BG Reads 10.28.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - October 28, 2024

October 28, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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www.binghamgp.com

October 28, 2024

➡️ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Texas’ high housing costs sparked a movement to bring them down. The fight could shape the state for years to come. (Texas Tribune)

🟪 City Council moves to complete purchase of combined public safety headquarters (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Rain chances return to Austin: Storms on Halloween could make trick-or-treating damp (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Texans don’t live in a swing state, but Lone Star money fuels Trump, Harris campaigns (Dallas Morning News)

🟪 Voters are deeply skeptical about the health of American democracy (New York Times)

Read On!

🗳️ Early voting ends Friday, November 1st. Find voting locations and sample ballots here:

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 The Austin Council has three (3) regular meetings left in 2024:

  • November 7

  • November 21

  • December 12

đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 2 - Video (9.26.2024)

đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 4 - Video (9.19.2024)

đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 6 - Video (9.5.2024)

đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 7 - Video (9.5.2024)

đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 10 - Video (9.30.2024)

đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: Mayor - Video (10.3.2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

➡️ Texas’ high housing costs sparked a movement to bring them down. The fight could shape the state for years to come. (Texas Tribune)

The scene was a familiar one at Austin City Hall: The City Council once again was seeking reforms to curb the capital city’s sky-high home prices and rents, and opponents had turned out in force to try to block them.

The central idea behind the reforms: Austin needed a lot more homes and it would have to relax certain city rules to see them built.

On a Thursday in May, more than 150 people signed up to denounce the changes. Among them were homeowners who complained the overhaul would wreck the character of their single-family neighborhoods and anti-gentrification activists who feared it would further displace communities of color.

Such critics — often referred to as NIMBYs, which stands for “not in my backyard” — have long held sway in Austin and other cities. But something was different this time.

As Austin grew and its housing costs soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, a diametrically opposed group of advocates who push cities to allow cheaper and denser housing — known as “yes-in-my-backyard” activists, or YIMBYs — had gained new footing at City Hall. That day at City Council, they showed up in numbers that rivaled their opponents and urged council members to pass the reforms.

By that point, they barely needed to convince anyone. Austin YIMBYs had laid the groundwork for the reforms during the last citywide election, when they successfully backed candidates who vowed to tackle the housing crisis head-on.

Those efforts resulted in a YIMBY supermajority on the City Council that includes Mayor Kirk Watson. After hours of testimony that stretched past midnight, council members approved the reforms… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ City Council moves to complete purchase of combined public safety headquarters (Austin Monitor)

The city is moving ahead with the planned purchase of a combined public safety campus located in four existing office buildings on South MoPac Expressway in District 8.

Late during Thursday’s City Council meeting, after several hours of public comment ahead of the approval of a new contract with Austin Police Association, three items passed on the consent agenda related to the purchase and renovation of the two properties for $120.5 million.

The items were: an ordinance to amend the capital budget of the Financial Services Department to accommodate the purchase; a resolution that indicates the city will finance the purchase through tax-exempt bonds; a resolution for staff to move ahead with the purchase of the campus â€“ which totals more than 390,000 square feet â€“ at a purchase price of just over $107 million… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Rain chances return to Austin: Storms on Halloween could make trick-or-treating damp (Austin American-Statesman)

After three months of minimal rain in Austin, precipitation is set to return this week, though experts warn it won't have a drought-busting effect.

The best chances for storm activity will come Thursday and Friday, potentially dampening Halloween trick-or-treating, though only about a half-inch of rain is expected, said Emily Heller, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. The last time it rained substantially was nearly three months ago, on Aug. 4, when Camp Mabry saw nearly an inch of rain. Camp Mabry recorded about a tenth of an inch Oct. 18. In total, it has rained four days in the past three months, weather records show.

