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BG Reads 3.26.2024

BG Reads 3.26.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - March 26, 2024

March 26, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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March 26, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 BG Blog - Takeaways From Austin’s City Manager Candidate Town Hall

🟣 Austin Infrastructure Academy finds a home at ACC

🟣 Study finds city employees distrustful of city’s ethics conduct

🟣 APD’s efforts to revamp cadet academy fall short of goals, report says

Read on!

✅ CLICK HERE for this week’s City of Austin meeting times and agendas.

[BINGHAM GROUP]

✅ [NEW] BG Blog - Takeaways From Austin’s City Manager Candidate Town Hall

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

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin Police Department's efforts to revamp cadet academy fall short of goals, report says (Austin American-Statesman)

As city leaders continue to push for changes at the Austin Police Department's cadet academy, outside consultants say "more work remains" to reach the goals established years ago.

Amid a yearslong effort to revamp the cadet academy, the City Council hired consultants with Kroll Associates to review the academy and suggest changes to switch from a "warrior" to a "guardian" mentality emphasis in training.

Kroll began making recommendations to change the department's academy in 2021 and 2022. The City Council canceled three cadet classes starting in June 2020 over concerns about how officers were trained. Reviews of the academy later showed that Black cadets endured worse treatment than non-Black cadets and that some cadets described the academy's training tactics as more harsh than military training.

While some of the proposed changes have been implemented, the latest, nearly 30-page report from Kroll notes that there are still many places where the Austin Police Department has not administered the changes recommended by Kroll and the City Council.

This report, along with an update from leaders of the Austin Police Department about implementation, was presented during an emergency meeting Monday of the city's Public Safety Committee... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Study finds city employees distrustful of city’s ethics conduct (Austin Monitor)

City employees who responded to a survey on the city’s behavior with regard to ethics gave the city lower marks for trust and accountability as compared to how city management rated the city. Employees surveyed also showed a greater fear of retaliation for reporting ethics violations than management respondents did.

These are two major conclusions of an ethics assessment done by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative at the request of the Office of the City Auditor. Members of City Council’s Audit and Finance Committee are scheduled to hear about the assessment during Wednesday’s meeting.

ECI, the group that performed the assessment, said the city has many of the components needed for an effective ethics and compliance program. “However, results suggest not all components are in place or working together,” they said...(LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin Infrastructure Academy finds a home at ACC (Austin Business Journal)

Austin Community College will host the city's new workforce development academy.

The Austin Infrastructure Academy will be a permanent part of ACC's planned Southeast Travis County campus not far from Tesla's gigafactory and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Until that's built, the community college will host the new institution at its Riverside campus, which is also on the southeast side of town.

Austin's academy is being formed to educate the tens of thousands of builders and skilled professionals needed to keep up with big projects such as the I-35 revamp, Project Connect and the airport's expansion.

The new infrastructure academy will serve as an additional training center in a wider network of community-based and union-based training programs.

At the Riverside campus, ACC has the capacity to train students in welding, construction, heavy machinery operation, electric fleet maintenance and HVAC. The college can begin those programs immediately; however, an exact launch date for the city's academy has not yet been set.

The new program is moving forward in response to roughly $25 billion in mobility infrastructure investments planned for Austin over the next two decades.

These projects include the introduction of a new 10-mile light rail system, improvements and expansions at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the redevelopment of I-35 through the city and the corresponding plan to "cap and stitch" the new highway…(LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

U.S. Supreme Court takes up Texas case challenging abortion pill access (Texas Tribune)

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that has the potential to upend access to mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug. This is the first major abortion case the high court has heard since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The case was first filed in Amarillo, where conservative federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk sided nearly a year ago with anti-abortion groups seeking to move mifepristone off the market. Subsequently, the Supreme Court froze any changes to the drug’s legal status until it had a chance to hear the case.

