while 40,000 are saying "goodbye" Monday. 

"The most important thing is to remember to arrive at least 2.5 hours before your domestic flight and 3 for international. But given how busy it is, it's really important to understand what are traffic conditions going to be like," Ramirez said. 

Ramirez warns people of the dangers of arriving more than four hours before your flight. 

"It's no secret that we're kind of pressed for space here at our airport," Ramirez said... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Ballot measure asks taxpayers to help fund access to affordable child care (Austin Monitor)

In May of this year, Travis County committed to a broad investment in child care with the Creating Access for Resilient Families, or CARES initiative. To fund that care sustainably, the county will ask voters on Nov. 5 to approve a 2.5-cent property tax increase, which would generate an estimated $75.8 million and raise the average homeowner’s taxes by about $288 a year.

In a press conference May 13, Travis County Judge Andy Brown said, “We hear frequently from families who are struggling to meet just basic needs. That’s why we are taking this next big step so we can alleviate this financial burden for working families and ensure that every child, regardless of socioeconomic status, has access to the nurturing care they deserve.”

During the pandemic, child care facilities were supported by the Texas Workforce Commission’s Child Care Relief Fund program, which distributed $3.5 billion of federal grant dollars to providers. By 2023, that funding ended, and a staggering 44 percent of child care providers reported that they were at risk of closing within the year... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Huston-Tillotson seeks to expand to California, open first undergraduate HBCU in West Coast (Austin American-Statesman)

Huston-Tillotson University, a private historically Black college in Austin, is expanding to California in an effort to make HBCU education accessible to students on the West Coast and to further bolster the workforce in Texas.

The faith-based university plans to secure approval for a branch campus from the necessary California agencies by August 2025, President Melva Wallace told the American-Statesman, but it has received approval to start offering coursework remotely to California students, which it plans to start doing in January.

California has no historically Black undergraduate colleges. Texas has 10 such institutions, and Huston-Tillotson is the closest undergraduate HBCU in the nation to California, Wallace said.

Texas has seen an influx of former California residents, and Melva said she thinks this partnership will help strengthen the workforce pipeline even more.

"If it's working for the corporate and workforce, why don't we take the lead on building the pipeline for workforce by training more California students to enter into the workforce here?" Wallace asked. "Being the first undergraduate HBCU in California, it's just an amazing thing.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Austin's previously secret 'G-files' on police misconduct are now public. Here's what that means. (KUT)

More than a year after Austin voters OK'd a measure to make them public, the so-called "G-files" of police officers accused of misconduct are now available to the public.

Disclosure of these disciplinary files was a sticking point in discussions around the voter-approved Austin Police Oversight Act and the city's tentative labor agreement with the Austin Police Department. The police union argued disclosing them violated state law. Criminal justice advocates argued for transparency and pointed out other departments in Texas already disclose the files. A judge ruled last month the city didn't need to keep the files secret… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

➡️ Texas adds record number of jobs, boosting state’s labor force to a high of 15.5M (San Antonio Express-News)

Texas’ labor force hit a new high in September with 15.45 million people on the job or looking for work — and the state added a record number of jobs. More than 29,000 jobs were added last month, bringing the total to 327,000 jobs added over the past 12 months.

Texas has added jobs at a rate of 2.3%, outpacing national growth by 0.7 percentage points. The state’s seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment held steady at 4.1%, the Texas Workforce Commission said Friday.

That matched the national rate. In the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area, unemployment fell slightly to 3.8% from 4% in August. The region’s job count grew by 0.5% to nearly 1.2 million jobs, led by growth in the government and construction sectors.

“The record-setting 15.4 million Texans who make up our civilian labor force are strengthening and innovating our state’s economy,” Workforce Commissioner Alberto Treviño III said in a statement. The state’s civilian labor force has added 318,500 people so far this year, including the 51,500 who joined in September. That was up from 44,800 people the month prior. Statewide, job growth was led by the professional and business services sector with its 10,500 new jobs.

