BG Reads 10.3.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - October 3, 2024

October 03, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

www.binghamgp.com

October 3, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Monday is the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election. Here's what you need to know. (KUT)

🟪 How cities in the Austin area are handling deannexation requests under controversial new law (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Waymo begins offering robotaxi rides in Austin to certain members of the public (Tech Crunch)

🟪 Mexico's first female president vows 'it's time for women' (NPR)

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

⚽️ Last Thursday the 4ATX Foundation, Austin FC’s nonprofit arm, held it’s 4th Annual Night in Verde. This year's gala raised over $1,058,000 in support of our mission, closing the opportunity gap and creating Austin's next generation of leaders. That includes Austin ISD’s Bedichek Middle School, which I attended. It’s been a joy to serve as the 4ATX Board Chair this year!

🟪 Bingham Group represents and has represented a wide range of clients in the Austin Metro and Texas Capitol at the intersection of government and business.

🟪 Learn more about Bingham Group’s experience here, and review client testimonials here.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 The Austin Council has seven (5) regular meetings left in 2024

  • Mayor - Tomorrow

    • Austin City Hall Council Chambers, 301 W. 2nd St. Austin 78701

  • District 6 - October 7th

    • Hope Presbyterian Church, 11512 Olson Drive, Austin 78750

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

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

✅ All candidate forums will are scheduled from 6:30pm to 8pm.

✅ All forums will be streamed live and archived on ATXN. 

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Monday is the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election. Here's what you need to know. (KUT)

Monday is the deadline to register to vote in Texas in the Nov. 5 election. Citizens across the country will get to vote for president, and Texans will get to vote in a U.S. Senate race.

At the local level, Austinites will vote for mayor, and some residents will choose City Council members. Depending on what county you live in county, you will also get to weigh in on local tax changes and school bonds. Find sample ballots on your county’s election website. Here are some examples:

How cities in the Austin area are handling deannexation requests under controversial new law (Austin Business Journal)

Pretty much every Central Texas city has been impacted by Senate Bill 2038, the controversial law that allows landowners to dodge the limited regulatory standards on cities' fringes.

The Austin Business Journal surveyed Austin and 19 of its biggest suburbs regarding the number of deannexation applications each has received. In total, more than 1,000 properties encompassing more than 34,000 acres have been released from the extraterritorial jurisdictions of cities — with several dozen applications still being processed that add up to thousands more acres.

For perspective, Round Rock's city limits encompass about 25,000 acres.

Cities aren't all handling the requests the same. Some are pointing to pending litigation challenging the law's constitutionality and are waiting to release properties until the lawsuit is settled. Others are moving properties along to deannexation during city council meetings.

Some are just letting land be removed by a 45-day time period set by the bill.

Here's a breakdown of how some Austin-area cities are handling SB 2038:.. 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Waymo begins offering robotaxi rides in Austin to certain members of the public (Tech Crunch)

Waymo has gotten one step closer to a commercial launch in Austin by early 2025. This week, the company will open its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to certain members of the public in the city as it gears up to partner with Uber next year.

The initial riders will have 24/7 access to the service via the Waymo One app until Waymo transitions fully to the Uber app. Two weeks ago, the company said it would offer its robotaxis exclusively through the Uber app in Austin and Atlanta next year. Waymo is already offering fully autonomous rides via Uber in Phoenix.

The company has been offering autonomous rides to employees in Austin since March. 

Waymo didn’t respond in time to TechCrunch to clarify whether it would charge customers who signed up on the waitlist in Austin for initial rides, but the company’s playbook is usually to offer those rides for free at first. 

The service will be available via the Uber app across 37 square miles of the city, from Parker Lane and Montopolis in the south to Hyde Park and Tarrytown in the north... 