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an organization of anti-abortion doctors, filed the initial lawsuit in November 2022, saying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not properly vet the safety of mifepristone before approving it in 2000 or loosening restrictions in 2016 and 2022... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Outgoing Dallas City Manager Broadnax says chance at Austin job came at ‘perfect time’ (Dallas Morning News)

Outgoing Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax told Austin residents on Monday that he’s excited at the idea of working with their City Council and being their top municipal executive, calling the opportunity the “perfect place” at the “perfect time”.

During a public forum Monday where the two finalists for Austin’s city manager job made their case for why they should be hired, Broadnax said he believed the Austin City Council was “committed to doing things to the benefit of this community,” with a long-term vision. He said he was excited to work on their behalf to execute those plans. Broadnax called Dallas “the city I had dreamed of leading” but said he looked forward to the chance of leading the state’s capital city.

“I would love to have an opportunity to lead that city so that we can be the beacon for any other city in this great nation, let alone in the (state) of Texas,” said Broadnax during a question and answer session in front of a capacity crowd that included Mayor Kirk Watson and several council members at the Permitting and Development Event Center in Austin. The other finalist is Denton City Manager Sara Hensley, a former Austin assistant city manager who has also led the city’s parks and recreation department.

Both will be interviewed by the Austin City Council during a closed Council meeting on Tuesday. Watson has said the city plans to invite at least one of the candidates back for interviews next week and the council could approve negotiations starting with one of them as soon as next Thursday.

Broadnax started as Dallas city manager in 2017. His resignation was announced Feb. 21 and goes into effect June 3. While Broadnax answered a series of questions from a moderator at the Austin event, he never referenced anything about the circumstances that led to his resignation nor how it was at the suggestion of the majority of the City Council… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Keller Williams faces class action over profit sharing (San Antonio Express-News)

Austin-based Keller Williams Realty Inc. is facing a potential class-action lawsuit over changes to its profit-sharing program that could collectively cost former associates millions of dollars. Ex-Keller Williams agent Jerri Moulder wants a court to rule the company cannot retroactively reduce distributions earned by former associates vested in the profit-sharing program just because they now work for a competitor. She’s now an agent with another firm in Kansas City, Mo.

Last summer, Keller Williams announced plans to slash from 100% to 5% the profit distributions it shares with agents vested in the program but who left the brokerage to join a rival — unless they returned to the firm within six months. The change takes effect July 1, but does not affect Keller Williams agents who have retired or left the industry.

“Under the revised policy, former KW agents who actively compete against our brokerages will receive less profit share, with more redistributed to the agents who continue to partner in our growth,” said Darryl Frost, a spokesperson for Keller Williams. The dispute involves big money. In Moulder’s case filed Friday in federal court in San Antonio, she seeks damages of $250 million or an amount to be determined at trial.

The class is expected to number more than 100 former agents. As of July 31, Keller Williams had distributed almost $1.6 billion to associates since the profit-sharing program took effect in 1987, HousingWire reported in August. According to the lawsuit, Keller Williams paid from $25 million to $40 million in distributions in the year before an August 2019 presentation to the company’s International Associate Leadership Council. The damages claim was calculated by multiplying $25 million by 10 years, said Kenneth McClain, a Missouri lawyer representing Moulder… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Israel cancels visit to Washington after U.S. abstains on U.N. cease-fire resolution (Wall Street Journal)

The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza after the U.S. allowed it to pass by abstaining, prompting Israel to withdraw from coming high-level meetings with the Biden administration.

The unusual U.S. move signaled the administration’s growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relations with the White House have deteriorated over their clashing political agendas and conflicting views of military tactics.

By abstaining rather than vetoing the resolution, the U.S. enabled the Security Council for the first time since the war began in October to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire.

The resolution calls for “an immediate cease-fire” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends April 9, “leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire, and also the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

Netanyahu’s office said that the wording of the resolution was unacceptable because it didn’t explicitly make a cease-fire conditional on the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told the Security Council the American position on that link was unchanged. “A cease-fire of any duration must come with the release of hostages,” she said. “This is the only path.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)