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BG Reads 2.7.2024

BG Reads 2.7.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - February 7, 2024

February 07, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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February 7, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 New restaurants to pave the way for Stream Realty’s Sixth Street revitalization

🟣 Austin City Council considering bond election to address climate change

🟣 BG Podcast (Ep. 236): City of Austin Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guidelines

🟣 Another blockbuster year for booze in Austin

🟣 ‘None of these candidates’ wins Nevada in a blowout defeat to Haley

🟣 Redefining the milestone: America has never had so many 65-year-olds

Read on!

🟣 Click here for this week’s Austin public meeting times and agendas.

[BG BLOG]

✅ NEW - Five City of Austin Issues to Watch in 2024

🟣 Economic Development Incentives

🟣 Impacts of the HOME Initiative

🟣 Short-term Rentals

🟣 A 2024 Bond Proposal

🟣 Autonomous Mobility

✅ NEW - City of Austin org chart red line (as of 1/31/2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

New restaurants to pave the way for Stream Realty’s Sixth Street revitalization (Austin Monitor)

The real estate group looking to revitalize the Sixth Street entertainment district just west of Interstate 35 is betting that a wave of new restaurants will be the initial difference-maker in the move to gradually strip the area of its “Dirty Sixth” reputation.

Paul Bodenman, senior vice president of investments at Stream Realty, told the Austin Monitor the company has been actively courting potential restaurateurs to fill some of the more than 30 parcels it now owns on East Sixth Street. At the same time, Stream is also preparing for the start of facade improvement work on some of its properties to begin in April. While retail is still a goal for some of the other ground-floor spaces in addition to restaurants, Bodenman said there’s no hard decision or plan for adding office, hotel or residential use to some of the properties where the company has the ability to build up to 140 feet.

“Our opinion is food and beverage is more complementary to what is currently on Sixth Street. That obviously helps people come down the street in general,” he said. “The experience that somebody has going to a great restaurant and then being able to go see a show or go to the bar down the street or go to East Sixth Street is more impactful from an experience and a perception change than maybe going just to a retail store and then leaving the street. So we want people to come out in various times of day, and we want people to experience the street over several hours and have a really good time. We think that bringing in restaurants is the way to do that initially.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin City Council considering bond election to address climate change (KXAN)

Austin City Council will vote on whether to take steps toward an “environmental investment plan” next week (link to the resolution, Item 25). The vote could kickstart the public input process and direct staff to bring back recommendations.

The plan aims “to address climate change, sustainability of City operations, and community resiliency,” a release from Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter’s office said (also check out Alter’s message board post). The proposal was brought forward by Alter and cosponsored by Council Members Vanessa Fuentes, José Velásquez and Paige Ellis.

Austin City Council approved the Austin Climate Equity Plan in September 2021, according to council documents. That plan pushed for 74 ways to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 while also prioritizing communities that may be disproportionately impacted by climate change including low-income and communities of color… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Another blockbuster year for booze (Austin Business Journal)

Another billion-dollar year is in the books for Austin’s alcohol industry.

For the second year in a row, on-premise alcohol sales in the city exceeded $1 billion, reaching $1.18 billion in 2023 — a nearly $50 million uptick from 2022 and notably higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019 when Austin clocked $883 million in such sales.

Leading the charge is a relatively new type of alcohol mavens — hotels, which rake in alcohol revenue with their trendy bars and restaurants plus ballrooms that host business events.

White Lodging Services Corp. is the clear king of beers, wine and liquor in Austin. The Indiana-based hotel giant clocks more than twice the alcohol sales than the Moody Center at No. 2. It does so via the management of the JW Marriott, the Westin hotels, Otis Hotel/AC Hotel, Austin Marriott, Moxy Austin and more. JW Marriott itself is a powerhouse with its bevy of bars and restaurants, and the hotel is one of the most popular for big business events and galas — many of which feature alcohol.

On-premise consumption in other big Texas cities climbed by about the same percentage from 2022 to 2023 as it did in Austin, in the 4% to 5% range. Still, consumption is high in Austin on a relative basis, with the city imbibing nearly as much as Dallas last year despite having 300,000 fewer residents. The ABJ's analysis included cities but not their wider metro areas… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[BG Podcast]

BG Podcast Episode 236

BG Policy Watch - City of Austin Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guidelines

On this episode the Bingham Group CEO A.J. and Consultant Chris Stewart, former Austin Chief Information Officer (2020 to 2023) discuss Item 24 on the Austin City Council's February 15th agenda.