Private education and health services, a combined sector, added 10,400 jobs; and construction added 8,100 jobs. Construction has consistently led the state’s job growth, with a 5.1% growth rate over the year. In the San Antonio area, the construction sector — which is combined with mining and logging job categories for the report — has grown 4.2% over the past 12 months, adding 76,500 jobs.

The San Antonio area wasn’t the only one to record a lower unemployment rate last month — all 25 major metro areas saw rates drop.

austin austinaaaaaaaaaaThe Midland metro had the state’s lowest unemployment rate with a rate of 2.6%, followed by the Amarillo at 3% and College Station-Bryan at 3.2%. Beaumont-Port Arthur had the highest rate on unemployment at 6%, followed by McAllen-Edinburg-Mission at 5.9% and Killeen-Temple at 4.7%. While the statewide unemployment rate is seasonally adjusted, rates for metro areas are not… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Whitmire launches ethics investigation into Controller Hollins over potential 'pay to play' sponsorships (Houston Chronicle)

Mayor John Whitmire said he has initiated an ethics investigation into Controller Chris Hollins’ decision to solicit sponsorships for a financial conference the controller’s office is hosting next week, questioning whether the practice is an example of “pay to play.” The Houston Annual Investor Conference is now in its ninth year, but Tuesday’s event – Hollins’ first as city controller – is the first for which sponsorships have been sought, Whitmire wrote in a letter, dated Thursday, to conference participants.

A pamphlet on the conference website lists sponsorships from $10,000 up to $100,000, with increasing perks for top donors. The conference homepage shows Loop Capital, an investment bank, gave $50,000 to become a “platinum sponsor,” securing the firm a list of promotional opportunities at the conference. A “platinum” sponsorship also secured donors a “private dinner with the controller” in an earlier version of the sponsorship pamphlet Whitmire distributed at his Thursday press conference.

That perk is no longer listed as available for “platinum” sponsors, only for $100,000 “title” sponsors. No firms are listed as contributing at that level. A local representative with Loop Capital directed questions to its corporate office, which could not be reached. Hollins, in a press conference Thursday afternoon, said that he viewed the proposed dinner as a nice gesture that might encourage firms to make a "meaningful" charitable contribution.

Any financial institution that has asked for a meeting during his tenure, he added, has gotten one. A spokesman for his office said the change to the sponsorship packet was to fix a typo. Three companies gave $25,000 to become “gold” sponsors, and nine people or firms contributed at the $10,000 “silver” level, including Hollins and his wife. Whitmire said at a Thursday morning press conference he called on the topic that he started getting calls from banks that received the sponsorship packet two weeks ago.

“They said it was the appearance of pay to play, and they were seeking advice," he said. "'If we don’t contribute at the level of our competitors, can we still get city business? If we don’t, what are the repercussions for keeping city business?'”

[US and World News]

➡️ U.S. agencies fund, and fight with, Elon Musk. A Trump presidency could give him power over them. (New York Times)

Elon Musk’s influence over the federal government is extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative. Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.

His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial. His companies have been targeted in at least 20 recent investigations or reviews, including over the safety of his Tesla cars and the environmental damage caused by his rockets. Given Mr. Musk’s immense business footprint, he will be a major player no matter who wins the election. But he has thrown his fortune and power behind former President Donald J. Trump and, in return, Mr. Trump has vowed to make Mr. Musk head of a new “government efficiency commission” with the power to recommend wide-ranging cuts at federal agencies and changes to federal rules.

That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest. Through a review of court filings, regulatory dockets and government contracting data, The New York Times has compiled an accounting of Mr. Musk’s multipronged business arrangements with the federal government, as well as the violations, fines, consent decrees and other inquiries federal agencies have ordered against his companies.

Together, they show a deep web of relationships: Instead of entering this new role as a neutral observer, Mr. Musk would be passing judgment on his own customers and regulators. Already, Mr. Musk has discussed how he would use the new position to help his own companies. He has questioned a rule that required SpaceX to obtain a permit for discharging large amounts of potentially polluted water from its launchpad in Texas. He also said that limiting this kind of oversight could help SpaceX reach Mars sooner — “so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy,” he wrote on X, his social-media platform. “The Department of Government Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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