The BG Reads
Posts
BG Reads 3.6.2024

BG Reads 3.6.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - March 6, 2024

March 06, 2024

View this email in your browser

Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

March 6, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 3 finalists named in Austin city manager search

🟣 DA José Garza pushes aside challenger in Travis County Democratic primary

🟣 Google’s Waymo will begin testing driverless cars, with no human behind the wheel, in Austin, starting today

🟣 Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton declare victory in attack on House GOP defectors

🟣 Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting attempts to ban him over Capitol attack

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 CITY HALL]

The Austin City Council meets tomorrow at 10AM for its Regular Meeting.

Click Here for the Regular Meeting Agenda

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

José Garza pushes aside Jeremy Sylestine in Democratic primary for Travis County district attorney (KUT)

Incumbent District Attorney José Garza claimed victory Tuesday in the race to keep his job as Travis County district attorney.

As of 11:08 p.m., Garza had a more than 30-point lead over Jeremy Sylestine, picking up 53,085 votes to Sylestine's 26,978, according to the Travis County Clerk.

The Democratic primary race between Garza and Sylestine got messy ahead of Election Day.

Sylestine outraised Garza by a staggering amount: $1.2 million compared to just $204,000 for the incumbent.

The bulk of that support came from high-dollar GOP donors. The race has more or less become a proxy war for Republicans who've railed against Garza since he took office in 2021. A group in Irving, Texas, also accused the DA of "filling Austin's streets with pedophiles and killers" in a mailer.

In a speech on election night, Garza said the effort was an attempt by would-be Republican spoilers to "scare voters into turning their backs on progress."

"The truth is Republicans tried to infiltrate our primary," he said. "How did that work out for them?"… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

3 finalists named in Austin city manager search (Community Impact)

City Council members have narrowed their search for Austin's next city manager down to three candidates and are planning to vote on a final hire in early April.

Austin officials have spent months planning for the arrival of interim City Manager Jesús Garza's permanent replacement. Garza took the helm at City Hall last February after council fired his predecessor, Spencer Cronk.A national search conducted by Mosaic Public Partners led 39 total candidates to apply for the top city government job through the start of 2024.After a closed-door March 5 discussion, Mayor Kirk Watson announced that City Council had selected three finalists for Mosaic to bring to Austin for further consideration:

T.C. Broadnax, the outgoing city manager in Dallas who'd been in that role since 2017. Broadnax previously served as Tacoma, Washington's city manager.
Sara Hensley, city manager of Denton since early 2022. Hensley previously served in other Denton city management roles and is a former Austin Parks and Recreation Department director and temporary assistant city manager.
Brian Platt, city manager of Kansas City, Missouri, since late 2020. Platt previously served as Jersey City, New Jersey's city manager and is a former McKinsey & Co. consultant… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Further Coverage:

Driverless startup Waymo to test self-driving vehicles with no human driver in Austin (Austin American-Statesman)

Autonomous vehicle company Waymo will begin testing driverless cars, with no human behind the wheel, in Austin, starting Wednesday.

Waymo, which returned to Austin to test its self-driving technology about a year ago, started as a project of Google before becoming a Google subsidiary known as Waymo in 2016. The company has been testing its fifth-generation Waymo Driver, an all-electric Jaguar I-Pace outfitted with the company’s latest sensor technology.

The company was one of the first to use Austin as the testing location for autonomous technology. It first tested a fully self-driving vehicle on public streets in Austin in 2015, but later closed its Central Texas operations in 2019.

The company's latest Austin announcement marks a step closer to the company's plans to make Austin its fourth city to offer ride-hail services. Waymo first announced its aim to do this in August.

Waymo already operates 24/7 ride-hail services in San Franciso and Phoenix and also offers ride-hail in Los Angeles under its Waymo One service. The service works similarly to apps such as Uber and Lyft… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Plaintiffs hope to strike city of Austin from Project Connect suit (Austin Monitor)

The people who filed suit last fall to stop the Austin Transit Partnership from proceeding without another bond election have intervened in a lawsuit filed by the city and ATP seeking to validate bonds needed to build the light-rail system. The plaintiffs’ goal is to remove the city as a party to the bond validation lawsuit. Attorney Bill Aleshire, who represents the group seeking to stop ATP from

proceeding without another election, said the suits had been consolidated and an initial hearing is set for March 18.

As for the ATP bonds and what they will buy, Aleshire told the Austin Monitor, “I think this is the biggest con ever pulled on the taxpayers of Austin.” As the language of the lawsuit says, “This lawsuit is brought because Austin taxpayers are not getting anything close to the benefit of the bargain they made for the Project Connect ‘Contract With the Voters.’”

In November, Mark Nemir, the owner of the longstanding burger joint Dirty Martin’s – along with Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, former Council Member Ora Houston and East Austin activist Susana Almanza – filed suit seeking to stop the city from collecting any more tax dollars to fund Project Connect. The group of taxpayers complain that voters were deceived in November 2020, when they approved a 21 percent property tax rate increase to pay for the construction of Project Connect… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan heading to runoff against hardline conservative challenger (Texas Tribune)

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan is facing a runoff election after he failed to secure a majority of votes in primary voting, the clearest sign to date of his precarious position within the Republican Party.

Phelan advanced to the runoff with rival David Covey, a former chairman of the Orange County Republican Party who has been endorsed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and former President Donald Trump.

The third candidate in the race, anti-tax crusader Alicia Davis, won only a fraction of a vote but prevented Phelan and Covey from securing the 50% necessary to win outright.

"This runoff is not just another race, it's the frontline of the battle for the soul of our district," Phelan said in a statement Tuesday evening.

"While my opponent hides behind empty rhetoric, dishonest advertising and surrogate voices, I stand before voters with a clear record of service and conservative success."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton declare victory in attack on House GOP defectors (Texas Tribune)

In a victory for Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, at least nine House Republicans appeared to have lost their primaries on Tuesday evening.

Another eight members, at least, were also forced into runoffs this May 28 — including House Speaker Dade Phelan who was the No. 1 target of the far right.

The two state leaders and other prominent Republicans, like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and former president Donald Trump, endorsed challengers in dozens of races citing the incumbents’ disloyalty to the party.

The Tuesday night drubbing serves as a cautionary reminder that elected Republicans, regardless of their seniority and length of tenure, cross the party’s base at their peril. Challengers and their surrogates framed the Texas House as an institution that catered to liberals and thwarted the conservative priorities.

In particular, Abbott vowed revenge on those House Republicans who helped kill his signature legislative priority to pass school vouchers and Paxton separately targeted Republicans who voted to impeach him last summer.

As many challengers attempted to outflank incumbents on the right, the result signals that the House will likely continue to embrace more conservative policies. It will also become more receptive to school vouchers… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting attempts to ban him over Capitol attack (Associated Press)

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously restored Donald Trump to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to ban the Republican former president over the Capitol riot. The justices ruled a day before the Super Tuesday primaries that states cannot invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots. That power resides with Congress, the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.

Trump posted on his social media network shortly after the decision was released: “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!” The outcome ends efforts in Colorado, Illinois, Maine and elsewhere to kick Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, off the ballot because of his attempts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol… (LINK TO FULL STORY)