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BG Reads 5.1.2024

BG Reads 5.1.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - May 1, 2024

May 01, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

4.17.24 // Bingham Group celebrates 7 years in business!

May 1, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Travis County attorney says continuing to charge protesters is 'unsustainable

🟣 Judge rules that city is violating open meetings law and the city charter

🟣 Delta throttles up service at Austin airport after American cuts flights

🟣 Austin’s Royal Blue Grocery going strong despite Foxtrot’s demise

🟣 What marijuana reclassification means for the United States

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

✅ (NEW) BG Podcast Ep. 249: Austin Politics Weekly Recap and What's Ahead

✅ BG Memos - Leadership and Budget Profiles of New Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax

With the upcoming (May 6th) start of Austin's new City Manager T.C. Broadnax, we've put together three memos intended to provide background for organizations with City Hall interests.
The first and second memos are reviews of Mr. Broadnax's time as city manager of Dallas and Tacoma, respectively. The information was pulled from news articles from the time. We've provided links where appropriate.
The last is a review of the seven city of Dallas budget's Mr. Broadnax spearheaded. This was compiled through review of publicly available budget documents.
BG Memo Link - Contact me for general questions or comments. If there are specific business/policy concerns, we’re happy to schedule time to consult -> [email protected].

✅ BG Podcast Ep. 246: 2024 Elections - Austin Mayoral Round Up

On this episode we welcome back Jack Craver, independent reporter and founder of The Austin Politics Newsletter. Jack and Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham discuss the candidate field for the 2024 Austin Mayoral elections, including incumbent Mayor Kirk Watson.

✅ BG Blog: Land Development Code Amendments (4) Overview

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

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW CITY OF AUSTIN PUBLIC MEETINGS / AGENDAS FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 29, 2024

[AUSTIN CITY HALL]

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

✅ Austin City Council Regular Meeting Agenda (5.2.2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Judge rules that city is violating open meetings law and the city charter (Austin Monitor)

A second Travis County judge ruled Tuesday that the city of Austin is violating the Texas Open Meetings Act as well as the city charter in allowing people who wish to speak to City Council only two minutes, regardless of how many items they want to address. District Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle ruled in favor of the Save Our Springs Alliance and its executive director, Bill Bunch, in their lawsuit against the city.

That means speakers wishing to address City Council will continue to have three minutes per item – not the two minutes for all items that has been in effect since 2023. In mid-April, Judge Madeleine Connor granted a temporary restraining order, giving each speaker three minutes on each item they wished to address. It is not clear whether a court would allow the city to give each speaker two minutes per item. But traditionally, each speaker had three minutes and that is what the plaintiffs were seeking.

The plaintiffs presented three witnesses familiar with testimony before City Council. Former Council Member Laura Morrison told the court she was very familiar with speaking to Council, which she did frequently before being elected in 2008. She said everyone would get three minutes to speak, giving Council members different perspectives. She said that on any number of occasions, Council meetings went beyond 10 p.m. According to Council rules, the Council must vote at 10 p.m. to continue the meeting or adjourn… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

After 79 more arrests, Travis County attorney says continuing to charge protesters is 'unsustainable’ (Texas Public Radio)

Seventy-nine people were arrested on UT Austin's campus during demonstrations Monday against Israel's war in Gaza, the Travis County Sheriff's Office said.

The most recent arrests began a second week of protests, with pro-Palestinian demonstrators again descending on the university's south lawn. State police responded, arresting scores of protesters. Crowds attempting to block vans carrying arrested protesters to jail were met with pepper spray and flash-bangs.

Travis County Attorney Delia Garza said Tuesday those cases have overwhelmed her office, which handles misdemeanors… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Delta throttles up service at Austin airport after American cuts flights (KUT)

After years of booming growth, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport's (ABIA) flight activity is slowing down. Right now, the city-owned airport provides nonstop connections to 77 cities — a 9% dip from last April. Daily departures are down by 4% to 253 flights.

Compared to 2023, the first four months of the year have each seen a decline in the number of seats on flights, an industry metric that factors in both the number of flights and plane capacity.

City staff expect small increases in May, June and July, but this follows gains of 30% to 40% per year since the post-pandemic travel rebound. ABIA is still over-capacity — serving more than 20 million travelers a year in a facility built for 15 million — and working on a major expansion.

One jumbo factor in flight volumes is American Airlines' move to slash 21 routes, more than half its destinations from Austin. The last of those cuts took effect this month with service ending to holiday hotspots Liberia, Costa Rica, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Spirit Airlines cut some flights, too.

This year also saw Virgin Atlantic end direct flights to London, citing less interest from businesses, especially tech firms.

