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BG Reads 2.26.2024

BG Reads 2.26.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - February 26, 2024

February 26, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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February 26, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 CapMetro addresses rail issues during Austin FC season opener

🟣 Trump wins South Carolina, easily beating Haley in her home state

🟣 Travis County to launch $23 million project to keep mentally ill from jail

🟣 San Antonio home prices start 2024 as the most affordable of big Texas cities

Read on!

Click on the BG Logo for this week’s Austin public meeting times and agendas.

[BG BLOG]

✅ NEW - City of Austin org chart red line (as of 2/9/2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin office market has a glut of space, but experts predict it will eventually fill up (Austin American-Statesman)

Every office market in the country now has way more office space than it needs.

So pronounced Austin-area real estate expert Eldon Rude, as part of his 21st annual forecast event last week sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Austin.

Just over 27% of office space in the Austin market was vacant at the end of last year, up from 21.8% at the end of 2022, Rude told about 700 industry professionals last week.

Rude said Austin "has a huge amount of sublease space" (a sign of a slowing market). Rude said 5.5 million square feet of space was available for sublease by tenants who want to give it back to the market, up 41% from the last quarter of 2022.

In Austin, one of the most notable examples is the more than 600,000 square feet of space that Facebook is seeking to sublease in a new 66-story tower at Sixth and Guadalupe streets, currently the tallest building on Austin's skyline.

In addition, Internet search giant Google delayed moving into a 35-story building it has leased downtown, the sail-shaped building overlooking Lady Bird Lake… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

‘We will do better’: CapMetro addresses rail issues during Austin FC season opener (KXAN)

One day after Austin FC’s season opener and the unveiling of CapMetro’s new McKalla Station rail stop, transit authority leaders are offering another fare-free day for Red Line services following issues during Saturday’s operations.

“I want to apologize to our rail customers whose experience was impacted by last night’s service,” said Dottie Watkins, CapMetro president and CEO, in a social media thread. “We are committed to getting this right and we will do better.”

Officials celebrated the ribbon cutting ceremony for McKalla Rail Station Saturday morning ahead of the season opener match. Watkins said CapMetro moved more than 4,000 customers on the Red Line Saturday night.

Austin FC’s next home match on March 9 correlates with the first weekend of the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals. Watkins said CapMetro crews are working to learn from mistakes made Saturday night in advance of that next home math… “ (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Travis County to launch $23 million project to keep mentally ill from jail (Texas Tribune)

For years, veteran Texas sheriffs like Travis County’s Sally Hernandez have watched how countless tax dollars are spent to break the endless cycle of taking mentally ill or intoxicated individuals who commit minor crimes to treatment or the jail, only to see them released within hours.

Someone might be screaming in the middle of a street, or harassing others, or urinating in public while suffering the effects of untreated mental illness or substance use. While these criminal infractions are minor in the grand scheme of things, they do require law enforcement’s attention. So where to take the suspect? Jail or a mental health facility? Either way, these arrested suspects are out within hours after they are first taken into custody.

“The frustration on the law enforcement end is that we have nowhere to take them,” Hernandez said.

Travis County has tried almost everything from teaming up with the county mental health provider and hotlines to training programs for law enforcement to having the county jail staffed with various health care professionals… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Electric Utility Commission offers climate-friendly recommendations for Austin Energy update (Austin Monitor)

As the deadline approaches for an update to Austin Energy’s Resource, Generation, and Climate Protection Plan, the city’s Electric Utility Commission is joining the conversation, banding behind its own proposal for the coming decade.

The proposal, formed in collaboration with the city’s Resource Management Commission and a number of Austin Energy ratepayers, asks that the utility reconsider a number of approaches to decarbonization, including a proposal for a new hydrogen-capable combined cycle power plant. Supporters say air pollutants like nitrous oxide caused by the combustion-based approach would be counterproductive to the utility’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2035, particularly as efforts to close the Fayette Power Project coal plant have continued to flounder.