The item calls for the City Council to, "Approve a resolution regarding transparent and ethical citywide artificial intelligence guidelines and procedures, accountability strategies, and workforce considerations."

Among other directives to the City Manager, the resolution calls for the guidelines to include (but are not limited) to the following principles:

🟣 Innovation and Collaboration

🟣 Data Privacy and Security

🟣 Transparency

🟣 Explainability and Interpretability

🟣 Validity and Reliability

🟣 Bias and Harm Reduction

✅ Learn more here - BG Blog: Policy Watch - City of Austin Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guidelines -> tinyurl.com/b9k29s9u

LISTEN ON: SoundCloud, YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify

[TEXAS NEWS]

Despite grand jury investigation, officers may not face charges in Uvalde shooting response(Texas Tribune)

Even though police training instructs officers to confront a shooter, hundreds of officers responding to Robb Elementary waited over an hour to confront the gunman.

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that officers do not have a constitutional “duty to protect,” even if they have been trained to do so. And even if the Uvalde grand jury decides to indict officers, prosecutors would then have the difficult burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers were under a specific legal duty to act and that in failing to act they caused a specific harm.

“There’s a big difference between what is morally right and what the law actually requires,” said Seth Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and former police officer. “I’d be very surprised if there was a straightforward path to criminal prosecution.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

At grid 'summit' in Houston, Lt. Gov. Patrick and BlackRock make pitch for new power plants (KUT)

Some big names in the world of finance, Texas energy and politics met Tuesday in Houston to talk about the state's power grid. The goal of the event, called the “Texas Power Grid Investment Summit,” was to attract investors to build natural gas power plants in Texas. The summit was hosted by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm. Patrick and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink shared opening remarks, but have found themselves at odds over energy policy in the past.

A few years ago, Patrick helped pass a law getting Texas to divest public funds from BlackRock and other firms because of their environmental and socially focussed financial strategies. After that divestment push, BlackRock went into damage control and began touting the billions it still puts in the industry. Patrick said Fink reached out to him directly, and the two began talking.

Both men want something from each other. Fink wants to get off the blacklist. Patrick wants BlackRock to help find backers for more power plants in Texas, which he says will bolster the grid. Fast forward to Tuesday, where they shared the stage at the Houstonian Hotel. At the event, the audience heard from both men about opportunities to invest in Texas power generation. Those opportunities include $10 billion in incentives and bonuses to encourage power plant construction proposed by lawmakers and approved by voters last year. At times the sales pitch almost took the tone of an auction or, as Patrick joked, a “timeshare presentation.”

“We estimate in this room there’s $2.2 trillion," Fink told the crowd. “We only have to put $10 billion to work, so can we get it done? Can we start raising hands?” “In all seriousness,” he said, “I think we can find a solution.” Not everyone is so sure. Ed Hirs is an energy economist at the University of Houston and longtime critic of Texas’ deregulated energy market. He says the way the Texas market is structured won’t provide a steady return to power plant operators, making plant construction bonuses ineffective. He said he believes the fact the summit was held in the first place proves his point. “If you’ve got $2 trillion worth of investors and they’re looking for a deal ... they wouldn’t have had this summit; there would already be power plants being built," he said. “All of these guys are sharks. There not going to miss an opportunity to make a profit.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Once hesitant, Texas Republicans have united behind Donald Trump again (Texas Tribune)

It has been sweet vindication for Trump’s earliest backers in Texas, like Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. Miller declared himself the first statewide official to endorse Trump for 2024 — at a Trump rally two years ago in the Houston suburbs.

“Eventually [other state GOP leaders] just kind of saw the writing on the wall,” Miller said in an interview. “Trump was gonna be the nominee, might as well get on the train before it leaves the station.”

Perhaps the most revealing Texas endorsement came shortly after Trump won the New Hampshire primary last month. Two minutes after NBC projected Trump the winner, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, and lent his support.

“I have seen enough,” Cornyn said.

Cornyn had spent much of 2023 expressing interest in a post-Trump direction for the GOP and saying he did not plan to endorse in the primary regardless. Cornyn even said in May that he thought Trump’s “time has passed him by.”

But Trump’s vanquishing of the primary field appeared to sway Cornyn, who also has his own personal political considerations. He is up for reelection in 2026 and has made no secret he wants to be Senate majority leader one day.

