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BG Reads 12.18.2023

BG Reads 12.18.2023

🗞️ BG Reads | News - December 18, 2023

December 18, 2023

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December 18, 2023

Today's BG Reads include:

✅ Energy officials warn of winter blackout risk in Texas and beyond

✅ Austin Chamber announces incoming board members

✅ Austin’s homebuilding industry, others prepare for HOME Initiative

Read on!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

Bingham Group Associate Hannah Garcia has been named Rockstar Rookie of the Year by the Austin Young Chamber. She was acknowledged last week for her stand out efforts and volunteerism since joining the chamber in March. Please join us in congratulating her!

[BG PODCAST]

Welcome to BG Podcast Episode 227.

On this episode the Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham and Associate Hannah Garcia wrap up the week of December 11th in Austin politics.

TOPICS INCLUDE:

✅ A Travis County Court signs final order overturning three zoning ordinances

✅ Updates on the city of Austin's demographics

✅ Austin ISD board names its lone finalist for superintendent and more.

LISTEN ON!

Apple Podcasts

SoundCloud

Spotify

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Energy officials warn of winter blackout risk in Texas and beyond (KUT)

The vulnerability of power grids across North America is something the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, has been warning about in energy assessments over the past several weeks.

One report, released on Wednesday, highlights the long-term challenges of maintaining grid reliability. Another assessment in November underlines the challenges that big winter storms may pose in the coming months.

In that November assessment, NERC, a nonprofit industry group charged with creating reliability standards, reported that about two-thirds of the U.S. and Canada face the risk of energy shortages this winter if hit by a major storm. And time is running out to reduce that risk.

John Moura, director of reliability assessment for NERC, said the risk of blackouts this winter is greater than he’s ever seen.

“We’re actually seeing that risk expand over wider areas,” Moura said. “More people (are) being affected by the tightening of reserves that we see in the future.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin Chamber announces incoming board members (Austin Business Journal)

The Austin Chamber of Commerce has revealed its leadership team for the coming years.

The professionals picked to steer the chamber will have a new position in which they can influence the Austin area — and they'll undoubtedly make strong connections as they work alongside other business notables.

In a Dec. 14 announcement, the chamber confirmed that Rudy Garza, president and CEO of engineering firm GarzaEMC, will be the 2024 board chair, and Mark Ramseur, managing principal of Pape-Dawson Engineers, will be the 2025 board chair and serve as chair elect in 2024. Ali Khataw, also a real estate engineer and business owner, has been chair of the chamber this year.

Garza currently serves on multiple boards throughout the city, including the Real Estate Council of Austin, Leadership Austin and the Salvation Army. Before founding GarzaEMC, Garza was assistant city manager of the City of Austin from 2000 to 2011, where he gained experience in project management, budgeting and project financing.

Garza and Ramseur will take on the roles as the city embarks on a set of major infrastructure projects including an expansion to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and a new light rail system. Also on the chamber's radar: the state's plan to expand I-35 through downtown Austin. Chamber President and CEO Jeremy Martin was a recent guest on the Texas Business Minds podcast where he shared the issues that are top of mind for the chamber and local businesses… (LINK TO FULL REPORT)

Median prices, total sales down almost 10 percentage points in Austin-area for November (Austin American-Statesman)

There was good news for homebuyers in the latest monthly report from the Austin Board of Realtors last week.

With rising inventory and lower prices, Central Texas' cooling housing market has provided more choices and leverage for buyers, board officials and other experts say.

Here are some key takeaways from the November report… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

LINK: November 2023 Central Texas Housing Market Report

Austin’s homebuilding industry, others prepare for HOME Initiative (Austin Business Journal)

Developers, homebuilders and lenders are all preparing for the new rules under the recently approved HOME Initiative, which represents one of most transformative piecemeal changes made to the city’s land development code in an effort to boost housing supply and curb soaring affordability issues.

Following the Dec. 7 approval of the policy spearheaded by Council Member Leslie Pool, the private sector is now wading through the details and establishing a roadmap for how to make the most out of the new standard. Simultaneously, a cloud is looming as longtime opponents of City Hall’s land use reforms prepare to take aim at the changes.

