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- BG Reads 2.25.2025
BG Reads 2.25.2025
🟪 BG Reads - February 25, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
February 25, 2025
âś… Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Austin residents voice budget concerns at town hall meeting (CBS Austin)
🟪 West Campus could get taller high-rises (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Round Rock isn't relaxing after legal win related to Dell incentives deal (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Republican lawmaker files bills to ban DEI in Texas K-12 public schools (Texas Tribune)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ Today @9AM: Austin Council Work Session
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
âś… Austin residents voice budget concerns at town hall meeting (CBS Austin)
Austin residents had the opportunity to express their concerns about the city's budget allocation during a town hall meeting hosted by City Manager TC Broadnax.
This event marked the first in a series of town halls aimed at gathering community input as the city begins planning its 2025-2026 fiscal year budget.
Broadnax, who is navigating his first full budget cycle since assuming his role last May, emphasized the importance of community feedback in shaping Austin's financial priorities. "For me, the priorities of the community should and often mirror what I'm hearing from the city council," Broadnax said.
The city is considering a $1.4 billion general fund for 2025, primarily sourced from property taxes.
Currently, the plan allocates 36% of the budget to the Austin Police Department, 18% to the Austin Fire Department, and 10% to Austin-Travis County EMS.
Broadnax is set to present his proposed budget to the City Council in July, with a final vote scheduled for August… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Student housing union advocates for renters ahead of city’s UNO update (Austin Monitor)
The University Tenants Union student group at the University of Texas has launched a new housing toolkit aimed at helping student renters better navigate the housing market in West Campus and surrounding areas.
The organization, which advocates for tenant rights and policy reforms affecting student housing, developed the resource to centralize legal and practical guidance for students, many of whom are first-time renters.
The toolkit compiles information from organizations such as Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and includes templates for communicating with landlords, advice on handling disputes and guidance on escalating issues when necessary. UTU representatives say the initiative is meant to equip students with the knowledge needed to protect themselves in an often complex and competitive rental market. “What we are trying to do is centralize a lot of these resources that are available on a lot of housing advocacy, housing support websites.
A lot of these things are out there, but we’re centralizing them, focusing on making sure they’re really intuitive and especially just thinking about our audience, which is students, many of which are first-time renters,” said Justin Lanier, UTU’s policy director, adding that student renters can often feel intimidated by the large number of homes and apartments owned by private equity firms and investment groups.
“​​West Campus, I would say (is) very consolidated. There are definitely a handful of property owners and some of them are developers that own a ton of those beds in those units.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… West Campus could get taller high-rises (Austin Business Journal)
Buildings up to 600 feet tall — or more than 40 stories — could be on tap next to the University of Texas campus.
That's because changes to the University Neighborhood Overlay, or UNO district, proposed by the Austin Planning Department would allow for them under certain conditions to create more housing.
The proposal includes a slight expansion of the UNO and a redrawing of subdistricts within it, as well as the creation of the new maximum height limit up to 600 feet — which is higher than the 515-foot Frost Bank Tower downtown.
In April last year, the Austin City Council approved a resolution calling for the UNO update, as a means of expanding the city's affordable housing bonus program, ensuring bedrooms have access to natural light, updating height limits and encouraging ground-floor commercial development. The proposal alters some of the UNO subdistrict boundaries and calls for new maximum heights for each.
The transit-core subdistrict, which runs along Guadalupe Street, would allow for projects up to 600 feet; the inner-west subdistrict in the center of the UNO would allow for projects up to 420 feet; and the outer-west subdistrict near Lamar Boulevard would allow for 90-foot maximums… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Round Rock isn't relaxing after legal win related to Dell incentives deal (Austin Business Journal)
Round Rock won a big court victory in December in its long-running effort to safeguard the lucrative, three-decade-old incentives deal with Dell Technologies Inc. that keeps its property taxes down and helped it grow into Austin’s largest, and perhaps most prominent, suburb. But it isn’t lowering its guard.
That’s because the legal ruling can be appealed until March 3. And with the Texas Legislature in session, there’s also a chance a bill could be filed until the March 14 filing deadline that's aimed at upending the incentive agreement that brings in nearly $30 million annually for the city about 20 miles north of Austin.
