- The BG Reads
- Posts
- BG Reads 2.20.2025
BG Reads 2.20.2025
🟪 BG Reads - February 20, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
February 20, 2025
âś… Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Central Austin homes continue to spend more time on market year over year (Community Impact)
🟪 UT System Board of Regents names Jim Davis as interim president of UT Austin (KUT)
🟪 Texas infrastructure fares better than U.S. average but needs major investment: report (Austin American-Statesman)
🟪 In Trump’s first month, a relentless effort to remake the presidency (Washington Post)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
âś… Audit and Finance seeks more input before voting on board and commission changes (Austin Monitor)
The City Council Audit and Finance Committee on Wednesday deliberated scaling back about two dozen of the city’s boards, commissions and other governmental bodies but ultimately took no action pending further input from the affected groups.
The discussion centered on a City Council-approved resolution to consolidate or dissolve up to 36 citizen groups, although Council Member Ryan Alter, who sponsored the initiative, reduced the number to 26 after hearing feedback from commissioners and other volunteer members.
After lengthy consideration, Committee Chair Mayor Kirk Watson summarized the conversation by asking staff to gather more feedback from the existing bodies that would be impacted by merging with other citizen groups.
A sunset review process should also be used for dissolving those governmental bodies that have been rendered inactive, Watson said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Central Austin homes continue to spend more time on market year over year (Community Impact)
Homes in Central Austin spent 19.7% more time on the market in January 2025 compared to January 2024, according to data from the Austin Board of Realtors. Median home prices only saw a slight increase year over year, with the largest share sold in the $900,000 and over price range.
Median home prices slightly increased year over year by 1.42%. Homes in 78756 saw the largest price increases year over year, by 84.31%, and homes in the 78701 ZIP code saw the largest decrease in price, by 57.78%… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Hearst to acquire Austin American-Statesman from Gannett (Austin Business Journal)
New York-based Hearst Corp., which owns news outlets such as the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, has agreed to purchase the Austin American-Statesman from Gannett Co. Inc.
The planned purchase also includes the Austin newspaper’s community publications — Bastrop Advertiser, Lake Travis View, Pflugerville Pflag and Round Rock Leader — and digital offerings such as Austin360 and Hookem.com, according to a Feb. 19 announcement. The acquisition is expected to close by March 31.
Officials declined to provide a purchase price. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels and television stations around the country, along with 50% of the A&E Networks cable network group and 20% of the Walt Disney Co.’s sports division ESPN Inc.
Hearst Newspapers, the operating group responsible for the company's newspapers, local digital marketing services businesses and directories, publishes 26 dailies and 52 weeklies across the U.S, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan and Esquire… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… UT System Board of Regents names Jim Davis as interim president of UT Austin (KUT)
The UT System Board of Regents named Jim Davis as the interim president of UT Austin on Wednesday. Davis currently serves as the university's senior vice president and chief operating officer. He previously served as a deputy attorney general under Ken Paxton.
“Jim Davis has consistently executed very effective and high-impact strategies to propel UT Austin’s rise," Board of Regents Chair Kevin Eltife said in a news release.
"His depth of knowledge in optimizing how the university operates to best serve its students is critical at this time in higher education, and we appreciate his willingness to serve in this role." Davis' appointment is effective immediately. He takes over from Jay Hartzell who announced his departure from UT Austin last month... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… New lounge space coming to Austin airport as part of expansion (Austin Business Journal)
A new lounge is in the works at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, just as an existing one is closing.
The planned new facility, designed to be leased and branded by a financial institution, will be located in the revamped Barbara Jordan Terminal after the airport's West Infill expansion project is finished.
That project is part of a larger plan to notably upgrade Austin's airport by 2030. Requests for proposals for the new lounge are being solicited and a company hasn't been selected yet, said Sam Haynes, ABIA’s deputy chief of communications and marketing.
“We hope to complete the RFP process sometime later this year with an eye on 2027 as the opening date for the new lounge,” Haynes said in an email.