Now Cornyn is helping host a major Trump fundraiser next month in Washington, D.C., along with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and most of Texas’ House GOP delegation, including two new supporters, Reps. Dan Crenshaw and Jake Ellzey… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

For Lina Hidalgo, mental health treatment became a political identity (New York Times)

As a rising young Democratic star and the top elected official of Harris County, the most populous in Texas, Lina Hidalgo surprised many people last summer when she announced that she had checked herself in at a residential mental health clinic for serious depression. She had been struggling privately for years, even as she stepped forward assertively to preside over Houston’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and help residents throughout the county deal with flooding and a devastating winter freeze. Then, during a brutal re-election fight in 2022, her mental state worsened.

Aides were aware that something was wrong — there were missed campaign events, and shortness with staff members — but few knew just how dire things had become. “I remember feeling really suicidal, and saying to David, my boyfriend, and to my therapist at the time, ‘We have to do something,’” Ms. Hidalgo said. Since her return from nearly two months of treatment at the clinic, Ms. Hidalgo has spoken openly and often about her mental health, making her struggles an increasingly central part of her political identity.

In an extended interview with The New York Times, she talked candidly about her depression, her decision to seek treatment and the trauma of childhood sexual abuse that she has rarely discussed.

“The more we talk about it, the more it’s going to help somebody else,” she said. Ms. Hidalgo, 32, has added her name to a growing list of politicians — most of them Democrats — who have chosen to be public about their mental health. She benefited from such openness herself, she said, taking inspiration from Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who announced that he was receiving inpatient treatment for depression several months before Ms. Hidalgo sought that kind of care. But the approach remains politically risky.

Political consultants still point to Senator Thomas Eagleton, a Missouri Democrat whose history of mental health treatment doomed his prospects as a vice-presidential running mate in 1972. And while the number of politicians who are willing to discuss their mental health treatment has grown, it remains small.

“They feel that once you’ve got that scarlet letter, people are always going to look at you sideways,” said Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman who sought help for addiction and mental health issues after he crashed his car into a barrier at the U.S. Capitol. He has since become an outspoken advocate for mental health treatment. “We’re still negotiating all of this in our modern work world,” Mr. Kennedy said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Nikki Haley is trounced by the ‘none of these candidates’ option in Nevada’s Republican primary (Associated Press)

Nikki Haley was swamped in Nevada’s symbolic Republican presidential primary as GOP voters resoundingly picked the “none of these candidates” option on the ballot in a repudiation of the former U.N. ambassador who is the last remaining major rival to front-runner Donald Trump.

Trump didn’t compete in Tuesday’s primary, which doesn’t award any delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. The former president is instead focused on caucuses that will be held Thursday and will help him move closer to becoming the Republican standard-bearer.

That leaves the results Tuesday as technically meaningless in the Republican race. But they still amount to an embarrassment for Haley, who has sought to position herself as a candidate who can genuinely compete against Trump. Instead, she became the first presidential candidate from either party to lose a race to “none of these candidates” since that option was introduced in Nevada in 1975… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

America has never had so many 65-year-olds. They’re redefining the milestone. (Wall Street Journal)

More Americans are turning 65 this year than any prior time in history.

Today’s 65-year-olds are redefining a milestone long associated with retirement parties and the end of productive years. They are wealthier and by many measures, healthier, and expected to live another 20 years. A growing share are divorced. Many turn their focus to what they want in this next stage.

“Being 65 is not just thinking about who you were, but what you might become in a new chapter,” says Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave, a California-based consulting firm specializing in aging-related issues.

Our own parents and grandparents, he says, weren’t typically thinking of new ventures and possibilities at 65. “They were winding down,” he says.

About 4.1 million Americans will reach 65 years old this year, reaching a surge that will continue through 2027, according to an analysis by Jason Fichtner, executive director of the Retirement Income Institute and chief economist at the Bipartisan Policy Center. That is about 11,200 a day, compared with the 10,000 daily average from the previous decade, he says.

Robin Darrow, vice president of sales and marketing at Scentrifugal Events, turns 65 in a few months but has no plans to retire because she loves her work and also can’t afford to retire. Darrow, who lives in the Philadelphia area, helped found the company in 2016, which offers “create your own fragrance” events at meetings and celebrations... (LINK TO FULL STORY)