"While there are (rain) chances every day (this week), it's not going to be a substantial amount of rain, and it's going to be rather hit or miss," Heller said. "I wouldn't expect rain every day, and if you do see it, it's not going to be any drought buster."l… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ New hotel room fee moves closer to approval; convention center plans refined (Austin Business Journal)

The local hotel industry has given a thumbs up to a new room fee designed to raise money to better market Austin as a tourism destination, according to a top tourism official.

But plans for the so-called Tourism Public Improvement District — in which hotels with 100 rooms or more would implement the 2% nightly fee â€” still must be vetted by the Texas Hotel and Lodging Association and receive final approval from the Austin City Council, said Tom Noonan, president and CEO of Visit Austin.

Meanwhile, city officials said the possibility of adding a hotel to Austin's future convention center through a pubic-private partnership, or even a multifamily housing component, isn't compatible with the goal of opening it in time for the 2029 spring festival season.

The Austin Convention Center is set to close April 1 next year, after which it will be torn down to make way for the new facility. The four-year period in which Austin will have no main convention center downtown is expected to put a major strain on the city's tourism and hospitality sector.

City staff "will continue to explore partnership development opportunities on other city-owned land downtown and do not plan to bring forth an item for council consideration related to the (public-private partnership) on the Convention Center site," said Trisha Tatro, director of the Austin Convention Center Department, in a memo to the council… đźźŞ (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ More than five years after closing, NLand Surf Park to get new life as private surf community (Austin Business Journal)

More than five years after NLand Surf Park shuttered, it appears to be re-emerging as a private surf-and-condominium community.

Over the last several months, details have trickled out regarding what's being called Austin Surf Club. It's a partnership between Arizona-based Discovery Land Co. and Kelly Slater — perhaps the most famous surfer in the world — and it's located not too far from the airport along Navarro Creek Road off State Highway 71, about 15 miles from downtown Austin.

NLand closed for good in November 2018, and companies tied to Slater subsequently purchased the site in southeastern Travis County. Slater had been working to turn the project into a world-class surf destination, similar to a Surf Ranch community operated by his company in Lemoore, California. But the project appeared to be in limbo since then — even as he continued to amass land holdings that now total more than 190 acres, according to Travis County property records…

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texans don’t live in a swing state, but Lone Star money fuels Trump, Harris campaigns (Dallas Morning News)

Texans have combined to donate more than $65 million directly to the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns, a windfall that helps pay for the deluge of ads and events focused on a handful of swing states far from Texas. Generous Texans have long sent money to out-of-state campaigns, said Brendan Glavin, deputy research director at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics.

“Texas has a history of not just Republicans but Democrats raising a lot of money,” Glavin said. “There’s clearly a good donor base in Texas for candidates.” Texas has not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976, and based on the latest polling that’s not likely to change this year. But like busy commuters stopping by an ATM for quick cash, the major-party candidates and top surrogates have made regular stops in Texas to collect checks from donors.

The candidates’ principal campaign committees — Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc. and Harris for President — are limited to donations of $3,300 per person, per election, or no more than $6,600 this cycle for those who also donated in the primary. These organizations are the source of many of the texts and emails that bombard voters with pleas for smaller donations, and many Texans have responded. OpenSecrets found Texans had donated at least $35 million to Trump and $30 million to Harris in this cycle, through the end of August. Harris’ total includes money donated to President Joe Biden before she replaced him atop the ticket.

A breakdown by major metropolitan areas found Dallas sent Harris about $6.9 million and Trump $6.5 million, OpenSecrets said. The Fort Worth-Arlington area gave Trump $3 million and Harris $1.9 million. Those numbers don’t include donations made more recently to the chief campaign organizations for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

In Dallas, ballot propositions could drastically change police and city government (Texas Tribune)

Three Dallas city charter amendments, buried at the very end of the upcoming November ballot, could drastically affect the city’s police department — and change how local government operates.

If passed, those amendments could force the city to hire hundreds more police officers and dictate where some excess revenue is spent, tie the city manager’s compensation to a community survey — and allow residents to sue the city for violating the charter while forcing the city to waive its governmental immunity.