The HOME Initiative makes it possible to build up to three homes on an existing single-family lot. It also allows developers and homebuilders to seek building approval through the city’s general residential review process instead of the more expensive and time-consuming site plan review process.

As outlined in the new policy, the city will begin accepting applications in early February, 60 days following the Council's approval… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Democrats jockey to take on Ted Cruz as national party plans big push to oust Republican (Houston Chronicle)

If money is any indication, the crowded contest to challenge U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz next year is Democrat Colin Allred’s to lose. The congressman from Dallas has set campaign fundraising records and outpaced his closest primary competitor by roughly $10 million. Allred has ignored the seven other Democrats in the race and focused squarely on Cruz, pitching himself to voters as a pragmatic and bipartisan alternative who proved he can beat an incumbent Republican when he flipped the congressional seat he holds in 2018.

“We’ve generated support around the country because folks realize I’m battle-tested, I know how to win in tough races — but I also know how to bring people together,” Allred said. But state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat seen as Allred’s closest rival, has been turning up the heat on the former professional football player he calls too moderate and too hesitant to throw political punches.

Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde and has focused his campaign on curbing gun violence after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, has staked out a series of positions to Allred’s left. He is calling for “Medicare for All” while slamming Allred for supporting border barriers and refusing to back calls for a cease-fire in Israel’s war with Hamas. “The other candidate, he’s so afraid to talk about these things because he thinks he’s going to back himself out of his moderate world,” Gutierrez said.

“We’re not in those times anymore. I know he loves to talk about bipartisanship, but that’s not what this is about anymore. Our world and our country and our state are on fire.” It’s an effort to generate some competition in a race that so far has attracted little attention from Texas voters — even as national Democrats have made clear they plan to pour significant resources into the state to unseat Cruz, whom they view as one of the very few potentially vulnerable Senate Republicans on the ballot next year. Cruz fended off Beto O’Rourke in 2018 by just 2.6 percentage points. Political scientists say a more competitive primary could give Texas Democrats a much-needed boost heading into a difficult general election match after years of disappointing results in statewide races.

“There are very interesting X factors in Gutierrez’s candidacy that potentially make this a lot more interesting race than it’s been so far, but that also suggest it could get more interesting once people start paying attention,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

How Texas Gov. Greg Abbott divided Democrats on immigration with migrant busing (NBC News)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott knows he’s wreaking havoc by sending busloads of migrants from his border towns to sanctuary cities. The signs are evident. New York says it’s at a breaking point. Chicago is running out of time and space before a harsh winter sets in. Washington, D.C. says its housing is at capacity. Other cities, like Denver, have declared states of emergency. But if Abbott has made one thing clear, it’s this: He’s not stopping. For more than a year, Abbott has regularly sent busloads of migrants to cities that have deemed themselves sanctuaries to immigrants. It’s a controversial practice, with officials on the receiving end saying the busing comes without warning or coordination and with an intent of creating chaos. Since April 2022, the Abbott administration has bused some 75,500 migrants from Texas to six cities, according to the governor's office.

Abbott has said it all began from sheer desperation while overseeing small border towns bursting at the seams with migrants. That’s something he blames on President Joe Biden’s border policies, which he says are lax. Along the way, however, a different phenomenon has taken over — Democrats are raising the alarm on immigration, with the leaders of sanctuary cities and blue states thousands of miles from the southern border now warning their situation is dire. Democrats are calling on the White House for more funding and to seize control over the interior operations to ensure migrants are sent to areas that have the capacity to take them in. It has all added up to a shift in the immigration debate, where Democrats are calling out the president of their own party to do more to contain what they call a crisis. And this winter could make it worse. Asked if the busing would continue through the winter months in cold-weather places like Chicago and New York, Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement to NBC News, “Until President Biden does his job and secures the border, Texas will continue busing migrants to sanctuary cities to provide much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border towns.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Austin returns to Israel with a tougher message and lessons learned (New York Times)

After three years as President Biden’s quiet man at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III stepped off his plane at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Monday and into the limelight.

