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BG Reads 3.4.2024

BG Reads 3.4.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - March 4, 2024

March 04, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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March 4, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Meet the Democratic candidates for Travis County district attorney (KUT)

🟣 Early voting turnout in 2024 Texas primaries slumps compared to 2020 (Texas Tribune)

🟣 Largest wildfire in Texas history keeps spreading, forces more evacuations (Dallas Morning News)

Read on!

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

[BINGHAM GROUP]

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

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Adjusted density bonus program pushes housing, affordability on commercial properties (Austin Monitor)

Following a December court ruling that invalidated three changes to the city’s Land Development Code, City Council has approved an ordinance change that promotes housing density by using many of the components of the now-obsolete Vertical Mixed Use 2 ordinance. The pair of changes were approved, with agenda Item 70 passing unanimously and Item 73 passing 9-1, with Council Member Alison Alter voting against and Council Member Mackenzie Kelly abstaining.

The DB90 program, so named because it features a density bonus structure that allows commercial properties converted to housing to build up to 90 feet in height, is intended to bake different levels of affordable housing into new residential units. The Density Bonus Combining District differs from VMU2 because it will also apply to properties located outside of existing and future core transit corridors.

Projects seeking to participate in the program will need to be reviewed through the city’s zoning process, including approvals by Planning Commission and City Council, in a nod to court defeats that found the city didn’t give proper notification to neighbors of potentially affected parcels… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Meet the Democratic candidates for Travis County district attorney (KUT)

Travis County voters will decide between two Democratic candidates for district attorney in the March primary: Jeremy Sylestine and incumbent José Garza, who has held the office since 2021.

The winner will face Republican candidate Daniel W. Betts, who is running unopposed.

Early voting in the primaries runs through Friday, March 1. Election Day is Tuesday, March 5… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

South Korean supplier to Samsung takes office in Round Rock (Austin Business Journal)

The U.S. subsidiary of industrial materials distributor and Samsung supplier iMarket Korea Inc. has leased a small office in Round Rock it's calling its new U.S. headquarters as it undertakes an ambitious real estate project nearby.

The Feb. 29 announcement by iMarket America comes after it signed a memorandum of understanding with the city of Taylor last year to build a technology-oriented business campus on more than 200 acres it purchased east of the city. Plans for that project, called the Taylor Technology Park, remain in motion.

iMarket America Inc.'s new headquarters is in a 2,300-square-foot office at 810 Hesters Crossing Road in The Summit at La Frontera in Round Rock. There is no estimated job total for the headquarters, but it's expected to have only a handful of employees, officials said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Early voting turnout in 2024 Texas primaries slumps compared to 2020 (Texas Tribune)

More than 200,000 fewer Texans participated in early voting during the 2024 primary election compared to the 2020 primary – despite an overall uptick in the number of registered voters in the state.

About 10% of registered voters, or 1.8 million people, cast a ballot during early voting, which ran from Feb. 20 to March 1. That marked a significant decline from the last presidential primary election in 2020, where 12.6% of registered voters participated early.

Voters across all 254 counties are choosing Democratic and Republican nominees for the presidential election, as well as for representatives in Congress and the Texas Legislature. Lower-level judges and county offices are also on the ballot.

Democratic turnout accounts for the entirety of the decline in early voting numbers – Republican participation increased slightly compared to 2020 but not by enough to counter the sharp decrease in votes cast early in the Democratic primary. About 1.2 million votes were cast in the Republican primary and about 600,000 were cast in the Democratic primary… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Largest wildfire in Texas history keeps spreading, forces more evacuations (Dallas Morning News)

Planes dropped fire retardant over the Texas Panhandle on Sunday and a small community was ordered to evacuate as firefighters kept up efforts to stamp out the largest wildfire in state history while contending with new blazes. Strong winds spread the flames further, prompting an evacuation order to be issued in Sanford, a town of a little more than 100 residents, according to the Amarillo office of the National Weather Service, which posted on X. A cluster of fires has burned nearly 2,000 square miles — or almost 1.3 million acres — in rural areas surrounding Amarillo, including the largest blaze spilling into neighboring Oklahoma.