Even beyond that date, such efforts could be mounted in future legislative sessions. "I would love to say, 'Yes, (the threat) is gone and we are riding off into the sunset,'" said Jordan Robinson, president and CEO of the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce. But "it's something we will always be keeping an eye on."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
âś… Republican lawmaker files bills to ban DEI in Texas K-12 public schools (Texas Tribune)
A top Texas senator filed legislation Monday that would extend the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to K-12 public schools. Sen. Brandon Creighton, the Conroe Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Education K-16, introduced both Senate Bill 12 and Senate Bill 1565 after Gov. Greg Abbott expressed support in his State of the State address earlier this month for Texas banning diversity practices across its more than 1,200 public school districts.
The introductory text in the legislation suggests school districts that fail to comply with the proposed DEI ban could lose out on funding, but neither bills specify how that would happen.
Public schools receive funding primarily from local property taxes and the state budget. Following the bill filing Monday, Erin Daly Wilson, the communications director for Creighton’s office, told The Texas Tribune that the bill would not withhold funding from school districts that violate the law… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… How latest Texas Lottery controversy further complicates chances for expanding gambling (Austin American-Statesman)
After several members of the state Senate Finance Committee, in round-robin style, castigated the executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission and three members of its oversight board over third-party brokers being allowed to sell game tickets via smartphone apps, Sen. Carol Alvarado weighed in with an understatement.
"You all are sure muddying the waters for some of us who are trying to expand gaming in this state," the Houston Democrat told the lottery representatives during the hearing Feb. 12. The observation came after other senators accused the lottery leadership of leaving the agency that operates the state-run gambling operation vulnerable to money laundering and making it easier for minors to purchase lottery tickets anonymously.
To illustrate their concerns, the senators pointed to a $95 million Lotto jackpot won in April 2023 by an entity that made multimillion-dollar bulk purchases from what the lottery industry calls "courier companies" to effectively buy up all the possible six-number combinations for the next drawing. The final $11 million bulk purchase was made in person at a courier company store in North Texas that had multiple lottery terminals running around the clock to fill orders that are mostly placed online using courier companies' apps. Even though state law prohibits lottery retailers from selling tickets over the phone, Texas Lottery Director Ryan Mindell told the finance panel that the retailers aren't selling the tickets via apps, the courier companies are.
The companies take the orders, he said, and then buy the tickets from a licensed operator. Therefore, he said, his agency is powerless to regulate the couriers. The senators, led by Houston's Paul Bettencourt, Rockwall's Bob Hall and Lubbock's Charles Perry, all Republicans, essentially said Mindell was splitting hairs at best and turning a blind eye to what they considered a dangerous way to do state business at worse.
And a week later, as fortune would have it, a courier company store in Austin sold the winning ticket for an $83.5 million Texas Lotto jackpot. So, what does all of this have to do with legislative proposals that would allow things like sports betting and destination casinos in Texas?… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
âś… In first month, Trump upends century-old approach to the world (Washington Post)
In his first month in office, President Donald Trump has upended the nation’s nearly century-old approach to global affairs. The speed and energy with which the president has moved to remake Washington’s role in the world has been most visible in his approach to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
He has embraced Russia’s strength and blasted the smaller country, falsely accusing President Volodymyr Zelensky of starting a conflict that began with a Russian invasion. He has insulted U.S. allies in Europe, who for decades have relied on the United States to check Russian power.
The result, diplomats and analysts say, has been to cede influence to Moscow. But that might just be the beginning. At worst, Trump’s strategy could embolden other global powers, notably China, to adopt more bellicose policies toward their neighbors, they say — the opposite of what some of his allies say needs to be the focus of U.S. foreign policy. Trump has gone further than he did in his first term to redefine whom the United States embraces and whom it combats, surprising fellow world leaders who thought they knew Trump’s playbook and had been working to please him.
Instead, the president is spurning a post-World War II international system built to block global aggressors, embracing far older ideas of allowing military powers to build regional spheres of influence and exert dominion over their neighbors. He appears to be turning back the clock to a time in world history when countries with the biggest militaries constructed empires, demanded tribute from weaker nations and expanded their territories through coercion, analysts say.
“This is classic geopolitics, actually: influence on the areas that are closest to you geographically,” said Rosa Balfour, the director of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank. “If you pair that up with this conversation with Putin, then you see the potential emergence of a worldview where the world is carved up by different powers.
This fits in very well with a Russian view of things.” Trump’s approach has stunned U.S. allies, in part because of their view that his rush to strike a deal with Russia over Ukraine — and apparent rejection of Washington’s long-standing role of checking the power of the Kremlin — might reduce the nation’s influence in the world rather than expand it… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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