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BG Reads 3.29.2024

BG Reads 3.29.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - March 29, 2024

March 29, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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March 29, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 T.C. Broadnax is Austin's next city manager. Here's why he was picked.

🟣 Driverless semitrucks to hit Central Texas roads

🟣 Texas could require social media influencers to disclose paid political posts

🟣 Some leaders of the Texas GOP have found a new enemy: H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt

Read on!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

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

[AUSTIN CITY HALL]

✅ Austin City Council Regular Meeting Agenda - April 4, 2024

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

T.C. Broadnax is Austin's next city manager. Here's why he was picked. (KUT)

Austin announced Tuesday night that it will offer the city manager job to T.C. Broadnax, the outgoing city manager in Dallas. Upon his arrival later this year, he will have a full plate of duties and projects to oversee.

Broadnax is joining Austin during major reform in the housing and policing sectors. The city will also soon embark on the construction of the public transportation behemoth Project Connect, the I-35 expansion, the renovation of the Austin Convention Center and an expansion at the Austin airport.

These things are not new for Broadnax. In Dallas, he helped usher many of these same projects, including the revitalization of Fair Park, where the State Fair of Texas is held, and the master plan for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. He also helped oversee operations at Dallas Love Field airport, according to his resume.

Broadnax’s local government experience spans 30 years.

He served as a city manager in Tacoma, Washington, and before that, as an assistant city manager in San Antonio. Most recently, he has been the city manager of Dallas. He took on the role in 2017 but resigned last month under pressure from the City Council.

Despite his complicated relationship with some of the Dallas City Council, Austin city leaders said they are confident he will do this job well.

"We did our due diligence and reference checked him in Dallas and Tacoma, and we got a lot of positive feedback," Council Member Zo Qadri said.

Ultimately, his experience is why city council members say he is the best fit for the job.

Council Member Vanessa Fuentes is on the city manager search subcommittee and said Broadnax's work addressing homelessness stood out... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Affidavit: Truck driver admits to cocaine use hours before fatal Hays CISD school bus crash (Austin American-Statesman)

The driver of the concrete truck that struck a Hays school district bus carrying 44 prekindergarten students on Friday, causing the deaths of one student and a driver behind the bus, said he only got three hours of sleep before starting his shift and had used cocaine earlier that morning.

A copy of an affidavit for a search warrant obtained by the American-Statesman shows that the driver of the truck was Jerry Hernandez, 42. Those documents state that Hernandez told investigators he had smoked marijuana the night before.

Hernandez then told investigators that he did a "small amount of cocaine" Friday morning, the affidavit said. Hernandez refused to voluntarily give a blood sample at the scene.

Hernandez has not been arrested as of Thursday afternoon, Bastrop District Attorney Bryan Goertz told the American-Statesman… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Driverless semitrucks to hit Texas roads (Community Impact)

By the end of 2024, Texas drivers could look over to see a semitruck traveling down the highway with no one in the driver’s seat.Leading the charge in the Austin area is autonomous truck company Kodiak Robotics, which is already hauling IKEA furniture, C.R. England refrigerated products and Tyson Foods chicken daily on Texas roads.Currently, Kodiak trucks have a “safety driver” monitoring the truck as it carries freight for hundreds of miles. By the end of the year, Kodiak will begin sending trucks out solo.

TxDOT is developing a 21-mile “smart corridor” on SH 130 from Georgetown through Del Valle. The stretch will be equipped with sensors and cameras that will help autonomous vehicles navigate road conditions and any potential hazards, according to road technology company Cavnue… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Report: Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse up for sale (Austin Business Journal)

Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas LLC is up for sale, according to a news report.

Film website Deadline, citing "several sources," said the Austin-based chain has been shopped to some studios but there are no bidders yet.

An Alamo Drafthouse spokesperson had no comment regarding the report when contacted by the Austin Business Journal, declining to confirm or deny it.

Regardless, the cinema chain has been undergoing changes. A new CEO, Michael Kustermann, was appointed last summer, replacing Shelli Taylor, who stepped into the position in 2020 during a crushing period for entertainment and many other industries amid the height of the Covid-19 pandemic… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas appeals court overturns Crystal Mason’s conviction, 5-year sentence for illegal voting (Texas Tribune)

A Texas appeals court on Thursday overturned the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.