It was his second visit to the region since Israel launched a war in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7. During meetings and conversations with Israeli officials, Mr. Austin has stressed both the Biden administration’s support for Israel and concerns about the rising Palestinian death toll.

But his message has become more blunt: Israel, Mr. Austin recently predicted, could face “strategic defeat” that would leave the country less secure if it does not do more to protect civilians.

The warning is one that Mr. Austin is well equipped to deliver. The retired four-star general brings a wealth of military experience in combat, including urban warfare. Early U.S. efforts to target the Taliban and insurgents in Afghanistan in 2004. The troop “surge” in Iraq in 2007. The planning to pry Mosul, Iraq, from the hands of the Islamic State in 2016. Mr. Austin was involved in all of that… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Senior homes left dangerously understaffed amid assisted-living boom (Washington Post)

Lavender Farms, an upscale assisted-living facility in the Boulder suburbs, promised “24/7 on-site care” in its marketing materials. But managers at its operating company, Balfour Senior Living, worried deeply about their ability to care for the elderly residents who roamed the farmhouse-chic corridors at odd hours and sometimes wandered outside unnoticed, documents and interviews show. Balfour managers proposed raising wages to hire and retain more and better caregivers to improve resident safety. But to do that, the managers said, Balfour needed the approval of Welltower, the $40 billion investment firm that owned Lavender Farms. Executives at Welltower balked.

“Their position was: We are trying to increase our profitability,” said one former Balfour executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “Care is an ancillary part of the conversation.” For two decades, Balfour has been a star of the senior-housing industry, marketing its properties like boutique hotels, replete with high-end furnishings, fine dining and concierge services. But as Welltower and other professional investors have acquired the buildings where Balfour operates, waves of cost cutting have left it unable to meet the basic needs of many residents, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Failures at Balfour facilities are symptoms of deeper problems in the $34 billion market for assisted living and memory care, a growing industry that now provides care and housing for more than a million Americans, according to industry estimates. Conceived about 40 years ago to give seniors more freedom in their final years of life, the assisted-living industry has been reshaped by real estate speculators looking to cash in on an aging nation. They were aided by Congress in 2008, when a new law gave certain investors the ability to hold senior-housing properties tax-free while also taking a slice of their annual income.

As a result, many facilities across the nation are now held by investors under pressure to produce profits for shareholders. In some places, a bare-bones approach to staffing and pay has produced a chaotic environment where medications are missed, falls and bed sores go unnoticed, residents are abused and confused seniors wander away undetected, according to a review of 160,000 state inspection reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former employees of assisted-living businesses and relatives of current and former residents… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Biden said to be increasingly frustrated by dismal poll numbers (Washington Post)

The night before President Biden departed Washington to celebrate Thanksgiving on Nantucket, Mass., he gathered his closest aides for a meeting in the White House residence. After pardoning a pair of turkeys, an annual White House tradition, Biden delivered some stern words for the small group assembled: His poll numbers were unacceptably low and he wanted to know what his team and his campaign were doing about it. He complained that his economic message had done little to move the ball, even as the economy was growing and unemployment was falling, according to people familiar with his comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation. For months, the president and first lady Jill Biden have told aides and friends they are frustrated by the president’s low approval rating and the polls that show him trailing former president Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination — and in recent weeks, they have grown upset that they are not making more progress.

“We do not discuss the President’s private conversations one way or the other,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “The President and first lady meet regularly with their senior team for updates and to review plans.” Since that November meeting, which has not been previously reported, most polls continue to show Biden trailing Trump nationally and, more importantly, in key battleground states. The accumulation of troubling polls for Biden has made it harder for Democrats to dismiss them, leading to a fresh set of conversations among Biden officials and allies about whether the president and his team need a shift in strategy.

And now Democrats in competitive races are growing increasingly worried about Biden damaging their own electoral prospects. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is running for the state’s open Senate seat, has expressed concern to allies that she may not be able to win her race if Biden is at the top of the ticket, according to people familiar with the conversations. A spokesman for Slotkin’s campaign said she “looks forward to running with President Biden.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]

Next fall will see elections for the following Council positions, District 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor. Candidates can’t file for a place on the ballot until July 22, 2024.

Declared candidates so far are:

District 2