But as some airlines vacate gates, Delta Airlines is launching 11 new flights from Austin this month — destinations include McAllen, Midland/Odessa, Nashville, Cincinnati and Raleigh-Durham — representing a 20% increase in Delta's service over last year. It's the first time Delta is using Austin as a connecting point, requiring travelers worldwide to pass through ABIA to reach Midland and McAllen… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin bodega chain Royal Blue Grocery is going strong despite a national competitor's demise (Austin Business Journal)

The sudden closure of Foxtrot Market in Austin and elsewhere came as a shock to some, but it didn't faze a small Austin-based chain of bodegas, Royal Blue Grocery, that's going strong after 18 years.

According to co-owner Craig Staley, the key for Royal Blue has been to understand its limits and its market, such as where to open and where it can't compete, and also that margins have a ceiling in the challenging industry.

Royal Blue has seven stores spread across the downtown landscape, plus one in San Antonio, serving customers ranging from billionaires residing at The Austonian to the unhoused.

Depending on the year, its profit margin floats around a target of 37%, Staley said. As the business blossomed, Royal Blue added a 3,600-square-foot commissary kitchen to make ready-to-eat items, such as sandwiches and cookies, which are among the most profitable items in its stores.

"We couldn't have existed with just one store. And we wouldn't have made it without prepared foods," Staley said.

While Royal Blue Grocery has grown at a steady pace, Foxtrot debuted in 2016 — pitching itself akin to a tech company with multiple rounds of fundraising, totaling $160 million and including a $100 million series C to expand into more cities. Based on the typical performance of his chain, Staley estimated that Foxtrot would need about 200 stores to pay back all of its investors.

Instead, Foxtrot had 33 across Chicago, Austin, Dallas and Washington, D.C., all of which shuttered earlier this month after a merger at the end of 2023. Foxtrot's biggest store in Austin was 5,000 square feet… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Gov. Greg Abbott orders Texas to ignore Biden administration’s new federal protections of LGBTQ+ students (Texas Tribune)

Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Education Agency on Monday to ignore a Biden administration rule that expanded federal sex discrimination protections to include LGBTQ+ students.

The Biden administration recently revised the rules for Title IX, the sweeping civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at federally funded colleges and K-12 schools. The new rules, which are set to go into effect in August, redefined sex discrimination and sex-based harassment to prevent misconduct based on sex stereotypes, pregnancy, gender identity and sexual orientation. It codifies initial guidance documents that prompted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue the Biden administration last year.

"Congress wrote Title IX to protect women. Biden, with no authority to do so, rewrote Title IX to protect men who identify as women," Abbott wrote Monday on social media platform X... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

How Tiktok is becoming an indirect political tool in the Texas Republican runoffs (Austin American-Statesman)

TikTok from the United States unless it is severed from its Beijing-based parent company, some Republican Texas House members battling to survive the May 28 runoffs have sought to link their opponents to the app because one of its major investors has become a financial player in their races. The investor, Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who owns 7% of TikTok parent ByteDance, emerged during the run-up to the March 5 primaries as a major donor to Gov. Greg Abbott's effort to defeat House Republicans who opposed "school choice" legislation during 2023 legislative session. Nine of those incumbents were defeated outright, and several others were forced into runoffs. School choice, or vouchers, would use public money to help pay for students' private school tuition — a proposal that divided House Republicans last year.

Rep. Justin Holland, a four-term Republican from the Dallas suburb of Rockwall who is running against former Donald Trump campaign official Katrina Pierson, goes after Yass by name in his online campaign messaging. Holland says Yass "made billions investing in TikTok" and accuses the platform of "turning young people away from American and Israel." The federal TikTok ban, which was signed by President Joe Biden early Wednesday, was part of a sweeping $95.3 billion foreign aid package Congress passed late Tuesday to provide assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Supporters of the measure — which would ban TikTok unless the platform is sold — have said TikTok is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and represents a security threat to the United States. "This app is a spy balloon in Americans' phones," U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, said on the House floor last week. "It is a modern-day Trojan horse of the CCP used to surveil and exploit Americans' personal information." The new law sets a nine-month deadline for the platform to be sold or be blocked from U.S.-based web hosting services… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[NATION/WORLD NEWS]

What marijuana reclassification means for the United States (Associated Press)

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis, but wouldn’t legalize it for recreational use.

The proposal would move marijuana from the “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”

So what does that mean, and what are the implications?

Technically, nothing yet. The proposal must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and then undergo a public-comment period and review from an administrative judge, a potentially lengthy process… (LINK TO FULL STORY)