BG Reads 11.11.2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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November 11, 2024  

➡️ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Cities between San Antonio to Austin growing at high speed (MYSA)

🟪 Staffing issues cause delays with arriving flights at Austin airport (KVUE)

🟪 Legal questions cause delay in considering changes to petition rules (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Chairman of the Texas Democrats resigns after election losses, controversial comments (Texas Public Radio)

🟪 Drop-off in Democratic votes ignites conspiracy theories on Left and Right (New York Times)

🟪 Justice Sonia Sotomayor is expected to remain on Supreme Court (Wall Street Journal)

Read On!

🟪 LINK TO THIS WEEK’S CITY OF AUSTIN HEARINGS + AGENDA

[CITY OF AUSTIN/TRAVIS COUNTY]

🟪 [NEW] Austin City Council Regular Meeting Agenda, 11.21.2024

🟪 MEMO: City of Austin Executive Leadership Team and Organizational Announced (Effective November 4, 2024)

In an October 30 memo, City Manager T.C. Broadnax announced several key additions to the city leadership team, effective November 4.

You can view the memo here: CITY OF AUSTIN MEMO: Executive Leadership Team and Organizational Announcements. An org chart is included on page 3.

We particularly wanted to flag the creation of a Grants Division within the Intergovernmental Relations Office to focus on creating a centralized grant funding strategy and governance for the City that advances City Council’s strategic priorities, leverages local resources, and targets investments for Austin. 

The memo notes “the City lacks a centralized grants function causing us to potentially leave federal and state funding on the table. Staff from across the organization are currently being identified for potential reassignment to the Grants Division.”

🟪 The Austin Council has three (2) regular meetings left in 2024:

• November 21

• December 12

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

➡️ Cities between San Antonio to Austin growing at high speed (MYSA)

Suburban cities, like New Braunfels and Seguin, are growing at a high speed and experiencing a higher population change rate than major cities like San Antonio and Austin. New population data showed how major Texas cities, like San Antonio, are increasing in residents, but more so in the areas around the urban counties. 

The Texas Demographic Center released its estimated total population data on Thursday, November 8, showing the state's tremendous growth over the years. The population in Texas is estimated to have surpassed 30.7 million people with a growth of about 5% since 2020, according to the Texas Demographic Center. 

Most population growth is observed in large metropolitan areas, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Helen You, the associate director and senior demographer for the center, said in a webinar on Thursday that the four areas are what they refer to as the Texas Triangle. She said the four areas account for about 69% of the Texas population in 2023 and have a 84% growth between 2020 and 2023.

The cities surrounding the major metropolitan areas are having the most growth. You said they call the central urban counties the "Suburban Rings." Like in Dallas and Houston, the cities surrounding San Antonio and Austin are increasing in its residents. You said they often talk about the growth in the cities on I-35 between San Antonio and Austin. 

Bexar County had a percent population change under 0 percent from 2020 to 2023. However, Converse, Cibolo, New Braunfels, Seguin, San Marcos and Kyle each increased from 25 to 39.9 percent in that time frame, according to the center.

The San Antonio-New Braunfels area increased by 167,441 people and have a combined 10 percent share of the state's population growth in 2023. The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos area totaled 15 percent with its population increase of 247,845, according to the center. Individually, San Antonio gained over 52,000 people, while had over 25,000… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Staffing issues cause delays with arriving flights at Austin airport (KVUE)

Arriving flights at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) were facing delays on Sunday afternoon as the airport deals with staffing issues with air traffic controllers.

According to the FAA, a “traffic management program” was in effect for air traffic arriving into the airport. This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 36 minutes, the FAA said. Traffic into the airport was be slowed until 11 p.m... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

➡️ Legal questions cause delay in considering changes to petition rules (Austin Monitor)

At Thursday’s City Council meeting, after hearing complaints from two attorneys that a proposed ordinance would violate state law and the city charter, Mayor Kirk Watson announced that the item would be withdrawn. The proposed ordinance would govern petitions for initiatives, referendums and recall of City Council members.

After hearing about problems with the proposed ordinance from Bill Bunch and Bobby Levinski of the Save Our Springs Alliance, Watson said, “The city attorney has asked that we withdraw this item and bring it back at another point in time so the city attorney’s office can look into a question that has been raised.”

Bunch told Council, “You’re proposing to erect barriers and delays and obfuscation to the powers reserved to the people by the charter for initiative, referendum and recall. Your proposal violates the city charter itself and is therefore completely illegal under state law.”

In addition, he said the notice concerning the proposed ordinance did not include sufficient information to comply with the state’s Open Meetings Act.

The charter gives the power to enact legislation directly to the people and also reserves to the people the right to recall a Council member, he said. Although the charter specifically says the city must follow the requirements of state law and the charter, he said, there is no reference to ordinances… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin developer Nate Paul was ordered to serve 10 days in jail. (Austin American-Statesman)

Embattled Austin real estate developer Nate Paul was ordered Friday to report to the Travis County Jail later this week to serve a 10-day criminal contempt-of-court sentence.

State District Judge Jan Soifer instructed Paul to begin serving the sentence Nov. 15 related to the contempt finding she first handed him last year, saying he "continuously refused" to comply with a court order in a civil case in which he is accused of defrauding a nonprofit.

The sentence had been delayed as Paul sought an appeal of Soifer's order. U.S. District Judge David Allan Ezra on Thursday cleared the way for Soifer to order Paul to jail.

The civil case is separate from federal charges against Paul, who was once featured in Forbes magazine for building a real estate investment firm that had amassed a $1 billion portfolio in 17 states of office buildings, retail centers, apartments and student housing. Some of his big initiatives include founding Great Value Storage, a large player in self-storage facilities, and buying the KPMG Tower in downtown Dallas.