As of Sunday afternoon, the Smokehouse Creek fire, which has burned nearly 1.1 million acres, was 15% contained. Two other fires that have burned a combined 180,000 acres, were 60% contained. Authorities have not said what ignited the fires, but strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes.

The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings — signifying extreme fire risk due to warm temperatures, low humidity and strong winds — across much of the central U.S. on Sunday, including Texas and its neighboring states of New Mexico and Oklahoma. Red flag warnings also covered nearly all of Nebraska and Iowa, along with large swaths of Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota. Smaller portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota and Illinois were also under red flag warnings.

As firefighters battle to contain the unprecedented wildfires, humanitarian organizations are pivoting their attention to victims who have lost their homes and livelihoods in the blazes. Residents began clearing affected property on Saturday, and by Sunday the extent of the loss began mounting. Julie Winters, the executive director for Hutchinson County United Way, said the organization has heard estimates of over 150 homes being impacted in the county, noting that the fires extend to at least five other counties. “We already know that a large group of people are uninsured who lost their homes. So without monetary assistance, it’s going to be very hard for them to start back over,” Winters said. About 70 families from Fritch, Texas, approached the organization on Friday during an event, but Winters believes many others will come forward in the days and weeks ahead… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Dade Phelan delivered for the right. Now it wants to exile him. (Texas Monthly)

When the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives calls, money comes running. This is the natural order of power asserting itself. The Speaker helps regulate the world’s eighth-largest economy, and he will always be surrounded by those who want favors. But the Speaker, unlike the governor and lieutenant governor, is effectively elected twice, first as a member in his district and then as leader of the House by all the representatives in the chamber. To keep his job and do the business of the House, the Speaker must seek and win votes from members of both parties, and money from all sorts of interest groups. He is fragile in a way other power brokers are not.

In the kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells his apostles in the book of Matthew, “the first will be last and the last first.” So it is in the Texas House, where the Speaker wields great power while also being constrained, and at times even imprisoned, by that power. The Speaker can control events and influence policy. But he—all Speakers so far have been men—is merely the voice of the body. If he displeases the House, he can be replaced. At the same time, the chamber relies on him to take heat the governor and the Senate direct at it.In the best of times, the Speaker’s job is to take punches. But no Speaker in living memory, and perhaps no Texas political figure of any kind, has received a pummeling as sustained and omnidirectional as Phelan has this year. This is all the more remarkable given that Phelan’s House is the most right-wing ever. Phelan’s speakership was an accident of sorts. He comes from a politically connected family in southeast Texas and runs Phelan Investments, a self-described “fourth generation” investment firm. After college he worked for a year in the office of U.S. House majority leader Dick Armey, who represented a district north of Fort Worth. Phelan later worked as a staffer in the Texas Senate.

In 2014 he was elected to the state House. In 2019, under then-Speaker Dennis Bonnen, who won the gavel by promising to elevate young guns who felt stymied under prior leaders, Phelan was given the chairmanship of the State Affairs Committee. That body bears a boring name but often hears some of the most contentious issues of a legislative session, from laws targeting LGBTQ Texans to anti-union measures. Phelan earned the job off his reputation as quiet, confident, and popular among members of both parties. He represented a deeply conservative district, but he didn’t regularly reach for the red-meat button. The party should be “done talking about bashing on the gay community,” he said upon assuming the chairmanship, amid a fight about nondiscrimination ordinances. “It’s completely unacceptable.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Haley faces growing third-party speculation (The Hill)

Speculation surrounding the possibility of Nikki Haley launching a third-party bid is mounting as she struggles to win delegates going into Super Tuesday.

The group No Labels has said it would be open to the possibility of Haley leading its ticket as it scrambles to find a candidate to top its ticket.

Haley, for her part, has brushed off the No Labels speculation, arguing her place is in the Republican Party. But with no primary wins under her belt and a general air of uncertainty surrounding her endgame in the presidential race, Haley is spurring talk of a possible third-party insurgent bid… (LINK TO FULL STORY)