ABIA, which is undergoing a multibillion-dollar expansion, is adding more terminal square footage as part of the West Infill portion of the project, where a new outbound baggage handling system will be located along with an expanded TSA checkpoint 3… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
âś… Texas infrastructure fares better than U.S. average but needs major investment: report (Austin American-Statesman)
Texas must increase its investment in water, wastewater and transit systems infrastructure, the country's foremost society of civil engineers urged state lawmakers Tuesday when it announced Texas received a "C" grade on its 2025 report card. "Without proactive measures, we risk catastrophic failures," Steve Ihnen, president-elect of the Austin Contractors & Engineers Association, said at a news conference at the Capitol. "Now is the time for the Legislature to invest in our children's future."
The 161-page report rated Texas' infrastructure slightly better than the nation's as a whole, but it said the state government gambles with residents' lives if it does not bolster the systems that supply drinking water, storm drainage, waste treatment and transportation to its 30 million residents.
The U.S. scored a C- overall in the American Society of Civil Engineers' most recent report. Around 60 members of the Texas section of the engineers society reviewed policies, budgets and performance measures — like the number of gallons of water lost due to leaky pipes and the rate of pedestrian fatalities — from 2022 and 2023 to determine the 2025 rating.
The report includes detailed recommendations for each of 16 categories, including aviation, bridges, broadband internet, solid waste, ports, public parks, rail and transit. Texas' C grade, which finds that its infrastructure is "in adequate condition but needs attention," is the same score that it received in 2021. Public infrastructure is "completely unnoticed until there's failure, and we are looking at report cards here where we have potential failures. Such failures can cost lives," Ihnen said.
"Without proper planning and strategic funding for our public infrastructure, we could be strained to a level where there is no longer support for economic growth and opportunities here in Texas." Texas scored best on its aviation infrastructure and bridges, with a "B" and "B-" respectively, which means "good, adequate for now."
The engineers said increased state, local and federal funding boosted Texas' capacity at airport terminals and noted that several expansions of Austin and Houston airports will help service the exploding populations of urban areas in the state. The report also noted that Texas has the third-lowest number of bridges in poor condition of any U.S. state, thanks in part to increased public safety and inspection programs... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
✅ In Trump’s first month, a relentless effort to remake the presidency (Washington Post)
In just one month in office, President Donald Trump has made it clear that he sees the presidency in starkly different terms from virtually any of his 44 predecessors. He is not the first president to push the bounds of his authority. Andrew Johnson fired a Cabinet secretary in defiance of Congress. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court.
Richard M. Nixon dismissed a prosecutor who threatened his hold on power. But to a degree possibly unprecedented in the country’s nearly 250 years, Trump is barreling through the executive branch with the conviction that it is his to rule alone, no matter the laws Congress has enacted — even if that means destroying agencies, intervening in the justice system or granting enormous authority to a wealthy donor.
That is not how most presidents have seen a job that the Constitution arguably defines — beyond its military and diplomatic duties — as essentially doing what Congress tells him, saying he must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” “We are in a new kind of presidency with Donald Trump,” said H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin.
“He is trying to make the presidency like a CEO position in a corporation.” Trump is the first president who is essentially ignoring the existence of Congress, added Brands, a biographer of Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. “Presidents before Trump have not led with executive orders — they have fallen back on executive orders when Congress wouldn’t do what they wanted it to do,” Brands said. “But they all agreed that it was better to get Congress to pass legislation than to issue an executive order.”
Trump’s first month is striking not just because of the president’s actions, but also because a significant number of Americans and members of Congress are applauding his aggressive approach to the job. The country appears to be in a dark mood, with some voters’ hunger for disruption outweighing their impulse to follow American traditions.
“What makes this moment particularly dangerous for those who care about our constitutional system is that Donald Trump believes he has a mandate to act this way — and so far, the American people haven’t pushed back,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs. Trump’s unconventional actions have been numerous and varied, but they all reflect his belief that Congress has no business telling him how to run the executive branch.
He has set about slashing the federal workforce with little regard to the myriad laws aimed at protecting it… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Copyright (C) " target="_blank">unsubscribe