Why Bastrop Mayor Lyle Nelson is asking a court to throw out a recall petition against him (Austin American-Statesman)

Bastrop Mayor Lyle Nelson is asking the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals to throw out a recall petition against him, alleging that the ballot initiative violates a provision in the city's charter, according to a writ of mandamus filed Sept. 23. Nelson is asking the court to order Bastrop Interim City Secretary Irma Parker, who has accepted the petition as valid, to reverse her decision.

The city secretary is required to verify the petition before the Bastrop City Council can order a recall election for the earliest date allowed by law. The council has until Feb. 14, 2025, to order a recall election on May 3, 2025, the court filing said. Parker told the City Council on Sept. 17 that the petition was sufficient. The City Council has not yet taken action on it.

Bill Aleshire, one of Nelson's defense attorneys, told the American-Statesman in an interview this week, that the petition violates the city charter because it doesn't include signatures from voters certifying that the reason for which the recall petition is being sought is true. The petition must include a signature on each page from just one of the voters who not only signed the page but also signed an affidavit attesting to the truth for the recall, he said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

A pair of billionaire preachers built the most powerful political machine in Texas. That’s just the start. (ProPublica and New York Times)

Last December, Sid Miller, the Texas commissioner of agriculture, posted a photo of himself brandishing a double-barrel shotgun on X and invited his followers to join him on a “RINO hunt.” Miller had taken to stumping in the March primary election against incumbents he deemed to be Republicans in Name Only. Not long after that, he received a text message from one of his targets, a state representative named Glenn Rogers.

“You are a bought and paid for, pathetic narcissist,” it began. “If you had any honor, you would challenge me, or any of my Republican colleagues to a duel.” Rogers, a 68-year-old rancher and grandfather of five, represents a rural district west of Fort Worth. He was proud to serve in a Legislature that, as he told me recently, “couldn’t be more conservative if it tried.”

Since entering office in 2021, he co-authored legislation that allowed Texans to carry handguns without a permit, supported the Heartbeat Act that grants citizens the right to sue abortion providers and voted to give the police the power to arrest suspected undocumented migrants in schools and hospitals. In a statehouse packed with debate-me agitators, he was comparatively soft-spoken — a former professor of veterinary medicine with an aversion to grandstanding. He was not in the habit of firing off salvos, as he had to Miller, that ended with “Kiss My Ass!”

But the viciousness of the primary season had been getting to him. Nearly a year before the March elections, ads began to appear in Rogers’ district castigating him not simply as a RINO but as a closet liberal who supported gun control and Shariah law. (Rogers was especially peeved by an ad that photoshopped his signature white cowboy hat onto a headshot of Joe Biden.) Some of the attacks originated from his challenger’s campaign, while others were sponsored by organizations with grassroots-sounding names, like Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, Texas Gun Rights and Texas Family Project.

By the time voters headed to the polls, they could have been forgiven for thinking that Rogers had disappointed a suite of conservative groups. In reality, Rogers had disappointed two men: Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think tanks, media organizations, political action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs.

“They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.” … 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Mexico's first female president vows 'it's time for women' (NPR)

The passing of the presidential sash every six years is always an important and symbolic occasion in Mexico.

But on Tuesday, when it was placed over the shoulder of Claudia Sheinbaum - the first woman to hold the highest office in the country - it was truly an historic watershed moment in more than 200 years of modern Mexican history.

It has been a long road which led the first female mayor of Mexico City to break the glass ceiling in Mexican politics again, this time at national level.

To huge cheers of “Presidenta!” ringing out both inside and outside the congressional chamber, she raised her fist in victory, savouring the moment.

She began her first speech as president by thanking her political mentor and predecessor in the top job, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, calling him “the most important political leader and social warrior in Mexico’s modern history"… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

_________________________

We are proud to represent and have represented a wide range of clients in the Austin Metro and Texas Capitol at the intersection of government and business.

Learn more about Bingham Group’s experience here, and review client testimonials here.

⬇️

Email icon
Facebook icon
Instagram icon
LinkedIn icon

Copyright (C) " target="_blank">unsubscribe