Advocates say the propositions would place the power of accountability back in Dallas resident’s hands — while also increasing police staffing.

“Propositions S, T and U are a suite of ballot propositions … that came together because of Dallas citizens’ refusal to accept a lot of the bad headlines that we were seeing,” Pete Marocco, the executive director of Dallas HERO, the group responsible for the amendments, told KERA… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

➡️ Voters are deeply skeptical about the health of American democracy (New York Times)

Nearly half of all voters are skeptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working, with 45 percent believing that the nation’s democracy does not do a good job representing ordinary people, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll. Three-quarters of voters in the United States say democracy is under threat, though their perception of the forces imperiling it vary widely based on partisan leanings.

And a majority of voters believe that the country is plagued by corruption, with 62 percent saying that the government is mostly working to benefit itself and elites rather than the common good. The eroding faith in the nearly 250-year-old American system of government follows four years of unparalleled challenges: a violent riot in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the criminal conviction of former President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Trump’s continued insistence that the democratic process is rigged.

Coupled with stubborn inflation, divisive culture wars and geopolitical crises, voters are expressing exasperation with American politics and a government that they believe has failed to serve them at the most basic level. “I even have to go to a food bank, and my husband and I make a decent salary, and we still can’t wholly make ends meet with three children,” said Tyra Jackson-Taylor, 51, a social worker from Norfolk, Va.

“It’s just a lot, me having to work and him work overtime, just to try to make the ends meet.” Such frustrations have left 58 percent of voters believing that the nation’s financial and political systems need major changes or a complete overhaul. Some wonder why the government seems unable to make significant progress on pressing issues.

“I’m 21 years old — it’s always a school shooting,” said Sarah Washington, a temporary worker in New Orleans. “There should be heavier laws in order to obtain a gun, for example. And there’s been discussion about how that should go, and nothing still being done about it. They talk about it, and then another one happens.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Democrats ready thousands of lawyers for final days of race (Wall Street Journal)

Four years ago, Joe Biden assembled hundreds of lawyers to work with his presidential campaign, which took an unusual detour through the courts when rival Donald Trump and his allies brought dozens of lawsuits making unsupported claims of election fraud. Bracing for a flurry of postelection lawsuits to cap what has already been a fiercely litigated presidential contest, Kamala Harris’s campaign has expanded the Democratic legal team considerably, spending the better part of a year trying to anticipate any legal curveball that could arise in the crucial days before—and after—voters go to the polls.

“It’s really just making sure we have systems in place—which we do—to monitor what Republicans are doing everywhere,” said Dana Remus, a former Biden White House counsel who is leading the Harris legal operation. “As soon as they file a case, as soon as they start saying election results can’t be trusted, we are prepared to respond.”

Remus, a partner at Covington & Burling, is a Yale Law graduate with a diverse résumé, including a clerkship to conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Her inner circle includes Bob Bauer, a personal lawyer to Biden and White House counsel to former President Barack Obama who also teaches law at New York University.

They have assigned priority to better coordination with local lawyers who are steeped in the minutiae of state election laws and how to best navigate their hometown courts. A series of teams, each focused on a specific battleground or priority state, have been running for the past year, with local attorneys working with a designated partner at one of a handful of large, national law firms that are helping to guide strategy.

More than 400 lawyers have been writing thousands of pages of draft legal pleadings and memos that could be deployed quickly in fast-moving litigation. A larger network of about 10,000 lawyers is on tap to be on the ground and supporting voter protection at polling places across the U.S. Senior advisers have held weekly brainstorming sessions that in effect work like legal game theory, with top lawyers sketching out strategies for addressing a host of hypothetical scenarios that could arise in legal combat over the election results.

The group has focused heavily on planning for potential delays or disruptions to the certification of vote totals, both at the county and state level, and in Congress. They say they are prepared to respond to any efforts to intimidate voters and election workers, including physical unrest on Election Day or during state vote counts afterward… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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