Paul's trial in connection with an  eight-count indictment on federal financial crimes handed up in June 2023 and a follow-up four-count indictment announced in November is scheduled to begin early next year.

In a court hearing late last month, a federal investigator testified that one of Paul's former employees had told him that he witnessed Paul alter bank documents in an effort to obtain a real estate loan… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

➡️ Chairman of the Texas Democrats resigns after election losses, controversial comments (Texas Public Radio)

The longtime chairman of the Texas Democrats will resign after the party’s bruising election losses. In a statement, Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said he will step down after the party’s spring meeting in March.

“On Tuesday, the Democratic Party suffered devastating defeats up and down the ballot In Texas and across the country,” Hinojosa wrote. “In the days and weeks to come, it is imperative that our Democratic leaders across the country reevaluate what is best for our party and embrace the next generation of leaders to take us through the next four years of Trump and win back seats up and down the ballot.

“That is why today I’m announcing that I’ll be stepping aside in the new year at the Spring SDEC meeting in March 2025, and passing the torch to the next generation.” The resignation announcement comes the day after Hinojosa apologized for saying immigration and transgender issues hurt Democrats at the polls. He made the remarks in an interview with The Texas Newsroom on the morning after Election Day. “You have a choice as a party,” Hinojosa, 72, said in the interview.

“You could, for example, you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there's certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.” He added: “If you are going to ignore the political consequences of these kinds of things, then you're asking to lose these elections in the manner that we did.”

LGBTQ rights groups and transgender advocates swiftly criticized Hinojosa’s remarks, saying he was blaming Democrats’ most vulnerable supporters for his and the party’s failures. On Friday, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas said "left-wing activists" among Democrats "forced" Hinojosa to apologize, "and now, they've forced him to resign."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

➡️ Drop-off in Democratic votes ignites conspiracy theories on Left and Right (New York Times)

When President-elect Donald J. Trump was announced the winner of this year’s presidential contest on Wednesday, the vote tallies initially suggested a sharp drop-off of millions of Democratic votes compared with the results in 2020.

To some Republicans, that slump was evidence that the 2020 election had been fraudulent, that Democrats had somehow conjured millions of phantom votes that year — despite repeated confirmation from election officials, statewide audits and courts that nothing nefarious had occurred.

The shortfall also set off doubts among the internet’s left flank, but for different reasons. Hundreds of thousands of posts on social media implored Vice President Kamala Harris to avoid conceding over suspicions that millions of votes were somehow “missing” this year — despite assurances from federal agencies that the election was safe and secure.

Though it is unusual for opposing political camps to create conspiracy theories from the same material, supporters of both candidates have fixated on Democrats’ underperformance this year as a central narrative.

The conversation online highlights the appeal that election fraud stories have to partisans of all stripes — especially those facing electoral defeat — and the power of social media to help those ideas go viral, despite ample evidence that the concerns are meritless. Though election officials dealt with a variety of complications on Election Day this year, Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, concluded there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.” As more ballots were counted in the days since, estimates from The Associated Press suggest that the number of votes cast this year will be about 157.6 million, down about 700,000 from 2020.

The gap between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris has continued to narrow as more votes are counted in left-leaning states like California, Washington and Oregon, which take time to process mail ballots. The right-leaning version of the conspiracy theory was shared by towering figures in conservative commentary, while the left-leaning version came from voters with much less reach.

“I’ve never thought about it in this way, but when he lost in 2020 and I kind of — I thought there was something wrong with it,” Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host turned internet personality, said on an election night livestream that received three million views. “Now I’m totally convinced it was stolen.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is expected to remain on Supreme Court (Wall Street Journal)

Despite calls from some liberal activists for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down while Democrats can fill her seat before political power changes hands in January, she has no plans to retire from the Supreme Court, people close to the justice said. “This is no time to lose her important voice on the court.

She just turned 70 and takes better care of herself than anyone I know,” said one person close to the justice, suggesting that progressives turn their attention to other ways of safeguarding the Constitution after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Sotomayor, appointed in 2009 by then President Barack Obama, is the senior member of the court’s liberal minority, which by custom makes her its leader.

Outnumbered by six conservatives, including three appointed by Trump during his first term, the liberals have increasingly been reduced to dissenting opinions that argue the majority has made grave errors on matters from abortion rights to presidential power.

Sotomayor, who has written a bestselling memoir and children’s books, appeared on “Sesame Street,” and championed civics education, is among the better-known justices. In February, a Marquette Law School poll found that while many Americans were unfamiliar with the court’s membership, Sotomayor was viewed more favorably than any other justice.

“This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire,” David Dayen, executive editor of the liberal American Prospect magazine, wrote the day after the election on social media. The same day, the former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, noting the justice has had Type 1 diabetes since childhood, resurfaced his April op-ed suggesting that it was time for Sotomayor to go.

Animating the discussion of Sotomayor—and of potential retirements by conservative justices of similar age—is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death at age 87. Ginsburg had resisted calls from liberals to step down in the early 2010s while Obama and the Democrats held appointment power.

Her death in September 2020 allowed Trump to solidify the court’s conservative majority by appointing Justice Amy Coney Barrett shortly before Democrats captured both the White House and Senate. Fears of further diminution of the liberal minority led some on the left to pressure Justice Stephen Breyer to step down soon after President Biden and Senate Democrats took over in 2021, with one group sending a billboard truck to Capitol Hill bearing the message, “Breyer, Retire.” He stepped down in 2022 at age 83, allowing Biden to replace him with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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