“According to The Texas Tribune, Travis County is now one of 10 counties in the state that will now exceed (Environmental Protection Agency) standards for particulate matter … and since 2010, according to data from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, there have been over 3,000 significant gas leaks. Nearly 400 resulted in explosions and injuries, including 163 deaths,” environmental activist Dale Bulla said at the EUC’s Feb. 12 meeting. “For more than six hours a Sunday or two ago, 80 percent of our electricity came from solar, wind and nuclear generation. Why not expand these cheaper and cleaner sources of energy?”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Woman suing Texas over its abortion ban plans to move her embryos out of state (NB News)

A woman who is suing Texas after she said she nearly died when doctors delayed giving her a medically necessary abortion tells NBC News exclusively that she plans to move her frozen embryos out of the state for fear Texas could stop providing in vitro fertilization.

The move by Amanda Zurawski and her husband, Josh, follows news that at least three fertility clinics in Alabama have paused in vitro fertilization treatments following a ruling by the state Supreme Court that found embryos are people who have the same legal protections as children — and that people can be held liable for destroying them.

Zurawski, 36, said on Thursday that she and her husband signed papers to move their embryos out of the state because she fears Texas could follow Alabama’s lead and block her from starting the family she’s spent years trying to build.

“I don’t want them in a state where a similar ruling could very likely take place,” she said of her embryos. “Everything about IVF is very anxiety-inducing. It’s very scary. It’s very difficult and rulings like this one in Alabama are just adding another layer of fear and anxiety.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

San Antonio home prices start 2024 as the most affordable among big Texas cities (Texas Public Radio)

San Antonio's existing median home price in January stood at $299,000, according to a report released Friday by the San Antonio Board of Realtors.

That price remains unchanged from one year ago. The board reported the median price of newly constructed homes in January was $280,500, a drop of 12% from the same month last year.

The San Antonio area still bests Austin, Dallas, and Houston in affordability and sometimes by a long shot. The median home prices in those areas, respectively, were $485,000, $351,000, and $315,000… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Trump wins South Carolina, easily beating Haley in her home state and closing in on GOP nomination (Associated Press)

Donald Trump won South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, easily beating former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state and further consolidating his path to a third straight GOP nomination.

Trump has now swept every contest that counted for Republican delegates, adding to previous wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Haley is facing growing pressure to leave the race but says she’s not going anywhere despite losing the state where she was governor from 2011 to 2017.

A 2020 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly inevitable. Haley has vowed to stay in the race through at least the batch of primaries on March 5, known as Super Tuesday, but was unable to dent Trump’s momentum in her home state despite holding far more campaign events and arguing that the indictments against Trump will hamstring him against Biden.

The Associated Press declared Trump the winner as polls closed statewide at 7 p.m. That race call was based on an analysis of AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of Republican South Carolina primary voters. The survey confirmed the findings of pre-Election Day polls showing Trump far outpacing Haley statewide.

“I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now,” Trump declared, taking the stage for his victory speech mere moments after polls closed. He added, “You can celebrate for about 15 minutes, but then we have to get back to work.” South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary has historically been a reliable bellwether for Republicans. In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. The lone exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012. Trump was dominant across the state, even leading in Lexington County, which Haley represented in the state Legislature.

Many Trump-backing South Carolinians, even some who previously supported Haley during her time as governor, weren’t willing to give her a home-state bump. “She’s done some good things,” Davis Paul, 36, said about Haley as he waited for Trump at a recent rally in Conway. “But I just don’t think she’s ready to tackle a candidate like Trump. I don’t think many people can.” (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies. (NBC News)

Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories. The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes. But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017. At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

One member of the group, Greg Conte, who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that his group showed up to talk to the media. He said that the group was prepared to be ejected if CPAC organizers were tipped off, but that never happened. Another, Ryan Sanchez, who was previously part of the Nazi “Rise Above Movement,” took photos and videos of himself at the conference with an official badge and touted associations with Fuentes.

Other attendees in Sanchez’s company openly used the N-word. For several years, CPAC and its supporters have attempted to temper the most extreme fringes of the conservative movement, and have welcomed the continued debate between Trump and more moderate conservatives.

This year, however, some attendees and former attendees have expressed frustration with the conference’s stronger association with Trump and his wing of the party. In one of the most viral moments from this year’s conference, conservative personality Jack Posobiec called for the end of democracy and a more explicitly Christian-focused government. While Posobiec later said his statements were partly satire, many CPAC attendees embraced his and others’ invocations of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection… (LINK TO FULL STORY)