The decision by the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals means she is formally acquitted of the felony voting charge. The court said in the decision that there was no evidence Mason knew she was ineligible to vote when she cast her ballot — which is a condition that must be met in order to convict her of illegal voting.

Mason has maintained throughout the seven-year case that she did not know she was ineligible and would not have risked her freedom if she had. She said Thursday in a statement that her long legal fight, which gained international attention, was devastating.

“I am overjoyed to see my faith rewarded today,” Mason said. “I was thrown into this fight for voting rights and will keep swinging to ensure no one else has to face what I’ve endured for over six years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas could require social media influencers to disclose paid political posts (Texas Tribune)

Texas’ top campaign finance watchdog gave initial approval last week to a proposal that would require social media users to disclose if they are being paid to share or create political advertisements.

The Texas Ethics Commission’s action comes just months after The Texas Tribune reported that a secretive and politically-connected company, called Influenceable LLC, paid internet influencers to defend Attorney General Ken Paxton ahead of his Senate impeachment trial.

The proposed rule could be finalized at the commission’s next meeting in June.

Commissioners did not mention Influenceable by name at their March 20 meeting. But the agency’s general counsel, James Tinley, noted that the rule change was in response to “at least one business” that paid social media users for undisclosed political messaging... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Some leaders of the Texas GOP have found a new enemy: H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt (Texas Monthly)

Up against the wall, Charles Butt! The Jacobins in the GOP have a new enemy, and it’s the 86-year-old chairman of Texas’s beloved grocery chain, H-E-B. This weekend, party officials in four counties in East and Southeast Texas voted to condemn the “Democrat billionaire” for involving himself in “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”

Among Butt’s alleged offenses against the party: Advocating against “election integrity.” (Ahead of the 2020 election, Butt publicly supported Harris County, home to Houston, in its quest to send mail-in ballots to all eligible voters.) Lobbying “against parents’ God-given rights and against empowering parents to choose the education that is best for their children.”

(It’s unclear what “God-given rights” Butt opposes—in general, the resolution is poorly worded—but otherwise, his apostasy involves contributing to candidates and groups that support public education and oppose private-school vouchers, which would divert tax dollars away from public schools and toward private ones.) Sponsoring “drag queen shows for children.” (The resolution doesn’t specify what events it is referencing, but right-wing news sites have accused H-E-B of sponsoring pride events that included drag shows.)

To understand how Butt has become a target of so many among the GOP faithful, consider how the party crafts its most sacred document: the party platform, a notoriously long and ideologically extreme text that activists wield like a cudgel against Republican elected officials and candidates.

For crimes against the principles outlined in the platform, the Texas GOP has adopted resolutions censuring a who’s who of the party’s top leaders, including—in chronological order—former House Speaker Joe Straus, Congressman Tony Gonzales, state representative Andrew Murr, and House Speaker Dade Phelan.

(After contacting the Charles Butt Foundation, a representative for Butt and H-E-B declined our request for an interview.)

The drafting of the platform is an every-other-year affair, in even years. It begins ahead of the biennial state Republican Party convention, during precinct, county, and state Senate district meetings that take place across the state.

If the Republican Party convention is a sort of right-wing Burning Man—a gathering of like-minded eccentrics—then the local and regional conventions are tailgating parties, where activists propose and debate resolutions that will be considered at the state convention.

The platform is supposed to reflect the ideology of the GOP base, which can be defined, for practical purposes, as the very right-wing 3 percent of Texans who decide Republican primary elections. Though it’s nonbinding, the document is treated with grim seriousness by its authors—and therefore commands at least some respect, or perhaps fear, among elected officials. Platform fundamentalism is a core feature of the Texas Republican Party... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison (Associated Press)

Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud on hundreds of thousands of customers that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world’s most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.

Though he described Bankman-Fried as “extremely smart,” U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan delivered a blistering analysis of Bankman-Fried and his crimes before announcing a sentence that was half of what prosecutors sought and less than a quarter of the 105 years recommended by the court’s probation officers.

“There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s name right now is pretty much mud around the world,” Kaplan said of the 32-year-old California man who seemed atop the cryptocurrency universe before his businesses collapsed in November 2022, leaving customers, investors and lenders short over $11 billion, which the judge ordered him to forfeit… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

'Oppenheimer' finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions (NPR)

"Oppenheimer" finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers' reactions understandably were mixed and highly emotional.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was 3, said he has been fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called "the father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project.

"What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win," he said, sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press… (LINK TO FULL STORY)